A2 Various Kritiks

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Michigan 7 Week Juniors

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7 WEEK JUNIORS AFF K TOOLBOX
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Before using this file, you should know:
The realism work was put out in a separate file (which you will have access to on the cd we will send this work out to the
individual labs electronically. While some is repetitive with the seniors lab, there is also other literature included (like Murray)
We did not put out answers to every criticism written at camp, since the criticisms all came with answers. However, we did put
out additional evidence to most of the criticisms, which you should use as supplements to your answer files
Many of the cards can be used to answer multiple Ks (ex. Truth exists/good, pragmatism, etc). Familiarize yourself with the
file so you can find answers to all the ks
Pragmatism Solvency Best Action........................................1

Pragmatism Solvency Best Action (Need nation-state action)2
Pragmatism Solvency Best Action (Need nation-state action)3
Pragmatism Solvency Alt can work within framework.........4
Pragmatism Solvency Critical Theory Alone Fails...............5
Pragmatism Solvency Moral Purity Alone Fails...................6
Pragmatism Solvency Disengagement war and tyranny. .7
AT: Pragmatism Key to the Feminist Movement..................8
State Good................................................................................9
State Good..............................................................................10
State Good..............................................................................11
State Good Zizek.................................................................12
State Good Zizek (AT: Cooption)........................................13
Util Good Morality Hurts Policymaking.............................14
Util Good Ok to Use People as Means to an End................15
AT: Framework Debate Good..............................................16
AT: Methods K No Alt.........................................................21
AT: Postmodernism K Postmodernism Fails.......................22
AT: Postmodernism K Permutation Solvency.....................23
AT: Podemodernism K Permutation Solvency....................24
AT: Postmodernism K Modernism Good............................25
AT: Postmodernism K Cultural Relativism T/.....................26
AT: Postmodernism K Cultural Relativism T/.....................27
Postmodernism K K Destroys Coalitions (Krishna)...........28
AT: Truth Ks Truth Good.....................................................29
AT: Truth Ks K of Truth Bad...............................................32
AT: Fear of Death Love and Fear Compatible.....................34
AT: Fear of Death Love = destructive (Fear key)................35
AT: Fear of Death Love = Bad (Fear Key to Peace)............36
AT: Fear of Death Mobilizes people/compassion................37
AT: Fear of Death Mobilizes people/compassion................38
AT: Fear of Death Fear Key to Value to Life.......................39
AT: Fear of Death Fear Key to Value to Life.......................40
AT: Fear of Death Key to Human Survival..........................41
AT: Fear of Death Fear Key to Leadership..........................42
AT: Fear of Death Key to Prevent State Annihilation.........43
AT: Fear of Death Plan Solves.............................................44
AT: Fear of Nukes Plan Solves Numbing............................45
AT: Fear of Nukes Key to Peace and Survival....................46
AT: Fear of Nukes Key to Peace and Survival....................47
AT: Fear of Nukes Peace and Survival................................48
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AT: Fear of Nukes Peace and Survival................................49
AT: Fear of Nukes Disarm Bad (Weapons key to peace)....50
AT: Fear of Nukes Key to Denuclearize..............................51
AT: Nuclearism Permutation Solvency...............................52
AT: Nuclearism Alternative More Numbing..................53
AT: Nuclearism Images of Nuclear Discourse Key.............54
AT; Nuclearism- Nuclear weapons are morally acceptable....55
AT: Chaloupka Krishna evidence........................................56
AT: Non-violence Alternative Holocaust........................57
AT: Non-violence Alternative Genocide........................58
AT: Non-violence Alternative Increases Violence...............59
AT: Non-violence Violence Key to Peace...........................62
AT: Non-violence Alternative Unnecessary (Violence not a threat)
63
AT: Non-violence Alternative Impossible (nonviolence relies on violence)
AT: Non-violence Love = Impossible..................................65
AT: Non-violence Perm Solvency.......................................66
AT:Kappeler Permutation Solvency....................................67
AT: Cuomo Negative Peace Key to Positive Peace.............68
AT: Cuomo Permutation Solvency......................................69
AT: Terror Talk Alternative Terrorism............................70
AT: Terror Talk Alternative Terrorism............................71
AT: Terror Talk Language Key to Win WOT......................72
AT: Terror Talk Freedom Fighters Worse..........................73
AT: Images of Suffering Images good.................................74
AT: Language K Suppression of language bad....................75
AT: Language K Suppression of language bad....................76
AT: Language K Censorship Bad........................................77
AT: Language K Alt Fails....................................................78
AT: Identity Politics Essentialist..........................................79
AT: Borders K Borders key to peace...................................81
AT: Borders K Borders key to ethnic cleansing..................82
AT: Borders K Preserves Liberty.........................................83
AT: Santos Alt Fails.............................................................85
AT: Biopower Alt fails.........................................................88
AT: Biopower Alt Fails (Biopower Can Be Good)..............89
AT: Biopower Alt Fails (Biopower Can Be Good)..............90
AT: Biopower Key to Democracy.......................................91
AT: Biopower Key to Democracyy.....................................94
AT: Biopower Key to Value to Life (AT: Bare Life)...........95
AT: Biopower AT: Its Racist...............................................96
AT: Biopower AT: Its Racist...............................................97
AT: Foucalt Permutation Solvency......................................98
AT: Foucalt Permutation Solvency......................................99
AT: Foucalt No Link + Essentialism.................................100
AT: Foucalt Alt Fails = Essentialist...................................101
AT: Foucalt Alt Suffering.............................................102
AT: Foucalt Alt = Contradictory........................................103
AT: Foucalt No Alternative................................................104
AT: Foucalt No Alternative (Nihilism)..............................107
AT: Kritiks of Rights State Action Key.............................108
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AT: Agamben Alt Fails......................................................110
AT: Agamben Alt Violence (Ignores Suffering)............111
AT: Agamben Alt No Rights (Rights Good).................112
AT: Agamben Alt destroys democracy and rights.............113
AT: Agamben Alt collapse the state..............................114
AT: Agamben Singularity destroys politics.......................115
AT: Agamben Alt fails.......................................................116
AT: Agamben AT: Humanitarianism..................................117
AT: Calculations Bad Calculations Good..........................118
AT: Calculations Bad Calculations Good..........................119
AT: Otherization Plan key prevent extermination.............120
AT: Otherization Responsibility to Other Exists...............121
AT: Deconstruction K Permutation Solvency....................122
AT: Otherization Responsibility to Other Exists...............123
AT: Lacan Essentialism.....................................................124
AT: Lacan - Essentialism......................................................129
AT: Lacan AT: Lacan is not Essentialist............................130
AT: Lacan Conservatism....................................................131
AT: Lacan Violence...........................................................134
AT: Lacan Violence...........................................................135
AT: Lacan Alternative Doesnt Solve Case.......................136
AT: Stavrakakis Permutation Solvency.............................137
AT: Psychoanalysis Action Key.........................................138
AT: Psychoanalysis Alternative Fails................................139
AT: Utopias Bad Utopias Good.........................................140
AT: Utopian Fantasies Bad Utopias Good.........................141
AT: Traverse the Fantasy Utopias Good.............................142
AT: Traversing the Fantasy Fantasies Good......................143
AT: Traverse the Fantasy Fantasies = Inevitable (alt fails)145
AT: Traversing the Fantasy Fantasy destroys symbolic order146
AT: Traversing the Fantasy - Leads to bare life...................147
AT: Zizek Alt Violence..................................................148
AT: Zizek Alt Violence.................................................149
AT: Zizek Alt Fails.............................................................153
AT: Zizek Alt Fails (Reinscribes Capitalism)....................156
AT: Zizek Perm Solvency..................................................157
AT: Deleuze and Guattari Alt Fails....................................158
AT: Badiou Permutation Solvency....................................159
AT: Badiou State Key........................................................160
AT: Badiou Plan solves the criticism.................................161
AT: Badiou Human rights good.........................................162
AT: Badiou No Link..........................................................163
AT: Badiou Doublebind.....................................................164
AT: Badiou I/L to Lacan....................................................165
AT: Badiou Alternative fails..............................................166
AT: Normativity Normativity Good..................................169
AT: Normativity Normative Thought Inevitable...............170
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AT: Normativity Normative Thought Inevitable...............171
AT: Normativity Alternative Fails.....................................172
AT: Normativity Alternative Fails (Ommission)...............175
AT: Normativity Schlag ignores oppressed voices reifies oppression 176
AT: Normativity Alternative = Inaction.............................177
AT: Normativity Nihilistic and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. .178
AT: Empire Must Work Through The Empire (your alt fails)179
AT: Empire Must Work Through The Empire (your alt fails)180
AT: Empire Plan = key (US better alt to Empire)..............181
AT: Empire Alternative Terrorism................................182
AT: Empire Alternative Terrorism................................183
AT: Empire Alternative Violence..................................184
AT: Empire Alternative Violence..................................185
AT: Empire Alternative Justifies Holocaust......................186
AT: Empire Globalization Good........................................187
AT: Empire Globalization Good........................................188
AT: Empire Globalization Key to Democracy...................189
AT: Empire Capitalism Good (their alt = utopian)............190
AT: Empire US leadership good (alt fails)........................191
AT: Empire US action solves crisis management (MNCs)192
AT: Empire Alternative Fails (Lack of empiricism/proof..193
AT: Empire Alternative Fails (Multitude Bad)..................194
AT: Empire Alternative Fails (Multitude Bad)..................195
AT: Empire Alt Suffering (No rule of law)...................196
AT: Empire Imperialism Inevitable...................................197
AT: Empire Imperialism Inevitable...................................198
AT: Empire Capitalism Inevitable.....................................199
AT: Empire Capitalism Inevitable.....................................200
AT: Empire No Tech Revolution.......................................201
AT: Empire AT: Sovereignty Links....................................202
AT: Empire AT: Nation-State Links...................................203
AT: Empire Borders Links.................................................204
AT: Empire MNCs.............................................................205
AT: Empire AT: Biopower Impact.....................................206
AT: IR Fem Focus on identity exclusion......................207
AT: IR Fem Focus on identity exclusion......................208
AT: IR Fem Focus on identity Exclusion (shatters movement)
209
210
AT: IR Fem Reify Difference Falsely (Alt Fails)..............211
AT: IR Fem Makes Discipline Meaningless (Alt Fails)....212
AT: IR Fem Ignores Suffering of Men..............................213
AT: IR Fem Alt Fails..........................................................214
AT: IR Fem No Gender Bias.............................................215
AT: IR Fem Permutation (Realism)...................................216
AT: Anthropocentrism Anthro Romance nature = extinction
217
AT: Anthropocentrism Anthro key to action/ecological conscience (alt fails) 218
AT: Anthropocentrism Anthro key to protect environment/ecological conscience (alt fails)
AT: Anthropocentrism Anthro Wont Hurt the Environment220
AT: Anthropocentrism Humans and Nature are not zero-sum221
AT: Anthropocentrism Perm Solves Best..........................222
AT: Global local: Permutation Solvency...........................223
AT: Global local: Global Action Good..............................224
AT: Global local: Global Action Good..............................225
AT: Global local Alt Ignores Human Rights...................226
AT: Global local: No Alternative.......................................227
AT: Global local: Checks on globalization now (no need for global state)
228
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AT: Nietzsche /Nihilism Replicates Status Quo Problems 229
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Results in No Value to Life.........230
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Justifies Holocaust......................231
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Justifies Holocaust......................232
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Leads to Classism.......................233
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Justifies Terrorism.......................234
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Root of all violence.....................236
AT: Nietzsche /Nihilism Leads to Violence.......................237
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism AT: Christianity...........................238
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Alt Fails.......................................239
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Alt Fails.......................................240
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Alt Fails (Power Relations).........241
AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Alt Fails (Superman)...................242
AT: Hiedegger Alt Fails.....................................................243
AT: Hiedegger Alt Fails.....................................................244
AT: Hiedegger Alt Suffering/Extinction.......................245
AT: Hiedegger Alt fails (justifies Holocaust)....................246
AT: Hiedegger Alt Fails (justifies Holocaust)...................247
AT: Hiedegger Hes a Nazi................................................248
AT: Hiedegger Humanism Good.......................................249
AT: Spanos Alt Fails..........................................................252
AT: Spanos Alt Fails..........................................................253
AT: Baudrillard No Alt......................................................254
AT: Baudrillard No Alt......................................................255
AT: Baudrillard Alt reintrench modernism........................256
AT: Baudrillard Alt ignores exploitation and destruction..257
NEG INDICTS OF RORTY/PRAG..................................258
NEG INDICTS OF RORTY/PRAG..................................259
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Pragmatism Solvency Best Action

Pragmatism is best solves the case and achieves the benefits of the alternative
Gayman 99 (Cynthia, Penn State Journal of Speculative Philosophy,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_speculative_philosophy/v013/13.2gayman.html)
However, even as postmodernism can challenge the positive values inherent in pragmatic method--meliorism,
reconstruction, community, instrumentalism, pluralism--since even careful inquiry can be subverted by domination,
pragmatism challenges postmodernism pessimism: the privileging of "oppositionality and difference . . . commits
'the fallacy of selective emphasis' detailed by Dewey." As Stuhr remarks, "This is a seductive error, offering us, now
fortified by an appreciation of difference, the easy solace of traditional idealism: self-transformation and selftranscendence (and becoming other than what one is) through self-understanding and self-awareness" (108).
Pragmatism would argue against arbitrary and false self-assertion as the only hope against domination and
totalization, for the fact of social constitution of selves does not preclude recognition of or respect for difference and
oppositionality. Instead, socially constructed selves can join together as a pragmatic community of inquirers who
refuse to support inhumane social practices, thereby de-structuring institutional domination and creating the
communally recognized value of individual human dignity. Stuhr thus conjoins deconstructive critique with
pragmatic instrumentalism, whose means are political and moral action. [End Page 148]
In Stuhr's view, pragmatism and postmodernism together constitute a theoretical and practical challenge to beliefs
and practices in view of a reconstructive vision of the future. But on what basis will such a future be envisioned? Is
self-conscious critique an adequate basis for determining which forms of social domination are more or less
harmful? Does such critique indicate whose interests a desired end best serves or how a chosen means of action can
be determined as moral? If answers to such questions remain provisional, for no absolute justification exists for any
particular action, this is not to say "there is sufficient reason for doing nothing at all" (114). On the contrary,
"because there is no reason to think fuller individuality and fuller community are impossible, therefore there is
sufficient reason for undertaking the reconstruction of experience by means of intelligent criticism--criticism that is
always partial, perspectival, and provisional" (114). This embrace of life's inherent contingency makes Stuhr's
pragmatism a hard philosophy, for no ground of certainty provides rest for the birth and nurturance of the real.
But perhaps even the urge to philosophize is born less of wonder than of fear. As Dewey recognized, "the quest for
certainty" leads epistemological and moral inquiries to discover order in the nature of experience or find structure
intrinsic to human understanding. But if reality is less assured and more contextually determined, if it demands more
courage in the face of the ever-not-quite, this does not mean that the truth of human meanings and moral values are
relative to mere agreement or are a matter of social and political expediency. The hard philosophy of genealogical
pragmatism demands that inquiry be directed to open-ended truths or truths-in-process, to the complexities of
everyday experience, and to a never-ending critical assessment of choices finalized or mistakes made.
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Pragmatism Solvency Best Action (Need nation-state action)

We can agree with their criticism privately and use it to inform our own interactions with
others, but doing this on a national level is the equivalent of the abandoment of democratic
politics. Claiming a national identity within the nation-state is the only way to achieve
structural change.
Rorty 98 (Richard, Stanford Philosophy Professor, Achieving Our Country, pp. 94-7)
These futile attempts to philosophize one's way into polit-ical relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left
re-treats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from
practice pro-duces theoretical hallucinations. These result in an intellectual environment which is, as Mark Edmundson says in his
book Nightmare on Main Street, Gothic. The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the most frightening of which
is called "power." This is the name of what Edmund- son calls Foucault's "haunting agency, which is everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a
resourceful spook."10 In its Foucauldian usage, the term "power" denotes an agency which has left an indelible stain on every word in our language and on every
institution in our society. It is always already there, and cannot be spotted coming or going. One might spot a corporate bagman arriving at a congressman's office, and
perhaps block his entrance. But one cannot block off power in the Foucauldian sense. Power is as much inside one as outside one. It is nearer than hands and feet. As
Ed- mundson says: one cannot "confront power; one can only encounter its temporary and generally unwitting agents . . . [it] has capacities of motion and
transformation that make it a preternatural force."1' Only interminable individual and so-cial self-analysis, and perhaps not even that, can help us escape from the
infinitely fine meshes of its invisible web. The ubiquity of Foucauldian power is reminiscent of the ubiquity of Satan, and thus of the ubiquity of original sin that
diabolical stain on every human soul. I argued in my first lecture that the repudiation of the concept of sin was at the heart of Dewey and Whitman's civic religion. I
also claimed that the American Left, in its horror at the Vietnam War, rein-vented sin. It reinvented the old religious idea that some stains are ineradicable. I now wish
in committing itself to what it calls "theory," this Left has gotten something which is entirely too much like
religion. For the cultural Left has come to believe that we must place our country within a theoretical frame of reference, situate it within a vast
quasi-cosmological perspective. Stories about the webs of power and the insidious influence of a hegemonic ideology do for
to say that,
this Left what stories about the Lamanites did for Joseph Smith and what stories about Yakkub did for Elijah Muhammad. What stories about
blue-eyed devils are to the Black Muslims, stories about hegemony and power are to many cultural leftiststhe only thing they
really want to hear. To step into the intellectual world which some of these leftists inhabit is to move out of a world
in which the citizens of a democracy can join forces to resist sadism and selfishness into a Gothic world in which
democratic politics has become a farce. It is a world in which all the day lit cheerfulness of Whitmanesque hypersecularism has been
lost, and in which "liberalism" and "humanism" are synonyms for naivetefor an inability to grasp the full horror of our situation. I have argued
in various books that the philosophers most often cited by cultural leftistsNietzsche, Heidegger, Fou-cault, and
Derridaare largely right in their criticisms of Enlightenment rationalism. I have argued further that traditional
liberalism and traditional humanism are entirely compatible with such criticisms. We can still be old- fashioned
reformist liberals even if, like Dewey, we give up the correspondence theory of truth and start treating moral and
scientific beliefs as tools for achieving greater human happiness, rather than as representations of the intrinsic nature of reality. We can be this kind of liberal even after we turn our backs on Descartes, linguistify subjectivity, and see
everything around us and within us as one more replaceable social construction. But I have also urged that insofar as these
antimetaphysi-cal, anti-Cartesian philosophers offer a quasi-religious form of spiritual pathos, they should be relegated to private life
and not taken as guides to political deliberation. The notion of "infinite responsibility," formulated by Emmanuel Lev-inas
and sometimes deployed by Derridaas well as Der- rida's own frequent discoveries of impossibility, unreacha-bility, and
unrepresentabilitymay be useful to some of us in our individual quests for private perfection. When we take up
our public responsibilities, however, the infinite and the unrepresentable are merely nuisances. Thinking of our responsibilities in these terms is as much of a stumbling-block to effective political organization as is the sense of sin.
Em-phasizing the impossibility of meaning, or of justice, as Der- rida sometimes does, is a temptation to Gothicizeto view
democratic politics as ineffectual, because unable to cope with preternatural forces. Whitman and Dewey, I have argued,
gave us all the romance, and all the spiritual uplift, we Americans need to go about our public business. As Edmundson remarks, we should not
allow Emerson, who was a precursor of both Whitman and Dewey, to be displaced by Poe, who was a precursor of Lacan. For purposes of
thinking about how to achieve our country, we do not need to worry about the correspondence theory of truth, the
grounds of normativity, the impossibility of justice, or the infinite distance which separates us from the other. For
those purposes, we can give both religion and philosophy a pass. We can just get on with trying to solve what Dewey called "the problems of
men." To think about those problems means to refrain from thinking so much about otherness that we begin to acquiesce in
what Todd Gitlin has called, in the title of a recent book, "the twilight of common dreams." It means deriving our moral identity, at least in part,
from our citizenship in a dem-ocratic nation-state, and from leftist attempts to fulfill the promise of that nation.
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Pragmatism Solvency Best Action (Need nation-state action)

Focusing on national politics as citizens is vital to engaging society and achieving structural
changethe appeal to the nation is the only way the left can remain relevant
The cultural Left often seems convinced that the nation-state is obsolete, and that there is therefore no point in attempting to revive national politics. The trouble with this claim is that the government of our nation-state will be, for
the foreseeable future, the only agent capable of making any real difference in the amount of selfishness and sadism
inflicted on Americans. It is no comfort to those in danger of being immiserated by globalization to be told that,
since national governments are now irrelevant, we must think up a replacement for such governments. The
cosmopolitan super-rich do not think any replacements are needed, and they are likely to prevail. Bill Readings was right to say
that "the nation-state [has ceased] to be the elemental unit of capitalism," but it remains the entity which makes decisions about social benefits, and thus about social justice. 12 The current leftist
habit of taking the long view and looking beyond nationhood to a global polity is as useless as was faith in Marx's philosophy of history, for which it has become a substitute. Both are equally
irrelevant to the question of how to prevent the reemergence of hereditary castes, or of how to prevent right-wing populists from taking advantage of resentment at that reemergence. When we
one of the essential transformations which the cultural Left will have to undergo
is the shedding of its semi-conscious anti-Americanism, which it carried over from the rage of the late Sixties. This
Left will have to stop thinking up ever more abstract and abusive names for "the system" and start trying to
construct inspiring images of the country. Only by doing so can it begin to form alliances with people outside the
academyand, specifically, with the labor unions. Outside the academy, Americans still want to feel patriotic. They
still want to feel part of a nation which can take control of its destiny and make itself a better place. If the Left forms
no such alliances, it will never have any effect on the laws of the United States. To form them will require the
cultural Left to forget about Baudrillard's account of America as Disneylandas a country of simulacraand to
start proposing changes in the laws of a real country, inhabited by real people who are enduring unnecessary
suffering, much of which can be cured by governmental action.13 Nothing would do more to resurrect the American
Left than agreement on a concrete political platform, a People's Charter, a list of specific reforms. The existence of such a list
think about these latter questions, we begin to realize tha t
endlessly reprinted and debated, equally familiar to professors and production workers, imprinted on the memory both of professional people and
of those who clean the professionals' toiletsmight revitalize leftist politics.14 The problems which can be cured by governmental
action, and which such a list would canvass, are mostly those that stem from selfishness rather than sadism. But to
bring about such cures it would help if the Left would change the tone in which it now discusses sadism. The preSixties reformist Left, insofar as it concerned itself with oppressed minorities, did so by proclaiming that all of us
black, white, and brownare Americans, and that we should respect one another as such. This strategy gave rise to the
"platoon" movies, which showed Americans of various ethnic back- grounds fighting and dying side by side. By contrast, the contemporary cultural Left urges that America should not be a melting-pot, because we need to respect one another in
our differences. This Left wants to preserve otherness rather than ignore it. The distinction between the old strategy and the new is important.
The choice between them makes the difference between what Todd Gitlin calls "common dreams" and what Arthur Schlesinger calls "disuniting America." To take pride in being black or gay is
an entirely reasonable response to the sadistic humiliation to which one has been subjected. But insofar as this pride prevents someone from also taking pride in being an American citizen, from
thinking of his or her country as capable of reform, or from being able to join with straights or whites in reformist initiatives, it is a political disaster. The rhetorical question of the "platoon"
movies"What do our differences matter, compared with our commonality as fellow Americans?"did not commend pride in difference, but neither did it condemn it. The intent of posing that
If the cultural
Left insists on its present strategyon asking us to respect one another in our differences rather than asking us to
cease noticing those differencesit will have to find a new way of creating a sense of commonality at the level of
national politics. For only a rhetoric of commonality can forge a winning majority in national elections. I doubt that any
such new way will be found. Nobody has yet suggested a viable leftist alternative to the civic religion of which Whitman and
Dewey were prophets. That civic religion centered around taking advantage of traditional pride in American citizenship
by substituting social justice for individual freedom as our country's principal goal. We were supposed to love our
country because it showed promise of being kinder and more generous than other countries. As the blacks and the gays,
among others, were well aware, this was a counsel of perfection rather than description of fact. But you cannot urge national political
renewal on the basis of descriptions of fact. You have to describe the country in terms of what you passionately hope
it will become, as well as in terms of what you know it to be now. You have to be loyal to a dream country rather
than to the one to which you wake up every morning. Unless such loyalty exists, the ideal has no chance of
becoming actual.
question was to help us become a country in which a person's difference would be largely neglected by others, unless the person in question wished to call attention to it.
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Pragmatism Solvency Alt can work within framework

Idealism still has a place within pragmatics it just needs to be accompanied by political
action
Haber 2005 http://www.haberarts.com/rorty.htm, men and utopias
Her final point leaps on certain connotations of utopian, but not Rorty's connotations. Is a utopia,
literally, a "nowhere"? It may have become one for Suprematism and the arts under Stalin, but
Rorty does not oppose utopias to political dog-fighting. Surely he would see King's "I Have a
Dream" speech as politics at its best, and so would I. Surely he would find debates about whether
the Democrats have an independent vision to be eminently practical.
A pragmatist might see talk about rights as misleading from time to time, since these fictions
based on political and social structures are not facts of nature. That only means, however, that
rights are fair, utopian claims with a potentially revolutionary impact. Marx may have attacked
utopian socialism in the name of dialectical materialism, but Marxism attracted adherents based
on hopes for the future.
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Pragmatism Solvency Critical Theory Alone Fails
Failure to advocate concrete reforms paralyzes progress

The academic, cultural Left approvesin a rather distant and lofty wayof the activities of these surviving
reformists. But it retains a conviction which solidified in the late Sixties. It thinks that the system, and not just the
laws, must be changed. Reformism is not good enough. Because the very vocabulary of liberal politics is infected
with dubious presuppositions which need to be exposed, the first task of the Left must be, just as Confucius said,
the rectification of names. The concern to do what the Sixties called "naming the system" takes precedence over
reforming the laws. "The system" is sometimes identified as "late capitalism," but the cultural Left does not think
much about what the al-ternatives to a market economy might be, or about how to combine political freedom with
centralized economic deci-sionmaking. Nor does it spend much time asking whether Americans are undertaxed, or
how much of a welfare state the country can afford, or whether the United States should back out of the North
American Free Trade Agreement. When the Right proclaims that socialism has failed, and that capitalism is the only
alternative, the cultural Left has little to say in reply. For it prefers not to talk about money. Its principal enemy is a
mind-set rather than a set of economic arrangementsa way of thinking which is, supposedly, at the root of both
selfishness and sadism. This way of thinking is sometimes called "Cold War ideology," sometimes "technocratic
rationality," and sometimes "phallogocentrism" (the cultural Left comes up with fresh sobriquets every year). It is a
mind-set nurtured by the patriarchal and capitalist institutions of the industrial West, and its bad effects are most
clearly visible in the United States. To subvert this way of thinking, the academic Left believes, we must teach
Americans to recognize otherness. To this end, leftists have helped to put together such academic disciplines as
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women's history, black history, gay studies, Hispanic-American studies, and migrant studies. This has led Stefan
Collini to remark that in the United States, though not in Britain, the term "cultural studies" means "victim studies." Collini's choice of phrase has been resented, but he was making a good point: namely, that such programs were
cre-ated not out of the sort of curiosity about diverse forms of human life which gave rise to cultural anthropology,
but rather from a sense of what America needed in order to make itself a better place. The principal motive behind
the new di-rections taken in scholarship in the United States since the Sixties has been the urge to do something for
people who have been humiliatedto help victims of socially accept-able forms of sadism by making such sadism
no longer ac-ceptable
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Pragmatism Solvency Moral Purity Alone Fails

Democracy requires compromiseinsisting on moral purity means nothing gets done
both top-down and bottom-up approaches to politics are necessary
I can sum up by saying that it would be a good thing if the next generation of American leftists found as little resonance in the names of Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin as in those of Herbert Spencer and Benito Mussolini. It would be an even better thing if the names of Ely and Croly, Dreiser and Debs, A. Philip Randolph and
it would be a big help to American efforts for

so-cial justice if each new generation were able to think of itself as participating in a movement which has lasted for
more than a century, and has served human liberty well. It would help if students became as familiar with the Pullman Strike, the Great
John L. Lewis were more familiar to these leftists than they were to the students of the Sixties. For
Coalfield War,13 and the passage of the Wagner Act as with the march from Selma, the Berkeley free-speech demonstrations, and Stonewall. Each new generation of
They should be able to see, as Whitman and Dewey did,

the struggle for social justice as central to their country's moral identity. To bring this about, it would help if American leftists stopped
students ought to think of American leftism as having a long and glorious history.
asking whether or not Walter Reuther's attempt to bourgeoisify the auto workers was objectively reactionary. It would also help if they emphasized the similarities
rather than the differences between Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin, between Susan B. Anthony and Emma Goldman, between Catharine MacKinnon and Judith
Butler.
The sectarian divisions which plagued Marxism are manifestations of an urge for purity which the Left would
be better off without. America is not a morally pure country. No country ever has been or ever will be. Nor will any
country ever have a morally pure, homogeneous Left. In democratic countries you get things done by compromising your
principles in order to form alliances with groups about whom you have grave doubts. The Left in America has made
a lot of progress by doing just that. The closest the Left ever came to taking over the government was in 1912, when a Whitman enthu- siast, Eugene Debs, ran for
president and got almost a million votes. These votes were cast by, as Daniel Bell puts it, "as unstable a compound as was ever mixed in the modern history of political chemistry." This
compound mingled rage at low wages and miserable working conditions with, as Bell says, "the puritan conscience of millionaire socialists, the boyish romanticism of a Jack London, the pale
Christian piety of a George Herron, ... the reckless braggadocio of a 'Wild Bill' Haywood, ... the tepid social-work impulse of do-gooders, ... the flaming discontent of the dispossessed farmers,
the inarticulate and amorphous desire to 'belong' of the immigrant workers, the iconoclastic idol-breaking of the literary radicals, . . . and more." 14 Those dispossessed farmers were often racist,
nativist, and sadistic. The millionaire socialists, ruthless robber barons though they were, nevertheless set up the foundations which sponsored the research which helped get leftist legislation
We need to get rid of the Marxist idea that only bottom-up initiatives, conducted by workers and peasants who
have somehow been so freed from resentment as to show no trace of prejudice, can achieve our country. The his-tory
of leftist politics in America is a story of how top-down initiatives and bottom-up initiatives have interlocked. Top-down
passed.
leftist initiatives come from people who have enough security, money, and power themselves, but never-theless worry about the fate of people who have less. Exam-ples of such initiatives are
muckraking exposes by journalists, novelists, and scholarsfor example, Ida Tar bell on Stan- dard Oil, Upton Sinclair on immigrant workers in the Chicago slaughterhouses, Noam Chomsky on
the State De-partment's lies and the New York Times's omissions. Other examples are the Wagner and Norris-Laguardia Acts, novels of social protest like People of the Abyss and Studs Lonigan,
the clos-ing of university campuses after the American invasion of Cambodia, and the Supreme Court's decisions in Brown v. Board of Education and Romer v. Evans. Bottom-up leftist initiatives
come from people who have little security, money, or power and who rebel against the unfair treatment which they, or others like them, are receiv-ing. Examples are the Pullman Strike, Marcus
Garvey's black nationalist movement, the General Motors sit-down strike of 1936, the Montgomery bus boycott, the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the creation of Cesar
Chavez's United Farm Workers, and the Stonewall "riot" (the beginning of the gay rights movement). Although these two kinds of initiatives reinforced each other, the people at the bottom took
the risks, suffered the beatings, made all the big sacrifices, and were sometimes murdered. But their heroism might have been fruitless if leisured, educated, relatively risk-free people had not
joined the struggle. Those beaten to death by the goon squads and the lynch mobs might have died in vain if the safe and secure had not lent a hand.
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Pragmatism Solvency Disengagement war and tyranny

Political disengagement doesnt mean the national public sphere goes away, it means it will
be dominated by the far-right and collapse into fascism, causing wars and tyranny
if the pressures of globalization create such castes not only in the United States but in all
the old democracies, we shall end up in an Orwellian world. In such a world, there may be no supernational analogue of Big Brother, or any official creed
If the formation of hereditary castes continues unimpeded, and
analogous to Ingsoc. But there will be an analogue of the Inner Partynamely, the international, cosmopolitan super-rich. They will make all the important decisions. The analogue of Orwells Outer Party will
be educated, comfortably off, cosmopolitan professionalsLinds overclass, the people like you and me. The job of people like us will be to make sure that the decisions made by the Inner Party are carried out
smoothly and efficiently. It will be in the interest of the international super-rich to keep our class relatively prosperous and happy. For they need people who can pretend to be the political class of each of the
individual nation-states. For the sake of keeping the proles quiet, the super-rich will have to keep up the pretense that national politics might someday make a difference. Since economic decisions are their
prerogative, they will encourage politicians, of both the Left and the Right, to specialize in cultural issues.7 The aim will be to keep the minds of the proles elsewhereto keep the bottom 75 percent of Americans
If the proles can be distracted from their

own despair by media-created psuedo-events, including the occasional brief and bloody war, the super-rich will have little to fear.
Contemplation of this possible world invites two responses from the Left. The first is to insist that the inequalities between nations need to be mitigated and, in particular, that the Northern
Hemisphere must share its wealth with the Southern. The second is to insist that the primary responsibility of each democratic nation-state is to
its own least advantaged citizens. These two responses obviously conflict with each other. In particular, the first response suggests that the old democracies should open
and the bottom 95 percent of the worlds population busy with ethnic and religious hostilities, and with debates about sexual mores.
their borders, whereas the second suggests that they should close them.8 The first response comes naturally to academic leftists, who have always been internationally minded. The second
comes naturally to members of trade unions, and to the marginally employed people who can most easily be
recruited into right-wing populist movements. Union members in the United States have watched factory after factory close, only to reopen in Slovenia, Thailand, or
response
Mexico. It is no wonder that they see the result of international free trade as prosperity for managers and stockholders, a better standard of living for workers in developing countries, and a very much worse
standard of living for American workers. It would be no wonder if they saw the American leftist intelligentsia as on the same side of the managers and stockholdersas sharing the same class interests. For we
intellectuals, who are mostly academics, are ourselves quite well insulated, at least in the short run, from the effects of globalization. To make things worse, we often seem more interested in the workers of the
democracies are heading into a Weimarlike period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments . Edward Luttwak, for example,
has suggested that fascism may be the American future. The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and unorganized
developing world than in the fate of our fellow citizens. Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized
unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will
realize that suburban white-collar workersthemselves desperately afraid of being downsizedare not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. At that point,
something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for
a strongman to vote forsomeone will assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salemen, and postmodernist professors will no
longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis novel It Cant Happen Here may then be played out. For once such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will
One thing that is very likely to

happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be
wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words nigger and kike will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which
the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated
Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet. But such a renewal of sadism will not alter the effects of selfishness. For after my
imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make peace with the international superrich, just as Hitler made
with the German industrialists. He will invoke the glorious memory of the Gulf War to provoke military adventures which will
generate short-term prosperity. He will be a disaster for the country and the world. People will wonder why there was so
little resistance to his evitable rise. Where, they will ask, was the American Left? Why was it only rightists like Buchanan who spoke to the workers about the
happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.
consequences of globalization? Why could not the Left channel the mounting rage of the newly dispossesed? It is often said that we Americans, at the end of the twentieth century, no longer
have a Left. Since nobody denies the existence of what I have called
the cultural Left, this amounts to an admission that that Left is unable to engage in national
politics.
It is not the sort of the Left which can be asked to deal with the consequences of globalization. To get the country to deal with those consequences, the present cultural Left would
have to transform itself by opening relations with the residue of the old reformist Left, and in particular with the labor unions. It would have to talk much more about money, even at the cost of
talking less about stigma. I have two suggestions about how to effect this transition. The first is that
the Left should put a moratorium on theory
. It should try
to kick its philosophy habit. The second is that the Left should try to mobilize what remains of our pride in being Americans. It should ask the public to consider how the country of Lincoln and Whitman might
be achieved. In support of my first suggestion, let me cite a passage from Deweys Reconstruction in Philosophy in which he expresses his exasperation with the sort of sterile debate now going on under the
rubric of individualism versus communitarianism. Dewey thought that all discussions which took this dichotomy seriously suffer from a common defect. They are all committed to the logic of general notions
under which specific situations are to be brought. What we want is light upon this or that group of individuals, this or that concrete human being, this or that special institution or social arrangement. For such a
logic of inquiry, the traditionally accepted logic substitutes discussion of the meaning of concepts and their dialectical relationships with one another. Dewey was right to be exasperated by sociopolitical theory
conducted at this level of abstraction. He was wrong when he went on to say that ascending to this level is typically a rightist maneuver, one which supplies the apparatus for intellectual justifications of the
established order.9 For such ascents are now more common on the Left than on the Right. The contemporary academic Left seems to think that the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the
established order you can be. The more sweeping and novel your conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique. When one of todays academic leftists says that some topic has been inadequately
theorized, you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. Theorists of the Left
think that dissolving political agents into plays of differential subjectivity, or political initiatives into pursuits of Lacans impossible object of desire, helps to subvert the established order. Such subversion, they
say, is accomplished by problematizing familiar concepts. Recent attempts to subvert social institutitons by problematizing concepts have produced a few very good books. They have also produced many
it is almost
impossible to clamber back down from their books to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of
a law, a treaty, a candidate or a political strategy. Even though what these authors theorize is often something very concrete and near at handa curent TV show, a media
celebrity, a recent scandalthey offer the most absract and barren explanations imaginable. These futile attempts to philosophize ones way into
political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial
approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations . These result in
thousands of books which represent scholastic philosophizing at its worts. The authors of these purportedly subversive books honestly believe that the are serving human liberty. But
an intellectual environment which is, as Mark Edmundson says in his book Nightmare on Main Street, Gothic. The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the most frightening of which
is called "power." This is the name of what Edmund- son calls Foucault's "haunting agency, which is everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook." 10
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AT: Pragmatism Key to the Feminist Movement

Pragmatic focus on the future is essential to the feminist movement
Haber 2005[John, http://www.haberarts.com/rorty.htm, men and utopias]
Rorty's critics have long refused him the right to assert any politics at all, beyond the freedom to
philosophize. They have called his implicit ethics "the leisure of the theory class," and its genteel
liberalism seems to wallow in academic privileges. Any statement of fact or value, Rorty
explains, is relative to how people live and who they are. How then can he do better than a
ringing affirmation of the present or else ethical relativism? The choices sound equally passive
and complacent because they are.
One thing that makes his dilemma so interesting is that it parallels the challenges to a man in
feminism. Any man certainly can be, and often is, denied the label feminist. Whether he speaks
against women or pretends to speak for them, he is enacting a ritual of male oppression. The very
metaphor with which I began, that of opening territory, implicates me in American male myths.
And is it any easier for a woman to create a feminist project? If she promotes nonsexist
standards, she may reinterpret woman as part of some essential humanity, at least as men have
defined it. She then gives in to the depressing kind of work "adults," especially men, now do
with the added disadvantage that the roles were created with someone else in mind. On the other
hand, if she reserves for women an essential femininity, she reinterprets woman again, this time
basically as mothering. Either way, she sanctions the marginal status so long assigned to women.
Perhaps only a woman's artistry and desire could get around the paradox.
Rorty would get around these objections by leaping directly into the future. Ethical claims, he
would still insist, must be relative to ethical standards, but not necessarily to existing standards.
The solution, one might say, is already implied in the word movement: to move thinking toward a
future in which new ethical claims make more sense.
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State Good
Making demands on the state is critical to progressive changes. History proves that nonstatist movements, such as their alternative, are total failures.
Grossberg, Professor of Communications at the University of Illinois, 1992 [Lawrence, We Gotta Get Out of
This Place, p. 390-391]
But this would mean that the Left could not remain outside of the systems of governance. It has sometimes to
work with, against and with in bureaucratic systems of governance. Consider the case of Amnesty International, an
immesely effective organization when its major strategy was (similar to that of the Right) exerting pressure directly on
the bureaucracies of specific governments. In recent years (marked by the recent rock tour), it has apparently
redirected its energy and resources, seeking new members (who may not be committed to actually doing anything;
memebership becomes little more than a statement of ideological support for a position that few are likely to oppose)
and public visibility. In stark contrast, the most effective struggle on the Left in recent times has been the dramatic
(and, one hopes continuing) dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. It was accomplished by mobilizing popular
pressure on the institutions and bureaucracies of economic and governmental institutions and it depended on a
highly sophisticated organizational structure. The Left too often thinks that it can end racism and sexism and
classism by changing people's attitudes and everyday practices (e.g. the 1990 Balck boycott of Korean stores in New
York). Unfortunately, while such struggles may be extremely visible, they are often less effective than attempts to
move the institutions (e.g.,banks, taxing structures, distributors) which have put the economic realtions of bleack
and immigrant populations in place and which condition people's everyday practices. The Left needs institutions
which can operate within the system of governance, understanding that such institutions are the mediating structures by
which power is actively realized. It is often by directing opposition against specific institutions that power can be
challenged. The Left assumed for some time now that, since it has so little access to the apparatuses of agency, its
only alternative is to seek a public voice in the media through tactical protests. The Left does in fact need more
visibility, but it also needs greater access to the entire range of apparatuses of decision making power. Otherwise the
Left has nothing but its own self-righteousness. It is not individuals who have produced starvation and the other
social disgraces of our world, although it is individuals who must take responsibility for eliminating them. But to
do so, they must act with organizations, and within the systems of organizations which in fact have the capacity (as
well as responsibility) to fight them.
Denying the centrality of the state destroys all hope of changing it. We must analyze state
policy in order to understand it and reorient it
Krause & Williams, 1997 Prof. Political Sci. at Geneva Graduate Institute of Intl Studies and Asst. Prof. Political
Sci. at University of Southern Main [Keith and Michael, Critical Security Studies, Pg, XV-XVI]
These (and other) critical perspectives have much to say to each other in the construction of a critical theory of
international relations and, in turn, to contemporary security studies. While elements of many approaches may be
found in this volume, no one perspective dominates. If anything, several of the contributions to this volume stand
more inside than outside the tradition of security studies, which reflects our twofold conviction about the place of
critical perspectives in contemporary scholarship. First, to stand too far outside prevailing discourses is almost certain
to result in continued disciplinary exclusion. Second, to move toward alternative conceptions of security and security
studies, one must necessarily reopen the questions subsumed under the modem conception of sovereignty and the
scope of the political. To do this, one must take seriously the prevailing claims about the nature of security.
Many of the chapters in this volume thus retain a concern with the centrality of the state as a locus not only of
obligation but of effective political action. In the realm of organized violence, states also remain the preeminent
actors. The task of a critical, approach is not to deny the centrality of the state in this realm but, rather, to understand
more fully its structures, dynamics, and possibilities for reorientation. From a critical perspective, state action is
flexible and capable of reorientation, and analyzing state policy need not therefore be tantamount to embracing the
statist assumptions of orthodox conceptions. To exclude a focus on state action from a critical perspective on the
grounds that it plays inevitably within the rules of existing conceptions simply reverses the error of essentializing the
state. Moreover, it loses the possibility of influencing what remains the most structurally capable actor in
contemporary world politics.
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State Good
Failure to understand the state and interact with it guarantees our destruction
Spanier, Ph. D. from Yale and teacher at the University of Florida, 1990 [John, Games Nations Play, Pg. 115]
Whether the observer personally approves of the "logic of behavior" that a particular framework seems to suggest is
not the point. It is one thing to say , as done here, that the state system condemns each state to be continually
concerned with its power relative to that of other states, which, in an anarchical system, it regards as potential
aggressors. It is quite another thing to approve morally of power politics. The utility of the state-system framework is
simply that is points to the "essence" of state behavior. It does not pretend to account for all factors, such as moral
norms, that motivate states. As a necessarily simplified version of reality, it clarifies what most basically concerns and
drives states and what kinds of behavior can be expected. We, as observers, may deplore that behavior and the
anarchical system that produces it and we may wish that international politics were not as conflictual and violent as the
twentieth century has already amply demonstrated. We may prefer a system other that one in which states are so
committed to advancing their own national interests and protecting their sovereignty. Nevertheless, however much
we may deplore the current system and prefer a more peaceful and harmonious world, we must first understand the
contemporary one if we are to learn how to "manage" it and avoid the catastrophe of a nuclear war.
Ignoring the state prevents mediation needed to save millions

Hill, Professor of IR at LSE, 2000 [Christopher, Confronting the Political in International Relations, ed. Ebata]
The ineluctable tendency of those who wish to regulate the state to a position of lesser importance in international
relations is that of downgrading politics. This is often not intentional; those falling into Martin Wight's
`revolutionist' category, after all, might see the politics of international class struggle, of center-periphery relations, or
between clashing civilizations as rather more substantial that the politics of conventional interstate relations. But
generalizations of such high order of magnitude are difficult to cash in, in terms of cases, choices and mobilisable
political forces . They tend to remain at the systemic level, with a strong element of determinism and the identity of
the central actors never being quite clear. The idealists, who make up one part of this group, are by definition
calling for a new kind of politics and it is hardly fair to expect them to describe in detail what it might look like.
Still, it is clear that just as the international law and institutions school of the 1920s became increasingly remote from
the compelling political action arising of the ethical globalists can find it difficult to go beyond handwriting from a
distance. Although it is true, as Steve Smith has argued, that their central point is to challenge the conventional view
of politics (i.e. as what policy-makers do), it remains true that if you inherently distrust or demote the importance
of states and government, it is then difficult to give convincing guidance on how matters are to be carried forward in the
face of such dangerous problems of foreign policy as China's relations with Taiwan or the Arab- Israel dispute.
Problems of this kind- and no-one could dispute their significance for the lives of millions- in practice require a lead
from states, combing amongst themselves and with other actors, if any progress is to be made.
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State Good
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State Good Zizek

Subversive strategies failits better to read the letter of the law against itself and work
within the system
iek, Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, 1998 [Slavoj, Why does the law need an
obscene supplement? Law and the Postmodern Mind, p. electronic]
When, in the late eighteenth century, universal human rights were proclaimed, this universality, of course, concealed
the fact that they privilege white, men of property; however, this limitation was not openly admitted, it was coded in
apparently tautological supplementary qualifications like "all humans have rights, insofar as they truly are. rational
and free," " which then implicitly excludes the mentally ill, "savages," criminals, children, women.'. . So, if, in this
situation, a poor black woman disregards this unwritten-implicit, qualification and demands human rights, also for
herself, she just takes the letter of the discourse of rights "more literally than it was meant" (and thereby redefines its
universality, inscribing it into a different hegemonic chain). "Fantasy" designates precisely this unwritten framework
that tells us how are we to understand the letter of Law. The lesson of this is that-sometimes, at least-the truly
subversive thing is not to disregard the explicit letter of Law on behalf of the underlying fantasies, but to stick to this
letter against the fantasy that sustains it. Is-at a certain level, at least-this not the outcome of the long conversation
between Josepf K. and the priest that follows the priest's narrative on the Door of the Law in The Trial?-the uncanny
effect of this conversation does not reside in the fact that the reader is at a loss insofar as he lacks the unwritten
interpretive code or frame of reference that would enable him to discern the hidden Meaning, but, on the contrary, in
that the priest's interpretation of the parable on the Door of the Law disregards all standard frames of unwritten rules
and reads the text in an "absolutely literal" way. One could also approach this deadlock via. Lacan's notion of the
specifically symbolic mode of deception: ideology "cheats precisely by letting us know that its propositions (say, on
universal human rights)' are not to be read a la lettre, but against the background of a set of unwritten rules.
Sometimes, at least, the most effective anti-ideological subversion of the official discourse of human rights consists
in reading it in an excessively "literal" way, disregarding the set of underlying unwritten rules.
VI
The need for unwritten rules thus bears witness to, confirms, this vulnerability: the system is compelled to allow for
possibilities of choices that must never actually take place since they would disintegrate the system, and the function
of the unwritten rules is precisely to prevent the actualization of these choices formally allowed by the system. One
can see how unwritten rules are correlative to, the obverse of, the empty symbolic gesture and/or the forced choice:
unwritten rules prevent the subject from effectively accepting what is offered in the empty gesture, from taking the
choice literally and choosing the impossible, that the choice of which destroys the system. In the Soviet Union of the
1930s and 1940s, to take the most extreme example, it was not only prohibited to criticize Stalin, it was perhaps
even more prohibited to enounce publicly this prohibition, i.e., too state that one is prohibited to criticize Stalin-the
system needed to maintain the appearance that one is allowed to criticize Stalin, i.e., that the absence of this
criticism (and the fact that there is no opposition party or movement, that the Party got 99.99% of the votes at
elections) simply demonstrates that Stalin is effectively the best and (almost) always right. In Hegelese, this
appearance qua appearance was essential.
This dialectical tension between the vulnerability and invulnerability of the System also enables us to denounce the
ultimate racist and/or sexist trick, that of "two birds in the bush instead of a bird in hand": when women demand'
simple equality, quasi-"feminists" often pretend to offer them "much more" (the role of the warm and wise
"conscience of society," elevated above the vulgar everyday competition and struggle for domination ...)-the only
proper answer to this offer, of course, is "No, thanks! Better is the enemy of the Good! We do not want more, just
equality!" Here, at least, the last lines in Now Voyager ("Why reach for the moon, when we can have the stars?") are
wrong. It is homologous with the native American who wants to become integrated into the predominant "white"
society, and a politically correct progressive liberal endeavors to convince him that, he is thereby renouncing his
very unique prerogative, the authentic native culture and tradition-no thanks, simple equality is enough, I also
wouldn't mind my part of consumerist alienation! ... A modest demand of the excluded group for the full
participation at the society's universal rights is much more threatening for the system than the apparently much more
"radical" rejection of the predominant "social values" and the assertion of the superiority of one's own culture. For a
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true feminist, Otto Weininger's assertion that, although women are "ontologically false," lacking the proper ethical
stature, they should be acknowledged the same rights as men in public life, is infinitely more acceptable than the
false elevation of women that makes them "too good" for the banality of men's rights.
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State Good Zizek (AT: Cooption)

The fear of cooption prevents from changing the system for the bettertransgressions, like
their alternative, only reinforces the system
iek, Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, 1998 [Slavoj, Why does the law need an
obscene supplement? Law and the Postmodern Mind, p. electronic]
Finally, the point about inherent transgression is not that every opposition, every attempt at subversion, is
automatically "coopted." On the contrary, the, very fear of being coopted that makes us search for more and more
"radical," "pure" attitudes, is the supreme strategy of suspension or marginalization. The point is rather that true
subversion is not always where it seems to be. Sometimes, a small distance is much more explosive for the system
than an ineffective radical rejection. In religion, a small heresy can be more threatening than an outright atheism or
passage to another religion; for a hard-line Stalinist, a Trotskyite is infinitely more threatening than a bourgeois
liberal or social democrat. As le Carre put it, one true revisionist in the Central Committee is worth more than
thousand dissidents outside it. It was easy to dismiss Gorbachev for aiming only at improving the system , making it
more efficient-he nonetheless set in motion its disintegration. So one should also bear in mind the obverse of the
inherent transgression: one is tempted to paraphrase Freud's claim from The Ego and the Id that man is not only
much more immoral than he believes, but also much more moral than he knows-the System is not only infinitely
more resistant and invulnerable than it may appear (it can coopt apparently subversive strategies, they can serve as
its support), it is also infinitely more vulnerable (a small revision etc, can have large unforeseen catastrophic
consequences). Or, to put it in another way: the paradoxical role of the unwritten superego injunction is that, with
regard to the explicit, public Law, it is simultaneously transgressive (superego suspends, violates, the explicit social
rules) and more coercive (superego consists of additional rules that restrain the field of choice by way of prohibiting
the possibilities allowed for, guaranteed even, by the public Law). From my personal history, I recall the moment of
the referendum for the independence of Slovenia as the exemplary case of such a forced choice: the whole point, of
course, was to have a truly free choice-but nonetheless, in the pro-independence euphoria, every argumentation for
remaining within Yugoslavia was immediately denounced as treacherous and disloyal. This example is especially
suitable since Slovenes were deciding about a matter that was literally "transgressive" (to break from Yugoslavia
with its constitutional order), which is why the Belgrade authorities denounced Slovene referendum as
unconstitutional-one was thus ordered to transgress the Law ... The obverse of the omnipotence of the unwritten is
thus that, if one ignores them, they simply cease to exist, in contrast to the written law that exists (functions)
whether one is aware of it or not-or, as the priest in Kafka's The Trial put it, law does not want anything from you, it
only bothers you if you yourself acknowledge it and address yourself to it with a demand ...
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Util Good Morality Hurts Policymaking

Morality undermines policymaking it hinders good judgment by making us blind-sighted
Isaac, 2002 (Jeffrey C., Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and
Public Life at Indiana University, Ends, Means, and Politics, DISSENT, Spring)
<Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to
effect outcomes in the world. Politics, in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means that are necessary to bring it about. And to
develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It
is to say that power is not reducible to morality.
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an
unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable,
reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of
ones intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Ab- juring violence or refusing to make
common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence,
then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters ; (2) it fails
to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a
form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of poli- ticsas opposed to religionpacifism is
always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically re- pudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain
violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it
is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant . Just as the
alignment with good may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of good that generates evil. This is the
lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that ones goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally
important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and
historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism in- hibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true
believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.>
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Util Good Ok to Use People as Means to an End

In times such as the pre-9/11 world, it is life-threatening to not use people as a means to an
ends
Isaac, 2002 (Jeffrey C., Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and
Public Life at Indiana University, Ends, Means, and Politics, DISSENT, Spring)
<What would it mean for the Ameri- can left right now to take seriously the centrality of means in politics? First, it
would mean taking seriously the specific means employed by the September 11 attackersterrorism . There is a
tendency in some quarters of the left to assimilate the death and destruction of September 11 to more ordinary (and
still deplorable) injustices of the world systemthe starvation of children in Africa, or the repression of peasants in
Mexico, or the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel. But this assimilation is only possible by
ignoring the specific modalities of September 11. It is true that in Mexico, Palestine, and elsewhere, too many
innocent people suffer, and that is wrong. It may even be true that the experience of suffering is equally terrible in
each case. But neither the Mexican nor the Israeli government has ever hijacked civilian airliners and deliberately
flown them into crowded office buildings in the middle of cities where innocent civilians work and live, with the
intention of killing thousands of people. Al-Qaeda did precisely this. That does not make the other injustices
unimportant. It simply makes them different. It makes the September 11 hijackings distinctive, in their defining and
malevolent pur- poseto kill people and to create terror and havoc. This was not an ordinary injustice. It was an
extraordinary injustice. The premise of terrorism is the sheer superfluousness of human life. This premise is
inconsistent with civilized living anywhere. It threatens people of every race and class, every ethnicity and religion. Because it threatens everyone, and threatens values central to any decent conception of a good society, it
must be fought. And it must be fought in a way commensurate with its ma- levolence . Ordinary injustice can be
remedied. Terrorism can only be stopped.
Second, it would mean frankly acknowledging something well understood, often too ea- gerly embraced, by the
twentieth century Marxist leftthat it is often politically necessary to employ morally troubling means in the name
of morally valid ends. A just or even a better society can only be realized in and through political practice; in our
complex and bloody world, it will sometimes be necessary to respond to barbarous tyrants or criminals, with whom
moral suasion wont work. In such situations our choice is not between the wrong that confronts us and our ideal
vision of a world beyond wrong. It is between the wrong that confronts us and the meansperhaps the dangerous
meanswe have to employ in order to oppose it. In such situations there is a danger that realism can become a
rationale for the Machiavellian worship of power. But equally great is the danger of a righteousness that translates,
in effect, into a refusal to act in the face of wrong. What is one to do? Proceed with caution. Avoid casting oneself
as the incarnation of pure goodness locked in a Manichean struggle with evil. Be wary of violence. Look for
alternative means when they are available, and support the development of such means when they are not. And
never sacrifice democratic freedoms and open debate. Above all, ask the hard questions about the situation at hand,
the means available, and the likely effectiveness of different strategies.>
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AT: Framework Debate Good

Policy discussion, specifically the advocacy of specific policy options is the hallmark of the
critical thinking skills that allow us to become more affective real world activists.
Keller, Whittaker, and Burke, 2001. [Thomas E., Asst. professor School of Social Service Administration U. of
Chicago, James K., professor of Social Work, and Tracy K., doctoral student School of Social Work, Student
debates in policy courses: promoting policy practice skills and knowledge through active learning, Journal of
Social Work Education, Spr/Summer]
Policy practice encompasses social workers' "efforts to influence the development, enactment, implementation, or
assessment of social policies" (Jansson, 1994, p. 8). Effective policy practice involves analytic activities, such as
defining issues, gathering data, conducting research, identifying and prioritizing policy options, and creating policy
proposals (Jansson, 1994). It also involves persuasive activities intended to influence opinions and outcomes, such
as discussing and debating issues, organizing coalitions and task forces, and providing testimony. According to
Jansson (1984, pp. 57-58), social workers rely upon five fundamental skills when pursuing policy practice
activities: * value-clarification skills for identifying and assessing the underlying values inherent in policy
positions; * conceptual skills for identifying and evaluating the relative merits of different policy options; *
interactional skills for interpreting the values and positions of others and conveying one's own point of view in a
convincing manner; * political skills for developing coalitions and developing effective strategies; and *
position-taking skills for recommending, advocating, and defending a particular policy. These policy practice skills
reflect the hallmarks of critical thinking (see Brookfield, 1987; Gambrill, 1997). The central activities of critical
thinking are identifying and challenging underlying assumptions, exploring alternative ways of thinking and acting,
and arriving at commitments after a period of questioning, analysis, and reflection (Brookfield, 1987). Significant
parallels exist with the policy-making process--identifying the values underlying policy choices, recognizing and
evaluating multiple alternatives, and taking a position and advocating for its adoption. Developing policy practice
skills seems to share much in common with developing capacities for critical thinking.
Role-playing debates promote prepare us for real world activism by giving us a better
understanding of how policy works, making us affective agents to achieve change. This
allows us as individuals to become actors who could indeed transform international
politics.
Joyner 1999 [Christopher, Professor international Law @ University of Georgetown, Teaching International Law:
Views from an international relations political scientist].
The debate exercises carry several specific educational objectives. First, students on each team must work together
to refine a cogent argument that compellingly asserts their legal position on a foreign policy issue confronting the
United States. In this way, they gain greater insight into the real-world legal dilemmas faced by policy makers.
Second, as they work with other members of their team, they realize the complexities of applying and implementing
international law, and the difficulty of bridging the gaps between United States policy and international legal
principles, either by reworking the former or creatively reinterpreting the latter. Finally, research for the debates
forces students to become familiarized with contemporary issues on the United States foreign policy agenda and the
role that international law plays in formulating and executing these policies. 8 The debate thus becomes an excellent
vehicle for pushing students beyond stale arguments over principles into the real world of policy analysis, political
critique, and legal defense.
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Debate is key to cognitive thinking and education on real world topicsswitch side debate
is especially critical to education.
Muir, 1993 (Star A, Department of Communications at George Mason University, A Defense of the Ethics of
Contemporary Debate, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 26, No. 4, pg. 282-285)
The debate over moral education and values clarification parallels in many ways the controversy over switchside debate. Where values clarification recognizes no one set of values, debate forces a questioning and exploration
of both sides of an issue. Where cognitive-development emphasizes the use of role playing in the inception of moral
judgment, debate requires an empathy for alternative points of view. Where discussion provides an opportunity for
expressions of personal feelings, debate fosters an analytic and explicit approach to value assessment. Freeley
describes the activity this way:
Educational debate provides an opportunity for students to consider the significant problems in the
context of a multivalued orientation. They learn to look at a problem from many points of view. As
debaters analyze the potential affirmative cases and the potential negative cases, including the
possibility of negative counterplans, they being to realize the complexity of most contemporary
problems and to appreciate the worth of a multivalued orientation; as they debate both sides of a
proposition under consideration, they learn not only that most problems of contemporary affairs have
more than one side but also that even one side of a proposition embodies a considerable range of
values.
The comparison between moral education and debate is useful because it contextualizes the process of moral
development within an educational setting. Several objections have been raised about the practice of moral
education, and these objections have direct relevance to the issue of switch-side debate. A view of debate as a form
of moral education can be developed by addressing questions of efficacy, of isolation from the real world, and of
relativism.
The first issue is one of effectiveness: Do clarification activities achieve the espoused goals? Social coercion
and peer pressure, for example, still occur in the group setting, leaving the individual choice of values an
indoctrination of sorts.27 Likewise, the focus of clarification exercises is arguably less analytic than expressive, less
critical than emotive.28 The expression of individual preferences may be guided by simple reaction rather than by
rational criteria. These problems are minimized in the debate setting, especially where advocacy is not aligned with
personal belief. Such advocacy requires explicit analysis of values and the decision criteria for evaluating them.
In contemporary debate, confronted with a case they believe in, debaters assigned to the negative side have
several options: present a morass of arguments to see what arguments "stick," concede the problem and offer a
"counterplan" as a better way of solving the problem, or attack the value structure of the affirmative and be more
effective in defending a particular hierarchy of values. While the first option is certainly exercised with some
frequency, the second and third options are also often used and are of critical importance in the development of
cognitive skills associated with moral judgment. For example, in attacking a case that restricts police powers and
upholds a personal right to privacy, debaters might question the reasoning of scholars and justices in raising privacy
rights to such significant heights (analyzing Griswold v. Connecticut and other landmark cases), offer alternative
value structures (social order, drug control), and defend the criteria through which such choices are made (utilitarian
vs. deontological premises). Even within the context of a "see what sticks" paradigm, these arguments require
debaters to assess and evaluate value structures opposite of their own personal feelings about their right to privacy.
Social coercion, or peer pressure to adopt certain value structures, is minimized in such a context because of
competitive pressures. Adopting a value just because everyone else does may be the surest way of losing a debate.
A second objection to debate as values clarification, consonant with Ehninger's concerns about gamesmanship,
is the separation of the educational process from the real world. A significant concern here is how such learning
about morality will be used in the rest of a student's life. Some critics question whether moral school knowledge
"may be quite separate from living moral experience in a similar way as proficiency in speaking one's native
language generally appears quite separate from the knowledge of formal grammar imparted by school. Edelstein
discusses two forms of segmentation: division between realms of school knowledge (e.g., history separated from
science) and between school and living experience (institutional learning separate from everyday life). Ehninger's
point, that debate becomes a pastime, and that application of these skills to solving real problems is diminished if it
is viewed as a game, is largely a reflection on institutional segmentation.
The melding of different areas of knowledge, however, is a particular benefit of debate, as it addresses topics of
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considerable importance in a real world setting. Recent college and high school topics include energy policy, prison
reform, care for the elderly, trade policy, homelessness, and the right to privacy. These topics are notable because
they exceed the knowledge boundaries of particular school subjects, they reach into issues of everyday life, and they
are broad enough to force students to address a variety of value appeals. The explosion of "squirrels," or small and
specific cases, III the 1960s and 1970s has had the effect of opening up each topic to many different case
approaches. National topics are no longer of the one-case variety (as in 1955's "the U.S. should recog nize Red
China"). On the privacy topic, for example, cases include search and seizure issues, abortion, sexual privacy,
tradeoffs with the first amendment, birth control, information privacy, pornography, and obscenity. The multiplicity
of issues pays special dividends for debaters required to defend both sides of many issues because the value criteria
change from round to round and evolve over the year. The development of flexibility in coping with the
intertwining of issues is an essential component in the interconnection of knowledge, and is a major rationale for
switch-side debate.]
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Switch side debate is key to becoming an informed citizenfocus on technique and
strategy is the only way to gain education and become involved in the real world.
The isolation of debate from the real world is a much more potent challenge to the activity. There are indeed
"esoteric" techniques, special terminologies, and procedural constraints that limit the applicability of debate
knowledge and skills to the rest of the student's life. The first and most obvious rejoinder is that debate puts students
into greater contact with the real world by forcing them to read a great deal of information from popular periodicals,
scholarly books and journals, government documents, reports, newsletters, and daily newspapers. Debaters also
frequently seek out and query, administrators, policymakers, and public personae to gain more data. The constant
consumption of material by, from, and about the real world is significantly constitutive: The information grounds the
issues under discussion, and the process changes the relationship of the citizen to the public arena. Debaters can
become more involved than uninformed citizens because they know about important issues, and because they know
how to find out more information about these issues.
Switch-side debating is not peripheral to this value. A thorough research effort is guided in large part by the knowledge that both sides of the issues must be
covered. Where a particular controversy might involve affirmative research among conservative sources, the negative must research the liberal perspective. Where
scientific studies predominate in justifying a particular policy, research in cultural studies may be necessary to counter the adoption of the policy. Debating a ban on
the teaching of creationism in public schools, for example, forces research on the scientific consensus on evolution, the viability of theological grounds for public
A primary value of switch-side debate, that of encouraging research skills is

fundamentally an attachment to the "real world," and is enhanced by requiring debaters to investigate both sides of
an issue.
A second response to the charge of segmentation is the proclivity of debaters to become involved in public
policy and international affairs. Although the stereotype is that debaters become lawyers, students seeking other
professional areas also see value in the skills of debate. Business management, government, politics, international
relations, teaching, public policy, and so on, are significant career options for debaters. In surveys, ex-debaters
frequently respond that debate was the single most educational activity of their college careers. Most classes
provide information, but debate compels the use, assimilation, and evaluation of information that is not required in
most classrooms. As one debate alumnus writes: "The lessons learned and the experience gained have been more
valuable to me than any other aspect of my formal education. "31 It is no wonder, then, that surveys of Congress and
other policy-making institutions reveal a high percentage of ex-debaters. The argument that debate isolates
participants from the Real world" is not sustained in practice when debaters trained in research, organization,
strategy, and technique are consistently effective in integrating these skills into success on the job.]
policy, and a consideration of the nature of science itself.
Debate is key to forming effective public decisions and tying education to the real world.
A third point about isolation from the real world is that switch-side debate develops habits of the mind and
instills a lifelong pattern of critical assessment. Students who have debated both sides of a topic are better voters, Dell writes, because of "their
habit of analyzing both sides before forming a conclusion. "33 O'Neill, Laycock and Scales, responding in part to Roosevelt's indictment, iterated the basic position in
1931:
Skill in the use of facts and inferences available may be gained on >either side of a question without regard to convictions. Instruction ~and
practice in debate should give young men this skill. And where these matters are properly handled, stress is not laid on getting the speaker to
think rightly in regard to the merits of either side of these questions-but to think accurately on both sides.
Reasons for not taking a position counter to one's beliefs (isolation from the "real world," sophistry) are largely outweighed by the benefit of such mental habits
throughout an individual's life.
The jargon, strategies, and techniques may be alienating to "outsiders," but they are also paradoxically integrative as well. Playing the game of
debate involves certain skills, including research and policy evaluation, that evolve along with a debater's
consciousness pf the complexities of moral and political dilemmas. This conceptual development is a basis for the
formation of ideas and relational thinking necessary for effective public decision making, making even the game of
debate a significant benefit in solving real world problems.
Switch side debate allows us to debate issues, not necessarily endorse themthis gives us
space to experiment with different ideas.
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Contemporary Debate, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 26, No. 4, pg. 288)
The role of switch-side debate is especially important in the oral defense of arguments that foster tolerance without
accruing the moral complications of acting on such beliefs. The forum is therefore unique in providing debaters with attitudes of tolerance without committing them
to active moral irresponsibility. As Freeley notes, debaters
are indeed exposed to a multivalued world, both within and between the
sides of a given topic. Yet this exposure hardly commits them to such mistaken values. In this view, the divorce
of the game from the real world can be seen as a means of gaining perspective without obligating students to
validate their hypothetical structure through immoral actions.
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Debating fosters tolerance for opposing views by forcing us to debate both sides of an issue.
Values clarification, Stewart is correct in pointing out, does not mean that no values are developed. Two very
important valuestolerance and fairnessinhere to a significant degree in the ethics of switch-side debate. A
second point about the charge of relativism is that tolerance is related to the development of reasoned moral
viewpoints. The willingness to recognize the existence of other views, and to grant alternative positions a degree of
credibility, is a value fostered by switch-side debate:
Alternately debating both sides of the same question ... inculcates a deep-seated attitude of tolerance
toward differing points of view. To be forced to debate only one side leads to an ego-identification with
that side.... The other side in contrast is seen only as something to be discredited. Arguing as
persuasively as one cane for completely opposing views is one way of giving recognition to the idea
that a strong case can generally be made for the views of earnest and intelligent men, however such
views may clash with ones own . . .. Promoting this kind of tolerance is perhaps one of the greatest
benefits debating both sides has to offer.
The activity should encourage debating both sides of a topic, reasons Thompson, because debaters are "more
likely to realize that propositions are bilateral. It is those who fail to recognize this fact who: become intolerant,
dogmatic, and bigoted. "While Theodore Roosevelt can hardly be said to be advocating bigotry, his efforts to turn
out advocates convinced of their rightness is not a position imbued with tolerance.
At a societal level, the value of tolerance is more conducjye to a fair and open assessment of competing ideas.
John Stuart Mill eloquently states the case this way:
Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which justifies us in
assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have
any rational assurance of being right. ... the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is,
that it is robbing the human race .... If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of
exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception
and livelier impression of the truth, produced by its collision with error.
At an individual level, tolerance is related to moral identity via empathic and critical assessments of differing
perspectives. Paul posits a strong relationship between tolerance, empathy, and critical thought. Discussing the
function of argument in everyday life, he observes that in order to overcome natural tendencies to reason
egocentrically and sociocentrically, individuals must gain the capacity to engage in self-reflective Questioning, to
reason dialogically and dialectically, and to "reconstruct alien and opposing belief systems empathically. "Our
system of beliefs is, by definition, irrational when we are incapable of abandoning a belief for rational reasons; that
is, when we egocentrically associate our beliefs with our own integrity. Paul describes an intimate relationship
between private inferential habits, moral practices, and the nature of argumentation. Critical thought and moral
identity, he urges, must be predicated on discovering the insights of opposing views and the weakness of our own
beliefs. Role playing, he reasons, is a central element of any effort to gain such insight.]
Switch side debate prevents relativism while respecting different beliefs.

The first response to the charge of relativism is that switch-side debate respects the existence of divergent
beliefs, but focuses attention on assessing the validity of opposing belief systems. Scriven argues that the
"confusion of pluralism, of the proper tolerance for diversity of ideas, with relativism-the doctrine that there are no
right and wrong answers in ethics or religion-is perhaps the most serious ideological barrier to the implementation of
moral education today. The process of ethical inquiry is central to such moral education, but the allowance of just
any position is not. Here is where cognitive-development diverges from the formal aims of values
clarification. Where clarification ostensibly allows any value position, cognitive-development
progresses from individualism to social conformity to social contract theory to universal
ethical principles. A pluralistic pedagogy does not imply that all views are acceptable:
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It is morally and pedagogically correct to teach about ethics, and the skills of moral analysis rather than
doctrine, and to set out the arguments for and against tolerance and pluralism. All of this is undone if you
also imply that all the various in compatible views about abortion or pornography or war are equally right,
or likely to be right, or deserving of respect. Pluralism requires respecting the right to hold divergent
beliefs; it implies neither tolerance of actions based on those beliefs nor respecting the content of beliefs.
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Switch side debate fosters moral responsibility and reaps the educational benefits of debate
sounding persuasive is not enough.
Firm moral commitment to a value system, however, along with a sense of moral identity, is founded in
reflexive assessments of multiple perspectives. Switch-side debate is not simply a matter of speaking persuasively or
organizing ideas clearly (although it does involve these), but of understanding and mobilizing arguments to make an
effective case. Proponents of debating both sides observe that the debaters should prepare the best possible case
they can, given the facts and information available to them. This process, at its core, involves critical assessment
and evaluation of arguments; it is a process of critical-thinking not available with many traditional teaching
methods. We must progressively learn to recognize how often the concepts of others are discredited by the concepts
we use to justify ourselves to ourselves. We must come to see how often our claims are compelling only when
expressed in Slur own egocentric view. We can do this if we learn the art of using concepts without living in them.
This is possible only when the intellectual act of stepping outside of our own systems of belief has become second
nature, a routine and ordinary responsibility of everyday living. Neither academic schooling nor socialization has yet
addressed this moral responsibility, but switch-side debating fosters this type of role playing and generates reasoned
moral positions based in part on values of tolerance and fairness .
Yes, there may be a dangerous sense of competitive pride that comes with successfully advocating a position
against one's own views, and there are ex-debaters who excuse their deceptive practices by saying ''I'm just doing
my job." Ultimately, however, sound convictions are distinguishable from emphatic convictions by a consideration
of all sides of a moral stance. Moral education is not a guaranteed formula for rectitude, but the central tendencies of
switch-side debate are in line with convictions built on empathic appreciation for alternative points of view and a
reasoned assessment of arguments both pro and con. Tolerance, as an alternative to dogmatism, is preferable, not
because it invites a relativistic view of the world, but because in a framework of equal access to ideas and equal
opportunities for expression, the truth that emerges is more defensible and more justifiable. Morality, an emerging
focal point of controversy in late twentieth-century American culture, is fostered rather than hampered by
empowering students to form their own moral identity.]
Imagining what someone else would do is the epitome of switch side debateits key to
critiquing our assumptions.
The values of tolerance and fairness, implicit in the metaphor of debate as a game, are idealistic by nature.
They have a much greater chance of success, however, in an activity that requires students to examine and
understand both sides of an issue. In his description of debating societies, Robert Louis Stevenson questions the
prevalence of unreasoned opinion, and summarizes the judgment furthered in this work:
Now, as the rule stands, you are saddled with the side you disapprove, and so you are forced, by
regard for your own fame, to argue out, to feel with, to elaborate completely, the case as it stands
against yourself; and what a fund of wisdom do you not turn up in this idle digging of the vineyard!
How many new difficulties take form before your eyes! How many superannuated arguments
cripple finally into limbo, under the glance of your enforced eclecticism! . . . It is as a means of
melting down this museum of premature petrifactions into living and impressionable soul that we
insist on their utility.")
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AT: Methods K No Alt
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AT: Postmodernism K Postmodernism Fails

Postmodern theory is ineffective in promoting resistance and makes any resistance
impossible
Norris 1992 (Christopher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wales in Cardiff, Uncritical Theory:
Postmodernism, Intellectuals, and the Gulf War, pg 31)
Of course I am not suggesting - absurdly - that this trahison des clercs is a direct result of over-exposure to poststructuralist ideas, or that a better understanding of the philosophic issues would automatically produce the desired
change of attitude. Still, it should be cause for some rueful reflection on the part of left-wing intellectuals that
'theory' (or so much of what nowadays passes for advanced theoretical wisdom) has shown itself not only illequipped to mount any kind of effective critical resistance, but also quite capable of lending support to neopragmatist or consensus-based doctrines which would render such resistance strictly unthinkable. Nor is this in any
way surprising, given its pervasive anti-realist drift, its rejection of truth-claims or validity conditions of whatever
kind, and its attitude of thoroughgoing Nietzschean contempt for the values of 'liberal-humanist' thought.
Merely to use concepts such as conscience, good faith, responsibility, or ethical judgment in the presence of
right-thinking orthodox post-structuralists is to find oneself treated with pitying fondness as a relic of that old
'Enlightenment' discourse. For if - as their argument standard goes - the autonomous subject has now been dispersed
in to a range of plural, polymorphous 'subject-positions' inscribed within language or existing solely as figments of
this or that constitutive discourse, then of course there is no question of those values surviving as anything but a
species of chronic self-delusion, a form of 'imaginary' specular investment whose claims have long since been
deconstructed through the insights of psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, Foucauldian discourse-theory
etc.29 Thus the so-called 'postmodern condition' applies just as much to issues of ethics and politics as to matters of
an epistemological import. That is to say, there is no getting outside the 'discourse' - or the existing range
of discursive subject-positions - whose limits are inescapably (in Wittgenstein's phrase) 'the limits of our world',
and which therefore set the terms for any meaningful debate about truth, reality, or ethical values.
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AT: Postmodernism K Permutation Solvency

A complete rejection of modernism is politically debilitating. We must synthesize modern
and postmodern theory to develop a strategy with the potential for progressive change.
Best and Kellner 01 (Steve and Douglas, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Texas-El Paso; and
Professor of Philosophy at UCLA, "Dawns, Twilights, and Transitions: Postmodern Theories, Politics, and
Challenges," Democracy & Nature, Mar, Vol. 7, No. 1, http://www.democracynature.org/dn/
vol7/best_kellner_postmodernism.htm )
Our contemporary situation thus finds us between the modern and the postmodern, the old and the new, tradition and
the contemporary, the global and the local, the universal and the particular, and any number of other competing
matrixes. Such a complex situation produces feelings of vertigo, anxiety, and panic, and contemporary theory, art,
politics and everyday life exhibit signs of all of these symptoms. To deal with these tensions, we need to develop
new syntheses of modern and postmodern theory and politics to negotiate the novelties and intricacies of our current
era. Indeed, both modern and postmodern positions have strengths and limitations, and we should seek a creative
combination of the best elements of each. Thus, we should combine modern notions of solidarity, alliances,
consensus, universal rights, macropolitics and institutional struggle with postmodern notions of difference, plurality,
multiperspectivalism, identity, and micropolitics. The task today is to construct what Hegel called a "differentiated
unity," where the various threads of historical development come together in a rich and mediated way. The abstract
unity of the Enlightenment, as expressed in the discourse of rights or human nature, produced a false unity that
masked and suppressed differences and privileged certain groups at the expense of others. The postmodern turn,
conversely, has produced in its extreme forms warring fragments of difference, exploding any possible context for
human community. This was perhaps a necessary development in order to construct needed differences, but it is now
equally necessary to reconstruct a new social whole, a progressive community in consensus over basic values and
goals, a solidarity that is richly mediated with differences that are articulated without being annulled. Thus, one of
the main dramas of our time will be which road we choose to travel into the future, the road that leads, in Martin
Luther King's phrasing, to community, or the one that verges toward chaos. Similarly, will we take the course that
leads to war or the one that brings peace? The one that establishes social justice, or ever grosser forms of inequality
and poverty? Will we stay on the same modern path of irrational growth and development, of the further expansion
of a global capitalist economy (the world of NAFTA and GATT) that has generated seeming permanent economic,
of social, and environmental crisis, or will we create a sustainable society that lives in balance with the natural
world? Will we chart a whole new postmodern path, blind to the progressive heritage of the past, with all its
attendant snares and dangers? Or will we stake out an alternative route, radicalizing the traditions of modern
Enlightenment and democracy, guided by the vision of a future that is just, egalitarian, participatory, ecological,
healthy, happy, and sane? The future will depend on what choices we make, hence we must intelligently and
decisively develop a new politics for the future. In this way, we can begin to develop a politics of alliance and
solidarity equal to the challenges of the coming millennium.
We must combine the modern and the postmodern to solve for the shortcomings of each
Best & Kellner, Department of Philosophy at University of Texas-El Paso, 1998 [Steven & Douglas,
http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/illuminations/kell28.htm, Postmodern Politics and the Battle for the Future]
The postmodern turn which has so marked social and cultural theory also involves conflicts between modern and
postmodern politics. In this study, we articulate the differences between modern and postmodern politics and argue
against one-sided positions which dogmatically reject one tradition or the other in favor of partisanship for either the
modern or the postmodern. Arguing for a politics of alliance and solidarity, we claim that this project is best served
by drawing on the most progressive elements of both the modern and postmodern traditions. Developing a new
politics involves overcoming the limitations of certain versions of modern politics and postmodern identity politics
in order to develop a politics of alliance and solidarity equal to the challenges of the coming millennium.
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AT: Podemodernism K Permutation Solvency

The plan and alternative can be combined forming coalitions through an ethic of love is
critical to liberation
Cook 92 (Anthony, Associate Professor at Georgetown Law School, A Diversity of Influence: Reflections on
Postmodernism, New Eng. L. Rev. 751)
We must also resist, I believe, nonracist forms of separatism that refuse to open themselves to the commonality of
our experiences. Instead, from a position of racial strength, pride and assuredness, rooted in a knowledge of our
place in and contributions to history and humanity, we must seek coalitions with others for purposes of transforming
conditions of suffering that disproportionately impact blacks but that traverse race and ethnic boundaries as well. If
my assessment is correct, King provides powerful insights into how we might accomplish this delicate balancing of
ends.
In summary, King's commitment to humility and love broadened, without sacrificing his vision of a transformed
America. As one can gather from his struggle to come to grips with and embrace many of Black Nationalism's
concerns, there was real listening going on -- as Frank Michelman puts it, an openness to modulation through
dialogic encounter. His orientation and attitude lead me to believe that such a balanced and sensitive reckoning
would have been no less forthcoming in the wake of feminist, gay rights and church laity critiques of hierarchy that
followed his death.
A commitment to humility and love, as I have defined these terms, is vital to a critical postmodernism that remains
committed to Justice, yet acknowledges that its conception of Justice can only be partial and incomplete. Such an
intellectual and critical predisposition avoids the Derridaian paralysis of analysis engendered by a facile
commitment to endless theoretical deconstructions of binary opposites. Moreover, its search for and linking of
various stories of historic subordination -- the intellectual and existential quest to grasp the otherness of self and the
context of being -- avoids an unhealthy Foucaultian insularity. It is only in this way, I believe, that activist minded
scholars can successfully harness the forces of postmodernism in the struggles for human liberation.
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AT: Postmodernism K Modernism Good

We shouldnt abandon modern strategies of liberation. Coalitions and alliances are
necessary to challenge domination.
Best and Kellner 01 (Steve and Douglas, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Texas-El Paso; and
Professor of Philosophy at UCLA, "Dawns, Twilights, and Transitions: Postmodern Theories, Politics, and
Challenges," Democracy & Nature, Mar, Vol. 7, No. 1, http://www.democracynature.org/dn/
vol7/best_kellner_postmodernism.htm )
The emphasis on local struggles and micropower, cultural politics which redefine the political, and attempts to
develop political forms relevant to the problems and developments of the contemporary age is extremely valuable,
but there are also key limitations to the dominant forms of postmodern politics. While an emphasis on micropolitics
and local struggles can be a healthy substitute for excessively utopian and ambitious political projects, one should
not lose sight that core sources of political power and oppression are precisely the big targets aimed at by modern
theory, including capital, the state, imperialism, racism, and patriarchy. Taking on such major targets involves
coalitions and multifront struggle, often requiring a politics of alliance and solidarity that cuts across group
identifications to mobilize sufficient power to struggle against, say, the evils of capitalism or the state. Thus, while
today we need the expansion of localized cultural practices, they attain their real significance only within the
struggle for the transformation of society as a whole. Without this systemic emphasis, cultural and identity politics
remain confined to the margins of society and are in danger of degenerating into narcissism, hedonism, aestheticism,
or personal therapy, where they pose no danger and are immediately coopted by the culture industries. In such cases,
the political is merely the personal, and the original intentions of the 1960s goal to broaden the political field are
inverted and perverted. Just as economic and political demands have their referent in subjectivity in everyday life, so
these cultural and existential issues find their ultimate meaning in the demand for a new society and mode of
production. Yet we would insist that it is not a question of micro vs macropolitics, as if it were an either/or
proposition, but rather both dimensions are important for the struggles of the present and future. Likewise, we would
argue that we need to combine the most affirmative and negative perspectives, embodying Marcuse's declaration that
critical social theory should be both more negative and utopian in reference to the status quo. i[xii] There are
certainly many things to be depressed about is in the negative and cynical postmodernism of a Baudrillard, yet
without a positive political vision merely citing the negative might lead to apathy and depression that only benefits
the existing order. For a dialectical politics, however, positive vision of what could be is articulated in conjunction
with critical analysis of what is in a multiperspectivist approach that focuses on the forces of domination as well as
possibilities of emancipation. But it is also a mistake, we believe, to ground one's politics in either modern or
postmodern theory alone. Against one-sided positions, we advocate a version of reconstructive postmodernism that
we call a politics of alliance and solidarity that builds on both modern and postmodern traditions. Unlike Laclau and
Mouffe who believe that postmodern theory basically provides a basis for a new politics, and who tend to reject the
Enlightenment per se, we believe that the Enlightenment continues to provide resources for political struggle today
and are skeptical whether postmodern theory alone can provide sufficient assets for an emancipatory new politics.
Yet the Enlightenment has its blindspots and dark sides (such as its relentless pursuit of the domination of nature,
and naive belief in "progress," so we believe that aspects of the postmodern critique of Enlightenment are valid and
force us to rethink and reconstruct Enlightenment philosophy for the present age. And while we agree with
Habermas that a reconstruction of the Enlightenment and modernity are in order, unlike Habermas we believe that
postmodern theory has important contributions to make to this project. Various forms of postmodern politics have
been liberatory in breaking away from the abstract and ideological universalism of the Enlightenment and the
reductionist class politics of Marxism, but they tend to be insular and fragmenting, focusing solely on the
experiences and political issues of a given group, even splintering further into distinct subgroups such as divide the
feminist community. Identity politics are often structured around simplistic binary oppositions such as Us vs. Them
and Good vs. Bad that pit people against one another, making alliances, consensus, and compromise difficult or
impossible. This has been the case, for example, with tendencies within radical feminism and ecofeminism which
reproduce essentialism by stigmatizing men and "male rationality" while exalting women as the bearers of peaceful
and loving value and as being "closer to nature."ii[xiii] Elements in the black nationalist liberation movement in the
1960s and the early politics of Malcolm X were exclusionist and racist, literally demonizing white people as an evil
and inferior race. Similarly, the sexual politics of some gay and lesbian groups tend to exclusively focus on their
own interests, while the mainstream environmental movement is notorious for resisting alliances with people of
color and grass roots movements.
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A. Cultural relativism cedes politics to the far right.
Antonio 2000 (Robert J., Professor of Sociology at University of Kansas, After Postmodernism: Reactionary
Tribalism, JSTOR)
Even Fukuyama warned that prosaic economism and cultural relativism make neoliberal regimes vulnerable to attack
from the far right (1992, pp. xxii-xxiii, 181-244, 300-39). Discussing Fukuyama, Allan Bloom held that if "an alternative is sought there is
nowhere else to seek it. I would suggest that fascism has a future, if not the future" (1989, p. 21). When belief in modernization was strong and
the memory of fascism was vivid, protofascism was usually seen as an irrational reflex or symptom of a collective character disorder. However,
New Right critiques of the culturally fragmenting, depoliticizing impacts of neoliberalism and postmodernization are sophisticated and
innovative and deserve serious consideration. In light of today's escalating forms of bloody retribalization (e.g., Kosovo and East
Timor) and deepening economic and cultural crises in important regions (e.g., Russia), claims that such radical right views may
become more widely popular do not seem so far-fetched. Roger Eatwell attaches special significance to resurgent radical
conservative theories and European New Right theories. He states that
the most promising form of neofascist radicalism in terms of burying the
past is the attempt to rehabilitate the German conservative revolutionaries,
like Ernst Jtinger . . . and key intellectuals who supported fascism, like
Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger. . . . The French New Right, in particular its key theorist Alain de Benoist, has turned to the conservative
revolutionaries and Schmitt for much of its inspiration, particularly to their
ideas on the importance of re-creating national identity. (Eatwell 1997, p.
360)
Although still objectionable in "polite company," Eatwell warns, neofascist theories offer a countervision that could become much more widely
embraced, especially in an economic downturn. The European New Right claims to fuse the radical antiliberal facets of left and
right into a new, vibrant "Third Way." For example, New Right opposition to African, Middle Eastern, or Asian immigration
stresses the evils of capitalist globalization, resistance to cultural homogenization, and defense of cultural identity and
difference. Their pleas for "ethnopluralism" transmute plans to repatriate immigrants into a left-sounding antiimperialist strategy championing the autonomy of all cultural groups and their right to exert sovereignty in their
living space. Claiming to counter
"antiwhite racism," they argue that multiculturalism serves global capitalism's merciless leveling and that only exclusionary monoculture nurtures
genuine cultural diversity. They also pose "green" agendas to protect their homelands from overpopulation, overdevelopment, and other ravages
of the neoliberal "New World Order" and latest and most exploitative phase of Enlightenment.16 They often deploy New Age spiritualism,
inscribed in pagan or early Christian symbols, to foster reenchantment and remythologization. Following the New Left and today's postmodernist
cultural left, the New Right stress the ascendancy of cultural politics. Reshaping radical conservatism for postmodern times, they employ
cultural studies' favorite forerunner theorist, Antonio Gramsci, an icon of their fusion of left and right and use his idea of "cultural hegemony"
against the liberal left (e.g., Sunk 1990, pp. 14, 29-41).
Eatwell holds that the New Right's "ideological core" is little changed from first-generation radical conservatism's "holistic-national
radical Third Way" (1997, p. 361; emphasis in original). Recently resurrected and appropriated by the New Right, the original Weimar-era
approaches bear the imprint of radical tribalism.17 Following Nietzschean antisociology, they charged that modern
theorists elevate "decadent" values into guiding ideals and that their universalist grand narratives of modernization
produce pernicious leveling of cultural particularity. They were influenced strongly by Nietzsche's antiliberalism and total critique
of modernity, but they reformulated his ideas into nationalist visions that he rejected. Inverting the idea of a progressive shift
from homogenous tribes, rooted in "ethnos," to plural modern societies, based on "demos," radical conservatives held that modern theory affirms
normatively an actual descent from animate cultural diversity to souless universal technocracy They contended that modern
democracy's melding of diverse ethnic groups into a mass "society" destroys their distinctive cultural identities. 18 In
their view, it dissolves cultural community into atomized, selfish, impersonal economic relations. Radical conservatives decried liberal-
left efforts to impose formal and substantive equality, holding that allegedly suppressed natural inequalities ought to
be cultivated and employed within the ranks of the domestic sociopolitical order. Overall, they envisioned an "organic"
hierarchy of corporate groups and loyal subjects, regimented in a pseudo-communal way under natural leaderships.19 Heidegger held that
"Europe lies in a pincers between Russia and America, which are metaphysically the same"; that is, their economism and instrumentalism causes
a "darkening of the world" or "always-the-same-ness" (1961, pp. 36-39). In his view, the hegemonic modern emphasis on technical rationality
turns people into a timid, powerless, mediocre, nihilistic mass or a totally homogenized technological civilization devoid of cultural creativity
Heidegger and other radical conservatives contended that capitalism and socialism are both rooted in the West's characteristic universalis tic
rationalism. Still manifesting this exhausted cultural complex, they held, left-wing "revolution" cannot forge a genuinely new culture. They still
considered communism an especially dangerous and formidable enemy, fearing that its antiliberal communalism, statism, and internationalism
could forge the solidarity and discipline that are lacking in liberal democracy They believed that the left could grab political power, but that
would merely harden the grip of bankrupt Western civilization. They thought that communism's instrumentalist, egalitarian rationalization
would suppress all opposition and be the bane of all culture. Radical conservatives hoped that radical segments of the cultural
left, sharing their virulent hatred of liberal institutions and belief that bourgeois culture was totally spent, would join
a "revolution from the right" aimed at demolishing sociocultural modernity and putting modern technology in the service a
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truly new cultural complex. Radical
conservatives saw the political spectrum as a sharply bowed horseshoe; the extreme
left occupies an opposite, but proximate end of the continuum. They hoped that left radicals would give up on their
failed revolution and make the short jump to the extreme right, closing the "ends of a horseshoe" and encircling the
common liberal enemy (Kolnai 1938, pp. 113, 235).
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B. This causes worse forms of racism and domination.
Antonio 2000 (Robert J., Professor of Sociology at University of Kansas, After Postmodernism: Reactionary
Tribalism, JSTOR)
The recently revived European New Right repeats many of the first generation's positions, but it refashions the old
ideas to fit culturally postmodernized settings and to divorce its agenda from the former fascist regimes and from
the Holocaust. The leading theorist of the French New Right, Alain de Benoist, provides an exemplary version of
"postmodernism 'of the right,'" trumpeting radical conservatism to the Derridian-sounding tune of the "right to
difference," mixing Schmitt with Gramsci, and blurring left and right (Taguieff 1993-94a, p. 103).22 Like others of the New
Right, however, he rejects multiculturalism and takes a Schmittian view of European identities. He says he wants to protect
continental ethnopluralism and to preserve the local cultures of Europe's diverse ethnic and linguistic groups,
empowering them politically as autonomous regional entities in a larger imperial unit. In his view, only federated "organic
communities" can resist global neoliberalism and its seductive U.S.-spawned consumerism and mass media. Following Schmitt, Benoist
advocates nurturing local homogeneity to fight capitalism's universal homogenization, but he applauds active civic life, public
discussion, direct democracy, and North American communitarism. His scathing broadsides against liberal individualism have a clear affinity for the Sandel-BellahTaylor-Etzioni-Maclntyre critiques of fictional monads that are supposedly able to choose, act, and frame identity independent of communalties ("unencumbered
selves"). His incisive attacks on neoliberal globalization and Hayekian economics are quite scholarly and sophisticated, converging with work by the most able left
liberal theorists. Rejecting Le Pen's Front National and openly racist nationalism, he claims to embrace NSM "politics of recognition." Believing the nation-state and
left politics to be exhausted, Benoist contends that new assertions of collective identity and "proliferation of networks and multiplication of 'tribes'" offer alternatives
to liberal left leveling (1993-946, pp. 195, 203-4; 1993-94a, pp. 95-97; 1995, 1997, 1996a, 19966, 19986,, 1998c 1999).
Benoist's direction is visible in his friendly references to Schmitt and other radical conservatives and in his
equation of modern democracy with extreme domination and exhaustion (i.e., total atomization, instrumentalization, and
homogenization). Seeing capitalist globalization as the cause of today's Third World diaspora, he holds that receiving states, countries of origin, and transplanted
people themselves would all benefit from the repatriation of immigrants. He claims that such a move is the only way to preserve difference and foster a heterotopia
of autonomous cultures or Schmittian pluriverse; only homogenous ethnically unified communities are capable of sustaining the type of collective identities needed
to resist neoliberalism's grim reaper. Like Schmitt, Benoist stresses incommensurable culture, rather than biological difference. He rejects traditional racism and
espouses cultural relativism and tolerance, but he argues that cultural differences cannot be mediated communicatively or regulated by common norms.23 His
self-described "postmodern" move is supposed to counter the West's hegemonic rationalism and cultural imperialism,
especially the allegedly corrosive force of its universal human rights and abstract notions of equality (which he argues
serve liberal economism and homogenization). He treats democratic universalism and egalitarianism as protototalitarian
tendencies, and he suggests that Stalinism and Nazism are rooted in liberal democratic culture's evaporation of particularity and that they provide a staging
point for an organicist inversion of modern democracy. Benoist's convergence with postmodernism's politicized strong program is
transparent, except that following more consistently the logic of radical perspectivism's break with the
communication model, he argues that cultural diversity can never be preserved in a multicultural society (Benoist 199394a, 1993-946, 1995; Taguieff 1993-94a; Sunk 1990, pp. 125-51).
Benoist claims to champion the "direct democracy" of the ancient Greek polis, but, like earlier radical conservatives, he leaves vague the actual mechanisms of
political rule. He does imply, however, that they would invert liberal democracy. Praising the Greek polis for averting liberal fragmentation and paralysis and, thus,
Benoist sees "ancient democracy" as "genuine democracy." He attributes its cultural and political
integration to the convergence of "demos and ethnos"; that is, citizenship was based on "common ancestry" or the "reverse" of liberal orders
where equal rights derive from "the natural equality of all." He is aware that citizens of "ancient democracy" were usually a
being "a community of citizens,"
hereditary status order of landed and militarized propertyholders that relied on ruthless extraction from unfree slave
and serf strata and that did not extend equal rights to women. Seeing such dominance and subordination as a
natural facet of organic particularity, he asserts that "a certain hierarchical structure" does not diminish the
democratic status of such regimes. His idea of ancient "liberty" inverts today's liberal democratic usages of the term. Rather than
"emancipation from the collectivity," he argues, ancient liberty affirmed the individual's bond to the community and
stressed "inheritance" and "adherence." Accordingly, he held that the "'liberty' of an individual-without heritage, i.e., of a
deracinated individual, was completely devoid of any meaning." He also states casually that "slaves were excluded from voting not because they
were slaves, but because they were not 'citizens' [i.e., not members of one of the polis's constituent phratries or clans]." In his view, the most vital facet of the polis
was its exclusion of outsiders. Conversely, today's hegemonic principles of universal citizenship and human equality preclude his preferred "aristodemocracy"
(Benoist 1991). Benoist praised ancient imperial regimes for similar reasons as the polis; they recognized individuals only through their membership in legally
empowered corporate groupings or status orders (religions, ethnic groups, communities, and nations). By contrast to the modern nation-state's principle of voluntary
association and countervailing power of individual rights, ancient groups were compulsory and had sweeping power over their flocks. For today, Benoist advises,
"Imperial principle above, direct democracy below" (Benoist 1993-94a, p. 97). His hoped-for federated European monocultures, where political rights would be tied
to ethnos, would empower compulsory groupings, forging communitarianism with an iron glove (Walzer 1997, pp. 14-19). The undemocratic features of the
premodern polis, the empire, and the feudal state disappear in Benoist's rendering. Ignoring pervasive force and dependency, he praises their "democratic" facets,
"spiritual character," solidarity, and integration of the "one and the many" (all emanating from the centrality of "ethnos" and participation limited by status-group
membership) (Benoist 1993-946). He redefine's "direct democracy" as hierarchical monoculture, which overcomes today's normative emphases on universal
citizenship, equal participation, and individual freedom. Posed as a revolutionary "alternative" to mass democracy and liberal institutions, his position, like earlier
This direction
is manifested in his unproblematical description of the Weimar radical conservative Ernst Junger's "democracy of
the state," or hierarchical order, based on "Prussian principles of command," where "liberty and obedience are one"
radical conservative arguments for "organic democracy," points toward protofascist pseudocommunity rather than self-governing Gemeinschaft.
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(Benoist 1998a, 1998&).24 Equating modern democracy with spiritless mediocrity, decadence, and deracination, Benoist postures when he expresses appreciative
views of North American communitarians, who he must know aim to enliven the very types of representative democracy and liberal institutions that he despises.
Claiming that everyone pretends to support democracy today, Benoist employs the term for his own purposes (1991, p. 26). His effort to locate himself as an "organic
communitarian" who embraces "community" and "difference" manifests the postmodern split of signifier and signified (Benoist 1993-94a).
Pitting "community" and "ethnos" against "society" and "demos," radical conservatives break with modern theory or the sociological presuppositions of modern
democracy. They see the "universe of the particular," or self-enclosed collective identities, as the only bulwark against homogenization. Against universalism and
human rights, they hold that divergent cultures cannot reach shared understandings or be judged by common standards. Their
radical perspectivism
parallels the essentialist standpoint philosophies of postmodernism's politicized strong program. However, they
propose an exclusionary monoculture that follows consistently from their break with the communication model.
Their inherently conflictive view of intergroup relations treat power-knowledge and dominance-subordination as all-pervasive defining forces
among the tribes. Most important, they transform the ideals of freedom and autonomy from qualities of individual citizens
to attributes of a unitary, collective political subject. The radical conservative strategy of strengthening the political
center and empowering groups over individuals is posed, today, as therapy for the homelessness, fragmentation, and
unconstrained, nihilistic individualism that allegedly inhere in the neoliberal political economic regime and in cultural
postmodernization. However, the total state lurks behind their
critique.
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Postmodernism K K Destroys Coalitions (Krishna)

Total critique destroys coalitions and the possibility of progressive social change.
Krishna 93 (Sankaran, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Alternatives, Summer,
p. 400-401, The Importance of Being Ironic: A Postcolonial View on Critical International Relations Theory)
The dichotomous choice presented in this excerpt is straightforward: one either indulges in total critique,
delegitimizing all sovereign truths, or one is committed to "nostalgic," essentialist unities that have become obsolete
and have been the grounds for all our oppressions. In offering this dichotomous choice, Der Derian replicates a
move made by Chaloupka in his equally dismissive critique of the move mainstream nuclear opposition, the Nuclear
Freeze movement of the early 1980s, that, according to him, was operating along obsolete lines, emphasizing "facts"
and "realities," while a "postmodern" President Reagan easily outflanked them through an illusory Star Wars
program (See KN: chapter 4) Chaloupka centers this difference between his own supposedly total critique of all
sovereign truths (which he describes as nuclear criticism in an echo of literary criticism) and the more partial (and
issue based) criticism of what he calls "nuclear opposition" or "antinuclearists" at the very outset of his book. (Kn:
xvi) Once again, the unhappy choice forced upon the reader is to join Chaloupka in his total critique of all sovereign
truths or be trapped in obsolete essentialisms. This leads to a disastrous politics pitting groups that have the most in
common (and need to unite on some basis to be effective) against each other. Both Chaloupka and Der Derian thus
reserve their most trenchant critique for political groups that should, in any analysis, be regarded as the closest to
them in terms of an oppositional politics and their desired futures. Instead of finding ways to live with these
differences and to (if fleetingly) coalesce against the New Right, this fratricidal critique is politically suicidal. It
obliterates the space for a political activism based on provisional and contingent coalitions, for uniting behind a
common cause even as one recognizes that the coalition is comprised of groups that have very differing (and
possibly unresolvable) views of reality. Moreover, it fails to consider the possibility that there may have been other,
more compelling reasons for the "failure" of the Nuclear Freeze movement or anti-Gulf War movement. Like many
a worthwhile cause in our times, they failed to garner sufficient support to influence state policy. The response to
that need not be a totalizing critique that delegitimizes all narratives. The blackmail inherent in the choice offered by
Der Derian and Chaloupka, between total critique and "ineffective" partial critique, ought to be transparent. Among
other things, it effectively militates against the construction of provisional on strategic essentialisms our attempts to
create space for activist politics. In the next section, I focus more widely on the genre of critical international theory
and its impact on such an activist politics.
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AT: Truth Ks Truth Good

Postmodern rejections of truth failOnly rational knowledge can advance the
causes of minority groups and overthrow the traditional order
Sokal, Professor of Physics at New York University, 1996 (Alan D., Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword,
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/afterword_v1a/afterword_v1a_singlefile.html)
But why did I do it? I confess that I'm an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood
how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist
who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths
about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If science were merely a
negotiation of social conventions about what is agreed to be ``true'', why would I bother
devoting a large fraction of my all-too-short life to it? I don't aspire to be the Emily Post of
quantum field theory.3) But my main concern isn't to defend science from the barbarian
hordes of lit crit (we'll survive just fine, thank you). Rather, my concern is explicitly political:
to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist
discourse -- and more generally a penchant for subjectivism -- which is, I believe, inimical to
the values and future of the Left.4 Alan Ryan said it well:
It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace Michel Foucault, let
alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power could be undermined by
truth ... Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you've had
it. ... But American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large numbers of
self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about objectivity with political
radicalism, and are in a mess.5
Likewise, Eric Hobsbawm has decried the rise of ``postmodernist'' intellectual fashions in
Western universities, particularly in departments of literature and anthropology, which imply
that all ``facts'' claiming objective existence are simply intellectual constructions. In short,
that there is no clear difference between fact and fiction. But there is, and for historians,
even for the most militantly antipositivist ones among us, the ability to distinguish between
the two is absolutely fundamental.6
(Hobsbawm goes on to show how rigorous historical work can refute the fictions propounded
by reactionary nationalists in India, Israel, the Balkans and elsewhere.) And finally Stanislav
Andreski:
So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies
in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of
which the progress of the natural sciences provides the best example) and the advance of
knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused thinking, on the other
hand, leads nowhere in particular and can be indulged indefinitely without producing any
impact upon the world.7
We must base evaluations of truth and logic on their own meritsunderlying
ethical questions have no bearing on scientific and rational questions of being
Sokal, Professor of Physics at New York University, 1996 (Alan D., Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword,
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/afterword_v1a/afterword_v1a_singlefile.html)
For example, Harding (citing Forman 1987) points out that American research in the 1940s
and 50s on quantum electronics was motivated in large part by potential military
applications. True enough. Now, quantum mechanics made possible solid-state physics,
which in turn made possible quantum electronics (e.g. the transistor), which made possible
nearly all of modern technology (e.g. the computer).8 And the computer has had
applications that are beneficial to society (e.g. in allowing the postmodern cultural critic to
produce her articles more efficiently) as well as applications that are harmful (e.g. in
allowing the U.S. military to kill human beings more efficiently). This raises a host of social
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and individual ethical questions: Ought society to forbid (or discourage) certain applications
of computers? Forbid (or discourage) research on computers per se? Forbid (or discourage)
research on quantum electronics? On solid-state physics? On quantum mechanics? And
likewise for individual scientists and technologists. (Clearly, an affirmative answer to these
questions becomes harder to justify as one goes down the list; but I do not want to declare
any of these questions a priori illegitimate.) Likewise, sociological questions arise, for
example: To what extent is our (true) knowledge of computer science, quantum electronics,
solid-state physics and quantum mechanics -- and our lack of knowledge about other
scientific subjects, e.g. the global climate -- a result of public-policy choices favoring
militarism? To what extent have the erroneous theories (if any) in computer science,
quantum electronics, solid-state physics and quantum mechanics been the result (in whole
or in part) of social, economic, political, cultural and ideological factors, in particular the
culture of militarism?9 These are all serious questions, which deserve careful investigation
adhering to the highest standards of scientific and historical evidence. But they have no
effect whatsoever on the underlying scientific questions: whether atoms (and silicon
crystals, transistors and computers) really do behave according to the laws of quantum
mechanics (and solid-state physics, quantum electronics and computer science). The
militaristic orientation of American science has quite simply no bearing whatsoever on the
ontological question, and only under a wildly implausible scenario could it have any bearing
on the epistemological question. (E.g. if the worldwide community of solid-state physicists,
following what they believe to be the conventional standards of scientific evidence, were to
hastily accept an erroneous theory of semiconductor behavior because of their enthusiasm
for the breakthrough in military technology that this theory would make possible.)
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The notion that claims of absolute truth lead to totalitarianism is falseour framework
does embrace some truths contingently, but also allows for skepticism about those truths
Fierlbeck 1994 [Katherine, Associate Professor of Political Science at Dalhousie University, Review Author
Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions, History and Theory, Vol 33, No 1,
February, p. 107-113]
But the acceptance of "ultimate unknowability" is even more relevant within the context of normative issues than it
is within that of mere explanation.[5] The claim to be able scientifically to determine what "justice" is, argues
Lyotard, exacerbates the likelihood of political terror, as those who promulgate such an "accurate" and incontestable
account of justice have a seemingly powerful justification to suppress any competing accounts. In this way, some
post-modernists have linked scientific methodology with the political inclination to totalitarianism: for both assume
that there is, ultimately, only one correct answer.[6] By refusing the metaphysical mindset that the One Great Truth
must be "out there," asserts Lyotard, the possibility of populations accepting a totalitarian regime decreases. But this
refusal does not oblige us to embrace a starkly relativist position, for the argument is not that "there are all sorts of
justice" which we cannot compare and evaluate, but rather that "there is a necessity that we keep discussion as to the
nature of the just open."[7] To accuse "liberalism" of encouraging the likelihood of totalitarianism because of its
links with Enlightenment rationalism is, or course, a very selective reading of liberalism. While one must admit that
liberalism has almost as many shapes and permutations as does post-modernism itself, it is also fair to suggest that
the usual understanding of liberalism is grounded firmly upon John Stuart Mill's classical declaration that political
freedom is essential because no one person's opinion is infallible. "Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving
our opinion," wrote Mill, "is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on
no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right."[8] While modern
scientific methodology and the political protection of individual autonomy may both have had a common genesis
within the Enlightenment era, there is simply no persuasive evidence that an alarming causal link between them will
allow the former to extinguish the latter. Skepticism and pragmatism are invaluable attributes, both intellectually
and politically. And, to the extent that post-modernism presents itself as a sober challenge to the excesses of
metaphysical assumptions (a challenge that requires us to explain why theoretical reasoning [empiricism, rationality,
universalism, causality] is an apt or accurate means to investigate human life), post-modernism can enrich the study
of who we are, and why we are that way. And it can restrain the political abuses of power which are built upon the
overwhelming authority of reason. But skepticism and pragmatism are not unique to post-modernist thought; they
are frequently to be found within many variants of "liberalism" itself (such as that of Hayek). From a very cynical
point of view, it might seem that post-modernism becomes more compelling the better it can misrepresent the
"liberal" character of modern Western thought, culture, and political organization.
Defending truth claims is less dangerous than attacking them policy solutions are
necessary to achieve progress and prevent policy paralysis
In many respects, even the dismally skeptical post-modernists are too optimistic in their allegiance to post-modern
ideas. As many others have already pointed out, post-modernism offers little constructive advice about how to
reorganize and reinvigorate modern social relations. "The views of the post-modern individual," explains Rosenau,
"are likely neither to lead to a post-modern society of innovative production nor to engender sustained or contained
economic growth." This is simply because "these are not post-modern priorities"(55). Post-modernism offers no
salient solutions; and, where it does, such ideas have usually been reconstituted from ideas presented in other times
and places.[9] What we need are specific solutions to specific problems: to trade disputes, to the redistribution of
health care resources, to unemployment, to spousal abuse. If one cannot prioritize public policy alternatives, or
assign political responsibility to address such issues, or even say without hesitation that wealthy nations that
steadfastly ignore pockets of virulent poverty are immoral, then the worst nightmares of the most cynical postmodernists will likely come to life. Such an overarching refusal to address these issues is at least as dangerous as
any overarching affirmation of beliefs regarding ways to go about solving them. Post-modernism suffers from -and is defined by -- too much indeterminacy. In order to achieve anything, constructive or otherwise, human beings
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must attempt to understand the nature of things, and to evaluate them. This can be done even if we accept that we
may never understand things completely, or evaluate them correctly. But if paralysis is the most obvious political
consequence of post-modernism, a graver danger lies in the rejection of the "Enlightenment ideals" of universality
and impartiality. If the resounding end to the Cold War has taught us anything, it should be that the opposite of
"universalism" is not invariably a coexistence of "little narratives": it can be, and frequently is, some combination of
intolerance, local prejudice, suspicion, bigotry, fear, brutality, and persecution. The uncritical affiliation with the
community of one's birth, as Martha Nussbaum notes, "while not without causal and formative power, is ethically
arbitrary, and sometimes ethically dangerous -- in that it encourages us to listen to our unexamined preferences as if
they were ethical laws."[10]
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Logic and reasoned skepticism are key to social changeRejection of all truth claims
fosters irresponsibility that allows individuals to deny real events like the Holocaust
Sokal, Professor of Physics at New York University, 1996 (Alan D., Transgressing the Boundaries: An
Afterword, http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/afterword_v1a/afterword_v1a_singlefile.html)
Andrew Ross has drawn an analogy between the hierarchical taste cultures (high, middlebrow and popular) familiar to cultural
critics, and the demarcation between science and pseudoscience.10 At a sociological level this is an incisive observation; but at an
ontological and epistemological level it is simply mad. Ross seems to recognize this, because he immediately says:
I do not want to insist on a literal interpretation of this analogy ... A more exhaustive treatment would take account of the local,
qualifying differences between the realm of cultural taste and that of science [!], but it would run up, finally, against the stand-off
between the empiricist's claim that non-context-dependent beliefs exist and that they can be true, and the culturalist's claim that
epistemological agnosticism simply won't suffice, at

least not for people who aspire to make social change. Deny that non-context-dependent
assertions can be true, and you don't just throw out quantum mechanics and molecular
biology: you also throw out the Nazi gas chambers, the American enslavement of Africans,
and the fact that today in New York it's raining. Hobsbawm is right: facts do matter, and some
beliefs are only socially accepted as true.11 But such
facts (like the first two cited here) matter a great deal.
Still, Ross is correct that, at a sociological level, maintaining the demarcation line between science and pseudoscience serves -among other things -- to maintain the social power of those who, whether or not they have formal scientific credentials, stand on
science's side of the line. (It has also served to increase the mean life expectancy in the United States from 47 years to 76 years in
Ross notes that

Cultural critics have, for some time now, been faced with the task of exposing similar vested
institutional interests in the debates about class, gender, race, and sexual preference that
touch upon the demarcations between taste cultures, and I see no ultimate reason for us to
abandon our hard-earned skepticism when we confront science.13
Fair enough: scientists are in fact the first to advise skepticism in the face of other people's
(and one's own) truth claims. But a sophomoric skepticism, a bland (or blind) agnosticism,
won't get you anywhere. Cultural critics, like historians or scientists, need an informed
skepticism: one that can evaluate evidence and logic, and come to reasoned (albeit
tentative) judgments based on that evidence and logic.
At this point Ross may object that I am rigging the power game in my own favor: how is he,
a professor of American Studies, to compete with me, a physicist, in a discussion of quantum
mechanics?14 (Or even of nuclear power -- a subject on which I have no expertise
whatsoever.) But it is equally true that I would be unlikely to win a debate with a professional
historian on the causes of World War I. Nevertheless, as an intelligent lay person with a
modest knowledge of history, I am capable of evaluating the evidence and logic offered by
competing historians, and of coming to some sort of reasoned (albeit tentative) judgment.
(Without that ability, how could any thoughtful person justify being politically active?)
less than a century.12)
The rejection of objective reality fosters irresponsibility and forecloses possibilities for
social changeonly truth claims allow us to combat the dominant ideologies of elites
Sokal, Professor of Physics at New York University, 1996 (A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html)
Why did I do it? While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly serious. What
concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking per se, but of a
particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking: one that denies the existence of objective
realities, or (when challenged) admits their existence but downplays their practical
relevance. At its best, a journal like Social Text raises important questions that no scientist should ignore -- questions, for
example, about how corporate and government funding influence scientific work. Unfortunately, epistemic relativism does little to
further the discussion of these matters.
my concern over the spread of subjectivist thinking is both intellectual and political.
Intellectually, the problem with such doctrines is that they are false (when not simply
meaningless). There is a real world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts
and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much
contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious
In short,
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truths -- the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious
language.
Social Text's acceptance of my article exemplifies the intellectual arrogance of Theory -- meaning postmodernist literary theory --
If all is discourse and ``text,'' then

knowledge of the real world is superfluous; even physics becomes just another branch of
Cultural Studies. If, moreover, all is rhetoric and ``language games,'' then internal logical
consistency is superfluous too: a patina of theoretical sophistication serves equally well.
Incomprehensibility becomes a virtue; allusions, metaphors and puns substitute for evidence
and logic. My own article is, if anything, an extremely modest example of this wellestablished genre.
Politically, I'm angered because most (though not all) of this silliness is emanating from the
self-proclaimed Left. We're witnessing here a profound historical volte-face. For most of the
past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we
have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both
natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the
powerful -- not to mention being desirable human ends in their own right. The recent turn of
many ``progressive'' or ``leftist'' academic humanists and social scientists toward one or
another form of epistemic relativism betrays this worthy heritage and undermines the
already fragile prospects for progressive social critique. Theorizing about ``the social
construction of reality'' won't help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise
strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in history,
sociology, economics and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity.
carried to its logical extreme. No wonder they didn't bother to consult a physicist.
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AT: Truth Ks K of Truth Bad

Postmodern rejections of rational thought create the conditions for oppression and
undermine possibilities for progressive social critique
Sokal, Professor of Physics at New York University, 1997 (Alan, A Plea for Reason, Evidence and Logic
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/nyu_forum.html)
I didn't write the parody for the reasons you might at first think. My aim wasn't to defend
science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit or sociology. I know perfectly well that the main
threats to science nowadays come from budget-cutting politicians and corporate executives,
not from a handful of postmodernist academics. Rather, my goal is to defend what one
might call a scientific worldview -- defined broadly as a respect for evidence and logic, and
for the incessant confrontation of theories with the real world; in short, for reasoned
argument over wishful thinking, superstition and demagoguery. And my motives for trying to
defend these old-fashioned ideas are basically political. I'm worried about trends in the
American Left -- particularly here in academia -- that at a minimum divert us from the task of
formulating a progressive social critique, by leading smart and committed people into trendy
but ultimately empty intellectual fashions, and that can in fact undermine the prospects for
such a critique, by promoting subjectivist and relativist philosophies that in my view are
inconsistent with producing a realistic analysis of society that we and our fellow citizens will
find compelling. David Whiteis, in a recent article, said it well:
Too many academics, secure in their ivory towers and insulated from the real-world
consequences of the ideas they espouse, seem blind to the fact that non-rationality has
historically been among the most powerful weapons in the ideological arsenals of
oppressors. The hypersubjectivity that characterizes postmodernism is a perfect case in
point: far from being a legacy of leftist iconoclasm, as some of its advocates so
disingenuously claim, it in fact ... plays perfectly into the anti-rationalist -- really, antithinking -- bias that currently infects "mainstream" U.S. culture.Along similar lines, the
philosopher of science Larry Laudan observed caustically that
the displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything
boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political
campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our
time.
(And these days, being nearly as anti-intellectual as American political campaigns is really
quite a feat.)
Now of course, no one will admit to being against reason, evidence and logic -- that's like
being against Motherhood and Apple Pie. Rather, our postmodernist and poststructuralist
friends will claim to be in favor of some new and deeper kind of reason, such as the
celebration of "local knowledges" and "alternative ways of knowing" as an antidote to the
so-called "Eurocentric scientific methodology" (you know, things like systematic experiment,
controls, replication, and so forth). You find this magic phrase "local knowledges" in, for
example, the articles of Andrew Ross and Sandra Harding in the "Science Wars" issue of
Social Text. But are "local knowledges" all that great? And when local knowledges conflict,
which local knowledges should we believe? In many parts of the Midwest, the "local
knowledges" say that you should spray more herbicides to get bigger crops. It's oldfashioned objective science that can tell us which herbicides are poisonous to farm workers
and to people downstream. Here in New York City, lots of "local knowledges" hold that
there's a wave of teenage motherhood that's destroying our moral fiber. It's those boring
data that show that the birth rate to teenage mothers has been essentially constant since
1975, and is about half of what it was in the good old 1950's. Another word for "local
knowledges" is prejudice.
The left needs to evaluate both ethical and rational interests to achieve true political change
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A narrow focus on postmodern interests is profoundly irresponsible

Sokal, Professor of Physics at New York University, 1996 (Alan D., Transgressing the Boundaries:
An Afterword, http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/afterword_v1a/afterword_v1a_singlefile.html)
As Ross has noted18, many of the central political issues of the coming decades -- from
health care to global warming to Third World development -- depend in part on subtle (and
hotly debated) questions of scientific fact. But they don't depend only on scientific fact: they
depend also on ethical values and -- in this journal it hardly needs to be added -- on naked
economic interests. No Left can be effective unless it takes seriously questions of scientific
fact and of ethical values and of economic interests. The issues at stake are too important to
be left to the capitalists or to the scientists -- or to the postmodernists.
A quarter-century ago, at the height of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, Noam Chomsky
observed that:
George Orwell once remarked that political thought, especially on the left, is a sort of
masturbation fantasy in which the world of fact hardly matters. That's true, unfortunately,
and it's part of the reason that our society lacks a genuine, responsible, serious left-wing
movement.19
Perhaps that's unduly harsh, but there's unfortunately a significant kernel of truth in it.
Nowadays the erotic text tends to be written in (broken) French rather than Chinese, but the
real-life consequences remain the same. Here's Alan Ryan in 1992, concluding his wry
analysis of American intellectual fashions with a lament that the number of people who
combine intellectual toughness with even a modest political radicalism is pitifully small.
Which, in a country that has George Bush as President and Danforth Quayle lined up for
1996, is not very funny.20 Four years later, with Bill Clinton installed as our supposedly
``progressive'' president and Newt Gingrich already preparing for the new millennium, it still
isn't funny.
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There is no way to criticize standards or discourses without using Enlightenment thought
The problem that arises, of course, is how to critique the accepted standards of criticism convincingly without
compromising one's claim that such standards are incomplete, misleading, and tyrannical. This dilemma, according
to the critics of post-modernism, leads either to overreaction or to incoherence, and occasionally to both. To reject
modern standards of rationality in an attempt to prevent particular perceptions from becoming dominant (and
dominating) accounts of how things are, suggest these critics, is not only to throw out the baby with the bathwater,
but to discard the tub as well. One is left with very little. And, as post-modern writers cannot use a standard
framework of argumentation to persuade their readers, they retreat into literary contortions which, they hope, will
oblige the reader actively to engage with the text in order to determine its significance. Those who are cynical about
the post-modern project have argued that this license to obfuscate merely encourages untalented writers and
confused thinkers to produce exasperatingly impenetrable prose.
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AT: Fear of Death Love and Fear Compatible

Love and fear are compatible Fear is necessary to protect loved ones
Sandman and Valenti 86 (Peter and JoAnn, Professor of Human Ecology at Rutgers and Preeminent Risk
Communications Expert published over 80 articles and books on various aspects of risk communication, Scared stiff
or scared into action, , Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 1986, pp. 1216,
http://www.psandman.com/articles/scarstif.htm)
Love
Anger without love soon becomes sterile or uncontrolled, while love without anger can still
inspire a movement. But there is no need to choose; love and anger are compatible. Nothing
could better symbolize anger than the powerful bolt-cutters with which the Greenham Common
women routinely destroy the fence surrounding the cruise missile site. Nothing could better
symbolize love than the webs of twine and ribbon and memorabilia with which they decorate the
same fence. We suspect it is this combination the anger not rancid, the love not languid
that has captured the imaginations of peace activists around the world.
Love is compatible with fear as well. As we suggested earlier, some evidence indicates that
people are more affected by fear appeals targeted at their loved ones than by those aimed at
themselves. Ironically, one of the classic studies from the early 1960s tried to persuade citizens
to support community fallout shelters; strong fear appeals threatening family safety worked
better than threats to the individual.(17)
But love is not compatible with psychic numbing. Just as numbness interferes with the ability to
love freely, so active love drives away the numbness. Antinuclear activists almost universally
report that they remain active less for themselves than for those they love, and that without love
they could not stay with the fight. This is not to suggest that these activists are more loving than
their neighbors, only that their love helps them stay active and that their activism is a powerful
expression of love. It is relevant that the children of activists are far more confident of their
futures than most children.(18)
Just as activists rely on love to keep them going, one can mobilize the uninvolved by talking
about the people, places, and values one holds dear and encouraging listeners to do the same.
Something or someone to fight for is as indispensable to activism as something or someone to
fight against.
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AT: Fear of Death Love = destructive (Fear key)

Love is a lust for possession and destruction
Derrida 97 (Jacques, Philosopher and director of studies at the cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales The
Politics of Friendship, 1997, pg 64-65.)
This disappropiation would undoubtedly beckon to this other love whose true name, says Nietzsche in
conclusion, whose just name is friendship (Ihr rechter Name is Freundschaft). This friendship is a species of love,
but of a love more loving that love. All the names would have to change for the sake of coherence. Without being
able to devote to it the careful reading it deserves, let us recall that this little two-page treatise on love denounces, in
sum, the right to property. This property right is the claim (revendeication) of love (at least, of what is thus named).
The vindicative claim of this right can be deciphered throughout all the appropriative maneuvers of the strategy
which this love deploys. It is the appropriating drive (Trieh) par excellence. Love wants to posses. It wants the
possessing. It is possessing cupidity itself (hadsucht); it always hopes for new property; and even the very
Christian love of ones neighbor charity perhaps would reveal only a new lust in this fundamental drive: Our
love of our neighbor is it not a lust for new possessions?
This question is double important. In contesting the Christian revolution of love as much as the Greek philosophical
concept of friendship and just as the norms of justice that depend on them its target is the very value of proximity,
the neighbors proximity as the ruse of the proper and of appropriation. The gesture confirms the warning
accompanying the discourse on good friendship: not to give in to proximity or identification, to the fusion or the
permutation of you and me. But, rather to place, maintain or keep an infinite distance within good friendshiip.
The very that love this which is thus named, love between the sexes, egotism itself, jealously which tends only
twoards possession is incapable of doing.
Violence is inevitable only through our abilities to use moral outrage, fear and action can
we hope to contain it
Adams 86 (David, Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan University and Director of the Unit for the International
Year for the Culture of Peacem Role of Anger in the Consciousness Development of Peace Activists: Where
Physiology and History, International Journal of Psychophysiology,Volume 4, page 157-164 1986,
http://www.culture-of-peace.info/psychophysiology/title-page.html.)
To summarize the argument of this paper, we may chart a series of transformations that have occurred during the
course of evolution which have enabled the offense behavior common to all mammals to serve-among its many
functions-a special function in human history. The first transformation involves a new set of motivating stimuli for
offense which consists of certain actions of the target, rather than more enduring attributes of that animal. Second,
and still at the level of primate evolution, there is a process of internalization by which the young animal learns
which actions are to be punished, and by which the adults guide their own punishing anger. Third, at the level of
human society, there develops the ability to conceptualize institutions and social systems and to respond to their
actions with punishment and anger, just as one might respond to the immoral actions of another individual. And,
finally, there is the ability to incorporate this moral outrage into a complex pattern of consciousness development,
including action, affiliation and analysis by which individuals become powerful forces in history.
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AT: Fear of Death Love = Bad (Fear Key to Peace)

Anger is a necessary prerequisite towards peace it is responsible for consciousness
development and collective action
In general, one can conclude that anger is an early and important step in the consciousness development of peace
activists. The anger is a response to perceived social injustice. It is an expression of moral outrage and it depends
upon prior acquisition of social values and knowledge. Anger leads to action, which is the following step in
consciousness development. Later, as consciousness development proceeds to steps of affiliation and analysis, the
anger does not disappear . Instead, the individual episodes of anger and action are replaced by collective anger and
action against the perceived source of injustice.
It is important to recognize that anger and violence are not the same. In fact, the tactical use of non-violence may
draw upon and harness the collective anger of participants. The quotes above from Gandhi illustrate this. In drawing
upon Gandhi's philosophy, Martin Luther King Jr. (1958) put it this way:
'Non-violent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. ..this is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice
is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight. ..while the non-violent resister is passive in the sense that he is
not physically aggressive toward his opponent, his mind and emotions are always active.'
Turning now from my own findings to those of other investigators, we find further evidence that strengthens and
elaborates the hypothesis that anger plays a critical role in consciousness development. Jerome Frank, the eminent
psychiatrist and peace activist, carried out a questionnaire study in the 1960's on the origins of peace activism.
Among his findings were the fact that 96% of the respondants said that the precipitating event that made them active
included moderate or very strong emotional reactions, often anger. According to Frank (1965), they used words like
'outrage, furious, incensed, damned annoyed', to describe the feeling which was directed against the country's
leadership or against groups whom they had mistakenly expected to be promoting peace.
Anger is Key to peace movements, only moral condemnation is effective at spurring peace
movements
In a dialectical view of history, the role of the individual actor may be seen in terms of his response to historical
contradictions. In this case we may speak of the contradiction of war and peace. The contemporary peace activist is
raised in an educational, religious political system that claims to oppose war. Having acquired and adopted these
values, the peace activist reacts with anger when he or she perceives the nation and its leaders are engaging in
practices that threaten to provoke or maintain a policy of war. The individual activist, in his moral reactions, reflects
the historical contradiction. Evidence suggests that it is precisely those members of a society who have most
strongly acquired the moral values of the society who become the most angry and active to resolve the
contradictions. And further, we may suppose that the more the society tries to suppress his activity, the more the
activist is confirmed in his outrage against the society's injustice. Repression may, at least in some cases, feed the
flames of discontent.
In the historical context, anger may be characterized as the personal fuel in the social motor that resolves the
institutional contradictions that arise in the course of history. Perhaps the best known illustration of this in our own
cultural history is the anger of Jesus and the Old Testament prophets. The prophets, like the peace activists of our
own day, point to moral standards which they learned from the society and condemn the practices of the society in
the light of those standards.
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AT: Fear of Death Mobilizes people/compassion

Fear spurs compassion, mobilizing people to protect and give meaning to life
Greenspan 2003 (Miriam Greenspan Pioneer in the Area of Womens Psychology 2003 (An Excerpt from
Healing through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair by Miriam Greenspan,
www.spiritualityhealth.com/newsh/excerpts/bookreview/excp_5513.html)
"Fear is a very powerful emotion. When you feel fear in your body, it's helpful to relate to it as an energy that can be
mobilized for life. It may feel like a constriction in your chest, throat, or abdomen. Breathe through it without
judgment and allow yourself to feel it as a very strong force. If you pray for help, you can begin to expand this
energy we call 'fear' and use it for healing and transformation.
"In this regard, we can take our model from the heroes of Flight 93 who. realizing that they were bound for death,
stormed the plane and brought it down without hitting a civilian target. One cannot even imagine being able to do
this without fear. Fear for the lives of others was the energy that mobilized them to do something meaningful with
their last moments of life. Some of these people said good-bye to their husbands and wives and wished them
happiness before they left this earth. They had found some peace in their last moments, peace in the midst of
turbulence. And they found it through their last wish, which they heroically put into action: to help others live.
"Perhaps there is nothing that can redeem the dead but our own actions for the good. This is a time to find out what
we want to do for the world and do it. And, as every trauma survivor knows, this is the way to make meaning out of
pain, perhaps the most effective way: to draw something good out of evil. The heroes of September 11 point us to
the choice we each have: to help create a state of global peace and justice that we, like they, will not see before we
die. It is in giving ourselves to this vision, out of love for this world that we inhabit together, that we stand a chance
of transcending the human proclivity to damage life. And that we honor those we have brought into this world and
who must inherit it. . . .
"Our only protection is in our interconnectedness. This has always been the message of the dark emotions when they
are experienced most deeply and widely. Grief is not just "my" grief; it is the grief of every motherless child, every
witness to horror in the world. Despair is not just "my" despair; it is everyone's despair about life in the twentyfirst
century. Fear is not just 'my' fear; it is everyone's fear of anthrax, of nuclear war, of truck bombs, of airplane
hijackings, of things falling apart, blowing up, sickening and dying.
"If fear is only telling you to save your own skin, there's not much hope for us. But the fact is that in conscious fear,
there is a potentially revolutionary power of compassion and connection that can be mobilized en masse. This is the
power of fear. Our collective fear, which is intelligent, is telling us now: Find new ways to keep this global village
safe. Find new forms of international cooperation that will root out evil in ways that don't create more victims and
more evil. Leap out of the confines of national egos. Learn the ways of peace. Find a ceremony of safety so that not
just you and I but all of us can live together without fear."
Fear is necessary to mobilize people into action

Pittock 84 (A Barrie-, Post-Retirement Fellow with the Climate Group at CSIRO Atmospheric Research and
a Contributing Author for the Intergovernmental Plane on Climate Change, Sept., Scientists Against Nuclear
Arms Newsletter, "Comment on Brian Martin's 'Extinction Politics'",
www.uow.edu/au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/84sanap.pdf)
In my experience most people already feel rather helpless to influence the
political process - what they need in order to act politically is the motivation of
feeling personally threatened or outraged to the point of anger, plus a sense of
hope which we in the peace movement must provide.
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AT: Fear of Death Mobilizes people/compassion

Fear is natural, we can only hope to use in a constructive way
Greenspan 2003 ( Miriam, Pioneer in the Area of Womens Psychology, The Wisdom in the Dark Emotions,
Shambhala Sun http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1625&Itemid=244,
online)
Emotions like grief, fear and despair are as much a part of the human
condition as love, awe and joy. They are our natural and inevitable
responses to existence, so long as loss, vulnerability and violence come
with the territory of being human. These are the dark emotions, but by dark,
I don't mean that they are bad, unwholesome or pathological. I mean that as
a culture we have kept these emotions in the dark'shameful, secret and
unseen.
Emotion-phobia dissociates us from the energies of these emotions and
tells us they are untrustworthy, dangerous and destructive. Like other
traits our culture distrusts and devalues - vulnerability, for instance, and
dependence - emotionality is associated with weakness, women and children. We
tend to regard these painful emotions as signs of psychological fragility,
mental disorder or spiritual defect. We suppress, intellectualize, judge or
deny them. We may use our spiritual beliefs or practices to bypass their
reality.
Few of us learn how to experience the dark emotions fully - in the body,
with awareness'so we end up experiencing their energies in displaced,
neurotic or dangerous forms. We act out impulsively. We become addicted to a
variety of substances and/or activities. We become depressed, anxious or
emotionally numb, and aborted dark emotions are at the root of these
characteristic psychological disorders of our time. But it's not the
emotions themselves that are the problem; it's our inability to bear them
mindfully.
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AT: Fear of Death Fear Key to Value to Life

Fear of Death is key to Value to Life and lending meaning to existence
Arthur 2002 (Kate, Doctoral Candidate at University of St. Michaels College, Terror of Death in the Wake of
September the 11th:Is This the End of Death Denial?, November 14th, Probing the Boundaries: Making Sense of
Dying and Death Conference Brussels)
This insight from a simpler time in America is more than a quaint remnant of a pastoral sensibility
of the past. It is a truth that the people of our world must integrate into daily living. We can think of the dust
as the transient things of the world, and the Spirit is that part of us that trusts in the Eternal. For me, the
overcoat of clay is the memory of all departed souls. I recognize that many people are unwilling to recover
meaning from the horror of terror. But the eventual challenge is to find meaning in death, and plum our innate
spiritual resources to move from despair and fear into hope. We can retrieve a sense of living in the presence
of death that evokes ultimate meaning, mystery and wonder evoked by the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
Change, loss and mutability are present everywhere, in everything we do. Two pioneers in palliative care, Dr.
Derek Doyle and Dr. Elisabeth Kbler-Ross, speak of the increased spirituality among people who work with
the dying. By being ever mindful of death in life, we can discover or recover a sense mystery.
The great religions have urged contemplation of death in life as a means to spiritual wholeness.
Instead of being abolished from life, death is universally integral to religious observance. If the faithful
embrace death in life then they are more able to accept the exigencies of life, death and transcendence. Death
in life lends symbolic meaning to the conundrums of human existence. What man shall live and not see
death? says the Hebrew text Psalm 98:48. Dying yet we live, is the central message of the Christian Gospel of
St. Paul (2 Corinthians 6:9). The Buddhist Samyutta Nikaya says For the Born, there is no such thing as not
dying. The Muslim Holy Book The Koran counsels keeping death in perspective and the materialism of this
world in perspective: Every soul shall have a taste of death (al-Imran 3:185). Greeley and Hout (1999) say as
many as 80 percent of Americans believe in life after death. Equal numbers also claim to be religious.
Alvarado et. al. (1995) found that strong religious conviction accompanied by belief in an afterlife is
associated with decreased anxiety and depression related to death. Death does now occupy a prominent place
in the public domain. Annie Dilliard thinks that, on the brink of death, the dying pray not please but thank
you as a guest thanks his host at the door. Falling from airplanes she says, the people are crying thank
you, thank you, all down from the air (Dilliard, page 270). This is not denial, but a deeply held sensibility of
religious consolation and gratitude for life lived in the presence of death.
Fear and Knowledge of Death is key to value to life

Russell 1903 (Bertrand, founder of analytical philosophy and Nobel laureate in literature, A free mans
worship, 1903, http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell1.htm)
But the beauty of Tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more or less obvious shapes, is present always
and everywhere in life. In the spectacle of Death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, and in the irrevocableness of a
vanished past, there is a sacredness, an overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible
mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of
sorrow. In these moments of insight, we lose all eagerness of temporary desire, all struggling and striving for petty
ends, all care for the little trivial things that, to a superficial view, make up the common life of day by day; we see,
surrounding the narrow raft illumined by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling
waves we toss for a brief hour; from the great night without, a chill blast breaks in upon our refuge; all the loneliness
of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated upon the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of
courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. Victory,
in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism into the glorious company of heroes, the true
initiation into the overmastering beauty of human existence. From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer
world, enunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost
shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be--Death and change, the irrevocableness of the
past, and the powerlessness of Man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity--to feel these things
and know them is to conquer them.
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AT: Fear of Death Fear Key to Value to Life

Fear of death is key to value to life recognizing death is inevitable allows us to create a
world of love
Kelsang 99 (Geshe, internationally renowned teacher of Buddhism (, http://www.tharpa.com/background/fear-ofdeath.htm)
A healthy fear of death would be the fear of dying unprepared, as this is a fear we can do something about, a danger
we can avert. If we have this realistic fear, this sense of danger, we are encouraged to prepare for a peaceful and
successful death and are also inspired to make the most of our very precious human life instead of wasting it.
This "sense of danger" inspires us to make preparations so that we are no longer in the danger we are in now, for
example by practicing moral discipline, purifying our negative karma, and accumulating as much merit, or good
karma, as possible.
We put on a seat belt out of a sense of danger of the unseen dangers of traffic on the road, and that seat belt protects
us from going through the windshield. We can do nothing about other traffic, but we can do something about
whether or not we go through the windscreen if someone crashes into us.
Similarly, we can do nothing about the fact of death, but we can seize control over how we prepare for death and
how we die. Eventually, through Tantric spiritual practice, we can even attain a deathless body.
In Living Meaningfully, Dying Joyfully, Geshe Kelsang says:
Dying with regrets is not at all unusual. To avoid a sad and meaningless end to our life we need to remember
continually that we too must die. Contemplating our own death will inspire us to use our life wisely by developing
the inner refuge of spiritual realizations; otherwise we shall have no ability to protect ourself from the sufferings of
death and what lies beyond.
Moreover, when someone close to us is dying, such as a parent or friend, we shall be powerless to help them because
we shall not know how; and we shall experience sadness and frustration at our inability to be of genuine help.
Preparing for death is one of the kindest and wisest things we can do both for ourself and others.
The fact of the matter is that this world is not our home. We are travelers, passing through. We came from our
previous life, and in a few years, or a few days, we shall move on to our next life. We entered this world emptyhanded and alone, and we shall leave empty-handed and alone.
Everything we have accumulated in this life, including our very body, will be left behind. All that we can take with
us from one life to the next are the imprints of the positive and negative actions we have created.
If we ignore death we shall waste our life working for things that we shall only have to leave behind, creating many
negative actions in the process, and having to travel on to our next life with nothing but a heavy burden of negative
karma.
On the other hand, if we base our life on a realistic awareness of our mortality, we shall regard our spiritual
development as far more important than the attainments of this world, and we shall view our time in this world
principally as an opportunity to cultivate positive minds such as patience, love, compassion, and wisdom.
Motivated by these virtuous minds we shall perform many positive actions, thereby creating the cause for future
happiness. When the time of our death comes we shall be able to pass away without fear or regret, our mind
empowered by the virtuous karma we have created.
The Kadampa Teachers say that there is no use in being afraid when we are on our deathbed and about to die; the
time to fear death is while we are young. Most people do the reverse. While they are young they think, "I shall not
die", and they live recklessly without concern for death; but when death comes they are terrified.
If we develop fear of death right now we shall use our life meaningfully by engaging in virtuous actions and
avoiding non-virtuous actions, thus creating the cause to take a fortunate rebirth. When death actually comes we
shall feel like a child returning to the home of its parents, and pass away joyfully, without fear.
Fear of death is key to purpose in life

Greenspan 2003 ( Miriam, Pioneer in the Area of Womens Psychology, The Wisdom in the Dark Emotions,
Shambhala Sun http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1625&Itemid=244,
online)
Every dark emotion has a value and purpose. There are no negative
emotions; there are only negative attitudes towards emotions we don't like
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and can't tolerate, and the negative consequences of denying them. The
emotions we call "negative" are energies that get our attention, ask for
expression, transmit information and impel action. Grief tells us that we
are all interconnected in the web of life, and that what connects us also
breaks our hearts. Fear alerts us to protect and sustain life. Despair asks
us to grieve our losses, to examine and transform the meaning of our lives,
to repair our broken souls. Each of these emotions is purposeful and
useful - if we know how to listen to them.
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AT: Fear of Death Key to Human Survival

Rational fear is good - only through fear can we prevent a WMD catastrophe and
environmental degradation
Greenspan 2003 (Miriam, Pioneer in the Area of Womens Psychology, Excerpt from Healing Through the Dark
Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair, Chapter Seven - From Fear to Joy,
http://www.miriamgreenspan.com/excerpts/chapterSevenEx.html )
While it would be comforting to think that all phobias and fears are irrational, obviously this is not the case. The
threats to survival in our era are numerous. Global warming, environmental pollution, nuclear and biochemical
disasters, and terrorism are not individual but global threats. But this doesnt mean they dont affect us as
individuals! In relation to these threats, it has become almost impossible to experience fear in the old individualized
way that we once did when being chased by a wild boar. Our fears are rational, largely transpersonal, and
overwhelming. They are also largely denied. In this unprecedented world context, fear is continually triggered and
benumbed. Isolated in our own skins, without a community in which our fears can be shared, validated, and
addressed, the authentic experience of fear in our time has become almost impossible.
We cant heal what we dont feel. The alchemy of fear is out of reach until we can learn, like Jack, how to feel our
fear. When we dont know the contours of our fear, when we cant experience it authentically or speak about it
openly, we are more likely to be afflicted with anxieties and phobias, panic, obsessive-compulsion, psychosomatic
ills, and all kinds of controlling, destructive, and violent behaviors. Those of us who dont know how to feel our way
through the real fears that haunt us; or who are not threatened by the immediate, in-your-face fears that plague
millions of people on earthfears of starvation, war, homelessness, disease, pervasive violencehave replaced the
alarm of authentic fear with the host of anxiety disorders that have become epidemic in our time.
Fear of Death is key to human survival confronting death is key to state and individual
existence
Beres 96 (Louis Rene, Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue University, Feb.,
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/ feb96/ beresn.htm)
Fear of death, the ultimate source of anxiety, is essential to human survival. This is true not only
for individuals, but also for states. Without such fear, states will exhibit an incapacity to confront
nonbeing that can hasten their disappearance. So it is today with the State of Israel.
Israel suffers acutely from insufficient existential dread. Refusing to tremble before the growing
prospect of collective disintegration - a forseeable prospect connected with both genocide and
war - this state is now unable to take the necessary steps toward collective survival. What is
more, because death is the one fact of life which is not relative but absolute, Israel's blithe
unawareness of its national mortality deprives its still living days of essential absoluteness and
growth.
For states, just as for individuals, confronting death can give the most positive reality to life
itself. In this respect, a cultivated awareness of nonbeing is central to each state's pattern of
potentialities as well as to its very existence. When a state chooses to block off such an
awareness, a choice currently made by the State of Israel, it loses, possibly forever, the altogether
critical benefits of "anxiety."
Fear is key to value to life, survival and transcending evil
Greenspan 2003 (Miriam, Pioneer in the Area of Womens Psychology, Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The
Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair, Excerpt of Chapter Three - How Dark Emotions Become Toxic,
http://www.miriamgreenspan.com/excerpts/chapterThreeEx.html )
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Grief, fear, and despair are primary human emotions. Without them, we would be less than human, and less likely
to survive. Grief arises because we are not alone, and what connects us to others and to the world also breaks our
hearts. Grieving our losses allows us to heal and renew our spirits. Fear alerts us to protect our survival, extending
beyond our instinct for self-preservation to our concern for others. Despair asks us to find meaning in the midst of
apparent chaos or meaninglessness. Making meaning out of suffering is the basis of the human capacity to survive
evil and transcend it.
The purposefulness of these dark emotions is evident when we can experience them mindfully, tolerate their
intense energies, and let them be. Unfortunately, we dont learn how to do this in a culture that fears and devalues
them. Emotion-phobia toxifies dark emotions, leaving our hearts confused and numb, depressed and anxious,
isolated and lonely. In emotion-phobic culture, we internalize the idea that befriending what hurts will hurt us,
whereas suppressing and avoiding it will make us feel better. We only end up feeling worse. The cultural baggage
we carry weighs us down, a major impediment to the art of emotional alchemy.
But we werent born with our bias against the dark emotions. We can change what we believe and how we react to
grief, fear, and despair. We can transform the way we experience these emotions and begin to taste the freedom and
power of letting our emotions be.
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AT: Fear of Death Fear Key to Leadership

A. Fear sustains US leadership
Krauthammer 01, (Charles, Contributing Editor to Weekly Standard "The new world order
after 11 September," Dec 2, 11/12/2001, Volume 007, Issue 09
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/456zfygd.asp)
The assumption after September 11 was that an aroused America will win. If we demonstrate that we cannot win, no
coalition with moderate Arabs will long survive. But much more depends on our success than just the allegiance of
that last piece of the geopolitical puzzle, the Islamic world. The entire new world alignment is at stake.
States line up with more powerful states not out of love but out of fear. And respect. The fear of radical Islam has
created a new, almost unprecedented coalition of interests among the Great Powers. But that coalition of fear is held
together also by respect for American power and its ability to provide safety under the American umbrella. Should
we succeed in the war on terrorism, first in Afghanistan, we will be cementing the New World Order -- the
expansion of the American sphere of peace to include Russia and India (with a more neutral China) -- just now
beginning to take shape. Should we fail, it will be sauve qui peut. Other countries -- and not just our new allies but
even our old allies in Europe -- will seek their separate peace. If the guarantor of world peace for the last half
century cannot succeed in a war of self-defense against Afghanistan(!), then the whole post-World War II structure -open borders, open trade, open seas, open societies -- will begin to unravel.
B. Inset Leadership Impact
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AT: Fear of Death Key to Prevent State Annihilation

Only by recognizing the possibility of total annihilation can states survive, the thought of
total existential elimination must be at the forefront of the all nations minds
Beres 96 (Louis Rene, Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue University, Feb.,
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/ feb96/ beresn.htm)
Nowhere is it written that Israel is forever, or that presumptions of collective immortality are
purposeful to Israel's security. Stepping into imaginations of death in order to prevent
annihilation, Israel must quickly discover, in the immanent abyss of nonbeing, the course of
direction toward life. Drawing upon the anxiety of death's immanence in the life of every nation,
the People of Israel could nurture the Angst that is now antecedent to national endurance.
Israel cannot afford to be "liberated" from existential anxiety. It must, instead, feel that the Third
Temple Commonwealth is problematic, that collective extinction represents the end point of the
same continuum that contains collective vitality, and that preservation as a state cannot be
detached from reasonable intimations of disappearance. Left uncontrolled, anguish can become
an unbearable hindrance, but disregarded entirely, it can become the source of unalterable
despair.
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AT: Fear of Death Plan Solves

The plan solves for your fear of death arguments by embracing an ethic of universal
sympathy we can come to terms with our own death by alleviating the suffering of others
Schulz, professor of philosophy at Tubigen University, 2000
(Walter, Continental Philosophy Review 33, p. 483-485)
It is significant that the death of others is thematized neither by Scheler nor by Heidegger and Sartre. These thinkers
begin their analyses of death always from the self that is in each case mine as an isolated individual. The meaning
that the death of others has for me is not regarded by them. The centering of the death problem in the question of
ones own death may be conditioned by the hegemony of the principle of interiority in the epoch of Christian
metaphysics, whose secularized form is existential philosophy. This is factically a constriction of the problematic.
Thus, one may not, when one wants to comprehend the whole problem of death, look only ahead towards ones own
death. However, it is this shall once more be expressly exhibited just as necessary, to go against the other
extreme which confronts us in modern sociological observations of images of death. Its characteristic is that it
thematizes only death, more exactly: the dying of others.
This modern approach blocks so we think from its point of view the complex of questions in an almost stronger
way than the existentialist perspective, insofar as here the fact is excluded along with disregarding his own death
that man is a self-understanding and as such fears death. In opposition to the one-sidedness of both either
thematizing only my death or observing only the dying of others one ought to treat the phenomenon of death
dialectically; that is, to refer to the facts, that man following Kierkegaard is himself and the same time his
species. In The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard brought to our attention the meaning of this complex in relation to
history. Every individual for himself takes as his point of departure his history and advances the history of the
species which, however, represents its own dimension. This means that the individual can just as little be released
from universal history as the latter can be released from the individual, whereby the individuals history and the
history of the species can exhibit not only different tendencies, but also both make it possible to experience in
relation to one another a different evaluation: one can lose oneself in universal history or over-emphasize ones own
singularity.
This dialectical approach, which has still in no way been philosophically estimated in its universal meaning, now
says in our context we are here pulling together our argumentation my death as an individual and death in
general, which occurs to the human species, must not be thought without the other. My death appears to me as the
essential, and at the same time I do in fact know that my death is only a special case of death in general. This
dialectic, from which a mediation appears possible between existential introspection and sociological extrospection,
becomes first concrete through the insertion of a mediating determination between my death and death in general.
This mediating determination is the death of other men or women, which, existentially and sociologically regarded,
can in fact become relevant for me in thoroughly different degrees and under the most differentiating respects. None of
these three determinations dyingness in general, the death of others and my death are, however, posited for themselves, rather all of them are to be mediated with the other. The structure of
this mediation shall be made more clear by way of example in the brevity required here. The general determination of dyingness and transitoriness becomes for me first and foremost tangible
and concrete in the death of others. It becomes in no way superfluous through this concretization. It remains essential as a background determination, and that means it indicates the possibility of
my death. The observation of death, more exactly, the dying of others, is certainly the only real experience of death. But in this extrospection the possible relation to my death comes into play and
plays along always already more or less concealed, because the other and myself are subjugated to the same destiny of dying. Vice versa: the passing into death or more simply said: the thought, I
myself must die, which comes over the aging human being becomes a little more tolerable in dialectically looking away from myself, that means in view of the universal lot of dying, that itself
only appears in stark reality, when we actually see humans dying and observe the uncanny change from life to death in order to cite an interpretation of Max Schur on Freuds sentence from the
work Reflections upon War and Death: Human
it is his turn.
beings actually die, not only a few, rather all of them, each and every one of us, when
This dialectic - in which I look away from myself to others or from others to myself, uniting us under the universal lot of transitoriness is no solution to the problem of
the struggle against violent

death over against the help for the dying indicates certainly here that they can be taken up in their positivity
without falling into the illusion that death can be abolished and that the fear of death is an archaic remnant and in
itself irrational. Both these tendencies find their foundation in the thought of a universal sympathy that binds me to
all things living. This sympathy actualizes itself as sympathy, which means as a return behind selfishness in all its
forms. This return is identical with the immediate recognition that the other is equal to me insofar as he is also a
living thing, which must expire and become nothing. This connectedness between human beings that reveals itself in
the light of the common determinateness of death retains in its ground that is, in the thought of universal
transitoriness the form of negativity. But it also refers to the fact that the individual does not have to stare
spellbound at his own imminent end. Rather if surely also to a small degree only the individual is able to think
beyond his death in view of the task common to everyone, reducing suffering within the world in the face of death.
death, not even a recipe against the fear of death. But the possibility of a resigned acquiesce that stands opposite both tendencies at work today
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AT: Fear of Nukes Plan Solves Numbing

ADVOCATING A PLAN TO ADDRESS HARMS OF NUCLEAR WAR OVERCOMES THE PROBLEM OF NUMBING
Advocating a plan to address harms of nuclear war overcomes the problem of numbing
Sandman and Valenti 86 (Peter and JoAnn, Professor of Human Ecology at Rutgers and Preeminent Risk
Communications Expert published over 80 articles and books on various aspects of risk communication, Scared stiff
or scared into action, , Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 1986, pp. 1216,
http://www.psandman.com/articles/scarstif.htm)
WHEN THE MOVEMENT against nuclear weapons celebrates its heroes, a place of honor is
reserved for Helen Caldicott, the Australian pediatrician who revived Physicians for Social
Responsibility (PSR) in 1978 and made it the vehicle for her impassioned antinuclear crusade. In
countless communities since then, Caldicott has briskly narrated the devastation that would result
if a small nuclear warhead exploded right here and now. Thousands of activists trace their
movement beginnings to a Helen Caldicott speech, wondering if it wouldn't help reverse the
arms race just to make everyone sit through that speech and each week hundreds of activists
do their best to give the speech themselves.
Nonetheless, PSR Executive Director Jane Wales, while acknowledging a huge debt to Caldicott,
said in 1984 that the time for the bombing runs (as insiders call the speech) was past. We
knew it was past when someone interrupted the speech one evening, actually interrupted it, and
said, We know all that, but what can we do? In a 1985 newsletter, similarly, Sanford Gottlieb
of United Campuses to Prevent Nuclear War warned that many students were being numbed by
the emphasis on nuclear blast, fire and radiation in courses on nuclear war and were therefore
feeling more impotent and depressed than before the class began.(1) Perhaps the first broad
awareness that shock therapy may not be the best therapy came, ironically, in 1983 in the weeks
preceding the broadcast of the television film The Day After, when Educators for Social
Responsibility and others worried that the program might do children more harm than good. The
Day After turned out to be less frightening than expected, but other films (Threads, Testament,
and Caldicotts own The Last Epidemic) raise the same worry and not just for children.
In the following analysis of the fear of nuclear Armageddon and its implications for antinuclear
advocacy, we will argue that most people are neither apathetic about nuclear war nor actively
terrified of it but rather, in Robert Jay Liftons evocative phrase, psychically numbed; that it is
ineffective to frighten audiences who have found a refuge from their fears in numbness; and that
there exist more effective keys to unlocking such paralysis.
THE CENTRAL ENIGMA of antinuclear activism is why everyone is not working to prevent
nuclear war. Activists who can understand those who disagree about what should be done are
bewildered and frustrated by those who do nothing. Such inaction is objectively irrational; as
Caldicott asked in a 1982 cover article in Family Weekly, Why make sure kids clean their teeth
and eat healthy food if theyre not going to survive?(2)
Advocates of all causes chafe at their neighbors lack of interest. When the issue is something
like saving whales or wheelchair access to public buildings, the problem is usually diagnosed as
apathy. Psychiatrist Robert Winer argues that the same is true of the nuclear threat, which most
of us experience as remote, impersonal, and vague. For Winer, one of the genuinely tragic
aspects of the nuclear situation is that immediacy may be given to us only once and then it will
be too late to learn.(3) There is obviously some truth to this view. When asked to describe their
images of nuclear war, people do tend to come up with abstractions and those with more
concrete, immediate images are likely to be antinuclear activists.(4)
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AT: Fear of Nukes Key to Peace and Survival

In a world of Nukes, only fear can motivate people to act for peace
Russell 67 (Bertrand, founder of analytic philosophy and Nobel laureate in literature,
1967,http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/%7Erussell/bressay.htm, online)
What can private persons do meanwhile? They can agitate, by pointing out the effects of modern war and the danger
of the extinction of Man. They can teach men not to hate peoples other than their own, or to cause themselves to be
hated. They can value, and cause others to value, what Man has achieved in art and science. They can emphasize the
superiority of co-operation to competition.
Finally, have I done anything to further such ends?
Something perhaps, but sadly little in view of the magnitude of the evil. Some few people in England and the U.S.A.
I have encouraged in the expression of liberal views, or have terrified with the knowledge of what modern weapons
can do. It is not much, but if everybody did as much this Earth would soon be a paradise. Consider for a moment
what our planet is and what it might be. At present, for most, there is toil and hunger, constant danger, more hatred
than love. There could be a happy world, where co-operation was more in evidence than competition, and
monotonous work is done by machines, where what is lovely in nature is not destroyed to make room for hideous
machines whose sole business is to kill, and where to promote joy is more respected than to produce mountains of
corpses. Do not say this is impossible: it is not. It waits only for men to desire it more than the infliction of torture.
Fear of nuclear weapons has prevented their use deterrence has checked conflict
Rajaraman 2002 (Professor of Theoretical Physics at JNU, 2002 [R., Ban battlefield nuclear weapons, 4/22/2,
The Hindu, http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/04/22/stories/2002042200431000.htm[
There were a variety of different reasons behind each of these examples of abstinence from using nuclear weapons.
But one major common factor
contributing to all of them has been an ingrained terror of nuclear devastation. The well documented images of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the awesome photographs of giant mushroom clouds emerging from nuclear tests in the
Pacific and the numerous movies based on nuclear Armageddon scenarios have all contributed to building up a deep
rooted fear of nuclear weapons. This is not limited just to the abhorrence felt by anti-nuclear activists. It permeates
to one extent or another the psyche of all but the most pathological of fanatics. It colours the calculations, even if not
decisively, of the most hardened of military strategists. The unacceptability of nuclear devastation is the backbone of
all deterrence strategies. There is not just a fear of being attacked oneself, but also a strong mental barrier against
actually initiating nuclear attacks on enemy populations, no matter how much they may be contemplated in war
games and strategies. As a result a taboo has tacitly evolved over the decades preventing nations, at least so far, from
actually pressing the nuclear button even in the face of serious military crises.
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AT: Fear of Nukes Key to Peace and Survival

FEAR OF NUCLEAR WAR IS GOOD ITS KEY TO STOPPING THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND CREATING A MORE PEACEFUL SOCIETY
Fear of nuclear war is good its key to stopping the use of nuclear weapons and creating a
more peaceful society
Futterman, 1991 (JAH, Livermore lab researcher, 1995, Mediation of the Bomb, online,
http://www.dogchurch.org/scriptorium/nuke0
I could say that if I didn't do it, someone else would, but that answer was rejected at Nuremberg.
(It's also a better reason to leave the weapons program than to stay.) I continue to support the u
business with my effort for many reasons, which I discuss throughout this piece. But mostly, I do
it because the fear of nuclear holocaust is the only authority my own country or any other has
respected so far when it comes to nationalistic urges to make unlimited war. As William L. Shirer
states in his preface to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Touchstone Books, New York,
1990),
"Adolf Hitler is probably the last of the great adventurer-conquerors in the tradition of
Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, and the Third Reich the last of the empires which set out on
the path taken earlier by France, Rome and Macedonia. The curtain was rung down on that phase
of history, at least, by the sudden invention of the hydrogen bomb, of the ballistic missile, and of
rockets which can be aimed to hit the moon."
Now this contrasts with the argument of those who would "reinvent government" by putting up
bureaucratic roadblocks to maintaining the reliability of the US nuclear arsenal through research
and testing. They reason that if the reliability of everyone's nuclear arsenals declines, everyone
will be less likely to try using them. The problem is that some "adventurer-conqueror" may arise
and use everyone's doubt about their arsenals to risk massive conventional war instead. An
expansionist dictatorship might even risk nuclear war with weapons that are simpler, cruder, less
powerful, much riskier (in terms of the possibility of accidental detonation) but much more
reliable than our own may eventually become without adequate "stockpile stewardship."[14]
But the inhibitory effect of reliable nuclear weapons goes deeper than Shirer's deterrence of
adventurer-conquerors. It changes the way we think individually and culturally, preparing us for
a future we cannot now imagine. Jungian psychiatrist Anthony J. Stevens states, [15]
"History would indicate that people cannot rise above their narrow sectarian concerns without
some overwhelming paroxysm. It took the War of Independence and the Civil War to forge the
United States, World War I to create the League of Nations, World War II to create the United
Nations Organization and the European Economic Community. Only catastrophe, it seems,
forces people to take the wider view.
Or what about fear? Can the horror which we all experience when we contemplate the possibility
of nuclear extinction mobilize in us sufficient libidinal energy to resist the archetypes of war?
Certainly, the moment we become blas about the possibility of holocaust we are lost. As long as
horror of nuclear exchange remains uppermost we can recognize that nothing is worth it. War
becomes the impossible option. Perhaps horror, the experience of horror, the consciousness of
horror, is our only hope. Perhaps horror alone will enable us to overcome the otherwise
invincible attraction of war."
Thus I also continue engaging in nuclear weapons work to help fire that world-historical warning
shot I mentioned above, namely, that as our beneficial technologies become more powerful, so
will our weapons technologies, unless genuine peace precludes it. We must build a future more
peaceful than our past, if we are to have a future at all, with or without nuclear weapons a fact
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we had better learn before worse things than nuclear weapons are invented. If you're a
philosopher, this means that I regard the nature of humankind as mutable rather than fixed, but
that I think most people welcome change in their personalities and cultures with all the
enthusiasm that they welcome death thus, the fear of nuclear annihilation of ourselves and all
our values may be what we require in order to become peaceful enough to survive our future
technological breakthroughs.[16]
In other words, when the peace movement tells the world that we need to treat each other more
kindly, I and my colleagues stand behind it (like Malcolm X stood behind Martin Luther King,
Jr.) saying, "Or else." We provide the peace movement with a needed sense of urgency that it
might otherwise lack.
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AT: Fear of Nukes Peace and Survival

Fear motivates people to pursue constructive means to sustain peace and prevent largescale catastrophe
LIFTON 01
Lifton 01 (Robert Jay, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at John Jay College, Illusions of the
second nuclear age, World Policy Journal. New York: Spring 2001. Vol. 18, Iss. 1; pg. 25, 6 pgs)
The trouble is that in other ways the dangers associated with nuclear weapons are greater than ever: the continuing
weapons-- centered policies in the United States and elsewhere; the difficulties in controlling nuclear weapons that
exist under unstable conditions (especially in Russia and other areas of the former Soviet Union);2 and the eagerness
and potential capacity of certain nations and "private" groups to acquire and possibly use the weapons. In that sense,
the nuclear quietism is perilous. Or, to put the matter another way, we no longer manifest an appropriate degree of
fear in relation to actual nuclear danger. While fear in itself is hardly to be recommended as a guiding human
emotion, its absence in the face of danger can lead to catastrophe.
We human animals have built-in fear reactions in response to threat. These reactions help us to protect ourselves-to
step back from the path of a speeding automobile, or in the case of our ancestors, from the path of a wild animal.
Fear can be transmuted into constructive planning and policies: whether for minimizing vulnerability to attacks by
wild animals, or for more complex contemporary threats. Through fear, ordinary people can be motivated to pursue
constructive means for sustaining peace, or at least for limiting the scope of violence. Similarly, in exchanges
between world leaders on behalf of preventing large-scale conflict, a tinge of fear-sometimes more than a tinge- can
enable each to feel the potential bloodshed and suffering that would result from failure.
But with nuclear weapons, our psychological circuits are impaired. We know that the weapons are around-and we
hear talk about nuclear dangers somewhere "out there" -but our minds no longer connect with the dangers or with
the weapons themselves. That blunting of feeling extends into other areas. One of the many sins for which advocates
of large nuclear stockpiles must answer is the prevalence of psychic numbing to enormous potential suffering, the
blunting of our ethical standards as human beings.
In the absence of the sort of threatening nuclear rhetoric the United States and Russia indulged in during the 1980s,
we can all too readily numb ourselves to everything nuclear, and thereby live as though the weapons pose no danger,
or as though they don't exist. To be sure, we have never quite been able to muster an appropriate level of fear with
respect to these weapons-one that would spur us to take constructive steps to remove the threat. We have always
been able to numb ourselves in this regard, which must be seen as a basic human response to a threat that is
apocalyptic in scope and so technologically distanced as to be unreal. But there were at least brief moments when
we would awaken from our nuclear torpor.
Now there is little but torpor. The weapons have been accepted as belonging on our planet no less than we do, as if
they were part of nature-like great trees or mountains that are old, established, immovable-rather than technological
instruments of genocide that we ourselves have created.
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AT: Fear of Nukes Peace and Survival

Deterrence is needed to maintain peace - your alternative does nothing
But this situation is different we now confront potential enemies with enough force to
convince them that they have no hope of seizing control of the world in the first place. So I help
maintain that deterrence, a paradoxical, insufficient, but necessary part of making peace. I do
other parts in my spare time.
Still, there is the notion that because I did research related to nuclear weapons, I deserve a
greater portion of guilt for what happens if they are used. Let me point out that even the antinuclear activists contribute to the nuclear weapons business, because they make war on nuclear
weapons instead of making peace. They are shooting the bearer of the bad news that we can't
make global war safely anymore. It's as if they want war to be safer, so that humanity can
continue as before, making wars that only kill some of us. I hand them back the guilt[20] some of
them wish to hand me.
In particular, I sometimes consider those who engage in anti-war or anti-nuclear actions
(including some scientists who eschew defense research for moral reasons) without ever doing
any actual peace-making to be in the same category that Dante seems to have placed Pope
Celestine V. Celestine apparently abdicated the papacy out of fear that the worldliness that one
must take on as Pope would jeopardize his salvation. Of him and his kind Dante says, [21]
"...These are the nearly soulless,
whose lives concluded neither blame nor praise.
They are mixed here with that despicable corps
of angels who were neither for God nor Satan,
but only for themselves. The High Creator
scourged them from Heaven for its perfect beauty,
and Hell will not receive them since the wicked
might feel some glory over them."
In other words, I think that those who engage in peace protests without engaging in the
enfranchisement of the disenfranchised, the empowerment of the powerless, and the deterrence
of the willfully destructive may be serving their own desire to be morally pure, more than the
cause of peace. Instead of acknowledging the difference between forcefully confronting a bully
and being one, they advocate passivity, which just encourages the bully.
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AT: Fear of Nukes Disarm Bad (Weapons key to peace)

Disarmarment wont solve, only empowerment will solve war, nukes are just a side effect
Internationally, peace requires empowerment of some groups that seem eager to earn the hatred
of the civilized world like the Palestinians. Now that nuclear deterrence and economic
necessity have combined to bring about more freedom, empowerment, and therefore peace in
Europe, the Middle East is one of the next hot-spots for triggering a nuclear war. In order to have
peace, the world must empower the Palestinians to determine their political and economic
destiny, while at the same time it must deter them from warring with Israel. Such empowerment
and deterrence will require the active involvement of the Islamic nations who thus far have been
unwilling to empower the Palestinians to engage in much beyond stone-throwing and terrorism.
May the Palestinians awaken to how they have been used by their brethren.
So we need to make peace, at home and abroad. Before you demonstrate to make your town a
nuclear-free zone or to stop nuclear testing, [12] consider what you can do to enlarge someone's
freedom, or to help them obtain the power to determine a better life for themselves. In other
words, rather than fight against nuclear weapons or even against war, try making peace.
Meanwhile, I do what I can to make waging unlimited war dangerous, and preparation for it
expensive. I can provide palliative treatment, but you, physicians/patients, must heal yourselves.
Or to put it more bluntly, as long as we continue to express our human nature in
disenfranchising, disempowering ways, we will cling to armament nuclear or worse to
distance ourselves from our own nearness to war.
Weapons Testing and Prolif are necessary to develop smaller, safer nuclear weapons,
without testing wed still be pointing massive bombs at each other
NOW, regardless of the possibility that the present world without nuclear weapons may be
unstable against conventional world war.
They are also oblivious to the idea that even a nuclear test ban can carry some risk to future
generations. If the comprehensive test moratorium of the early sixties had held, we would have
more multi-megaton weapons and more total megatons of explosive capability in the US and CIS
arsenals than we do today. In other words, the world grew technically safer from nuclear winter
during the cold war because of continued nuclear testing of new nuclear designs. Moreover,
consider the devices that are incorporated into nuclear weapons to prevent their unauthorized
use: how can we trust that they actually can prevent such use without testing them? Now the
proliferation of nuclear weapons may make it necessary for us to develop ways to detect[23] and
flexible responses to deter nuclear terrorism (including ways to disable terrorist nuclear
explosives).
I would hesitate to preclude such development given the present state of the world.
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AT: Fear of Nukes Key to Denuclearize

We need fear of nuclear weapons to break down nuclearism and denuclearize
Lifton 01 (Robert Jay, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at John Jay College, Illusions of the
second nuclear age, World Policy Journal. New York: Spring 2001. Vol. 18, Iss. 1; pg. 25, 6 pgs)
Looking psychologically and historically, then, at our second nuclear age, we can come to what I believe to be a
simple set of conclusions. We need to replace psychic numbing with awareness, and to expose and counter the new
versions of nuclearism as well as the older ones. We need to probe ever more deeply the trickle-down effects of
existing weapons, including especially their psychological effects. And we need to take steps, as citizen activists and
concerned intellectuals, to denuclearize the world. We need to start here at home and renounce our weaponscentered superpower status, thereby freeing ourselves to pursue saner, life-enhancing projects. We ought to heed the
words of Seneca, the Roman philosopher and dramatist: "Power over life and death--don't be proud of it. Whatever
others fear from you, you'll be threatened with."
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AT: Nuclearism Permutation Solvency

The permutation to do the plan while rethinking solves best-their own author says that
there is no single truth. Engaging in political action and recognizing the power of the
human race allows us to resist nuclear aggression.
Lifton and Markusen in 90 (Robert Jay and Eric, Professor of International Relations at Princeton University and
Assistant Researcher at the University of New York, The Genocidal Mentality, pg. 278-279)
[Species awareness means awareness of human choice: "This is not the End of Timeunless we choose
to make it so. We need not accept the death sentence . . . .We are not powerless." By choosing instead a
human future, we arein the words of the Polish Solidarity leader Adam Michnik"defending hope."
And "hope is important. Perhaps more important than anything else." Hope is greatly enhancedas is the
acceptance of individual mortalityby the sense of reasserting the immortality of the species. The task is
intensified by the psychological upheavals we can expect in connection with the millennial transition of
the year 2000. Whatever the millennial imagery, we must recognize that the hopeful future is not an
apocalyptic heavenly peace but rather expanded awareness on behalf of human continuity.
This adaptation will not eliminate peoples need to define themselves in relation to otherness, but it can
begin to subsume that otherness to larger human commonality. It must include struggles against
widespread oppression and drastic human inequities by invoking the kind of originality in political
action that has taken place in the Solidarity movement in Polandand in related movements in Hungary,
East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgariaand was so cruelly frustrated in the student movement in
China: Political action that enlarges, rather than blights or destroys, human possibilities. This speciesoriented approach would defy the given models of defiance.
No one can claim knowledge of a single, correct path. Rather, there must be endless combinations of
reflection and action and, above all, the kind of larger collective adaptation we have been discussing. At
the same time, we must remain aware of persisting genocidal arrangements and expressions of genocidal
mentality. We cannot afford to stop thinking. Nor can we wait for a new Gandhi or Saint Joan to
deliver us. Rather, each of us must join in a vast projectpolitical, ethical, psychologicalon behalf of
perpetuating and nurturing our humanity. We are then people getting up from their knees to resist
nuclear oppression. We clear away the thick glass that has blurred our moral and political vision. We
become healers, not killers, of our species.]
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AT: Nuclearism Alternative More Numbing

We do not really know the impact to nuclear war- denying that destruction can occur
through the criticism furthers numbing
Lifton and Markusen in 90 (Robert Jay and Eric, Professor of International Relations at Princeton University and
Assistant Researcher at the University of New York, The Genocidal Mentality, pg. 203)
Dissociation is called forth to cover over and deny ignorance. Not only are we much more ignorant about
what we call nuclear war than we care to admit, but "we don't know how much we do or do not know
about it." Since, as the Israeli philosopher Avner Cohen points out, "we do not really know how to
conceive of nuclear warfare as a concrete actuality, how it could be properly kept under control and how it
might be brought to termination," it is less than responsible to claim how such an event could be
"managed, controlled or concluded." But all evidence suggests that "no matter what nuclear war might be,
it would not be the kind of rule-governed practice" often assumed on the basis of past wars. And while the
principle of deterrence has a long history in political and military practice going back to the time of the
Greek city-states, the consequences, should deterrence fail and the deterrer act on his threat, were always
limited: after the war and destruction, there would be recovery and resumption of life. Precisely the
present absence of those limits "should deterrence fail," the un certainty or unlikelihood of any significant
amount of human life remaining, radically distinguishes nuclear deterrence from that tradition.
Dissociation, especially in the form of psychic numbing, helps blur that distinction by denying not only
our ignorance but also what we can be expected to know.
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AT: Nuclearism Images of Nuclear Discourse Key

Images evoked by nuclear discourse serve as a way to tame the forces of nuclear power.
Cohn in 97 (Carol, Research Fellow at the Center for Psychological Studies, Slickems, Glickems, Christmas
Trees, and Cookie Cutters: Nuclear Language, Bulletin of At the Atomic Scientists, June 1987, p. 17-24,
http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl07aa.shtml)
[ These domestic images are more than simply one more way to remove oneself from the grisly reality behind the
words; ordinary abstraction is adequate to that task. Calling the pattern in which bombs fall a "footprint" almost
seems a willful distorting process, a playful, perverse refusal of accountability--because to be accountable to reality
is to be unable to do this work.
The images evoked by these words may also be a way to tame the uncontrollable forces of nuclear destruction. Take
fire-breathing dragons under the bed, the one who threatens to incinerate your family, your town, your planet, and
turn it into a pet you can pat. Or domestic imagery may simply serve to make everyone more comfortable with what
they're doing. "PAL" (permissive action links) is the carefully constructed, friendly acronym for the electronic
system designed to prevent the unauthorized firing of nuclear warheads. The president's annual nuclear weapons
stockpile memorandum, which outlines both short and long-range plans for production of new nuclear weapons, is
benignly referred to as "the shopping list." The "cookie cutter" is a phrase used to describe a particular model of
nuclear attack.]
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AT; Nuclearism- Nuclear weapons are morally acceptable

Nuclear weapons are designed to deter wars - they are morally acceptable because they
secure the world.
Gusterson in 93 (Hugh, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Science Studies at MIT, Adjunct Fellow at
Harvard Universitys Center for Psychology and Social Change, Ethnographic Writing on Militarism, Journal of
Contemporary Ethnology, April 1993, vol. 22, no. 1, p.72)
[How can the anthropologist and the political citizen learn to
live together in the same person in such a situation? How, for example, should one write about an interview subject like Lester,3
who told me that, although his university colleagues tried to talk
him out of working at a nuclear weapons laboratory, their objections did not trouble him? He believes that it is more ethical to
work on nuclear weapons than on less destructive conventional
weapons because nuclear weapons are designed to deter wars
rather than to fight them. He says that he could never work as
a lawyer defending murderers or other criminals but feels morally comfortable with his work as a nuclear warhead designer,
and even wonders if it might be morally reprehensible not to
work on nuclear weapons because, as he sees it, they make
the world more stable. Lester is puzzled by those who cannot
see that nuclear weapons make us safer by making war unthinkable. Like most of his colleagues, he is confident that nuclear
weapons can be controlled by humans, that technological progress is unavoidable and beneficial, and that nuclear weapons
are the embodiment of a transcendent rationality, which alone
can discipline the dark impulses leading humans to make war.
Everything in his life, where he sees the atom bent to the
experimental will of human rationality on a daily basis, confirms
those beliefs. Lester does not worry that the United States will
misuse the hydrogen bombs he designs, bombs he describes
as "no more strange than a vacuum cleaner. You don't feel a
fear for them at all." In fact, he sees weapons technology as
"beautiful." "How do I explain that?" he asked me. "To me, a
spectrometer is a very pretty thing ... and you feel badly that
it's going to be destroyed [in a nuclear test]."]
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AT: Chaloupka Krishna evidence

Chaloupkas total critique destroys coalitions and the possibility of progressive social change.
Krishna 93 (Sankaran, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Alternatives, Summer,
p. 400-401, The Importance of Being Ironic: A Postcolonial View on Critical International Relations Theory)
The dichotomous choice presented in this excerpt is straightforward: one either indulges in total critique,
delegitimizing all sovereign truths, or one is committed to "nostalgic," essentialist unities that have become obsolete
and have been the grounds for all our oppressions. In offering this dichotomous choice, Der Derian replicates a
move made by Chaloupka in his equally dismissive critique of the move mainstream nuclear opposition, the Nuclear
Freeze movement of the early 1980s, that, according to him, was operating along obsolete lines, emphasizing "facts"
and "realities," while a "postmodern" President Reagan easily outflanked them through an illusory Star Wars
program (See KN: chapter 4) Chaloupka centers this difference between his own supposedly total critique of all
sovereign truths (which he describes as nuclear criticism in an echo of literary criticism) and the more partial (and
issue based) criticism of what he calls "nuclear opposition" or "antinuclearists" at the very outset of his book. (Kn:
xvi) Once again, the unhappy choice forced upon the reader is to join Chaloupka in his total critique of all sovereign
truths or be trapped in obsolete essentialisms. This leads to a disastrous politics pitting groups that have the most in
common (and need to unite on some basis to be effective) against each other. Both Chaloupka and Der Derian thus
reserve their most trenchant critique for political groups that should, in any analysis, be regarded as the closest to
them in terms of an oppositional politics and their desired futures. Instead of finding ways to live with these
differences and to (if fleetingly) coalesce against the New Right, this fratricidal critique is politically suicidal. It
obliterates the space for a political activism based on provisional and contingent coalitions, for uniting behind a
common cause even as one recognizes that the coalition is comprised of groups that have very differing (and
possibly unresolvable) views of reality. Moreover, it fails to consider the possibility that there may have been other,
more compelling reasons for the "failure" of the Nuclear Freeze movement or anti-Gulf War movement. Like many
a worthwhile cause in our times, they failed to garner sufficient support to influence state policy. The response to
that need not be a totalizing critique that delegitimizes all narratives. The blackmail inherent in the choice offered by
Der Derian and Chaloupka, between total critique and "ineffective" partial critique, ought to be transparent. Among
other things, it effectively militates against the construction of provisional on strategic essentialisms our attempts to
create space for activist politics. In the next section, I focus more widely on the genre of critical international theory
and its impact on such an activist politics.
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AT: Non-violence Alternative Holocaust

Non Violence would have had no chance to stop the Nazis. Denmarks strategy wouldnt
have worked on a global scale - a 1000 year Reich would of resulted
http://www.dogchurch.org/scriptorium/nuke0.html)
The Nazis, who with their "Master Race" ideology admitted only so-called "Aryans" to the
category of human, provide an example counter to that of the British. There were some
successful acts of non-violent confrontation against the Nazis, like King Christian of Denmark's
public declaration that he would wear the yellow star if it were introduced in his country. He did
so in response to the Nazi practice of ordering Jews to wear yellow-starred armbands so that the
Nazis could more easily isolate them from their surrounding society. That many Danes followed
their king's example helped camouflage many Jews until they could escape to Sweden in fishing
boats. [5] Now this resistance worked partly because the Nazis considered the Danes to be
"Aryans" like themselves. Had the Poles tried the same thing, the Nazis would have been
perfectly happy to use the event as an excuse for liquidating more Poles. Rather than awaken the
Nazis' moral sense, non-violent confrontation on the part of the Poles would probably have
enabled the Nazis to carry out their agenda in Poland more easily. The other reason these acts
succeeded was that overwhelming violence of the Allies had stretched the Nazi forces too thin to
suppress massive action by a whole populace, and eventually deprived the Nazis of the time they
needed to find other ways to carry out their "final solution."
In other words, non-violence resistance alone would have been very slow to work against the
Nazis, once they had consolidated their power. And while it slowly ground away at the evil in the
Nazi soul, how many millions more would have died, and how much extra time would have been
given to Nazi scientists trying to invent atomic bombs to go on those V-2 rockets? The evil of
Nazism may well have expended itself, but perhaps after a real "thousand-year Reich," leaving
a world populated only by blue-eyed blondes. In other words, if the world had used non-violence
alone against the Nazis, the results may have been much worse those of the war.[6]
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AT: Non-violence Alternative Genocide

Non-violence fails and makes us complicit with genocidetheir alternative devalues life
and leads to more conflict and millions of deaths
Ketels, Associate Professor of English at Temple University, 1996
(Violet B., Havel to the Castle! The Power of the Word, 548 Annals 45, November, Lexis)
Havel stresses the potential of truth and humane values to transform human consciousness incrementally over time. We must constantly work for
every good thing and struggle against violence. But Havel is tough-minded, his vision comprehensive and realistic. Violence may be
unavoidable in the face of totalitarian savagery. Still, it must remain a means of last resort. Repeatedly, he warns that
violence breeds violence. Havel is not, however, a pacifist, as that term applies to Quakers or others who organize peace
movements. n40 Although the regime Havel and his fellow dissidents resisted for more than thirty years accused them of terrorist tactics and
plots, they conscientiously sought legal justification for their resistance, using the letter even of unjust laws to manifest support for the principle
of legality. Their attitude was "fundamentally hostile to the notion of violent change--simply because it places its faith in violence," Havel writes
in one place. He immediately restates the point, however, in a powerfully significant parenthesis: "the 'dissident' attitude can only accept
violence as a necessary evil in extreme situations, when direct violence can only be met by violence and where
remaining passive would in effect mean supporting violence." n41 He recalls us to the tragic blindness of European
pacifism that helped to prepare the ground for World War II. He points to the fact that the Czechs sent troops to the
Persian Gulf and stood willing to contribute to a U.N. force in the former Yugoslavia. But he is at pains to condemn violence
used as a quick fix to change political systems--the sacrifice of human beings here and now for "abstract political visions of the future." The
problems in human society "lie far too deep to be settled through [*55] mere systemic changes, either governmental or technological." n42
Havel writes and thinks out of a unique humanist tradition that has been continuous in Czech history. He has specifically identified with the
humanism of the founder of the Czech state, Tomas Masaryk, who regarded "ethical, aesthetic and scientific categories" as "no less real than
bread and butter." Masaryk felt the need for a social revolution "more moral and less materialistic than that envisaged by the Marxists." Like
Havel, he hoped to avoid violence, but he does not rule it out altogether. His language is as circumspect as Havel's: We must consistently reject
every act of violence; otherwise we shall never be able to disentangle ourselves from violence. We may, should, must protect, defend
ourselves. In extreme cases with the sword. But even in self-defense we must restrain ourselves from new, active acts of violence. n43
In an address prepared for delivery at a 1985 peace conference, Havel explains the reticence of Europeans to join Western peace
movements as rooted in the skepticism of those who have already been burned by succumbing to other forms of
utopianism, specifically the Stalin-Leninist variety, which grotesquely deformed its utopian principles as soon as it
got power. The very word "peace" has been drained of all content by the European experience of "peace in our
time." n44 The Western version of peace sounds far too much like appeasement. Havel speculates whether World War II, with its millions of
corpses, could have been avoided if the Western democracies had stood up to Hitler forcefully and in time. He ascribes to the Czech people as a
whole the firmly rooted idea that the inability to risk, in extremis, even life itself to save what gives it meaning and a
human dimension leads not only to the loss of meaning but finally and inevitably to the loss of life as well--and not
one life only but thousands and millions of lives. n45
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AT: Non-violence Alternative Increases Violence

Nonviolence is code for appeasement, history proves that EVEN RHETORICAL stances
against the use of force can embolden aggressors
Sowell, Author, September 23, 2001 (Thomas, http://capmag.com/articlePrint.asp?ID= 1108, Acc 7-14)
Although most Americans seem to understand the gravity of the situation that terrorism has put us in -- and the need
for some serious military response, even if that means dangers to the lives of us all -- there are still those who insist
on posturing, while on the edge of a volcano. In the forefront are college students who demand a peaceful
response to an act of war. But there are others who are old enough to know better, who are still repeating the pacifist
platitudes of the 1930s that contributed so much to bringing on World War II.
A former ambassador from the weak-kneed Carter administration says that we should look at the root causes
behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We should understand the alienation and sense of
grievance against us by various people in the Middle East.
It is astonishing to see the 1960s phrase root causes resurrected at this late date and in this context. It was
precisely this kind of thinking. which sought the root causes of crime during that decade, creating soft policies
toward criminals, which led to skyrocketing crime rates. Moreover, these soaring crime rates came right after a
period when crime rates were lower than they had been in decades.
On the international scene, trying to assuage aggressors feelings and look at the world from their point of view has
had an even more catastrophic track record. A typical sample of this kind of thinking can be found in a speech to the
British Parliament by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938: It has always seemed to me that in dealing with
foreign countries we do not give ourselves a chance of success unless we try to understand their mentality, which is
not always the same as our own, and it really is astonishing to contemplate how the identically same facts are
regarded from two different angles.
Like our former ambassador from the Carter era, Chamberlain sought to remove the causes of strife or war. He
wanted a general settlement of the grievances of the world without war. In other words, the British prime minister
approached Hitler with the attitude of someone negotiating a labor contract, where each side gives a little and
everything gets worked out in the end. What Chamberlain did not understand was that all his concessions simply led
to new demands from Hitler -- and contempt for him by Hitler.
What Winston Churchill understood at the time, and Chamberlain did not, was that Hitler was driven by what
Churchill called currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of those who swim upon them. That was also
what drove the men who drove the planes into the World Trade Center.
Pacifists of the 20th century had a lot of blood on their hands for weakening the Western democracies in the face of
rising belligerence and military might in aggressor nations like Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. In Britain during
the 1930s, Labor Party members of Parliament voted repeatedly against military spending, while Hitler built up the
most powerful military machine in Europe. Students at leading British universities signed pledges to refuse to fight
in the event of war.
All of this encouraged the Nazis and the Japanese toward war against countries that they knew had greater military
potential than their own. Military potential only counts when there is the will to develop it and use it, and the
fortitude to continue with a bloody war when it comes. This is what they did not believe the West had. And it was
Western pacifists who led them to that belief.
Then as now, pacifism was a statement about ones ideals that paid little attention to actual consequences. At a
Labor Party rally where Britain was being urged to disarm [!!!]as an example to others, economist Roy Harrod
asked one of the pacifists: You think our example will cause Hitler and Mussolini to disarm? The reply was: Oh,
Roy, have you lost all your idealism? In other words, the issue was about making a statement --that is, posturing
on the edge of a volcano, with World War II threatening to erupt at any time. When disarmament advocate George
Bemard Shaw was asked what Britons should do if the Nazis crossed the channel into Britain, the playwright
replied, Welcome them as tourists.
What a shame our schools and college neglect history, which could save us from continuing to repeat the idiocies of
the past, which are even more dangerous now in a nuclear age.
Nonviolence risks appeasement which results in more conflict

Rummel, 1981 (R.J., professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, The Just Peace,
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkil1s/TJP.CHAP 10.HTM)
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Violent conquest is usually wrong (the Just Package). Forcibly imposing one's values and goals on another, aside
from its general immorality, can create smoldering resentment, grievance, and hostility that later may burst into
greater conflict and violence. Nonetheless, in some exceptional conflict situations, the only resolution possible or
desirable may be through conquest: a test of strength and the unambiguous violent defeat of the other side--as of
Hitler's Germany. To believe that conflict should always be resolved through negotiation, mediation, and
compromise invites an aggressor to assume that what is his is his, but what is yours is negotiable. Resisting
aggression forces a test of interests, capabilities, and will--if the aggressor so wants it. And this may be a faster,
ultimately less conflictful, less violent way of resolving conflict than conciliation or appeasement.
In resisting aggression, gauge different power responses. Do not automatically respond to aggression in kind. The
most effective response is one which shifts power to bases which can be employed more effectively, while lessening
the risk of violent escalation. And respond proportionally. To meet aggression in equal measure is legitimate, while
overreaction risks escalation to a more extended and intense conflict, and underreaction appears weak and risks
defeat and repeated aggression.
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You cant imagine the world as peaceful this self deception begets more violence
Laren, October 4, 2001 (Carter, http:!/capmag.comlarticle.asp?ID= 1128)
Pacifists would argue that they are idealists, as if being an idealist meant being excused from having to defend those
ideals. Consider an individual engaged in the following line of reasoning: "It would be ideal if all people knew how
to perform open- heart surgery, so I am going to behave as if everyone is a heart surgeon. I am an idealist." Although
this may be idealism, it is also idiocy (and self-destructive).
Pacifists think that by pretending that violence doesn't exist, eventually it won't. This is not just silly; it is a vicious,
deadly lie. Aggression cannot be defeated by rewarding it. Organizers of "Don't turn tradgedy [sic] into a war"
rallies across the country would have Americans believe that the proper response to the murder of thousands of
innocent lives is a candlelight vigil and impromptu poetry readings. This is mass suicide. It is an invitation to the
Hitlers, the Stalins, the Attilas, and the Bin Ladens of the world to slaughter the American people and to gut their
corpses.
Implicit in the pacifist's drivel is the implication: "may the worst man win." Only two types of people can accept a
philosophy like this: a fiend or a fool. A fiend hates everyone, including himself, and so doesn't care if the "worst
man" wins. A fool believes that if he smiles sheepishly at Adolf Hitler, Hitler will suddenly change his mind and
decide to take-up knitting. They are both wrong, and they are both evil, [because in both cases such a policy can
only lead to the destruction of the good.
To promote this evil in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks, pacifists have added a few extra deceptions to their
arsenal. One of these is the equation of war and racism. "War and Racism are Not the Answer," reads an anti-war
poster at a San Francisco university. This statement blatantly implies that those who support war against terroristharboring nations are racist. It relies on the insecurity of the reader by convincing him to oppose war for fear of
being (unjustly) labeled "racist." A war against the Afghan, Iranian, and other terrorist-supporting governments does
not constitute racism. It constitutes self-defense. Racism is clearly wrong, but pacifism doesn't hold a monopoly on
that idea.
Pacifism in the face of violence appeases evil

Root, Staff Writer, 2001 (Damon, http://www.objectivistcenter.orgjarticles/droot_against-pacifism.asp, Acc: 7-14)
In 1941, with Hitlers war machine furiously hacking Western civilization to bits, George Orwell famously observed
that objectively, the pacifist is pro-Nazi.
Today, as Islamic fascists like Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban struggle to bring the world under another
yoke of vicious, anti-Semitic totalitarianism, our own anti-war activists inform anyone who will listen that an eye
for an eye makes the world go blind.
Since these folks would apparently rather see Islamic fascism run free than have America vigorously engage her
enemies, lets consider just what sort of world the modem pacifist is objectively in favor of.
Afghanistan, under the Taliban, is literally a hell on earth. Women and girls are deprived of every imaginable civil,
social, political, and economic liberty. Their humanity itself is under brutal attack, every minute of every day.
According to Human Rights Watch, Taliban officials beat women on the streets for dress code violations and for venturing outside the home
without the company of a close male relative. Amnesty International reports that women who wear nail varnish could have their fingers chopped
off
Forbidden to speak with or visit any male who is not a close relative (including doctors and dentists), women and girls regularly go without basic
medical attention. In addition, the Taliban have banned music, films, television, playing cards, and other forms of entertainment. Musical
instruments and books have been seized and burned. Civil liberties like freedom of speech and religion are repressed by force. For example, the
punishment for converting to Christianity or Judaism, professing these religions, or distributing their literature, is death.
Amnesty Intemational describes how two men convicted of sodomy were placed under a wall of dried mud which was bulldozed upon them. In
Kabul, an unmarried man convicted of premarital sex received 100 lashes with a leather strap. Had he been married, the punishment would have
been death by stoning, the report states.
With each passing day, similar accounts of misogyny and oppression come pouring in. Kim Candy, President of the National Organization for
Women, observes that when such extremism is allowed to flourish anywhere in the world, none of us is safe.
Confront the moral relativists who infest our college campuses and progressive institutions with these unspeakable events, however, and they
respond with juvenile slogans like one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter. In New York City, popular graffiti artist and left-wing
dissident De La Vega has a statement hanging in his gallery that reads Osama, whether right or wrong, is a fighter for freedom.
Following the logic of this idiocy, we should elevate Hitlers holocaust and South Africas apartheid into noble
ideals simply because some illiterate thugs were willing to shed blood on their behalf. Thankfully, we do nothing of
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the sort.
Just what sort of freedom do people like De La Vega think bin Laden and the Taliban are fighting for? Freedom to
throw acid in the faces of unveiled women? Freedom to torture and murder gays, Jews, and atheists? Anyone
suggesting a similarity between the values of Martin Luther King and Mullah Omar ought to put down the placard,
quit the protest, and hide their head in shame. The Islamic fascists have brought nightmare to life in their own lands,
while their ideology calls for its export. To profess pacifism in the face of such horror is to appease evil itself.
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Even non-violent movements inevitably become totalitarian and violentthe leaders
cannot control the masses.
Steger 00 (Manfred B., Professor in the Department of Politics and Government at Illinois State University,
Gandhis Dilemma: Nonviolent Principles and Nationalist Power, 2000)
Urging all Indians to crown the swadeshi campaign by publicly burning their foreign-made clothes, Gandhi spoke in
glowing terms of the "inspiring sight" of large piles of garments going up in smoke: "And as the flames leapt up and
enveloped the whole pyramid [of clothes], there was a shout of joy resounding through the air. It was as if our
shackles had been broken asunder. A glow of freedom passed through the vast concourse. It was a noble act nobly
performed."62 Yet, the flames of swadeshi kindled by thousands of ordinary Indian also symbolized, like no other
satyagraha action, the fundamental tension at the core of Gandhi's nonviolent nationalism. For the Ma-hatma, the
burning clothes manufactured in England conveyed India's economic, political, and spiritual emancipation
from the threads of oppression. He viewed these spectacles as symbols of the nonviolent purification of a corrupted
civilization and its materialist culture, and, therefore, the purgation of a tainted Indian identity. For others
including some of Gandhi's closest associates and friends, like Charlie Andrewsthe flames of swadeshi
signified a rather violent act of self-definition that seemed to be an ominous sign of things to come: the obliteration
of the Other by nationalist passions set ablaze.
Indeed, the first indication that Gandhi was incapable of controlling the nationalist passions of the masses set free
during the noncooperation campaign came as early as April 1921, when a sub-inspector of police and four
constables were killed in an act of mob violence provoked by the trial of Khilafat workers in the city of Malegaon.
Gandhi chided the perpetrators for having "put back the hands of the clock of progress," and reminded them that,
"Non-violence is the rock on which the whole structure of non-co-operation is built."63 Yet another incident took
place in Bombay on November 17, 1921, the day the Prince of Wales arrived there for an official visit. Violent
attacks were launched by Hindu and Muslim noncoop-erators upon Parsi and Christian Indians who had voluntarily
taken part in the Prince's welcome. The violence escalated as many non-cooperators looted shops and burned
clothes. Soon these actions expanded to the torching of entire buildings and the beating of government officials,
ultimately leading to the deaths of several policemen and demonstrators. When, after three days of violence, the
passions had finally cooled down, fifty-eight Bombay citizens had been killed and nearly four hundred had been
injured.64
The masses empirically morph non-violent movements into violent ones

Gandhi accepted personal responsibility for these atrocities, declaring that he had been "more instrumental than any
other in bringing into being the spirit of [violent] revolt." Confessing that he had been incapable of maintaining
"sufficient control over the people to keep their violence under check," he vowed to observe henceforth every
Monday a twenty-four-hour penitential fast until swaraj was attained. Reflecting on the events in Bombay, he
recognized the magnitude of his dilemma: "If I can have nothing to do with the organized violence of the
Government, I can have less to do with the unorganized violence of the people. I would prefer to be crushed
between the two."65 Indeed, it began to dawn on him that, instead of embracing his idea of swaraj as a process of
moral regeneration involving both self and nation, the masses seemed to be much more excited about the prospect of
expelling the British from Indian soil by any means necessary. Although Gandhi had always insisted on maintaining
the nonviolent character of the noncooperation campaign, his own instrumentalist tendencies, together with his
apocalyptic language, had sowed some of the very seeds that bloomed into the masses' limited and woefully
inadequate interpretation of the movement's primary objective.66 As Nehru put it years later, "Gand-hiji was
delightfully vague on the subject [of swaraj], and he did not encourage clear thinking about it either."67
Anti-political movements inevitably give way to elitist and authoritarian violence and
intolerance
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While justifiably exposing the instrumentalism of power politics, such moralizing forms of politics also tend to aid
the formation of an undemocratic, elitist political culture that serves as the fertile soil for much less tolerant social
forces. The authoritarian tendencies of antipolitical politics become especially transparent in the intolerant idiom of
radical cultural nationalists who inscribe notions of patriotic duty and purity into the construction of the ideal national citizen and the ideal
leader. Even Gandhi flirted with such authoritarian notions when he imagined the creation of a nonviolent army of disciplined satyagrahis who
would acquire political legitimacy through virtuous acts of "terrible self-discipline, self-denial and penance." Exercising their authority "as lightly
as a flower," they would help India fulfill its true destiny as the world's first nonviolent nation without engaging in conventional power' politics
and without recreating the morally corrupt institutions of modern politics. Gandhi's dream of merging moral charisma and political
power explicitly drew on the Platonic notion of a dictatorship of the virtuous few who were best equipped to
establish a just political order. Such rare "prophets or supermen would realize the ideal of ahimsa in its
fullness, and ultimately redeem the whole of society. However, as the violent history of Indian nationalism has
shown, this highly idealized construction of a politics of purity spearheaded by leaders of superior moral fiber has
also proven itself incapable of producing exclusivist sentiments and heinous acts of communal violence.
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AT: Non-violence Violence Key to Peace

True peace necessitates some unavoidable violence violence is key to dignity and other
virtues
Rummel, 1981 (R.J., professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, The Just Peace,
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkil1s/TJP.CHAP 10.HTM)
Such are major subprinciples of peacemaking. Conflict engages what the parties want and can and will do in a
situation in which relevant status quo expectations are disrupted. Situational perceptions, expectations, interests,
capabilities, and will are the elements of the conflict--and of peacemaking. Material things--land, people, wealth,
ports, borders--are merely the tools or objects of conflict. And material conditions, such as the topography of a
country or a mountainous border between states, only frame and physically limit conflict. The essence of conflict is
an opposition of minds. The arena of conflict is the mental field. The principles and rules for its resolution are
psychological.
Now, peacemaking is not necessarily the best and most immediate response to conflict. Doubtlessly, some conflicts
are unnecessary, some needlessly intense and long-lasting. But some also are a real and unavoidable clash, the only
means through which one, as a partisan, can protect or further vital interests and achieve a more satisfactory and
harmonious just peace. For example, war against Hitlers Germany from 1939 to 1945 cost millions lives, but it
prevented the greater misery, the terror, the executions, the cold-blooded murders which probably would have
occurred had Hitler consolidated his control of Europe and subjugated the Soviet Union.
We always can end a conflict when we want by surrender. But some ideas are more important than peace:
Dignity. Freedom. Security. That is, peace with justice--a just peace.
There is another relevant qualification. The term "peacemaking" is well established, and I used it accordingly.
Unfortunately, the verb "make" can imply that peace is designed and constructed, as a house is planned and erected
brick by brick or a road engineered and built. This implication is especially seductive in this age when society is
seen as manmade (rather than having evolved),9 and many believe that communities should be centrally planned and
managed.
But peace is not constructed like a bridge. Peace emerges from the balancing of individual mental fields. What the
leaders of a group or nation honestly believe, actually want, truly are willing to get, are really capable of achieving
are unknown to others--and perhaps only partially to themselves. Nonetheless only they can best utilize the
information available to them to justly satisfy their interests. For a third party to try to construct and enforce an
abstract peace imposed on others is foolhardy. Such a peace would be uncertain, forestall the necessary trial-anderror balancing of the parties themselves, and perhaps even create greater conflict later. The best peace is an
outcome of reciprocal adjustments among those involved. At most, peacemaking should ease the process.
A final qualification. Pacifists believe that violence and war cannot occur if people laid down their arms and refused
to fight. But this ignores unilateral violence. Under threat, a state or government may try to avoid violence by
submission. The result may be enslavement, systematic execution, and elimination of leaders and "undesirables."
The resulting genocide and mass murder may ultimately end in more deaths than would have occurred had people
fought to defend themselves.
I agree that in some situations nonviolence may be an effective strategy for waging conflict,10 as in the successful
Black civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s in America; or the successful nonviolent, civil disobedience
movement for Indian independence from Britain begun by Mahatma Gandhi in 1922. In some situations refusal to
use violence may avoid unnecessary escalation and ease peacekeeping. However, there are also conflicts, especially
involving actual or potential tyrants, despots, and other such oppressors, in which nonviolence cannot buy freedom
from violence by others or a just resolution of a dispute. Then a down payment on such a peace requires public
display of one's capability and a resolve to meet violent aggression in kind.
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AT: Non-violence Alternative Unnecessary (Violence not a threat)

The vast majority of violence poses no threat of nuclear annihilation; therefore, its
potential is not a reason to default to non-violence.
Marty, 1971 (William R., Professor of Political Science. Mepbis State University, The Journal Politics, Vol. 33, No.
I, Feb, p. 19-20, jstor)
Defenders of nonviolence sometimes level a final crushing charge against violencethat it is, in an age of nuclear
weapons, a sure path to annihilation. Dr. King, for example, argued that our choice is no longer nonviolence or
violence, rather it is nonviolence or nonexistence.17 The only new element in this argument for nonviolence is the
threat of nuclear annihilation. That threat, presumably, makes total commitment to nonviolence both necessary and
possible. In fact, however, certain types of violence pose no threat of nuclear warfare, hence the horrors of nuclear
warfare provide no reason or incentive to give up these types of violence; other types of violence pose a real threat
of nuclear warfare, but the dangers involved in abandoning conventional weapons will seem greater and more
immediate, hence conventional violence is unlikely to be abandoned; and, finally, realistic plans for community
order and nuclear disarmament, the most likely path to survival, depend, at least potentially, upon violent
enforcement. For these reasons, the call to total commitment to nonviolence in order to avoid total nuclear
annihilation is neither rationally necessary nor psychologically likely to be adopted. Each of the listed objectives
deserves elaboration.
First, certain types of violence pose no threat of nuclear annihilation. The man or woman who keeps a weapon in the
home to deal with intruders (burglars, sex criminals, rioters) may be unwise for several reasons, but not because his
or her weapon poses a threat of nuclear warfare. Whether this person uses a weapon against an intruder, or resists
nonviolently, or submits, will have no effect on whether nuclear war is waged between nations, though it will have
considerable effect on his or her personal safety. To ask this person to disarm in order to avoid nuclear warfare is as
ridiculous as it would be to ask city officials having no say whatever in the decision to wage nuclear warfare to
disarm their police in order to avoid nuclear annihilation. Even on a national and international level there are types
of violence that pose little threat of nuclear warfare. In Chad and Sudan, for example, there has been guerrilla and
civil warfare for years, but the threat of nuclear warfare resulting from these conflicts is small or nonexistent
because nuclear weapons don't exist in those nations and because nations with nuclear weapons have no incentive to
intervene that is worth a nuclear confrontation. In these cases the threat of nuclear warfare is inadequate as an
incentive to adopt nonviolence because no apparent threat of nuclear warfare exists. In sum, from the individual to
the international level, there are types of violence that pose no real threat of nuclear warfare, and certainly are not
perceived by those employing them as threatening nuclear warfare; hence they have no incentive to adopt
nonviolence as an alternative to nuclear warfare.
In other cases, such as the continuing crisis in the Middle East, the possibility of nuclear warfare is real, but the
threat is unlikely to cause renunciation of violence because other dangers seem greater and more immediate. To
Israel the dangers of adopting nonviolence in the face of Arab hatred and calls for national extinction seem greater
than the dangers of nuclear warfare resulting from armed defense. The Israelis are unlikely to make a total
commitment to nonviolence in all circumstances despite a real threat of nuclear confrontation. The same situation
occurs in Vietnam. There was at least a remote chance of nuclear confrontation in Vietnam at one time, but that did
not provide adequate incentive to any of the involved parties, from the Viet Cong to the United States and Russia, to
renounce all types of violence, though it did produce some restraints on United States and Russian intervention.
Again, when the danger of death is already great by conventional means, and when abandonment of conventional
weapons appears as suicidal, then the threat of nuclear warfare will he inadequate as an incentive to renounce all
types of violence. An appeal to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, or to the Saigon government, or to both, to
abandon violence in order to avoid the possibility of nuclear war would be fruitless.
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AT: Non-violence Alternative Impossible (nonviolence relies on

violence)
Even nonviolence relies on the threat of violence to be successful
http://www.dogchurch.org/scriptorium/nuke0.html)
Even when non-violence does succeed, it does so by rallying the majority of the population
toward whom it is directed to stop the direct perpetrators of injustice by force the force of law
in the form of the police, the prisons, and the polls force that necessarily includes the threat of
violence. In other words, non-violent resistance harnesses (or co-opts), rather than eliminates
violence.
In fact, non-violence is sometimes even helped by the threat of violence to achieve its objectives.
The non-violence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was complemented by the willingness to use
"any means necessary" of Malcolm X. These two men were sending white America the same
message concerning justice and racial equality. If whites failed to respond to the message stated
gently, whites would be given the opportunity to respond to it stated violently. It took both
statements to achieve the progress made thus far.
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AT: Non-violence Love = Impossible

Not all violence is bad- it is impossible to approach everyone with an ethic of love
Laren, October 4, 2001 (Carter, http://capmag.comlarticle.asp?ID= 1128)
Another pacifist deception is the love-hate alternative. Pacifists often assume that a person must either "love"
everyone or "hate" everyone. In a fit of confused self- righteousness, they then proceed to denounce "hate" and
appoint themselves as champions of "love." "Love is stronger than hate," reads a university-sponsored banner
condemning US retaliation. What pacifists do not chose to (or cannot) understand is that one cannot truly love
everything and everyone.
Love is based on a value-structure: one loves someone in relation to how one's own values are reflected in that
person. A man who tried to love everyone indiscriminately would place himself in the following predicament: he
must feel emotions towards Joseph Stalin that are similar to the emotions he feels for his spouse. If he ever reaches
such a deranged state, it is certain that whatever emotion he is feeling, it is most definitely not love. It is acceptable
and proper to hate Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and the terrorists who leveled the World Trade Center; those people
were evil. They do not deserve the same emotion due a spouse or a friend. Stay away from a person that claims to
"love" everyone; they necessarily stand for nothing and value nothing. Such people are incapable of loving anyone
at all.
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AT: Non-violence Perm Solvency

Even Gandhi admitted that there are good aspects of warriors that must be integrated into
a non-violent movement.
While Gandhi had not yet arrived at a polished formulation of his philosophy of nonviolence, he had nonetheless
expressed the moral core of his satyagraha method as early as 1896: "Our method in South Africa is to conquer this
hatred by love. At any rate, that is our goal. We would often fall short of that ideal, but we can adduce innumerable
instances to show that we have acted in that spirit. We do not attempt to have individuals punished but, as a rule,
patiently suffer wrongs at their hands."7 Hence, he admitted that his decision to participate in the Boer War was
precipitated by a painful "inner struggle"another indication that he was fully aware of the existing tension
between his willingness to support the British war effort and his moral principles. Still, at the time, he believed that
he had no right to enforce his individual convictions during a national crisis:
As a Hindu, I do not believe in war, but if anything can even partially reconcile me to it, it was the rich experience
we gained at the front. It was certainly not the thirst for blood that took thousands of men to the battlefield. If 1 may
use a most holy name without doing any violence to our feelings, like Arjun[a], they went to the battlefield, because
it was their duty. And how many proud, rude, savage spirits has it not broken into gentle creatures of God?8
Thus, at the dawning of the new century, Gandhi offered two distinct rationales for his decision to support war. On a
philosophical level, he argued that considerations of civic duty and patriotic loyalty outweighed moral concerns
about the violence employed in warfare. If one demanded the full rights of British citizenship, Gandhi reasoned, one
had to be prepared to accept the corresponding obligation to defend the nation in a time of need. Even though he
acknowledged that justice seemed to be on the side of the Boers, he insisted that British subjects ought not disavow
their patriotic duty and cut the ties of allegiance that bound them to the empire. In addition, Gandhi highlighted
war's potential for bringing out positive qualities in humans, particularly the virtues of comradeship, heroism,
courage, and "manhood." He did so not only to put to rest false rumors about Indian cowardice, but also to stress the
importance of developing these virtues as the building blocks of a moral character. As Peter Brock notes, Gandhi's
mature expression of satyagraha would ultimately champion a technique that sought to preserve the "good" virtues
of the warriorparticularly courage and disciplinewhile eliminating the violent aspects of warfare.
Non-violence is far from inconsistent with national serviceGandhi encouraged it

And yet, at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Gandhi again rushed to the defense of the empire, making the same old arguments in support of the British cause. Having just left South Africa
after eight years of leading highly publicized satyagraha campaigns on behalf of his Indian constituencies, he decided to stop over in London on his way back home to India in order to meet with
, Gandhi emphasized once

again the importance of remaining loyal to the empire, telling his mostly Indian audience that their support for the
British war effort constituted "a sacred matter of duty." In a letter of support that bore the signatures of over fifty prominent Indians residing in London,
Gandhi assured the Undersecretary of State for India that, " We, the undersigned have, after mature deliberation, decided for the sake of the Motherland and the Empire to place our
services unconditionally, during this crisis, at the disposal of the authorities. We advisedly use the word
'unconditionally' as we believe that, in a moment like this, no service that can be assigned to us can be considered to
be beneath our dignity or inconsistent with our self-respect "17
his political guru Gokhale, who was then touring Europe. In his London reception speech given a few days after the British declaration of war
Even Gandhi often combined political goals with ethical concerns

In order to achieve his political objective, he was even willing to personally spearhead an
ambitious recruiting campaign to enlist Indian volunteers for the British armed forces. His engagement, therefore, no
longer represented a case of supporting noncombatant war service designed to save lives on the front. Instead, his new campaign explicitly sought to
Gandhi's offer was not an exaggeration.
provide a new supply of Indian troops to replenish the depleted British army. Constituting a "strange phenomenon in one who preached non-violence," Gandhi's recruiting activities were once
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, the Mahatma still maintained that he had remained

committed to his philosophy of nonviolence. Arguing that he was not personally killing or injuring anyone"friend
or foe"he pointed to the possibility of Indian soldiers practicing on the European front a "real ahimsa" that consisted of receiving rather than giving blows: "If
again greeted by a vociferous chorus of pacifist dissenters.2' Much to their surprise, however
our soldiers go and stand before them [Germans] weaponless and will not use explosives and say, 'We will die of your blows', then, I am sure our Government will win the war at once."28 At the
same time, he was well aware of the fact that such action was almost tantamount to suicide, leading either to the death of the Indian recruits serving in the British army at the hands of the
. Once again dressing up political motives in ethical garments, Gandhi had

set himself the task of squaring the circle. As Peter Brock asks, "How was he ever to succeed in combining recruitment of
his fellow countrymen for the most destructive war the world had so far seen with continued devotion to the doctrine
of nonviolence?"29
Germans or to their certain British court martial for insubordination
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AT:Kappeler Permutation Solvency

Theres no forced choice, we can endorse policy advocacy and fiat while acknowledging
that violence is an issue of agency.
Kappeler 95 (Susanne, Associate Professor at Al-Akhawayn University, The Will to Violence: The politics of
personal behavior, Pg.8)
Moreover, personal behavior is no alternative to political action; there is no question of either/or. My concern, on
the contrary, is the connection between these recognized forms of violence and the forms of everyday behavior
which we consider normal but which betray our own will to violence- the connection, in other words, between our
own actions and those acts of violence which are normally the focus of our political critiques. Precisely because
there is no choice between dedicating oneself either to political issues or to personal behavior, the question of the
politics of personal behavior has (also) to be moved into the centre of our politics and our critique.
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AT: Cuomo Negative Peace Key to Positive Peace

Preventing nuclear war is the absolute prerequisite to positive peace
Folk, Professor of Religious and Peace Studies at Bethany College, 1978 [Jerry, Peace Educations Peace
Studies : Towards an Integrated Approach, Peace & Change, volume V, number 1, Spring, p. 58]
Those proponents of the positive peace approach who reject out of hand the work of researchers and educators coming to the field
from the perspective of negative peace too easily forget that the prevention of a nuclear confrontation of global
dimensions is the prerequisite for all other peace research, education, and action. Unless such a confrontation can be
avoided there will be no world left in which to build positive peace. Moreover, the blanket condemnation of all such
negative peace oriented research, education or action as a reactionary attempt to support and reinforce the status quo is doctrinaire.
Conflict theory and resolution, disarmament studies, studies of the international system and of international organizations, and
integration studies are in themselves neutral. They do not intrinsically support either the status quo or revolutionary
efforts to change or overthrow it. Rather they offer a body of knowledge which can be used for either purpose or for some
purpose in between. It is much more logical for those who understand peace as positive peace to integrate this
knowledge into their own framework and to utilize it in achieving their own purposes. A balanced peace studies
program should therefore offer the student exposure to the questions and concerns which occupy those who view the field essentially from the point of
view of negative peace.
Negative peace is a precondition for positive peace. Violence is sometimes necessary to

achieve these goals
Sandole, Professor of Conflict Resolution and International Relations at George Mason University, 1996
[Dennis J. D., Conflict Resolution, usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/1296/ijpe/pj19sand.htm, USIA Electronic
Journals, Vol. 1, No. 19, Dec.]
Negative peace, however, does not go far enough; it is one part -- albeit, often an essential part -- of a larger process that is rarely attempted -- and if
attempted, rarely achieved -- by traditional diplomacy. The remaining part consists of " positive peace": the elimination of the underlying structural causes and
conditions that have given rise to the violent conflict which negative peace processes seek to contain. To put it simply, negative peace deals with
symptoms of underlying problems -- "putting out fires" -- while positive peace deals with the underlying,
"combustible" problems themselves.
Why doesn't traditional diplomacy deal with positive peace? One reason is that diplomats are trained in dispute settlement -- reaching agreements about how to
establish negative peace -- without, good intentions to the contrary, necessarily addressing the underlying problems that gave rise to the disputes that are being settled.
Hence, negotiations to end wars or to control or reduce armaments, resulting in treaties or other agreements, are efforts to halt or manage actual or threatened violence
resulting from conflicts without necessarily dealing with their underlying, deep-rooted causes and conditions.
[CONTINUES]
The stage has been set for this: NATO, under U.S. leadership, established the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1991 and the Partnership for
Peace in 1994, to reach out to, and collaborate with, its former Warsaw Pact adversaries. These developments are a powerful sign that the Cold
War is over and therefore, by implication, that nations are undergoing a shift from a narrow world view based on national security to a
comprehensive one based on common security.
Hence, the United States and its security partners are conceptually able to move beyond negative into positive peace. What this will entail in
Bosnia is for the United States and its NATO and other partners to remain there long enough to ensure that negative peace holds. At the same
time, they should work with international governmental and nongovernmental (including conflict resolution) organizations, and with the
conflicting parties, to pursue, achieve, and maintain positive peace.
With secure negative peace as a point of departure, positive peace in Bosnia begins with the reconstruction
of the country.
But lest the United States and its partners repeat the failure of the European Union to achieve positive peace in the Bosnian city of Mostar through substantial
investments in rebuilding Mostar's infrastructure, this reconstruction must reflect a comprehensive peacebuilding strategy -- reconciliative as well as physical -- over a
period of time.
Some frameworks that could be useful in guiding U.S.-led activities in this regard are:
the "contingency model" of Ron Fisher and Loraleigh Keashly, which matches an intervention with the intensity of a given conflict, and then follows up
with other interventions designed to move the parties toward positive peace;
the "multi-track framework" of IMTD's Ambassador John McDonald and Louise Diamond, which combines the resources of nongovernmental conflict
resolution practitioners with those of the business and religious communities, media, funders, and others as well as governmental actors, in the pursuit of
positive peace; and
my own design for a "new European peace and security system" which combines elements of these and other frameworks within the context of the
OSCE.
by expanding their options to include cooperative processes geared to positive

peace as well as competitive processes associated with negative peace, the United States and its partners will
enhance their prospects for success in dealing with the deep-rooted intrastate ethnic and other conflicts that seem to
be the dominant form of warfare in the post-Cold War world.
There is a working hypothesis implicit in all this:
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Intervening in such conflicts may mean "taking casualties," particularly in cases where one party is attempting to
impose a genocidal "final solution" on another, as in Rwanda or Bosnia . In such situations, the use of an appropriate
amount of force to achieve negative peace may be a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of positive peace. We
should not, in such cases, allow the U.S. experience in Somalia to prevent us from acting. Genocide in Rwanda or Bosnia does, sooner or later,
affect the interests of the United States and others. The use of such extreme violence to "resolve" conflicts anywhere in the world is not only morally reprehensible,
but constitutes a model for others to emulate, perhaps increasing the costs of dealing with it later on.
The implicit emphasis here on early warning and early action is part of the gist of conflict resolution: being
proactive instead of reactive. A proactive approach to problem solving worldwide is in the U.S. national interest. This means, among other
things, pursuing a bipartisan U.S. foreign policy to avoid the necessity of having to issue unrealistic timelines in any future deployment of forces,
plus paying the massive U.S. debt to the United Nations so that the United States can more credibly and effectively lead in the debate over U.N.
reform as well as in efforts to craft effective international responses to problems worldwide.
Effective international responses imply working synergistically with other regional international organizations -- including the Organization of
African Unity, the Organization of American States, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations -- to facilitate dealing with local problems, as
well as working with the OSCE, NATO, the European Union (EU) and NGOs engaged in conflict resolution, in dealing with Bosnia and other
conflicts in Europe.
The United States -- where conflict resolution is most advanced as an applied field -- cannot afford not to lead on this one: the "political will" of
others and our common security depend on it.
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AT: Cuomo Permutation Solvency

Absolutist rejections are ultimately unproductivewe must embrace the differences in
philosophy in order to achieve common goals
Folk, Professor of Religious and Peace Studies at Bethany College, 1978 [Jerry, Peace Educations Peace
Studies : Towards an Integrated Approach, Peace & Change, volume V, number 1, Spring, p. 59]
The conflicting positions held by various researchers, educators, and activists in the peace studies field can be seen as
complementary rather than contradictory. Tensions, disagreements, and arguments of considerable intensity are unavoidable
and indeed desirable in this as in other fields of endeavor. Such dialectical tensions ensure a depth and breadth of perception
which one position alone could not produce. Truth is often paradoxical, and therefore a dialectical approach to it is
most appropriate. Antagonisms insure that the dialectic is kept alive. They introduce a third dimension into one's
understanding of truth and preserve it from petrification and sterility. Therefore, premature closures, mutual
excommunications, and fixations on a particular but incomplete position or approach should be avoided.
some fringe groups or persons in the field who, by the ultimate and legalistic commitment to a
ideology and the absolute rejection of any other ideas or approaches, call their legitimacy as peace
researchers, educators or activists into question. An absolutistic commitment to the status quo would be one example. Absolutistic
and rigid commitments to the capitalist, Marxist or liberal democratic systems might be another. Rigid and fanatic loyalty to a
particular revolutionary or reformist tradition or to the reformist or revolutionary tradition itself would be a third. None of the approaches or
positions with regard to peace studies which this paper discusses, however, are identical with any of these ideological orientations. Moreover, it is time particularly
in the peace studies field, that the ultimate value commitments of individuals and groups be given more weight than their politics and
philosophical preferences. The preference of one individual or group for Marxist socialism might be based on precisely the
same value commitments which have led another to prefer liberal democracy.
In summary, a well-balanced peace studies program ought to involve researchers, educator and activists. At all three levels, it ought to include
some participants who approach the field primarily from the standpoint of negative peace and others who approach it using
primarily the positive peace paradigm. Among the latter group some should be highly sympathetic to the radical revolutionary tradition and others more
in sympathy with the reformist approach of liberal democracy. Moreover, through the structure and interactions of the program not only the tension
and conflicts but also the positive interrelationships between these various groups ought to become visible. A program structured
On the other hand, there may indeed be
particular
approach or
according to such principles would admittedly be difficult to construct and even more difficult to administer. It would, however, be more that merely comprehensive.
It would be a microcosm of the world and therefore a laboratory in which to experiment with the actual building of
creative peace among groups and individuals of the most divergent persuasions.
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AT: Terror Talk Alternative Terrorism

Referring to terrorists as anything else legitimizes their actions
St. Petersburg Times, 2003 (Philip Gailey, Word choice matters in Mid East Reporting, August 31, Lexis)
The madness in the Mideast is all of those things and more, and the words you find in Webster's don't begin to
describe just how horrible the terrorism and the military retaliation that follows each suicide bomber's success is in
the daily lives of the Israelis and the Palestinians. When a Palestinian suicide bomber recently boarded a bus in
Jerusalem and blew 20 men, women and children to bits, most of the wire service reports I saw, including one from
the Associated Press, said the carnage was the work of Palestinian "militants."
By that standard, I suppose Osama bin Laden is a militant, as was Mohammed Atta, who led the 9/11 terrorist
attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in New York and Washington. And President Bush's war on terrorism is
really a war on militancy.
For me, it's not a hard call. Acts of terror are committed by terrorists, and the horrific bus attack on Israeli civilians,
like the dozens of suicide bombings that preceded it, was an act of cold, indiscriminate terror. So why do so many
news organizations insist on describing terrorists as militants? I don't think militants set out to deliberately kill
children.
Dr. Bruce Epstein wonders if the St. Petersburg Times is part of the problem, intentionally or not. In a recent letter,
this Pinellas County physician complained that newspapers appear to want to "legitimatize" Palestinian terrorists by
describing them as militants. I happen to believe the Palestinian cause - an independent and free Palestinian state - is
legitimate and that the Palestinian people do have legitimate grievances over the Israeli occupation. That said, I
believe Epstein raises a fair question about news coverage of Mideast violence. He objected in particular to a recent
headline in the Times on a story about the assassination of a senior leader of the Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group "Militant's death sparks vengeance threats." He later noticed another headline - "Dealer sympathized with terrorists."
That headline was on a story about the arrest of a man in the New York area who was trying to sell surface-to-air
missiles to terrorists (they turned out to be undercover agents) to bring down U.S. commercial airliners.
Epstein writes: "In my mind, this double standard is both appalling and disturbing. If Americans are killed in a terror
attack, the killers are called terrorists. If Jewish Israelis are killed in a terror attack, the killers are called
militants. . . . By using the word "militant' to describe a terrorist, the Times legitimizes the terrorist. When the Times
substitutes the word "militant' for terrorist, the newspaper conveys to its readers that these Palestinian (terrorist)
groups are legal, legitimate and even moral."
Contrary to what Epstein and other readers suggest, the Times has no such motive or policy. It needs a policy on
how to distinguish a militant from a terrorist, and newsroom editors are in the process of drafting one, as are editors
at other newspapers around the country.
The Orlando Sentinel has been getting similar complaints from readers, and earlier this year its style committee
reviewed the use of militant and terrorist and came up with this standard: "Use caution when using these terms
(militants, terrorists), which can show bias toward one side in a conflict. Generally, "bombers', "attackers', or
"suicide bombers' are preferred terms."
Manning Pynn, the Sentinel's public editor, recently wrote that despite the style committee decision, the paper will
continue to use "militant" to describe Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, both of which are on the State Department's list
of terrorist organizations. "The term "terrorist' certainly expresses judgment: It imputes to the person or organization
being described the motive of trying to instill fear. "Militant' seems to me much more neutral," Pynn wrote.
Foolish me. I thought instilling fear is exactly what Hamas and Islamic Jihad mean to do when they send their
suicide bombers into markets, restaurants and buses to kill and terrorize Israeli civilians. I'm all for fair and balanced
reporting (I hope the Fox cable news network doesn't slap me with a lawsuit for trademark infringement), but I also
believe that words do matter. And if the word "terrorism" is to have any real meaning, then blowing up a bus
crowded with women and children must be condemned for what it is - an act of terrorism.
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AT: Terror Talk Alternative Terrorism

Refusing to call terrorists terrorists emboldens their acts of unjustifiable violence against
civilians.
HonestReporting.com, 2004 (Calling Terror by its Name, March 16,
www.honestreporting.com/articles/reports/Calling_Terror_By_Its_Name.asp)
<For over three years, in continual updates and through TerrorPetition.com, HonestReporting has led the campaign
to insist that news outlets call Palestinian terror "terror." Now, as the scourge of Islamic terrorism continues to
spread throughout the globe, it is more important than ever that Israel's struggle against Palestinian terror be
properly identified as part of the larger battle to preserve civil, democratic society against militant Islam.
Definition of terrorism:
Though a number of definitions exist, the United States Government's definition has gained broad acceptance:
Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d):
The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or
clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
The term "international terrorism" means terrorism involving the territory or the citizens of more than one country.
The term "terrorist group" means any group that practices, or has significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.
Under this definition, the US State Department and Canadian government define Hamas and Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations, and outlaw
all financial or logistical support for their activities. Even Yasser Arafat, writing in The New York Times on February 3, 2002, described
Palestinian attacks against Isaeli civilians as "terrorist."
Media use of term "terrorism":Media outlets however, especially in news reports, will oftentimes shy away from the use of the term "terrorism"
when describing deliberate attacks on civilians worldwide. This, in the effort to maintain journalistic neutrality, which some journalists believe is
jeopardized when using the pejorative term "terrorism."
HonestReporting's position is that a deliberate attack against a civilian target, anywhere in the world, is most
accurately referred to as a "terrorist attack," for two fundamental reasons:
It has become common English usage to use "terrorism" to describe these horrific events (as per the definition
above), and it therefore is the most accurate term available.
The post-9/11 political climate is characterized by a struggle between radical Islamic groups and western
democracies. The repeated Islamist targeting of innocent western civilians to further jihadist goals is understood by
the great majority of world to lie beyond the pale of legitimate political struggle. The term "terrorism" is therefore
necessary to differentiate between this wholly illegitimate method of warfare and legitimate methods, as defined by
the Fourth Geneva Convention.
When media outlets refuse to use the term "terrorism" to describe what are clearly terrorist acts, they both depart
from common usage, and in effect (if not in intent) embolden those who use the mass murder of civilians to further
their ideological goals. And since the language of news coverage has an extremely powerful effect on popular
opinion, this refusal to call terror "terror" confers a degree of legitimacy to the horrific acts, in the minds of millions
of media consumers.
Double standards in media coverage:
As HonestReporting has repeatedly documented, while media outlets often use the accurate term "terrorism" in other world contexts, when it comes to Palestinian
terrorist attacks on Israelis the term is rarely used. This double standard is particularly evident when comparing terrorist attacks in Israel and elsewhere that occurred
nearly simultaneously, or in very similar physical circumstances. A few recent examples:
In the beginning of April, 2003 an Iraqi army officer killed five American soldiers by blowing himself up in a taxi. In Netanya that week, a Palestinian ignited his
explosive belt at the entrance to a cafe, injuring 50 Israelis. The Associated Press listed the Iraqi attack among other historical "terror attacks against the U.S. military,"
but AP coverage of the Netanya blast referred to the bomber as a Palestinian "militant."
In May, 2003 the New York Times launched a new, special section of their news site called "Threats and Responses: Targeting Terror." Recent deadly terror attacks
in Chechnya, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines were included, but absolutely no reference was made to two terrorist attacks in Israel during that period.
In October, 2003 suicide bombers killed a number of American soldiers in Iraq, and 19 Israelis in a Haifa cafe. The San Jose Mercury News reported on Iraq:
"Suicide bombers unleashed a wave of terror in the Iraqi capital Monday..." But in Israel, the Mercury News reported no "terror."
Editors' positions:
On Jan. 4, 2004, the executive editor of the Miami Herald expressed his paper's commitment to call terror "terror," despite the overriding concern for evenhandedness:
It's Herald policy to use the most neutral language available in a given situation. We, too, label those who fight for a cause as militants. But unlike some of our
we see a line where a militant becomes a terrorist and we don't shy away from the latter word. When a
suicide bomber blows up a bus carrying innocent civilians, it's an act of terrorism, not militancy.
colleagues,
The Herald is the latest in a string of papers to recently address this issue head-on, however belatedly.
Here's an overview of the positions that ombudsmen and editors at various papers have expressed (Note particularly the distinction between al Qaeda and Hamas that
the Orlando Sentinel, Boston Globe and Washington Post attempt to make):
The quite similar claims by the Orlando Sentinel, Boston Globe, and Washington Post demand attention, since both attempt to justify the non-use of the term
"terrorism" in the specific context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These editors posit that since Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad are
"resisting occupation," "at war," and have "nationalistic ambitions," the term "terrorism" may not apply to their actions even brutal attacks on Israeli civilian buses
and restaurants. At the same time, the editors are willing to accept the use of the term to describe al Qaeda terrorist acts.
Their logic is faulty for a number of reasons:
Palestinian Arab terrorism against Jews in the decades before and after 1948 long preceded the 1967 war that created the disputed (or "occupied") territories.
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Hamas and Islamic Jihad have repeatedly clarified, in official documents and statements, that their goal is not the creation of an independent Palestinian state, but
rather the genocidal elimination of all Jewish presence in the region.
Palestinian terrorist groups have strong affiliations with global Islamist terrorist groups and regimes, and are not merely "regional" in scope.
Even in the context of warfare, deliberate attacks against civilian targets are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and therefore demand being described as
terrorism.
Conclusion:
The latest wave of Palestinian terrorism, including over 100 suicide bombings since September 2000, has caused the brutal murder of 664 Israeli civilian lives. Israeli
policy and action regarding the Palestinian people and leadership must be understood in the context of this unprecedented assault on a Western democracy.
As the West unites against barbaric Islamic terrorism that now also haunts continental Europe, it is essential that Israel's struggle against Palestinian terror be properly
When news outlets differentiate between

attacks in Israel and those elsewhere, they expose an editorial decision that Palestinian attacks are not part of that
larger battle between Islamist terrorists and democratic civilization, but rather, more justified acts of nationalistic
"resistance." This journalistic act is factually wrong, morally dangerous, and a far cry from "neutral reporting.">
identified as part of this larger battle (which many now consider nothing less than World War III).
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AT: Terror Talk Language Key to Win WOT

Labeling terrorist as such is key to fighting the war on terror
Ganor, 2001 (Boaz, Director of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism Defining Terrorism,
http://www.ict.org.il/articles/define.htm, May 16)
We face an essential need to reach a definition of terrorism that will enjoy wide international agreement, thus
enabling international operations against terrorist organizations. A definition of this type must rely on the same
principles already agreed upon regarding conventional wars (between states), and extrapolate from them regarding
non-conventional wars (betweean organization and a state).
The definition of terrorism will be the basis and the operational tool for expanding the international communitys
ability to combat terrorism. It will enable legislation and specific punishments against those perpetrating, involved
in, or supporting terrorism, and will allow the formulation of a codex of laws and international conventions against
terrorism, terrorist organizations, states sponsoring terrorism, and economic firms trading with them. At the same
time, the definition of terrorism will hamper the attempts of terrorist organizations to obtain public legitimacy, and
will erode support among those segments of the population willing to assist them (as opposed to guerrilla activities).
Finally, the operative use of the definition of terrorism could motivate terrorist organizations, due to moral or
utilitarian considerations, to shift from terrorist activities to alternative courses (such as guerrilla warfare) in order to
attain their aims, thus reducing the scope of international terrorism.
The struggle to define terrorism is sometimes as hard as the struggle against terrorism itself. The present view,
claiming it is unnecessary and well-nigh impossible to agree on an objective definition of terrorism, has long
established itself as the politically correct one. It is the aim of this paper, however, to demonstrate that an
objective, internationally accepted definition of terrorism is a feasible goal, and that an effective struggle against
terrorism requires such a definition. The sooner the nations of the world come to this realization, the better.
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AT: Terror Talk Freedom Fighters Worse

CALLING TERRORISTS FREEDOM FIGHTERS IS WRONGTERRORISTS ARE DIFFERENT, SINCE THEY KILL CIVILIANS.
Calling terrorists freedom fighters is wrongterrorists are different, since they kill
civilians.
Ganor, 2001 (Boaz, Director of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism Defining Terrorism,
http://www.ict.org.il/articles/define.htm, May 16)
The foreign and interior ministers of the Arab League reiterated this position at their April 1998 meeting in Cairo. In
a document entitled Arab Strategy in the Struggle against Terrorism, they emphasized that belligerent activities
aimed at liberation and self determination are not in the category of terrorism, whereas hostile activities against
regimes or families of rulers will not be considered political attacks but rather criminal assaults.[7] Here again we
notice an attempt to justify the means (terrorism) in terms of the end (national liberation). Regardless of the
nature of the operation, when we speak of liberation from the yoke of a foreign occupation this will not be
terrorism but a legitimate and justified activity. This is the source of the clich, One mans terrorist is another mans
freedom fighter, which stresses that all depends on the perspective and the worldview of the one doing the defining.
The former President of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, made the following statement in April 1981, during the
visit of the Libyan ruler, Muamar Qadhafi: Imperialists have no regard either for the will of the people or the laws
of history. Liberation struggles cause their indignation. They describe them as terrorism.[8]
Surprisingly, many in the Western world have accepted the mistaken assumption that terrorism and national
liberation are two extremes in the scale of legitimate use of violence. The struggle for national liberation would
appear to be the positive and justified end of this sequence, whereas terrorism is the negative and odious one. It is
impossible, according to this approach, for any organization to be both a terrorist group and a movement for national
liberation at the same time.
In failing to understand the difference between these two concepts, many have, in effect, been caught in a semantic
trap laid by the terrorist organizations and their allies. They have attempted to contend with the clichs of national
liberation by resorting to odd arguments, instead of stating that when a group or organization chooses terrorism as a
means, the aim of their struggle cannot be used to justify their actions (see below). Thus, for instance, Senator
Jackson was quoted in Benyamin Netanyahus book Terrorism: How the West Can Win as saying,
The idea that one persons terrorist is anothers freedom fighter cannot be sanctioned. Freedom fighters or
revolutionaries dont blow up buses containing non-combatants; terrorist murderers do. Freedom fighters dont set
out to capture and slaughter schoolchildren; terrorist murderers do . . . It is a disgrace that democracies would allow
the treasured word freedom to be associated with acts of terrorists.[9]
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AT: Images of Suffering Images good

A lack of images of suffering allows states to carry out atrocities. The presentation of
suffering is vital to bearing witness to it and preventing its repetition
Kleinman and Kleinman 1996 [Arthur, Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology and
Professor of Anthropology at Harvard, Joan, Research Association at Medical Anthropology Program at Harvard,
The appeal of experience; the dismay of images: cultural appropriations of suffering in our times,
Daedalus v125.n1 (Wntr 1996): pp1(23)]
It is necessary to balance the account of the globalization of commercial and professional images with a vastly
different and even more dangerous cultural process of appropriation: the totalitarian state's erasure of social
experiences of suffering through the suppression of images. Here the possibility of moral appeal through images of
human misery is prevented, and it is their absence that is the source of existential dismay.
Such is the case with the massive starvation in China from 1959 to 1961. This story was not reported at the time even though more than thirty million Chinese died in the aftermath of the ruinous
policies of the Great Leap Forward, the perverse effect of Mao's impossible dream of forcing immediate industrialization on peasants. Accounts of this, the world's most devastating famine, were
totally suppressed; no stories or pictures of the starving or the dead were published.
An internal report on the famine was made by an investigating team for the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It was based on a detailed survey of an extremely poor region of
Anwei Province that was particularly brutally affected. The report includes this numbing statement by Wei Wu-ji, a local peasant leader from Anwei:
Originally there were 5,000 people in our commune, now only 3,200 remain. When the Japanese invaded we did not lose this many: we at least could save ourselves by running away! This year
there's no escape. We die shut up in our own houses. Of my 6 family members, 5 are already dead, and I am left to starve, and I'll not be able to stave off death for long.(30)
Wei Wu-ji continued:
Wang Jia-feng from West Springs County reported that cases of eating human meat were discovered. Zhang Sheng-jiu said, "Only an evil man could do such a thing!" Wang Jia-feng said, "In
1960, there were 20 in our household, ten of them died last year. My son told his mother 'I'll die of hunger in a few days.'" And indeed he did.(31)
The report also includes a graphic image by Li Qin-ming, from Wudian County, Shanwang Brigade:
In 1959, we were prescheduled to deliver 58,000 jin of grain to the State, but only 35,000 jin were harvested, hence we only turned over 33,000 jin, which left 2,000 jin for the commune. We
really have nothing to eat. The peasants eat hemp leaves, anything they can possibly eat. In my last report after I wrote, "We have nothing to eat," the Party told me they wanted to remove my
name from the Party Roster. Out of a population of 280, 170 died. In our family of five, four of us have died leaving only myself. Should I say that I'm not broken hearted?(32)
Chen Zhang-yu, from Guanyu County, offered the investigators this terrible image:
Last spring the phenomenon of cannibalism appeared. Since Comrade Chao Wu-chu could not come up with any good ways of prohibiting it, he put out the order to secretly imprison those who
seemed to be at death's door to combat the rumors. He secretly imprisoned 63 people from the entire country. Thirty-three died in prison.(33)
The official report is thorough and detailed. It is classified neibu, restricted use only. To distribute it is to reveal state secrets. Presented publicly it would have been, especially if it had been
published in the 1960s, a fundamental critique of the Great Leap, and a moral and political delegitimation of the Chinese Communist Party's claim to have improved the life of poor peasants.
official silence is another form of appropriation. It prevents public witnessing. It

forges a secret history, an act of political resistance through keeping alive the memory of things denied.34 The
totalitarian state rules by collective forgetting, by denying the collective experience of suffering, and thus creates a
culture of terror.
The absent image is also a form of political appropriation; public silence is perhaps more terrifying than being
overwhelmed by public images of atrocity. Taken together the two modes of appropriation delimit the extremes in
this cultural process.(35)
Even today the authorities regard it as dangerous. The
Representations of suffering are vital to identifying human needs and necessary social
action
Kleinman and Kleinman 1996 [Arthur, Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology and
Professor of Anthropology at Harvard, Joan, Research Association at Medical Anthropology Program at Harvard,
The appeal of experience; the dismay of images: cultural appropriations of suffering in our times,
Daedalus v125.n1 (Wntr 1996): pp1(23)]
Our critique of appropriations of suffering that do harm does not mean that no appropriations are valid. To conclude
that would be to undermine any attempt to respond to human misery. It would be much more destructive than the
problem we have identified; it would paralyze social action. We must draw upon the images of human suffering in
order to identify human needs and to craft humane responses.
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AT: Language K Suppression of language bad

The refusal to reappropriate exclusionary language is politically paralyzing dogmatism
Butler, Chair of the Rhetoric Department at U.C.-Berkley, 1997 [Judith, Excitable Speech, p. 162]
Such dogmatism appears as well in the effort to circumscribe speech that injures, excites, threatens, and offends.
Whether it is the censorship of particular kinds of representation or the circumscription of the domain of public
discourse itself, the effort to tighten the reins on speech undercuts those political impulses to exploit speech itself for
its insurrectionary effects. The intellectual opposition to questions that destabilize a sense of reality seems a mundane
academic case in point.
To question a term, a term like "the subject" or "universality," is to ask how it plays, what investments it bears, what
aims it achieves, what alterations it undergoes. The changeable life of that term does not preclude the possibility of its
use. If a term becomes questionable, does that mean it cannot be used any longer, and that we can only use terms that
we already know how to master? Why is it that posing a question about a term is considered the same as enacting
a prohibition against use? Why is it that we sometimes do feel that if a term is dislodged of its prior and
known contexts, that we will not be able to live, to survive, to use language, to speak for ourselves? What kind of
guarantee does this effort to refer the speech act back to its originating con text exercise, and what sort of terror
does it forestall? Is it that in the ordinary mode, terms arc assumed, terms like "the subject" and "uni versality," and
the sense in which they "must" be assumed is a moral one, taking the form of an imperative, and like some moral
interdictions, a defense against what terrifies us most? Are we not paralyzed by a fear of the unknown future of words
that keeps us from interrogating the terms that we need to live, and of taking the risk of living the terms that we keep
in question?
Regulating speech makes re-appropriating speech impossible only by using language can
resignification occur
Fleche 99 (Anne, Assistant Professor of English at Boston College, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the
Performative, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theatre_journal/v051 /51.3fleche.html)
Excitable Speech might seem surprising to readers of Butler's previous work. Having argued, in Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, that
bodies and subjects are constructed in the cultural forms that articulate them, Butler now argues that to speak is not quite the same
as
to act. For Butler the conservative conflation of speech and act is neither performative nor, in her sense of the word, constructionist, because it argues for a notion
of free speech that presumes an unconstrained, sovereign subject.
Butler considers this problem and its possible remedies in her analyses of Supreme Court decisions, anti-pornography arguments, and the policy against homosexuals
in the military. In every instance, she complicates the relation of speech to act, by introducing fantasy, linguistic instability, and temporality, arguing against censorship
and the legal redress of hate speech and for its critical re-articulation. The key move in the analysis comes in the opening chapter, "On Linguistic Vulnerability," where
Butler deconstructs the relation of the body to speech. Working from texts by Toni Morrison and Shoshana Felman, Butler argues that language and the body are
neither strictly separable nor simply the same, but speak together, as it were, to produce the effect known as the social speaking subject. Thus verbal threats, for
example, are also, in some way, bodily ones: "[T]he body is the blindspot of speech, that which acts in excess of what is said, but which also acts in and through what
is said" (11). Once the body/speech relation is deconstructed, censorship, with its assumptions of causality between word and act, becomes even more troubling.
because speech threatens, delivers and delays, it opens up a future of options. It is

the gap between speech and conduct she wants to emphasize. In theatrical terms, this is the gap in which Brecht sees the actor intervening--in his
view performance is not referential, but a social gest, playful and capable of change. Indeed Butler's notion of performativity,
sometimes understood as the ability of language to produce what it names, is nearly the opposite of referentiality: it is an effect
of representation that cannot wholly be controlled. Performativity is what gives a future to the name in name-calling. In the
process of coming out, for example, homosexuality is named but never fully defined: while coming out "renders
homosexuality discursive," Butler emphasizes, "it does not render discourse referential . . . . [I]t is important not to close the gap
Butler finds promise in this problem, arguing that,
between the performative and the referential" (125). To close this gap is to leave no remedy for hate speech short of
state intervention, and the state is certainly not neutral. Butler points out that the Supreme Court has tended to protect racist behavior as
speech, while restricting pornographic literature. In censoring pornography, the court appears to agree with feminist arguments that pornographic representation is a
the policy against gays in the military assumes that to identify oneself as a homosexual is to act
upon another person in a homosexual way, to make such an identification "contagious," as Butler puts it. And yet, in a
case of cross burning, the Supreme Court found that when he burned a cross in front of a black family's house, a white
teenager was expressing a "viewpoint" in the "free marketplace of ideas" (53). These decisions imply that language
should not have power to do what it says, but that the state, in regulating speech, should. When speech becomes
injurious act in some cases and remains free speech in others, it is clear that a theory of speech, and not a legal
remedy, is what is most urgently needed.
discriminatory act. Similarly,
Consequently, Butler opposes linguistic determinism and the "anti-intellectualism" of the academy's efforts to return to "direct" speech.
Language is politically and socially useful, she argues, precisely to the extent that it is "excitable"--by which she means "out of
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control", in play, "performative:" "Indeed, the
act-like character of certain offensive utterances may be precisely what keeps

them from saying what they mean to say or doing what it is they say" (72). Language is neither fully social nor fully semantic
but socially performed and cited, interpellating a body and a social self while excluding "impossible" bodies, selves and speech. In a brief
reference to the argument elaborated in her book The Psychic Life of Power (also 1997), Butler counters the legal arguments for
restricting hate speech with Foucault's "less legal" notion of power as an effect, produced through multiple forces.
Foucault's idea of power eliminates the sovereign, accountable subject (or state) that speech regulation seeks to restore. It is power, Butler
argues, that makes speech into censorship, by legislating what counts. Thus, not all social forms are simply censored,
tainted or unusable: the terms of legibility produce the possibility of breaking silence, of thwarting exclusion, and of
acting "with authority without being authorized" (157), as in the civil disobedience of Rosa Parks. [End Page 348]
Rather than offer prescriptions, Butler uses her own writing to illustrate the power of resignification. In her rhetorical readings of Supreme
Court decisions, for example, the justices' words become surprisingly rich and suggestive. She is herself an expert resignifier. Resignifying words, Butler
acknowledges, does not take away their hurt. She does think that sometimes people should be prosecuted for injurious speech and that universities might need to
Excitable
Speech asks whether regulation makes it easier or harder to reappropriate speech, and why we fear to take the exciting risk of
regulate speech--but should do so only when they have "a story to tell" about its harmful effects. She is not opposed to all speech regulation. But
language, where a threat might also be a promise.
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AT: Language K Suppression of language bad

Suppressing language because it is offensive preserves its injurious meaning only by using
the language can space be opened to reconstruct a more humane meaning
Kurtz and Oscarson 03 (Anna and Christopher, Members of National Council of Teachers of English Conference
on College Composition and Communication, BookTalk: Revising the Discourse of Hate, ProQuest)
However, Butler also argues that the daily, repeated use of words opens a space for another, more empowering kind
of performance. This alternative performance, Butler insists, can be "the occasion for something we might still call
agency, the repetition of an original subordination for another purpose, one whose future is partially open" (p. 38).
To think of words as having an "open" future is to recognize that their authority lies less in their historical than in
their present uses; it is to acknowledge that people can revise the meaning of words even as we repeat them; it is to
embrace the notion that the instability of words opens the possibility that we can use them to (re)construct a more
humane future for ourselves and others. Because words can be revised, Butler contends that it would be
counterproductive simply to stop using terms that we would deem injurious or oppressive. For when we choose not
to use offensive words under any circumstance, we preserve their existing meanings as well as their power to injure.
If as teachers, for instance, we were simply to forbid the use of speech that is hurtful to LGBT students we would be
effectively denying the fact that such language still exists. To ignore words in this way, Butler insists, won't make
them go away. Butler thus suggests that we actually use these words in thoughtful conversation in which we work
through the injuries they cause (p. 1.02). Indeed, Butler insists that if we are to reclaim the power that oppressive
speech robs from us, we must use, confront, and interrogate terms like "queer." We must ask how such terms affect
both the speaker and the subject, what the purpose of their use is, and how their meaning can be altered to empower
those whom they name. Thus, as Butler helps us see, language is violence, but only if we allow it to be. She
encourages us to believe that words can take on new meanings-ones which forbid stasis, challenge our habits, and
open the possibility that teachers and students might be able to create spaces for learning in which everyone feels
safe.
Regulating language destroys the hope of true emancipation. We must be able to resignify
derogatory terms to defuse their injurious abilities
Disch 99 (Lisa, Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Minnesota, Judith Butler and the
Politics of the Performative, jstor)
Judith Butler's longstanding political concern has been to discern what in the structure of subjectivity makes it so
difficult to shift from moralized to politicized mobilization and so easy to fall into identity politics and the politics of
scapegoating. In The Psychic Life of Power, she analyzes the psychic and social process of subject formation to
disclose the investments that stand in the way of "the development of forms of differentiation [that could] lead to
fundamentally more capacious, generous, and 'unthreatened' bearings of the self in the midst of community" (CR,
140). In Excitable Speech, she rebuts the work of the theorists who introduced hate speech into the legal arsenal.
Whereas they share her premise that we are linguistic beings, Butler charges that in advocating speech codes,
censorship, and other regulatory approaches to linguistic injury, hate speech theorists destroy "something
fundamental about language and, more specifically, about the subject's constitution in language" (ES, 27). Butler
proposes to counter injurious speech with "subversive resignification": the insubordinate use of a derogatory term or
authoritative convention to defuse its power to injure and to expose "prevailing forms of authority and the
exclusions by which they proceed" (ES, 157-58). These two books are especially important for answering the charge
that poststructuralist critics of humanism demolish political agency when they take issue with autonomy. Butler's
theory of "insurrectionary" speech acts opens up the possibility of an agency that does not fantasize "the restoration
of a sovereign autonomy in speech" but, rather, plays our dependency on sanctioned forms of address into an
everyday resistance (ES, 145,15). Insurrectionary speech does considerable theoretical work to break the impasse
between autonomy and determinism that stalls many discussions of political agency in "postliberatory times" (The
Psychic Life of Power [PL], 18). And although this contribution is significant, it may strike some readers as incomplete. Butler is more attentive to examples where dominant institutions (such as the courts and the military) have
subversively resignified potentially insurrectionary initiatives (such as hate speech) than she is to instances where
performative agency has transformed the status quo. Even if Butler's own examples do not establish it as such, I will
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argue that the "politics of the performative" is a politics of insurrection. First, I offer a brief summary of Butler's
concepts "heterosexual matrix," "heterosexual melancholy," and "gender performativity," as these are indispensable
to appreciating her recent writings.
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AT: Language K Censorship Bad

Censorship will be coopted by conservative elements to destroy minority rights instead
language should be used to subvert the conventional meanings of the words
Nye 99 (Andrea, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, Excitable Speech: A Politics
of the Performative; In Pursuit of Privacy: Law, Ethics, and the Rise of Technology, Jstor)
Excitable Speech and In Pursuit of Privacy will appeal to very different audiences. Judith Buder is a theorist's theorist whose mastery of the
complex intellectual gyrations of poststructuralism and postmodernism will be daunting to all but an initiated few, while Judith Wagner DeCew is
a legal scholar who uses traditional reviews of case law and standard techniques of rational argument to make her point. Nevertheless, they ask
the same important questionIn promoting the rights of women, to what extent should feminists call for state action? and they give the same
negative answer: Not very far at all. Butler's concern is with recent controversies surrounding regulation of "hate language," specifically decisions
that broadly interpret the "fighting words55 doctrine, which makes certain uses of speech unprotected under the First Amendment's guarantee of
freedom of speech. She argues against Catharine MacKinnon5s claim that pornography is subject to government intervention because it is action
that effectively silences women. DeCew, on the other hand, defends a broad view of the "right to privacy55 that protects not only private
information but also individual decision making from state interference. Their methods in making these points could not be more different. Butler
works meticulously through a dense thicket of the analytic speech act theory of John Austin, the structuralist and poststructuralist theories of
Jacques Derrida and Pierre Bourdieu, psychoanalytic constructions in the style of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, and German critical theory
to conclude that state regulation of hate language should be resisted. Once the state has the power to legislate what can be said and
not said, she argues, that power will be coopted by conservative elements to defeat liberal causes and minority
rights. State power will also curtail the freedom of speech of private individuals that is the very basis for effective
antidotes to derogatory name calling. DeCew, however, painstakingly reviews the legal and philosophical history of privacy rights as
well as current debates about its scope and status before she takes on the question of whether feminists have any interest in preserving a private
sphere. For DeCew, too, a major target is MacKinnon, specifically her argument that leaving alone the privacy of home and family means leaving
men alone to abuse and dominate women. DeCew argues that decisions that protect the use of sexually explicit materials in the home, consensual
sex practices in private, and personal decisions about abortion are in the interest of women as well as men, even though in some cases, such as
wife beating, there may be overriding considerations that justify state intervention. Both authors argue persuasively for a more careful look at the
dangers lurking behind calls for state action. For Butler, the danger is that the state becomes arbiter of what is and is not
permissible speech, allowing rulings that the erection of burning crosses by the Ku Klux Klan is protected speech
but that artistic expressions of gay sexuality or statements of gay identity are actions rather than speech and so are
not protected. The danger DeCew sees is that once the right to privacy is denied or narrowly defined, the state can, on the grounds of
immorality, move into women's personal lives to interfere with sexual expression, whether homosexual or heterosexual, or with the right to
choose an abortion established in Roe v. Wade. Both DeCew and Butler, however, provide alternative remedies for the admitted harm that state
action is intended to redress. For DeCew, the right to privacy is not absolute; like freedom, it can be overridden by other rights thus the state
can intervene in domestic abuse cases because of the physical harm being done. Butler's remedy for harmful hate language is more deeply rooted
in postmodern theories of the speaking subject. Given the postmodern view that the subject can never magisterially use a lan -
guage with fixed meanings according to clear intentions, it is always possible to subvert the conventional meanings
of words. What is said as a derogatory slur"nigger," "chick," "spic," or "gay," for example can be "resignified," that is,
returned in such a manner that its conventional meaning in practices of discrimination and abuse is subverted. Butler
gives as examples the revalorization of terms like "black" or "gay," the satirical citation of racial or sexual slurs, reappropriation in street
language or rap music, and expressions of homosexual identity in art depicting graphic sex. These are expressions that any erosion
in
First Amendment rights might endanger.
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AT: Language K Alt Fails

Criticisms of language fail. We cannot objectively determine whether certain words are good or bad. We can
only use language as a tool - not as an accurate picture of the world.
Rorty 82 (Richard, Professor of Philosophy at Stanford, Consequences of Pragmatism,
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/index.htm)
This Davidsonian way of looking at language lets us avoid hypostatising Language in the way in which the
Cartesian epistemological tradition, and particularly the idealist tradition which built upon Kant, hypostatised
Thought. For it lets us see language not as a tertium quid between Subject and Object, nor as a medium in which we
try to form pictures of reality, but as part of the behaviour of human beings. On this view, the activity of uttering
sentences is one of the things people do in order to cope with their environment. The Deweyan notion of language as
tool rather than picture is right as far as it goes. But we must be careful not to phrase this analogy so as to suggest
that one can separate the tool, Language, from its users and inquire as to its "adequacy" to achieve our purposes. The
latter suggestion presupposes that there is some way of breaking out of language in order to compare it with
something else. But there is no way to think about either the world or our purposes except by using our language.
One can use language to criticise and enlarge itself, as one can exercise one's body to develop and strengthen and
enlarge it, but one cannot see language-as-a-whole in relation to something else to which it applies, or for which it is
a means to an end. The arts and the sciences, and philosophy as their self-reflection and integration, constitute such a
process. of enlargement and strengthening. But Philosophy, the attempt to say "how language relates to the world"
by saying what makes certain sentences true, or certain actions or attitudes good or rational, is, on this view,
impossible.
It is the impossible attempt to step outside our skins-the traditions, linguistic and other, within which we do our
thinking and self-criticism-and compare ourselves with something absolute. This Platonic urge to escape from the
finitude of one's time and place, the "merely conventional" and contingent aspects of one's life, is responsible for the
original Platonic distinction between two kinds of true sentence. By attacking this latter distinction, the holistic
"pragmaticising" strain in analytic philosophy has helped us see how the metaphysical urge -common to fuzzy
Whiteheadians and razor-sharp "scientific realists"-works. It has helped us be sceptical about the idea that some
particular science (say physics) or some particular literary genre (say Romantic poetry, or transcendental
philosophy) gives us that species of true sentence which is not just a true sentence, but rather a piece of Truth itself.
Such sentences may be very useful indeed, but there is not going to be a Philosophical explanation of this utility. That explanation, like the original justification of the
assertion of the sentence, will be a parochial matter-a comparison of the sentence with alternative sentences formulated in the same or in other vocabularies. But such
comparisons are the business of, for example, the physicist or the poet, or perhaps of the philosopher - not of the Philosopher, the outside expert on the utility, or
function, or metaphysical status of Language or of Thought.
The Wittgenstein-Sellars-Quine-Davidson attack on distinctions between classes of sentences is the special contribution of analytic philosophy to the anti-Platonist
insistence on the ubiquity of language. This insistence characterises both pragmatism and recent "Continental" philosophising. Here are some examples:
Man makes the word, and the word means nothing which the man has not made it mean, and that only to some other man. But since man can think only by means of
words or other external symbols, these might turn around and say: You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only so far as you address some word as
the interpretant of your thought. . . . . . . the word or sign which man uses is the man himself Thus my language is the sum-total of myself; for the man is the thought.
(Peirce)
Peirce goes very far in the direction that I have called the de-construction of the transcendental signified, which, at one time or another, would place a reassuring end
to the reference from sign to sign. (Derrida)
. . . psychological nominalism, according to which all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in short all awareness of abstract entities-indeed, all awareness
even of particulars-is a linguistic affair. (Sellars)
It is only in language that one can mean something by something. (Wittgenstein)

Human experience is essentially linguistic. (Gadamer)
. . . man is in the process of perishing as the being of language continues to shine ever brighter upon our horizon.
(Foucault)
Speaking about language turns language almost inevitably into an object . . . and then its reality vanishes.
(Heidegger)
This chorus should not, however, lead us to think that something new and exciting has recently been discovered
about Language-e.g., that it is more prevalent than had previously been thought. The authors cited are making only
negative points. They are saying that attempts to get back behind language to something which "grounds" it, or
which it "expresses," or to which it might hope to be "adequate," have not, worked. The ubiquity of language is a
matter of language moving into the vacancies left by the failure of all the various candidates for the position of
"natural starting-points" of thought, starting-points which are prior to and independent of the way some culture
speaks or spoke. (Candidates for such starting-points include clear and distinct ideas, sense-data, categories of the pure understanding, structures of
prelinguistic consciousness, and the like.) Peirce and Sellars and Wittgenstein are saying that the regress - of interpretation cannot be cut off by the sort of "intuition"
which Cartesian epistemology took for granted. Gadamer and Derrida are saying that our culture has been dominated by the notion of a "transcendental signified"
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which, by cutting off this regress, would bring us out from contingency and convention and into the Truth. Foucault is saying that we are gradually losing our grip on
the "metaphysical comfort" which that Philosophical tradition provided-its picture of Man as having a "double" (the soul, the Noumenal Self) who uses Reality's own
language rather than merely the vocabulary of a time and a place. Finally, Heidegger is cautioning that if we try to make Language into a new topic of Philosophical
inquiry we shall simply recreate the hopeless old Philosophical puzzles which we used to raise about Being or Thought.
This last point amounts to saying that what Gustav Bergmann called "the linguistic turn" should not be seen as the logical positivists saw it-as enabling us to ask
Kantian questions without having to trespass on the psychologists' turf by talking, with Kant, about "experience" or "consciousness." That was, indeed, the initial
analytic philosophy of language was able to

transcend this Kantian motive and adopt a naturalistic, behaviouristic attitude toward language. This attitude has led
it to the same outcome as the "Continental" reaction against the traditional Kantian problematic, the reaction found
in Nietzsche and Heidegger. This convergence shows that the traditional association of analytic philosophy with
tough-minded positivism and of "Continental" philosophy with tender-minded Platonism is completely misleading.
The pragmaticisation of analytic philosophy gratified the logical positivists' hopes, but not in the fashion which they
had envisaged. it did not find a way for Philosophy to become "scientific," but rather found a way of setting
Philosophy to one side. This post-positivistic kind of analytic philosophy thus comes to resemble the NietzscheHeidegger-Derrida tradition in beginning with criticism of Platonism and ending in criticism of Philosophy as such.
Both traditions are now in a period of doubt about their own status. Both are living between a repudiated past and a
dimly seen post-Philosophical future.
motive for the "turn,"" but (thanks to the holism and pragmatism of the authors I have cited)
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AT: Identity Politics Essentialist

Kritiks of identity are essentialist and flawed
Robinson and Tormey, Professors of Politics at Nottingham University, 2003
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/simon.tormey/articles/Zizeknotradical.pdf)
not
Radical,"
<Zizeks popularity results largely from the apparent way out that he provides from the cul-desac in which radical
theory, and in particular radical postmodern theory, has found itself. Zizek is of course not the first author to attack
postmodernists, post-structuralists and post-Marxists on grounds of their lack of radical ambition on the terrain of
politics. To take a couple of examples from amongst the many, Sharon Smith asserts that [t]he politics of identity do
not offer a way forward for those genuinely interested in transforming society. ... The emphasis on lifestyle ... is the
guarantee that such movements will remain middle class.4 Murray Bookchin similarly argues that subjectivist
claims about the impossibility of formulating an objective criterion of rationality or good are an indulgence we
can ill afford - the condition of the world is far too desperate.5 These critiques, however, are rooted in an old left
prone to essentialism, unfounded objective claims and simplifying vulgarisations precisely the reasons for the
popularity of postmodern approaches. Objections to spurious claims about an objective answer to the present
problems, to class and other reductionisms which risk perpetuating voicelessness, and to dogmatism and theoretical
rigidity are often well-founded, even if those who make such criticisms appear disturbingly liberal in their
orientations. Thus, left activists genuinely interested in confronting the liberal capitalist status quo find themselves
trapped between politically radical but theoretically flawed leftist orthodoxies and theoretically innovative but
politically moderate post-theories.>
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AT: Borders K Borders Inevitable and Key to Peace

Borders are inevitable- Iraq, Kosovo, and others prove that sometimes borders are the only
option. Preventing cross border aggression is a much easier than deterring a domestic
insurgency
Downes, 2k6 (Alexander Downes, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke, More Borders, Less Conflict?: Partition as a Solution to
Ethnic Civil Wars, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sais_review/v026/26.1downes.html)
<Partition: The Future of Iraq

Despite international attempts to encourage power-sharing and federalism as a means to preserve a united Iraq, a
partition of the country into three statesa Kurdish state in the northeast, a Shi'ite state in the south, and a Sunni
state in the northwestis probably unavoidable for the same reasons it is unavoidable in Kosovo. The history of
violence and repression has made it hard for Iraq's ethnic groups to trust each other. The Kurds suffered such
brutality that they insist on maintaining their own armed forces and prefer an independent Kurdish state to remaining
part of a united Iraq. The Sunni Arabsthe dominant and privileged group under Saddam Hussein's regimehave
suffered a major status reversal and are now marginalized. The Sunni-based insurgency that has raged since
Saddam's downfall in 2003 signals not only many Sunnis' attachment to and reverence for Saddam, but also their
mistrust and suspicion of Iraq's Shi'ites and Kurds. The 2005 constitution was negotiated mostly without Sunni input
and over their vehement objections. Unsurprisingly, Sunnis voted overwhelmingly against the document. Lastminute promises by Shi'a and Kurdish leaders that would allow the constitution to be renegotiated following new
parliamentary elections are small consolation to Sunnis, who will always compose a small minority of the country's
elected representatives and thus will wield little power. The constitution's federal provisions represent Shi'ite leaders'
recognition that the Kurds insist on near total autonomyand thus that the Shi'ites should form their own federal
bloc as well. Given the powerful centrifugal forces at play, this process will lead to the eventual partition of Iraq.
This result is not surprising. The basic logic for why Iraq would fall apart was laid out nearly 10 years ago in an
article by Daniel Byman.28 In this article, Byman argued that the legacy of bitterness and mistrust engendered by
Saddam's use of massive violence against the Kurdish and Shi'ite [End Page 58] communities would make it nearly
impossible for those groups ever to trust the Sunnis again, or to entrust their security to institutions they did not
control. Byman cites Michael Ignatieff's argument that "Genocide and nationalism have an entwined history. It was
genocide that convinced the Jews . . . that they were a people who would never be safe until they had a nation-state
of their own. As with the Jews, so with the Kurds . . . for a people who have known genocide, there is only one thing
that will do: a nation-state of their own."29 These two communities are regionally concentrated in areas they view as
homelands, increasing their ability and willingness to fight for secession and making partition relatively feasible to
implement. Given each group's inability to rely on the others' benign intentions, the fact that each group is armed,
and the likelihood that central power-sharing institutions will generate deadlock rather than consensus, it is likely
that federalism will promote separation rather than unity and lead to partition. Byman's conclusion in 1997 still rings
true: "Iraq . . . is a state that deserves to collapse and be partitioned."30 The Kurds, of course, will be delighted at the
prospect of achieving statehood, and the Shi'ites will accept the break-up of Iraq, as they will obtain the largest piece
of territory as well as copious reserves of oil. The Sunnisthe group that stands to lose the most territory and
natural resourcesare also the group with the least capability to reverse partition. The insurgency is based in the
areas that would become part of a Sunni state; thus it would lose steam once foreign occupation forces depart. Once
new borders and states are created, the problem would become one of deterring and preventing cross-border
aggression. This would be easier than quelling a domestic insurgency with strong social support and a task that
Kurdish and Shi'ite forcesaided by smaller external forcesshould be able to perform. >
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AT: Borders K Borders key to peace

When we eliminate borders, it makes all conflicts civil wars, which makes a peace an
impossibility. Kosovo proves that partition is key to stability in any region.
<The conventional wisdom among scholars and policymakers opposes solving ethnic conflicts by drawing new
borders and creating new states. This view, however, is flawed because the process of fighting civil wars imbues the
belligerents with a deep sense of mistrust that makes sharing power after the conflict difficult. This is especially true
in ethnic civil wars, in which negotiated power-sharing agreements run a high risk of failing and leading to renewed
warfare. In light of these problems, this article argues that partition should be considered as an option for ending
severe ethnic conflicts. The article shows how failure to adopt partition in Kosovo has left that province in a semipermanent state of limbo that only increases the majority Albanian population's desire for independence. The only
route to long-term stability in the regionand an exit for international forcesis through partition. Moreover, the
article suggests that the United States should recognize and prepare for the coming partition of Iraq rather than
pursuing the futile endeavor of implementing power-sharing among Iraq's Shi'ites, Kurds, and Sunnis.>
Kosovo proves that borders are key to prevent wars
Trepidation over Kosovo's future status makes both ethnic communities reluctant to part with their weapons.
According to a report by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, "Faced with an uncertain future and constant
wondering about whether conflict will ensue once again, people may want to keep weapons to provide protection
and security if the situation once again becomes precarious."20 Comments by both Serbs and Albanians confirm this
motivation. According to an Albanian tour guide in Drenica, for example, "Nobody knows if another war is going to
happen or not. If they don't give us independence, that might mean that the Serbian forces will be allowed to come
backand most people here don't want to be caught empty-handed when that happens." Serbs, for their part, believe
that self-help is the only way to safeguard themselves from vengeful Albanians. As one Serb from Gracanica
commented, "We believe that none of the security forces operating in Kosovo at the moment are able to fully protect
the Serbs, so we have to look out for ourselves."21
Partition allows for more security than power sharing or dissolving borders.
<In this article, I argue that partitiondefined as separation of contending ethnic groups and the creation of
independent statesshould be considered as an alternative to power-sharing and regional autonomy as a means to
end civil wars. Partition does not require groups to disarm and make themselves vulnerable to devastating betrayal.
Nor do formerly warring groups have to cooperate and share power in joint institutions. Partition also satisfies
nationalist desires for statehood and fills the need for security. In cases of severe ethnic conflict, when perceptions
of the adversary's malign intentions are so entrenched as to impede any agreement based on a single-state solution,
partition is the preferred solution. >
Empirically proven- power sharing doesnt solve, partition is key to peace

<The poor record of negotiated settlements in ethnic civil wars that leave borders intact, whether or not they are
facilitated by third-party intervention, suggests that a new approach might be necessary: one based on partition
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rather than power-sharing. In this model, third parties would intervene not to turn back the clock to the pre-war
situation, but to inflict a decisive defeat on one side or the other. This would reduce the likelihood that the defeated
party would think it could gain anything by resorting to war in the future. In those cases where a third party
intervenes on behalf of ethnic rebels, military victory will result in partition. Partition can only lead to peace,
however, if it is accompanied by ethnic separation. Interveners should work to make sure that the states are as
ethnically homogeneous as possible so as to reduce the likelihood of future cleansing, rebellions by the remnant
minority for union with its brethren in the other state, or war to rescue "trapped" minorities. Finally, both sides
should be militarily capable of defending themselves, and the borders between them should be made as defensible as
possible to discourage aggression, either by following natural terrain features or by building demilitarized zones or
other barriers.[End Page 54] >
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AT: Borders K Borders key to ethnic cleansing

Borders are key to prevent ethnic cleansing
<Recently, however, scholars have begun to challenge this single-state-solution orthodoxy, arguing instead that
dividing states and creating new borders may be a way to promote peace after ethnic civil wars. One view, [End
Page 49] represented by Chaim Kaufmann, stresses that ethnic civil wars cannot end until contending groups are
separated into homogeneous ethnic enclaves. When groups are intermingled, each side has an incentive to attack and
cleanse the other. Once separation is achieved, these incentives disappear. With the necessary condition for peace in
place, political arrangements become secondary. Unless ethnic separation occurs, Kaufmann argues, all other
solutions are fruitless because ethnic intermingling is what fuels conflict.3>
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AT: Borders K Preserves Liberty

Borders preserve liberty better than a world without borders
Moriss 2k4 (Andrew P. Moriss, Professor of Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve University,
Borders and Liberty, http://209.217.49.168/vnews.php?nid=6081, July 2004)
<Even though borders can be an excuse for reducing liberty, a world with lots of borders is nonetheless a far
friendlier world for liberty than one with fewer borders. They promote competition for people and money, which
tends to restrain the state from grabbing either. Borders offer chances to arbitrage regulatory restrictions, making
them less effective. Without borders these constraints on the growth of the state would vanish.>
Competitions between states motivates governments to preserve liberty

National borders are also important sources of liberty. The Mexican border, for example, offers a choice between a
drug-regulatory regime that requires a doctors prescription for most pharmaceuticals and one
that does not. The streams of visitors to towns such as Algodones, Baja California, are not merely seeking lower
prices. Some are seeking medicines unapproved in the United States; others are looking for
medications for which they have no U.S. prescription, whether for recreational (such as Viagra) or medical
(antibiotics) use. Mexico does not offer the pro-plaintiff tort doctrines of U.S. product-liability law, has lower
barriers to entry for pharmacists, and a wide-open market for pharmaceuticals that includes openly advertised price
competition. U.S. residents near the Mexican border thus have a choice of regulatory regimes for their medicine that
those of us who live farther away do not. Border-region residents can buy medicines either with the U.S. bundle of
qualities, restrictions, and rights, or the Mexican bundle. From the level of traffic of elderly visitors Ive seen at the
border crossing, it appears the Mexican bundle is more
attractive for many. Borders are thus friends of liberty in two important ways. First,
without borders we would not have the competition among jurisdictions that restricts attempts to abridge liberty. The
impact of borders goes beyond those who live near them. Pharmacists try to prevent the free sale of prescription
drugs, but they would be much more successful if Mexico did not offer an alternative for at least some consumers. It
is the margin that matters, and so free availability of pharmaceuticals in Mexico benefits even those of us who live
in Ohio. Jurisdictions thus compete to attract people and capital. This competition motivates governments to act to
preserve liberty. Famously, for example, states compete for corporations, with Delaware the current market leader.
Delaware corporate law offers companies the combination of a mostly voluntary set of default rules and an expert
decision-making body (the Court of Chancery). As a result, many corporations, large and small, choose to
incorporate in Delaware, making it their legal residence. (Their actual headquarters need not be physically located
there.) Corporations get a body of liberty-enhancing rules; Delaware gets tax revenue and employment in the
corporateservices and legal fields.>
Borders are critical to a free society

<Borders play a critical role in our lives. Some of the borders that matter to us are ones we establish ourselves: this
is my house and property; that is your house and property. By choosing what is mine and using the legal system to
mark it off from what is yours, I create a border. While not quite as invulnerable as suggested by the maxim A
mans home is his castle, my property gives me a firm border against you. Borders come from property rights and
are essential to a free society.>
Borders allow citizens to live in a setting that resembles the society they desire
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<The second way that borders further liberty is that they allow diversity in law and other community norms, letting
each individual find the setting that most resembles the type of society he or she desires. Everyone in Ohio need not
agree on how to organize town activities: I can live in a township with few taxes and few services, and my more leftwing colleagues at the university who prefer a more interventionist society can live in Cleveland Heights, a suburb
with an aggressive central-planning mentality and high taxes.>
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AT: Borders Borders Not Destructive

Cross Border competition is not destructive
<Statists are correct that competition among jurisdictions will make clear the costs of the policies they promote.
They are wrong when they suggest that cross-border competition is destructive of the quality of life, however. The
former divide between East and West Berlin is a fine example of the impact of cross-border comparisons. East
Germans could see the difference in outcomes between the two societies, and East Germany had to resort to
increasingly costly and desperate measures to prevent its citizens from voting against communism with their feet.
The example of West Germany did not erode the socialist regime by unfairly competing against it. West Germans
had a higher standard of living and more freedom. Competition between the two Germanys exposed the cost of East
German policies.>
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AT: Santos Alt Fails

Santos conception of the evils of modernity are too simple in their dualism, which replicates
the most pernicious aspects of the system he critiques.
Pieterse, 2001 (Jan Nederveen, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Social Studies at the Hague,
Emancipation and Regulation: Twin Pillars of Modernity?, European Journal of Social Theory 4(3), pg. 281-282)
[The findings Santos arrives at concerning the shortcomings of neoclassical economics are not as noteworthy as
the way he arrives at them. His treatment suffers from problems of scale and perspective and at times comes across
as too coarse-grained. For instance, what is mainstream economics? Neoclassical economics, rational choice, new
institutional economics, institutional analysis? As to modern science, what about new science such as quantum
physics and chaos theory? That is this critique of small-scale modeling in science itself uses small-scale models of
economics and science to the extent that several insights are too general to be penetrating. This critique of
representation comes with two other argumentsa discussion of regulation and emancipation, and a pleas for a new
common sense, although there is no necessary connection between them.
Regulation and emancipation are presented as the twin pillars of modernity, as capabilities and forms of
knowledge. This is a sequel to Santoss Toward a New Common Sense (1995). This too opened with the idea that
modernity is based on two pillars, the pillar of regulation and the pillar of emancipation.
So here we enter modernity by passing between two pillars. Let us pause right away. What kind of space do we
enter by passing between two pillars? A temple--and variations such as a courthouse, church, library--a demarcated,
sanctified space. The nearest reference to two pillars in the literature is the Temple of Solomon with its twin pillars
Jachin and Boaz. This metaphor has been used over and over again, from the Qabala to Freemasonry and alchemy to
Goethe ('zwei Seelin'). In other words, this is a classical, premodern metaphor for modernity. Accordingly,
modernity is marked off as an imaginary space, a building, and set apart from detail and intricacy, from the rumour
of agents, voices, dreams and projects, in a word, a small-scale model abstracted from history. This means taking a
normative view of modernity, as against, for instance, an institutional view (the nation state, capitalism, etc.) or a
historical view. Other normative angles are also absent (Parsons's universalism, Habermas's Enlightenment, etc.).
Which episodes, movements, transformations would exemplify this? History is only cursorily present in this
argument (e.g. capitalism, colonialism). Without 'examples' the argument remains ungrounded, untestable, hovering
outside time and space. This is a plea not for empiricism but for effective communication (the reader thinks this is
about A but the author thinks of B). The representation in terms of duality is fundamentally static. From Heraclitus
to Hegel, along with other folks, the common epistemological device has been dialectics, so where is dialectics in
this argument - i.e. regulation prompting emancipation, emancipation turning into regulation, and so forth? Then,
what is now presented as a problem ('the regulation that does not emancipate does not even regulate', etc.) is not a
problem at all, bur rather a solution.
A depiction in which not merely two principles are privileged, but only two remain is not a felicitous representation
of modernity . This is small-scale sociology at its most extreme. It gives us very little to work with. The treatment
is schematic, not occasionally so but as a matter of style and method. All the problems discussed in the critique of
small-scale representation recur in this argument on regulation and emancipation-vagueness (neglecting details and
contrast'), false contemporaneity, exclusion of other knowledges. Thus, a probing critique of small-scale economics
(i.e. modeling devoid of detail) comes with an exercise in small-scale sociology and the very epistemological
blinders that are so patiently laid bare in relation to economics are, in the same breath applied with abandon in
sociology.]
Santos is wrongwe must develop a curious mentality and revive cooperation to achieve
change.
Caraa, 2001 (Joo, Director of the Science Department at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Ceremonial
Inadequacy: In Search of a New Enlightenment, European Journal of Social Theory 4(3), pg. 289-290)
[Again, they can only be contained in the context of a new narrative. Here, too, Santos points his finger cleverly
to solidarity, to conceiving the other as a producer of knowledge. According to what modern biology teaches us,
each major step in the history of life in the universe - and eight such steps have been identified so far, from
replicating molecules to primate societies (Maynard Smith and Szathmary, 2000) - has been the outcome of
cooperation. It results from a cooperative effort between different species that henceforth behave and reproduce like
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a new one. This is the same as stating that hierarchical behaviour only brings more of the same, whereas
cooperation is a mechanism for generating complex behavior, eventually leading to emerging properties and
sustainable action.
The time is ripe for developing an attitude of curious perspective, of operating simultaneously at different
scales. We humans were born on the Earth. Let us not turn this blue planet into a senseless graveyard.]
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Santos contradicts himselfhe concludes that regulation kills emancipation, but that a new
common sense is possible.
Pieterse, 2001 (Jan Nederveen, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Social Studies at the Hague,
Emancipation and Regulation: Twin Pillars of Modernity?, European Journal of Social Theory 4(3), pg. 282-284)
[That regulation consumes emancipation is a familiar argument. When the dust of rebellion or revolution
settles, another order comes into being and ideals slip out of the window. According to the right, the violence of
revolution only brought unnecessary bloodshed; according the left, it is the myth of Sisyphus revisited (Camus,
Foucault, etc.). Both views are deeply conservative and pessimistic. My own view (discussed in several
publications) is that power (domi nation, oppression, rule, hegemony, etc.) and emancipation (empowerment,
participation, social transformation towards justice, etc.) are deeply interdependent and mutally implicated. The
exercise of power evokes resistance" resistance grows jnto empowerment, empowerment becomes emancipation,
and emancipation changes the rules of power. This is the definition of emancipation: unlike 'resistance', 'protest',
'participation', 'empowerment', emancipation changes the rules of the game.
Thus, constellations of power (e.g. imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism) evoke and shape emancipation
while emancipation movements influence and redirect the exercise of power. A new regulation comes about to
forestall upheaval or revolution, to close loopholes, rebuild legitimacy, reclaim hegemony. For example, in
nineteenth-century Europe national capitalism engendered the organized working class, and to forestall the growing
force of trade unions and labour parties, the welfare state was born. That is, a more inclusive, more just mode of
regulation developed. The objectives of emancipatory movements were translated into a new form of regulation not fully, not all the objectives, but significantly enough to change the character of power and widen the standards of
legitimate authority (universal suffrage, welfare state, Fordism). This too came with a downside (labour aristocracy,
working-class embourgeoisement, the chauvinism of prosperity, etc.). Yet, major emancipatory objectives were met
in the form of a different mode of regulation. This also implies that equating modernity and capitalism is not helpful,
for the question is what kind of capitalism?
In other words, that emancipation yields regulation is not its betrayal but its fulfillment. Emancipation is not a
utopian shortcut. It is a historical process whose logic is that each form of emancipation by definition constitutes
new form of regulation, which over time turns out to be a new form of oppression, which in turn evokes resistance,
so the cycle begins anew, and so forth. Now we have entered the epoch of global capitalism in which struggles are
local (Chiapas, Ogoniland, etc.), regional, (Nice) and global (in Seattle, Washington DC, Prague, Davos, Porto
Alegre, etc.). We have entered another space and another cycle and the drama of regulation (World Bank, IMF,
WTO) and emancipation (labour standards, NGOs, global civil society, etc.) unfolds anew. What is at stake now is
world-scale regulation (a new financial architecture, environmental regulation, etc.).
In Santos's argument, regulation cannibalizes emancipation while ultimately, as part of a new common sense,
emancipatory knowledge is to take the reins from regulatory knowledge. This yields the third argument, the plea for
a new common sense. The problem is that in one domain, regulation and emancipation, Santos displays extreme
pessimism. while in another, a new common sense, he displays extreme optimism. There is no emotional continuity
between these perspectives, lest we assume that extreme disaffection in one sphere is the raison d'etre for extreme
optimism in another. In this sphere, there is but a string of normative clauses to guide us: solidarity, prudence, a
decent life. Sounds good, but if matters have been so dreadful all along, how on earth would we get there? Would
not prudence suggest (a) a finer reading of the relationship between regulation and emancipation, and (b) of the
relationship between common sense and science, so that (c) a new common sense would not have to drop out of the
sky, Made in Utopia? 'Whether it is possible to know by creating solidarity' is an interesting question. Can a critique
be both penetrating and compassionate? Indeed, would not the test of a new common sense be that it informs a new
regulation that is based on more inclusive values?]
Alt cant solveit is too weak to overcome the epistemological breaks in knowledge.
Wagner, 2001 (Peter, Professor of Social and Political Theory at the European University Institute in Florence,
Epistemology and Critique, European Journal of Social Theory 4(3), pg. 284)
[The opening passage about Thorstein Veblen in Boaventura de Sousa Santos's article is breathtakingly brilliant.
It is not so much the idea of going back to Veblen for a discussion about the relation between economics and the
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other social sciences, or about the epistemology of the social sciences in general, that strikes one as original. Rather,
the force lies in the sudden move after the author already appeared to have his reader prepared for a critique of
economics from a historical-institutionalist perspectiveagainst Veblen whose important insights did not prevent
him from advocating a delirious racial anthropology as an alternative. The strike hits. Is it not indeed the case that
too many scholars in the social sciences spend their time elaborating sophisticated critiques, while their own
alternatives remain weaker and are often as much, if not more, subject to valid objections as the approaches they
criticizeif they are spelled out in any detail at all?
Boaventura de Sousa Santos himself does aim at developing alternatives while at the same trying to avoid
Veblens fatewith success, I dare say, since it is difficult to envisageeven a hundred years from nowthat
somebody could call his constructive ideas delirious. In great sympathy with his project of an epistemology of
seeing and the rewarding richness of its presentation here, it seems worth pointing to a basic tension in it, a tension
which I think needs to be resolved to pursue the project further.]
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Alt cant solvethe obstacles to knowledge and solidarity are too strong to overcome.
Wagner, 2001 (Peter, Professor of Social and Political Theory at the European University Institute in Florence,
Epistemology and Critique, European Journal of Social Theory 4(3), pg. 286-287)
[The lack of ambivalence with regard to the first break is repeated in the programme of the second break. At
least in the strong reading of his proposal, Santos succumbs to the time-honoured inclination of rather markedly
outlining a not-yet-existing alternative that solves all problems, an alternative in which knowledge and solidarity
become one. But a quick historical observation suggests that he may be running into a trap that he himself set. Is
such a conception not precisely reviving the Enlightenment dream of a self-regulating society , a dream about which
one can justifiably say that at least in some of its versions it has been converted from being emancipatory to being
regulatory, and now in the sense of regulation by some imposed on others, and not as self-regulation? Why should
we assume that something similar could not again be the case if we follow that same route again? In Santos's own,
fruitful terms. the problem here is that one should not move from the absolute reign of experience over expectation,
or from total indifference both to experience and expectation, towards a similarly unconstrained reign of expectation
over experience. That is a recipe for disillusionment, at best, and was historically a recipe for disaster. The challenge
of knowledge rather is to find the situationwise-appropriate relation of expectation to experience.
Santos rightly underlines that there is conflict and struggle in the social world, and there is indeed no need to
remain silent about this feature only because Carl Schmitt has emphasized it. However, even if we could assume that
friend and foe could be clearly identified, there is a struggle not merely between regulators and emancipators. If this
were the case, then the struggle would be over once that fight was won. Taking Schmitt (and others, such as Hannah
Arendt or Claude Lefort) seriously means to accept that, under conditions of modernity, there will always be
contestation, always struggle between different perspectives, And then there cannot be knowledge that is
unequivocally associated with emancipation and solidarity. Rather, even among those who support those goals, there
will be variety of perspectives and, thus, a 'constellation of knowledges' will emerge that does not settle a dispute,
but provides it with resources for reasoning. Against indifference, one would not just posit solidarity with friends.
Rather, concern for others would show precisely in both solidarity and dispute, and both at the same time. This is
what I see in the second, the weak programme in Boaventura de Sousa Santos's article, and it is the one I prefer.
In his strong programme, he continues the tradition of critique in pointing to something that is not, but could be,
and elevates this to a higher position, seen as immediately reachable, if not actually reached, as soon as the obstacles
are removed. His weak programme instead suggests a different understanding of critique, pointing also to something
that is not, but that is always struggling to come into existence, thus is always present but in the form of failing. An
epistemology of seeing would not merely show the way to knowledge, it would also need to make visible the
obstacles on that way. Since many of those obstacles will not disappear under any circumstances, the search for
knowledge means the search for the different ways to overcome them]
Santos fails to acknowledge that knowledge and power are permanenteconomic power is
intrinsically tied to knowledge.
Caraa, 2001 (Joo, Director of the Science Department at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Ceremonial
Inadequacy: In Search of a New Enlightenment, European Journal of Social Theory 4(3), pg. 288)
The difficulty of the analysis, however, resides in treating the situation of knowledge without explicit reference
to the overarching presence of power. In my view, this has a blurring effect. The entanglement of knowledge with
power constitutes the foundation from which criteria for truth are derived in any society. Knowledge cannot be
dissociated from power. The deployment of power always involves the constitution of a domain of knowledge from
which its own legitimation and cultural identity can be derived; concurrently, as Michel Foucault pointed out, the
rules that govern the operation of this body of knowledge involve a set of power relations. Therefore, we can say
that knowledge and power mirror each other, to the extent that the conditions for the enactment of both spring from
their mutual coexistence. In all epochs and communities each configuration of power, or knowledge, has set its
indelible mark on the other.
This is why we can ascertain that the Renaissance was premodern, i.e. not yet fully modern. It had some
dimensions that were later to be part of the unfolding of modernity but, in essence, its character was different. The
liberation of the energies of free enterprise, the scientific revolution, the emergence of national churches, the
institution of bourgeois states, are all mutually reinforcing, and essential for the affirmation of European peoples in
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the globe.
A new worldview emerged, not in connection with any direct religious belief, but with a marked spatial
character. The central question in this geometric worldview is the search for grand symmetries that correspond to
invariance principles, which, in turn, originate in the absolute, eternal laws of nature. Nature is seen as obeying to
Law. Time is a parameter. The Universe originated as space. Mankind (and its representatives, the European
peoples) were in command of the world.
But free enterprise was not solely a principle but a form of organization, of social relations, of action. Economic
power, in its m modern incarnation of industrialization, would certainly promote its own body of knowledge,
economics. In economics the issue of capital is pivotal, as one can easily guess. Santos points out deftly the
problems and limitations of mainstream economics; but it is not clear if he believes that some of the difficulties a re
related to a change in the nature of capitalthe emergence of a new type of capital, as proposed by Manuel Castells,
informational capitalnot yet understood by theory, or to a phasing out of the energies of modernity.]
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AT: Biopower Alt fails

Biopolitics is good only seeing it as bad a) ignores the massive decrease in structural
violence it has caused and b) views power unidirectionally in contradiction within their own
critique
Dickinson, University of Cincinnati, 2004
(Edward Ross, Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse About Modernity, Central
European History, vol. 37, no. 1, March)
<This understanding of the democratic and totalitarian potentials of biopolitics at the level of the state needs to be
underpinned by a reassessment of how biopolitical discourse operates in society at large, at the prepolitical level. I
would like to try to offer here the beginnings of a reconceptualization of biopolitical modernity, one that focuses less
on the machinations of technocrats and experts, and more on the different ways that biopolitical thinking circulated
within German society more broadly.
It is striking, then, that the new model of German modernity is even more relentlessly negative than the old
Sonderweg model. In that older model, premodern elites were constantly triumphing over the democratic opposition.
But at least there was an opposition; and in the long run, time was on the side of that opposition, which in fact
embodied the historical movement of modernization. In the new model, there is virtually a biopolitical
consensus.92 And that consensus is almost always fundamentally a nasty, oppressive thing, one that partakes in
crucial ways of the essential quality of National Socialism. Everywhere biopolitics is intrusive, technocratic, topdown, constraining, limiting. Biopolitics is almost never conceived of or at least discussed in any detail as
creating possibilities for people, as expanding the range of their choices, as empowering them, or indeed as doing
anything positive for them at all.
Of course, at the most simple-minded level, it seems to me that an assessment of the potentials of modernity that
ignores the ways in which biopolitics has made life tangibly better is somehow deeply flawed. To give just one
example, infant mortality in Germany in 1900 was just over 20 percent; or, in other words, one in five children died
before reaching the age of one year. By 1913, it was 15 percent; and by 1929 (when average real purchasing power
was not significantly higher than in 1913) it was only 9.7 percent.93 The expansion of infant health programs an
enormously ambitious, bureaucratic, medicalizing, and sometimes intrusive, social engineering project had a great
deal to do with that change. It would be bizarre to write a history of biopolitical modernity that ruled out an
appreciation for how absolutely wonderful and astonishing this achievement and any number of others like it
really was. There was a reason for the Machbarkeitswahn of the early twentieth century: many marvelous things
were in fact becoming machbar. In that sense, it is not really accurate to call it a Wahn (delusion, craziness) at all;
nor is it accurate to focus only on the inevitable frustration of delusions of power. Even in the late 1920s, many
social engineers could and did look with great satisfaction on the changes they genuinely had the power to
accomplish.
Concretely, moreover, I am not convinced that power operated in only one direction from the top down in
social work. Might we not ask whether people actually demanded welfare services, and whether and how social
workers and the state struggled to respond to those demands? David Crew and Greg Eghigian, for example, have
given us detailed studies of the micropolitics of welfare in the Weimar period in which it becomes clear that
conflicts between welfare administrators and their clients were sparked not only by heavyhanded intervention, but
also by refusal to help.94 What is more, the specific nature of social programs matters a great deal, and we must
distinguish between the different dynamics (and histories) of different programs. The removal of children from their
families for placement in foster families or reformatories was bitterly hated and stubbornly resisted by working-class
families; but mothers brought their children to infant health clinics voluntarily and in numbers, and after 1945 they
brought their older children to counseling clinics, as well. In this instance, historians of the German welfare state
might profit from the demand side models of welfare development that are sometimes more explicitly explored in
some of the international literature.95
In fact, even where social workers really were attempting to limit or subvert the autonomy and power of parents, I
am not sure that their actions can be characterized only and exclusively as part of a microphysics of oppression.
Progressive child welfare advocates in Germany, particularly in the National Center for Child Welfare, waged a
campaign in the 1920s to persuade German parents and educators to stop beating children with such ferocity,
regularity, and nonchalance. They did so because they feared the unintended physical and psychological effects of
beatings, and implicitly because they believed physical violence could compromise the development of the kind of
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autonomous, selfreliant subjectivity on which a modern state had to rely in its citizenry.96 Or, to give another
common example from the period, children removed from their families after being subjected by parents or other
relatives to repeated episodes of violence or rape were being manipulated by biopolitical technocrats, and were often
abused in new ways in institutions or foster families; but they were also being liberated. Sometimes some forms of
the exercise of power in society are in some ways emancipatory; and that is historically significant.
Further, of course we must ask whether it is really true that social workers and social agencies attempts to
manipulate people worked. My own impression is that social policy makers grew increasingly aware, between the
1870s and the 1960s, that their own ends could not be achieved unless they won the cooperation of the targets of
policy. And to do that, they had to offer people things that they wanted and needed. Policies that incited resistance
were sometimes with glacial slowness, after stubborn and embittered strugglesde-emphasized or even
abandoned. Should we really see the history of social welfare policy as a more or less static (because the same thing
is always happening) history of the imposition of manipulative policies on populations? I believe a more complex
model of the evolution of social policy as a system of social interaction, involving conflicting and converging
demands, constant negotiation, struggle, and above all mutual learning would be more appropriate. This is a
point Abram de Swaan and others have made at some length; but it does not appear to have been built into our
theory of modernity very systematically, least of all in German history.97>
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AT: Biopower Alt Fails (Biopower Can Be Good)

Their critique of biopolitics has a pessimistic view of modernity, totalizing a diverse
historical epoch and ignoring the good manifestations of biopolitical governance Nazism
is the exception, not the rule
This issue is important, I believe, in part because the project of ferreting out the contribution of biopolitical discourses to the construction of
National Socialism so dominates the literature, creating a sense of impending disaster that I believe has all too strongly
shaped the questions we, as historians, are asking about the history of modern biopolitics. I want to give two examples that I
believe reveal the way this focus constrains our collective historical imagination . I do so not in order to point out that my
colleagues are wrong, but to suggest how powerfully our imaginations and our questions are shaped by the specter and spectacle of National
Socialism.
In a brilliant review article published in 1996, Peter Fritzsche posed the question Did Weimar Fail? Fritzsche gave voice to a healthy skepticism
regarding the tendency in the literature to imply that the history of social welfare programs is only part of the prehistory of National Socialism.
The darker vision of modernism presented by Detlev Peukert, he suggested, is compelling but not wholly persuasive. The
spirit of science itself, he argued, does not introduce quite so automatically a discourse of segregation without the
application of racist politics ; and he asked to what extent are reformist practices invariably collusions in disciplinary regimes? And yet,
Fritzsches reflections are haunted by almost unrelieved foreboding, which merely accurately reflects the tone of the literature he was reviewing.
He suggested that the central theme of this scholarship . . . is the regimentation and discipline of citizens in often dangerously imaginative
ways; it establishes significant continuities between the Weimar era and the Third Reich; the history of the republic reveals the dark shadows
of modernity.58 Indeed, the conceptual framework Fritzsche set up seems to take totalitarianism, war, and mass murder
as the end-point of continuity. Taking up a question asked by Gerald Feldman, Fritzsche suggested that the Weimar Republic was
neither a gamble nor an experiment, but rather a laboratory of modernity. From this perspective, Fritzsche asserts, perhaps Weimar should be
regarded as less a failure than a series of bold experiments that do not come to an end with the year 1933. The
failure of political democracy is not the same as the destruction of the laboratory. Thus, the coming of the Third
Reich was not so much a verification of Weimars singular failure as the validation of its dangerous potential. 59
Fritzsches was a wonderful metaphor for Weimar Germany, a period of enormous creativity and experimentation in any number of fields; and it
is surely also a fruitful way to conceive of the relationship between Weimar and Nazi Germany. And yet again, as Fritzsches more skeptical
comments pointed out the laboratory didnt simply stay open; the experimenters didnt simply keep experimenting; not all the
experiments simply kept running under new management.60 Particular kinds of experiments were not permitted in
the Third Reich: those founded on the idea of the toleration of difference ; those that defined difference as a psychological,
political, or cultural fact to be understood and managed, rather than as a form of deviance or subversion to be repressed or eliminated; those
founded on the idea of integration through selfdirected participation (as opposed to integration through orchestrated
and obedient participation); and those that aimed at achieving a stable pluralism. There were many such experiments under
way in the Weimar period; given the extent to which the political fabric of the Weimar Republic was rent by ideological differences, they were
often of particular importance and urgency.
Many of those experiments appeared to be failing by the end of the 1920s; and that in itself was a critically important reason for the appeal of the
ideas championed by the Nazis. The totalitarian and biological conception of national unity was in part a response to the apparent failure of a
democratic and pluralist model of social and political integration. And yet, many of those very same experiments were revived,
with enormous success, after 1949. Examples from my own field of research might include the development of a
profession of social work that claimed to be a value-neutral foundation for cooperation between social workers of
radically differing ideological orientation; the development of a psychoanalytic, rather than psychiatric,
interpretation of deviance (neurosis replaces inherited brain defects); and the use of corporatist structures of governance
within the welfare bureaucracy. These mechanisms did not work perfectly. But they were a continuation of
experiments undertaken in the Weimar period and shut down in 1933; and they did contribute to the stabilization
of a pluralist democracy. That was not a historically trivial or selfevident achievement , either in Germany or elsewhere. It
required time, ingenuity, and a large-scale convergence of long-term historical forces. We should be alive to its importance as a
feature of modernity.
As Fritzsches review makes clear, then, much of the recent literature seems to imply that National Socialism was a product
of the success of a modernity that ends in 1945; but it could just as easily be seen as a temporary failure of
modernity, the success of which would only come in the 1950s and 1960s. As Paul Betts recently remarked, we should
not present the postwar period as a redemptive tale of modernism triumphant and cast Nazism as merely a
regressive interlude. But neither should we dismiss the fact that such a narrative would be, so to speak, half true
that the democratic welfare state is no less a product of modernity than is totalitarianism.
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AT: Biopower Alt Fails (Biopower Can Be Good)

Their critique only focuses on the dark side of modernity, masking the achievements of
biopolitical modernity which is the large scale absence of mass murder not its cause
A second example is Geoff Eleys masterful synthetic introduction to a collection of essays published in 1996 under
the title Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 18701930. Eley set forth two research agendas derived from
his review of recent hypotheses regarding the origins and nature of Nazism. One was to discover what allowed so
many people to identify with the Nazis. The second was that we explore the ways in which welfare policy
contributed to Nazism, by examining the production of new values, new mores, new social practices, new ideas
about the good and efficient society. Eley suggested that we examine strategies of policing and constructions of
criminality, notions of the normal and the deviant, the production and regulation of sexuality, the . . . understanding
of the socially valued individual . . . the coalescence of racialized thinking . . .62 So far so good; but why stop
there? Why not examine the expanding hold of the language of rights on the political imagination, or the
disintegration of traditional authority under the impact of the explosive expansion of the public sphere? Why not
pursue a clearer understanding of ideas about the nature of citizenship in the modern state; about the potentials of a
participatory social and political order; about human needs and human rights to have those needs met; about the
liberation of the individual (including her sexual liberation, her liberation from ignorance and sickness, her
liberation from social and economic powerlessness); about the physical and psychological dangers created by the
existing social order and how to reduce them, the traumas it inflicted and how to heal them? In short, why not
examine how the construction of the social the ideas and practices of the modern biopolitical interventionist
complex contributed to the development of a democratic politics and humane social policies between 1918 and
1930, and again after 1945? Like Fritzsches essay, Eleys accurately reflected the tone of most of those it
introduced. In the body of the volume, Elizabeth Domansky, for example, pointed out that biopolitics did not
automatically or naturally lead to the rise of National Socialism, but rather provided . . . the political Right in
Weimar with the opportunity to capitalize on a discursive strategy that could successfully compete with liberal and
socialist strategies.63 This is correct; but the language of biopolitics was demonstrably one on which liberals,
socialists, and advocates of a democratic welfare state could also capitalize, and did. Or again, Jean Quataert
remarkedquite rightly, I believe that the most progressive achievements of the Weimar welfare state were
completely embedded in biopolitical discourse. She also commented that Nazi policy was continuous with what
passed as the ruling knowledge of the time and was a product of an extreme form of technocratic reason and
early twentieth-century modernitys dark side. The implication seems to be that progressive welfare policy was
fundamentally dark; but it seems more accurate to conclude that biopolitics had a variety of potentials.64
Again, the point here is not that any of the interpretations offered in these pieces are wrong; instead, it is that we are,
collectively, so focused on unmasking the negative potentials and realities of modernity that we have constructed a
true, but very one-sided picture. The pathos of this picture is undeniable, particularly for a generation of historians
raised on the Manichean myth forged in the crucible of World War II and the Cold War of the democratic
welfare state. And as a rhetorical gesture, this analysis works magnificently we explode the narcissistic selfadmiration of democratic modernity by revealing the dark, manipulative, murderous potential that lurks within, thus
arriving at a healthy, mature sort of melancholy. But this gesture too often precludes asking what else biopolitics was
doing, besides manipulating people, reducing them to pawns in the plans of technocrats, and paving the way for
massacre. In 1989 Detlev Peukert argued that any adequate picture of modernity must include both its
achievements and its pathologies social reform as well as Machbarkeitswahn, the growth of rational
relations between people as well as the swelling instrumental goal-rationality, the liberation of artistic and
scientific creativity as well as the loss of substance and absence of limits [Haltlosigkeit].65 Yet he himself wrote
nothing like such a balanced history, focusing exclusively on Nazism and on the negative half of each of these
binaries; and that focus has remained characteristic of the literature as a whole.
What I want to suggest here is that the function of the rhetorical or explanatory framework surrounding our
conception of modernity seems to be in danger of being inverted. The investigation of the history of modern
biopolitics has enabled new understandings of National Socialism; now we need to take care that our understanding
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of National Socialism does not thwart a realistic assessment of modern biopolitics. Much of the literature leaves one
with the sense that a modern world in which mass murder is not happening is just that: a place where something is
not yet happening. Normalization is not yet giving way to exclusion, scientific study and classification of
populations is not yet giving way to concentration camps and extermination campaigns. Mass murder, in short, is the
historical problem; the absence of mass murder is not a problem, it does not need to be investigated or explained.
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AT: Biopower Key to Democracy

Biopolitics is good its key to promote democracy and check totalitarianism
All of these questions, however, still address primarily the activities of technocrats and social managers. We are still
asking how bad social engineering is. In fact, this entire discourse seems to be shaped by the fundamental suspicion
that trying actively to create a better society is always and necessarily a bad thing an undemocratic, manipulative,
oppressive thing.98 This assumption is rooted in a particular understanding of the micropolitics of expertise and
professionalism. It is frequently argued that modern forms of technical knowledge and licensing create relations of
dominance and subordination between experts and their clients. Thus Paul Weindling, for example, asserted that,
Professionalism, reinforced by official powers, meant that welfare defined new spheres for the exercising of
coercion . . . The new technocracy of professions and welfare administrators might be seen as erecting
antidemocratic and coercive social structures by extending the welfare state. Michael Schwartz, similarly, observed
in 1992 that even in the democratic variant of science there was a tendency to technocratic elitism and the
scientistic objectification of humanity.99 And Detlev Peukert reminded us that rationalization as a strategy of
experts inherently contained [barg systematisch] the danger of the technocratic arrogance of experts, the
overwhelming of those affected by the catalog of norms for rational living derived from the expert knowledge of the
professions, but not from the experience of those affected.100 Even more sinister, again, is the tendency of these
same experts to exclude, stigmatize, and pathologize those they are not able to normalize. Zygmunt Bauman has
presented the same case with a particular clarity, concluding that since modernity is about order, and order always
implies its opposite, chaos, intolerance is . . . the natural inclination of modern practice. Construction of order sets
the limits to incorporation and admission. It calls for the denial of rights, and of the grounds, of everything that
cannot be assimilated for the de-legitimation of the other.101
At its simplest, this view of the politics of expertise and professionalization is certainly plausible. Historically
speaking, however, the further conjecture that this micropolitical dynamic creates authoritarian, totalitarian, or
homicidal potentials at the level of the state does not seem very tenable. Historically, it appears that the greatest
advocates of political democracy in Germany leftliberals and Social Democrats have been also the greatest
advocates of every kind of biopolitical social engineering, from public health and welfare programs through social
insurance to city planning and, yes, even eugenics.102 The state they built has intervened in social relations to an
(until recently) ever-growing degree; professionalization has run ever more rampant in Western societies; the
production of scientistic and technocratic expert knowledge has proceeded at an ever more frenetic pace. And yet,
from the perspective of the first years of the millennium, the second half of the twentieth century appears to be the
great age of democracy in precisely those societies where these processes have been most in evidence. What is
more, the interventionist state has steadily expanded both the rights and the resources of virtually every citizen
including those who were stigmatized and persecuted as biologically defective under National Socialism. Perhaps
these processes have created an ever more restrictive iron cage of rationality in European societies. But if so, it
seems clear that there is no necessary correlation between rationalization and authoritarian politics; the opposite
seems in fact to be at least equally true.
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Biopower is key to democracy five reasons
<Why was Europes twentieth century, in addition to being the age of biopolitics and totalitarianism, also
the age of biopolitics and democracy? How should we theorize this relationship? I would like to offer five
propositions as food for thought.
First, again, the concept of the essential legitimacy and social value of individual needs, and hence the
imperative of individual rights as the political mechanism for getting them met, has historically been a cornerstone
of some strategies of social management. To borrow a phrase from Detlev Peukert, this does not mean that
democracy was the absolutely inevitable outcome of the development of biopolitics; but it does mean that it was
one among other possible outcomes of the crisis of modern civilization.112
Second, I would argue that there is also a causal fit between cultures of expertise, or scientism, and
democracy. Of course, scientism subverted the real, historical ideological underpinnings of authoritarian polities
in Europe in the nineteenth century. It also in a sense replaced them. Democratic citizens have the freedom to ask
why; and in a democratic system there is therefore a bias toward pragmatic, objective or naturalized answers
since values are often regarded as matters of opinion, with which any citizen has a right to differ. Scientific fact is
democracys substitute for revealed truth, expertise its substitute for authority. The age of democracy is the age of
professionalization, of technocracy; there is a deeper connection between the two, this is not merely a matter of
historical coincidence.
Third, the vulnerability of explicitly moral values in democratic societies creates a problem of legitimation .
Of course there are moral values that all democratic societies must in some degree uphold (individual autonomy and
freedom, human dignity, fairness, the rule of law), and those values are part of their strength. But as peoples states,
democratic social and political orders are also implicitly and often explicitly expected to do something positive and
tangible to enhance the well-being of their citizens. One of those things, of course, is simply to provide a rising
standard of living; and the visible and astonishing success of that project has been crucial to all Western democracies
since 1945. Another is the provision of a rising standard of health; and here again, the democratic welfare state has
delivered the goods in concrete, measurable, and extraordinary ways. In this sense, it may not be so
simpleminded, after all, to insist on considering the fact that modern biopolitics has worked phenomenally well.
Fourth, it was precisely the democratizing dynamic of modern societies that made the question of the
quality of the mass of the population seem and not only in the eyes of the dominant classes increasingly
important. Again, in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the expected level of the average
citizens active participation in European political, social, cultural, and economic life rose steadily, as did the
expected level of her effective influence in all these spheres. This made it a matter of increasing importance whether
the average person was more or less educated and informed, more or less moral and self-disciplined, more or less
healthy and physically capable, more or less socially competent. And modern social reform biopolitics defined
very broadlyseemed to offer the possibility of creating the human foundation for a society ordered by autonomous
participation, rather than by obedience. This too was part of the Machbarkeitswahn of modernity; but this was
potentially a democratic Wahn, not only an authoritarian one.
Fifth, historically there has been a clear connection between the concept of political citizenship and the idea
of moral autonomy. The political subject (or citizen as opposed to the political subject, who is an object of state
action) is also a moral subject. The citizens capacity for moral reasoning is the legitimating postulate of all
democratic politics. The regulation of sexual and reproductive life has long been understood in European societies to
be among the most fundamental issues of morality. There is, therefore, a connection between political citizenship on
the one hand, and the sexual and reproductive autonomy implied in the individual control that is a central element of
the modern biopolitical complex, on the other. The association in the minds of conservatives in the late imperial
period between democracy and declining fertility was not a panicky delusion; panicky it certainly was, but it was
also a genuine insight into a deeper ideological connection.113>
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Biopolitics is not totalitarian, in fact its good it has empirically lead to the strengthening
of liberal democracy which has on-balance prevented the violence they describe and been
used against oppressive structures
In short, the continuities between early twentieth-century biopolitical discourse and the practices of the welfare state
in our own time are unmistakasble. Both are instances of the disciplinary society and of biopolitical, regulatory, social-engineering modernity, and
they share that genealogy with more authoritarian states, including the National Socialist state, but also fascist Italy, for example. And it is certainly fruitful to view
analysis can easily become superficial and misleading, because it obfuscates the
profoundly different strategic and local dynamics of power in the two kinds of regimes. Clearly the democratic
welfare state is not only formally but also substantively quite different from totalitarianism. Above all , again, it has
nowhere developed the fateful, radicalizing dynamic that characterized National Socialism (or for that matter
Stalinism), the psychotic logic that leads from economistic population management to mass murder. Again, there is
always the potential for such a discursive regime to generate coercive policies. In those cases in which the regime of rights does not
successfully produce health, such a system can and historically does create compulsory programs to enforce it. But again, there are political and
policy potentials and constraints in such a structuring of biopolitics that are very different from those of National
Socialist Germany. Democratic biopolitical regimes require, enable, and incite a degree of self-direction and
participation that is functionally incompatible with authoritarian or totalitarian structures. And this pursuit of
biopolitical ends through a regime of democratic citizenship does appear, historically, to have imposed increasingly
narrow limits on coercive policies, and to have generated a logic or imperative of increasing liberalization.
Despite limitations imposed by political context and the slow pace of discursive change, I think this is the
unmistakable message of the really very impressive waves of legislative and welfare reforms in the 1920s or the
1970s in Germany.90
Of course it is not yet clear whether this is an irreversible dynamic of such systems. Nevertheless, such regimes are
characterized by sufficient degrees of autonomy (and of the potential for its expansion) for sufficient numbers of
people that I think it becomes useful to conceive of them as productive of a strategic configuration of power
relations that might fruitfully be analyzed as a condition of liberty, just as much as they are productive of
constraint, oppression, or manipulation. At the very least, totalitarianism cannot be the sole orientation point for our
understanding of biopolitics, the only end point of the logic of social engineering.
This notion is not at all at odds with the core of Foucauldian (and Peukertian) theory. Democratic welfare states are
regimes of power/knowledge no less than early twentieth-century totalitarian states; these systems are not
opposites, in the sense that they are two alternative ways of organizing the same thing. But they are two very
different ways of organizing it. The concept power should not be read as a universal stifling night of oppression,
manipulation, and entrapment, in which all political and social orders are grey, are essentially or effectively the
same. Power is a set of social relations, in which individuals and groups have varying degrees of autonomy and
effective subjectivity. And discourse is, as Foucault argued, tactically polyvalent. Discursive elements (like the
various elements of biopolitics) can be combined in different ways to form parts of quite different strategies (like
totalitarianism or the democratic welfare state); they cannot be assigned to one place in a structure, but rather
circulate. The varying possible constellations of power in modern societies create multiple modernities, modern
societies with quite radically differing potentials.
them from this very broad perspective. But that
Biopolitics is not the problem in and of itself its biopolitics deployed in totalitarians
societies which is bad our strengthening of democratic structures prevents, not causes,
their impact
In an important programmatic statement of 1996 Geoff Eley celebrated the fact that Foucaults ideas have fundamentally directed attention away from institutionally
centered conceptions of government and the state . . . and toward a dispersed and decentered notion of power and its microphysics.48 The broader, deeper, and less
But the powerproducing effects in Foucaults microphysical sense (Eley) of the construction of social bureaucracies and social
knowledge, of an entire institutional apparatus and system of practice ( Jean Quataert), simply do not explain Nazi
visible ideological consensus on technocratic reason and the ethical unboundedness of science was the focus of his interest.49
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policy.50 The destructive dynamic of Nazism was a product not so much of a particular modern set of ideas as of a
particular modern political structure, one that could realize the disastrous potential of those ideas. What was critical
was not the expansion of the instruments and disciplines of biopolitics, which occurred everywhere in Europe.
Instead, it was the principles that guided how those instruments and disciplines were organized and used, and the
external constraints on them. In National Socialism, biopolitics was shaped by a totalitarian conception of social
management focused on the power and ubiquity of the vlkisch state. In democratic societies, biopolitics has
historically been constrained by a rights-based strategy of social management. This is a point to which I will return shortly. For now,
the point is that what was decisive was actually politics at the level of the state.
Other states passed compulsory sterilization laws in the 1930s indeed,

individual states in the United States had already begun doing so in 1907. Yet they did not proceed to the next steps adopted by
National Socialism mass sterilization, mass eugenic abortion and murder of the defective. Individual figures in, for
example, the U.S. did make such suggestions. But neither the political structures of democratic states nor their legal and political
principles permitted such policies actually being enacted. Nor did the scale of forcible sterilization in other countries
match that of the Nazi program. I do not mean to suggest that such programs were not horrible; but in a democratic
political context they did not develop the dynamic of constant radicalization and escalation that characterized Nazi
policies.
A comparative framework can help us to clarify this point.
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AT: Biopower Key to Democracyy

Biopower is key to democracy five reasons
<Why was Europes twentieth century, in addition to being the age of biopolitics and totalitarianism, also
the age of biopolitics and democracy? How should we theorize this relationship? I would like to offer five
propositions as food for thought.
First, again, the concept of the essential legitimacy and social value of individual needs, and hence the
imperative of individual rights as the political mechanism for getting them met, has historically been a cornerstone
of some strategies of social management. To borrow a phrase from Detlev Peukert, this does not mean that
democracy was the absolutely inevitable outcome of the development of biopolitics; but it does mean that it was
one among other possible outcomes of the crisis of modern civilization.112
Second, I would argue that there is also a causal fit between cultures of expertise, or scientism, and
democracy. Of course, scientism subverted the real, historical ideological underpinnings of authoritarian polities
in Europe in the nineteenth century. It also in a sense replaced them. Democratic citizens have the freedom to ask
why; and in a democratic system there is therefore a bias toward pragmatic, objective or naturalized answers
since values are often regarded as matters of opinion, with which any citizen has a right to differ. Scientific fact is
democracys substitute for revealed truth, expertise its substitute for authority. The age of democracy is the age of
professionalization, of technocracy; there is a deeper connection between the two, this is not merely a matter of
historical coincidence.
Third, the vulnerability of explicitly moral values in democratic societies creates a problem of legitimation .
Of course there are moral values that all democratic societies must in some degree uphold (individual autonomy and
freedom, human dignity, fairness, the rule of law), and those values are part of their strength. But as peoples states,
democratic social and political orders are also implicitly and often explicitly expected to do something positive and
tangible to enhance the well-being of their citizens. One of those things, of course, is simply to provide a rising
standard of living; and the visible and astonishing success of that project has been crucial to all Western democracies
since 1945. Another is the provision of a rising standard of health; and here again, the democratic welfare state has
delivered the goods in concrete, measurable, and extraordinary ways. In this sense, it may not be so
simpleminded, after all, to insist on considering the fact that modern biopolitics has worked phenomenally well.
Fourth, it was precisely the democratizing dynamic of modern societies that made the question of the
quality of the mass of the population seem and not only in the eyes of the dominant classes increasingly
important. Again, in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the expected level of the average
citizens active participation in European political, social, cultural, and economic life rose steadily, as did the
expected level of her effective influence in all these spheres. This made it a matter of increasing importance whether
the average person was more or less educated and informed, more or less moral and self-disciplined, more or less
healthy and physically capable, more or less socially competent. And modern social reform biopolitics defined
very broadlyseemed to offer the possibility of creating the human foundation for a society ordered by autonomous
participation, rather than by obedience. This too was part of the Machbarkeitswahn of modernity; but this was
potentially a democratic Wahn, not only an authoritarian one.
Fifth, historically there has been a clear connection between the concept of political citizenship and the idea
of moral autonomy. The political subject (or citizen as opposed to the political subject, who is an object of state
action) is also a moral subject. The citizens capacity for moral reasoning is the legitimating postulate of all
democratic politics. The regulation of sexual and reproductive life has long been understood in European societies to
be among the most fundamental issues of morality. There is, therefore, a connection between political citizenship on
the one hand, and the sexual and reproductive autonomy implied in the individual control that is a central element of
the modern biopolitical complex, on the other. The association in the minds of conservatives in the late imperial
period between democracy and declining fertility was not a panicky delusion; panicky it certainly was, but it was
also a genuine insight into a deeper ideological connection.113>
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AT: Biopower Key to Value to Life (AT: Bare Life)

Biopower does not result in bare-life increase in biopower increases the potentialities of
life
Ojakangas, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in Finland, 2005
(Mika, Impossible Dialogue on Bio-power, Foucault Studies, No. 2, p. 5-28, May)
<Moreover, life as the object and the subject of bio power given that life is everywhere, it becomes everywhere
is in no way bare, but is as the synthetic notion of life implies, the multiplicity of the forms of life, from the nutritive
life to the intellectual life, from the biological levels of life to the political existence of man .43 Instead of bare life,
the life of biopower is a plenitude of life, as Foucault puts it.44 Agamben is certainly right in saying that the
production of bare life is, and has been since Aristotle, a main strategy of the sovereign power to establish itself to
the same degree that sovereignty has been the main fiction of juridicoinstitutional thinking from Jean Bodin to Carl
Schmitt. The sovereign power is, indeed, based on bare life because it is capable of confronting life merely when
stripped off and isolated from all forms of life, when the entire existence of a man is reduced to a bare life and
exposed to an unconditional threat of death. Life is undoubtedly sacred for the sovereign power in the sense that
Agamben defines it. It can be taken away without a homicide being committed. In the case of biopower, however,
this does not hold true. In order to function properly, biopower cannot reduce life to the level of bare life, because
bare life is life that can only be taken away or allowed to persist which also makes understandable the vast critique
of sovereignty in the era of biopower. Biopower needs a notion of life that corresponds to its aims. What then is
the aim of biopower? Its aim is not to produce bare life but, as Foucault emphasizes, to multiply life,45 to
produce extralife.46 Biopower needs, in other words, a notion of life which enables it to accomplish this task.
The modern synthetic notion of life endows it with such a notion. It enables bio power to invest life through and
through, to optimize forces, aptitudes, and life in general without at the same time making them more difficult to
govern. 47
It could be argued, of course, that instead of bare life (zoe) the form of life (bios) functions as the foundation of bio
power. However, there is no room either for a bios in the modern biopolitical order because every bios has always
been, as Agamben emphasizes, the result of the exclusion of zoe from the political realm. The modern biopolitical
order does not exclude anything not even in the form of inclusive exclusion. As a matter of fact, in the era of
biopolitics, life is already a bios that is only its own zoe. It has already moved into the site that Agamben suggests
as the remedy of the political pathologies of modernity, that is to say, into the site where politics is freed from every
ban and a form of life is wholly exhausted in bare life.48 At the end of Homo Sacer, Agamben gives this life the
name formoflife, signifying always and above all possibilities of life, always and above all power, understood
as potentiality (potenza).49 According to Agamben, there would be no power that could have any hold over mens
existence if life were understood as a formoflife. However, it is precisely this life, life as untamed power and
potentiality, that biopower invests and optimizes. If biopower multiplies and optimizes life, it does so, above all,
by multiplying and optimizing potentialities of life, by fostering and generating forms oflife. 50>
The purpose of biopolitical actions of the state is to increase the welfare and happiness of
society
<To say that biopower stands outside the law does not yet mean that it stands outside state power. On the
contrary, as we have already noted and as Foucault himself has shown, it was precisely the modern sovereign state
that first started to use biopolitical methods extensively for the care of individuals and populations. Undoubtedly,
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the original purpose of these methods was to increase state power, but its aim has also been, from the beginning, the
welfare of the individual and of the entire population, the improvement of their condition, the increase of their
wealth, their longevity, health and even happiness71 happiness of all and everyone (omnes et singulatim): The
sole purpose of the police, one of the first institutional loci of the nascent bio power, is to lead man to the utmost
happiness to be enjoyed in this life, wrote De Lamare in Treaty on the Police at the beginning of the eighteenth
century.72 According to Foucault, one should not, however, concentrate only on the modern state in looking for the
origin of biopower. One should examine also the religious tradition of the West, especially the JudeoChristian idea
of a shepherd as a political leader of his people. 73>
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AT: Biopower AT: Its Racist

Biopower is used to care for individuals. Racism only occurs when sovereign power and
biopower combine. And, once a bio-political society kills its populace, it ceases to be
biopolitical
<According to Foucault, it is that transformation which constitutes the background of what he calls
governmentality, that is to say, biopolitical rationality within the modern state. 78 It explains why political power
that is at work within the modern state as a legal framework of unity is, from the beginning of a states existence,
accompanied by a power that can be called pastoral. Its role is not to threaten lives but to ensure, sustain, and
improve them, the lives of each and every one.79 Its means are not law and violence but care, the care for
individual life.80 It is precisely care, the Christian power of love (agape), as the opposite of all violence that is at
issue in biopower. This is not to say, however, that biopower would be nothing but love and care. Biopower is
love and care only to the same extent that the law, according to Benjamin, is violence, namely, by its origin.81
Admittedly, in the era of biopolitics, as Foucault writes, even massacres have become vital.82 This is
not the case, however, because violence is hidden in the foundation of biopolitics, as Agamben believes. Although
the twentieth century thanatopolitics is the reverse of biopolitics,83 it should not be understood, according to
Foucault, as the effect, the result, or the logical consequence of biopolitical rationality.84 Rather, it should be
understood, as he suggests, as an outcome of the demonic combination of the sovereign power and bio power, of
the citycitizen game and the shepherdflock game85 or as I would like to put it, of patria potestas (fathers
unconditional power of life and death over his son) and cura materna (mothers unconditional duty to take care of
her children). Although massacres can be carried out in the name of care, they do not follow from the logic of bio
power for which death is the object of taboo.86 They follow from the logic of sovereign power, which legitimates
killing by whatever arguments it chooses, be it God, Nature, or life.
Indeed, the imperative to improve life, to prolong its duration, to improve its chances, to avoid accidents,
and to compensate for failings,87 may also legitimate killing. According to Foucault, it may legitimate killing if it
assumes the following logic of argumentation of racism:
The more inferior species die out, the more abnormal individual are eliminated, the fewer degenerates there will be in the
species as a whole, and the more I as species rather than individual can live, the stronger I will be, the more vigorous I
88
will be. I will be able to proliferate.
It is the logic of racism, according to Foucault, that makes killing acceptable in modern bio political societies. This is not to say, however, that
biopolitical societies are necessarily more racist than other societies. It is to say that in the era of bio politics, only racism, because it is a
89
determination immanent to life, can justify the murderous function of the State. However, racism can only justify killing killing
that does not follow from the logic of biopower but from the logic of the sovereign power. Racism is, in other words, the
only way the sovereign power, the right to kill, can be maintained in biopolitical societies: Racism is bound up with workings of a State that is
90
obliged to use race, the elimination of races and the purification of the race, to exercise its sovereign power. Racism is, in other words, a
91
discourse quite compatible with biopolitics through which biopower can be most smoothly transformed into the form of sovereign
power.
A biopolitical society that wishes to exercise the old sovereign

92
right to kill, even in the name of race, ceases to be a mere biopolitical society, practicing merely biopolitics. It
Such transformation, however, changes everything.
becomes a demonic combination of sovereign power and bio power, exercising sovereign means for bio political
ends. In its most monstrous form, it becomes the Third Reich. For this reason, I cannot subscribe to Agambens thesis, according
93
to which biopolitics is absolutized in the Third Reich. To be sure, the Third Reich used biopolitical means it was a state in which insurance
94
and reassurance were universal and aimed for biopolitical ends in order to improve the living conditions of the German people but so did
many other nations in the 1930s. What distinguishes the Third Reich from those other nations is the fact that, alongside its biopolitical apparatus,
it erected a massive machinery of death. It became a society that unleashed murderous power, or in other words, the old sovereign right to take
95
life throughout the entire social body, as Foucault puts it. It is not, therefore, biopolitics that was absolutized in the Third Reich as a
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matter of fact, biopolitical measures in the NaziGermany were, although harsh, relatively modest in scale compared to some presentday welfare
states but rather the sovereign power:
This power to kill, which ran through the entire social body of Nazi society, was first manifested when the power to take
life, the power of life and death, was granted not only to the State but to a whole series of individuals, to a considerable
number of people (such as the SA, the SS, and so on). Ultimately, everyone in the Nazi State had the power of life and
death over his or her neighbours, if only because of the practice of informing, which effectively meant doing away with the
96
people next door, or having them done away with.
The only thing that the Third Reich actually absolutizes is , in other words, the sovereignty of power and therefore,
the nakedness of bare life at least if sovereignty is defined in the Agambenian manner: The sovereign is the one
with respect to whom all men are potentially homines sacri, and homo sacer is the one with respect to whom all men
act as sovereigns. 97>
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AT: Biopower AT: Its Racist

State racism only occurs when sovereign power and biopower are combined. Biopower
itself is not bad it is used to improve peoples conditions of living
<For Foucault, the coexistence in political structures of large destructive mechanisms and institutions oriented
toward the care of individual life was something puzzling: It is one of the central antinomies of our political
reason.110 However, it was an antinomy precisely because in principle the sovereign power and biopower are
mutually exclusive. How is it possible that the care of individual life paves the way for mass slaughters? Although
Foucault could never give a satisfactory answer to this question, he was convinced that mass slaughters are not the
effect or the logical conclusion of bio political rationality. I am also convinced about that. To be sure, it can be
argued that sovereign power and biopower are reconciled within the modern state, which legitimates killing by bio
political arguments. Especially, it can be argued that these powers are reconciled in the Third Reich in which they
seemed to coincide exactly.111 To my mind, however, neither the modern state nor the Third Reich in which the
monstrosity of the modern state is crystallized are the syntheses of the sovereign power and bio power, but, rather,
the institutional loci of their irreconcilable tension. This is, I believe, what Foucault meant when he wrote about
their demonic combination.
In fact, the history of modern Western societies would be quite incomprehensible without taking into
account that there exists a form of power which refrains from killing but which nevertheless is capable of directing
peoples lives. The effectiveness of biopower can be seen lying precisely in that it refrains and withdraws before
every demand of killing, even though these demands would derive from the demand of justice. In biopolitical
societies, according to Foucault, capital punishment could not be maintained except by invoking less the enormity of
the crime itself than the monstrosity of the criminal: One had the right to kill those who represented a kind of
biological danger to others.112 However, given that the right to kill is precisely a sovereign right, it can be
argued that the biopolitical societies analyzed by Foucault were not entirely biopolitical. Perhaps, there neither has
been nor can be a society that is entirely biopolitical. Nevertheless, the fact is that presentday European societies
have abolished capital punishment. In them, there are no longer exceptions. It is the very right to kill that has been
called into question. However, it is not called into question because of enlightened moral sentiments, but rather
because of the deployment of biopolitical thinking and practice.
For all these reasons, Agambens thesis, according to which the concentration camp is the fundamental bio
political paradigm of the West, has to be corrected.113 The biopolitical paradigm of the West is not the
concentration camp, but, rather, the presentday welfare society and, instead of homo sacer, the paradigmatic
figure of the biopolitical society can be seen, for example, in the middleclass Swedish socialdemocrat. Although
this figure is an object and a product of the huge biopolitical machinery, it does not mean that he is permitted to
kill without committing homicide. Actually, the fact that he eventually dies, seems to be his greatest crime against
the machinery. (In biopolitical societies, death is not only something to be hidden away, but, also, as Foucault
stresses, the most shameful thing of all. 114) Therefore, he is not exposed to an unconditional threat of death, but
rather to an unconditional retreat of all dying. In fact, the biopolitical machinery does not want to threaten him, but
to encourage him, with all its material and spiritual capacities, to live healthily, to live long and to live happily
even when, in biological terms, he should have been dead long ago.115 This is because biopower is not bloody
power over bare life for its own sake but pure power over all life for the sake of the living. It is not power but the
living, the condition of all life individual as well as collective that is the measure of the success of bio power.>
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AT: Foucalt Permutation Solvency

Foucault ignores juridical power as a key source of violence for the constitutional state. We
can strategically reform the law and use the extension of rights to hedge against power
Foucault himself was engaged in these very same political like the Aff
Habermas, Permanent Visiting Professor at Northwestern, 1987 (Jrgen, The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity, p. 289-291)
Foucault begins by analyzing the normative language game of rational natural law in connection with the latent functions that the discourse on authority has in the age of Classicism for the
establishment and the exercise of absolutist state power. The sovereignty of the state that has a monopoly on violence is also expressed in the demonstrative forms of punishment that Foucault
depicts in connection with the procedures of torture and ordeal. From the same functionalist perspective, he then describes the advances made by the Classical language game during the reform
era of the Enlightenment. They culminate, on the one hand, in the Kantian theory of morality and law and, on the other hand, in utilitarianism. Interestingly enough, Foucault docs not go into the
fact that these in turn serve the revolutionary establishment of a constitutionalized slate power, which is to say, of a political order transferred ideologically from the sovereignty of the prince to
Because
Foucault filters out the internal aspects of the de velopment of law, he can inconspicuously take a third and decisive
step: Whereas the sovereign power of Classical formations of power is constituted in concepts of right and law, this
normative language game is supposed to be inapplicable to the disciplinary power of the modern age; the latter is
suited only to empirical, at least nonjuridical, concepts having to do with the factual steering and organization of the behavioral
modes and the motives of a population rendered increas ingly manipulable by science: "The procedures of normalization come to be ever more
the sovereignty of the people. This kind of regime is, after all, correlated with those normalizing forms of punishment that constitute the proper theme of Discipline and Punish.
constantly engaged in the colonization of those of the law. I believe that all this can explain the global functioning of what I would call a society of normalization." 33 As the transition from
the complex life-context of modern societies as a whole can as a matter of fact

be less and less construed in the natural-law categories of con tractual relationships. However, this circumstance
cannot justify the strategic decision (so full of consequences for Foucault's theory) to neglect the development of normative structures
in connection with the modern formation of power . As soon as Foucault takes up the threads of the biopolitical establishment of disciplinary power, he
lets drop the threads of the legal organization of the exercise of power and of the legitimation of the order of
domination. Because of this, the ungrounded impression arises that the bourgeois constitutional state is a
dysfunctional relic from the period of absolutism . This uncircumspect leveling of culture and politics to immediate substrates of the application of violence
explains the ostensible gaps in his presentation. That his history of modern penal justice is detached from the development of the
constitutional state might be defended on methodological grounds. The theoretical narrowing down to the system of
carrying out punishment is more questionable. As soon as he passes from the Classical to the modern age, Foucault pays no attention
whatsoever to penal law and to the law governing penal process. Otherwise, he would have had to submit the
unmistakable gains in liberality and legal security, and the expansion of civil-rights guarantees even in this area, to
an exact interpretation in terms of the theory of power. However, his presentation is utterly distorted by the fact that he also filters out of the
history of penal practices itself all aspects of legal regulation. In prisons, indeed, just as in clinics, schools, and military
installations, there do exist those "special power relationships" that have by no means remained undisturbed by an
energetically advancing enactment of legal rights Foucault himself has been politi cally engaged for this cause. This
selectivity does not take anything away, from the importance of his fascinating unmasking of the capillary effects of power. But his generalization, in terms of the theory of
power, of such a selective reading hinders Foucault from perceiving the phenomenon actually in need of explanation: In the
welfare-state democracies of the West, the spread of legal regulation has the structure dilemma, because it is the legal means for securing
freedom that themselves endanger the freedom of their presumptive beneficiaries. Under the premises of his theory of power, Foucault so levels down the complexity
of societal modernization that the disturbing paradoxes of this process cannot even become apparent to him.
doctrines of natural law to those of natural societies shows, 34
The legal system provides an avenue for resistance to biopower

Baxter, Law Professor at Boston University, 1996
(Hugh, Review, Bringing Foucault into Law and Law into Foucault, 48 Stan. L. Rev. 449, January, Lexis)
This interpretation of Siegel's article suggests a strategy for appropriating Foucault's insights. Foucault offers, first
and foremost, a way of elaborating the social and historical setting in which legal structures and communications
operate. His account of the "network" or "dense web" n282 of social relations emphasizes the importance of
knowledge, particularly expert knowledge, in the process of constituting, reproducing, contesting, and transforming
relations of power. Foucault's polemical dismissals notwithstanding, law is both product and producer of this
ceaseless process. Law, no less than the discursive practices [*478] Foucault analyzed in detail, provides resources
both for the exercise of power and for resistance to power.
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AT: Foucalt Permutation Solvency

Foucalts form of resistance is ineffective at dealing with global oppression a combination
of action and postmodernism is best
Cook 92 (Anthony, Associate Professor at Georgetown Law School, A Diversity of Influence: Reflections on
Postmodernism, New Eng. L. Rev. 751)
Several things trouble me about Foucault's approach. First, he nurtures in many ways an unhealthy insularity that
fails to connect localized struggle to other localized struggles and to modes of oppression like classism, racism,
sexism, and homophobia that transcend their localized articulation within this particular law school, that particular
law firm, within this particular church or that particular factory.
I note among some followers of Foucault an unhealthy propensity to rely on rich, thick, ethnographic type
descriptions of power relations playing themselves out in these localized laboratories of social conflict. This reliance
on detailed description and its concomitant deemphasis of explanation begins, ironically, to look like a regressive
positivism which purports to sever the descriptive from the normative, the is from the ought and law from morality
and politics.
Unless we are to be trapped in this Foucaultian moment of postmodern insularity, we must resist the temptation to
sever description from explanation. Instead, our objective should be to explain what we describe in light of a vision
embracing values that we make explicit in struggle. These values should act as magnets that link our particularized
struggles to other struggles and more global critiques of power. In other words, we must not, as Foucault seems all
too willing to do, forsake the possibility of more universal narratives that, while tempered by postmodern insights,
attempt to say and do something about the oppressive world in which we live.
Second, Foucault's emphasis on the techniques and discourses of knowledge that constitute the human subject often
diminishes, if not abrogates, the role of human agency. Agency is of tremendous importance in any theory of
oppression, because individuals are not simply constituted by systems of knowledge but also constitute hegemonic
and counter-hegemonic systems of knowledge as well. Critical theory must pay attention to the ways in which
oppressed people not only are victimized by ideologies of oppression but the ways they craft from these ideologies
and discourses counter-hegemonic weapons of liberation.
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AT: Foucalt No Link + Essentialism

No link smaller sites of power are not tied to the states use of global power domination
your kritik is essentializing
Wickham, Professor of Social and Political Theory at Murdoch University, 1986
(Gary, Power and Power Analysis: Beyond Foucault, Towards a Critique of Foucault, ed. Mike Gane, p.
171-172)
<Meaghan Morris and Paul Patton, who can be said to be much more sympathetic to Foucault's project than Fine,
argue that Foucault's conception of the nature of power is especially superior in its treatment of 'global forms of
domination'. They say Foucault is able to go 'behind the seemingly natural object, in order to bring to light the
particular combination of discursive and non-discursive practices which give it its distinctive historical existence'.
They offer the example of Foucault's treatment of the 'modern state':
while the central locus of power in society undoubtedly involves a certain co-ordination of the more lowly
techniques and power relations, it cannot be deduced from these. It functions also on a different register; its principle
concern is the governance of larger multiplicities: territories or populations. The birth of the modern state, Foucault
suggests is to be sought in the history of a certain art of governing populations (Morris and Patton, 1979, 9).
This passage not only repeats the knowledge/reality distinction (in the form discursive/non-discursive) or at least
seems to repeat it; to be fair to Morris and Patton they may not be equating the term 'non-discursive' with reality but
only using this term to refer to non-regularized configurations, like informal conversations, which do not as yet
warrant the label 'discourse'. It also repeats both the negative and essentialist features of Foucault's understanding of
power. It talks of power in terms of global domination and despite the gesture towards a suggestion that smaller sites
of power relations are not necessarily related to more global sites it undoubtedly constructs the more global sites,
especially the state, as unified essences which are 'above' and incorporate 'more lowly' sites. As I have argued at
several points more global sites do not exist 'above' smaller sites and incorporate them; they exist
independently of and use specific techniques to reproduce or repeat these smaller sites within their boundaries. All
we need say about the state is that rather than being a unified essence with a definite form (and I must stress that I
am levelling this criticism only at Morris and Patton's treatment of the state (in the above passage); there are of
course a multitude of theories of the state and it would be absurd to attempt a single critique which addressed them
all), the state is only a category which can be used to repeat or represent several specific practices government
practices, semi-government practices, bureaucratic practices, etc. as a grouping in specific sites. In this
way a site around the policy of managing the economy, or a site around the policy of regulating broadcasting to a
particular standard, involving the representation of the practices of several government departments, semi-government agencies, advisory bodies etc. may be said to be the state. But this is all the state is, it does not mean that these
practices constitute a fixed, separately existing category of the state. They can only be said to constitute the state if
and when they are repeated as a grouping in specific sites. In being only this the state is certainly not an alwaysimportant object of analysis something it can only be when it is constructed as an essence. So whether Foucault
produces a 'better' or 'worse' account of the state is only really important in terms of criteria produced within any
essentialist framework which so constructs the state.>
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AT: Foucalt Alt Fails = Essentialist

The alternative is essentialist and fails power relations are not unified
153-154)
<We learnt above that Foucault sees technologies of power as functioning within, as being integrated in, what he
terms particular strategies. It is to an examination of the nature and operation of strategies that we now turn. Jeff
Minson says that Foucault's use of the term strategy is not quite the same as in the 'political-cum-military' use
'Foucault's notion of a strategy denotes a regularly reproduced pattern of effects, including the (re-) drawing up of
e.g. reformative plans' (Minson, 1980, 11, his emphasis). One example of a strategy in operation which Foucault
offers is that of the continuance of the 'bourgeois strategy'.
The bourgeoisie is perfectly well aware that a new constitution or legislature will not suffice to assure its hegemony;
it realises that it has to invent a new technology ensuring the irrigation by effects of power of the whole social body
down to its smallest particles. And it was by such means that the bourgeoisie not only made a revolution but
succeeded in establishing a social hegemony which it has never relinquished (Foucault, 1980 (d), 156).
This example highlights a major problem with Foucault's notion of strategy. His treatment of this notion reinforces
the essentialist tendencies of his analytical framework for it forces us to under stand power relations as completely
unified - in the above example they are unified around the classically essentialist economic category 'bourgeoisie'
(a term which, it must be stressed, does not always signal essentialism). Minson points out that a strategy is both the
identification and unification of relations of power in operation (Minson, 1980, 10, my emphasis). Of course the
unification of relations, or practices, does not necessarily involve the invocation of an essence (whether the
unification is theorized as a strategy or not). It is possible to theorize the unity of a particular set of relations or
practices without invoking an essence. But it is only possible to do so within particular sites. Once this process
moves beyond specific sites, as it does in Foucault's case, it be comes false unification. It then necessarily involves
the invocation of an essence which is used as the principle which unifies the re lations or practices beyond their
specific sites, beyond their specific conditions of existence.>
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AT: Foucalt Alt Suffering

Foucault undermines morals and politics the alternative will only cause suffering and the
destroy all ethics
Thiele Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida 2003 [Leslie Paul, The Ethics and Politics
of Narrative, Foucalt and Heidegger: Critical Encounters, editors Rosenberg and Milchman]
<The complementarity of Heidegger's and Foucault's accounts of modern demons and saving graces should not be
too surprising. Foucault's indebtedness to and fascination with Heidegger is well documented. 1 My intent in this
chapter is neither to focus on the complementarity of these visions, nor to outline the striking philosophical and
political differences that remain in Heidegger's and Foucault's work. Rather, I attempt to make a claim for what at
first blush might appear a lost cause. Despite their originality and intellectual brilliance, Heidegger and Foucault are
often castigated as ethico-political dead-ends. They are criticized for their unwillingness or inability to supply the
grounds for sound moral and political judgment. Heidegger's embrace of Nazism, in particular, is frequently
identified as proof positive that he has little, if anything, to contribute to the ethico-political domain. The standard
charge is that his highly abstract form of philosophizing, empyrean ontological vantage point, and depreciation of
das Man undermines moral principle and political responsibility. From his philosophical heights, it is
suggested, Heidegger remained blind to human sufferings, ethical imperatives, and political practicalities. He
immunized himself against the moral sensitivity, compassion, and prudence that might have dissuaded him from
endorsing and identifying with a brutal regime. Those who embrace his philosophy, critics warn, court similar
dangers.
In like fashion, it is held that Foucault dug himself into an equally deep, though ideologically relocated, moral and
political hole. Genealogical studies left Foucault convinced of the ubiquity of the disciplinary matrix. There would
be no final liberation. The sticky, normalizing webs of power were inescapable and a hermeneutics of suspicion
quashed any hope of gaining the ethical and political high ground. 2 As such, critics charge, Foucault stripped from
us all reason for resistance to unjust power and all hope of legitimating alternative ethico-political institutions. In a
Foucauldian world of panoptic power that shapes wants, needs, and selves, critics worry, one would have no
justification for fighting and nothing worth fighting for. 3
In sum, Heidegger's and Foucault's critics suggest that both thinkers undermine the foundations of the practical
wisdom needed to ethically and politically navigate late modernity. Despite the brilliance and originality of their
thought, arguably the greatest philosopher and the greatest social and political theorist of the twentieth century
remain ungrounded ethically and divorced from political responsibility. Critics argue that Heidegger's statements
and actions endorsing and defending Nazi authoritarianism and Foucault's radical anarchism, as displayed in his
discussions of popular justice with Maoists, demonstrate that neither thinker is capable of supplying us with the
resources for sound moral and political judgment.>
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AT: Foucalt Alt = Contradictory

Foucalts alternative is contradictory and should be rejected he misconceives the role of
power
156-157)
<There are two major problems with this treatment of the formation of subjects of power. It is both too general and
too negative. As I said above subjects are produced and/or reproduced or repeated in specific sites. There is no
general process, whether it is called normalization or something else, in which subjects can be said to be produced in
relation to a unified essence called power. And in suggesting as he does here that subjects are produced in
subjugation, produced as subjects of the essence of power, Foucault is promoting one of the major
misconceptions of power which he urges people to avoidnegative power: seeing power only in terms of a
sovereign figure who or which always prohibits or says no (Foucault, 1979 (a), 60; 1980 (c), 140; and 1980 (e),
187). I think these criticisms point not just to a weakness in Foucault's understanding of the production of subjects
but also, and probably more importantly, to weaknesses in the concept of subject itself. This concept should be
abandoned for two reasons. Firstly because of its negativity because it suggests that subjects are always subjected
to something or someone rather than being produced in specific sites with no inherent status in regard to a strategy
or technology or other 'subject'. And secondly it should be abandoned because it carries the implication that the
process of subjection works on independently existing entities, such as individuals, people, etc, rather than
producing these categories within it.>
Foucaults alternative is internally contradictory: It either has no true political effect, or, if
successful, it disproves itself by creating a new hegemonic discourse to discipline
Habermas, Permanent Visiting Professor at Northwestern, 1987 (Jrgen, The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity, p. 279)
Foucault's historiography can evade relativism as little as it can this acute presentism. His investigations are
caught exactly in the self-referentiality that was supposed to be excluded by a naturalistic treatment of the problematic of validity. Genealogical historiography is supposed to make the practices of power, precisely in their discourse-constituting achievement, accessible to
an empirical analysis. From this perspective, not only are truth claims confined to the discourses within which they arise; they exhaust their entire significance in the func tional
contribution they make to the self-maintenance of a given totality of discourse. That is to say, the meaning of validity claims consists in the power effects
they have. On the other hand, this basic assumption of the theory of power is self-referential; if it is correct, it must destroy
the foundations of the research inspired by it as well. But if the truth claims that Foucault himself raises for his genealogy of
knowledge were in fact illusory and amounted to no more than the effects that this theory is capable of releasing within the
circle of its adherents, then the entire undertaking of a critical unmasking of the human sciences would lose its point. Foucault
pursues genealogical historiography with the serious intent of getting a science underway that is superior to the mismanaged human sciences. If, then, its superiority cannot be
expressed in the fact that something more convincing enters in place of the convicted pseudo-sciences, if its superiority were
only to be expressed in the effect of its suppressing the hitherto dominant scientific discourse in fact, Foucault's theory would exhaust itself in the politics of
theory, and indeed in setting theoretical-political goals that would overburden the capacities of even so heroic a one-man enterprise. Foucault is aware of this. Con sequently, he would like to
single out his genealogy from all the rest of the human sciences in a manner that is reconcilable with the fundamental assumptions of his own theory. To this end, he turns
genealogical historiography upon itself ; the difference that can establish its preeminence above all the other human sciences is to be demonstrated in the history of its
(2)
own emergence.
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AT: Foucalt No Alternative

Foucaults ignorance of certain forms of struggles of oppression and human agency dooms
the alternative
Cook, Associate Professor at Georgetown Law School, 1992
(Anthony E., A Diversity of Influence: Reflections on Postmodernism, Spring, 26 New Eng.L. Rev. 751, Lexis)
Several things trouble me about Foucault's approach. First, he nurtures in many ways an unhealthy insularity that
fails to connect localized struggle to other localized struggles and to modes of oppression like classism, racism,
sexism, and homophobia that transcend their localized articulation within this particular law school, that particular
law firm, within this particular church or that particular factory. I note among some followers of Foucault an
unhealthy propensity to rely on rich, thick, ethnographic type descriptions of power relations playing themselves out
in these localized laboratories of social conflict. This reliance on detailed description and its concomitant
deemphasis of explanation begins, ironically, to look like a regressive positivism which purports to sever the
descriptive from the normative, the is from the ought and law from morality and politics. Unless we are to be
trapped in this Foucaultian moment of postmodern insularity, we must resist the temptation to sever description from
explanation. Instead, our objective should be to explain what we describe in light of a vision embracing values that
we make explicit in struggle. These values should act as magnets that link our particularized struggles to other
struggles and more global critiques of power. In other words, we must not, as Foucault seems all too willing to do,
forsake the possibility of more universal narratives that, while tempered by postmodern insights, attempt to say and
do something about the oppressive world in which we live. Second, Foucault's emphasis on the techniques and
discourses of knowledge that constitute the human subject often diminishes, if not abrogates, the role of human
agency. Agency is of tremendous importance in any theory of oppression, because individuals are not simply
constituted by systems of knowledge but also constitute hegemonic and counter-hegemonic systems of knowledge
as well. Critical theory must pay attention to the ways in which oppressed people not only are victimized by
ideologies of oppression but the ways they craft from these ideologies and discourses counter-hegemonic weapons
of liberation.
Totalizing critiques of law ignore its potential and undeniable past achievements.
Practically applying philosophy to reform can tap into the perfectibility of a truly
democratic state
McCarthy, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Northwestern, 1987
(Thomas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Introduction, p. XV-XVII)
Habermass disagreements with Foucault certainly do not amount to a blanket rejection of this critical perspective on power-knowledge
configurations. It is the totalization of critique that he objects to, the transformation of the critique of reason by reason which from Kant to Marx had taken
on the sociohistoncal form of a critique of ideology into a critique of reason tout court in the name of a rhetorically affirmed other of reason. On his view, the real
problem is too little rather than too much enlightenment, a deficiency rather than an excess of reason. And he
supports this view with a double-edged critique of Foucaults totalization, one edge applying to the transcendental-historiographic aspect of
genealogy, the other to its social-theoretical aspect. Briefly, he argues that Foucault cannot escape the performative contradiction involved
in using the tools of reason to criticize reason; this has the serious consequence of landing his genealogical
investigations in a situation embarrassingly similar to that of the sciences of man he so tellingly criticized. The ideas of
meaning, validity, and value that were to be eliminated by genealogical critique come back to haunt it in the spectral forms of presentism, relativism, and cryptonormativism. On the other
hand, the social-theoretical reading of modernity inspired by the theory of power turns out to he simply an inversion of the standard humanist reading it is meant to replace. It is, argues
The essentially ambiguous phenomena of modern culture and society are flattened down onto
the plane of power. Thus, for example, the internal development of law and morality, which on his view bears
effects of emancipation as well as of domination, disappears from Foucaults account of their normalizing functions.
It is precisely the ambiguity of rationalization processes that has to be captured, the undeniable achievements as well
as the palpable distortions; and this calls for a reconstructed dialectic of enlightenment rather than a totalized
critique of it. As I mentioned at the outset, Habermass strategy is to return to the counterdiscourse of modernity neglected by Nietzsche and his followers in which the principle of
Habermas, no less one-sided:
a self-sufficient, self-assertive subjectivity was exposed to telling criticism and a counterreckoning of the cost of modernity was drawn up. Examining the main crossroads in this
counterdiscourse, he points to indications of a path opened but not pursued: the construal of reason in terms of a noncoercive intersubjectivity of mutual understanding and reciprocal recognition.
Returning to the first major crossroad, he uses this notion to reconstruct Hegels idea of ethical life and to argue that the other of reason invoked by the post-Nietzschcans is not adequately
Habermas follows Hegel also in viewing reason as a

healing power of unification and reconciliation; however, it is not the Absolute that he has in mind, but the unforced intersubjectivity of rational agreement. At the
second major crossroad, he follows Marxs indication that philosophy must become practical, that its rational content has to be
rendered in their model of exclusion; it is better seen as a divided and destroyed ethical totality.
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mobilized in practice. This yields a counterposition to the post-Nietzschean privileging of the extraordinary limit experiences of aesthetic, mystical, or archaic provenance. If
situated reason is viewed as social interaction, the potential of reason has to be realized in the communicative practice of ordinary, everyday life. The social practice Habermas has in mind
cannot, however, be identified with Marxs conception of labor; in his view, productive activity is too specific and too restricted a notion to serve as a paradigm of rational practice. Furthermore,
it harbors an idealist residue labor as constitutive of a world in alienated form that has to be reappropriated that needs to be overcome if we are to get definitively beyond the paradigm of
subjectivity. The solution he opposes to the simple elimination of the subject is a kind of determinate negation: If communicative action is our paradigm, the decentered subject remains as a
participant in social interaction mediated by language. On this account, there is an internal relation of communicative practice to reason, for language use is oriented to validity claims, and
validity claims can in the end be redeemed only through intersubjective recognition brought about by the unforced force of reason. The internal relation of meaning to validity means that
communication is not only always immanent that is, situated, conditioned but also always transcendent that is, geared to validity claims that are meant to hold beyond any local
context and thus can be indefinitely criticized, defended, revised: Validity claims have a Janus face. As claims, they transcend any local context; at the same time, they have to be raised here and
now and be de facto recognized . The transcendent moment of universal validity bursts every provinciality asunder; the obligatory moment of accepted validity claims renders them carriers of
a context-bound everyday practice a moment of unconditionality is built into factual processes of mutual understanding the validity laid claim to is distinguished from the social currency of
a de facto established practice and yet serves it as the foundation of an existing consensus. This orientation of communicative action to validity claims admitting of argument and
counterargument is precisely what makes possible the learning processes that lead to transformations of our world views and thus of the very conditions and standards of rationality. In sum, then,
Habermas agrees with the radical critics of enlightenment that the paradigm of consciousness is exhausted. Like
them, he views reason as inescapably situated, as concretized in history, society, body, and language. Unlike them,
however, he holds that the defects of the Enlightenment can only be made good by further enlightenment. The
totalized critique of reason undercuts the capacity of reason to be critical. It refuses to acknowledge that
modernization bears developments as well as distortions of reason. Among the former, he mentions the unthawing
and reflective refraction of cultural traditions, the universalization of norms and generalization of values, and the
growing individuation of personal identities all prerequisites for that effectively democratic organization of society through which
alone reason can, in the end, become practical.
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Foucaults alternative = nihilistic he lacks a clear vision for change
<The pursuit of knowledge continues unabated for the skeptic. Yet it proceeds with a suspicious eye. There are inherent limitations to and a price to pay forthe
pursuit of knowledge. Charles Scott describes Foucault's efforts in this regard: Far from the skepticism that argues that
nothing is really knowablegenealogies embody a sense of the historical limits that define our capacities for
knowing and believing. Things are known. But they are known in ways that have considerable social and cultural
costs. 8 Both Heidegger and Foucault maintain that there is no legitimate basis for the radical skeptic's conviction
that knowledge is impossible or unworthy of pursuit. This sort of skepticism, Heidegger states, consists merely in an
addiction to doubt. 9 The skeptical nature of political philosophical thought, in contrast, is grounded in the
imperative of endless inquiry. The point for Heidegger and Foucault is to inquire not in order to sustain doubt, but
to doubt that one might better sustain inquiry. At the same time, inquiry is tempered with a sensibility of the ethicopolitical costs of any knowledge that is gained.
Doing political philosophy of this sort might be likened to walking on a tightrope. If vertigo is experienced, a
precarious balance may be lost. Falling to one side leaves one mired in apathy, cynicism, and apoliticism. This
results when skeptical inquiry degenerates into a radical skepticism, an addictive doubt that denies the value of (the
search for) knowledge and undermines the engagements of collective life, which invariably demand commitment
(based on tentatively embraced knowledge). Falling to the other side of the tightrope leaves one mired in dogmatic
belief or blind activism. Authoritarian ideologies come to serve as stable foundations, or a reactive iconoclasm
leads to irresponsible defiance. Apathy, cynicism, and apoliticism, on the one side, and dogmatic authoritarianism or
reactive iconoclasm, on the other, are the dangerous consequences of losing one's balance. These states of mind and their
corresponding patterns of behavior relieve the vertigo of political philosophical inquiry, but at a prohibitive cost.
It has been argued that Foucault did not so much walk the tightrope of political philosophy as straddle it, at times leaving his readers hopeless and cynical, at times
egging them on to an irresponsible monkeywrenching. For some, the Foucauldian flight from the ubiquitous powers of normalization undermines any defensible
Hopelessness accompanies lost innocence. Cynicism or nihilism become the only alternatives for
those who spurn all ethical and political foundations. By refusing to paint a picture of a better future, Foucault is
said to undercut the impetus to struggle. Others focus on Foucault's development of a tool kit whose contents are to be employed to deconstruct the
apparatuses of modern power. Yet the danger remains that Foucault's hyperactive tool-kit users will be unprincipled activists,
Luddites at best, terrorists at worst. In either case, Foucault provides no overarching theoretical vision. Indeed,
Foucault is upfront about his rejection of ethical and political theories and ideals. I think that to imagine another system is to
extend our participation in the present system, Foucault stipulates . Reject theory and all forms of general discourse. This need for
theory is still part of the system we reject. 10 One might worry whether action is meant to take the place of thought.
normative position.
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Foucault does not deal with the underlying issues of social hierarchies that wraps us up
with institutions. His alternative masks these with autonomy, while doing nothing to truly
break away from power relations
Habermas, Permanent Visiting Professor at Northwestern, 1987
(Jrgen, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, p. 286-288)
Foucault cannot adequately deal with the persistent problems that come up in connection with an interpretative
approach to the object domain, a self-referential denial of universal validity claims, and a normative justification for
critique. The categories of meaning, validity, and value are to be eliminated not only on the metatheoretical, but on
the empirical level as well. Genealogical historiography deals with an object domain from which the theory of
power has erased all traces of communi cative actions entangled in lifeworld contexts. This suppression of basic
concepts that could take into account the symbolic prestructuring of action systems burdens his empirical research
with problems that, this time at least, Foucault does not address. I will pick out two problems with a venerable
history in classical social theory: the issues of how social order is possible at all, and of how individual and society
are related to one another. When, like Foucault, one admits only the model of processes of subjugation, of
confrontations mediated by the body, of contexts of more or less consciously strategic action; when one excludes
any stabilizing of domains of action in terms of values, norms, and processes of mutual understanding and offers for
these mechanisms of social integration none of the familiar equivalents from systems or exchange theories; then one
is hardly able to explain just how persistent local struggles could get consolidated into institutionalized power . Axel
Honneth has energetically worked out this problematic. Foucault presupposes in his descriptions institutionally
sedimented disciplines, power practices, technologies of truth and of domination, but he cannot explain "how there
can be derived from a social condition of uninterrupted struggle the aggregate state of a network of power, however
momentary one conceives it as being."28 Conceptual difficulties similar to those raised by the epochal establishment
of discourse and power formations are posed by the phenomena for which Durkheim introduced the key term
"institutionalized individualism." If one admits only the model of empowerment, the socialization of succeeding
generations can also be presented only in the image of wily confrontation. Then, however, the socialization of
subjects capable of speech and action cannot be simul taneously conceived as individuation, but only as the
progressive subsumption of bodies and of all vital substrata under technologies of power. The increasingly
individualizing formative processes that penetrate ever broader social strata in societies with traditions that have
become reflective and with action norms that arc highly abstract, have to be artificially reinterpreted to make up for
the categorical poverty of the empowerment model. Foucault, the theorist of power, encounters here the same
problems as the institutionalist, Arnold Gehlen; 29 both theories lack a mechanism for social integration such as
language, with its interlacing of the performative atti tudes of speakers and hearers,30 which could explain the individuating effects of socialization. Just like Gehlen, Foucault compensates for this bottleneck in his basic" concepts
by purifying the concept of individuation of all connotations of self-determination and self-realization, and reducing
it to an inner world produced by external stimuli and fitted out with arbitrarily manipulable, representative contents.
This time the difficulty does not result from the lack of an equivalent for familiar constructions of the relationship
between individual and society; rather, the issue is whether the model of an inflation of the psychic that is evoked by
power techniques (or released by the disintegration of institutions) does not make it necessary to bring the growth in
subjective freedom under descriptions that render unrecognizable the experience of an expanded scope for
expressive self-manifestation and for autonomy.
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AT: Foucalt No Alternative (Nihilism)

They are in a double bind either Foucault is a nihilist or the alternative doesnt solve
Hicks, Professor and chair of philosophy at Queens College of the CUNY, 2003
(Steven V., Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault: Nihilism and Beyond, Foucault and Heidegger: Critical
Encounters, Ed. Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, p. 109, Questia)
<Here Foucault seems less interested in defining a purpose for incitation and struggle than underscoring its
potential creativity: bringing into the struggle as much gaiety, lucidity and determination as possible. 76 Given
his belief that even our modern discourses of liberation, rights, and humanism are all deeply entangled in the
inarticulable and inescapable background web of power practices, Foucault's only option to passive nihilism
seems to be the perpetuation and amelioration of the conditions that make struggle itself possible 77 And this
political task of promoting the pathos of struggle functions as an alternative to the ascetic ideal: creating and
maintaining many sites of resistance to the numerous forms of domination, exploitation, and subjectification
present in the social and political body. 78 Admittedly, the pathos of struggle has a strong (and from a Nietzschean
perspective, a possibly suspect) negative component: struggling against any system of constraints or technologies of
power that prevent individuals (affected by the systems) from having the possibility of altering them or the
means of modifying them. 79 As an ethico-political ideal, the pathos of struggle would call for the negation of
all political, social, and cultural conditions that preclude the possibility of struggling to change these conditions.
As Foucault writes, perhaps one must not be for consensuality, but one must be against nonconsensuality. 80 But it
would also contain an affirmative component as well, a struggle for something: Minimally, it will be a struggle
for the establishing of conditions in which self-creation is made possible, in which the assertion of individuality and
otherness is viable. 81 As with Nietzsche's alternative ideals (of recurrence and will to power), the final
trajectory of the pathos of struggle remains undetermined. It can't tell us beforehand what our goals should be,
only that (a) the conditions of their conception and articulation must remain polymorphous and unhierarchical,
and that (b) whatever they are, they should remain rooted in gratitude and service to life a joyful creative, and
self-constituting engagement rather than resentment against it. 82 But as with Nietzsche's nonascetic ideals, the
pathos of struggle might also supply some affirmative content as well: the doing of what is necessary to affirm
your creative freedom and enhance the ongoing process of self-definition and social definition (within the
constraints of not excluding or disempowering the viable other). For example, overcome the oppression of your
present situation if it prevents you from getting a sufficient sense of power and effectiveness in relation to life except
by devaluing life. 83
In a manner somewhat reminiscent of Schiller's attempt to instill an aesthetic education in humanity to promote
political freedom, we might view Foucault as attempting to instill an agonistic education a will to struggle
within an overarching aesthetics of lifeto prepare the ground for, and manifest, our creative freedom. 84
According to Foucault, glimpses of freedom and creation of the self as a work of art are prompted by continuous
acts of resistance and political struggle that serve to loosen the hold of those vast matrices of disciplinary power and
technologies of the body that threaten to overwhelm and homogenize us (cf. HS, 2,:io-n). 85 As Foucault sees it,
then, a will to struggle, an aesthetic agonism, becomes the defining characteristic and alternate (nonascetic) ideal
that allows us to best live out our unresolved existence surrounded by ubiquitous, inescapable power
arrangements and tottering on the abyss of nihilism.>
Foucault is caught in a constant struggle to fight power structures, which leads to nihilism
<Hence, the only ethico-political choice we have, one that Foucault thinks we must make every day, is simply to
determine which of the many insidious forms of power is the main danger and then to engage in an activity of
resistance in the nexus of opposing forces. 72 Unending action is required to combat ubiquitous peril. 73 But
this ceaseless Foucauldian recoil from the ubiquitous power perils of normalization precludes, or so it would
seem, formulating any defensible alternative position or successor ideals. And if Nietzsche is correct in claiming
that the only prevailing human ideal to date has been the ascetic ideal, then even Foucauldian resistance will
continue to work in service of this ideal, at least under one of its guises, viz., the nihilism of negativity. Certainly
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Foucault's distancing of himself from all ideological commitments, his recoiling from all traditional values by which
we know and judge, his holding at bay all conventional answers that press themselves upon us, and his keeping in
play the twists and recoils that question our usual concepts and habitual patterns of behavior, all seem a close
approximation, in the ethicopolitical sphere, to the idealization of asceticism.>
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AT: Kritiks of Rights State Action Key

Only through the use of the state can we bear witness to the tradition of the oppressed plan is key to recognizing how to protect rights
Deranty, Professor of Philosophy, 2k4 (Jean-Phillipe, Macquarie University, Agambens challenge to normative
theories of modern rights, borderlands,
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no1_2004/deranty_agambnschall.htm)
50. In the social and historical fields, politics is only the name of the contingency that strikes at the heart of systemic
necessity. An ontology of contingency provides the model with which to think together both the possibility, and the
possibility of the repetition of, catastrophe, as the one heritage of modernity, and the contingency of catastrophe as
logically entailing the possibility of its opposite. Modernity is ambiguous because it provides the normative
resources to combat the apparent necessity of possible systemic catastrophes. Politics is the name of the struggle
drawing on those resources.
51. This ontology enables us also to rethink the relationship of modern subjects to rights. Modern subjects are able
to consider themselves autonomous subjects because legal recognition signals to them that they are recognised as
full members of the community, endowed with the full capacity to judge. This account of rights in modernity is
precious because it provides an adequate framework to understand real political struggles, as fights for rights. We
can see now how this account needs to be complemented by the notion of contingency that undermines the apparent
necessity of the progress of modernity. Modern subjects know that their rights are granted only contingently, that the
possibility of the impossible is always actual. This is why rights should not be taken for granted. But this does not
imply that they should be rejected as illusion, on the grounds that they were disclosed as contingent in the horrors of
the 20th century. Instead, their contingency should be the reason for constant political vigilance.
52. By questioning the rejection of modern rights, one is undoubtedly unfaithful to the letter of Benjamin. Yet, if one
accepts that one of the great weaknesses of the Marxist philosophy of revolution was its inability to constructively
engage with the question of rights and the State, then it might be the case that the politics that define themselves as
the articulation of demands born in the struggles against injustice are better able to bear witness to the "tradition of
the oppressed" than their messianic counterparts.
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AT: Kritiks of Rights No Alternative

Rejecting rights undermines critical theorists ability to fight against oppression
11. In the case of empirical examples, the erasure of difference between phenomena seems particularly counterintuitive in the case of dissimilar modes of internment. From a practical point of view, it seems counter-productive
to claim that there is no substantial difference between archaic communities and modern communities provided with
the language of rights, between the lawlessness of war times and democratic discourse. There must be a way of
problematising the ideological mantra of Western freedom, of modernitys moral superiority, that does not simply
equate it with Nazi propaganda (Ogilvie 2001). Habermas and Honneth probably have a point when they highlight
the advances made by modernity in the entrenchment of rights. If the ethical task is that of testimony, then our
testimony should go also to all the individual lives that were freed from alienation by the establishment of legal
barriers against arbitrariness and exclusion. We should heed Honneths reminder that struggles for social and
political emancipation have often privileged the language of rights over any other discourse (Fraser, Honneth 2003).
To reject the language of human rights altogether could be a costly gesture in understanding past political struggles
in their relevance for future ones, and a serious strategic, political loss for accompanying present struggles. We want
to criticise the ideology of human rights, but not at the cost of renouncing the resources that rights provide.
Otherwise, critical theory would be in the odd position of casting aspersions upon the very people it purports to
speak for, and of depriving itself of a major weapon in the struggle against oppression.
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AT: Agamben Alt Fails

Agambens use of the camp conflates victim with oppressor, preventing us from holding
perpetrators responsible and destroying any ethical obligation to act since we posit
everyone as the victim
Sanyal, Assistant Professor of French at UC Berkeley, 2002
(Debarati, A Soccer Match in Auschwitz: Passing Culpability in Holocaust Criticism, Representations, Issue 79,
Caliber)
Agambens radicalization of Levis gray zone has even more
disturbing consequences for understanding the relations of power within the camps. The unstable boundary between
oppressor and oppressed in the gray zone is radicalized in Agambens account such that the two positions appear to
be reciprocal and convertible: It seems, in fact, that the only thing that interests him [Levi] is what makes judgement impossible: the gray zone in which victims become
executioners and executioners become victims (Remnants, 17).18 While Agamben nowhere suggests that perpetrators and victims truly did exchange positions, his emphasis on the
camps as sites for a potentially endless circulation of guilt nevertheless takes the convertibility of victims and
executioners as a structural given. Primo Levi, however, was at pains to emphasize that this convertibility was a
politically expedient fiction designed to erase the difference between victim and executioner by forcing Jews to participate in the
murder and cremation of their own. He also stressed the singular, unimaginable strain such a predicament must have exerted upon the SK. To transform such a charged,
ambiguous lived reality into a formal conception of convertibility has disturbing ethical consequences. It suggests
that the perpetrators too, by virtue of occupying this zone of radical inversion and participating in the traumatic
conditions of camp life, could be perceived as victims. The fallacy of this structural reciprocity, however, is refuted by Levi in a cautionary preface to his
Beyond the problems inherent in a transhistorical treatment of shame and complicity,
discussion of the Sonderkommando: This mimesis, this identification or imitation or exchange of roles between oppressor and victim, has provoked much discussion. . . . I do not know, and it
does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that the murderers existed, not only in Germany, and still exist, retired or on active duty, and that
to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is a precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators of
The conceptualization of the gray zone as a transhistorical and trans-subjective site of culpability, in
which victims become executioners and executioners become victims, thus conflates the positions of Muslims, Prominents,
Kapos, and SS in a gesture that reaches beyond the concentration camp experience to include us in a general condition
of traumatic culpability. This blurring of subject positions leads to a vision of inescapable guilt, in which we are
always already collectively steeped in the eliminationist logic that led to the concentration camp and continue
unknowingly to perpetuate its violence. But just as this vision posits an ever-encroaching web of complicity, it also, paradoxically, proposes an
infinitely elastic notion of victimhood. If we are obscurely complicit with the logic of the soccer match, the irrealization of violence in daily life,
we are also comparably violated by the historical trauma of the camps. The generalization of complicity and
victimization not only dismantles the historical specificity of the camps and the survivors testimonies. It also, more
disturbingly, coopts the figure of the victim as an other who is but an avatar of ourselves, a point I will address in a moment.
truth. (Drowned, 50)
Agambens philosophy does not apply to politics biopolitics is an empty term that
ultimately blocks critical thought
Virno, Professor of Linguistic Philosophy, 2002
(Paolo, University of Cosenza, 'General intellect, exodus, multitude. Interview with Paolo Virno', Archiplago
number 54, published in English at http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpvirno2.htm)
<Agamben is a problem. Agamben is a thinker of great value but also, in my opinion, a thinker with no political
vocation. Then, when Agamben speaks of the biopolitical he has the tendency to transform it into an ontological
category with value already since the archaic Roman right. And, in this, in my opinion, he is very wrong-headed.
The problem is, I believe, that the biopolitical is only an effect derived from the concept of labor-power. When there
is a commodity that is called labor-power it is already implicitly government over life. Agamben says, on the other
hand, that labor-power is only one of the aspects of the biopolitical; I say the contrary: over all because labor power
is a paradoxical commodity, because it is not a real commodity like a book or a bottle of water, but rather is simply
the potential to produce. As soon as this potential is transformed into a commodity, then, it is necessary to govern the
living body that maintains this potential, that contains this potential. Toni (Negri) and Michael (Hardt), on the other
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hand, use biopolitics in a historically determined sense, basing it on Foucault, but Foucault spoke in few pages of the
biopolitical - in relation to the birth of liberalism - that Foucault is not a sufficient base for founding a discourse over
the biopolitical and my apprehension, my fear, is that the biopolitical can be transformed into a word that hides,
covers problems instead of being an instrument for confronting them. A fetish word, an "open doors" word, a word
with an exclamation point, a word that carries the risk of blocking critical thought instead of helping it. Then, my
fear is of fetish words in politics because it seems like the cries of a child that is afraid of the dark..., the child that
says "mama, mama!", "biopolitics, biopolitics!". I don't negate that there can be a serious content in the term,
however I see that the use of the term biopolitics sometimes is a consolatory use, like the cry of a child, when what
serves us are, in all cases, instruments of work and not propaganda words.>
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AT: Agamben Alt Violence (Ignores Suffering)

Agambens conception of the camp as the paradigm of civilian life ignores the specificity of
suffering in the Holocaust and normalizes its violence. It does not universally define our
times and can be fought. We thus must struggle against particular sites of oppression
Sanyal, Assistant Professor of French at UC Berkeley, 2002
(Debarati, A Soccer Match in Auschwitz: Passing Culpability in Holocaust Criticism, Representations, Issue 79,
Caliber)
Agambens claim for the continuing relevance of Levis gray zone transforms the aberrant event of a soccer match
played in Auschwitzand the complex web of complicity between victims and executioners such a game reveals into the allegory for a recurrent,
unlocatable and transhistorical violence, one contaminating the civilian world of even a liberal democracy and its
daily rituals and spectacles. The analogy drawn between the soccer match in Auschwitz and its ongoing rehearsal in stadiums and television broadcasts is at once
compelling and perplexing, for it seems to conflate several incommensurate and undefined forms of violence. Perhaps the spectacles of
everyday life distracting us from the massacres that surround us may be seen as replicating the horrifying production of normalcy at the gates of the crematoria. Yet such a transhistorical
deployment of the soccer match as figure suggests that the extreme, eliminationist violence masked by a game in Auschwitz is fundamentally the same as the violences masked by contemporary
mass culture. It is also unclear whether the ambiguous metaphor of the soccer match designates our distraction from or our participation in the massacres repeated not far away from us.
Agamben obscurely suggests that the true horror of the camps is woven into the very normalcy of daily
sociopolitical life, a nameless violence circulating between spectator and spectacle, consumer and product, like the shifting
dynamic between victim and executioner staged in the soccer match. The collective we interpellated by Agamben are cast as baffled and
complicit witnesses to, if not consumers of, sanctioned maskings of a violence that remains a perfect and eternal cipher. Even more troubling than the loss of
context, definition, and specificity in this allegorical treatment of the soccer match is Agambens conflation of literal
and metaphorical survival. We secondary witnesses and spectators of athletic events and television broadcasts are identified with the
camps survivors (or primary witnesses) and made to share their anguish and shame (hence the anguish and shame of the survivors. . . . but hence also
our shame).14 To imagine that our actions and beliefs may inadvertently participate even by distractionin the violences around
us is a seductive point. Few have articulated it with more power than Albert Camus, in his postwar novel La peste. Tarrou, one of the characters participating in the resistance to
Indeed,
the plague that overtakes the city, claims that we are all pestiferes, plague-ridden, that each one of our daily acts and choices may end up colluding in unforeseen, hidden ways with the workings
of violence. In a similar context, Alain Resnais and Jean Cayrols documentary, Nuit et brouillard, concludes with a powerful interpellation, beckoning its spectators to acknowledge their past and
continued implication within the ideology of extermination deployed in the camps.15 Yet Camus, Resnais, and Cayrol legitimately appealed to historically concrete instances of complicity
Agambens plea that we recognize our continued

implication within the indeterminate zone of ethics produced in the extermination camps proposes an unexpectedly
normative reading of the Shoah. Erasing the specific circumstances of an event such as Nyiszlis soccer match, and
the nexus of conditions that it reveals about moral life in the concentration camp, he transforms a key moment in
Levis testimony into a perfect and eternal cipher, an undefined and onmipresent allegory whose players and
spectators are interpellated into both complicity and victimization. The infernal conditions of the gray zones emergence undergo a sort of
spatiotemporal erasure. What the death camps reveal, it would seem, is no less than the human condition, one which knows
no time and is in every place. Agambens extension of the gray zone to civilian life today is analogous to his
general claim that Auschwitz is precisely the place in which the state of exception coincides perfectly with the rule and the extreme
situation becomes the very paradigm of daily life (Remnants, 49). Yet Primo Levis exposition of the gray zone makes quite the opposite
claim. In the chapter detailing the soccer matcha chapter that is significantly enough titled Shame Levi stresses the irreducibly singular nature of the
prisoners affective and somatic experience in the camps: The mental mechanisms of the Haftlinge were different from ours; curiously, and in parallel,
different also were their physiology and pathology. Warning his readers against the temptation to apply categories drawn from the space
of civilian normalcy upon their anguish, Levi proposes that knowledge that has been built up and tested outside in
the world that, for the sake of simplicity, we call civilian (Drowned, 85) is irrelevant to the physiological and psychological conditions
within the Lager. Agambens appropriation of Levis voice when discussing a different order of violence altogether
is a disturbing ventriloquism that disregards the survivors explicit injunction against conflating the extermination
camp and civilian life. The shame and anguish to which Levi refers in his allusion to the tohu-bohu of a deserted universe, is not an abstract
experience of moral chaos that is accessed by camp survivors and television viewers alike. It designates the singular
and elusive mixture of guilt, shame, anguish, and ethical responsibility that drove survivors of the extermination camp to testify on behalf of those
who never returned. The shame that arises from having survived or witnessed extreme cruelty may well be a new ethical
material, as Agamben suggests in his discussion of the gray zones redefinition of morality. But to suggest that primary and secondary witnesses
have a comparable experience of the traumatic inner dislocation Agamben describes is an untenable conflation of literal and metaphorical
victimization, complicity, and survival. For how can the we interpellated by Agamben, as secondary witnesses, fully grasp the shame Levi describes as, in silent
between victims, perpetrators, and witnesses during the occupation and collaborationism. By contrast,
defeat, he watches a Sonderkommando defiantly shout out Comrades, I am the last one! before being executed for his participation in the revolt that blew up a Birkenau crematorium? Or the
wave of nausea gripping the narrator of Borowskis short story, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen as he participates in divesting the truckloads of prisoners entering the camps of
What we must question, then, is the impulse toward identification enabling Agamben to posit himself as
survivor-witness (I, like the witnesses, instead view this match, this moment of normalcy, as the true horror of the camp), thereby assimilating the positions of primary and
their possessions?
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conflate his own stance with that of the witness
is particularly problematic,
secondary witnessing. To
in this instance
for it is Nyiszli, and
not Primo Levi, who reports the soccer game. Further, the ambiguities of Nyiszlis position as pathologist to Dr. Mengeles experiments make it difficult to transparently assume his place.16
Agambens extension of shame, guilt, and trauma, of responses to the affective and bodily experiences occurring in
the extreme conditions of the camps to us and now disregards the irreducible particularity of the gray zone. It
also erodes the very real differences between those who inhabited that zone (the distinction, for example, between Miklos Nyiszli and Primo
Levi) as well as the multiple gaps separating us (readers of testimonies, spectators of a continuous figurative soccer match) and the survivor-witnesses.17
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AT: Agamben Alt No Rights (Rights Good)

Even though the term rights can have negative connotations, it is necessary to renew rights
that contain human dignity and prevent exploitation the alternative is fascism
Daly, Research Fellow in the Philosophy Department at the Australian National University, 2004
(Frances, Australian National University, The Non-citizen and the Concept of Human Rights, borderlands,
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no1_2004/daly_noncitizen.htm)
<21. At its most fundamental, right is the right to something, and within the realm of natural rights or rights of the
human being, it has been principally concerned with rights against oppression and inequality in order to realize a
potential for freedom. Citizen rights have at their basis quite different values, namely, a range of political and
property rights to be realized within and not against the State. This is not to say that law associated with human
rights is not, at times, itself an external form of oppression - but natural or human right is also able to offer
something quite different. The term needs to be used advisedly because of the problematic connotations it has but
there is a tradition of natural right containing anticipatory elements of human dignity in which forms of justice as
ethically-based community survive, and it is this tradition, I would argue, which needs to be renewed. We can see
this in all struggles for human dignity in which unsatisfied demands exist for overcoming the lack of freedom of
exploitation and constraint; the inequality of degradation and humiliation; the absence of community in egoism and
disunity. And so too can we view this via the necessary reference point that a critique of right provides: by
acknowledging the hypocrisy of law or the distance between intention and realization we have an important basis for
distinguishing between the problem of right and its complete negation, such as we would see under despotic,
fascistic rule. The use and abuse of right is not the same thing as a complete absence of right, and understanding
this is vital to being able to comprehend where and in what ways democratic, constitutional States become, or are,
fascistic. Natural right, or the right of the human being, occupies a space of interruption in the divide between law
and ethicality that can, on occasion, act as to reintroduce a radical pathos within right. Agamben is unable to allow
for any of this because, for him, rights are without any basis in human respect, their institutional representation
guaranteeing the logic of only the police, the market and, ultimately, the 'extermination camps'.>
Rights are key to challenging the StateAgambens critique cant connect to reality
Daly, Research Fellow in the Philosophy Department at the Australian National University, 2004
(Frances, Australian National University, The Non-citizen and the Concept of Human Rights, borderlands,
<24. The context of rights is one that is frequently unstable, and, as such, it is important to clearly assess the place of
rights within our present conditions of unfreedom. Often as a result of their denial, human rights currently act so as
to allow a questioning of the assumed authority of the State. Indeed, without a sense of rights it would be
difficult for us to understand the current absence of real freedom. If we consider the contemporary struggles of
the 'Sans Papiers' in France, the several hundred thousand people whose refusal of the label 'illegal' and fight for
documentation is premised on the basis that the undermining of rights is merely a way of attacking the value of
dignity for all, we can see a clear example of the possibility that can be realized through right. The Sans Papiers are
well-known for their questioning of the assumptions of immigration policies, such as the existence of quotas,
detention camps and deportations, and they argue cogently for an end to frontiers themselves. Madjigune Ciss
argues that the initiatives of those claiming their rights are basic to the survival of communities (Ciss, 1997: 3).
This is done on the basis of an appeal to rights of justice and egalitarianism. Indeed, it is not possible to understand
this emancipatory struggle outside a conception of rights.
25. Agamben views all such setting out of rights as essentially reintegrating those marginalized from citizenship into
the fiction of a guaranteed community. Law only "wants to prevent and regulate" (Agamben, 2001: 1) and it is
certainly the case that much law does but within rights, I argue, we can also detect a potential for justice. In
contrast, Agamben contends that legal right and the law always operate in a double apparatus of pure violence and
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forms of life guaranteed by a Schmittian 'state of emergency' (Agamben, 2000: 43). And although he recognizes the
dire consequences of a state of emergency with the eradication of the legal status of individuals, he views this as the
force of law without law, as a mystical or fictional element, a space devoid of law, an 'empty legal space', or 'state of
exception' as Carl Schmitt refers to it, that is essential to the legal order (Carl Schmitt, 1985: 6). What is then
eliminated here is any sense of how the appeal to rights brings into question institutionalized unfreedom and why
this underlying insufficiency between the idea of right and real need is opposed by those attempting to expand the
realm of human rights. The problem with this strategy for doing away with any distinction and placing the refugee in
a position of pure potentiality is that, instead of liberating or revolutionizing the place of the refugee, it creates an
eternal present that is unable to connect the very real reality of difference with a critique of the society that
victimizes the refugee in the manner with which we are currently so familiar.>
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AT: Agamben Alt destroys democracy and rights

Agambens analysis destroys democracy and leads to state control. The alternative destroys
citizenship and reduce rights to absolute politics
Daly, Research Fellow in the Philosophy Department at the Australian National University, 2004 (Frances,
Australian National University, The Non-citizen and the Concept of Human Rights, borderlands,
<26. There is much in Agambens analysis of contemporary society, particularly via his use of a Debordian critique
of the spectacle, that forcefully restates some of the central problems of social life that we perceive in
commodification, a fetishized distancing and an alienation of the very nature of what it means to be human. But
perhaps the rather overstated or one-dimensional nature of Agamben's understanding of alienation reveals one of the
problems with his use of this critique. He refers to the "absolutely banal man" who is tempted to evil by the powers
of right and law (Agamben, 1993; 32); we have the 'falsification of all production' and the 'complete control of
social memory and social communication'; or the "absolute systematic falsification of truth, of language and opinion
[] without escape" (Agamben, 2002). Because it is precisely in such a critique that one would expect Agamben to
not merely acknowledge the "complete triumph of the spectacle" but to explain the relation between the spectacle
and what 'positive possibility' there remains within conditions of alienation that might be used to counter these
conditions. There would seem to be an enormous gap between Agamben's critique of this society and the state of
simply being that continues to be a possibility. This state of death that Agamben would argue now colonizes all
structures of power and that eradicates any experience of democracy might well still possess some kind of
antagonistic clash, as Toni Negri argues, but it is difficult for us to see just where resistance to this state might
emerge (Negri, 2003: 1).
27. Certainly, Agamben calls for making all residents of extraterritorial space (which would include both citizen and
non-citizen) as existing within a position of exodus or refuge, and in this we can perhaps see some basis for
resistance. A position of refuge, he argues, would be able to "act back onto" territories as states and 'perforate' and
alter' them such that "the citizen would be able to recognize the refugee that he or she is" (Agamben, 2000: 26). In
this Agamben directs our attention usefully to the importance of the refugee today both in terms of the plight of
refugees and their presence in questioning any assumption about citizen rights, and also in placing the refugee, or
"denizen" as he says using Tomas Hammar's term, as the central figure of a potential politics (Agamben, 2000: 23).
But he also reduces the concepts of right and the values they involve to forms of State control, eliding all difference
within right and thereby terminating an understanding of the reasons for a disjuncture between legality and morality
and of an existing separation of rights from the ideal of ethicality, in which liberation and dignity exist to be realized
beyond any form of contract.
28. It is always possible to suppose that a self-fashioned potentiality is simply available to us, and in some senses it
is, but not because a type of theory merely posits the social and the historical as completely open to our
manipulation or 'perforation'. Likewise, we cannot merely assume that changing 'forms of life' necessarily amount to
types of refusal. Such a claim would only make sense if it were put forward on the basis of an appreciation of an
impulse to freedom from particular types of constraint and oppression. It would also require a sense of how this
impulse takes place within a variety of conditions, some of which might be easily altered and some of which might
not. In the absence of an engaged sense of what this impulse means, and of the context in which elements of
freedom and unfreedom do battle, it is impossible to speculate on the nature of the subjectivity or potentiality
which might be emerging or which might be in stages of decomposition. Agamben merely presumes that a strategy
by which we all identify as refugees will renew a politics and thereby end the current plight of the refugee, as if no
other reality impinges on this identification. This is also assumed on the basis that the State in Agamben's
theorizing, the abstraction of an all-encompassing, leviathan State is equally, readily and easily liable to
perforation. This contradiction is indicative of a wider problem where what we encounter is a form of critique that
is oddly inappropriate to the type of issue it addresses.
29. Much can be said in criticism of the doctrine of right, of the limited nature of the understanding of freedom and
rights in documents on rights, of the assumption of the place of citizen rights as the locus of the fundamental rights
of the human, and most significantly, the absence of any sense of the undetermined nature of what being might
mean. But what must be stated, I feel, is that it would be a serious impoverishment of the ethical problem that we
currently face to deny any potential value of rights in carrying forth traces of an impetus towards human dignity, of
the ideals of freedom and equality, and to thus reduce rights to what might be termed an absolute politics. Rights
cannot be reduced to citizenship rights as if the ideas of rights and citizenship are coterminus. What most critically
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needs to be understood is, firstly, why values of freedom and equality have such a limited and fragile place within
conditions of such inordinate legalism, and, secondly, what the absence of freedom, which the cause of human rights
inevitably suggests, means for the installation of any such rights. Without such an understanding we are left with a
gestural politics that contains a posture of radicalism but one which fails to connect the aspirations of those who are
struggling to achieve elementary rights with a vision of a world that could accord them a degree of dignity. To
acknowledge this is not to be seduced by concepts of right or law, but is rather to refuse the denial of a radical
questioning of the possibilities with which a discourse presents us. Benjamin's understanding of a genuinely
messianic idea is something that is "not the final end of historical progress, but rather its often failed and finally
accomplished interruption" (Benjamin, 1974: 1231). We find this in values that resist exploitation and assaults upon
human dignity. And it is this realm that currently requires urgent, emphatic and significant renewal.>
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AT: Agamben Alt collapse the state

Agambens alternative makes no sense on a public level. The net result is communities at war with the state
which would collapse the state
Cmiel, Professor of Cultural History at Iowa, 1996
(Kenneth, The Fate of the Nation and the Withering of the State, American Literary History, Spring, p. 196,
http://alh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/8/1/184)
<If community cannot be a closed thing, if it is forever open to the potentially new, then the dream of a national
community is simply impossible. In Agamben's community, the idea of something being "un-American" makes no
sense, for there is no defining essence in a "whatever singularity." Yet Agamben is also aware that capitalism and the
state will continue. Indeed, he recognizes that after the fall of Communism, they are sweeping the globe. Politics, in
the future, Agamben argues, will not be community building but the perpetual project of communities against the
state, "a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever
singularity and the State organization" (84).
I doubt Agamben's new community is actually coming. It remains far from clear that communities without identities
are emerging anywhere except in the febrile imaginations of a few philosophers. It is not that I dislike the dream. It
is for me the most attractive dream there is. It is that I am skeptical that such "whatever singularities" are possible on
more than the level of personal behavior. Politics is too clunky for such subtlety. Even the new social movements
seem far more down-to-earth and prone to defining themselves than Agamben's theorizing. Politics , alas, demands
more leaden language.
Still, the image of the state fighting communities is one worth pondering. Its distance from earlier welfare state
thinking could not be more dramatic. Instead of the state embodying the will of the nation, we have a picture of
numerous communities at war with the state. It is, and I say this with no relish, a far more plausible picture of our
emerging politics than Walzer's happy pluralism. Just think of insurance companies, Perotistas, and gay and lesbian
activistsall communities distrustful of the state, all committed to struggling with the state.
Agamben does not ask what this perpetual warfare will do to government. Like Walzer, he assumes that the state
will trudge on as before. Yet if this warfare between humanity and the state is constant, is it not plausible to surmise
that hostility to the state will become permanent? With the fiction that the state embodies the nation's will dying,
who will defend the state? Who will keep it from becoming the recipient of increasing rancor and from being
permanently wobbly? Isn't that a good way of understanding recent politics in the US? And as for Agamben's own
Italy the past decade has revealed a public far more disgusted with the state than even in America.>
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AT: Agamben Singularity destroys politics

Theres no alternative- singularity cannot be described and will destroy politics as a whole
42. The conclusion is clear: if we want to move beyond biopolitics, beyond the violent politics of sovereignty, we
have to develop an alternative ontology where the potential is not always already recaptured by its own potentiality
and thus forced to relate to its opposite, actuality. We have to think potentiality as pure or absolute potentiality,
"beyond every figure of relation" (1998: 47).
43. Agamben thus connects Benjamins "politics of pure means" with the alternative ontology articulated by
Heidegger on the basis of his reading of Aristotles metaphysics. In his 1931 lectures on the Metaphysics
(Heidegger, 1981: 114), in his Nietzsche lectures (1980: 64-65), and in the Letter on humanism (1977: 220),
Heidegger had tied the imperative of a "recovery of the question of Being" to a radical rethinking of the categories
of modality in which Being is freed from the productivist paradigm of actualitas. Only through a questioning of the
modal logic operating within the onto-theological tradition could a free "ethos" be prepared as a genuine dwelling.
Agambens thought owes just as much to this fundamental inspiration as he does to Benjamin. How much
Heideggers ontology of potentiality has exerted a fundamental influence on him is especially clear in the lectures at
the Collge international de Philosophie published under the title Lombre de lamour (1988: 44-46).
44. The description of the radical politics that emerges from the ontology of pure potentiality can be found in The
Coming Community, and it is here that the full consequences of Agambens problematic interpretation and
reappropriation of Benjamin, Heidegger, Schmitt and Arendt become apparent.
45. In the notes that Benjamin was writing in preparation for his Theses on the philosophy of history, one reads:
"The messianic world is the world of overall and integral actuality" (Benjamin 1991e: 1235). The last expression is a
self-reference to the 1929 essay on surrealism (1991d: 309, [1929]). Against Benjamins explicit equation of the
"real state of exception" (the state of liberated humanity), with actuality, Agambens coming community is a
community of subjects that exist only as negative potentialities (actualities that are the possibility of not-being,
actualisations of potentiality), the "whatever singularities". Because he has severed the concept of the community
from all normative ties, and has rejected all conceptual and normative distinctions (between state of nature and civil
state, law and violence, nomos and physis, normal state and exception, etc.), this community-to-come can only be
ever described negatively, as beyond all forms of community, and accessed only in the flight from all present and all
immanence. It is difficult to avoid thinking that the assumed messianism of this radical politics is only a form of
negative theology. Difficult not to think, also, that politics constructed as the "gigantomachy" (Agamben 2003:
chapter 4) of an onto-theology of power does not lead to the evanescence of politics.
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AT: Agamben Alt fails

Agamben fails to acknowledge daily forms of sovereign violence and power from below.
The alternative would not get rid of all forms of sovereignty and power
Hardt & Dumm, Literature Program and Romance Studies Department at Duke & Amherst
College, 2000
[Michael & Thomas, Sovereignty, Multitudes, Absolute Democracy: A Discussion between Michael Hardt and
Thomas Dumm about Hardt and Negri's Empire, Theory & Event 4:3, Project MUSE]
<TD: In that regard, my sense is that you both recognize the power of Giorgio Agamben's argument in Homo Sacer concerning the extraordinary violence of
sovereignty at the end of modernity and yet you seek to overcome what may (not too unjustly) be thought of as a terrifying passivity that his position could result in.
MH: Our argument in Empire does share some central concerns with Agamben's Homo Sacer, particularly surrounding the notions of sovereignty and biopower.
Agamben brilliantly elaborates a conception of modern sovereignty based on Carl Schmitt's notions of the decision on the exception and the state of emergency, in
which the modern functioning of rule becomes a permanent state of exception. He then links this conception to the figure of the banned or excluded person back as far
as ancient Roman law with his usual spectacular erudition. The pinnacle and full realization of modern sovereignty thus becomes the Nazi concentration camp: the
by posing the extreme

case of the concentration camp as the heart of sovereignty it tends to obscure the daily violence of modern
sovereignty in all its forms. It implies, in other words, that if we could do away with the camp then all the violence
of sovereignty would also disappear.
The most significant difference between our projects, though, is that Agamben dwells on modern sovereignty whereas we claim that
modern sovereignty has now come to an end and transformed into a new kind of sovereignty, what we call imperial
sovereignty. Imperial sovereignty has nothing to do with the concentration camp. It no longer takes the form of a
dialectic between Self and Other and does not function through any such absolute exclusion, but rules rather through
mechanisms of differential inclusion, making hierarchies of hybrid identities. This description may not immediately
give you the same sense of horror that you get from Auschwitz and the Nazi Lager, but imperial sovereignty is
certainly just as brutal as modern sovereignty was, and it has its own subtle and not so subtle horrors.
zone of exclusion and exception is the heart of modern sovereignty and grounds the rule of law. My hesitation with this view is that
But still none of that addresses the passivity you refer to. For that we have to look instead at Agamben's notions of life and biopower. Agamben uses the term
"naked life" to name that limit of humanity, the bare minimum of existence that is exposed in the concentration camp. In the final analysis, he explains, modern
biopower is this power to rule over life itself. What results from this analysis is not so
much passivity, I would say, but powerlessness. There is no figure that can challenge and contest sovereignty. Our
critique of Agamben's (and also Foucault's) notion of biopower is that it is conceived only from above and we
attempt to formulate instead a notion of biopower from below, that is, a power by which the multitude itself rules
over life. (In this sense, the notion of biopower one finds in some veins of ecofeminism such as the work of Vandana Shiva, although cast on a very different
register, is closer to our notion of a biopower from below.) What we are interested in finally is a new biopolitics that reveals the
struggles over forms of life.>
sovereignty rules over naked life and
Agamben ignores the actual differences between liberal democracy and totalitarianism and
only thinks in absolutes
Heins, Visiting Professor of Political Science at Concordia University and Senior Fellow at the
Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, 2005
(Volker, Giorgio Agamben and the Current State of Affairs in Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Policy, 6
German Law Journal No. 5, May, http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=598)
<Agamben is not interested in such weighing of costs and benefits because he assumes from the outset that taking
care of the survival needs of people in distress is simply the reverse side of the modern inclination to ignore
precisely those needs and turn life itself into a tool and object of power politics . By way of conclusion, I will indicate briefly how
his view differs from two other, often no less shattering critiques of modern humanitarianism. Martti Koskenniemi warned that humanitarian demands and human
rights are in danger of degenerating into "mere talk."[47] The recent crisis in Darfur, Sudan, can be cited as an example for a situation in which the repeated invocation
of human rights standards and jus cogens norms, like those articulated in the Genocide Convention, might ultimately damage those norms themselves if states are
unwilling to act on them.[48] This criticism implies that human rights should be taken seriously and applied in a reasonable manner.
Both David Kennedy and Oona Hathaway have gone one step further by taking issue even with those who proved to be serious by joining treaties or engaging in
advocacy. In a controversial quantitative study, Hathaway contended that the ratification of human rights treaties by sets of given countries not only did not improve
human rights conditions on the ground, but actually correlated with increasing violations.[49] In a similar vein, David Kennedy radicalized Koskenniemi's point by
arguing that human rights regimes and humanitarian law are rather part of the problem than part of solution, because they "justify" and "excuse" too much.[50] To
some extent, this is an effect of the logic of legal reasoning: marking a line between noncombatants and combatants increases the legitimacy of attacking the latter,
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granting privileges to lawful combatants delegitimizes unlawful belligerents and dramatically worsens their status. On the whole, Kennedy is more concerned about
the dangers of leaving human rights to international legal elites and a professional culture which is blind for the mismatch between lofty ideals and textual
articulations on the one side, and real people and problems on the other side.[51]
Whereas these authors reveal the "dark sides" of overly relying on human rights talk and treaties, the moral fervor of activists or the routines of the legal profession,
Agamben claims that something is wrong with human rights as such, and that recent history has demonstrated a deep affinity between the protection and the
infringement of these rights. Considered in this light, the effort of the British aid organization Save the Children, for instance, to help children in need both in Britain
and abroad after World War I faithful to George Bernard Shaw's saying, "I have no enemies under seven"is only the flip side of a trend to declare total war on
others regardless of their age and situation. This assertion clearly goes far beyond the voices of other pessimists.
Agamben's work is understandable only against the backdrop of an entirely familiar mistrust of liberal democracy and its ability to cultivate nonpartisan moral and
According to Agamben, democracy does not threaten to turn into totalitarianism, but rather both
regimes smoothly cross over into one another since they ultimately rest on the same foundation of a political
interpretation of life itself.[52] Like Carl Schmitt, Agamben sees the invocation of human rights by democratic governments as well as the "humanitarian
legal perspectives.
concept of humanity"[53] as deceptive manouvers or, at least, as acts of self-deception on the part of the liberal bourgeois subject. The difference between Agamben
and Schmitt lies in the fact that Schmitt fought liberal democracy in the name of the authoritarian state, while Agamben sees democracy and dictatorship as two
confronts us with a mode of thinking in vaguely felt

resemblances in lieu of distinctly perceived differences. Ultimately, he offers a version of Schmitt's theory of
sovereignty that changes its political valence and downplays the difference between liberal democracy and
totalitarian dictatorshipa difference about which Adorno once said that it "is a total difference. And I would say,"
he added, "that it would be abstract and in a problematic way fanatical if one were to ignore this difference."[54]
equally unappealing twins. Very much unlike Schmitt, the Italian philosopher
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AT: Agamben AT: Humanitarianism

Humanitarianism does not reduce one to bare life it is about protecting ones moral
agency which Agamben ignores. Liberal democratic protections prevent military action
and the slide to totalitarianism
<According to this basic Principle of Distinction, modern humanitarian action is directed towards those who are
caught up in violent conflicts without possessing any strategic value for the respective warring parties. Does this
imply that classic humanitarianism and its legal expressions reduce the lives of noncombatants to the "bare life" of
nameless individuals beyond the protection of any legal order? I would rather argue that humanitarianism is itself an
order-making activity. Its goal is not the preservation of life reduced to a bare natural fact, but conversely the
protection of civilians and thereby the protection of elementary standards of civilization which prevent the exclusion
of individuals from any legal and moral order. The same holds true for human rights, of course. Agamben fails to
appreciate the fact that human rights laws are not about some cadaveric "bare life", but about the protection of
moral agency.[33]
His sweeping critique also lacks any sense for essential distinctions. It may be legitimate to see "bare life" as a
juridical fiction nurtured by the modern state, which claims the right to derogate from otherwise binding norms in
times of war and emergency, and to kill individuals, if necessary, outside the law in a mode of "effective
factuality."[34] Agamben asserts that sovereignty understood in this manner continues to function in the same way
since the seventeenth century and regardless of the democratic or dictatorial structure of the state in question. This
claim remains unilluminated by the wealth of evidence that shows how the humanitarian motive not only shapes the
mandate of a host state and nonstate agencies, but also serves to restrict the operational freedom of military
commanders in democracies, who cannot act with impunity and who do not wage war in a lawless state of nature.
[35]
Furthermore, Agamben ignores the crisis of humanitarianism that emerged as a result of the totalitarian
degeneration of modern states in the twentieth century. States cannot always be assumed to follow a rational selfinterest which informs them that there is no point in killing others indiscriminately. The Nazi episode in European
history has shown that sometimes leaders do not spare the weak and the sick, but take extra care not to let them
escape, even if they are handicapped, very old or very young. Classic humanitarianism depends on the existence of
an international society whose members feel bound by a basic set of rules regarding the use of violencerules
which the ICRC itself helped to institutionalize. Conversely, classic humanitarianism becomes dysfunctional when
states place no value at all on their international reputation and see harming the lives of defenseless individuals not
as useless and cruel, but as part of their very mission.[36]>
Agambens theory is outdated. Modern humanitarian law has no exceptions and apply to
all individuals
<The political/humanitarian divide is indeed a real one, but Agamben is inaccurate when he holds (a) that
humanitarian law and human rights are essentially the same thing, and (b) that human rights are apolitical in the
sense of being outside the scope of serious political conflicts or unenforcable outside the domestic jurisdiction of
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states. While Agamben places civil rights within the political realm, he simultaneously seems to attribute the
acceptance of presumably apolitical human rights not to the salience of transnational legal norms, but to the
contingency of humanitarian feelings. Even Hannah Arendt indicted in her own day the harmlessness of human
rights groups and discovered "an uncanny similarity" between their language and that of certain "societies for the
prevention of cruelty to animals."[8] Today, however, we have good reasons to reject this rigid dualism of enforcable
civil rights versus merely declaratory human rights as outdated.
Agamben is certainly right to draw a broad analogy between humanitarianism and human rights law, although he
skips the important issue of how the two relate to each other. Both bodies of law share the objective of protecting
individuals under any circumstances. As Agamben seems to realize, the classic separation between the law of war
and law of peace, which limited the applicability of human rights to the latter, was gradually replaced after 1945 by
legal opinions and treaties containing clear stipulations regarding basic human rights obligations which cannot be
suspended even in times of war or other public emergencies. Thus, both Article 27 of the American Convention on
Human Rights (ACHR) and Article 15 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) list a number of "non-derogable" human rights, including the rights to life and the
right of belief, which are to be applied without exception in all circumstances.[9]>
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AT: Calculations Bad Calculations Good

Refusing to calculate masks the most totalitarian calculations. Refusal to be responsible for
all the potential outcomes of our actions is the worst for violence and totally unethical
Campbell, Professor of International Politics at the University of Newcastle, 1999
(David, The Deterritorialization of Responsibility, Moral Spaces, Eds. Michael J. Shapiro & David Campbell, p.
45-7)
That undecidability resides within the decision, Derrida argues, "that justice exceeds law and calculation, that the
unpresentable exceeds the determinable cannot and should not serve as alibi for staying out of juridico-political
battles, within an institution or a state, or between institutions or states and others."91 Indeed, "incalculable justice
requires us to calculate." From where does this insistence come? What is behind, what is animating, these
imperatives? It is both the character of infinite justice as a heteronomic relationship to the other, a relationship that
because of its undecidability multiplies responsibility, and the fact that "left to itself, the incalculable and giving
(donatrice) idea of justice is always very close to the bad, even to the worst, for it can always be reap-propriated by
the most perverse calculation."92 The necessity of calculating the incalculable thus responds to a duty, a duty that
inhabits the instant of madness and compels the decision to avoid "the bad," the "perverse calculation," even
"the worst." This is the duty that also dwells with deconstruction and makes it the starting point, the "at least
necessary condition," for the organization of resistance to totalitarianism in all its forms. And it is a duty that responds to
practical political concerns when we recognize that Derrida names the bad, the perverse, and the worst as those violences " we recognize all too well
without yet having thought them through, the crimes of xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, religious or nationalist
fanaticism."93
Furthermore, the duty within the decision, the obligation that recognizes the necessity of negotiating the possibilities provided by the impossibilities of justice, is not
content with simply avoiding, containing, combating, or negating the worst violence though it could cer tainly begin with those strategies. Instead ,
this
responsibility, which is the responsibility of responsibility, commissions a "utopian" strategy. Not a strategy that is
beyond all bounds of possibility so as to be con sidered "unrealistic," but one which in respecting the necessity of
calculation, takes the possibility summoned by the calculation as far as possible, "must take it as far as possible,
beyond the place we find our selves and beyond the already identifiable zones of morality or politics or law, beyond
the distinction between national and international, pub lic and private, and so on."94 As Derrida declares, "The
condition of possibility of this thing called responsibility is a certain experience and experiment of the possibility of
the impossible: the testing of the aporia from which one may invent the only possible invention, the impossible
invention."'1'' This leads Derrida to enunciate a proposition that many, not the least of whom are his Habermasian critics, could hardly have expected: "Nothing
seems to me less outdated than the classical emancipatory ideal. We cannot attempt to disqualify it today, whether crudely or with sophistication, at least not without
treating it too lightly and forming the worst complicities."96>
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AT: Calculations Bad Calculations Good

Justice is infinite failure to help the other and use calculations leads to perverse
calculations and totalitarianism which have justified the worst atrocities in human history
(David, The Deterritorialization of Responsibility, Moral Spaces, Eds. Michael J. Shapiro & David Campbell, p. )
<The theme of undecidability gives us the context of the decision, but in and of itself undecidability does not provide an account of the decision that would satisfy the
concern raised by Critchley. "Decisions have to be taken. But how? And in virtue of what? How does one make a decision in an undecidable terrain?" 85 These
questions point to the nub of the problem, for sure, but they are issues that do not go unnoticed in Der-rida's work. They are of particular concern for Derrida in "Force
of Law." In that essay, subsequent to making the case for the intrinsic deconstructibility of the law and noting how this is good news for politics and historical
Derrida argues that the law's deconstructibility is made possible by the undeconstructibility of justice. Justice
is outside and beyond the law. "Justice is the experience of the impossible."86 Justice is not a principle, or a
foundation, or a guiding tradition. Justice is infinite, and in a favorable comparison to Levinas's notion of justice
"the heteronomic relation to others, to the faces of otherness that govern me, whose infinity I cannot thematize
and whose hostage I remain."87 In these terms, justice is like the pre-original, an-archic relation to the other, and
akin to the undecidable. It represents the domain of the im possible and the unrepresentable that lies outside and
beyond the limit of the possible and the representable. But it cannot be understood as "utopian," at least insofar as
that means the opposite of "realistic." It is not indeterminate. It is undecidable. It is that which marks the limit of the
possible; indeed, it is that which brings the domain of the possible into being and gives it the ongoing chance for
transformation and re-figuration, that which is one of the conditions of possibility for ethics and politics.
In this context, justice enables the law, but the law is that which "is never exercised without a decision that cuts, that
divides."88 The law works from the unrepresentable and seeks to represent; it takes from the im possible and
conceives the possible; it is embedded in the undecidable but nevertheless decides. Nonetheless, "the undecidable
remains caught, lodged, at least as a ghost but an essential ghost in every decision, in every event of decision. Its ghostliness deconstructs from
within any assurance of presence, any certitude or any supposed criteriology that would assure us of the justice of
the decision, in truth of the very event of a decision."89
The undecidable within the decision does not, however, prevent the decision or avoid its urgency. As Derrida
observes, "a just decision is al ways required immediately, 'right away' " This necessary haste has un avoidable
consequences because the pursuit of "infinite information and the unlimited knowledge of conditions, rules or
hypothetical imperatives that could justify it" are unavailable in the crush of time. Nor can the crush of time be
avoided, even by unlimited time, "because the moment of decision, as such, always remains a finite moment of
urgency and precipitation." The decision is always "structurally finite," it "always marks the interruption of the
juridico- or ethico- or politico-cognitive deliberation that precedes it, that must precede it." This is why, invoking
Kierkegaard, Derrida declares that "the instant of decision is a madness."90
The finite nature of the decision may be a "madness" in the way it renders possible the impossible, the infinite character of justice, but Derrida argues for the
necessity of this madness. Most importantly, although Derrida's argument concerning the decision has, to this point, been con cerned with an account of the
procedure by which a decision is possible, it is with respect to the necessity of the decision that Derrida be gins to formulate an
account of the decision that bears upon the content of the decision. In so doing, Derrida's argument addresses more
directly more directly, I would argue, than is acknowledged by Critchley the concern that for politics (at least for a progressive politics) one
must provide an account of the decision to combat domination.
progress,
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AT: Otherization Plan key prevent extermination

Operating within a framework of ethics is critical to prevent ontological totalitarianism.
Our act of infinite responsibility for the other though the plan is critical to prevent
extermination of the other
<In this contemporary milieu, a 1934 essay by Emmanuel Levinas ("Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism")
has been republished with a preface offering a different account of danger. In that short note, Levinas argued that the
origins of National Socialism's "bloody barbarism" were not to be found in an aberration of reasoning or an accident
of ideology, but rather in "the essential possibility of elemental Evil into which we can be led by logic and against
which Western philosophy had not sufficiently insured itself." 4 Moreover, the possibility of evil as a product of
reason, something against which Western philosophy had no guard, was "inscribed within the ontology of a being
concerned with being." As such, this possibility remains a risk: it "still threatens the subject correlative with being as
gathering together and as dominating," even though this subject (the subject of liberalism and humanism) is "the
famous subject of transcendental idealism that before all else wishes to be free and thinks itself free." 5
In this statement, Levinas offered the core of a thought developed over the last six decades, a thought with the
potential to chart an ethical course for subjects implicated in deconstruetion but who want to resist destruction.
Levinas's philosophythat of ethics as first philosophy is "dominated by the presentiment and the memory of the
Nazi horror,"6 and from under the shadow of Auschwitz seeks to install a disposition that will prevent its
repetition.7 Yet this summons is not answeredby the admonition to return to the dominant moral-philosophical dis course of modernity with its traditional concept of responsibility, where ethics is most often understood in terms of
the moral codes and commands pertaining to autonomous agents (whether they be individuals or states). 8 For
Levinas, being beholden by reason to elements of that tradition was the basis upon which the Holocaust (among
other related atrocities) was possible.9 Instead, Levinas argues that in order to confront evil it is the totalities of that
moral-philosophical discourse that must be contested, for " political totalitarianism rests on an ontological
totalitarianism."10
The critique of "ontological totalitarianism" puts Levinas in tension with the legacies of (Greek) philosophy, at least
insofar as Levinas understands that philosophy to have been dominated by a way of thinking in which truth is
equivalent to presence. "By this I mean an intelligibility that considers truth to be that which is present or copresent,
that which can be gathered or synchronized into a totality that we would call the world or cosmos.'"" That which is
Other is thereby reduced to the Same. This transformation is considered by Levinas to be an "alchemy that is
performed with the philosopher's stone of the knowing ego," a being concerned with being. 12 "Political
totalitarianism" originates in this privilege granted to presence because it disenables and resists an understanding
of that which cannot be thematized, the "otherwise than Being."13 In this context, antisemitism as one of the
bases for the Nazi horror is more than "the hostility felt by a majority towards a mi nority, nor only xenophobia,
nor any ordinary racism." Instead, it can be understood as "a repugnance felt for the unknown within the psyche of
the Other, for the mystery of its interority or... a repugnance felt for the pure proximity of the other man, for sociality
itself."14
However, there is for Levinas another tradition of thought that takes us in this otherwise direction: the Hebraic (as
opposed to Hellenic) tradition.15 Although Levinas does not discount the Greek tradition's capacity to understand the
interhuman realm as presence, he argues that this realm "can also be considered from another perspective the eth ical or biblical perspective that transcends the Greek language of intel ligibility as a theme of justice and concern
for the other as other, as a theme of love and desire, which carries us beyond the infinite being of the world as
presence."16 Levinas cannot therefore be understood as be ing bound by an either/or logic through which one
tradition is rejected in favor of another. Instead, he argues that "the interhuman is thus an interface: a double axis
where what is 'of the world' qua phenomenological intelligibility is juxtaposed with what is 'not of the world' qua
ethical responsibility."17
This double axis of presence and absence, identity and alterity, "essence and essence's other," stands as "the ultimate
relationship in Being," the "irreducible structure upon which all the other structures rest."18 It is that which
constitutes, or reterritorializes, the space the "null-site," a nonplace of a place of responsibility, subjectivity,
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and ethics in the location deterritorialized by Heidegger (and others). 19>
Using the state is the only way to fulfill our infinite responsibility to the other
<Moreover, the spatial dimension foregrounded by the third party's disturbance and the resultant need for justice is
associated with the state. "Who is closest to me? Who is the Other?... We must investigate carefully. Legal justice
is required. There is need for a state."57 Equally, in Otherwise Than Being, Levinas writes that "a problem is
posited by proximity itself, which, as the immediate itself, is without problems. The ex traordinary commitment of
the other to the third party calls for control, a search for justice, society and the State."58 Indeed, Levinas has an
approving view of the state, regarding it as "the highest achievement in the lives of western peoples,"59 something
perhaps attributable to his contestable interpretation of the legitimacy of the state of Israel. 60>
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AT: Otherization Responsibility to Other Exists

Our responsibility to the other is infinite and cannot be calculated it is critical to
understand subjectivity and ethics
<Levinas's thought radically refigures our understanding of responsibil ity, subjectivity, and ethics, for the meaning
of each is implicated in the other: "[Responsibility [is] the essential, primary and fundamental structure of
subjectivity. For I describe subjectivity in ethical terms. Ethics... does not supplement a preceding existential base;
the very node of the subjective is knotted in ethics understood as responsibility."20 Of these concepts, responsibility
is perhaps the most important because, for Levinas, being is a radically interdependent condition, a con dition made
possible only because of my responsibility to the Other:
Responsibility for the Other, for the naked face of the first individual to come along. A responsibility that goes
beyond what I may or may not have done to the Other or whatever acts I may or may not have committed, as if 1
were devoted to the other man before being devoted to myself. Or more exactly, as if 1 had to answer for the other's
death even before being. A guiltless responsibility, whereby I am none the less open to an accusation of which no
alibi, spatial or temporal, could clear me. It is as if the Other established a relationship or a relationship were
established whose whole intensity consists in not presupposing the idea of community.21
This responsibility is unlike that associated with the autonomous moral agents of traditional conceptions. It is "a
responsibility without limits, and so necessarily excessive, incalculable, before memory... a responsibility before
the very concept of responsibility."22 It is a responsibility that is pre-original, an-archic, and devolved from an
"infrastructural alterity,"23 and thus reworks our understanding of both subjectivity and ethics.
Responsibility understood as such refigures subjectivity because the very origin of the subject is to be found in its
subjection to the Other, a subjection that precedes consciousness, identity, and freedom, does not therefore
originate in a vow or decision, and ergo cannot be made possible by a command or imperative.24 In other
words, subjects are constituted by their relationship with the Other. Their being is called into question by the prior
existence of the Other, which has an unremitting and even accusative hold on the subject. Moreover, and this is what
re-articulates ethics, this relationship with the Other means that one's be ing has to be affirmed in terms of a right to
be in relation to the Other:
One has to respond to one's right to be, not by referring to some abstract and anonymous law, or judicial entity, but
because of one's fear for the Other. My being-in-the-world or my "place in the sun," my being at home, have these
not also been the usurpation of spaces belonging to the other man whom I have already oppressed or starved, or
driven out into a third world; are they not acts of repulsing, excluding, exiling, stripping, killing? 25
Having decentered subjectivity by making it an effect of the relationship with the Other, Levinas's thought recasts
ethics in terms of a primary responsibility that stakes our being on the assertion of our right to be. As Levinas
declares, "We name this calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other ethics." 26 In turn, the
recasting of ethics reinforces the decentering of subjectivity:
Ethical subjectivity dispenses with the idealizing subjectivity of ontology, which reduces everything to itself. The
ethical "I" is subjectivity precisely insofar as it kneels before the other, sacrificing its own liberty to the more
primordial call of the other. The heteronomy of our response to the human other, or to God as the absolutely other,
precedes the autonomy of our subjective freedom. As soon as I acknowledge that it is "I" who am responsible, I
accept that my freedom is anteceded by an obligation to the other. Ethics redefines subjectivity as this
heteronomous responsibility, in contrast to autonomous freedom.27
Levinas's philosophy of ethics as first philosophy is clearly in accord with the demise of universality as signalled by
"the end of philosophy," especially as his enterprise has been animated by a concern for the po litical consequences
of Being, ontology, and totality. At the same time, and partly because its truly radical nature goes beyond the
confines of either/or logic, it can be argued that there remains an important moment of universality in Levinas's
thought. It is to be found paradoxically in "the very particularity" of the obligation to the Other.28 We are all in
that circumstance, and it is thus universal, a form of transcendence. Not the transcendence of an ahistorical ego or
principle, but transcendence in the sense that alterity, being's other, is a necessity structured by differance rather than
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ontology, which effects a transcendence without presence. 29 As Levinas observes, "The fundamental experience
which objective experience itself presupposes is the experience of the Other."30>
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AT: Deconstruction K Permutation Solvency

Ethics and deconstruction must be combined to be open towards the other. The two alone
fail
<The affinities between "Levinasian ethics" and "Derridean deconstruction" are considerable. Most notably, alterity
incites ethics and responsibility for each, as both depend on the recognition of a structural condition of alterity prior
to subjectivity and thought. As Derrida argues in defense of the proposition that deconstruction entails an
affirmation, "[Deconstruction is, in itself, a positive response to an alterity which necessarily calls, summons or
motivates it. Deconstruction is therefore vocation a response to a call...The other precedes philosophy and
necessarily invokes and provokes the subject before any genuine questioning can begin. It is in this rapport with the
other that affirmation expresses itself."71 As such, "Deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but an
openness towards the other."72
Deconstruction's unconditional affirmation has enabled Simon Critchley to argue that the question of ethics and
deconstruction is not one of deriving an ethics from deconstruction, but of recognizing that decon struction has a
basic ethicality, that it takes place ethically, because of its orientation to the call of the other. But, for Critchley,
deconstruction alone "fails to navigate the treacherous passage from ethics to politics,"73 and requires the supplement
of Levinas's unconditional responsibility to traverse this passage. The Levinasian fortification is effective because
"for Levinas ethics is ethical for the sake of politicsthat is, for the sake of a new conception of the organization of
political space." In consequence, Critchley's argument (although it is not specifically intended as a critique of
Derrida) is that "politics provides the continual horizon of Levinasian ethics, and that the problem of politics is that
of delineating a form of political life that will repeatedly interrupt all attempts at totalization."74>
Deconstruction combined with action prevents totalitarianism. Failure to do so eliminates

any possibility of politics
<But the concern about politics in Derrida articulated by Critchley is not about politics per se, nor about the
possibilities of political analysis, but about the prospects for a progressive, radical politics, one that will demand
and thus do more than simply permit the decision to resist domination, exploitation, oppression, and all other
conditions that seek to contain or eliminate alterity. Yet, again, I would argue that the above discussion
demonstrates that not only does Derridean deconstruc tion address the question of politics, especially when
Levinasian ethics draws out its political qualities, it does so in an affirmative antitotalitarian manner that gives its
politics a particular quality, which is what Critchley and others like him most want (and rightly so, in my view). We
may still be dissatisfied with the prospect that Derrida's account cannot rule out forever perverse calculations and
unjust laws. But to aspire to such a guarantee would be to wish for the demise of politics, for it would install a new
technology, even if it was a technology that began life with the markings of progressivism and radicalism . Such
dissatisfaction, then, is not with a Derridean politics, but with the necessities of politics per se, necessities that can
be contested and negotiated, but not escaped or transcended.
It is in this context that the limits of the Levinasian supplement proposed by Critchley as necessary for
deconstruction become evident. While it is the case that Levinas's thought is antagonistic to all totaliz ing forms of
politics, recognizing the way that ontological totalitarian ism gives rise to political totalitarianism, I argued above
that the limit of its critical potential is exposed by the question of the state. In this regard, insofar as Derridean
deconstruction requires the Levinasian supplement, that supplement itself needs to be supplemented, and supple mented with recognition of the manner in which deconstruction's af firmation of alterity deterritorializes
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responsibility, and pluralizes the possibilities for ethics and politics over and beyond (yet still including) the
state.107>
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AT: Otherization Responsibility to Other Exists

Our responsibility to the other comes before everything else, even if it means abandoning
politics or Democracy
<Notwithstanding the interrelated nature of the norm of the interhuman and the rules of governance, in the shift to
morality Levinas argues that ethics "hardens its skin as soon as we move into the political world or the impersonal
'third' the world of government, institutions, tribunals, prisons, schools, committees, and so on."66 This
"hardening of the skin" is a manifestation of the way in which Levinas understands politics to involve "a totalizing
discourse of ontology,"67 a discourse most evident in arguments enunciated by and for the state. Nonetheless, in his
discussion of the shift from ethics to morality, Levinas exhibits a less sanguine attitude to the state than noted above:
If the moral-political order totally relinquishes its ethical foundation, it must accept all forms of society, including
the fascist or totalitarian, for it can no longer evaluate or discriminate between them. The state is usually better than
anarchy but not always. In some instances fascism or totalitarianism, for example the political order of the
state may have to be challenged in the name of our ethical responsibility to the other. That is why ethics must remain
the first philosophy.68
Even though Levinas's limited reservations about the state are here restricted to the nature of (domestic) political
order, the idea that "the state may have to be challenged in the name of our ethical responsibil ity to the other" at least
allows for the possibility of extending political action in terms of the ethical relation beyond the bounds suggested
by Levinas's previous reflections on the third party and the state. There is no doubt, however, that to fulfill the
promise of Levinas's ethics with respect to international politics, this possibility for challenge has to be carried a
good deal further. Moreover, I would argue, this possibility for challenge has to be pursued in order to maintain
fidelity with Levinas's conviction that neither politics nor warfare can obliterate the relation ship of the self to
the other as a relation of responsibility. Indeed, this endeavor might be thought of in terms of making Levinas's
thought more "Levinasian," for pursuing this possibility of challenge flows from the recognition that "injustice
not to mention racism, nationalism, and imperialism begins when one loses sight of the transcendence of the
Other and forgets that the State, with its institutions, is informed by the proximity of my relation to the Other."69>
Our relationship to the other is always necessary, not matter the circumstances. We cannot
say no or it is not my responsibility
Campbell, Professor of International Politics at the University of Newcastle, 1999 (David, The
Deterritorialization of Responsibility, Moral Spaces, Eds. Michael J. Shapiro & David Campbell, p. )
<Levinas's thought is appealing for rethinking the question of responsibility, especially with respect to situations like
the Balkan crisis, because it maintains that there is no circumstance under which we could declare that it was not our
concern. As Levinas notes, people can (and obviously do) conduct their relationship to the Other in terms of
exploitation, oppression, and violence. But no matter how allergic to the other is the self, "the relation to the other,
as a relation of responsibility, cannot be totally suppressed, even when it takes the form of politics or war fare." In
consequence, no self can ever opt out of a relationship with the other: "[l]t is impossible to free myself by saying,
'It's not my concern.' There is no choice, for it is always and inescapably my concern . This is a unique 'no choice,'
one that is not slavery."'37
This unique lack of choice comes about because in Levinas's thought ethics has been transformed from something
independent of subjectivity that is, from a set of rules and regulations adopted by pregiven, autonomous agents
to something insinuated within and integral to that subjectivity. Accordingly, ethics can be understood as something
not ancillary to the existence of a subject; instead, ethics can be appre ciated for its indispensability to the very being
of the subject. This argument leads us to the recognition that "we" are always already ethically situated, so making
judgments about conduct depends less on what sort of rules are invoked as regulations and more on how the
interdepen-dencies of our relations with others are appreciated. To repeat one of Levinas's key points: "Ethics
redefines subjectivity as this heteronomous responsibility, in contrast to autonomous freedom."'38
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AT: Lacan Essentialism

Essentialism: Lacanian theory is premised on the myth of constitutive lack; it places its
highly symbolic universal theory outside the realm of the signified, shielding it to any
criticism, over-applying it to all specific scenarios of antagonism, and recreating the
symbolic order that it claims to criticize.
Robinson, Professor of Politics at Nottingham University, 2004 (Andrew, The Political Theory of Constitutive
Lack: A Critique, http://andyrobinsontheoryblog.blogspot.com/)
constitutive lack is an instance of a Barthesian myth. It is, after all, the function of
myth to do exactly what this concept does: to assert the empty facticity of a particular ideological schema while
rejecting any need to argue for its assumptions. Myth does not deny things; on the contrary, its function is to talk
about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it is a
clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact (2000, 143, my emphasis). This is precisely the status of
constitutive lack: a supposed fact which is supposed to operate above and beyond explanation, on an ontological
level instantly accessible to those with the courage to accept it. Myths operate to construct euphoric enjoyment for
those who use them, but their operation is in conflict with the social context with which they interact. This is because
<More precisely, I would maintain that
their operation is connotative: they are received rather than read (1984, 232), and open only to a readerly and not a writerly
interpretation. A myth is a second-order signification attached to an already-constructed denotative sign, and the
ideological message projected into this sign is constructed outside the context of the signified. A myth is therefore, in
Alfred Korzybskis sense, intensional: its meaning derives from a prior linguistic schema, not from interaction with the world in its complexity.
Furthermore, myths have a repressive social function, carrying in Barthess words an order not to think (1997, 59). They
are necessarily projected onto or imposed on actual people and events, under the cover of this order. The triumph of literature in the Dominici
trial (2000, 43-6) consists precisely in this projection of an externally-constructed mythical schema as a way of avoiding
engagement with something one does not understand.

Lacanian theory, like Barthesian myths, involves a prior idea of a structural matrix which is not open to change in
the light of the instances to which it is applied. (This is one of the reasons why the strong ontology founding Lacanian theory is rarely
accompanied by a systematic epistemology). ieks writes of a pre-ontological dimension which precedes and eludes the construction of reality
(1997a, 208), while Laclau suggests there is a formal structure of any chain of equivalences which necessitates the logic of hegemony (1996, 57).
Specific analyses are referred back to this underlying structure as its necessary expressions, without apparently
being able to alter it; for instance, those who triggered the process of democratization [in eastern Europe] are not those who today enjoy
its fruits, not because of a simple usurpation but because of a deeper structural logic (iek, 1992a, 27). In most instances, the mythical
operation of the idea of constitutive lack is implicit, revealed only by a rhetoric of denunciation. For instance, Mouffe
accuses liberalism of an incapacity to grasp the irreducible character of antagonism (1993, 1-2), while iek claims that a dimension is
lost in Butlers work because of her failure to conceive of trouble as constitutive of gender (1994, 71). This language of denial
which is invoked to silence critics is a clear example of Barthess order not to think: one is not to think about the
idea of constitutive lack, one is simply to accept it, under pain of invalidation. If someone else disagrees, s/he
can simply be told that there is something crucial missing from her/his theory. Indeed, critics are as likely to be accused of
being dangerous as to be accused of being wrong.
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 high-level generalizations and ultra-specific (pseudo-)concrete instances. In Barthess 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 generalisations 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 (Butler, Laclau and iek,
2000, 239-40). He also has a concept of a notion which has a reality above and beyond any referent, so that, if reality does not fit it, so much
the worse for reality (Butler, Laclau and iek, 2000, 244). The failure to see what is really going on means that one sees more, not less, because
libidinal perception is not impeded by annoying facts (see Butler, Laclau and iek, 2000, 248). iek insists on the necessity of the gesture of
externally projecting a conception of an essence onto phenomena (1994, 62-3), even affirming its necessity in the same case (anti-Semitism) in
which Reich denounces its absurdity (iek, 1994, 74; Reich, 1974, 30-1). This amounts to an endorsement of myths in the Barthesian sense, as
well as demonstrating the dialectical genius of the likes of Kelvin McKenzie.
Lacanian analysis consists mainly of an exercise in projection. As a result, Lacanian explanations often look more propagandistic
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or pedagogical than explanatory. A particular case is dealt with only in order to, and to the extent that it can, confirm the alreadyformulated structural theory. Judith Butler criticizes ieks method on the grounds that theory is applied to its examples, as if
already true, prior to its exemplification. The theory is articulated on its self-sufficiency, and then shifts register only for the
pedagogical purpose of illustrating an already accomplished truth. It is therefore a theoretical fetish that disavows the conditions of its own
emergence (Butler, Laclau and iek, 2000, 26-7). She accuses Laclau of developing a model of explanation which reduces social movements to
a single logic of claim-making. Using this method, [w]e become meta-commentators on the conditions of possibility of political life without then
bothering to see whether the dilemmas we assume to pertain universally are, in fact, at work in the subject we purport to judge (Butler, Laclau
and iek, 2000, 169). The moment at which, for instance, a specific law is taken to express the Law as a prior concept, Lacanians adopt a
credo of faith; this is the moment in which a theory of psychoanalysis becomes a theological project. Such simplification is a way
to avoid the rather messy psychic and social entanglement involved in studying specific cases (Butler, Laclau and iek,
2000, 155-6). Similarly, Dominick LaCapra objects to the idea of constitutive lack because specific losses cannot be
adequately addressed when they are enveloped in an overly generalised discourse of absence Conversely, absence at a
foundational level cannot simply be derived from particular historical losses (1999, 698). Attacking the long story of conflating absence with
loss that becomes constitutive instead of historical (1999, 719), he accuses several theorists of eliding the difference between
absence and loss, with confusing and dubious results, including a tendency to avoid addressing historical
problems, including losses, in sufficiently specific terms, and a tendency to enshroud, perhaps even to etherealise,
them in a generalised discourse of absence (1999, 700). Unlike structural absences, traumatic historical events are always determined
by specific circumstances (1999, 725). For instance, referring to ieks remark that explanations of the Holocaust and the Gulag are so many
attempts to elude the fact that we are dealing with the real which returns as the same traumatic kernel in all civilisations (1989, 50), LaCapra
remarks that iek performs an extreme and extremely dubious theoretical gesture of reducing specific events to
mere manifestations of an underlying structure (1999, 727). (LaCapra, however, revives the idea of constitutive lack in his concept of
general or structural absence - absence as absence or untranscendable structural trauma [1999, 722] - which simply displaces the problem of
surplus lack into one of how one tells whether a phenomenon is a contingent lack or a structural absence). Daniel Bensad draws out the
political consequences of the projection of absolutes into politics. The fetishism of the absolute event involves a suppression
of historical intelligibility, necessary to its depoliticization. The space from which politics is evacuated becomes
a suitable place for abstractions, delusions and hypostases. Instead of actual social forces, there are shadows and
spectres (2002, 7).
The operation of the logic of projection is predictable. According to Lacanians, there is a basic structure (sometimes called a
ground or matrix) from which all social phenomena arise, and this structure, which remains unchanged in all
eventualities, is the reference-point from which particular cases are viewed. For instance, iek, replying to criticisms of
Lacanian film theory that its concept of the gaze never expresses anything which arises concretely in a film, states that the gaze, which is a
structural/essential category, is prior to instances of eyes and sight (Butler, Laclau and iek, 2000, 260). The fit between theory and evidence
is constructed monologically by the reduction of the latter to the former, or by selectivity in inclusion and reading of examples. At its simplest, the
Lacanian myth functions by a short-circuit between a particular instance and statements containing words such as all, always, never,
necessity and so on. A contingent example or a generic reference to experience is used, misleadingly, to found a
claim with supposed universal validity. For instance, Stavrakakis uses the fact that existing belief-systems are based
on exclusions as a basis to claim that all belief-systems are necessarily based on exclusions (1999, 63-4), and claims that
particular traumas express an ultimate impossibility (1999, 84-5). Similarly, Laclau and Mouffe use the fact that a particular antagonism can
disrupt a particular fixed identity to claim that the social as such is penetrated and constituted by antagonism as such (1985, 125-9). Phenomena
are often analysed as outgrowths of something exterior to the situation in question. For instance, ieks concept of the social symptom
depends on a reduction of the acts of one particular series of people (the socially excluded, fundamentalists, Serbian paramilitaries, etc.) to a
psychological function in the psyche of a different group (westerners).
The real is a supposedly self-identical principle which is used to reduce any and all qualitative differences
between situations to a relation of formal equivalence. This shows how mythical characteristics can be projected from the outside,
although it also raises a different problem: the under-conceptualization of the relationship between individual psyches and collective phenomena
in Lacanian theory. Too often, the denial of a dividing-line between the two is used as an excuse for simply flitting
between them, as if there is no difference between analysing a single individual and a social conflict. Lacanians
frequently avoid questions of agency (iek has more to say about class struggle than classes, for instance), and a related tendency for
psychological concepts to acquire an ersatz agency similar to that of a Marxian fetish. The Real or antagonism occurs in phrases which have
it doing or causing something.
As Barthes shows, myth offers the psychological benefits of empiricism without the epistemological costs. Tautology, for instance, is a minor
ethical salvation, the satisfaction of having militated in favour of a truth without having to assume the risks which any somewhat positive
search for truth inevitably involves (1997, 61). It dispenses with the need to have ideas, while treating this release as a stern morality.
Tautology is a rationality which simultaneously denies itself, in which the accidental failure of language is magically identified with what one
decides is a natural resistance of the object (1997, 152-3).
This passage could almost have been written with the Lacanian Real in mind. The characteristic of the Real is precisely that one
can invoke it without defining it (since it is beyond symbolization), and that the accidental failure of language, or
indeed a contingent failure in social praxis, is identified with an ontological resistance to symbolization projected
into Being itself. For instance, ieks classification of the Nation as a Thing rests on the claim that the only way we can determine it is
by empty tautology, and that it is a semantic void (1990, 53). Similarly, he claims that the tautological gesture of the Master-Signifier, an
empty performative which retroactively turns presuppositions into conclusions, is necessary, and also that tautology is the only way historical
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change can occur (1994, 43, 59). He even declares constitutive lack (in this case, termed the death drive) to be a tautology (1994, 50).
Lacanian references to the Real or antagonism as the cause of a contingent failure are reminiscent of Robert
Teflons definition of God: [a]n explanation which means I have no explanation (cited Bufe ed., 1995,188). An ethics
of the Real is a minor ethical salvation which says very little in positive terms, but which can pose in macho terms
as a hard acceptance of terrifying realities. It authorizes truth-claims - in Laclaus language, a reality which is before our
eyes (1990, 97), or in Newmans, a harsh reality hidden beneath a protective veil (2001, 53) - without the attendant risks. Some Lacanian
theorists also show indications of a commitment based on the particular kind of euphoric enjoyment Barthes associates with myths. Laclau in
particular emphasizes his belief in the exhilarating significance of the present (1990, 98), hinting that he is committed to euphoric investments
generated through the repetition of the same.>
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Lacans alternative, to embrace lack, is to create an illusion of order when there is none.
It is the essence of fantasy construction, requiring elimination of difference in order to
maintain the smooth functioning of the Master Signifier.
<The gap between the two kinds of contingency is also suggested by the Lacanian insistence on the need for a
master-signifier (or nodal point), i.e. a particular signifier which fills the position of universality, a symbolic injunction which relies only on
its own act of enunciation (iek, 2001d, 6). It is through such a gesture that one establishes a logic of sameness, and such a
logic seems to be desired by Lacanians. Butler remarks that ieks text is a project of mastery and a discourse of the law in which the
contingency of language [is] mastered in and by a textual practice which speaks as the law (1993, 198). He demands a New
Harmony, sustained by a newly emerged Master-Signifier (iek 1999, 154). This insistence on a master-signifier is an anticontingent gesture, especially in its rejection of the multiordinality of language. It is, after all, this multiordinality (the possibility of making a
statement about any other statement) which renders language an open rather than a closed system. The need for a master-signifier
seems to be a need to restore an illusion of closure, the need for metacommunication to operate in a repressive
rather than an open way. This need arises because the mythical concept of constitutive lack is located in an
entire mythical narrative in which it relates to other abstractions. In the work of Laclau and Mouffe, this expresses itself in
the demand for a hegemonic agent who contingently expresses the idea of social order as such.
One should recall that such an order is impossible, since antagonism is constitutive of social relations, and that the
hegemonic gesture therefore requires an exclusion. Thus, the establishment of a hegemonic master-signifier is
merely a useful illusion. The alternative to demanding a master-signifier - an illusion of order where there is none - would be to reject the
pursuit of the ordering function itself, and to embrace a rhizomatic politics which goes beyond this pursuit. In Laclau and Mouffes work,
however, the need for a social order, and a state to embody it, is never questioned, and, even in Zizeks texts, the
Act which smashes the social order is to be followed by a necessary restoration of order (e.g. 1989, 211-12). This
necessity is derived ontologically: people are, says iek, in need of firm roots (Butler, Laclau and iek, 2000, 250). The tautological gesture
of establishing a master-signifier by restrospectively positing conditions of an object as its components, thereby block[ing] any further inquiry
into the social meaning of what it quilts (i.e. repressive metacommunication), is a structural necessity (1993, 49). This is because discourse itself
is in its fundamental structure authoritarian. A distortion introducing non-founded violence into language is necessary, and with Lacan, the
master is an impostor, yet the place occupied by him cannot be abolished, since the very finitude of every discursive field imposes its structural
necessity. The role of the analyst is not to challenge the place of the master, but to occupy it in such a way as to expose its underlying
contingency (1992c, 103). The master-signifier, also termed the One, demonstrates the centrality of a logic of place in
Lacanian theory. Badiou accomplishes the ultimate gesture of obedience to King Abacus in specifying mathematics - the core of many logics
of place - as the root of being-as-being (i.e. in itself). When all particularity is stripped away, what remains is mathematics (2001, 130). His
position on revolutionary change is similar to ieks. It is inevitable, even destiny, that every truth or revolutionary break should return to
the logic of normalization (2001, 70). The truth-event is fated to disappear (2001, 72), and truth can only change the content of opinion (i.e.
everyday symbolic discourse), not destroy it (2001, 80). Lacanians assume that constitutive lack necessitates the construction of
a positive space which a particular agent can fill (albeit contingently). The empty place of power in liberal-democratic Lacanian
texts such as those of Laclau, Mouffe, Stavrakakis and Newman is not empty at all, since it involves a particular (though changing) positivity. An
empty place of power would involve, not an agent who adopts the empty position, but a simple absence of the
position, or in other words, the destruction of the state and the free emergence of rhizomatic networks with no determinate centre.
Therefore, the commitment to master-signifiers and the state involves a continuation of an essentialist image of
positivity, with lack operating structurally as the master-signifier of Lacanian theory itself (not as a subversion of
positivity, but as a particular positive element).>
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Lacanian theory, beneath a veneer of anti-essentialism, mythically represents constitutive
lack as objective truth that cannot be criticized. Acceptance of human nature as inherently
antagonistic justifies any violence against individuals.
<The reason Lacanians can claim to be anti-essentialist is that there is a radical rupture between the form and
content of Lacanian theory. The acceptance of contingency constructed around the idea of constitutive lack is a
closing, not an opening, gesture, and is itself essentialist and non-contingent. Many Lacanian claims are not at all
contingent, but are posited as ahistorical absolutes. To take an instance from Mouffes work, power and antagonism are supposed to have an ineradicable
character so that any social objectivity is constituted through acts of power and will show traces of exclusions (2000, 21). One could hardly find a clearer example
anywhere of a claim about a fixed basic structure of Being. One could also note again the frequency of words such
as all and always in the Lacanian vocabulary, as well as instances of contradiction and anomaly. For instance, Laclau and Mouffe accuse Norman Geras of
essentialism because he uses the phrase what it is, yet they use the same phrase only two pages earlier (1990, 129, 131). The dislocation between form and content
involves playing with words, rather than constructing a language game. Ludwig Wittgenstein argues that if someone wished to say: There is
something common to all these constructions - namely the disjunction of all their common properties - I should reply: Now you are only playing with words (1967, part 1 sect. 67, 32e).
Lacanian theory seems, indeed, to be treating disjunction as a basis for similarity.
The contingency embraced in Lacanian theory is not an openness which exceeds specifiable positivities, but a positivity posing as negativity. The relationship between contingency and
constitutive lack is like the relationship between Germans and Germanness, or tables and tableness, in the work of Barthes. One could speak, therefore, of a lack-ness or a contingencyness or an antagonism-ness in Lacanian political theory, and of this theory as a claim to fullness with this reified lack-ness as one of the positive elements within the fullness. One sometimes
finds direct instances of such mythical vocabulary, as for instance when Stavrakakis demands acknowledgement of event-ness and negativity (2003, 69). Indeed, it is an especially closed variety
the Real is never subject to the

same logic of contingency that it secures (1993, 196). It is indicative that Lacanians do not allow their own edifice
to be haunted by any kind of outside: it is for iek a defining feature of both psychoanalysis and Marxism that they are able to interpret
of fullness, with core ideas posited as unquestionable dogmas and the entire structure virtually immune to falsification. As Butler claims,
resistances to their arguments (i.e. an outside) as the result of the object they are studying (i.e. as an inside) (2001c, 174). The fixed structure of
Lacanian theory is strongly operative in resultant arguments, although it is concealed to some extent by an apparent reluctance on the part of
Lacanian theorists to engage in metacommunicative dialogue about their theoretical claims. This allows a smoothly-flowing rhetoric
within which they can subsume contemporary events and specific subjects of analysis. However, beneath this
rhetoric, the essentialist basic structure and the myth of constitutive lack call the shots.
One even finds at times an open reference to lack as an essence. For instance, Laclau and Mouffe refer to negativity
and antagonism as foundational and grounding (1985, 145, 193; c.f. Newman, 2001, 153), Newman refers to the emptiness at the heart of place and comes close
to admitting his own essentialism (2001, 50-1), Stavrakakis refers to the Real as inherent in human experience (1999, 87) and Laclau admits privileging the moment of negativity (1990, 17).
iek at times embraces essentialism and his entire analysis is unashamedly ontological. Sometimes, Lacanians
imply the existence of an element in human nature which necessitates conflict. Mouffe refers to an element of hostility among human beings
and denounces others for rejecting the idea that violence is inherent in human nature, and Newman cites Lacans view that constitutive lack is almost natural (Mouffe, 2000, 130-2; Newman,
Most often, one finds the essentialism of constitutive lack concealed beneath a simple change of words .
this allows an
essentialism at the level of form to be combined with an anti-essentialism at the level of content. For instance, iek
2001, 144).
Instead of essential, one might say radical, constitutive, primordial, fundamental, basic or indivisible, and
takes the term constitutive to mean the story of everyone (1992c, 74), i.e. more-or-less the same as a universal essence.
One way in which Lacanian theorists differentiate themselves from essentialism is by reference to the idea of
constitutive lack as negativity. For instance, Laclau claims that he does not pose his theory as a full awareness of
objectivity because antagonism is the limit of all objectvity and has no objective meaning of its own (1990, 17).
Therefore, in Stavrakakiss terms, Lacanian theory is supposedly breaking down the limits between thought and non-thought, encircling rather than symbolizing lack (1999, 82-3), and creating a
Such claims are misleading. They may apply to the arguments of (say) Derrida or
Korzybski, but the syntax and grammar of Lacanian theory is not such as to permit such an opening. Constitutive
lack appears in Lacanian rhetoric as an entity with a positive name, such as the Real, and instances of lacking are
frequently nominalized or explained by reference to it. As Butler asks, assuming sociality and conceptualization to have a limit,
space within thought for an awareness of its own limits.
why are we compelled to give a technical name to this limit, the Real, and to make the further claim that the subject is constituted by this
foreclosure? The use of technical nomenclature opens up more problems than it solves. Indeed, it could even be a
gesture of discursive control in its own right. Are we using the categories to understand the phenomena, or
marshalling the phenomena to shore up the categories in the name of the father? (Butler, Laclau and iek, 2000,
152). Perhaps it involves social significations reified as prediscursive (1993, 195). In any case, to say that the real
resists symbolization is already to symbolize it (1993, 207).
The technical term operates in much the same way as in positivistic theories, where the use of a noun turns a set of observed facts into a law. Lack (in the sense of the verb to lack) is
explained by means of a nominalized lack (for instance, the failure of society by the fact of antagonism), and the various versions of nominalized lack are arranged in sentences involving the verb
to be. It is not simply a relation of dislocation but a theoretical entity in its own right. For instance, class struggle is that on account of which every direct reference to universality is
biased, dislocated with regard to its literal meaning. Class struggle is the Marxist name for this basic operator of dislocation (iek, 1997a, 217). One might compare this formula to the
statement, I dont know what causes dislocation. iek also refers to the universal traumatic kernel which returns as the Same throughout all historical epochs, epochs which should be
conceived as a series of ultimately failed attempts to deal with the same unhistorical, traumatic kernel (1992c, 81). Dallmayr similarly writes of Laclau and Mouffes concept of antagonism
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that negativity designates not simply a lack but a nihilating potency, a nihilating ferment with real effects (1987, 287, 292-3). Stavrakakis differentiates negativity, an ontological concept of
that which shows the limits of the constitution of objectivity, from contingent instances of negativities (2003, 56) and Newman writes of a creative and constitutive absence (2001,142).
Badious Real - more situated than the rest, yet still an ontological necessity - has the same positive role. Hence, at the heart of every situation, at the foundation of its being, there is a situated
void, around which is organised the plenitude of the situation (2001, 68). This void is a specific element, so that the event names the void insofar as it names the not-known of the situation
(2001, 69), and it must name the one true central void of the situation (2001, 72). This notion of the void as positivity - as something already present in the situation which motivates change - is
the only substantial difference between Badious truth-events and Kuhns paradigm-shifts. (It would seem to mean taking, for instance, the lack of factories before the industrial revolution to be
an active, positive element which the revolution named, a real void rather than something constructed retrospectively out of a situation open to many different developments; this is certainly
how Badiou reads the rise of quantum physics) . Butler notes that the real that is a rock or a kernel or sometimes a substance is also, and sometimes within the same sentence, a loss, a
negativity (1993, 198). Constitutive lack is a positivity - an operator of dislocation, a nihilating element - in the Lacanian vocabulary. It is this process of mythical construction which
One can
only avoid an I-dont-know being underdefined if one misrepresents it mythically. The idea of constitutive lack
is equivalent to a concept of a positive element in human nature which necessitates conflict with others. For
instance, the claim that the political is a dimension inherent to society and which determine[s] our [i.e.
humans] very ontological condition (1993, 3) could be rephrased as a claim that it is natural to hate or fight. Many of
allows lack to be defined precisely, and which therefore meets (for instance) Newmans criterion that it be less radically underdefined than Derridas concept of lack (2001, 132).
the conservative authors who intermittently litter the references of Lacanian political theory (e.g. Schmitt and Hobbes) are explicitly committed to
a negative conception of human nature.>
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Lacans critique of neurosis demonstrates how mythological the notion of inevitable lack is
psychosis can only be defined as not neurosis, ensuring that psychosis is then repressed
in order to ensure the survival of psychoanalytic theory.
<More evidence for the mythical character of the idea of constitutive lack comes from the assertion that it is
irreducible and unavoidable (an indivisible remainder, in one of ieks favourite catchphrases). If it is repressed or even
foreclosed, it necessarily returns (in symptoms, social symptoms, delusions, hallucinations and so on). This claim rests on a
repressed element within Lacanian theory itself: psychosis. When Lacan defines psychosis as the foreclosure of the name-of-thefather, he performs a gesture similar to that seen in a classic episode of Blackadder, when Baldrick proposes that the word cat be defined as
not a dog. Because of the mythical operation of the core account of neurosis in Lacanian theory, it can only refer to
psychosis by defining it as not neurosis. The absence of a positive discussion of psychosis - its reduction to a
failure of the construction of neurotic subjectivity - is evidence of the all-pervasive operation of the mythical model
of a core structure. It also allows psychosis to return as the repressed element in Lacanian theory itself, the
element it must deny to survive as a theoretical edifice. For Badiou, for instance, one must avoid challenging the reign of
opinion (phatic discourse), as this leads to madness (2001, 84). The Deleuzian schizo contrasts favourably with the Lacanian masochist as the
psychological basis for a radical line of flight.>
Lacanian theory places itself in a double bind either it loses its universalist status or it
links back into what it critiques.
<The idea of constitutive lack is supposed to entail a rejection of neutral and universal standpoints, and it is this
rejection which constructs it as an anti-essentialist position. In practice, however , Lacanians restore the idea of a
universal framework through the backdoor: the universality of a statement such as that there is no neutral
universality is constructed so as to privilege whichever side in a conflict accepts the statement more completely.
Acceptance or awareness of the fundamental ontological level becomes the very neutral standpoint of
objectivity it claims to obliterate, reasserting essentialism in the very act of denying it. Take, for instance, ieks claim that
a true Leninist is not afraid to assume all the consequences, unpleasant as they may be, of realizing his political project [A] Leninist, like a
conservative, is authentic [because] fully aware of what it means to take power and to exert it (2001b, 4). Can one find a clearer example of a
claim to a status of authenticity due to a position of ontological privilege, in this case a privilege conferred by awareness of the underlying
lack? It should be added that this is by no means the only reference to authenticity in ieks work. The Act, his primary ethical concept, is
constructed around a reference to authenticity, defined in exclusion of the various instances of false acts and shirking of the Act . Beneath
the idea that there is no neutral universality lurks a claim to know precisely such a neutral universality and to
claim a privileged position on this basis. A consistent belief in contingency and anti-essentialism entails scepticism about the idea of
constitutive lack. After all, how does one know that the appearance that experience shows lack to be constitutive reflects
an underlying universality, as opposed to the contingent or even simulated effects of a particular discourse or
episteme? Alongside its opponents, shouldnt Lacanian theory also be haunted by its own fallibility and
incompletion? There is a paradox in the idea of radical choice, for it is unclear whether Lacanians believe this should be applied reflexively.
Is the choice of Lacanian theory itself an ungrounded Decision? If so, the theory loses the universalist status it
implicitly claims. If not, it would seem to be the kind of structural theory it attacks. A complete structural theory
would seem to assume an extra-contingent standpoint, even if the structure includes a reference to constitutive lack.
Such a theory would seem to be a radical negation of the incompletion of I dont know.>
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AT: Lacan - Essentialism

The idea of constitutive lack is a roadblock to true knowledge it symbolizes lack instead
of affirming the fact that we may not know the answer to every question.
<The difference between contingency and constitutive lack becomes clear if one imagines other ways in which the former could be expressed.
One important expression of an awareness of contingency is a preparedness to say I dont know. This phrase - sadly anathematized in
contemporary western societies which identify knowledge with quick-fire answers, but expressing a noble tradition stretching back to Socrates
- expresses a contingent awareness that a particular aspect of the world has escaped ones own symbolic schema,
and that (in Lacanian terms) the Symbolic itself is incomplete. As Postman and Weingartner put it, good learners do not
need to have an absolute, final, irrevocable resolution to every problem. The sentence I dont know, does not depress them,
and they certainly prefer it to the various forms of semantic nonsense that pass for answers to questions that do not as yet have any solution - or
may never have one (1969, 42). They even advocate that teachers use I dont know as a pedagogical tactic to inspire investigation (1969, 103).
Trevor Pateman adds that [I]t is significant when people give an answer when really they dont know, because they
create an illusion of knowledge, which at the collective level may function as a real obstacle to understanding (1975,
14). Pointing to a gap in ones knowledge by the metacommunicative statement I dont know is far more direct than the more immediately
communicative and apparently affirmative use of phrases involving words such as the and is. Is the idea of a constitutive lack
equivalent to the gesture of saying I dont know? Although (as noted above) it is an explanation which means I dont know, it nevertheless
poses as an explanation, and so is part of the problem Pateman outlines. One could, of course, refer to the instance where one
says I dont know as a gap in ones knowledge, and subsequently refer to this as the gap, generating a use of language superficially similar
to Lacanian theory. This is possible due to what Korzybski terms the multiordinality of language: although one cannot make a statement about
what one does not know, one can nevertheless make a statement about ones incapacity to make a statement, because it is always possible to make
a statement about a statement (or its absence). A second-order nominalization of this kind could indeed express an impossibility without
attempting to symbolize it (i.e. without asserting one way or another the nature of that which one does not know). However, one could not
incorporate such a second-order concept in some of the phrases which arise in Lacanian theory. There is a particular problem as
regards phrases involving words such as constitutive, primordial and irreducible. The idea of a constitutive Idont-know is virtually meaningless. If it could be rendered meaningful, it would seem to mean something along the lines of the idea
that inquiry and creation are motivated by gaps in knowledge. It would not preclude (for instance) learning something one does not know, and
therefore, it does not have the reductive and limiting effects of the idea of constitutive lack (for instance, that all
social organization is reducible to antagonism). This suggests that, in Lacanian theory, the I-dont-know gesture is reified into
something else: it has a silent -ity on the end, and relates to instances of I dont know in much the same way that Germanness relates to
individual Germans.>
Lacan mischaracterizes the nature of conflict he rules out the possibility of antagonism
arising from any specific, contextual causes.
the idea of constitutive lack is radically incompatible with the idea that specific conflicts
result from specific, contextual causes. Mouffe distances her view explicitly from any idea that conflicts have a
contingent and empirical basis (2000, 19, 48). She insists that far from being merely empirical or epistemological, the obstacles to
rationalist devices are ontological (2000, 98). This does, not, however, stop her from claiming to have provided an analysis
which explains how specific antagonisms arise (1993 2; c.f. Laclau, 1996, 17). Even more clearly, iek constructs his idea that lack
<It should be added that
is a feature of desire as such in opposition to the idea that alienation results from present, contingent capitalist conditions (1990, 56) and
denounces the idea of contingency as an incapacity of concepts to grasp a complex reality as incompatible with the idea of the Real (Butler,
Laclau and iek, 2000, 216). Guattaris critique of psychoanalysis makes clear the myths which underlie it. Psychoanalysis transforms
and deforms the unconscious by forcing it to pass through the grid of its system of inscription and representation.
For psychoanalysis, the unconscious is always already there, genetically programmed, structured, and finalized on
objectives of conformity to social norms (1996, 206).>
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AT: Lacan AT: Lacan is not Essentialist

Their claims that they arent essentialist are bunk Lacanians espouse anti-essentialism in
order to cover up the mythical nature of the notion of constitutive lack.
Barthesian myths are claims to express social fullness or an avowed essence, whereas the
Lacanian constitutive lack is introduced precisely so as to attack such illusions of fullness, and is (iek apart)
articulated to poststructuralist anti-essentialism. It is widely accepted amongst poststructuralists that if one endorses
contingency and openness, one must oppose the reduction of the world to a fixed system of essences. To gain
support in this milieu, Lacanians must make a show of opposing essentialism, a show they are more than happy to
perform. For instance, Stavrakakis states that a certain indeterminacy has to be retained as a trace of the real within representation (1999,
<But isnt there a problem here?
12), Newman claims that Lacans theory of lack is not essentialist or foundational (2001, 10), Laclau denies that he believes in a ground
(1990, 27) and Mouffe claims to be anti-essentialist (1993, vii). Isnt this hostility to essentialism a decisive criticism of my analysis? It is
indeed the case that much of Lacanian theory makes itself acceptable in a critical theory/cultural studies context by
appealing to anti-essentialism, contingency and indeterminacy, but such verbal commitments do not
fundamentally alter its mythical structure. It is revealing that Lacanians rarely define concepts such as
essentialism, because any possible distinction between (say) an essence and a constitutive element, or between a ground and a
primordial character, would have to be extremely precise and technical, and since there is a recurrent suggestion, overwhelming in some
passages (e.g. Laclau, 1990, 186), that the Lacanian concept of essentialism simply means not Lacanianism. Lacanians
assume that the idea of a founding negativity is not essentialist, whereas any idea of an autonomous positive or affirmative force, even if
constructed as active, undefinable, changing and/or incomplete, is essentialist (e.g. Newman 2001, 77, 149).>
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AT: Lacan Conservatism

Lacans alternative is a terribly conservative fantasy it writes world problems off as
inevitable and constitutive of existence, thereby ending all hope of solving them, all the
while universally applying a fantastical symbolism that replicates what Lacan critiques.
<There is a danger of a stultifying conservatism arising from within Lacanian political theory. echoing the terrifying
conservatism Deleuze suggests is active in any reduction of history to negativity (1994, 53). The addition of an always to contemporary
evils amounts to a pessimism of the will, or a repressive reduction of thought to the present. Stavrakakis, for instance, claims that
attempts to find causes and thereby to solve problems are always fantasmatic (1999, 87), while iek states that an object
which is perceived as blocking something does nothing but materialize the already-operative constitutive lack (1992c, 89). It is not clear whether
such hostility applies to all instances of solution, or whether there is a difference between constitutive lack and some kind of surplus lack
arising from contingent conditions. Certainly, Lacanians often revert to contingent, empirical explanations, even when these seem contrary to
their own theoretical assumptions (e.g. Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, 131). In any case, a Lacanian approach to an instance of lack, such
as environmental crisis, famine or political repression, carries a large danger that a contingent phenomenon will be
labelled as constitutive and thereby placed beyond criticism. For instance, the argument that, since existing food production is
sufficient for the worlds population, the existence of famine is an intolerable indictment of the world trade system and global power relations
would be severely damaged by a Lacanian claim that an inclusive distribution system is an impossible totalitarian fantasy. Contingent
explanations - for instance, that the current famine in southern Africa is a result of IMF demands that governments sell food stocks - are in
competition with the Lacanian mythical gesture of explaining shortages and conflicts by reference to a constitutive impossibility of completion.
Even if Lacanians believe in surplus/contingent as well as constitutive lack, there are no standards for distinguishing
the two. How does one tell an expression of constitutive lack from an effect of a particular regime of power, or for
that matter from an imagined, nonexistent bogeyman? Perhaps all instances fall into the former category anyway: if it is not
possible to know whether any specific impasse is an instance of constitutive lack or not, it is not possible to know
that any of them are, and there is therefore no basis for claiming with any certainty that constitutive lack exists . (iek
effectively admits that no element in the world is Real per se, reducing his affirmation of the idea to a suggestion that its rejection would lead to
liberal conclusions [iek and Salecl, 1996, 41-2]. This suggests that he is prepared to affirm whatever he must affirm to avoid a conclusion he
has decided in advance to view as unacceptable - a far flight from his official image as a daredevil revealing repressed truths). Even if
constitutive lack exists, Lacanian theory runs a risk of misdiagnoses which have a neophobe or even reactionary
effect. To take an imagined example, a Lacanian living in France in 1788 would probably conclude that democracy
is a utopian fantasmatic ideal and would settle for a pragmatic reinterpretation of the ancin regime. Laclau and
Mouffes hostility to workers councils and ieks insistence on the need for a state and a Party (e.g. Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, 178; iek,
2002b, 296-7; 1997a, 157) exemplify this neophobe tendency. The construction of (for instance) the relation between colonizer
and colonized in terms of constitutive antagonism (see Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 129) turns colonialism into an
expression of an unchangeable ontology and impedes the possibility of anti-colonial rebellion. It is also interesting that
Newman begins his book with an intention to destroy the place of power, but concludes with the view that this is impossible. Instead of the
anarchic desire to destroy hierarchy, he demands that power merely be reinterpreted and displaced (2001, 37, 118-19). The pervasive
negativity and cynicism of Lacanian theory offers little basis for constructive activity. Instead of radical
transformation, one is left with a pragmatics of containment which involves a conservative de-problematization of
the worst aspects of the status quo. The inactivity it counsels would make its claims a self-fulfilling prophecy by
acting as a barrier to transformative activity.
To conclude, the political theory of constitutive lack does not hold together as an analytical project and falls short
of its radical claims as a theoretical and political one. It relies on central concepts which are constructed through the
operation of a mythical discourse in the Barthesian sense, with the result that it is unable to offer sufficient openness to
engage with complex issues. If political theory is to make use of poststructuralist conceptions of contingency, it would do better to look to
the examples provided by Deleuze and Guattari, whose conception of contingency is active and affirmative. In contrast, the idea of
constitutive lack turns Lacanian theory into something its most vocal proponent, iek, claims to attack: a plague of
fantasies.>
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Lacanian political theory is the essence of conservatism its focus on altering relationships
to power instead of actually changing the structures themselves displaces actual radical
resistance and allows oppressive systems to function even more smoothly, a notion that
Lacan originally critiques but ultimately reinforces.
Lacanian political theory resides, for, while on a theoretical level it is based on an
almost sectarian radicalism, denouncing everything that exists for its complicity in illusions and guilt for the
present, its alternative is little different from what it condemns. Just like in the process of psychoanalytic cure, nothing
actually changes on the level of specific characteristics. The only change is in how one relates to the characteristics,
a process iek terms dotting the is in reality, recognizing and thereby installing necessity (1994, 57, 61 ). All that changes, in other
words, is the interpretation: as long as they are reconceived as expressions of constitutive lack, the old politics are
acceptable. Thus, iek claims that de Gaulles Act succeeded by allowing him effectively to realize the necessary pragmatic measures
which others pursued unsuccessfully (1997b, 72-3). More recent examples of ieks pragmatism include that his alternative to the U.S.
war in Afghanistan is only that the punishment of those responsible should be done in a spirit of sad duty, not
exhilarating retaliation (2002b, 244), and his solution to the Palestine-Israel crisis is NATO control of the occupied territories (2002a
<It is in this pragmatism that the ambiguity of
129). If this is the case for iek, the ultra-radical Marxist-Leninist Lacanian, it is so much the more so for his more moderate adversaries.
Jason Glynos, for instance, offers an uncompromizing critique of the construction of guilt and innocence in anti-crime rhetoric, demanding that
demonization of deviants be abandoned, only to insist as an afterthought that, [o]f course, this does not mean that their offences should go
unpunished (2001, 98, 109). Similarly, Mouffes goal is to improve the efficiency of liberal-democratic politics by
removing the effects of occultation resulting from the refusal to accept antagonism (1993, 140, 146). Badiou,
meanwhile, expends a good deal of space attacking the inanities of idle, phatic discourse (in his language,
opinion), only to identify it with sociality in general and thereby declare it a necessity (2001, 50-1, 79). Lacanian
theory tends, therefore, to produce an anything goes attitude to state action: because everything else is
contingent, nothing is to limit the practical consideration of tactics by dominant elites. The only change is a
change in interpretation, as iek admits (1997a, 90-1). After all, the subject can change nothing: the role of the Act is
merely to add oneself to reality by claiming responsibility for the given (1989, 221).>
The myth of constitutive lack paralyzes politics and progressive action its attempted
universal over-application translates to a command not to think, and thus fail to affect
real change.
<There is more than an accidental relationship between the mythical operation of the concept of constitutive lack
and Lacanians conservative and pragmatist politics. Myth is a way of reducing thought to the present : the isolated signs
which are included in the mythical gesture are thereby attached to extra-historical abstractions. On an analytical level, Lacanian theory can be
very radical, unscrupulously exposing the underlying relations and assumptions concealed beneath officially-sanctioned discourse. This
radicalism, however, never translates into political conclusions: as shown above, a radical rejection of anti-crime
rhetoric turns into an endorsement of punishment, and a radical critique of neo-liberalism turns into a pragmatist
endorsement of structural adjustment. It is as if there is a magical barrier between theory and politics which
insulates the latter from the former. One should recall a remark once made by Wilhelm Reich: You plead for happiness in life, but
security means more to you (1974, 27). Lacanians have a radical theory oriented towards happiness, but politically, their
primary concern is security. As long as they are engaged in politically ineffectual critique, Lacanians will denounce
and criticize the social system, but once it comes to practical problems, the order not to think becomes
operative.
This magic barrier is the alibi function of myth. The short-circuit between specific instances and high-level
abstractions is politically consequential. A present evil can be denounced and overthrown if located in an analysis with a middle
level. The Lacanian gesture, however, is instead to present the evil and then add a word such as always to it.
In this way, a present problem becomes eternal and social change becomes impossible. At the very most, such
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change cannot affect the basic matrix posited by Lacanian theory, because this is assumed to operate above history.
In this way, Lacanian theory operates as an alibi: it offers a little bit of theoretical radicalism to inoculate the
system against the threat posed by a lot of politicized radicalism (cf. Barthes, 2000, 41-2). In Laclau and Mouffes version,
this takes the classic Barthesian form: yes, liberal democracy involves violent exclusions, but what is this compared to the desert of the real
outside it? The iekian version is more complex: yes, there can be a revolution, but after the revolution, one must return to the pragmatic tasks
of the present. A good example is provided in one of ieks texts. The author presents an excellent analysis of a Kafkaesque incident in the
former Yugoslavia where the state gives a soldier a direct, compulsory order to take a voluntary oath - in other words, attempts to compel consent.
He then ruins the impact of this example by insisting that there is always such a moment of forced choice, and that one
should not attempt to escape it lest one end up in psychosis or totalitarianism (1989, 165-6). The political function
of Lacanian theory is to preclude critique by encoding the present as myth.>
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Lacanian theory attempts to create a universal order that blocks progressive political
action with the myth that one must simply accept antagonism.
<The myth of constitutive lack, like all myths, has a closing role: it limits what can be said through an order not to
think. On the other hand, the idea that creativity is motivated by a stance that I-dont-know has an opening effect. As Callinicos puts it,
[w]hat Badiou calls the void in a situation is rather the set of determinate possibilities it contains, including that of transformation (2001, 394).
If there is no irreducible Real beneath each blockage or lack, these can be overcome by creative action, as with the creative role of anomalies in
paradigm-change in the sciences, and the creative role of psychotic philosophies such as those of Deleuze and Nietzsche. The imperative in
Lacanian theory is to accept lack, whereas the logic of a non-mythical idea of contingency is to use opportunities
for openness as a basis for creativity. The difference between mythical and non-mythical versions leads
politically to the difference between acceptance of blockages and attempts to overcome them. Psychologically, it
involves the difference between reactive and active character-structures. Lacanian theories involve a strong commitment to slave morality, as
exemplified by Laclaus insistence that every chain of equivalence involve a unity against an external threat (1996, 57), Norvals advocacy of the
use of apartheid as a bogeyman in South African politics (in Laclau 1990, 157) and Mouffes demand for submission to rules (1993, 66-9), but
also in ieks revolutionary insistence on the need for masochistic self-degradation, subjective destitution and identification with a Master
and a Cause (e.g. 2002b, 253-4; 2001a, 77-8; 1999, 212, 375-8), not to mention his directly reactive insistence that self-awareness amounts to
awareness of the negative, of death and trauma, prior to any active identification or articulation (Butler, Laclau and iek, 2000, 256-7). This is
a reterritorializing contingency which fits closely with the operation of capitalist ideology, where under
conditions we recognize as desperate, we are told to alter ourselves, not the conditions, because the self is
conceived as a decisionist founder (Nielsen, 1978, 168-70). The alternative is a difference which is not reified into a positive
negativity. According to Deleuze, there are two models of contingency: the creative power of the poet, and the politicians denial of difference so
as to prolong an established order. It is for the latter that negation (lack) is primary, as if it were necessary to pass through the misfortunes of rift
and division in order to be able to say yes. For the poet, on the other hand, difference is light, aerial and affirmative. There is a false profundity
in conflict, but underneath conflict, the play of differences, differences which should be affirmed as positive and not overcoded by negativity
(1994, 50-4). Deleuze and Guattari radically oppose the Lacanian model of desire. Desire does not lack anything; it does not lack its object. It is,
rather, the subject which is lacking in desire, or desire that lacks a fixed subject Desire and its object are a unity Desire is a machine, the
object of desire also a connected machine (1977, 26). Ours is no art of mutilation, but of excess, superabundance, amazement, declares Hakim
Bey. Though truly fearful things exist in the world, they can perhaps be overcome - on the condition that we build an aesthetic on the
overcoming rather than the fear (1991, 37, 78). A constitutive I-dont-know, if such a concept is thinkable, would involve precisely such a free
play of differences, and not, to use ieks term, the good terror which ensures that this free play is brought to a halt
(Butler, Laclau and iek, 2000, 326; iek, 2002b, 311). It is through the mythical construction of constitutive
lack that Lacanian theory is able to derive a drive for order from a starting-point of contingency.>
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AT: Lacan Violence

Lacanian theory, in its acceptance of social antagonism, requires continued violence and
social exclusion while failing to radically alter the status quo. This approach reinstates the
social order that it critiques and blocks true radicalism.
<ieks anti-capitalism has won him friends in leftist circles, but the capitalism to which he objects is not the capitalism of classical Marxist
critique. One could, indeed, question whether iek is attacking capitalism (as opposed to liberalism) at all. His capitalism is a
stultifying world of suffocating Good which is unbearable precisely because it lacks the dimension of violence and
antagonism. It is, he says, boring, repetitive and perverse because it lacks the properly political attitude of Us against Them (2001a,
237-8). It therefore eliminates the element of unconditional attachment to an unattainable Thing or Real, an element which is the core of
humanity (2001c, 8-9; iek and Salecl, 1996, 41-2). It delivers what iek fears most: a pallid and anaemic, self-satisfied, tolerant peaceful
daily life. To rectify this situation, there is a need for suffocating Good to be destroyed by diabolical Evil (2000a, 122). Why not violence?
he rhetorically asks. Horrible as it may sound, I think its a useful antidote to all the aseptic, frustrating, politically correct pacifism (2002c,
80). There must always be social exclusion, and enemies of the people (Butler, Laclau and iek, 2000, 92). The resulting
politics involves an ethical duty to accomplish an Act which shatters the social edifice by undermining the fantasies which sustain it (1997a, 74).
As with Mouffe, this is both a duty and an acceptance of necessity. By traversing the fantasy the subject accepts the void of his nonexistence
(1999, 281). Baudrillard takes a position similar to ieks, denouncing an empty world in which [e]ven the military has lost the privilege of usevalue, the privilege of real war (1995, 28). His critique of the Gulf
(non-)War has an overtone of distaste for the sanitization of war and the resultant loss of the dimension of antagonism: if this were a real war, it
would be more acceptable. Elsewhere, he denounces simulation for the absence of violence and death. Completely expunged from the political
dimension, it is dependent on production and mass consumption. Its spark has disappeared; only the fiction of a political universe is saved
(1988, 181).
On a political level, this kind of stance leads to an acceptance of social exclusion which negates compassion for its
victims. The resultant inhumanity finds its most extreme expression in ieks work, where todays mad dance,
the dynamic proliferation of multiple shifting identities awaits its resolution in a new form of Terror (Butler, Laclau
and iek, 2000, 326), Badious, in which the ethics of truth is always more or less combative and requires the singular operation of naming
enemies (2001, 75), and Baudrillards, where the spirit of terrorism is accredited with the ultimate ethical status as the
absolute, irrevocable event (2002, 17) which can make the system collapse under an excess of reality (1983, 120). It is also present,
however, in the toned-down exclusionism of authors such as Mouffe. Hence, democracy depends on the possibility of drawing a frontier between
us and them, and always entails relations of inclusion-exclusion (2000, 43). No state or political order can exist without some form of
exclusion experienced by its victims as coercion and violence (1993, 145), and, since Mouffe assumes a state to be necessary , this means
that one must endorse exclusion and violence. (The supposed necessity of the state is derived from the supposed need for a mastersignifier or nodal point to stabilize identity and avoid psychosis, either for individuals or for societies). What is at stake in the division between
these two trends in Lacanian political theory is akin to the distinction Vaneigem draws between active and passive nihilism (1994, 178-9).
The Laclauian trend involves an implied ironic distance from any specific project, which maintain awareness of its contingency; overall,
however, it reinforces conformity by insisting on an institutional mediation which overcodes all the articulations. The iekian version
is committed to a more violent and passionate affirmation of negativity, but one which ultimately changes
very little. The function of the iekian Act is to dissolve the self, producing a historical event. After the revolution, however,
everything stays much the same. For all its radical pretensions, ieks politics can be summed up in his attitude to neo-liberalism: If it
works, why not try a dose of it?(iek and Salecl, 1996, 32). The same can be said of Badiou, whose ostensibly radical commitments do not
prevent him from making a virtue of moderation (2001, 91) and insisting that the Good is Good only to the extent that it does not aspire to render
the world good. Thus, the power of a truth is also a kind of powerlessness (2001, 85). There is no History other than our own;
there is no true world to come. The world as world is, and will remain, beneath the true and false [and] beneath Good and Evil (2001, 85).
The phenomena which are denounced in Lacanian theory are invariably readmitted in its small print, and
this leads to a theory which renounces both effectiveness and political radicalism.>
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AT: Lacan Violence

Theories of constitutive lack are based on a myth that blocks progressive politics in their
embracement of social antagonism, they prevent radical political action and instead
encourage violence and strife.
<The challenge posed by this influential perspective is too important to ignore. Its paradigmatic structure - the shared, often unconscious and
unreflexive, assumptions which unite its various proponents in a single way of thinking and arguing - is becoming the dominant trend in
(ostensibly) radical theory. It is accounting for a growing number of submitted and published articles and is gaining a growing support among
researchers and graduates. It has almost invisibly gained a foothold in theoretical literature significant enough to raise its influence to a level
second only, perhaps, to the analytical/Rawlsian tradition. This is at least partly due to its radical pretensions. It is, however, crucial to
challenge it, because its political effects are to paralyse radical theory. It provides a very weak basis for any
kind of politics, and certainly no basis for a radical or transformative agenda. It is, in short, a surrogate radicalism, a
theoretical placebo which does not live up to the promises it makes.1`
This article examines this paradigm through a critique of its founding concept. In contrast to the claims of authors such as Laclau to have escaped
the essentialism of classical political theory, I shall demonstrate that the idea of constitutive lack involves the reintroduction of
myth and essentialism into political theory. I shall demonstrate that Lacanian political theory cannot meet its claims to be radical and
anti-essentialist, and its central arguments are analytically flawed. First of all, however, I shall outline the parameters of this new theoretical
paradigm.
A new paradigm: the concept of lack in political theory
The concept of constitutive lack arises across a number of theories and under a number of labels (e.g. the Real, the Thing, antagonism and the
political). It emerged initially as an ontological concept in the work of Jacques Lacan, the focus of much adulation among the authors discussed
here. Badiou goes as far as to say that a philosophy is possible today, only if it is compatible with Lacan (1999, 84). There is already in Lacan
(and Althusser) an imperative to embrace or accept the lack at the root of the social. He explicitly states that the question of ethics is to be
articulated from the point of view of the location of man in relation to the Real (1988, 11). It is this imperative which provides the starting-point
for the kind of politicized Lacanianism with which this paper is concerned.
The basic claim of Lacanian theory is that identity - whether individual or social - is founded on a lack. Therefore, social relations
are always irreducibly concerned with antagonism, conflict, strife and exclusion. Chantal Mouffe, for instance, writes of the
primary reality of strife in social life (1993, 113), while Slavoj iek seeks an ethics grounded in reference to the traumatic Real which resists
symbolization (1997a, 213). [L]ack (castration) is original; enjoyment constitutes itself as stolen (1990, 54). According to Stavrakakis, the
Real is inherent in human experience and doesnt stop not being written (1999, 87). Hence, the primary element of social life is a negativity
which prevents the emergence of any social whole. In Mouffes words, [s]ociety is the illusion that hides the struggle and antagonism
behind the scenes, putting the harsh reality of antagonism behind a protective veil (1993, 51, 53). For Newman, [w]ar is the reality, whereas
[s]ociety is the illusion that hides the struggle and antagonism behind the scenes (2001, 51). For Stavrakakis, personal trauma, social crisis
and political rupture are constant characteristics of human experience (2003, 56). Such claims have political consequences, because
they rule out the possibility of achieving substantial improvements (whether reformist or revolutionary) in any
area on which this fundamental negativity bears. The dimension of antagonism is, after all, ineradicable (Mouffe,
2000, 21).
Instead of the imperative to overcome antagonism which one finds in forms as diverse as Marxian revolution and deliberative democracy,
Lacanian political theory posits as the central political imperative a demand that one accept the underlying lack and the constitutive character of
antagonism. While the various authors disagree about the means of achieving this, they agree on its desirability. Lacanian theory thus entails an
ethical commitment to create conflict and antagonism. This ethics mostly expresses itself via a detour into ontology: the ethical imperative is to
accept or grasp the truth of the primacy of lack, and the accusation against opponents is that they fall into some kind of fallacy (illusion,
delusion, blindness, failure to accept, and so on). At other times, however, one finds a direct ethical advocacy of exclusion and
conflict as almost goods in themselves.

To take an example, Chantal Mouffe criticises deconstructive ethics for being unable to come to terms with the political in its antagonistic
dimension; what is missing from a politics of dialogue with others is a proper reflection on the moment of decision which characterises the
field of politics and which entail[s] an element of force and violence (2000, 129-30). To this ostensibly incomplete politics, Mouffe adds an
imperative about coming to terms with the nature of the social. One should seek a politics which acknowledges the real nature of [the]
frontiers [of the social] and the forms of exclusion that they entail, instead of trying to disguise them under the veil of rationality or morality
(2000, 105). A failure to accept antagonism is a dangerous liberal illusion and an aversion to reality (1993, 127, 149). Mouffe therefore accepts
social exclusion as a necessity, and opposes any attempt to resolve (rather than institutionalize or domesticate) conflict. Friend/enemy frontiers
are necessary, and hostility, which is ontological and ineradicable, can be contained but never eliminated (1993, 3-4). In practice, this means
directly favouring the existence of conflict and antagonism. In other passages, Mouffe expresses the ethics of antagonism more
directly, labelling it as a value in its own right. Hence, equality and liberty can never be reconciled, but this is precisely what constitutes for
[Mouffe] the value of liberal democracy (1993, 110). She also refers to division as an ideal and an urgent need (1993, 114, 118). In other
words, negativity and conflict are given a positive value of their own, because they express what is taken to be the
essence of social life: constitutive lack. One finds the same view expressed in works by other authors who use the Lacanian paradigm.
Ernesto Laclau, for instance, claims that a world in which reform takes place without violence is not a world in which I would like to live (1996,
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114). He also calls for a symbolisation of impossibility as such as a positive value (Butler, Laclau and iek, 2000, 199). Badiou, meanwhile,
insists that ethics remain confined by the Real. At least one real element must exist that the truth cannot force (2001, 85).>
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AT: Lacan Alternative Doesnt Solve Case

Alt doesnt solve case--Recognizing the Lack cant access the real-world policy impacts
inevitable in the status quo
Robinson 2k5 [Andy, author, PhD at University of Nottingham, The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A
Critique, The Johns Hopkins University Press,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v008/8.1robinson.html#authbio]
The function of the iekian "Act" is to dissolve the self, producing a historical event. "After the revolution",
however, everything stays much the same. For all its radical pretensions, iek's politics can be summed up in his
attitude to neo-liberalism: 'If it works, why not try a dose of it?'31. The phenomena which are denounced in
Lacanian theory are invariably readmitted in its "small print", and this leads to a theory which renounces both
effectiveness and political radicalism. It is in this pragmatism that the ambiguity of Lacanian political theory resides,
for, while on a theoretical level it is based on an almost sectarian "radicalism", denouncing everything that exists for
its complicity in illusions and guilt for the present, its "alternative" is little different from what it condemns (the
assumption apparently being that the "symbolic" change in the psychological coordinates of attachments in reality is
directly effective, a claim assumed wrongly to follow from the claim that social reality is constructed
discursively). Just like in the process of psychoanalytic cure, nothing actually changes on the level of specific
characteristics. The only change is in how one relates to the characteristics, a process iek terms 'dotting the "i's"'
in reality, recognizing and thereby installing necessity32. All that changes, in other words, is the interpretation: as
long as they are reconceived as expressions of constitutive lack, the old politics are acceptable. Thus, iek claims
that de Gaulle's "Act" succeeded by allowing him 'effectively to realize the necessary pragmatic measures' which
others pursued unsuccessfully33.
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AT: Stavrakakis Permutation Solvency

By endorsing the affirmative as an act of hope, not utopia - it is possible to have politics
without utopia
Stavrakakis, Teaching Fellow in Government at the University of Essex, 1999 [Yannis, Lacan and the
Political , p. 111-112]
What should not be neglected however in Ricoeurs standpoint is the centrality of the element of hope. No doubt, a
society without hope is a dead society. Yet, in reality, to eliminate the element of hope is a dead society. Yet, in
reality, to eliminate the element of hope from human life is not only undesirable but also impossible. As Jacques
Derrida has put it:
There is no language without the performative dimension of the promise, the minute I open my mouth I am in the
promise. Even if I say I dont believe in truth or whatever, the minute I open my mouth there is a believe me at
work. Even when I lie, and perhaps especially when I lie, there is a believe me in play. And this I promise you
that I am speaking the truth is a messianic a priori, a promise which, even if it is not kept, even if one knows it
cannot be kept, takes place and qua promise is messianic. (Derrida, 1996:82-3)
In addition, for Derrida, this element of hope is not necessarily utopian: I would not call this attitude
utopian. The messianic experience of which I spoke takes place here and now that is the fact of promising
and speaking is an event that takes place here and now and is not utopian (ibid.).
Is it then possible to retain this element of hope without incorporating it into a utopian vision? Can we have passion
in politics without holocausts? Furthermore, is it possible to have a politics of hope, a politics of change without
utopia? The experience of the democratic revolution permits a certain optimism. Democratization is certainly a
political project of hope. But democratic discourse is not (or should not be) based on the vision of a utopian
harmonious society. It is based on the recognition of the impossibility and the catastrophic consequences of such a
dream. What differentiates democracy from other political forms of society is legitimization of conflict and the
refusal to eliminate it through the establishment of an authoritarian harmonious order. Within this framework the
antagonistic diversity between different conceptions of good is not seen as something negative that should be
eliminated, but as something to be valued and celebrated. This requires the presence of institutions that establish a
specific dynamic between consensus and dissent This is why democratic politics cannot aim towards harmony and
reconciliation. To believe that a final resolution of conflict is eventually possible, even when it is envisaged as
asymptotic approaching to the regulative idea of a free unconstrained communication, as in Habermas, is to put the
pluralist democratic project at risk.(Mouffe, 1996b:8)14
Plan is a pre-requisite for their alternativewe must first establish a fantasy before we can
traverse it
Stavrakakis, Teaching Fellow in Government at the University of Essex, 1999 [Yannis, Lacan and the
Political , p. 161]
Freud was, in fact, the first to connect politics with the impossible. In his view, politics, together with psychoanalysis and education, constitutes
an impossible profession. But if democratic politics is attempting something ultimately impossible, that is to say institutionalizing social lack, in
fact even if this quasi-utopian move, this is a quasi utopia structured around its own negation; it negates the idea of its absolute realization, in
other words this is a quasi-utopia beyond fantasmic politics. If there is an Aufhebung in Lacan, it is one in which Hegels progress is replaced by
the anti-utopian avatars of a lack (Lacan in Evans, 1996a:43). Thus way, what is altered is not only the positive content of politics (utopian
visions are replaced by the language games around a recognition of lack, which means that happiness is no longer a legitimate political objective
although a better society definitely is) but also the support giving coherence to this positive content (the fantasmatic support is traversed by this
recognition of lack). Moreover, if this is a quasi-utopian or utopian move, it can only be a utopian negation of utopia (remember Lacans metalinguistic negation of meta-language in the first note of the introduction). Perhaps the fantasmatic structure of utopia can only be traversed after
we situate and orient ourselves within its dangerous ground; fantasy has to be constructed before it is traversed. In addition, one has to keep in
mind that the crossing of utopian fantasy does not entail the disappearance of the social symptom but a new modality of interacting with it. To
this we will return in the last chapter of this book. In any case, this new modality, even if one still wants to call it utopian, has important
repercussions for our life: it neutralizes the catastrophic effects or by-products of utopian visions. And this is something fundamental.
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AT: Psychoanalysis Action Key

Psychoanalysis must be accompanied with political change to have any hope for solvency
Lacans alternative fails
Milovanovic, Professor in Criminal Justice at Northeastern Illinois, 1994 [Dragan, 8 Emory International Law
Review 67, l/n]
<For current critical feminist theorizing that focuses on postmodernism, more and more analysis is
finding itself in a dialogue between Marxism and the body of work by Lacan. n75 The [*97]
shortcomings of Lacan's work by itself, are recognized, even if his work does provide some key
elements, or tools, for critical inquiry. Perhaps Braidotti said it best: ". . .The politico-epistemological
question of achieving structural transformations of the subject cannot be dissociated from the need to
effect changes in the sociomaterial frames of reference. . . ." n76 Future developments surely will
arise in the integration and synthesis of a psychoanalytic semiotic examination grounded in a
historical, materialistic critique of the given mode of production. Necessarily, the effects of the
Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real Orders need to be integrated into any transformative political agenda,
especially within legal discourse in which change may be made manifest most immediately.>
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AT: Psychoanalysis Alternative Fails

Psychoanalysis has lost its innocence- it is now shaped according to the subjects knowledge.
In postmodern society, people make their own decisions, kritik will not influence them.
Nicol, University College at Chichester, 1999 [Brian, "As If: Traversing the fantasy," Paragraph, v24 i2, p. 149150]
All this suggests why it is problematic to equate this knowingness with liberation. In 'You May!,' an
article recently published in the London Review of Books (particularly interesting because it is a more
deliberately accessible statement of the aims of his project), Zizek surveys what he sees as evidence of
the dominant attitude of 'refiexiveness' in the postmodern permissive society. In the apparent absence of
the symbolic order to instruct us in our social behaviour, 'all our impulses, from sexual orientation to
ethnic belonging, are more and more experienced as matters of choice' (Zizek, 1999a, 1): one can choose
how to be seduced, how to rewrite one's psychological history, how to be racist. Even psychoanalytic
symptoms have 'lost their innocence,' and are shaped according to the subject's knowledge of
psychoanalytic theory (Zizek, 1999a, 2). This means that the law no longer operates via repression and
the imposition of a strict social hierarchy, but effectively sponsors our acts of transgression, demanding
that we 'Enjoy!'. Zizek's argument is to emphasize, firstly, that although on the face of it something has
changed in the nature of our relation to the big Other, beneath the surface things are still the same. The
apparent endorsement of our transgressive acts by the Other only creates new guilts and anxieties: 'Our
postmodern reflexive society which seems hedonistic and permissive is actually saturated with rules and
regulations which are intended to serve our well-being (restrictions on smoking and eating, rules against
sexual harassment)' (Zizek, 1999a, 5). With the demise of one kind of adherence to the law comes another
in its place. The second aspect of his argument is to wonder: if the law regulates our enjoyment, where is
the potential for subversion?>
Psychoanalysis fails it is an endless cycle that leads to paralysis

Miers, Ph.D. and Director of Liberal and Professional Studies at Towson University, 1999
(Paul, "Language and the Structure of Desire," MLN 114.5 (1999) 1078-1091, Project MUSE)
Note: Towson University is the second largest university in Maryland
<This last confusion is perhaps most clearly illustrated in Slavoj Zizek's attack on Butler in his most recent work,
The Ticklish Subject. Zizek's continual need to put forward Lacan as the one true master who can validate a
grammar of self-configuration ends up exposing the fundamental problem with Lacan. Unlike Freud, who by
confusing sex and kinship, collapses them both into a single undifferentiated libido, Lacan fully realizes that identity
is fractured by the split between affinity and descent in the kinship system. Lacan, however, makes the fateful choice
of letting affinity and descent gain symbolic authority over the subject by allowing its desires to be structured by the
monolithic fiction of the totalized and totalizing Other. The subject is thus denied any way to strategize a passage
through the field of descent and affinity; both the horizon of affinity "out there" and the zero degree of identity "in
here" are permanently blocked. Lacanian analysis is thus a perfect interminable machine which gives its devotees a
paradoxical but stable one-size-fits-all allegory in exchange for living in a zone of over-saturated structures as
permanently infantilized adults who play at the masquerade of sex--perhaps the perfect psycho-anthropology for
some whole zone of postculture culture, particularly in Paris. [End Page 1082]>
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AT: Utopias Bad Utopias Good

Utopian politics allows us to re imagine our world so we can begin to construct a new one
fantasies are key to conscious-raising
Review 67, l/n]
<Lacan's views on the borromean knot, which indicate how knotbreaking and repairing may produce alternative
Symptoms, are also relevant. In other words, borromean knots, as demonstrated earlier, provide a degree of
consistency to the psychic apparatus. These knot-configurations can be reconfigured for alternative embodiments of
desire and constructions of bodies of knowledge. Alternative myth-making, then, implicates the process by which
borromean knots are reconstituted.
Through the recreation of myths the individual is in the position
[*96] of creating an "elsewhere". According to Cornell's reading of the ideas of Cixous,
We re-collect the mythic figures of the past, but as we do so we reimagine them. It is the potential variability of
myth that allows us to work within myth, and the significance it offers, so as to reimagine our world and by so
doing, to begin to dream of a new one. n69
In this way, an affirmative politics of the feminine emerges that is also utopian in its attempt to point to an
elsewhere. n70 As Cornell states:
Consciousness-raising must involve creation, not just discovery. We need our poetry, our fantasies and our fables;
we need the poetic evocation of the feminine body in Irigaray and in Cixous if we are to finally find a way beyond
the muteness imposed by a gender hierarchy in which our desire is "unspeakable". n71>
Creating an imaginary order is the only way to deconstruct the oppressive legal and
political order
Review 67, l/n]
<Accordingly, the Imaginary Order is also necessarily integral to a transformative politics. An integration of the three Orders is
therefore necessary for a bona fide statement on an alternative transformative politics and law. Only in this way are oppressive
legal structures deconstructed and an alternative legal and political order reconstructed. Given the existence of legal abstractions
such as the juridic subject, linear forms of reasoning, circumscribed codifications of signifieds, dualistic conceptualizations of
social reality, and forms of hate or revenge politics historically inherent in many "humanistic" movements--all of which support
hierarchy--genuine change only can take place by way of this transpraxis. Thus, the next section of this Essay considers Cornell's
work, which has focused on the Imaginary Order as a potential vista for "what could be".>
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AT: Utopian Fantasies Bad Utopias Good

Utopian fantasies are good they allos us to bring about change
Devall & Sessions, Deep Ecologists, 1985 [Bill & George, Deep Ecology, p. 162]
<Developing ecotopian visions is part of our environmental education. In a society famous for dystopian
visions, such as Brave New World and 1984, ecotopian visions present affirmations of our bonds with Earth.
Creating ecotopian futures has practical value. It helps us articulate our goals and presents an ideal which
may never be completely realized but which keeps us focused on the ideal. We can also com pare our personal
actions and collective public decisions on specific issues with this goal. We suggest that ecotopian visions give
perspective on vain-glorious illusions of both revolutionary leaders and the propaganda of defenders of the status
quo. Furthermore, ecotopian visions help us see the distance between what ought to be and what is now reality in
our technocratic-industrial society.
In this chapter, we use ecotopia in the broad sense of all visions of a good society placed in the context of
deep ecological norms and principles. We present the ecotopian visions of Loren Eiseley, Baker Brownell, Aldous
Huxley, Gary Snyder and Paul Shepard. We should keep in mind that ecotopian visions are always tentative; the
examples given in this chapter are first approximations and not complete statements.'
In addition to acting as a provocative catalyst for public debate, creating ecotopian visions is also useful for
the development of ecological consciousness in people who struggle with these visions. This process enables one to
sharpen both the image of the ecotopian future, and the rational skills needed in public debate to argue the points.
We feel this process is an essential part of environmental education for high school- and college-age
students. This may help them see viable alternatives to the status quo which they can incorporate into their own
lives. Even grammar school children can gain from this activity. With some ingenuity on the part of teachers, deep
ecology principles can be introduced using the deep questioning process.
Inspiration for ecotopian visions can be drawn from the anthropological literature on hunter/gatherers,
small-scale agricultural communities, and contemporary primal cultures. A direct transition from our own culture
into an ecotopia is beyond the imagination of most people. And so deciding on what is the "best" of contemporary
culture to include in the ecotopian vision is part of the educational process. This can help us understand the
difference between vital and nonvital human needs and bring us to a greater realization of the implications of
applying deep ecology norms.>
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AT: Traverse the Fantasy Utopias Good

Ideological fantasies are both inevitable and valuable attempts to traverse the fantasy are
problematic
<Zizek occupies a rather paradoxical position for a Marxist. His aim to 're-hystericize' the subject, to
return it to its questioning function, has an obvious correlation with his stated commitment to
emancipation (in his prefaces to The Ziiek Reader and The Ticklish Subject). But where Marxist 'ideology
critique' is, as a rule, geared towards demystifying ideology in order to achieve some kind of greater
awareness which can contribute to social change, so deeply rooted in the psychic structure is Zizek's idea
of the fantasy that there can be no change: we cannot deal in any other way with the void at the heart of
ourselves. Ideology, in other words, is not just inevitable, but valuable, because without it we would lapse
into neurosis sor even psychosis. The implication of his analysis of contemporary culture is that exposing
the fantasies which glue our being together might enable us to traverse them. But this is prob lematic, and
not only because it brings us up against the familiar difficulty with psychoanalytic attempts to transpose
the personal onto the collective who would be the equivalent of the analyst? Zizek's notion of the
ideological fantasy does not suggest it is a pathological symptom in the psyche of the subject: it is
perfectly normal. Time and again he explains how our experience of social reality depends upon 'a certain
as if: 'we act as if we believe in the almight-iness of bureaucracy, as if the President incarnates the Will of
the People, as if the Party expresses the objective interest of the working class'. But he also reminds us
that if we do not act in this way 'the very texture of the social field disintegrates' (Zizek, 1989, 36)and
this is an outcome of a quite different order to political revolution.>
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AT: Traversing the Fantasy Fantasies Good

September 11th proves that the idea of the fantasy is ridiculous - It prevents us from
averting future suffering and global violence
Crosswhite, Associate Professor of English at University of Oregon, 2001
(Jim, A Response to Slavoj Zizek's "Welcome to the Desert of the Real!", September 25,
http://www.uoregon.edu/~jcross/response_to_zizek.htm)
<An acknowledgment of the difference between the real and the imaginary is a condition for social criticism that has
a real relation to suffering. And critical humility in the face of real suffering is a condition for social criticism that
will remain humane. The writer of "Welcome to the Desert of the Real" seems almost to believe that reality has
collapsed into a hyperbolic critical parody of itself, as if he can't quite tell the difference between real people and the
social powers with which those real people are contending. This approach to real suffering by way of fantastic
conflations and exaggerations might be tolerable if it had some purpose, if it led us somewhere, but it does not.
Zizek is not alone in this (and he sounds a little like a Baudrillard tape in this piece), but to preach this fantastic
sermon in the context of September 11 is to move away from critique and toward the grotesque.
The idea of a "sphere" and the notion of a faked reality are as old as Plato's cave and its ("spectral") shadow makers.
Even there the inhabitants would resist and then kill anyone who tried to force them to recognize the fakery and
acknowledge an "outside." Even there the flickering shadows have achieved near immateriality. The "ultimate
American paranoiac fantasy" is more a genre with a long history than it is a national property of Americans. We
generate social criticism with this form. We imagine our reality as deficient in reality in order to imagine ways to
break through (to use the metaphor of the reality hackers) to a better reality, one that is less fake, less impoverished,
not so thoroughly managed by the wrong people, not so completely in the dominion of the wrong powers.
Of course the genre twists with the time. Philip K. Dick's paranoia is shaped partly by the cold war era, partly by
drugs, partly by Dick's weird psychology. And no one would want to deny the new appropriateness of the genre to
capture all the new virtuality produced by technologyelectric lights, telephones, film, television, satellite
communication, the WWW and all the rest. Gibson's Neuromancer forced us into imagining online virtuality as the
real site of what still tries to be decisive, heroic action. And as far as the fantastic goes, any well-lit supermarket or
department store displays the Consumable Irreal. There is no question that there are good grounds for highlighting
and exaggerating the irreality whose power to eclipse the real keeps growing.
But to say that what happened on September 11 is like the scene in the Matrix where Morpheus introduces the
Keanu Reeves character to the "desert of the real" is to say something that belongs on a Fox Network talk show. For
what Americans is it true that the events of September 11 broke into an "insulated artificial universe" that generated
an image of a diabolical outsider? Let's not consider the 5,000 incinerated and dismembered men and women and
children who suffered from disease and injury like all people, who cleaned toilets and coughed up phlegm and
changed diapers and actually occupied with what was once their real bodies those towers which, for Zizek, stand for
virtual capitalism. They can't be the ones whose delusions generated the fantasy of a diabolical outsider. None of
them, none of their surviving children, none of their fellow citizens fantasized Bin Laden's ruling that it is an
individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, to kill the Americans,
military and civilians.
So for whom has the fantastic "outside" broken in and smashed, with "shattering impact," an immaterial world of
delusion? For whom does Osama Bin Laden appear as a character from a James Bond film? For whom did the
events of September 11 arrive with the painful awareness that we were living in an artificial insulated reality? For
whom do the people and events in this massacre of innocents appear solely in the shapes of film and television?
Perhaps, perhaps the Americans living in an insulated, artificial reality are the characters in American television
shows and in increasingly intertextual American films. Perhaps these are the Americans Zizek is listening to,
watching, imagining.
But here is the true "shattering impact:" that 5,000 innocent people who lived real lives in real, vulnerable human
bodies, who bore real children, suffered real disease and injury and pain, bled real blood; 5,000 real people who
helped to sustain a cosmopolitan city of millions and millions of other real people of different ethnic groups and
religions and languages, real citizens who had achieved a great measure of peace and hope, who had been slowly
and successfully bringing down the New York City crime rate; that 5,000 of these people would have their real
bodies and lives erased in a matter of minutes, and that only body parts, the vapors of the incinerated, and the
grieving and the sorrowful and the orphans would remain.
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This is the shock. This is the disbelief. Not the shattering of an illusion but the shattering of those real people and
their real bodies. Not the shattering of a virtual reality, but the erasing of what was real. This is why the people of
New York wept in the streets, why the tears and grief will continue. And this is why, in their grief, the survivors will
struggle to preserve a memory of what was real, and to keep this memory of what was real from evanescing into
someone else's symbol, or fantasy, or tool. Were the real lives they led less real for any happiness or peace they
achieved? Are the unfathomable sufferings of Rwanda and what happened in Sarajevo to be the measure of what is
most real?
And yet in Zizek's writing, what happened on September 11 is not real but symbolic, as it seems to have been for the
murderers, too: "the actual effect of these bombings is much more symbolic than real." We are just "getting a taste
of" what goes on around the world "on a daily basis." OK, perhaps we are insulated and ignorant. But where are
5,000 innocents being incinerated by murderers on a daily basis?
If Zizek is saying that Americans should be more knowledgeable about the lives and sufferings of other peoples
whose lives and sufferings are entangled with America's own history, then who would disagree? If Zizek is saying
that American power and its direct involvement in international affairs create a special responsibility for our
educational systems and our media to provide us with a knowledge of global matters that we have not yet achieved,
then who would disagree? If he is saying that Americans should comprehend more deeply how people in other parts
of the world comprehend us, once more, who would disagree? If he is saying that real understanding of
geographically distant others is endangered and distorted by the fantasies of film and television, are there educated
Americans who have not heard this? Is the struggle to educate a democratic citizenship adequate to our time and the
realities of globalization unique to the United States? That would be hard to believe. However, it must be conceded
by all that the U.S. faces one special difficulty and so a special but obligatory struggle here. Many of its citizens will
never have a first hand experience of Europe or the Middle East or Africa or Asia or even South America. I can drive
or fly 3,000 miles and never leave my country. At best, I can get to Mexico or Canada. This would take someone
living in France through all of Europe and into central Asia, or into the center of Africa. The problems of truly
comprehending these others whose languages are rarely spoken anywhere near you and into whose actual presence
you will never come are not trivial.
But Zizek seems to be saying something more than all of this. He seems to know more than most of us know. He
knows that "the ultimate truth of the capitalist utilitarian de-spiritualized universe is the de-materialization of the
'real life' itself, its reversal into a spectral show." This is difficult to comprehend. Is this the "ultimate truth" about a
real nation, about real people, about a real, existing economic system, about an ethical theory, about a fantasy of real
people, or about movies or television or what? The problem may be that many of us cannot imagine that
"capitalism" (is it one thing?), which is after all something historical, has an "ultimate truth."
And it is difficult to understand what he is asking at the end: "Or will America finally risk stepping through the
fantasmatic screen separating it from the Outside World, accepting its arrival into the Real world, making the longoverdue move from 'A thing like this should not happen HERE!' to 'A thing like this should not happen
ANYWHERE!'." Of course, to abandon the "here" for the "anywhere" would be foolish. We are in real bodies in real
places with real limitations and with real work to do. It is not simply a "fantasmatic screen" that deeply attaches
people in a unique way to the sufferings of their neighbors and their fellow citizens.
But the demand that Zizek makes is neither unfamiliar nor inappropriate. It is more than worth pursuing. What can
we do to work to see that what the people of New York City suffered on September 11 does not happen
anywhere,;neither in the U.S. nor anywhere else? The reactions of the American government now threaten regions
all over the world and seriously threaten liberty and privacy and tolerance in the United States. The American past
carries humanitarian successes and catastrophic failures and genocide. Perhaps fantastic critique has a role to play.
Certainly we must struggle to sustain serious social criticism through threatening times, but unless we are simply
displaying critical virtuosity, we must achieve a kind of criticism that is reasonably concrete, less pretending to
ultimate truths of history, more capable of acknowledging the real suffering of real people, criticism that is not too
proud to descend to the practicable.
What do we seek now? First, to avert a catastrophe. We must undo the terrorist networks and prevent American
anger and power from leading us into the catastrophic roles that seem to have been scripted for us. Five thousand
innocents are murdered in New York City. That is more than enough. Every dead innocent fuels more anger, either
from the powerless or from the powerful. Averting an escalation of global violence is the immediate and pressing
task. Undoing and weakening the terrorist networks, withdrawing support from them, arresting the guiltyeveryone
who is not already a monster must be persuaded to join in this. Restraining American power and calming American
angerall Americans must work tirelessly on this in their own ways. Steadily and powerfully and consistently
exposing and addressing and undoing the intolerance that threatensall Americans must engage in this struggle.>
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AT: Traverse the Fantasy Fantasies = Inevitable (alt fails)

The alternative has no solvency. We arent tricked into entering the fantasy we
understand and consciously enter it. We enjoy it our ideology, and the negs kritik has no
way of changing that.
Zizek's theory of the ideological fantasy suggests how complex and powerful our relationship with
ideology is. Ideology isn't something that cleverly tricks us, making us believe in something we don't.
Rather it is effective precisely because it acknowledges what it cannot explain, and because it appeals to
precisely the same sense of'enjoy-meanf which threatens to blow it apart. Generally speaking, the theory
of ideology before Zizek suggested that we conformed because we didn't know what we were really
doing. Zizekinfluenced here by the work of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk 12 argues that
ideology is more a matter of knowing what we do is false but still doing it anyway, just as we know that
the lagoon scenario acted out by stewardesses is unlikely to save us in a plane crash but still go along
with it. Ideology is something that itself yields enjoyment: we adhere to the Law because it appeals to our
enjoyment. This is also why Zizek thinks any theory of contemporary politics or society needs to take
account of'enjoyment as a political factor'. In a number of books (For They Know Not What They Do, The
Metastases of Enjoyment and The Sublime Object of Ideology) Zizek explores the role played by
enjoyment and the fantasy in oppressive elements of our culture, like totalitarian regimes and racist and
homophobic groups. Such communities are held together, he suggests, by the fact that the Law promises a
kind of enjoyment as much as it prohibits it. This relationship is secured through the fantasies they share
(about, say, the figure of the Jew) which serve both sides of the Law: order and transgression. Zizek's
writings on culture and ideology demonstrate how late capitalism always supported by its 'familiar,'
'liberal democracy'-sustains its dominant position by ensuring that the subject colludes in his/her own
subjugation. The idea of knowing what we're doing but still doing it anyway can explain what Sloterdijk
calls the 'cynical reasoning' evident in postmodern culture. Nowadays, we all know that presidents lie, yet
we still support them. We know that advertisers exaggerate the value of their products, yet we still buy
them. More than previous forms, postmodern ideology continually flaunts its own ideological operations:
post-ironic advertising draws attention to the whole sham of advertising and its own hyperbole, TV
generates endless programs based on the out-take, or what goes on behind the scenes.>
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AT: Traversing the Fantasy Fantasy destroys symbolic order

Zizek emphasizes that the only way to find the real is to work within the fantasy -The
fantasy draws attention to the real, and shatters the symbolic order
<For Zizek ideology is nothing less than the way we cope with the truth that subjectivity and social
reality are each constructed around a traumatic void. Ideology is thus much more complex than Marxist
critique has hitherto realized. When we take into account the real, Zizek says, 'it is no longer sufficient to
denounce the "artificial" character of the ideological experience, to demonstrate the way the object
experienced by ideology as "natural" and "given" is effectively a discursive construction, a result of a
network of symbolic overdetermination' (Zizek, 1991a, 129). Zizek thus complicates two key tenets of
ideology critique, the notion that ideology is a particular kind of discourse, and the idea that there is an
alternative 'reality' behind the false one maintained by ideology. Ideology does preserve a false version of
reality, but behind it is the real, a realm beyond signification, not another symbolic order. The key to
Zizek's argument is the Lacanian conception of fantasy, defined by Lacan as the relation of the barred
subject to the objet a ($Oa). The function of fantasy is to fill the void created by the real. It creates a
space, a kind of blank screen on which the subject's desires can be projected. In this way, fantasy realizes
desire-not in the sense of satisfying it, but by bringing it out in the open, giving it a shape. And this is
precisely what ideology does. One of the most striking aspects of Zizek's theory of ideology is his
insistence that, though it might seem otherwise, fantasy serves to support ideology rather than challenge
it. It is natural to think of fantasy as an escape into a realm of wish-fulfilment, divorced from reality, but
Zizek emphasizes that reality actually depends upon subscribing to the fantasy. This accounts for another
revision of Althusser's theory. Many readers of his work have pointed out that Althusser does not
satisfactorily explain why the subject is so willing to be interpellated. Zizek suggests that it is because
there is something fundamentally attractive about ideology which goes beyond its content. We sense the
symbolic order is a purely bureaucratic mechanism designed to keep us in our subject positions. We also
intuitively apprehend the real is beneath it all the while. Fantasy is what enables us to cover up this
knowledge and continue to function as normal subjects, to continue to make life 'meaningful' in the
symbolic.
Zizek demonstrates that there is a characteristic doubleness about ideology. The ideological fantasy
manages to cover up the real and persuade us to accept the logic of the symbolic, but by doing so draws
attention to the fact that the real is what the symbolic order is built upon and is continually ready to
shatter it. One of his best examples concerns the familiar safety rituals we are taken through on
aeroplanes as they take off. He asks:
Aren't they sustained by a fantasmatic scenario of how a possible plane-crash will look? After a gentle landing on
water (miraculously, it is always supposed to happen on water!), each of the passengers puts on the life-jacket and,
as on a beach toboggan, slides into the water and takes a swim, like a nice collective lagoon holiday experience
under the guidance of an experienced swimming instructor.11
In this scenario, the fantasy enables us to imagine that we will be safe in the event of a plane crash, even
though we know perfectly well this is unlikely to be the case. Thus, the fantasy simultaneously covers up
the real and draws attention to it. It expresses the very thing, the horrible reality of a plane crash, which
has been repressed, which cannot otherwise be symbolized. The mechanism works on a more explicitly
political level, too. In Looking Awry Zizek gives a reading of two films which portray persecutory
totalitarian worlds, Terry Gilliams's Brazil and Rainer Fassbinder's Lili Marleen. Each film is named after
the popular song which resounds throughout, and which functions in two contradictory ways: as a support
for the prevailing totalitarian order, a kind of signature-tune for the dominant ideology, making it all seem
unified and attractive, but also as a 'fragment of the signifier permeated with idiotic enjoyment'. Each
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song is 'on the verge of transforming itself into a subversive element that could burst from the very
ideological machine by which it is supported' (Zizek, 1991a, 129). Brazil ends with the apparent defeat of
its hero, who has been broken by savage torture, only for him to escape his oppressors by whistling
'Brazil'.>
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AT: Traversing the Fantasy - Leads to bare life

Attempt to traverse the fantasy turns people into bare life and destroys all freedom
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<The Act thus reproduces in the socio-political field the Lacanian concept of traversing the fantasy. Traversing the
fantasy involves accepting that there is no way one can be satisfied, and therefore a full acceptance of the pain ...
as inherent to the excess of pleasure which is jouissance, as well as a rejection of every conception of radical
difference.68 It means, contra Nietzsche, an acceptance of the fact that there is no secret treasure in me,69 and a
transition from being the nothing we are today to being a Nothing humbly aware of itself, a Nothing paradoxically
made rich through the very awareness of its lack.70 It involves being reduced to a zero-point or ultimate level
similar to that seen in the most broken concentrationcamp inmates,71 so the role of analysis is to throw out the
baby... in order to confront the patient with his dirty bathwater,72 inducing, not an improvement, but a transition
from Bad to Worse, which is inherently terroristic.73 It is also not freedom in the usual sense, but prostration
before the call of the truth-event,74 something violently imposed on me from the Outside through a traumatic
encounter that shatters the very foundation of my being.75 In true Orwellian fashion, Zizek claims that in the Act,
freedom equals slavery; the Act involves the highest freedom and also the utmost passivity with a reduction to a
lifeless automaton who blindly performs its gestures.76>
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AT: Zizek Alt Violence

Zizeks theory invites and even encourages violence it should be rejected just on the
notion that he would approve of humanitys most unspeakable atrocities
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<As becomes evident class struggle is not for Zizek an empirical referent and even less a category of Marxisant
sociological analysis, but a synonym for the Lacanian Real. A progressive endorsement of class struggle means
positing the lack of a common horizon and assuming or asserting the insolubility of political conflict.16 It therefore
involves a glorification of conflict, antagonism, terror and a militaristic logic of carving the field into good and
bad sides, as a good in itself.17 Zizek celebrates war because it undermines the complacency of our daily routine
by introducing meaningless sacrifice and destruction.18 He fears being trapped by a suffocating social peace or
Good and so calls on people to take a militant, divisive position of assertion of the Truth that enthuses them.19
The content of this Truth is a secondary issue. For Zizek, Truth has nothing to do with truth-claims and the field of
knowledge. Truth is an event which just happens, in which the thing itself is disclosed to us as what it is.20
Truth is therefore the exaggeration which distorts any balanced system.21 A truth-effect occurs whenever a work
produces a strong emotional reaction, and it need not be identified with empirical accuracy: lies and distortions can
have a truth-effect, and factual truth can cover the disavowal of desire and the Real.22
In this sense, therefore, Lenin and de Gaulle, St Paul and Lacan are all carriers of the truth and therefore are
progressive, radical figures, despite the incompatibility of their doctrines. Such individuals (and it is always
individuals) violently carve the field and produce a truth-effect. That de Gaulle and the Church are political rightists
is of no importance to Zizek, since he redefines right and left to avoid such problems. He also writes off the
human suffering caused by carving the field as justified or even beneficial: it has a transcendental genesis in the
subject, and its victims endure it because they obtain jouissance from it.23 The structural occurrence of a truth-event
is what matters to him - not what kind of world results from it. This is a secondary issue - and anyway one that he
thinks is impossible to discuss, since the logic of liberal capitalism is so total that it makes alternatives
unthinkable.24 One should keep the utopian possibility of alternatives open, but it should remain empty, awaiting a
content.25>
Zizeks alternative requires a mass of violence only equated by the most repulsive acts in
history, such as the Holocaust
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<Secondly, Zizek implies that Lenin must in some sense have understood that the revolution would necessarily betray itself, and that all
revolutions are structurally doomed to fall short of whatever ideals and principles motivate them. He also implies that the success or failure of a
revolution has nothing to do with whether the modes of thought and action, social relations and institutions which follow are at all related to the
original revolutionary ideals and principles. What matters is that power is held by those who identify with the symptom, who call themselves
Proletarian. Zizek therefore endorses the conservative claim that Lenins utopian moments were Machiavellian
manoeuvres or at best confused delusions, veiling his true intentions to seize power for himself or a small elite : Lenin
was the ultimate political strategist.121 That Zizek endorses the Lenin figure despite endorsing nearly every accusation against Lenin serves to
underline the degree to which Zizeks politics are wedded to conservative assumptions that repression, brutality and terror
are always with us. Rejecting the claim that politics could be otherwise, Zizek wishes to grasp, embrace and even
revel in the grubbiness and violence of modern politics. The moment of utopia in Russia was for Zizek realised
when the Red Guards succumbed to a destructive hedonism in moments of Bataillean excess.122 The only difference for Zizek
between leftist ethics and the standpoint of Oliver North, the Taleban, the anti-Dreyfusards and even the Nazis is that such rightists legitimate
their acts in reference to some higher good, whereas leftists also suspend the higher good in a truly authentic gesture of suspension.123 The
Soviet Terror is a good terror whereas the Nazi one is not, only because the Soviet terror was allegedly more total,
with everyone being potentially at risk, not only out-groups.124 Zizek goes well beyond advocating violence as a
means to an end; for Zizek, violence is part of the end itself, the utopian excess of the Act. The closest parallel is the
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nihilism of Nechaevs Catechism of a Revolution which proclaims that everything is moral that contributes to the
triumph of the revolution; everything that hinders it is immoral and criminal.125 As Peter Marshall comments in his digest
of anarchist writings and movements, the Catechism is one of the most repulsive documents in the history of terrorism.
One can only speculate what he would have made of Repeating Lenin.126 >
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Zizeks strategy for change is both impossible and excessively violent, reintroducing the
oppression that it seeks to prevent. Forming coalitions among progressive leftists based on
notions of positive change is the only way to overthrow actual structures of capitalism
Zizek offers only fragmentation and failure.
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<Zizeks politics are not merely impossible, but potentially despotic, and also (between support for a Master,
acceptance of pain and alienation, militarism and the restoration of order) tendentially conservative. They serve only
to discredit the left and further alienate those it seeks to mobilise. Instead, a transformative politics should be a
process of transformation, an alinear, rhizomatic, multiform plurality of resistances, initiatives, and, indeed, acts,
which are sometimes spectacular and carnivalesque, sometimes prefigurative, sometimes subterranean, sometimes
rooted in institutional change and reform, sometimes directly revolutionary. Zizeks model of the pledged group,
bound together by the One who Acts, is entirely irrelevant to the contemporary world and would be a step
backwards from the decentred character of current leftradical politics. Nor need this decentring be seen as a
weakness as Zizek insists. It can be a strength, protecting radical politics from self-appointed elites, transformism,
infiltration, defeat through the neutralisation of leaders, and the threat of a repeat of the Stalinist betrayal. In
contrast with Zizeks stress on subordination, exclusivity, hierarchy and violence, the tendency of anti-capitalists and
others to adopt anti-authoritarian, heterogeneous, inclusive and multiform types of activity offer a better chance of
effectively overcoming the homogenising logic of capitalism and of winning support among wider circles of those
dissatisfied with it. Similarly, the emphasis on direct action - which can include ludic, carnivalesque and non-violent
actions as well as more overtly confrontational ones - generates the possibility of empowerment through
involvement in and support for the myriad causes which make up the anti-capitalist resistance. This resistance stands
in stark contrast to the desert of heroic isolation advocated by Zizek, which, as Laclau puts it, is a prescription for
political quietism and sterility.154
Zizek is right that we should aim to overcome the impossibilities of capitalism, but this overcoming should involve
the active prefiguration and construction in actuality of alternative social forms , not a simple (and actually
impossible) break with everything which exists of the kind imagined by Zizek. It is important that radicals invoke
utopias, but in an active way, in the forms of organisation, disorganisation, and activity we adopt, in the spaces
we create for resistance, and in the prefiguration of alternative economic, political and social forms. Utopian
imaginaries express what is at stake in left radicalism: that what exists does not exist of necessity, and that the
contingency of social institutions and practices makes possible the overthrow of existing institutions and the
construction or creation of different practices, social relations, and conceptions of the world. The most Zizek allows
to radicals is the ability to glimpse utopia while enacting the reconstruction of oppression . Radicals should go
further, and bring this imagined other place into actual existence. Through enacting utopia, we have the ability to
bring the no-where into the now-here.>
Zizeks alternative is authoritarian It only works on an individual level and embodies a

molester, murderer, and Stalin
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
Furthermore, despite Zizeks emphasis on politics, his discussion of the Act remains resolutely individualist - as
befits its clinical origins. Zizeks examples of Acts are nearly all isolated actions by individuals, such as Mary Kay
Letourneaus defiance of juridical pressure to end a relationship with a youth,89 a soldier in Full Metal Jacket
killing his drill sergeant and himself,90 and the acts of Stalinist bureaucrats who rewrote history knowing they
would later be purged.91 This is problematic as a basis for understanding previous social transformations, and even
more so as a recommendation for the future. The new subject Zizek envisages is an authoritarian leader, someone
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capable of the inherently terroristic action of redefining the rules of the game.92 This is a conservative, if not
reactionary, position. As Donald Rooums cartoon character Wildcat so astutely puts it, I dont just want freedom
from the capitalists. I also want freedom from people fit to take over.93>
Regarding social structures, furthermore, Zizek consistently prefers overconformity to resistance. For him,
disidentification with ones ideologically-defined role is not subversive; rather, an ideological edifice can be
undermined by a too-literal identification.94 Escapism and ideas of an autonomous self are identical with ideology
because they make intolerable conditions liveable;95 even petty resistance is a condition of possibility of the
system,96 a supplement which sustains it. To be free of the present, one should renounce the transgressive
fantasmic supplement that attaches us to it,97 and attach oneself instead to the public discourse which power
officially promotes.98
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Zizekian theory gives rise to an authoritarian politics that necessarily reproduces the
violence and oppression it claims to prevent. Rejecting his project is necessary to revitalize
a progressive leftist politics that Zizek would destroy.
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<The paradox of this defence of Lenin is that it reproduces almost exactly the conservative account of why Lenin
should be renounced as a messianic totalitarian despot. This is the Lenin of Bertram D. Wolf, Leonard Shapiro and
Adam B. Ulam, the Lenin of the Gulag and the Evil Empire, the Lenin whose Bolshevism proved to be less a
doctrine than a technique of action for the seizing and holding of power,110 the big bad wolf so important for Cold
War and anti-left propaganda - that is, the very image of Lenin that generations of leftleaning scholars have been
trying to qualify, undermine, challenge or rebut.111 Zizeks endorsement of this Lenin illustrates in stark terms
why his project should be rejected by those seeking to advance a left agenda. Zizeks Leninism shows the primacy
of the category of the Act within his own approach. What he admires in the figure Lenin has little to do with
Lenins motives and objectives, about which he says little; nor does he endorse progressive aspects of the Bolshevik
ideology or programme, such as radical decentralisation, land reform and workers control. What he admires is how
Lenins ruthlessness supposedly enabled him to traverse the fantasy and accomplish an Act. Thus, the fact that the
revolution was betrayed, that it (or its successors) ate its own children and created a new Master and a new Order
through horrific purges in contradiction to its own proposed goals, are not to be regretted, but should for Zizek be
celebrated as evidence of the authenticity of the Leninist Act.112 That the regime which eventually emerged was
violent and terroristic is not problematic for Zizek: Acts are necessarily terroristic and sweep their initiators up in
a truth-event regardless of their will, and the most one can do is claim responsibility for what occurs .113 Further,
they are on Zizeks account supposed to produce a new Order and a new Master. It remains unclear why one should
support the Leninist Act, if this is the Leninism on offer.
As a historical account, this reading of Lenin is problematic. Zizek seems to feel he has little need for evidence to
back his claims; he cares about the empty usefulness of the Lenin signifier, not the historical Lenin - although his
account rests on the assumption that he is saying something relevant to this Lenin and to the historical Russian
Revolution. To take a few examples of the selectivity of Zizeks reading, Lenin specifically rejected orgiastic
releases of energy,114 and tried to restrain the worst excesses of the Cheka.115 Between Lenins mad position in
April and the Revolution in October, there were the July Days and the text Marxism and Insurrection, where Lenin
specifically renounced the idea of taking a revolutionary position without mass support. Lenins late texts show that
he did not take unconditional responsibility for the betrayal/failure of the revolution, but rather regretted and tried to
amend many of the developments to which he had contributed.116 These are just a few examples of a problem of
empirical inaccuracy which plagues much of Zizeks work.
What is more pertinent for our purposes is that Zizeks position on Lenin confirms the basic conservatism of his
political stance. Firstly, it involves an intentionalist Great Men approach to history which ignores the subaltern
strata. Echoing conservative readings, such as Bertram Wolfs Three Who Made a Revolution, Zizek assumes a
Master is necessary for social change. As a political strategy this is in turn a formula for a messianic, leaderfixated, authoritarian politics, with change delivered to the hapless masses by a Leader. Lenin is a Messiah and
commitment to him is a leap of faith.117 The theorists role is to identify or generate such a leader, rather than to
identify means whereby ordinary people can actively achieve their own liberation or emancipation. The leader
becomes a social engineer who should be given every opportunity to manipulate others to produce an authentic
Event.118 Zizeks formula of returning the masses message in its true-inverted form is indistinguishable from Mao
Zedongs slogan from the masses, to the masses.119 The anamorphic (distortingreflective) process Zizek
advocates is a manifesto for those who would substitute for others while claiming to represent them. Even the Lenin
of What is to be Done? would have blanched at such an approach, and with good reason. Zizeks model of the
revolutionary party is that of what Sartre terms a pledged group with individuals tied to each other through
identification with the Cause and the Leader, where in the name of our fidelity to the Cause we are ready to
sacrifice our elementary sincerity, honesty and human decency - whereas, according to Sartre, revolutions are made
by fused groups, directly mobilised around immediate concerns.120 Lenin was well aware that the party alone
could not make a revolution (Marxism and Insurrection), and, though sometimes surrounded by sycophants, he was
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notoriously wary of any attempt to identify the revolutionary process directly with the party leadership.>
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Zizeks alternative is pessimistic and authoritarian his theory precludes a democratic
politics
Breger, Assistant Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana, 2001 (Claudia, Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 73-90, "The
Leader's Two Bodies: Slavoj Zizek's Postmodern Political Theology," project muse)
Over the course of the last decade, Slavoj Zizek and his "Slovenian Lacanian school" have gained renown in the
Western theory market. Academics are fascinated not only by Zizek's performances as a speaker, his nondogmatic
approach to issues of genre and (inter)mediality, 1 and the "literary" character of his theoretical texts [Laclau,
Preface xii], but also by the political turn given to psychoanalysis by the "Slovenian school." Already in his preface
to Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Ernesto Laclau wrote that this school's work made Lacanian
theory "one of the principal reference points of the so-called 'Slovenia spring'that is to say the democratization
campaigns that have taken place in recent years" [xi]. More than ten years laterafter a decade of authoritarian rule,
war, and genocide in former Yugoslaviarecent revolutionary events in Serbia once more allow one to hope for a
thorough democratization of the region. In a newspaper article evaluating the uprising, however, Zizek warned that
these hopes might be premature: while Milosevic could find his new role as "a Serbian Jesus Christ," taking upon
him all the "sins" committed by his people, Kostunica and his "democratic" nationalism might represent "nothing
but Milosevic in the 'normal' version, without the excess" [Zizek, "Gewalt"]. 2
Zizek was not alone in warning that the new government in Yugoslavia might not bring an end to Serbian nationalist
politics. The pessimistic scenario Zizek evoked on this occasion, however, was not simply the result of his
evaluation of the current political constellation in Serbia. Rather, the fantasy of the necessary return of the leader is
connected to his political theorya theory that does not allow for more optimistic scenarios of democratization and
the diminution of nationalism in society. My reading of Zizek's work thus argues for a reevaluation of his theory in
terms of its implicit authoritarian politics. The need for such a reevaluation is also suggested by Laclau toward the
end of his recent exchange with Judith Butler and Zizek when he admits that "the more our discussions progressed,
the more I realized that my sympathy for Zizek's politics was largely the result of a mirage" [Laclau, "Constructing
Universality" 292]. Laclau now criticizes Zizek's radical Marxist rhetoric by suggesting that he "wants to do away
with liberal democratic regimes" without specifying a political alternative [289], and describes Zizek's discourse as
"schizophrenically split between a highly sophisticated Lacanian analysis and an insufficiently deconstructed
traditional Marxism" [205]. On [End Page 73] the other hand, he also problematizes Zizek's "psychoanalytic
discourse" as "not truly political" [289]. My argument primarily starts from this latter point: the antidemocratic
and, as I will argue, both antifeminist and anti-Semiticmoment of Zizek's theory is to be located not only in the
way he performs Marxism, but also in the way he performs Lacanian psychoanalysis. While , in other words, Zizek's
skepticism vis--vis democracy is obviously informed by, and inseparable from, Marxist critiques of "liberal,"
"representative" democracy, his failure to elaborate alternative visions of political change towards egalitarian and/or
plural scenarios of society cannot be explained solely by his Marxist perspective. Rather, it is Zizek's reading of
Lacanian psychoanalysis that does not allow for revisions of the Marxist paradigm toward, for example, a "radical
democracy" as suggested by Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.
The alternative is authoritarianism

Breger, Assistant Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana, 2001 (Claudia, Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 73-90, "The
Leader's Two Bodies: Slavoj Zizek's Postmodern Political Theology," project muse)
<Identity cannot be separated from authority [Zizek, Grimassen 88]. With regard to Hegel's dialectic, Zizek
describes the "leftover of the Real" constituting identity also as a "point of exception" or "additional element that
'stands out'" [97]. In order to explain its "immanently authoritarian character," he refers to Hegel's "most
disreputable" example for this additional element which hasunjustly, Zizek claimsbeen read as proof of the
philosopher's conservatism: the king. While the monarch's body suspends the state's rational constitution, the state
only achieves its reality in this "additional element that stands out" [89]. For the king is "immediatelyprecisely in
his naturethat which he is according to his symbolic designation (a king becomes king by virtue of his birth, not
his merits)" [89]. Thus, Zizek uses the dynastic model of legitimating authoritywhich tries to knot together the
king's two bodies inseparablyas a paradigm of identity in general. "The exception of the king is thus an exception
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that is 'reconciled in universality' ['im Allgemeinen'], since it founds universality" [89].

The "leftover of the Real" that sticks to the figure of the king as a "naturally" legitimized leader constitutes the
theory that insists on its performative effectiveness: only the point of exceptionthe monarchgives Zizek's
"democratic," materialist project its identity. The extraordinary role of the king may be as ideological as "historical
necessity"; for Zizek, it is nonetheless necessary: "the monarch plays his role as a figure of pure authority which cuts
off the endless succession of pros and contras by its 'Thus it shall happen!'" and thereby "guarantees the identity of
the social structure" [101]. At first, Zizek seems to argue that this element of necessity merely concerns the king's
structural position: while authority is always performative (Zizek reminds us of the Lacanian thesis according to
which the master is fundamentally an impostor), the exposure of his imposture cannot dissolve the place he occupies
[121]. By itself, however, this structural necessity of a position of authority would not turn democracy into a
paradoxical endeavor. Zizek argues that in a democratic society, the king's body guarantees the nonclosure of the
social field. He refers to Claude Lefort's dictum that in democracy, the throne is empty. Once a state to be overcome,
the "interregnum" now signifies the normal state of affairs [134]. No one has a full legal claim to the throne; by [End
Page 78] definition, every occupant of the place of power is a "usurper," mandated to exercise power as a temporary
representative only. Democracy is defined by the insurmountable boundary that prevents the political subject from
becoming consubstantial with power [134].
In the language of psychoanalysis, this means that the place of authority is "a purely symbolic construction" that
cannot be occupied by any "real" political official [134]. As we have seen, though, Zizek's epistemology does not
allow for a construction to be "purely symbolic." His obsession with the intervention of "pieces of the Real" enacts
the king not just as an example, a metaphorical casting of a necessary position, but as the necessary incorporation of
(social) identity. As a figure with "natural legitimation," the royal "piece of the Real" arrests the function of authority
in a nondemocratic field. Zizek concludes the above argument about democracy with an exegesis of Hegel's plea for
hereditary succession. He presents this plea as a suggestion of how to solve the paradox of democracya paradox
he introduced to the context of this argument by associating Lefort's thesis with Jacobean rhetoric and concluding
that the Terror was of a "strictly democratic nature" [135]. According to Zizek, Hegel's monarch is "nothing but
a materialization of the distance" between the place of power and its occupant. And it is precisely his hereditary
legitimationthe "contingency" of biological originwhich guards the emptiness of the throne by guaranteeing
"the 'utter insignificance' of the monarch's positive essence" [136]. Therefore, only the act of subjectivating the
barrier in a subject "in which the pure, empty name coincides with the 'last remnant' of nature" "interrupts the
vicious circle of terror" [137].
A king alone could save us from the terrors of totalitarianism that announce themselves in the Jacobean murders.
This argument suggests that Zizek offers a conservative answer to the diagnosed dilemmas of modernity. But it is
not quite that simple. His attempt to construct the Hegelian king as a quasi-utopian alternative to the totalitarian
present is not very convincing. Since the rhetoric of hereditary monarchy asserts the uniqueness of the king's person
(rather than its insignificance), Zizek enlists the theorem of the "two bodies" of the performative in order to support
his claim: the uniqueness asserted on the level of the enunciated is contradicted on the level of enunciation [137]. In
Zizek's theoretical universe, where the split body of the performative does not open a Third Space (Homi Bhabha) of
social renegotiation, this move comes as a surpriseand reads like a "hair-splitting" attempt to introduce difference
to a field constituted in sameness. For at this point of his argument, in order to explain why the people are fascinated
by the totalitarian leader, Zizek has already explained to the reader why the assertion of the master's personal
insignificance can never win the political game. In this argument, however, he uses the example of the king's
decapitation during the French Revolution.>
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AT: Zizek Alt Fails

Zizek doesnt identify a possible alternative, keeping him in an ivory tower and preventing
any change
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<How can one overcome capitalism without imagining an alternative? Zizeks answer relies on his extension of
Lacanian clinical principles into social analysis. For Zizek, every social system contains a Symbolic (social
institutions, law, etc.), an Imaginary (the ideologies, fantasies and pseudo-concrete images which sustain this
system), and a Real, a group which is extimate to (intimately present in, but necessarily external to) the system, a
part of no part which must be repressed or disavowed for the system to function. Zizek identifies this group with
the symptom in psychoanalysis, terming it the social symptom. Just as a patient in psychoanalysis should identify
with his or her symptom to cure neuroses, so political radicals should identify with the social symptom to achieve
radical change. This involves a statement of solidarity which takes the form We are all them, the excluded nonpart - for instance, we are all Sarajevans or we are all illegal immigrants.26 By identifying with the symptom,
one becomes for Zizek a proletarian, and therefore touched by Grace.27 Thus even academics like Zizek can
perform an authentic Act while retaining their accustomed lifestyles simply by identifying with anathemas
thrown at them by others.28 Since the social symptom is the embodiment of the inherent impossibility of society,
identification with it allows one, paradoxically, to recover a radical politics which is rendered unthinkable and
impossible by the present socio-symbolic system.29 Identification with the symptom is not an external act of
solidarity. Zizek does not accept a division between individual and social psychology, so he believes identifying
with the social symptom also disrupts ones own psychological structure. This identification involves neither the
self-emancipation of this group nor a struggle in support of its specific demands, but rather, a personal act from the
standpoint of this group, which substitutes for it and even goes against its particular demands in pursuit of its
ascribed Truth.30>
Zizek offers no guide to a successful deconstruction of the system his theory is a recipe for
fragmentation of progressive individuals.
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<As useful as such a reading is, this is not the Zizek who emerges on closer examination. Regarding where radicals - especially active radicals - should proceed from
here and now, Zizeks work offers little to celebrate. The relevance of a politics based on formal structural categories instead of lived historical processes, which
The concept of the Act is

metaphysical, not political, and it leads to a rejection of most forms of resistance. For Zizek, objections to official
ideologies which stop short of an Act are the very form of ideology,141 and the gap between complaint and Acts
is insurmountable.142 So protest politics fits the existing power relations and carnivals are a false transgression
which stabilizes the power edifice.143 This position misreads past revolutionary movements - including the
decades-long revolutionary process in Russia - and offers nothing to the development of a left strategy to
challenge the existing system. All Zizek establishes, therefore, is a radical break between his own theory and
any effective left politics. The concept of the Act is a recipe for irrelevance - for creating a desert around oneself
while sitting in judgement on actual political movements which always fall short of ones ideal criteria.>
measures radicalism, not by concrete achievements, but by how abruptly one rejects the existing symbolic order, is questionable.
Zizeks alternative cannot escape the current social system he merely shifts oppression
from one group to another.
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<So the Act is a rebirth - but a rebirth as what? The parallel with Lacans concept of traversing the fantasy is crucial, because, for Lacan, there is no escape from the
symbolic order or the Law of the Master.
We are trapped in the existing world, complete with its dislocation, lack, alienation and
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antagonism, and no transcendence can overcome the deep structure of this world, which is fixed at the level of
subject-formation; the most we can hope for is to go from incapable neurosis to mere alienated subjectivity. In
Zizeks politics, therefore, a fundamental social transformation is impossible. After the break initiated by an Act, a
system similar to the present one is restored ; the subject undergoes identification with a Cause,77 leading to a
new proper symbolic Prohibition revitalised by the process of rebirth,78 enabling one effectively to realize the
necessary pragmatic measures,79 which may be the same ones as today, e.g. structural adjustment policies.80 It is possible to start a
new life by replacing one symbolic fiction with another.81 As a Lacanian, Zizek is opposed to any idea of realising utopian fullness. Any change in the basic structure
of existence, whereby one may overcome dislocation and disorientation, is out of the question. However, he also rejects practical solutions to problems as a mere
an Act neither solves concrete problems nor achieves drastic improvements; it merely removes
blockages to existing modes of thought and action. It transforms the constellation which generates social
symptoms,83 shifting exclusion from one group to another, but it does not achieve either drastic or moderate
concrete changes. It means that we accept the vicious circle of revolving around the object [the Real] and find jouissance in it, renouncing the myth that
displacement.82 So
jouissance is amassed somewhere else.84 It also offers those who take part in it a dimension of Otherness, that moment when the absolute appears in all its
fragility, a brief apparition of a future utopian Otherness to which every authentic revolutionary stance should cling.85 This absolute, however, can only be
glimpsed. The leader, Act and Cause must be betrayed so the social order can be refounded. The leader, or mediator, must erase
himself [sic] from the picture,86 retreating to the horizon of the social to haunt history as spectre or phantasy.87 Every Great Man must be betrayed so he can assume
his fame and thereby become compatible with the status quo;88 once one glimpses the sublime Universal, therefore, one must commit suicide - as Zizek claims the
Bolshevik Party did, via the Stalinist purges (When the Party Commits Suicide).>
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AT: Zizek Alt Fails

Zizeks revolution is not transformative its very existence is predicated on the notion that
the system will eventually be restored under the tyranny of a master signifier.
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<Thirdly, Zizeks view of Lenin also shows that his revolution cannot be extensively transformative; it can suspend
the symbolic order, but must later restore it. Thus, Zizek identifies, not with the transformative agenda of The State and
Revolution or the early reforms such as workers control of factories, democratisation of the army and decentralisation of decision-making which hardly figure in his account - but rather, with Lenins determination to restore order even at the cost of abandoning
such transformations, to take on the burden of taking over, to take responsibility for the smooth running of the
social edifice and become the One who assumes the ultimate responsibility, including a ruthless readiness to break
the letter of the law to guarantee the systems survival.127 The heroic dimension of revolution occurs when the Stalinist
ritual, the empty flattery which holds together the community, which is a dimension... probably essential to language as such, necessarily
replaces the revolutionary moment.128 What Zizek is telling left radicals, therefore, is to abandon the notion of the state as a source of violence
and to see it as part of the solution to, rather than the problem of, reordering social life . Zizek sees the state as a useful ally, and an
instrument through which to impose the good terror. He denounces anti-statism as idealist and hypocritical,129 and attacks the
anticapitalist movement for lacking political centralisation.130 Zizek does not offer an alternative to statist violence; in Zizeks world (to
misquote an anarchist slogan), whoever you fight for, the state always wins . Opponents of the war in Afghanistan and the arms
trade, of police racism and repression against demonstrators, will find no alternative in Zizek - only a new
militarism, a good terror and yet another Cheka. Zizeks concept of socialisation, virtually his only concrete proposal for
social change, further confirms his authoritarianism. Since he applies it in areas such as gene patenting cyberspace, CCTV and
scientific knowledge,131 it cannot mean workers control, let alone workers management. Presumably, therefore, it must mean control by the
state, i.e. socialisation by the big Other under the control of the master-signifier, a conclusion confirmed by Zizeks use of the terms
socialisation and state control as interchangeable.132 If so, its extension to these areas is threatening, not liberating: Zizek is giving a green
light to eugenicists, Internet censors and Lysenkoites. Zizek admits that his approach reduces privacy and openly advocates
academic censorship and secret police.133 Gene patenting and CCTV should be eliminated, not socialised, while science and the
Internet are potential areas of freedom in which only the production process should be collective. Zizeks approach is closer to what Marx attacks
as barracks communism than to the Marxist idea of socialisation of the means of production. Zizek also defends the Stalinist view that social
issues should be dealt with in reference to their effect on production, not their human dimension.134 >
Zizeks politics of impossibility leaves progressive leftists without any guide to change.
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<Enter Zizek. Zizek offers an alternative to traditional left radicalisms and postmodern anti-essentialist
approaches, especially identity politics. For Zizek, radical democracy accepts the liberal-capitalist horizon, and so
is never radical enough.6 Against this alleged pseudo-radicalism, Zizek revives traditional leftist concepts such as
class struggle.7 However, he ignores the orthodox left meaning of such terms, rearticulating them in a
sophisticated Hegelian and Lacanian vocabulary. His dramatic impact on radical theory is therefore unsurprising. To
take one example, Sean Homers praise for Zizek is based on this supposed reinvigoration of radicalism and
Marxism.8 Though Homer is sceptical about Zizeks Lacanianism, he declares that Marxism has always been
much more to the fore of Zizeks work than many of his commentators have cared to acknowledge.9 Zizek, he
claims, is reopening the repressed issue of the Marxian and Althusserian legacy, and calling for [u]topian
imaginaries which allow us to think beyond the limits of capitalism.10 For Homers Zizek the point is to be anticapitalist, whatever form that might take.11 And though he attacks the problem of Zizeks Lacanian categories,
especially the Real, Homer clearly sees Zizeks work as a step towards the revitalised Marxist radicalism he
advocates.12 Problems remain, however. Zizeks version of class struggle does not map on to traditional
conceptions of an empirical working-class, and Zizeks proletariat is avowedly mythical.13 He also rejects
newer forms of struggle such as the anti-capitalist movement and the 1968 uprisings thereby reproducing a problem
common in radical theory: his theory has no link to radical politics in an immediate sense.14 Nevertheless, he has a
theory of how such a politics should look which he uses to judge existing political radicalisms. So how does Zizek
see radical politics emerging?
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Zizek does not offer much by way of a positive social agenda. He does not have anything approximating to a
programme, nor a model of the kind of society he seeks, nor a theory of the construction of alternatives in the
present. Indeed, the more one looks at the matter, the more difficult it becomes to pin Zizek down to any line or
position. He seems at first sight to regard social transformation, not as something possible to be theorised and
advanced, but as a fundamental impossibility because the influence of the dominant symbolic system is so great
that it makes alternatives unthinkable.15 A fundamental transformation, however, is clearly the only answer to the
vision of contemporary crisis Zizek offers. Can he escape this contradiction? His attempt to do so revolves around a
reclassification of impossibility as an active element in generating action. Asserting or pursuing the impossible
becomes in Zizeks account not only possible but desirable. So how then can the left advance its impossible
politics? How is a now impossible model of class struggle be transformed into a politics relevant to the present
period?>
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AT: Zizek Alt Fails

The alternative fails it wont work in the public sphere
Tell, Communication Arts and Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University, 2004
(David, On Belief (Review), Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.1 (2004) 96-99, Project MUSE)
<Most scholars of rhetoric, however, will not be satisfied with Zizek's belief. For although this belief provides the
necessary subjective conditions for public intervention, it is difficult to imagine it being publicly deployed. This
belief is, after all, radically privatized; it is the internal repetition of a "primordial decision," or an "unconscious
atemporal deed" (147). One must wonder about the public possibilities of such a private (and subconscious)
experience. Moreover, most rhetoricians may well be troubled by Zizek's claim that all "acts proper"acts of actual
freedomoccur outside the symbolic order. Insofar as rhetoric can be considered symbolic action, then, its action
can never provide for innovative intervention into the public sphere . Zizek admits as much in an endnote: "true
acts of freedom are choices/decisions which we make while unaware of itwe never decide (in the present tense);
all of a sudden, we just take note of how we have already decided " (156n46). It is precisely here that the rhetorician
will not be satisfied: if Rorty marginalized the rhetorical purchase of [End Page 98] belief by banishing it to the
private sphere, Zizek does so by marginalizing rhetoric itself.>
Zizeks alternative is an empirically denied fairy-tale dream

Boynton, Director of NYU's Graduate Magazine Journalism Program, 1998
(Robert, "Enjoy Your iek!" Lingua Franca, October, http://www.robertboynton.com/articleDisplay.php?
article_id=43)
UNDERGRADUATES ARE APT to be tolerant of their professors' idiosyncracies, but Zizek may have less luck
hiding from critics when The Ticklish Subject is published this winter. Just as he once saw socialist Yugoslavia as a
count ry that had been cynically depoliticized by its leaders, so Zizek now believes that conservatives, liberals, and
radicals have effectively stamped out genuine politics in the West. The modern era, he argues, is decidedly "postpolitical." Instead of politics, he writes, we have a largely conflict-free "collaboration of enlightened technocrats
(economists, public opinion specialists) and liberal multiculturalists" who negotiate a series of compromises that
pose asbut fail to reflecta "universal cons ensus."
Blair's New Labourites and Clinton's New Democrats are only the most recent depoliticized political parties to have
made "the art of the possible" their modest mantra. Zizek also charges that sexual and ethnic identity politics "fits
perfectly the depoliticized notion of society in which every particular group is "accounted for,' has its specific status
(of a victim) acknowledged through affirmative action or other measures destined to guarantee social justice." In
satisfying grievances through pr ograms targeted to specific groups, such as affirmative action, the tolerant liberal
establishment prevents the emergence of a genuinely universaland in Zizek's definition, properly politicalimpulse.
For Zizek, all successful ideologies function the same way. If American-style consumer capitalism has replaced
Yugoslavian Marxism as the antagonist, the battle is still the same: to create the conditions for what he calls "politics
proper," a vaguely defined, but deeply heroic and inherently universalist impulse, in which a given social order and
its power interests are destabilized and overthrown. "Authentic politics is the art of the impossible," he writes. "It
changes the very parameters of what is considered "possible' in the existing constellation."
This is a noble vision, but when Zizek turns to history, he finds only fleeting examples of genuine politics in action:
in ancient Athens; in the proclamations of the Third Estate during the French Revolution; in the Polish Solidarity
movement; and in the last, heady days of the East German Republic before the Wall came down and the crowds
stopped chanting "Wir sind das Volk" ("We are the people!") and began chanting "Wir sind ein Volk" ("We are a/one
people!"). The shift from definite to indefinite article, writes Zizek, marked "the closure of the momentary authentic
political opening, the reappropriation of the democratic impetus by the thrust towards reunification of Germany,
which meant rejoining Western Germany's liberal-capitalist police/political order."
In articulating his political credo, Zizek attempts to synthesize three unlikelyperhaps incompatiblesources:
Lacan's notion of the subject as a "pure void" that is "radically out of joint" with the world, Marx's political
economy, and St. Paul's conviction that universal truth is the only force capable of recognizing the needs of the
particular. Zizek is fond of calling himself a "Pauline materialist," and he admires St. Paul's muscular vision. He
believes that the post-political deadlock can be broken only by a gesture that undermines "capitalist globalization
from the standpoint of universal truth in the same way that Pauline Christianity did to the Roman global empire." He
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adds: "My dream is to combine an extremely dark, pessimistic belief that life is basically horrible and contingent,
with a revolutionary social attitude."
AS PHILOSOPHY, Zizek's argument is breathtaking, but as social prescription, "dream" may be an apt word. The
only way to combat the dominance of global capitalism, he argues, is through a "direct socialization of the
productive process"an agenda that is unlikely to play well in Slovenia, which is now enjoying many of the fruits of
Western consumer capitalism. When pressed to specify what controlling the productive process might look like,
Zizek admits he doesn't know, although he feels certain that an alternative to capitalism will emerge and that the
public debate must be opened up to include subjects like control over genetic engineering. Like many who call for a
return to the primacy of economics, Zizek has only the most tenuous grasp of the subject.
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AT: Zizek Alt Fails (Reinscribes Capitalism)

Their alternative as presented in this debate round is NOT the radical act it fails to meet
Zizeks own standards of what constitutes the Act. Zizek calls this a false act, one which
merely serves to reinscribe capitalism.
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<Caught in the Act The answer is that Zizek does not see impossibility as a barrier to action. Rather, he sees it as a sign of the purity and
authenticity of a particular action, i.e. of what he identifies as an authentic Act. For Zizek, an authentic, radical Act necessarily comes
from the repressed Real, and involves the return of this repressed impossibility. It necessarily, therefore , surprises not only conformist
observers, but the actor; it surprises/transforms the agent itself.37 The Act therefore opens a redemptive
dimension via a gesture of sublimation, of erasing the traces of ones past and beginning again from a zeropoint.38 Such an Act is for Zizek a transcendental necessity for subjective action, a quasi-transcendental unhistorical condition of possibility
and impossibility of historicisation.39
The Act, which for Zizek is the sole criterion of whether ones politics are radical, is a structural or formal category, defined (in principle)
internally and radically separated from anything which does not meet its criteria . All alternatives - even those which share Zizeks
hostility to liberal capitalism, and including some which fit particular formal requirements of an Act - which fall
short of the criteria of full Acts are for Zizek necessarily complicit in capitalism. At best, they are hysterical false
acts, providing a pseudo-radical pseudo-resistance which actually sustains capitalism by contributing to its
phantasmic supplement.40 Acts have several formal criteria which Zizek formulates differently on different occasions. Firstly,
someone who Acts must identify with the symptom, thereby revealing a repressed Truth and bringing the Real to the surface. Secondly, they
must suspend the existing symbolic system, including its ethics, politics, and systems of meaning and
knowledge;41 an Act is nihilistic and extra-, even anti-, ethical (at least as regards any conception of the good). Since Zizek denies the
existence of radical social, cultural or psychological difference, he believes that everyone is equally trapped by the dominant symbolic system, so
any break with it must come from beyond meaning and positive ethics. The commitment an Act generates must be
dogmatic; it cannot be refuted by any argumentation and is indifferent to the truth-status of the Event it refers to.42
An Act has its own inherent normativity, refusing all external standards;43 an Act (or Decision) is circular and
tautological,44 based on a shibboleth,45 and incomprehensible except from the inside.46 It is a response to an ethical injunction
beyond ordinary ethical norms, so that although what I am about to do will have catastrophic consequences for my well-being and for the wellbeing of my nearest and dearest, none the less I simply have to do it, because of the inexorable ethical injunction.47 The Act resolves all
problems in a single, all-encompassing Terror which bypasses particularities and violently stops the mad dance of shifting identities, operating
instead to ground a new political universality by opting for the impossible, with no taboos, no a priori norms...
respect for which would prevent us from resignifying terror, the ruthless exercise of power, the spirit of sacrifice.48 An Act is symbolic
death,49 creatio ex nihilo and self-grounded.50 It is the outcome of an ethics grounded in reference to the traumatic Real which resists
symbolisation, i.e. to an injunction which cannot be grounded in ontology ,51 a self-referential abyss,52 an excessive gesture
irreducible to human considerations and necessarily arbitrary.53 The suspension of ethical, epistemological and political standards
is not a necessary consequence of a Zizekian Act - it is a defining feature. It is necessary so a new system can be built from
nothing,54 and anything short of a full Act remains on enemy terrain.55 >
Zizeks alternative is nihilistic it hinders resistance to capitalism

(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
<What we want to suggest in this paper is that whilst Zizeks recent work is intellectually radical this is not, despite
appearances to the contrary, a radicalism that left politics can draw sustenance or hope from. Zizek, that is, does not
offer an alternative that is genuinely progressive or transformative, but only the empty negativity of what Raoul
Vaneigem terms active nihilism.3 This negativity breaks with the present but undermines, rather than generates a
meaningful politics of resistance to the system. What Zizek delivers falls short of its promise. Zizeks position
should therefore be exposed and opposed by those concerned with advancing left-radical goals and anti-capitalist
resistance.>
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AT: Zizek Perm Solvency

Only the perm solves resistance requires a radicalization of existing demands that
exploits loopholes in the system. A radical act coming out of nothing is a utopian
impossibility the system will just co-opt fragmented instances of Zizeks radicalism,
cutting off progressive social change.
(Andrew
and
Simon,
"Zizek
is
not
Radical,"
Far from being the

disavowed supplement of capitalism, the space for thinking the not-real which is opened by imaginaries and petty
resistances is a prerequisite to building a more active resistance and ultimately, a substantial social transformation.
In practice, political revolutions emerge through the radicalisation of existing demands and resistances - not as
pure Acts occurring out of nothing. Even when they are incomprehensible from the standpoint of normal, conformist bystanders,
they are a product of the development of subterranean resistances and counterhegemonies among subaltern groups. As Jim Scott argues, when
discontent among the subaltern strata generates moments of madness, insurrections and revolutions, it does so as
an extension of, and in continuity with, existing hidden transcripts, dissenting imaginaries and petty resistances. As
Scotts evidence shows, resistance requires an experimental spirit and a capacity to test and exploit all the
loopholes, ambiguities, silences and lapses available ... [and] setting a course for the very perimeter of what the
authorities are obliged to permit or unable to prevent.144 Such petty resistance can pass over into more general
insurrections. When prisoners at a Stalinist camp, expected to deliberately lose a race against their guards, spoiled the performance with a
pantomime of excess effort, a small political victory had real political consequences, producing a flurry of
activity.145 Filipino peasant uprisings often acted out an ideology developed through a subverted version of passion plays,146 and European
carnivals often passed over into insurrection.147 Social change does not come from nothing; it requires the pre-existence
of a counter-culture involving nonconformist ideas and practices. You have to know how the world isnt in
order to change it.148 As Gramsci puts it, before coming into existence a new society must be ideally active in the
minds of those struggling for change.149 The history of resistance gives little reason to support Zizeks politics of
the Act. The ability to Act in the manner described by Zizek is largely absent from the subaltern strata . Mary Kay Letourneau (let us
recall) did not transform society; rather, her Act was repressed and she was jailed. In another case discussed by
Zizek, a group of Siberian miners is said to accomplish an Act - by getting massacred.150 Since Acts are not socially
effective, they cannot help the worst-off, let alone transform society. Zizeks assumption of the effectiveness of Acts rests on a
confusion between individual and social levels of analysis. Vaneigem eerily foresees Zizeks Act when he argues against active nihilism. In a
gloomy bar where everyone is bored to death, a drunken young man breaks his glass, then picks up a bottle and
smashes it against the wall. Nobody gets excited; the disappointed young man lets himself be thrown out... Nobody
responded to the sign which he thought was explicit. He remained alone, like the hooligan who burns down a church
or kills a policeman, at one with himself, but condemned to exile for as long as other people remain exiled from their
existence. He has not escaped from the magnetic field of isolation; he is suspended in a zone of zero gravity.151 The
transition from this wasteland of the suicide and the solitary killer to revolutionary politics requires the repetition
of negation in a different register,152 connected to a positive project to change the world and relying on the
imaginaries Zizek denounces, the carnival spirit and the ability to dream.153>
<Zizek is right to advocate a transformative stance, but wrong to posit this as a radical break constituted ex nihilo.
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AT: Deleuze and Guattari Alt Fails

Deleuze and Guattari's belief in transformation through freedom from dialectical
opposition fails -- the figures and institutions which could create this freedom are
reappropriated by contemporary oppositional politics, foreclosing exits from the existing
political system
Mann, Professor of English at Pomona, 1995
(Paul, Stupid Undergrounds, PostModern Culture 5:3, Project MUSE)
Intellectual economics guarantees that even the most powerful and challenging work cannot protect itself from the
order of fashion. Becoming-fashion, becoming-commodity, becoming-ruin. Such instant, indeed retroactive ruins,
are the virtual landscape of the stupid underground. The exits and lines of flight pursued by Deleuze and Guattari are
being shut down and rerouted by the very people who would take them most seriously. By now, any given work
from the stupid underground's critical apparatus is liable to be tricked out with smooth spaces, war-machines, n - 1s,
planes of consistency, plateaus and deterritorializations, strewn about like tattoos on the stupid body without organs.
The nomad is already succumbing to the rousseauism and orientalism that were always invested in his figure;
whatever Deleuze and Guattari intended for him, he is reduced to being a romantic outlaw, to a position opposite the
State, in the sort of dialectical operation Deleuze most despised. And the rhizome is becoming just another stupid
subterranean figure. It is perhaps true that Deleuze and Guattari did not adequately protect their thought from this
dialectical reconfiguration (one is reminded of Breton's indictment against Rimbaud for not having prevented, in
advance, Claudel's recuperation of him as a proper Catholic), but no vigilance would have sufficed in any case. The
work of Deleuze and Guattari is evidence that, in real time, virtual models and maps close off the very exits they
indicate. The problem is in part that rhizomes, lines of flight, smooth spaces, BwOs, etc., are at one and the same
time theoretical-political devices of the highest critical order and merely fantasmatic, delirious, narcissistic models
for writing, and thus perhaps an instance of the all-too-proper blurring of the distinction between criticism and
fantasy. In Deleuze-speak, the stupid underground would be mapped not as a margin surrounding a fixed point, not
as a fixed site determined strictly by its relation or opposition to some more or less hegemonic formation, but as an
intensive, n-dimensional intersection of rhizomatic plateaus. Nomadology and rhizomatics conceive such a "space"
(if one only had the proverbial nickel for every time that word is used as a critical metaphor, without the slightest
reflection on what might be involved in rendering the conceptual in spatial terms) as a liquid, colloidal suspension,
often retrievable by one or another techno-metaphorical zoning (e.g., "cyberspace"). What is at stake, however, is
not only the topological verisimilitude of the model but the fantastic possibility of nonlinear passage, of multiple
simultaneous accesses and exits, of infinite fractal lines occupying finite social space. In the strictest sense, stupid
philosophy. Nomad thought is prosthetic, the experience of virtual exhilaration in modalities already mapped and
dominated by nomad, rhizomatic capital (the political philosophy of the stupid underground: capital is more radical
than any of its critiques, but one can always pretend otherwise). It is this very fantasy, this very narcissistic wish to
see oneself projected past the frontier into new spaces, that abandons one to this economy, that seals these spaces
within an order of critical fantasy that has long since been overdeveloped, entirely reterritorialized in advance. To
pursue nomadology or rhizomatics as such is already to have lost the game. Nothing is more crucial to philosophy
than escaping the dialectic and no project is more hopeless; the stupid-critical underground is the curved space in
which this opposition turns back on itself. It is not yet time to abandon work that so deeply challenges our
intellectual habits as does that of Deleuze and Guattari, and yet, before it has even been comprehended, in the very
process of its comprehension, its fate seems secure. One pursues it and knows that the pursuit will prove futile; that
every application of these new topologies will only serve to render them more pointless. The stupid optimism of
every work that takes up these figures is, by itself, the means of that futility and that immanent obsolescence. One
must pursue it still.
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AT: Badiou Permutation Solvency

We should combine the plan and the alternative this is the only way to solve the case
while maintaining an affirmative conception of ethics outside the bounds of the state
Peter Hallward, lecturer in the French department at Kings College, 2002, online:
http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Cmach/Backissues/j004/Articles/hallward.htm, accessed July 14, 2005
<At this point, the reader has to wonder if the OPs policy of strict non-participation in the state really stands up. The
OP declares with some pride that we never vote, just as in the factories, we keep our distance from trade
unionism (LDP, 12.02.95: 1).26 The OP consistently maintains that its politics of prescription requires a politics of
non-vote. But why, now, this either/or? Once the state has been acknowledged as a possible figure of the general
interest, then surely it matters who governs that figure. Regarding the central public issues of health and education,
the OP maintains, like most mainstream socialists, that the positive tasks on behalf of all are incumbent upon the
state (LDP, 10.11.94: 1).27 That participation in the state should not replace a prescriptive externality to the state is
obvious enough, but the stern either/or so often proclaimed in the pages of La Distance politique reads today like a
displaced trace of the days when the choice of state or revolution still figured as a genuine alternative.>
We should combine Badious generic conception of being with our description of the
specific, which doesnt result in depiction of the singular
Peter Hallward, lecturer in the French Department at Kings College, translator of Badious works, 2003,
Badiou: A Subject to Truth, p. 274
At each point, the alternative to Badious strictly generic conception of things is a more properly specific
understanding of individuals and situations as conditioned by the relations that both enable and constrain their
existence. In order to develop this alternative, it is essential to distinguish scrupulously between the specific and
what might be called the specified (Badious objectified).5 Actors are specific to a situation even though their
actions are not specified by it, just as a historical account is specific to the facts it describes even though its
assessment is not specified by them. The specific is a purely relational subjective domain. The specified, by
contrast, is defined by positive, intrinsic characteristics or essences (physical, cultural, personal, and so on). The
specified is a matter of inherited instincts as much as of acquired habits. We might say that the most general
effort of philosophy or critique should be to move from the specified to the specificwithout succumbing to the
temptations of the purely singular. Badiou certainly provides a most compelling critique of the specified. But he
hasat least thus far inadequate means of distinguishing specified from specific. The result, in my view, is an
ultimately unconvincing theoretical basis for his celebration of an extreme particularity as such.
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AT: Badiou State Key

Badious own writing concedes the necessity of including the state within our political
focus. When something must be done that only the state can do, like the plan, Badious
ethics force us to demand the plan from the state while maintaining a proper distance
towards it. This allows the plan to function as a truly ethical commitment.
Peter Hallward, lecturer in the French department at Kings College, 2002, online:
http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Cmach/Backissues/j004/Articles/hallward.htm, accessed July 14, 2005
<We know that Badious early and unequivocally hostile attitude to the state has considerably evolved. Just how far
it has evolved remains a little unclear. His conception of politics remains resolutely anti-consensual, anti-representative, and thus anti-democratic (in the ordinary sense of the word). A philosophy today is above all
something that enables people to have done with the "democratic" submission to the world as it is (Entretien avec
Alain Badiou, 1999: 2). But he seems more willing, now, to engage with this submission on its own terms. La
Distance politique again offers the most precise points de repre. On the one hand, the OP remains suspicious of any
political campaign for instance, electoral contests or petition movements that operates as a prisoner of the
parliamentary space (LDP, 19-20.04.96: 2). It remains an absolute necessity [of politics] not to have the state as
norm. The separation of politics and state is foundational of politics. On the other hand, however, it is now equally
clear that their separation need not lead to the banishment of the state from the field of political thought (LDP,
6.05.93: 1).24 The OP now conceives itself in a tense, non-dialectical vis--vis with the state, a stance that rejects
an intimate cooperation (in the interests of capital) as much as it refuses any antagonistic conception of their
operation, any conception that smacks of classism. There is to no more choice to be made between the state or
revolution; the vis--vis demands the presence of the two terms and not the annihilation of one of the two (LDP,
11.01.95: 3-4). Indeed, at the height of the December 95 strikes, the OP recognised that the only contemporary
movement of dstatisation with any real power was the corporate-driven movement of partial de-statification in
the interests of commercial flexibility and financial mobility. Unsurprisingly, we are against this withdrawal of the
state to the profit of capital, through general, systematic and brutal privatisation. The state is what can sometimes
take account of people and their situations in other registers and by other modalities than those of profit. The state
assures from this point of view the public space and the general interest. And capital does not incarnate the general
interest (LDP, 15.12.96: 11). Coming from the author of Thorie de la contradiction, these are remarkable words. >
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AT: Badiou Plan solves the criticism

Badious ethical project necessitates endlessly reconstituting the social realm to open it up
to the truth-event the specific demand of the plan can have universal ethical resonance
and can form the basis of a politics of truth
Jason Barker, Lecturer in Communications, and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at
Cardiff University, 2002, Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction, p. 146-48
How does Balibars theory of the State constitution stand alongside Badious, and can we find any key areas of
mutual agreement between these two ex-Althusserians? The most general area of difference involves Balibars
aporetic approach to the question of the masses. Balibar refuses to see any principle underlying the masses
conduct, since the latter are synonymous with the power of the State. Badiou, on the other hand, regards the
masses (ideally) as the bearers of the category of justice, to which the State remains indifferent (AM, 114). Two
divergent theories of the State, then, each of which is placed in the service of a distinctive ethics. With Balibar
we have an ethics or ethic in the sense of praxis of communication which encourages a dynamic and
expanding equilibrium of desires where every opinion has an equal chance of counting in the democratic sphere.
With Badiou we have an ethics of truths which hunts down those exceptional political statements in order to
subtract from them their egalitarian core, thereby striking a blow for justice against the passive democracy of the
State. Overall we might say that the general area of agreement lies in the fact that, in each case, democracy
remains a rational possibility. In particular, for both Balibar and Badiou, it is love as an amorous feeling towards
or encounter with ones fellow man a recognition that the fraternal part that is held in common between
human beings is somehow greater than the whole of their differences which forges the social bond.
However, on the precise nature of the ratio of this bond their respective paths diverge somewhat. In Balibars
case we are dealing with an objective illusion wherein one imagines that the love one feels for an object (an
abstract egalitarian ideal, say) is shared by others. Crucially, love in this sense is wholly ambivalent, wildly
vacillating between itself and its inherent opposite, hate.18 On this evidence we might say that a communist
peace would be really indistinct from a fascist one. Therefore, the challenge for Balibar is to construct a
prescriptive political framework capable of operating without repression in a utilitarian public sphere where the
free exchange of opinions is more likely than not to result in the self-limitation of extreme views. In Badious
case what we are dealing with, on the other hand and what we have been dealing with more or less
consistently throughout this book is a subjective reality. The social contract is forever being conditioned,
worked on practically from within by the political militants, in readiness for the occurrence of the truth-event.
This is the unforeseen moment of an amorous encounter between two natural adversaries (a group of students
mounting a boycott of university fees, for instance) which retrieves the latent communist axiom of equality from
within the social process. Here we have a particular call for social justice (free education for all!) which strikes
a chord with the whole people (students and non-students alike). Crucially, love in this sense is infinite, de-finite,
in seizing back (at least a part of) the State power directly into the hands of the people. Moreover, in this
encounter between students and the university authorities there is an invariant connection (of communist hope)
which is shared by all, and where any difference of opinion is purely incidental. Momentarily, at least. For
Badiou, the challenge is to develop and deepen an ethical practice, not in any utilitarian or communitarian sense
since the latter would merely risk forcing a political manifesto prematurely, perhaps giving rise to various
brands of State-sponsored populism9 but in the sense of a politics capable of combating repression; a politics
which, in its extreme singularity, holds itself open to seizure by Truth.
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AT: Badiou Human rights good

Badiou is wrong about human rights theyre a crucial rallying point for activists against
oppression
Peter Dews, Professor of
Philosophy, p. 109
Philosophy at the University of Essex, 2004, Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of
<Badiou is not mistaken, of course, in suggesting that the discourse of human rights has come to provide a crucial ideological
cover for economic and cultural imperialism, not to mention outright military intervention. No one doubts the murderous
hypocrisy with which the Western powers, led by the US, have invoked the language of human rights in recent years. But 'human
rights' have also been a rallying call for many activists around the globe. In the form of the Helsinki Accords, they were a major
focus for the East European opposition in the years leading up to 1989- They were equally important tactically for Latin
America's struggle against the dictatorships, and continue to provide a vital political point of leverage for many indigenous
populations, not to mention the Tibetans, the Burmese, the Palestinians. The United States, as is well known, continues to refuse
recognition to the recently established International Criminal Court, fearful, no doubt, that members of its own armed forces, and
perhaps of former administrations, could be amongst those arraigned before it.>
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AT: Badiou No Link

Badiou and Levinas both conceive of ethics as by definition exceeding our ability to comply
with ethical demands. Thats the most important part of our ethical framework, which
disproves the link.
Peter Dews, Professor of
Philosophy, p. 113-14
Philosophy at the University of Essex, 2004, Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of
< In fact, the structure of Badious thought seems remarkably similar, in some respects, to that of Levinas,
despite his attack on Levinass grounding of ethics in a principle of alterity which transcends mere finite
experience (F 23/22). For both thinkers set up an exaggerated contrast between the conatus of the human being
as a natural being, and the irruption of an event which breaks the cycle of self-preservation, constituting the
subject of a process which, as Badiou says, has nothing to do with the interests of the animal and has
eternity for its destiny. Although it is not the face of the Other, and the trace of the divine which this discloses,
but the event of truth as a rare and incalculable supplementation (CT 72), which breaks through the oppression
of the totality in Badiou, nonetheless a contrast emerges between the immanence of the domain of natural life
and its transcendent interruption. But Levinas merely offers one contemporary parallel, of course. In general,
Badious ethical thought can be placed squarely within the tradition that understands the ethical demand as
exceeding, almost by definition, our finite human capacities to satisfy it. Resolutely opposed to any form of
hedonism (every dehnition of Man based on happiness is nihilist [E 35/37]), Badiou poses the question: how do
we escape from the animals desire to grab its socialized chance and find our way towards the Good as the
superhumanity of humanity? (E 30/32).>
Badious ontology isnt applicable to non-ontological questions. We should focus on

relationality, rather than deny it outright
Peter Hallward, lecturer in the French Department at Kings College, translator of Badious works, 2003,
Badiou: A Subject to Truth, p. 278
In nonontological situations, the mechanics of belonging presumably vary from situation to situation, but
Badiou generally pays little attention to these mechanisms. If a situation or set is nothing other than the
collection or counting for one of its elements do analogies with the simple process of counting elements
help us to understand the sorts of structuring at work in the differentiation of even very simple material or social
situations, say? Consider again the extraordinarily vague notion of a situation. Badiou says that its elements
may include words, gestures, acts of violence, silences, expressions, comings together, corpuscles, stars, etc.8
But what distinguishes one word or gesture from another in the first place? Certainly not the situation itself: if
belonging is our only ontological verb, we must stick to a purely combinatorial rather than properly structuring
notion of situation, that is, we must equate situation with collection pure and simple, and leave the problem
of how the elements thus collected are themselves structured or differentiated aside. A set-theoretic situation
collects or selects a particular arrangement from among already distinct elements.9 On the other hand, to
introduce another ontological action would be to violate the strict univocity of Badious set-theoretical
approach, and with it the generic homogeneity of being as being. The alternative is indeed to accept an
ultimately equivocal notion of ontological inconsistency or infinity, and with it a constituent role for rela tion at
the heart of beingincluding a role for relation between being and thought. Being embodies us before we found
being on the empty set, and it is because we are embodied that we must abstract quality and matter before we
can conceive of mathematics and the void. If Badiou would proclaim mathematics to be ontologically primary,
this proclamation is itself epistemologically secondary. Where Badiou says things exist in their extreme and
isolated particularity and accede to truth in their subtraction from relation, I would argue that nothing exists
outside of its relations with other beings. Relation is the true medium of being as being. Relations should be
recognized as coimplied with their terms, at the same level of ontological primacy. There is no more actual
independence before relation than there can be a genuine autonomy after subtraction from relation. A
relational perspective, in other words, cannot accept the strict distinction of consistent from inconsistent
multiplicity: how we are structured is not indifferent to what we are, and the latter cannot be sustainably
characterized in terms of pure indetermination or abstract freedom.
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AT: Badiou Doublebind

Badiou is in a double-bind: either theres no way to distinguish between true and false
events which means the alternative cant solve, or subjects of the event go into it with a
preconceived notion of the event, which makes true fidelity impossible
Peter Hallward, Professor of
Philosophy, p. 15-16
French at Kings College, London, 2004, Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of
One implication of this last point is easily generalized. Badiou insists on the rare and unpredictable
character of every truth. On the other hand, we know that every truth, as it composes a generic or
egalitarian sampling of the situation, will proceed in such a way as to suspend the normal grip of the state
of its situation by eroding the distinctions used to classify and order parts of the situation. Is this then a
criterion that subjects must presume in advance or one that they come to discover in each case? If not the
former, if truth is entirely a matter of post-evental implication or consequence, then there can be no clear
way of distinguishing, before it is too late, a genuine event (which relates only to the void of the situation,
i.e. to the way inconsistency might appear within a situation) from a false event (one that, like September
11th or the triumph of National Socialism, reinforces the basic distinctions governing the situation). But if
there is always an initial hunch which guides the composition of a generic set, a sort of preliminary or
prophetic commitment to the generic just as there is, incidentally, in Cohens own account of generic
sets, insofar as this account seeks to demonstrate a possibility implicit in the ordinary extensional
definition of set25 then it seems difficult to sustain a fully post-evental conception of truth. In short: is
the initial decision to affirm an event unequivocally free, a matter of consequence alone? Or is it tacitly
guided by the criteria of the generic at every step, and thereby susceptible to a kind of anticipation?>
<
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AT: Badiou I/L to Lacan

A. Badiou relies on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory for his conception of ethics and the
event
Peter Hallward, lecturer in the French department at Kings College, 2001 , Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of
Evil, p. xvi-xvii
<The major and immediate inspiration for Badiou's ethics is his 'master' Jacques Lacan. Lacan's search for an ethics of
psychoanalysis provides Badiou with the model for a procedure-specific approach, and Lacan's famous imperative 'do not give
up on your desire [ne pas ceder sur son desir],'" furnishes him with an abstract principle valid for every such procedure. For to
be thus faithful to the peculiarity of your desire first requires 'a radical repudiation of a certain idea of the good', 9 that is, the
repudiation of all merely consensual social norms (happiness, pleasure, health . . .) in favour of an exceptional affirmation whose
'value' cannot necessarily be proved or communicated. Examples from the Lacanian pantheon include Antigone in her cave,
Oedipus in his pursuit of the truth, Socrates condemned to the hemlock, Thomas More in his fidelity to Catholicism, Geronimo in
his refusal to vield to an inevitable defeat. . . ."* Desire cares no more for the approval of others than for our own happiness.
Rather, the ethical question 'is to be articulated from the point of view of the location of man in relation to the Real [reel]',11 that
is to say, the traumatic, irreducible, essentially asocial and asymbolic particularity of your experience. Since your 'normal' conscious life (your psychological 'status quo') is structured around the repression of this Real, access to it must be achieved through
an 'essential encounter'1'2 (i.e. what Badiou will call an event, a happening which escapes all structuring 'normality'). Ethics is
what helps the subject to endure this encounter, and its consequences. Thus guided by an ethics of the Real, analysis can lead,
with time, to 'the advent of a true speech and the realization by the subject of his history'. 13 (Beckett's stubborn persistence - T
can't go on, I will go on' - is, for Badiou, exemplary of such a real ization.)14>
B. Lacanian
theory relies too heavily on a-priori assumptions and applies theory to

examples with the assumption that the theory is already true this dooms its political
potential
Andrew Robinson, PhD in political theory at the University of Nottingham, 2004, The British Journal of Politics
and International Relations, Vol. 6, p. 262
Butler, for her part, is not sufficiently committed to an ontology of lack to accept the other protagonists inability
to provide substantial argumentation for their positions. She calls Lacanian theory a theoretical fetish, because
the theory is applied to its examples, as if already true, prior to its exemplification. Articulated on its own
self-sufficiency, it shifts its basis to concrete matters only for pedagogical purposes (in Butler, Laclau and Zizek
2000, 2627). She suggests, quite accurately, that the Lacanian project is in a certain sense a theological
project, and that its heavy reliance on a priori assumptions impedes its ability to engage with practical political
issues, using simplification and a priori reasoning to avoid the rather messy psychic and social entanglement
involved in studying specific political cases (ibid., 155156). She could perhaps have added that, in practice, the
switch between ontology and politics is usually accomplished by the transmutation of single instances into
universal facts by means of a liberal deployment of words such as always, all, never and necessity; it is by
this specific discursive move that the short-circuit between theology and politics is achieved. Butler questions
the political motivations involved in such practices. Are we using the categories to understand the phenomena,
or marshalling the phenomena to shore up the categories in the name of the father [i.e. the master-signifier]?
(ibid., 152).
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AT: Badiou Alternative fails

Badious alternative is a disastrous form of politics because the subjects of a truth can
never translate that truth to those hostile to their agenda, and thus can never make political
coalitions theyre always preaching to the choir
Peter Hallward, Professor of French at Kings College, London, 2004, Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future
of Philosophy, p. 17
<6. In a related sense, is it enough to explain the process of subjectivation, the transformation of an ordinary
individual into the militant subject of a universalizable cause, or truth, mainly through analogies with the
process of conversion? It is certainly essential to maintain (after Saint Paul) that anyone can become the militant
of a truth, that truth is not primarily a matter of background or disposition. If it exists at all, truth must be
equally indifferent to both nature and nurture, and it is surely one of the great virtues of Badious account of the
subject that it, like Zizeks or Lacans, remains irreducible to all the forces (historical, social, cultural,
genetic .. .) that shape the individual or ego in the ordinary sense. On the other hand, the lack of any substantial
explanation of subjective empowerment, of the process that enables or inspires an individual to become a
subject, again serves only to make the account of subjectivation unhelpfully abrupt and abstract. Isnt there a
danger that by disregarding issues of motivation and resolve at play in any subjective decision, the militants of a
truth will preach only to the converted? Doesnt the real problem of any political organization begin where
Badious analyses tend to leave off, i.e. with the task of finding ways whereby a truth will begin to ring true for
those initially indifferent or hostile to its implications?>
Badiou cannot provide any criteria to judge the authenticity of the event you should err
on the assumption that the alternative will maintain fidelity to a false event, and thats
what Badiou names as the primary evil
Peter Dews, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex, 2004, Think Again: Alain Badiou and
the Future of Philosophy, p. 110-111
Viewed from a sceptical perspective, it might seem that Badious thought, and the conception of ethics
to which it gives rise, embodies an uneasy compromise between the antinomian impulses typical of
postmodernism, on the one hand, and the mainstream philosophical tradition. Badiou is tough on
postmodern conceptions of the end of philosophy (cf. MP 726/2745), yet his own position seems to
continue the valorization of the singularity and unpredictability of the disruptive event typical of
poststructuralism and post-modernism while seeking to endow this event
<
with all the prestige of a more classical notion of truth. As we have seen, whilst Badion asserts that the destiny of
truths is universal, he makes clear the status of such universality is not amenable to any form of discursive
investigation or assessment. He openly states: What arises from a truth-process [] cannot be communicated.
Communication is only suited to opinions []. In all that concerns truths there must be an encounter. The
Immortal that I am capable of being cannot be spurred in me by the effects of communicative sociality, it must
be directly seized by fidelity (E 47/51). Of course, this claim inevitably raises the question of how we
distinguish authentic from inauthentic truth-events, how we determine the genuineness of the disclosure to which
subjects are called to be faithful. And, to his credit, Badiou acknowledges that this is a crucial problem for his
position. The constant emphasis on the singular, incommunicable character of the event of truth on the one hand,
combined with its extension into a universal ethical claim, raises all too clearly the possibility of a false, coercive
universality. And it is precisely this possibility which, for Badiou, lies at the heart of evil.>
Badious desire to separate politics from the state makes politics itself impossible
Daniel Bensaid, professor at the University of Paris VIII and leading member of the Ligue Commiuniste
Revolutionnaire, 2004, Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy, p. 99-100
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Yet in Badiou, the intermittence of event and subject renders the very idea of politics problematic. According to
him, politics defines itself via fidelity to the event whereby the victims of oppression declare themselves. His
determination to prise politics free from the state in order to subjecrivize it, to deliver it from history in order to
hand it over to the event, is part of a tentative search for an autonomous politics of the oppressed. The
alternative effort, to subordinate politics to some putative meaning of history, which has ominous echoes in
recent history, is he suggests to incorporate it within the process of general technicization and to reduce it to the
management of state affairs. One must have the courage to declare that, from the point of view of politics,
history as meaning or direction does not exist: all that exists is the periodic occurrence of the a priori conditions
of chance. However, this divorce between event and history (between the event and its historically determined
conditions) tends to render politics if not unthinkable then at least impracticable (PP 18).
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The alternative doesnt solve anything Badious politics subordinate action to tracing the
implications of the Truth-event, which is an inherently reactive process.
Slavoj Zizek, Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana University, 2001, On Belief, p.
125-27
Badiou himself gets caught here in the proto-Kantian trap of spurious infinity: afraid of the potential
totalitarian terrorist consequences of asserting actual freedom as the direct inscription of the Event into the
order of Being (was Stalinism not precisely such a direct ontologization of the Event, its reduction to a new
positive order of Being?)~ he emphasizes the gap that separates them forever. For Badiou, fidelity to the Event
involves the work of discerning its traces, the work which is by definition never done; in spite of all claims to
the contrary, he thus relies on a kind of the Kantian regulative Idea, on the final end (the full conversion of the
Event into Being) which one can only approach in an endless process. Although Badiou emphatically advocates
the return to philosophy, he thereby nonetheless displays the failure to grasp the fundamental authentically
philosophical insight, shared by Hegel and Nietzsche, his great opponent does Nietzsches eternal return of
the same not point in the same direction as the very last words of Hegels Encyclopaedia: The eternal Idea, in
full fruition of its essence, eternally sets itself to work, engendering and enjoying itself as absolute Spirit?22
For an authentic philosopher, everything has always already happened; what is difficult to grasp is how this
notion not only does NOT prevent engaged activity, but effectively SUSTAINS it. The famous Jesuit axiom
concerning human activity displays a clear presentiment of this insight: Here, then, is the first rule of acting:
assume/believe that the success of your undertakings depends entirety on you, and in no way on God; but,
nonetheless, set to work as if God atone will do everything, and you yourself nothing.23 This axiom reverts the
common maxim to which it is usually reduced: Help yourself and God will help you (i.e., Believe that God
guides your hand, but act as if everything depends on you!). The difference is crucial here: you must
experience yourself as fully responsible the trust in God must be in your ACTS, not in your BELIEFS. While
the common maxim involves the standard fetishist split of I know very well [that everything depends on me],
but nonetheless [I believe in Gods helping hand], the Jesuit version is not a simple symmetrical reversal of this
split it rather thoroughly undermines the logic of the fetishist disavowal. The political aspect of this gap is, of
course, Badious marginalist anti-Statism: authentic politics should shun active involvement with State power, it
should restrain itself to an agency of pure declarations which formulate the unconditional demands of egaliberte.
Badious politics thus comes dangerously close to an apolitical politics the very opposite of, say, Lenins
ruthless readiness to seize power and impose a new political order. (At the most radical level, the deadlock
Badiou is dealing with here concerns the thorough ambiguity of what he calls linnommable, the unnameable:
what cannot be named is SIMULTANEOUSLY the Event prior to its Nomination AND the senseless factuality,
givenness, of the pure multitude of Being from the Hegelian standpoint, they are ultimately THE SAME,
since it is the act of nomination itself which retroactively elevates some feature of Being into the Event.) This
brings us back to Judaism and Christianity: Jews wait for the arrival of their Messiah, their attitude is one of
suspended attention directed towards the future, while, for a Christian believer, the Messiah is already here, the
Event has already taken place. How, then, does Judaism mediate between paganism and Christianity?24 In a
way, it is already in Judaism that we find the unplugging from the immersion into the Cosmic Order, into the
Chain of Being, i.e. the direct access to universality as opposed to the global Order, which is the basic feature of
Christianity. This is the ultimate meaning of Exodus: the withdrawal from the hierarchized (Egyptian) Order
under the impact of the direct divine call.
Badious alternative is obsessed with the purity of the event it marginalizes itself and
cant produce lasting change
Revolutionnaire, 2004, Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy, p. 101
If the future of a truth is decided by those who catty on and who hold to this faithful decision to carry on, the militant summoned by the rare if not exceptional idea
The
absolute incompatibility between truth and opinion, between philosopher and sophist, between event and history,
leads to a practical impasse. The refusal to work within the equivocal contradiction and tension which bind them
together ultimately leads to a pure voluntarism, which oscillates between a broadly leftist form of politics and its
of politics seems to be haunted by the Pauline ideal of saintliness, which constantly threatens to turn into a bureaucratic priesthood of Church, State or Party.
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philosophical circumvention. In either case, the combination of theoretical elitism and practical moralism can
indicate a haughty withdrawal from the public domain, sandwiched between the philosophers evental truth and the
masses subaltern resistance to the worlds misery. On this particular point, there exists an affinity between Badious philosophical radicality and
Bourdieus sociological radicality. Haunted by the epistemological cut that forever separates the scientist from the sophist and science from ideology, both Badiou
and Bourdieu declare a discourse of mastery. Whereas a politics that acts in order to change the world establishes itself precisely in the wound left by this cut, in the
site and moment in which the people declare themselves. Detached from its historical conditions, pure diamond of truth, the event, just like the notion of the
a politics without politics is akin to a negative

theology. The preoccupation with purity reduces politics to a grand refusal and prevents it from producing lasting
effects. Its rarity prevents us from thinking its expansion as the genuinely achieved form of the withering away of the State. Slavoj Zizek and Stathis Kouvelakis
absolutely aleatory encounter in the late Althusser, is akin to a miracle. By the same token,
have rightly pointed out that the antinomies of order and event, of police and politics, render radical politicization impossible and indicate a move away from the
Leninist passage a lacte. Unlike the liberal irresponsibility of leftism, a revolutionary politics assumes full responsibility for the consequences of its choices.
Carried away by his fervour, Zizek even goes so far as to affirm the necessity of those consequences no matter how unpleasant they may be. But in light of this
centurys history, one cannot take responsibility for them without specifying the extent to which they ate unavoidable and the extent to which they contradict the initial
act whose logical outcome they claim to be. Thus, what must be re-examined is the whole problem of the relation between revolution and counter-revolution, (between
October and the Stalinist Thermidor.
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Badious alternative fails because hes blind to political power structures his demand to
divorce politics from the state means it cant deal with todays most pressing problems
Peter Hallward, Professor of French at Kings College, London, 2004, Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future
of Philosophy, p. 18-19
Most obviously, to what extent can we abstract an exclusively political truth from matters relating to society,
history and the state? Take those most familiar topics of cultural politics: gender, sexuality and race. No doubt
the greater part of the still incomplete transformation here is due to militant subjective mobilizations that include
the anti-colonial wars of liberation, the civil rights movement, the feminist movements, Stonewall, and so on.
But has cumulative, institutional change played no role in the slow movement towards racial or sexual
indistinction, precisely? More importantly: since under the current state of things political authority is firmly
vested in the hands of those with economic power, can a political prescription have any enduring effect if it
manages only to distance or suspend the operation of such power? If a contemporary political sequence is to last
(if at least it is to avoid the usual consequences of capital flight and economic sabotage) must it not also directly
entail a genuine transformation of the economy itself, i.e. enable popular participation in economic decisions,
community or workers control over resources and production, and so on? In todays circumstances, if a political
prescription is to have any widespread consequence, isnt it essential that it find some way of bridging the gap
between the political and the economic? Even Badious own privileged example indicates the uncertain purity of
politics. The declaration of 18 March 1871 (which he quotes as the inaugural affirmation of a proletarian
political capacity) commits the Communards to taking in hand the running of public affairs,3 and throughout
its short existence the Commune busies itself as much with matters of education, employment and administration
as with issues of equality and power. Is a sharp distinction between politics and the state helpful in such
circumstances? Do forms of discipline subtracted from the state, from the party, apply in fact to anything other
than the beginning of relatively limited political sequences? Does the abstract ethical imperative, continue!,
coupled with a classical appeal to moderation and restraint,38 suffice to safeguard the long-term persistence of
political sequences from the altogether necessary return of state-like functions (military, bureaucratic,
institutional . . .)? To what extent, in short, does Badious position, which he presents in anticipation of an as yet
obscure step beyond the more state-centred conceptions of Lenin and Mao, rather return him instead to the
familiar objections levelled at earlier theories of anarchism?
Badious refusal to engage real historical and political events and structures dooms his
politics to a level of abstraction that renders them useless
Revolutionnaire, 2004, Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy, p. 98
In what does this ripeness of circumstances consist? How is it to be gauged? Badiou remains silent on this score.
By refusing to venture into the dense thickets of real history, into the social and historical determination of
events, Badious notion of the political tips over into a wholly imaginary dimension: this is politics made
tantamount to an act of levitation, reduced to a series of unconditioned events and sequences whose exhaustion
or end remain forever mysterious. As a result, history and the event become miraculous in Spinozas sense a
miracle is an event the cause of which cannot be explained. Politics can only flirt with a theology or aesthetics
of the event. Religious revelation, according to Slavoj Zizek, constitutes its unavowed paradigm. Yet the
storming of the Bastille can be understood only in the context of the Ancien Regime; the confrontation of June
1848 can be understood only in the context of urbanization and industrialization; the insurrection of the Paris
Commune can be understood only in the context of the commotion of European nationalities and the collapse of
the Second Empire; the October Revolution can be understood only in the particular context of capitalist
development in Russia and the convulsive outcome of the Great War.
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AT: Normativity Normativity Good

The critique of normativity is simply wrongwe must embrace normative theory instead
of attempting to deconstruct its claims.
Tushnet, Professor of Law at Georgetown University, 1992 (Mark V. The left critique of Normativity: A comment,
Michigan Law Review, August, Lexis)
[To use Delgado's terms, though, one might find another tool for rebuilding normative discourse. It is to relinquish
any normative [*2347] claims for leftist inclinations. n92 Left legal scholarship would be exclusively critical,
deconstructing the normative claims made elsewhere in legal scholarship but offering nothing at all in their place.
This project, too, seems difficult to sustain. Left legal academics walk into classrooms every day in which students
demand that we say what our views are on controverted issues. A stance of unremitting critique will not satisfy
them. To face such dissatisfaction routinely is simply uncomfortable. Thus, even a leftist teacher committed to "only
critique" is likely to succumb in the classroom. n93 Because the classroom is where we try out many of our ideas, it
seems likely that the normativity to which this teacher is pushed in the classroom will come to infect his or her
scholarship.
There is, of course, an alternative. Perhaps the critique of normativity goes all the way down, in which case the
"only critique" stance is the only one an intellectually honest legal academic can take. But perhaps the critique of
normativity is wrong. Legal academics might then remain committed to the project of comprehensive normative
rationality, and their modest normative gestures would be promissory notes to be cashed in elsewhere, in the
development of a comprehensive normative theory. n94]
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AT: Normativity Normative Thought Inevitable

Normative thought is inevitablediscussing the rule of law is the only way to prevent
complete destruction of rigid conceptions of legal theory.
Mootz, Associate Professor of Law at Western New England College School of Law, 1994 (Francis J. The
Paranoid Style in Contemporary Legal Scholarship, Houston Law Review, Fall, Lexis)
[ The differences between my conception of postmodern legal theory and Schlag's are highlighted by our very
different reactions to the idea of the rule of law. Schlag regards the rule of
[*883] law as a "virtually empty" signifier whose sole purpose is "simply to arrest thought upon impact." n36
Schlag does not propose to reformulate the idea of the rule of law, or even to replace it with a more fitting concept,
because such moves would circle within the same vacuous maze of normative legal thought. n37 Schlag's
disengagement from the language used by lawyers and judges is so stark and unrepentant that its significance easily
is underestimated. In an important sense, the ongoing struggle over the terms and conditions of social organization
defines Western history. A significant feature of this struggle has been the ongoing effort to describe what it means
for a society to be governed by the rule of law. Schlag bifurcates the operation of the legal system from the discourse
of its participants, arguing that the normative claims made by those attempting to describe what the rule of law
entails is superfluous to the reality of law. By doing so, he openly places in question whether discourse can describe,
not to mention influence, practice. n38 Admittedly, much of the "fancy" scholarship of the academy is removed from
the everyday language of legal practice, but the assertion that every theoretical invocation of the rule of law is
detached from some deeper, hidden, nonlinguistic realm of legal reality greatly overstates the case.
The extent of critical detachment presumed by Schlag's total rejection of the usefulness of discussing the rule of law
is quite fantastic. An individual who truly could achieve this detachment would be exhibiting the paranoid style. n39
I
[*885] wholeheartedly share Schlag's assessment that the justificatory efforts of judges and scholars alike to define
the rule of law has been framed by the unhelpful polarity of justify and redeem and constrain and control strategies.
n40 Yet the recognition that past formulations no longer suffice leads me to attempt to articulate a new conception of
the rule of law that accords with our experience. n41 It is possible to destroy rigid conceptions of the rule of law
without embracing endless deconstruction that renders further discussion moot.
Schlag is correct that the traditional accounts of the rule of law often are caricatures that arrest thought and
discussion, n42 but I argue that we should resume a vital discussion rather than conclude that all discussion
inherently is vacuous. The criticism that rule of law talk doesn't capture reality reveals a wistfulness for the
foundationalist hope of discovering a political truth that is not subject to a contingent, ongoing dialogue among
members of society. By claiming that everyone else is trapped in a meaningless maze, Schlag conveniently avoids
placing himself at risk in normative dialogue. By asserting that normative legal dialogue is irrelevant, Schlag
eliminates the possibility that he might have to change his mind in light of the force of a better argument, and he
avoids an obligation to rescue the hoi polloi from the maze. In sum, Schlag's approach insulates him from the
contingent and provisional language of social discourse.
Such an insulating move runs contrary to antifoundational accounts of the rule of law, which emphasize that the law
never operates outside the context of wider social struggles to define the terms of sociopolitical organization.
Traditional normative legal thought ordinarily is criticized as being unhelpful because it offers a constricted and
artificial conception of legal norms, not because normative legal thought is by nature irrelevant to legal practice.
Quite the opposite seems true: every assertion of legal power is predicated on a normative conception of politics that
always is subject to attack and reassessment. Escape from the maze of normative legal thinking is the
[*886] familiar dream of empiricists and rationalists alike, but it simply is not possible. Talking about the reality of
law as distinct from our representation of this reality in normative legal dialogue constitutes a performative
contradiction. n43 This is not to say that reality is wholly linguistic, but rather that our experience and understanding
of reality is always linguistically mediated in a shared realm of normative public dialogue. n44]
Normative thought cannot be completely destroyedwe should focus on clearing a way

through the maze instead of rejecting it.
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[ As Hilary Putnam concisely states, "the elimination of the normative is attempted mental suicide." n49 I would
refine Putnam's observation by including paranoid distanciation within the scope of mental suicide. Professor Schlag
writes powerfully, invariably capturing my interest and leading me to important new insights. However, his effort to
distance himself from the normative legal language that is our heritage falls short, as it must. I congratulate Schlag
for his skill in destroying some of the most cherished talismans in our legal vocabulary, including the rule of law.
But destruction is never total. In the wake of destruction we inevitably chart new paths in the maze. Legal theory
properly is viewed not as an attempt to escape the maze of normative legal thought, but as an effort to develop
shared strategies for navigating through the maze. Forging a path, rather than finding an exit, is the goal. That is
enough for me.]
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AT: Normativity Normative Thought Inevitable

Schlags characterization of the maze fails to take its function within critical theory into
accountescape from the maze is impossible.
[ The epistemological problems posed by modernist critical projects are only partially answered by adding a
postmodern gloss. Schlag's effort to analyze legal scholarship from outside the maze is extremely problematic.
Schlag believes that most scholars reside within a maze characterized by "dreariness," but that a select few have
found a way out, gained perspective
[*879] on the maze, and now engage in a fruitful questioning that reveals rather than obscures the law. n20 In sharp
contrast, I reject the idea that such a dramatic escape can take place. Just when a scholar believes that she has scaled
the last wall of the maze, she will be confronted by a boundless horizon of paths endlessly circling within the ambit
of the same maze. Hope for escape must always be dashed in the end, but this does not mean that an individual's
comportment within the maze is without ethical or political significance. The central problem for contemporary
jurisprudence is not the maze of normative legal discourse, but the failure to recognize the maze as an unavoidable
condition that is productive of knowledge.
Postmodern thought is a stimulating force, but it has been overused and abused by more than one scholar in search
of a truly radical break from the politics of normalcy. The questions raised by the maze are much more subtle and
complex than Schlag allows. Schlag's confusion over what the maze represents, how it operates, and the
consequential function of critical theory, exemplifies the postmodern crisis in legal theory. Put differently, Schlag's
characterization of the maze, offered with a sly wink and a conspiratorial nod to others in the know, comes off
sounding just a bit paranoid.]
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AT: Normativity Alternative Fails

Schlags critique is bound by the rhetoric he criticizeshe fails to break from the
narrowness of the law.
Conaghan, Professor @ Kent Law School, 2003 (Joanne, Beyond Right and Reason: Pierre Schlag, the Critique of
Normativity, and the Enchantment of Reason: Schlag in Wonderland, Miami Law Review, April, Lexis)
[A final concern emerging from the confines of Schlag's selective mimicry of the mainstream lies in its resolutely
legal character. American legal scholars do not, by and large, like to stray too far beyond the boundaries of what is
acceptably "legal" n65 and interestingly, neither does Schlag. He/they prefers the snug confines of traditional legal
discourse and its discontents, modestly professing ignorance and lack of expertise beyond the terrain of law,
narrowly understood as judicial decisions and the doctrines and theories legal scholars derive from them. Schlag
bemoans this narrowness repeatedly but seems in no great hurry to escape it. Indeed, one sometimes wonders
whether or not his insistence on so limited an enquiry masks a fear of his moving beyond what he has experienced
as safe and steady ground. By his own admission, this is the critique of "an insider," n66 but does it simultaneously
affirm the attractions of remaining "inside"? This dogged determination to steer clear of the complexities that an
extra-legal dimension might introduce is also manifest in Schlag's exclusive preoccupation with reason's aesthetic
appeal. While I applaud his efforts to draw attention to the coercive power of particular aesthetic forms--in the
context of law, the compelling effects of grid-like manifestations of reason--his neglect of, indeed total silence in
relation to, other features of law's coerciveness puts him at risk of overstating his case. This is particularly so when
what is neglected is so closely bound up with what he addresses at such length. Here, I am thinking in particular of
the ideological context within which law operates and upon which reason seeks to make her mark. In my view, there
is an ideological dimension to the effective deployment of reason that is not, or is only secondarily, dependent upon
its aesthetic form. There is a detectable distinction (not always but sometimes) between invocations of reason that
are dependent upon the political and ideological landscape for their validity and deployments of reason that [*557]
draw upon (or seek to develop) our aesthetic inclinations, particularly our attraction to order and coherence. n67
Often, what seems reasonable is inextricably related to our understanding of what is possible, and yet, it is not
always the case that what is possible is determined by the boundaries of reason. The ideological landscape abounds
with all of the "sources of belief" making an appearance in Schlag's critique.
The point is that reason as a particular aesthetic does not always work to disqualify reason as a repository for widely
held ideological beliefs. Although the former may contribute to understandings of the latter, it may not wholly
determine (or be determined by) them. A failure to acknowledge this explicitly arguably serves to weaken the power
of Schlag's critique. There are times when he invokes a primarily ideological concept of reason--one that relies on
notions of truth, self-evidence, and righteousness--and then proceeds to critique it for its failure to adhere to an
aesthetic form. Sometimes, this is effective, and it is almost always amusing. n68 At other times, one has a sense that
the boot does not fit, that he is over-emphasizing the importance of the schematic structure of the argument in
circumstances where its success has little to do with its schematic structure and everything to do with its
correspondence to the ideological status quo. Put bluntly, if reason's appeal to self-evidence (Sunstein) or virtue
(Nussbaum) is dependent upon factors beyond its internal logic, it is not thereby significantly diminished by
demonstrating that that logic has reached its limits.
Schlag's account of the wonderland of American legal scholarship is undoubtedly perceptive; his dissection of the
stances adopted by those who typify it both masterly and liberating, and his representation of his own alienation
intensely resonant of the experiences of many who occupy the margins of the legal academy. Indeed, therein lies its
appeal. But by the same token, it is at times injudicious in its forays into "hostile" terrain. It fails adequately to guard
against the dangers of importation, co-option, domestication, and reproduction. It constitutes even as it deconstructs.
In Schlagean terms, the power of his critique is diminished by neglect of aspects of the "rhetorical economy" with
which he is engaging. n69 In simpler terms, there appear to be dimensions to his enchantment of which he is
unaware.]
Schlags refusal to delineate a precise object of his critique causes his kritik to be co-opted
into the very normative system he challenges while he ignores key normative structures we
need to criticize.
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Nevertheless, Schlag's refusal to delineate with any precision the object of his critique is not a risk-free strategy. One difficulty
arising is that reason remains deliciously ephemeral throughout, assuming a [*550] dream-like, shadowy quality that at times
heightens its allure and triggers a desire to capture and contain it. This is of course a reflection of Schlag's own ambivalence
towards reason, signalled in particular by his use of the word "enchantment" n29 to denote our (his?) affinity to it. Schlag's
portrayal of reason is that of a siren, a femme fatale, who simultaneously entices and deceives. And, while he urges us endlessly
to recognize her pathological tendencies, we remain suspicious that he is still in her thrall. More importantly, however, the
nebulous quality of Schlag's invocations of reason is misleading and belies the prescriptive content of the notion(s) he deploys.
Reason, for Schlag's purposes, is bounded in ways he does not openly acknowledge. Woven within the fabric of his critique is a
particular perspective from which reason's purposes are derived and its shortcomings identified and assessed.
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Rules on discourse are inevitablethey also follow such norms as time constraints, speed,
reading evidence, and going negative.
Habermas, 1990 (Jurgen, Professor a Goethe University in Frankfurt, Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of
Philosophical Justification, The Communicative Ethics Controversy, edited by Benhabib and Dallmayr, pg. 92)
The second school of thought saddles transcendental pragmatics with a far-reaching claim to 'ultimate justification'.
Ultimate justification is, as W. Kuhlmann emphasizes, supposed to create an absolutely secure basis of unerring
knowledge, a basis that is immune to the fallibilism of all experiential knowledge:
What I cannot meaningfully dispute (i.e. without contradicting myself) because it is necessarily presupposed in a
process of meaningful argumentation, and what for the same reason I cannot meaningfully justify by deriving is
deductively (except at the price of a petitio principii), is therefore a secure, unshakable basis. As participants in a
process of argumentation, we have necessarily always already accepted the propositions and rules that belong to
these presuppositions. We are unable to question them skeptically, either to dispute their validty or to adduce
reasons for their validity.46
In other words, the type of argument that H. Lenk calls petitio tollendi serves only to demonstrate the inevitability'
of certain conditions and rules. It can be used only to show an opponent that he makes performative use of a
tollendum, that is, of the very thing he wants to negate..]
Attempts to free ourselves from normative discourse will only result in practical terror.
If the skeptic has followed the argumentation that has gone on in his presence and has seen that his
demonstrative exit from argumentation and action oriented to reaching understanding leads to an existential dead
end, he may finally be ready to accept the justification of the moral principle we have proposed and the principle of
discourse ethics we have introduced. He does so, however, only to now draw upon the remaining possibilities for
argumentation; he calls into question the meaning of a formalistic ethics of this kind. Rooting the practice of
argumentation in the lifeworld contexts of communicative action has called to mind Hegel's critique of Kant, which
he will now bring to bear against the cognitivist.
Albrecht Wellmer has formulated this objection as follows:
In the idea of a discourse free from domination we only seem to have gained an objcective criterion for assessing
the practical rationality of individuals or societies. In reality it would be an illusion to believe that we could
emancipate ourselves from the normatively charged facticity of our historical situation with its traditional values and
criteria of rationality and see history as a whole, and our poisition in it, from the sidelines, so to speak. An attempt
in this direction would end only in theoretical arbitrariness and practical terror.
There is no need for me to reiterate the counterarguments Wellmer develops in his brilliant study. What I will do
instead is to briefly review those aspects of the critique of formalism I that deserve consideration.]
Alt cant solvediscourse ethics are permanently rooted in normative claims.

[Second, practical discourses cannot be relieved of the burden of social conflicts to the degree that theoretical
and explicative discourses can. They are less "free of the burdens of action," because contested norms tend to upset
the balance of relations of intersubjective recognition. Even if it is conducted with discursive means, a dispute about
norms is still rooted in the 'struggle for recognition'.
Third, like all argumentations, practical discourses resemble islands threatened with inundation in a sea of
practice where the pattern of consensual conflict resolution is by no means the dominant one. The means of reaching
agreement are repeatedly thrust aside by the instruments of force. Hence action that is oriented to ethical principles
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has to accommodate itself to imperatives that flow not from principles but from strategic necessities. On the one
hand, the problem posed by an ethics of responsibility that is mindful of the term oral dimension is in essence trivial,
since the perspective that an ethics of responsibility would use for a future-oriented assessment of the indirect effects
of collective action can be derived from discourse ethics itself. On the other hand, these problems do give rise to
questions of a political ethics, which deals with the aporias of a political practice whose goal is radical emancipation
and which must take up those themes that were once part of Marxian revolutionary theory.
These limitations of practical discourses testify to the power history has over the transcending claims and
interests of reason. The skeptic for his part tends to give an overdrawn ac count of these limits. The key to
understanding the problem is that moral judgments, which provide "demotivated" answers to "decontextualized"
questions require offsetting compensation. If we are clear about the feats of abstraction to which univer salistic
moralities owe their superiority to conventional ones, the old problem of the relationship between morality and
ethical life appears in a different, rather trivial light.]
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Alt cant solvethe norms you try and change wont transfer to the public sphere; you can
only change one instance of bad discourse.
Philosophical Justification, The Communicative Ethics Controversy, edited by Benhabib and Dallmayr, pg. 82-83)
Admittedly, a second objection can be raised against such arguments, one that is not so easily refuted. True as it may
be that freedom of opinion in the sense of freedom from external interference in the process of opinion formation is
one of the inescapable pragmatic presuppositions of every argumentation, the fact remains that what the skeptic is
now forced to accept is no more than a the notion that as a participant in a process of argumentation he has
implicitly recognized a principle of freedom of opinion'. This argument does not go far enough to convince him in
his capacity as an actor as well. The validity of a norm of action, as for example a publicly guar anteed constitutional
right to freedom of expression, cannot be justified in this fashion. It is by no means self-evident that rules which are
unavoidable within discourses can also claim to be valid for regulating, action outside of discourses. Even if
participants in an argumentation are forced to make substantive normative presuppositions (e.g., to respect one
another as Competent subjects; to treat one another as equal partners; to assume one another's truthfulness; and to
cooperate with one another),34 they could still shake off this transcendental pragmatic compulsion when they leave
the field of argumentation. The necessity of making such presuppositions is not transferred directly from discourse
to action. In any case, a separate justification would be required to explain why the normative content discovered in
the pragmatic presuppositions of argumentation should have the power to regulate action.]
Discourse relies on information from the outside; without engaging in the real world,
change is impossible.
[The principle of discourse ethics makes reference to a procedure, namely, the discursive redemption of
normative claims to validity. To that extent, discourse ethics can properly be characterized as formal, for it provides
no substantive guidelines but only a procedure: practical discourse. Practical discourse is not a procedure for
generating justified norms but a procedure for testing the validity of norms that are being proposed and
hypothetically considered for adoption. This means that practical discourses depend on content brought to them
from outside. It would be utterly pointless to engage in a practical discourse without a horizon provided by the life world of a specific social group and without real conflicts in a concrete situation in which the actors considered it
incumbent upon them to reach a consensual means of regulating some controversial social matter. Practical
discourses are always related to the concrete point of departure of a disturbed normative agreement. These
antecedent disruptions determine the topics that are "up" for discussion. This procedure, then, is not formal in the
sense that it abstracts from content. Quite the contrary is true. In its openness, practical discourse is dependent upon
contingent content being "fed" into it from outside. In discourse this content is subjected to a process in which
particular values are ultimately discarded as being not susceptible to consensus. The question now arises whether
this very selectivity might not make the procedure unsuitable for resolving practical questions.]
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AT: Normativity Alternative Fails (Ommission)

Omission is the same as action, not mentioning something is the same as excluding it.
Claims to the contrary are rooted in the very normative presuppositions Schlag critiques.
[ A productive route to a better understanding of Schlag's purpose and motivation--and thereby to a fuller and more
informed critical grasp of the intellectual worth and political potential of his work--may [*545] be to attend to the
silences in The Enchantment of Reason, to highlight what is absent as well as what is present, to seek out implicit as
well as explicit agendas. There is, I would contend, as much to learn from Schlag's omissions as from his acts. As
lawyers, of course we are all too familiar with the vagaries and inconsistencies that surround the act/omission
distinction. We are also alert to the ideological power the dichotomy carries, particularly in the context of ascribing
responsibility. To act is to be held responsible. To fail to act--to omit--is, according to conventional morality, to be
without responsibility; an omission is never as morally heinous as an act. Underpinning this conventional morality is
a series of assumptions about attribution of cause and consequence. An act is said to set in motion--cause--a chain of
events, a set of consequences; an omission, by contrast, has no causative effect and is therefore without
consequences (we can of course all cite the standard exceptions to this general assertion).
As critical lawyers, however, we recognize this to be absolute humbug. The act/omission dichotomy is a sham--in
Derridean terms, it is a "logocentric hierarchy," part of a "categorical regime" that constrains, enables, and organizes
the discursive practice of law. n10 It is also a dichotomy that is impossible to draw with any certainty, with efforts to
do so inherently value-laden. In particular, the attribution of cause and consequence is almost always preceded by
unarticulated, morally predetermined assumptions about responsibility. An omission can be just as morally heinous
as an act (besides which, it is an act depending on how you choose to look at it), and it can certainly carry
consequences, perhaps serious ones.
The Enchantment of Reason is a work replete with omissions. As it unpicks what is unthought, it resounds with what
is unsaid. And, in the unsaid, it precisely echoes much
of what it attacks. These
omissions may have consequences--possibly serious consequences--both for Schlag's own project (however we
understand it) and for that of critical legal studies (understood in its broadest and most encompassing sense). n11 If
so, these consequences need to be examined. What is unsaid deserves as much attention as what is unthought. n12]
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AT: Normativity Schlag ignores oppressed voices reifies

oppression
Schlags kritik omits the voices of feminists and critical race scholarships, despite the fact
that they are the most oppressed by normative discourse. He merely reifies the oppression
of normativity in another form.
[*546] What then does Schlag leave unsaid but that nevertheless speaks so loudly? What omissions leap from the
pages of The Enchantment of Reason and, carrying their consequences, scuttle away in fear of detection? Well
firstly, as a feminist, I cannot help but be struck by the total lack of engagement with feminist and critical race
scholarship. By virtue of its omission, this body of work is situated outside Schlag's enquiry into reason. n13 This is
surprising, not least because American legal scholarship--about which Schlag purports to have something to say-offers more quarter than most to feminist and critical race scholarship. It is also puzzling because feminists in
particular have long been preoccupied with reason; women having been pronounced bereft of it at least since the
time of Aristotle. n14 More recently, in the United States context, both feminists and critical race scholars have
found themselves under attack because their scholarship is deemed to have "failed the test for rational discourse."
n15 Reason is being deployed openly and aggressively to silence and devalue legal scholarship that departs from the
conventions of the mainstream academy. n16 Schlag's inattention to the concrete political context in which recent
debate in law has played out in the American legal academy is troubling, to say the least.
Schlag disregards the material world and deliberately ignores the oppressed in his critique
of reason.
[Thus, one arrives at yet another striking omission in Schlag's critique: it would seem that the material world and its
corporeal inhabitants are missing. This is an ideational investigation unencumbered by the messiness and
unpredictability of bodies or the dreary cataloguing of material disadvantage and suffering. Schlag's concerns are of
a different kind, namely to chronicle the extent of self-delusion characterizing American legal academics and
question the integrity and rightness of the positions they adopt. His is a study of intellectual moves, of the "rhetorical
tricks" n17 and "Noble Scams" n18 passed off as legal reasoning, thus leading one reviewer cynically to remark that
"for [Schlag], American law is a mind-game that is not played well enough." n19
Now, it may fairly be protested that this is a scurrilous statement, that Schlag's work constitutes a strong challenge to
those who doggedly persist in the mind games of the academy. It may also be argued that Schlag does recognize the
grave implications of legal mind games: law is, he has acknowledged, a field of pain and death, n20 and reason, he
maintains, plays a central role in legitimizing the "ritualized forms of violence ... incarceration, killing, plunder,
extortion and so on" n21 of which legal practices comprise. But, as I read on, the suspicion still lingers. Surely
reason fails not just in the pages of law reviews, but also in the apologies for and rationalizations of material and
social practices [*548] which yield inequality, deprivation, oppression, and hurt. Why does he shrink from talking
with any particularity about these all too important implications of the legal mind game? And where are the voices
of the unequal, deprived, oppressed, and hurt? Why are they not here? What role does reason play in suppressing
them? (As it turns out, quite a lot.) And, if reason does suppress them, why does Schlag's critique not set them free?
In this article, I seek to answer some of these questions by probing the extent to which the omissions I have
identified unselfconsciously reflect the discursive frames Schlag is attacking. I want to track the consequences of
this reflection. My overriding concern is the extent to which Schlag's preoccupation with the foibles of the
mainstream legal academy may unduly inhibit the intellectual and political potential of his work. I believe such
potential is there, and, far from counselling the jettisoning of Schlag's work--as others, attentive to his omissions,
have done n22--I urge progressive legal scholars to take it seriously but not to take it on faith. In particular, I
consider it both appropriate and constructive to call Schlag on what appears to be a glaring lack of engagement with
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the implications of positionality and its relationship to power. This seems to me to be the greatest omission in The
Enchantment of Reason. It does not betray sufficient consciousness of its own standpoint, let alone that of those who
are cast in its shadows. n23 As a consequence, it never fully escapes the frame, the grid, the web that reason
weaves.]
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AT: Normativity Alternative = Inaction

Ignoring gender within reason reinforces the mind/body dichotomy, and leads to inaction.
[ In a multitude of ways, this blindness to the gendered implications of reason reveals the limits of Schlag's critical
interrogation. It fixes the point where he stops asking questions, the moment when his analysis is "marked by [his]
own authorship." n108 It betrays both his standpoint and his lack of awareness of it. Most importantly, it exposes the
consequences of this inattention.
First, take Schlag's apparent disregard for the dualisms typically invoked to denote and delimit reason's domain. In
particular, neither the mind/body nor the reason/emotion dichotomies emerge as significant in Schlag's account of
reason's role in legal scholarship. Emotion, for example, is listed by Schlag as just one of many sources of belief
above which reason purports to stand. The rhetorical power and frequent invocation of reason over emotion in legal
discourse does not fully emerge although it is actively played out in Sherry's article. n109 More importantly, it is not
clear that Schlag's critique seriously undermines the reason/emotion dualism. Although Schlag intends to show that
reason is no [*567] better than (among a host of other things) emotion, thus challenging the dualism's hierarchy,
what he does not do is seriously question representations of cognition that assume the separation of reason and
emotion. By restricting himself, for the most part, to a narrow investigation of reason as a source of belief (as
opposed to a cognitive process), there lingers undisturbed an assumption that reason can be exercised without
emotion (even if it very often is not).
Similarly and relatedly, Schlag not only fails to attend to the significance of the mind/body dichotomy in discourses
of reason, but, as a consequence, actively reinforces it. Nothing in The Enchantment of Reason questions the
separation of reason from our embodied condition; at no point is there any acknowledgement of the corporeal
context in which reason is exercised. Bodies are simply not in Schlag's script. n110
By contrast, the symbolic association of the body with femininity in western philosophical and political discourse
and its consequent exclusion from the parameters of rational discourse has inevitably drawn feminist attention, so
much so that the body has become one of the most important and recurring themes in feminist scholarship, a
powerful lens through which feminists can glean new understandings of what and how we know. n111 A focus on
the body spotlights the extent to which knowledge-producing practices continue to be embedded in the mind/body
dichotomy; that is, in the assumption that corporeal context is irrelevant to the exercise of the mind except insofar as
it is governed by it. n112 Within this ubiquitous frame of reference, mind rules matter, logic tames experience, and
reason, devoid of the corrupting influence of materiality, delivers truth. Moreover, the scholar is deemed immortal,
his particularity erased, his standpoint denied. The body is a way of challenging this immortality and the limitations
it imposes on understanding. It also renders standpoint explicit. As Bottomley observes: "A central theme of feminist
work is the need for 'embodiment' ... which, in this context, emphasises that we think and write from a position in
which we are never simply 'mind'... we are so much more and therefore so much less than that." n113
In The Enchantment of Reason, the body is simply assumed away, its banishment accompanied by a series of de
facto exclusions, including [*568] gender, race, context, material practices, and history. Their exclusion operates
metaphorically to affirm "the view from nowhere," the idea, crucial to conventional legal discourse, that reason,
properly exercised, is independent of identity and circumstances; n114 that it is, in other words, unsituated. It looks
like the mind/body dichotomy is at the heart of what is missing from Schlag's critique.
Without the body, gender fails to materialize and its association with reason is overlooked. In fact, the problem here
has a circularity to it. Because he fails to attend to gender perspectives, Schlag misses the importance of the
mind/body dichotomy in conferring reason's authority. And because he misses the importance of the mind/body
dichotomy in conferring reason's authority, he fails to take account of gender perspectives. In any case, the result is
that both the specificity and systematicity of reason's exclusionary tendencies get lost. Schlag acknowledges that
reason effects the "subjugation of the many to the one, of pluralism to monism, of polytony to monotony, of
difference to sameness," n115 but nothing in his account tells us who or what is subjugated. By contrast, a focus on
standpoint can illuminate how concepts such as coherence and fit--legal reason's favored form--help to sustain the
political and ideological status quo by disqualifying the perspectives of marginalized and oppressed groups. As
Margaret Radin remarks, "if the perspective of the oppressed includes significant portions of the dominant
conception of the world, and the role of the oppressed group in it, then the oppressed perspective may well be
incoherent... ." n116 It also follows that reason, effectively deployed, can do far more than convert "tastes and
preferences into the idioms of law ... ." n117 Certainly, these are not random conversions. One might be forgiven,
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however, after reading The Enchantment of Reason, from assuming that they were. For similar reasons, race too is
rendered invisible, and with it the concerns of critical race theorists. People of color have long had ample grounds
for regarding the mind/body dichotomy as suspect, its philosophical endorsement having too long co-existed with
material practices with which it contradicts. Thus, the narratives of critical race theorists are, to a significant extent,
narratives of and about the body. n118 They are a direct challenge to academic discourses that render the body
immaterial. Race is a lens that spotlights particularity because the general has been [*569] formed in the image of
whiteness. Thus, the project of embodiment has strategic implications for critical race theorists as well as feminists.
More importantly, the mind/body dichotomy implicates reason directly in racist and sexist beliefs and practices.]
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AT: Normativity Nihilistic and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Schlags criticism is structured along the same lines as postmodernisms nihilistic and
destructive character; it will inevitably become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
[William Bywater recently suggested that some postmodern literary criticism has come to resemble a paranoid,
rather than simply critical, posture.
Postmodernism's relentless refusal to accept any description, theory, or state of consciousness at face value, its
unswerving insistence that what seems most clear and certain is least likely to be so, and its maneuvers which
demonstrate that stability in meaning or in sense of self must give way to eternal slippage have all been cited as
evidence of postmodernism's nihilistic and destructive character. . . . The self which formerly was able to confront
nothingness is now dissolved into a concatenation of signifiers or a jumble of disconnected images. The hope which
might have sprung from the dissolution of the old values is rendered as suspect as those old values themselves.
Postmodernism does not refresh us with a sense of renewal, rather we seem to be frozen with intellectual paranoia.
n24
Linda Fisher intelligently extends Bywater's claim in her comparison of postmodernism and the tradition of the
"hermeneutics of suspicion" exemplified by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. n25 The subtle dialectic of the
hermeneutics of suspicion and the hermeneutics of belonging, elegantly represented in the famous exchanges
between contemporary Continental philosophers Jurgen Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer, n26 is flattened by
postmodernism's radical quest to overturn received traditions. Consequently, at least some postmodern efforts
dissolve the important distinctions "between suspicion and paranoia, limitation and abnegation, and, finally,
destruction and self-destruction." n27
[*881]
I contend that Schlag's pointed and challenging jurisprudential writings, typified in his recent description of the
normative maze, thematically exhibit postmodern paranoia. Schlag believes that the vast majority of judges and
legal scholars remain trapped within a maze of empty normative platitudes, and that only a select few have the
penetrating insight to recognize what law really is and how it really operates. "Whether cast as celebration or as
criticism, the normative prescriptions of the law' of the academy generally end up as part of the cheerful, happy, selfcongratulatory celebration of a law whose violence and destructiveness thus become obscured." n28 Normative legal
talk is an epiphenomenon that theorists use to compensate for what Schlag terms "ontological deficits," n29 a fancy
phrase that I take to mean the unsatisfactory condition of the legal system as it really exists within social practices
and psychological formations.
Some might argue that Schlag's approach does not mirror the paranoid style of functioning to the extent that his
picture of the postmodern legal critic ostensibly reaffirms the importance of ethics and intellectual creativity.
However, the classic paranoid personality never espouses a bleak, total nihilism. Instead, paranoid individuals
attempt to secure the integrity of their world view against the widespread delusions that they attribute to virtually
everyone else. The paranoid believes in the possibility of providing a true description, but also that only she and
perhaps a few other people are capable of seeing this truth. There is precious little assistance that the paranoid can
offer to members of the general populace, whose inability to see things correctly is, as Schlag asserts in the context
of legal theory, "a constitutive aspect of their very being as legal
[*882] academics." n30 The paranoid regards her special insight as the product of "an accident or a miracle," n31
and so there simply is no point in trying to educate others about the error of their ways. n32 "Like the paranoid, the
critic will see change as something foreign; as something which befalls a person and which can be spoken about
only after it has occurred." n33 The way out of the maze cannot be described, reports Schlag, but those lucky
academics who awake one morning to find themselves outside the maze can begin participating (with Schlag) in "an
extraordinarily exciting time in American legal thought." n34
As described by Schlag, the postmodern legal critic bears an uncanny resemblance to a paranoid individual. I have
no doubts that Schlag, as a person dealing with everyday life, is entirely free from paranoid tendencies. Why, then,
does his asserted intellectual persona assume such a counterproductive posture? Quite simply, the imperative to
radicalize the critique of foundationalism and formalism eventually carries theory, and the persona adopted by the
theorist, beyond the realm of ordinary discourse. Schlag does not engage his readers in a shared quest for decency
and happiness in an often brutal and traumatic world, but instead challenges such a normative quest as being
symptomatic of deeper-seated problems. Schlag's radicalism is extended to the point of cannibalizing its own
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presuppositions. "A collection of discourses that in their strategic maneuvering have precluded the possibility of
being discursive, have succeeded not just in being destructive, but in being self-destructive." n35 When the
hermeneutics of suspicion is pushed to the point of paranoia, the critical effort dissolves into a selfdescribed
irrelevance.]
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AT: Empire Must Work Through The Empire (your alt fails)
The Empires pursuit of total control creates contradictions and a paradox of power the
unification within Empire is key to resistance.
Wolfe, 2001 (Alan, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, The
Snake, The New Republic Online, October 4th, http://www.powells.com/review/2001_10_04)
But Hardt and Negri will have none of this talk of human nature, or use value, or labor power. Capital will exploit
wherever and whatever it can. With bio-power in command, our bodies are no longer irreducibly ours. Our bodies
have instead turned against themselves; they are the very instruments by which we are controlled by forces external
to us. We therefore have to "recognize our posthuman bodies and minds" and see ourselves "for the simians and
cyborgs we are" before we can begin to unleash whatever creative powers we may have left over. But all is not lost
for us simians and cyborgs. Unlike the writers of the Frankfurt School, who also emphasized the authoritarian
character of contemporary capitalism, writers such as Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, who are the true
intellectual heroes of Empire, recognize that efforts at total control create contradictions of their own. Here, in prose
that insults language, is how Hardt and Negri summarize what they have understood: "The analysis of real
subsumption, when this is understood as investing not only the economic or only the cultural dimension of society
but rather the social bios itself, and when it is attentive to the modalities of disciplinarity and/or control, disrupts the
linear and totalitarian figure of capitalist development." What this means is that under Empire there emerges a
"paradox of power" in which all elements of social life are unified, but the very act of unification "reveals a new
context, a new milieu of maximum plurality and uncontainable singularizationa milieu of the event." Even when
Empire seems to rule everywhere and over everything, there are opportunities for resistance, if only those
opportunities can be grasped and seen.]
The negatives alternative is wrong resistance can only succeed by working within the
conditions of the Empire.
Foster, 2001 (John Bellamy, editor of Monthly Review and author of Marxs Ecology: Materialism and Nature and
The Vulnerable Planet, Imperialism and Empire Monthly Review, http://www.monthlyreview.org/1201jbf.htm)
Empire, the name they give to this new world order, is a product of the struggle over sovereignty and
constitutionalism at the global level in an age in which a new global Jeffersonianismthe expansion of the U.S.
constitutional form into the global realmhas become possible. Local struggles against Empire are opposed by
these authors, who believe that the struggle now is simply over the form globalization will takeand the extent to
which Empire will live up to its promise of bringing to fruition the global expansion of the internal U.S.
constitutional project (p. 182). Their argument supports the efforts of the multitude against Empirethat is, the
struggle of the multitude to become an autonomous political subjectyet this can only take place, they argue, within
the ontological conditions that Empire presents (p. 407).
Acting within Empire offers the greatest potential for revolution against modern regimes of
power.
Bliwise, 2001 (Robert J. Empire: Not So Evil, Duke Magazine, November-December,
http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukemag/issues/111201/empire.html)
But Hardt and Negri don't regard this web of relationships as just some new brand of imperialism. Rather, they
envision the end of imperialism, which involved nation-states vying for economic advantage. Empire suggests
optimism about Empire: Because it disperses power and resists any kind of central control, it has great democratic
potential. "Empire creates a greater potential for revolution than did the modern regimes of power," according to the
book, "because it presents us, alongside the machine of command, with an alternative: the set of all the exploited and
the subjugated, a multitude that is directly opposed to Empire, with no mediation between them." As they declare
near the end of the book, "the fact that against the old powers of Europe a new Empire has formed is only good
news." ]
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AT: Empire Must Work Through The Empire (your alt fails)
Opposition to the Empire cannot occur at a local level; it can only come from within the
system.
Pederson, 2001 (David, Ph.D. in Anthropology and History from U of Michigan, Geohistorical Maps Within,
Against, and Beyond Empire, The New Centennial Review,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_centennial_review/v001/1.3pedersen.html)
[At such a crossroads, where exactly is one left to stand "in and against" Empire? The authors dismiss the possibility
of any kind of "localist position" that exists outside and in opposition to global Empire and criticize contemporary
political projects that heed such a reified logic as well as some theorists whom they claim are complicit. Instead,
opposition must come from within Empire through the power of what they refer to as the res gestae. To develop this
point, the authors "flirt with Hegel" as they call it, by arguing that the construction of Empire is good in itself but not
for itself. In other words, it has been called into being by a worldwide collective project and a desire for liberation
from the nation-state imperial system, and in this way Empire has ended colonialism and imperialism. But Empire
has not ceased to exploit brutally those who form part of its origins. In a formulation that reflects their reading of
Hegel, Hardt and Negri state that "the end of the dialectic of modernity has not resulted in the end of the dialectic of
exploitation" (43). From within this space of exploitation where there is no outside, the immanent possibilities of
overcoming Empire reside. Flirtation with Hegel now ends abruptly. The authors emphatically state that they will
not repeat "the schema of an ideal teleology that justifies any passage in the name of a promised end" (47). What
they propose instead is an approach that is "nondialectical and absolutely immanent." This love-hate relationship
with dialectic spirals at the theoretical core of the book and is the source of both its promise and its limitations. [End
Page 306] ]
Political action is essential to unite the multitude and overthrow the Empire.
Anderson, 2002 (Brian, Senior Editor of City Journal, The Ineducable Left, First Things, February 2002, pg. 4044, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0202/articles/anderson.html)
Yet, all is not lost. Even as Empire seduces, Hardt and Negri hold, it is sowing the seeds of its possible destruction.
Gestating within the womb of economic globalization is a counterEmpire, led by the multitudethe authors
standin for Marxs proletariat. The multitude are all those that dont fit neatly into the global capitalist economy.
Havenots across the planet, the antiglobalization movement, the L.A. rioters, Latin revolutionaries, innercity
blacks, drug addicts, antifamily women, drag queens, body piercers, Islamic radicals, and anyone else who rejects
bourgeois valuestogether they constitute the nomadic againstmen of the multitude. Just as the Christians of the
late Roman Empire colonized its spiritual universe from within, so the multitude will overcome the new Empire.
The political task of the third millennium, the authors believetheyre not vulgar historical determinists, they stress,
so political action is essentialwill be to help bring this multitude together so that it can forge an alternative
political organization of global flows and exchanges that will one day take us through and beyond Empire.
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AT: Empire Plan = key (US better alt to Empire)

Plan operates within the best system - The United States is the best alternative to Empire
because it functions as a totalizing society with social and political objectives.
Bull, 2001 (Malcolm, head of art history and theory at Oxford University, You Cant Build a New Society with a
Stanley Knife, London Review of Books, Vol. 23, No. 19, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/bull01_.html)
[One thing that the hijackings have brought to the surface is the extent to which 'the primordial founding myth' of a
total society is already available in the history of the United States. At one level, Hardt and Negri recognise this.
Their work is free of the European Left's residual anti-Americanism and represents a systematic effort to appropriate
the American myth for the global multitude. But theirs is the America of potentia not of potestas. They miss the
point that even if the multitude could create its own Americas, it would be stronger under the sovereignty of the
existing one - not just materially better off, but better able to bring about its social and political objectives. The
international Left's few successes of the past fifty years - decolonisation, anti-racism, the women's movement,
cultural anti-authoritarianism - have all had proper (and often official) backing from within the United States. The
United States is no utopia, but a utopian politics now has to be routed through it. Anti-globalisation is often an
argument for the globalisation of American norms - why should workers in the Philippines have fewer rights than
their American counterparts? Israel will join the list of 'rogue states' only when the United States becomes more
representative of the population of the world. The totalitarian regimes of the 20th century got a bad name less
because of their monopolistic control of everyday life than on account of their stifling insistence on a maxim of
shared values, and their draconian punishments for nonconformity. They were, in Durkheimian terms, attempts to
create total communities rather than total societies. The US offers a model for a different type of totalitarianism.
Within a total society - a world of universal anomie populated by the hybridised subjects of mutual recognition monopolistic microregulation need not be concerned with conformity. Of course, a global United States is not a total
society, but total society is rapidly becoming more imaginable than the state of nature from which political
theorising has traditionally started. In this situation, we need to start thinking in new ways. Negri's version of what
Althusser called 'totality without closure' is a politics without a social contract, 'a constituent power without
limitations'. But in a total society, it is not the social that needs a contract but the individual - an anti-social contract
that creates individual spaces in a world totally regulated by meaningless mutuality.]
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AT: Empire Alternative Terrorism

Hardt and Negris alternative is an endorsement of terrorism the multitudes revolt
against capitalism is empirically violent
Balakrishnan, Political Science Professor at University of Chicago and member of the editorial board of New
Left Review, 2000 (Gopal, Hardt and Negris Empire, New Left Review, September-October,
http://newleftreview.org/A2275)
[But the deeper reason for the zeal, I think, is the unusual biography of Empires Italian coauthor Antonio Negri. The
books glossy jacket matteroffactly informs us that he is an independent researcher and writerand an inmate
at Rebibbia Prison, Rome. In addition to having a career as an influential political philosopher, with widely
translated books on Spinoza and Marx to his credit, Negri is a convicted terrorist.
In 1979, the Italian government arrested Negri, at the time a political science professor at the University of Padua,
and accused him of being the secret brains behind the Red Brigades, the Italian version of the Weathermen in the
U.S. or the BaaderMeinhoff Gang in West Germanyleftwing groups that during the 1970s sought to overthrow
capitalism through campaigns of terrorist violence. Italian authorities believed that Negri himself planned the
infamous 1979 kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, the leader of Italys Christian Democratic Party. Just before
Aldos execution, his distraught wife got a taunting phone call, telling her that her husband was about to die. The
voice was allegedly Negris. Unable to build a strong enough case to try the philosopher for murder, Italian
authorities convicted him on lesser charges of armed insurrection against the state.
Negris theoretical work was in keeping with his terrorist activities. He had become the leading voice of Italys
ultraLeft by advancing an inventive reinterpretation of Marxs Grundrisse that located the agent of social revolution
not among the industrial proletariat, largely coopted as it was by capitalist wealth and bourgeois democratic
freedoms, but among those marginalized from economic and political life: the criminal, the parttime worker, the
unemployed. These dispossessed souls, Negri felt, would be far quicker to unleash the riotous confrontations with
the state that he saw as necessary to destroying capitalism]
Hardt and Negris claims that it is good to be against the West make it impossible to justify
intervention, even against acts of terrorism
[We cannot know, of course, whether Hardt and Negri, in the light of the recent atrocities at the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, will want to change their minds about the progressive potential of Islamic fundamentalism. But
their book gives no grounds on which such attacks can be condemned. For if being against the West is the sine qua
non of good and effective protest, well, no one could accuse the murderers in New York and Washington of not
being against Western hegemony. And if it is true, as Hardt and Negri blithely claim, that efforts to find legitimate
reasons for intervening in world affairs are only a smokescreen for the exercise of hegemonic power, then the way is
cleared for each and every illegitimate act of global intervention, since in the postmodern world of this book no
justifiable distinctions between good and evil acts can ever be made.]
The alternative is a form of rhetorical violence justifying terrorism.

Along with this utter failure to look at political reality, Hardt and Negri share another ugly characteristic with Lenin,
Franz Fanon, and many other antibourgeois thinkers: a totalitarian style of thought that substitutes rhetorical
violence for reasoned argument. For Lenin, disagreement with the revolutionary line (as he defined it) was heretical.
Differences of political vision or even pragmatic disputes were not open to moderation through debate, as in the
liberal democratic tradition, but deserved only insultand in practice, ruthless elimination. Hardt and Negris
violent verbal attacks on Western capitalistsputrid, rotting, parasiticcould come right from the pages of
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Materialism and Empirocriticism (or, for that matter, from one of Osama bin Ladens terrifying manifestos). After
September 11, the authors illiberal, terrorist language seems obscene.
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AT: Empire Alternative Terrorism

By conflating being anti-capitalist and anti-Westen, Hardt and Negri reify groups like the
Taliban, creating excuses for terrorists while ignoring everyday atrocities they commit.
[ The authors of Empire see no reason to exclude explicit reactionaries, including religious fundamentalists, from the
catalogue of post-Fordist movements that they admire. Fundamentalists, they write, are often portrayed as antimodernist, but this is Western propaganda. "It is more accurate and more useful...to understand the various
fundamentalism [sic] not as the re-creation of a pre-modern world, but rather as a powerful refusal of the
contemporary historical passage in course." Neglecting to mention the Taliban's treatment of women, Hardt and
Negri go out of their way to reassure readers of the genuinely subversive nature of the Islamic version of
fundamentalism. These movements are motivated not by nostalgic attempts to reconstruct the past, but by "original
thought." They are anti-Western, which means that they are anti-capitalist. Properly understood, they are postmodern
rather than premodern, since they engage in a refusal of Western hegemony, with the proviso that fundamentalism
speaks to the losers in the globalization project and postmodernism to the winners. Hardt and Negri even leave the
impression that, if they had to choose between the postmodernists in Western universities and the fundamentalists in
Iran, they would prefer the latter: "The losers in the process of globalization might indeed be the ones who give us
the strongest indication of the transformation in process."]
Hardt and Negris alternative is support for a terror-ridden mechanism of stepping away
from the best economic system yet devised because of its poisonous brew of bad ideas, it
belongs on the library bookshelf next to Mein Kampf.
Apolitical abstraction and wildeyed utopianism, a terroristic approach to political argument, hatred for flesh and
blood human beings, nihilism: Empire is a poisonous brew of bad ideas. It belongs with Mein Kampf in the library
of political madness.
Do Empires many fans really believe their own praise? Does Time really think its smart to call for the
eradication of private property, celebrate revolutionary violence, whitewash totalitarianism, and pour contempt on
the genuine achievements of liberal democracies and capitalist economics? Would Frederic Jameson like to give up
his big salary at Duke? To ask such questions is to answer them. The far lefts pleasure is in the adolescent thrill of
perpetual rebellion. Too many who should know better refuse to grow up. The ghost of Marx haunts us still.
For all its infantilism, the kind of hatred Hardt and Negri express for our flawed but decent democratic capitalist
institutionsthe best political and economic arrangements man has yet devised and the outcome of centuries of
difficult trial and erroris dangerous, especially since its so common in the university and media. It seems to
support Islamist revolutionary hopes, the increasingly violent antiglobalization movement, and kindred political
lunacies. September 11 has reminded us of the fragility of our freedom and prosperity. But the continued influence
of the far left, which some mistakenly dismiss as inconsequential, can weaken our collective will to protect
ourselves from our enemies. Why fight for a political and social order that is so contemptible?
Empire is rooted in anarchist rhetoric which praises acts of terrorism and denies the
existence of totalitarianism
The anarchist flavor of Empire is conveyed most strikingly by its romanticization of violence. Although by now
everyone knows that there are terrorists in this world, there are no terrorists in Hardt and Negri's book. There are
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only people who are called terrorists, "a crude conception and terminological reduction that is rooted in a police
mentality." Terms such as "ethnic terrorists" and "drug mafias" appear within quotation marks, as if no serious
revolutionary could believe that there were such things. "Totalitarianism" is another pure construct, simply an
invention of cold war ideology, that has been used to "denounce the destruction of the democratic sphere...."
Certainly the term has little to do with actual life in the Soviet Union, which Hardt and Negri describe as "a society
criss-crossed by extremely strong instances of creativity and freedom."
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AT: Empire Alternative Violence

Empire and its authors epitomize anti-Americanism and radicalism Negri is a proud
terrorist
Kimball, co-editor and publisher of The New Criterion and on Board of Advisor of the Gilder-Lehrman
Institute of American History at St. Johns College, 2001 (Roger, The New Anti-Americanism, The New
Criterion, Vol. 20, No. 2, http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/oct01/empire.htm)
[Empire is a contemporary redaction of the radicalism and anti-Americanism of the 1960s. It is the intellectual
rationalization of attitudes whose practical effects were demonstrated so vividly on September 11. Books like
Empire are not innocent academic inquiries. They are incitements to violence and terrorism. This is something that
Antonio Negri, at any rate, understands perfectly well. Emily Eakin described Negri as a flamboyant Italian
philosopher and suspected terrorist mastermind who is serving a 13-year prison sentence in Rome for inciting
violence during the turbulent 1970s.
That is putting it mildly. Antonio Negri was an architect of the infamous Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist
group. In 1979, he was arrested and charged with armed insurrection against the state and seventeen murders,
including the murder of the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, who was kidnapped in 1978 and shot dead fifty-five
days later, his body dumped in a car. Negri did not actually pull the trigger. But, as David Pryce-Jones noted in an
excellent article about Empire in the September 17 number of National Review, The Italian authorities had no
doubt that Negri was ultimately responsible. Just before Moro was shot dead, someone telephoned his distraught
wife to taunt her, and that person was identified at the time as Negri. He fled to Paris, where he struck up
friendships with Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and other specimens of enlightenment. He eventually returned to
Italy and negotiated a sharply reduced sentence for membership in an armed band.
There is nothing in Empire to suggest that Negri has had second thoughts about his activities in the Red Brigades.
On the contrary, whenever violent insurrection is mentioned, it is praised. In an op-ed piece published in The New
York Times in July, Hardt and Negri congratulated the violent protesters in Genoa who took to the streets this
summer when world financial leaders met there. These movements, they enthused, are what link Genoa this
weekend most clearly to the opennesstoward new kinds of exchange and new ideasof its Renaissance past.
(Hardt and Negri have what might generously be described as an idiosyncratic view of the Renaissance. In Empire,
they writein italics, to be sure we dont miss itthat Michel Foucaults final works on the history of sexuality
bring to life once again that same revolutionary impulse that animated Renaissance humanism. I wonder what
Jacob Burckhardt would have said about that.)]
Their alternative demands violence Hardt and Negri believe the multitude can only be
successful through barbarianism.
[The counterEmpire is possible only after modernityincluding the universal solvent of global capitalismhas
dissolved the certainties of all earlier ages. Hardt and Negris multitude is a Promethean power, born with the
modern ages emancipation of the human will from the moral constraints of religion and human nature. Today there
is not even the illusion of a transcendent God, the authors proclaim. The mythology of the languages of the
multitude interprets the telos of the earthly city, torn away by the power of its own destiny from any belonging or
subjection to a city of God, which has lost all honor and legitimacy. Human nature is a mirage too. We must
embrace our posthuman identities as monkeys and cyborgs, Hardt and Negri aver. Humanism after the death of
Man, the authors call their stark vision of man as demiurge. The multitude represents an uncontainable force, an
excess of value with respect to every form of right and law. Beyond good and evil, it will create and recreate the
human world in a secular Pentecost. Hardt and Negri, dreaming of Communist Supermen, view the American
Declaration of Independence and the Marxinspired revolutions of the twentieth century as anticipatory signs of the
coming liberation.
These epochal transformations will require a cleansing bloodletting. The new barbarians of the multitude must
destroy with an affirmative violence and trace new paths of life through their own material existence. Hardt and
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Negris language bristles menacingly at the multitudes bourgeois enemies: Who wants to see any more of that
pallid and parasitic European ruling class that led directly from the ancien rgime to nationalism, from populism to
fascism, and now pushes for a generalized neoliberalism? Who wants to see more of those ideologies and those
bureaucratic apparatuses that have nourished and abetted the rotting European elites? And who can still stand those
systems of labor organization and those corporations that have stripped away every vital spirit?]
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AT: Empire Alternative Violence

Negri supports the use of violence to resist capitalism.
As is the case with so much of the violence associated with the New Left, it is difficult to know exactly what Negri
did. We do know that Italy, like Germany, experienced considerable political violence in the 1960s and 1970s, and
that many radical groups, distrustful of the cautious conservatism of the Community Party, created ultra-leftist sects
such as Autonomia Operaia that either engaged directly in criminal acts or sought to justify them as a necessary
stage in the destruction of capitalism. Negri, who was closely associated with these splinter groups as a member and
a theorist, has had many opportunities since then to revisit his past and to reflect on whether the violence of the
times was wrong. He has chosen not to do so. Instead he has argued that violence is built into all the institutions and
all the practices of capitalism, as if to conclude that because society itself is so violent, one can hardly be surprised
that its opponents tend in that direction as well. Empire is merely the latest of a series of books in which a
completely unrepentant Negri defends himself. No wonder that efforts to win his full release from prison efforts
that will surely escalate now that Negri has received the imprimatur of America's most prestigious academic press
have failed.
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AT: Empire Alternative Justifies Holocaust

Hardt and Negri essentialize the state as always bad, and resistance movements as always
good within this criticism, they praise ordinary Germans who supported the Nazi regime,
downplaying the impact of the Holocaust
Negri, when not in prison, has been a political philosopher, and he is the author of numerous books, manifestos, and
theses on subjects ranging from Spinoza's metaphysics to the nature of insurgency under contemporary capitalism.
In nearly all this work, as in Empire, he invariably associates violence with states in the exercise of their power,
never with opposition groups and their tactics. For the latter, any action, no matter how insurrectionary, is justified.
For the former, any action, no matter how peaceful, is terrorism in disguise.
From this warped perspective, all states are equally bad and all movements of opposition are equally good. Only the
working of such a myopia can help the reader to understand why the authors of Empire are incapable of mustering
any rigorous historical or moral consciousness of Nazism and its policy of Jewish extermination. In their view
Nazism is capitalism, and that is the end of the story. Nazi Germany, Hardt and Negri write, far from a unique
excursion into human evil, "is the ideal type of the transformation of modern sovereignty into national sovereignty
and of its articulation into capitalist form...."
Since Nazism is merely normal capitalism this point of view was once associated with the Frankfurt School, and
it survives almost nowhere outside the pages of this book there is no reason to single out the Nazis or their
sympathizers for crimes against humanity. Astonishingly, Hardt and Negri are worse than neutral in their discussion
of the Nazi period: they actually heap praise on the ordinary Germans who supported the regime. The obedience of
these citizens is called "exemplary" in this book. The authors also celebrate "their military and civil valor in the
service of the nation," before moving on to identify the victims whom they valorously helped to send to Buchenwald
as "communists, homosexuals, Gypsies, and others," the latter, presumably, being the Jews (whom Hardt and Negri
reserve for Auschwitz).
I am not making this up. Lest anyone consider these apologetics for Nazism a misreading of my own how can
good leftists, after all, engage in a downplaying of the Holocaust? Hardt and Negri twice acknowledge that they
are completely fed up with the whole question of totalitarianism. It is certainly much less interesting to them than
the depredations of Empire. The phenomenon of totalitarianism, they write, has already been described "with great
fanfare" by "many (in fact too many) authors"; and then they announce, in the one sustained passage in their book
devoted to Hitler and his regime, that, despite their efforts to write a book aiming to discuss everything, they plan to
"leave this story to other scholars and to the disgrace of history."
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AT: Empire Globalization Good

Hardt and Negris assumption about the globalization of the market is wrong. MNCs are
reliant on the nation-state the imperialist state is key to protecting trade and destabilizing
nationalist regimes.
Petras, 2001 (James, Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, Empire With Imperialism, Rebelion:
Petras Essays in English, October 29, http://www.rebelion.org/petras/english/negri010102.htm)
All the major trade agreements, liberalizing trade and establishing new trade regulations are negotiated by the
states, enforced by the states and subject to state modifications. GATT, WTO, Lome, etc., which established the
trade rules and framework for global trading networks were formulated by the states. In addition, bi-lateral as well
as regional multi-lateral trade pacts, such as NAFTA, LAFTA, etc. are initiated by the state to open new markets for
the multi- nationals. The imperial state operates in synergy with its multi-national corporation. The "expansion in
markets" has nothing to do with multi-national corporations superseding anachronistic states: on the contrary, most
movements of capital to new markets depend on the state intervening to knock down barriers and in some cases
destabilizing nationalist regimes.
Investment Agreements
New multi-lateral as well as bi-lateral investment agreements are formulated at the state level with the agreement
and active participation of the MNCs. The reason is clear: the MNCs want state participation to guarantee that their
capital will not be expropriated, subject to "discriminatory" taxes, or restricted in remitting profits. The state is the
enforcer of investment guarantees, a crucial element in corporate investment expansion. In many cases, the imperial
states use their representatives in the IFI to impose new investment codes as conditions for 'stabilization' or
development loans.
Protection, Subsidies and Adjudication
The imperial states of EU impose powerful protective barriers for their agricultural products. The U.S. and
European states heavily subsidize agriculture with low rates for electricity and water use. Research and development
of new technology is heavily financed by the state and then turned over to the multi-nationals. At each stage prior to,
during and after the expansion of MNC overseas into the international market, the state is deeply implicated.
Moreover, where national enterprises are non-competitive, the imperial states invent pretexts to protect them from
more efficient producers. Japan protects its rice producers, even though their production is ten times more costly to
consumers. The U.S. provides huge subsidies to agro-business exporters in the form of research, cheap water rates
and tied loans to the purchase of U.S. grain exports. EU subsidizes the formation of its high tech industries.
Statism or neo-statism is the centerpiece of 'global expansion' of MNCs, located in the imperial states. The state has
grown, its reach has been expanded, its role in the international economy is essential. The empty rhetoric of 'free
markets' promoted by conservative ideologues has been consumed and parroted by the "globalist left". While NH
write about the declining role of the state, the Right has been active in promoting state activity to further the interests
of the MNC's. While NH write of the 'globalization' of markets, the MNC's from the imperial countries and their
states carve up the markets, enlarging their spheres of domination and control.
Above all the imperial state is not simply an economic institution; the overseas expansion of the MNCs is heavily
dependent on the military and political role of the imperial state.
Globalization increases world prosperity and freedom Hardt and Negri provide no
evidence to the contrary.
[Inseparable from the failure to think politically, Hardt and Negri, like the rioters endlessly disrupting World Trade
Organization meetings, offer no evidence to support their basic charge that economic globalization is causing wide
scale planetary misery. Predictably, this past summer, as the G8 meeting got underway in Genoa, Italy, the New
York Times chose these two joyful Communists to write a lengthy oped extolling the virtues of anti
globalization rioters.
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The truth about globalization is exactly the reverse of what Hardt and Negri assert. Globalization is dramatically
increasing world prosperity and freedom. As the Economists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge point out,
in the half century since the foundation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the world economy
has expanded sixfold, in part because trade has increased 1,600 percent; nations open to trade grow nearly twice as
fast as those that arent; and World Bank data show that during the past decade of accelerated economic
globalization, approximately 800 million people escaped poverty.]
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AT: Empire Globalization Good

Globalization allows for justice, solidarity, democracy and citizenship
Gills 2002 [Barry K, Chair of the World Historical Systems theory group of the International Studies Association and a faculty
affiliate of the Globalization Research Center of the University of Hawaii, Democratizing Globalization and Globalizing
Democracy, May, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May]
<If there is global capitalism, then the system gives rise to and in fact requires fundamental counterparts, including global justice,
global solidarity, global democracy, and global citizenship, the last of these perhaps being especially significant. We need a
credible political theory of global [*166] democracy based on the new concept of global citizenship rather than merely a
pragmatic problem-solving approach. If democracy is a process of building countervailing powers, then the democratic theory we
have at present, which is based on countries and their domestic political order, must be transposed to the global level. To do so,
we must also elevate or transpose the classic enlightenment democratic ideals of equality, justice, solidarity (fraternity), and
liberty to the global level. Defining "global equality," "global justice," "global solidarity," and "global liberty" will be the
prerequisites to formulating a theory of global democracy and global citizenship. In my own view, these definitions and this
global democratic theory does not necessarily require a global or "world polity" (Ruggie 1998) or a theory of a "global state" as
such (Shaw 2000).>
Globalization is inevitable, and it allows for global democratic freedom

<Thus, there is likewise a historical dialectic between globalization and democratization, a process that is unavoidable. I firmly
believe, on both historical and moral grounds, that this historical dialectic leads strongly, even inexorably, toward the practices
and theory of global democracy, that is, to the globalization of democracy and the democratization of globalization. Insofar as
neoliberal economic globalization has succeeded, it creates the conditions for further critical social responses that lead to renewed
struggles for democratic freedoms and participation by the ordinary people affected by these [*168] changes. In these processes
of renewed democratic struggles, we may expect to see continued efforts at self-government by many peoples and also expanded
representation. Globalization allows the transcending of old established and fixed territorial units and borders of political
representation, thus allowing a more territorially diffuse pattern of political community to emerge, and to do so globally. This
process deepens democracy by extending it to the global arena but moreover by also devolving power to self-constituting
communities seeking self-government and representation in the political order, whether this be on a local, national, regional, or
global level.>
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AT: Empire Globalization Key to Democracy

Globalization increases democracy only by working through the empire can political
innovation spread
[ In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman argues that globalization brings democracy in its wake in part
because it feeds on a now irresistible desire of consumers and would-be consumershis version of the multitude
to be a part of the system, in a dialectic that subjects democracy to an ever tighter market-discipline. Empire can be
read as the Lexus and Olive Tree of the Far Left. Both books argue that globalization is a process powered from
below. Friedman portrays a ubiquitous dispensation buoyed by pension-fund speculation, credit-card profligacy and
the universal appeal of the American way of life. Crude and exaggerated, the book effectively portrays social
realities that are not always more subtle, in its own fashion demystifying saccharine pieties of the hour. From an
incomparably higher cultural level, Negri and Hardt often fail to achieve this level of realism, and end up recasting
some of the mythologies of American liberalism. Friedman leaves not the smallest doubt about the paramount
power of the United States as global banker and gendarme; indeed rubs in with chauvinist relish what Hardt and
Negri would metaphysically sublimate. But while they downplay the mailed fist of the US in the global arena, they
grant America a more gratifying centrality as a laboratory of domestic political innovation. As they see it, both the
apogee and the antithesis of Empire lie in the inclusive, expansive republicanism of the US Constitution, which long
ago shed the European fetish of a homogeneous nation. In this spirit, Hegel is citedAmerica is the country of the
future, and its world historical importance has yet to be revealed in the ages which lie ahead . . . It is the land of
desire for all those who are weary of the historical arsenal of old Europeand Tocqueville congratulated for
deepening him, with an exemplary understanding of the significance of American mass democracy. There is an echo
of old illusions here. Empire bravely upholds the possibility of a utopian manifesto for these times, in which the
desire for another world buried or scattered in social experience could find an authentic language and point of
concentration. But to be politically effective, any such reclamation must take stock of the remorseless realities of
this one, without recourse to theoretical ecstasy.]
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AT: Empire Capitalism Good (their alt = utopian)

Capitalism is empirically better than any alternative economic order at diminishing human
suffering Hardt and Negris alternative is utopian nonsense.
Needless to say, economic globalization isnt without its downside. As Ive argued in these pages (see Capitalism
and the Suicide of Culture, February 2000), it cantheres no necessity at workamplify and disseminate some of
the less attractive aspects of todays libertine culture. But on balance, as neoconservative sociologist Peter L. Berger
has suggested, the empirical evidence proves it far preferable to any alternative economic order we know of. It has
profoundly diminished human suffering.
If Hardt and Negris depiction of global capitalism is mendacious, their hazy alternative to itabsolute democracy,
open borders, equal compensationis apolitical utopian nonsense. How would such schemes actually work? Hardt
and Negri never say. Do they truly think that annulling private property and eliminating nations, if it were
somehow possible, would be liberating? Wouldnt it lead to a totalitarian increase in political power, as in the old
Soviet Union? But then Hardt and Negri seem to look back fondly on Lenin and Stalins dark regime. Cold war
ideology called that society totalitarian, they complain, but in fact it was a society crisscrossed by extremely
strong instances of creativity and freedom, just as strong as the rhythms of economic development and cultural
modernization. To which one can only respond: Have they never read a page of Solzhenitsyn? Moreover, as filled
with admiration as Hardt and Negri are toward the Soviet Union, they are contemptuous toward the decencies and
the humbleoften not so humblefreedoms of democratic capitalist societies.
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AT: Empire US leadership good (alt fails)

The alternative to Empire is a world with no control of risk a world in which the US
exercises leadership at least holds promise.
[But that can only be a reason for people to start thinking about what new forms of totalitarianism might be possible,
and, indeed, desirable. In the United States, the discussion has been kick-started by the recent hijackings.
Globalisation appears to have created a world of unlimited risk, without a corresponding totalisation of the means of
social control. Some commentators, following Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilisations' model, argue that global
social control is impossible and the only way to contain risk is to maintain the boundaries between civilisations. For
Neoliberals, however, commitment to globalisation necessitates the search for some form of global authority - the
shifting nexus of institutions and alliances that Hardt and Negri call Empire. But this is never going to yield the type
of intensive social regulation needed to limit all the risks of a global society. Unlimited risks need total controls and,
as Hardt and Negri point out, 'totalitarianism consists not simply in totalising the effects of social life and
subordinating them to a global disciplinary norm' but also in 'the organic foundation and unified source of society
and the state'.
Hardt and Negri have no interest in the control of risk - a world of unlimited risk is a world of unlimited constituent
power - and they dismiss the totalitarian understanding of society as one in which 'community is not a dynamic
collective creation but a primordial founding myth.' But the debate about social control prompted by the hijackings
is one that others on the Left should hurry to join. The issue here is not American hypocrisy (Nagasaki, not Pearl
Harbor, is the relevant comparison): let the Swiss cast the first stone - London has statues of war criminals all over
the place. It is rather that, without yet realising it, the world's only superpower wants to achieve something that
presupposes greater economic and social justice. Current US policy may be unacceptable, but the long-term project
holds an unexpected promise.
If the 'war against terrorism' is going to be less of a fiasco than the 'war on drugs', it requires global social inclusivity
and reciprocity. Total social control involves a degree of microregulation with which individuals have to co-operate.
One way totalitarian societies have differed from those that are merely authoritarian is in their provision of work and
healthcare. (If you want to keep track of people you cannot abandon them when they are unemployed or sick.) The
link between welfare and totalitarianism works both ways: social regulation and inclusion go together. If the US
wants to make the world a safer place, it will eventually have to offer, or force other governments to provide, the
population of the entire world with the means to participate in global society. This will involve real constraints on
the operation of the market, particularly finance capital. Tuesday, 11 September 2001 may prove to be the date at
which Neoliberalism and globalisation parted company.]
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AT: Empire US action solves crisis management (MNCs)

Intervention by imperial states is key to crisis management the state is key to prevent
global economic collapse by propping up MNCs and preventing collapse of currencies.
Over the past decade several major financial and economic crises have occurred in various regions of the world. In
each instance, the imperial states, particularly the U.S. state, have intervened to save the MNC, and avoid the
collapse of financial systems. For example, in 1994, when the Mexican financial system was on the verge of
collapse, then President Clinton intervened to dispatch $20 billion to the Mexican state to bail out U.S. investors and
stabilize the peso. In the second instance, during the Asian crisis of 1998, the U.S. and European governments
approved an IMF-WB multi-billion dollar bail-out in exchange for opening their economies, particularly South
Korea, to foreign take-overs of basic industries. In the Brazilian crisis in 1999 and the Argentine crisis in 2001,
Washington pressured the IFI's to bail-out the regimes. Within the U.S. the threatened bankruptcy of a major
international investment bank, led to Federal Reserve (central bank) intervention, pressuring a private bank bail-out.
In a word, with greater frequency and with greater resources the imperial state has played a dominant role in crisis
management, saving major investors from bankruptcy, propping up insolvent MNCs and preventing the collapse of
currencies. More than ever the MNCs and the so-called "global economy" depends on the constant massive
intervention of imperial states to manage the crisis, and secure benefits (buy-outs of local enterprises).
Inter-imperialist Competition
The competition between rival imperial powers, economic enterprises and MNC's has been essentially spearheaded
by rival imperial states. For example, the U.S. imperial state is leading the fight to open European markets to U.S.
beef, and U.S. exports of bananas from South and Central America, while the Japanese and the European states
negotiate with the U.S. to increase the 'quota' on a series of exports, including steel, textiles, etc. Trade and markets
are largely defined by state to state agreements 'Globalization' is not only a product of the 'growth of the MNC', but
largely an artifice of state to state agreements. The competition between capitals is mediated, influenced, and
directed by the state. The markets do not transcend the state, but operate within state defined boundaries.
Conquest of Markets
The state plays a pervasive and profound role in the conquest of overseas markets and the protection of local
markets. In the first instance, the state provides indirect and direct subsidies to export sectors. In the U.S.,
agricultural exports receive subsidized water and electrical power, and subsidies in the form of tax relief. Secondly,
the imperial state, via the IFI, pressures loan recipient states in the Third World, through conditionality agreements,
to lower or eliminate trade barriers, privatize and de-nationalize enterprises, thus permitting U.S., European and
Japanese MNCs to penetrate markets and buy local enterprises. So-called "globalization" would not exist if it were
not for state intervention, nor would the markets remain open if it were not for imperial state military and electoral
intervention, political-economic threats or pressure and recruitment of local clients.]
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AT: Empire Alternative Fails (Lack of empiricism/proof

Hardt and Negris argument for empire lacks historical and empirical evidencethe
examples they give arent based off realistic versions of history.
[ The authors argue early on that the intellectual origins the U.S. revolution can be traced to Spinoza and
Machiavelli. Rousseau and Locke are given short shrift, despite their greater immediate relevance. Extended and
tendencious discussions of sovereignty are interspersed with reductionist assertions which collapse or omit
numerous variations. For example, in their discussion of totalitarianism and the nation-state they argue "If Nazi
Germany is ideal type of the transformation of modern sovereignty into national sovereignty and of the articulation
in its capitalist form, Stalinist Russia is the ideal type of the transmission of popular interest and the cruel logics that
follow from it into a project of national modernization, mobilizing for its own purposes the productive forces that
yearn for liberation from capitalism" (p.110). I have quoted extensively in order to illustrate the confused, illogical,
unhistorical nature of the author's broad and vacuous generalizations. What empirical or historical basis is there for
claiming Nazi Germany is the "ideal type"? National sovereignty pre-existed the Nazis and continues after its
demise in non-totalitarian settings. If Stalin's Russian embodied "popular interest" why should anyone seek to be
liberated from it? "Cruel logic" of "popular interests" is stuff from the ancien regime - hardly the basis for orienting
the "multitudes" which the writers describe to be the new agencies for democratizing the world.
The authors engage in what George Saboul once referred to as the "vacuum cleaner" approach to history: a little of
ancient history, a smattering of exegesis of elementary political theory, a plus and minus evaluation of postmodernism, a celebration of U.S. constitutionalism, a brief synopsis of colonialism and post-colonialism. These
discursive forays provide an intellectual gloss for the core argument dealing with the contemporary world: the
disappearance of imperialism; the obsolescence of imperial states, nation states (and boundaries) and the ascendancy
of an ill-defined Empire, globalization, and supra-national governing bodies, apparently resembling the United
Nations.]
Hardt and Negris call to reject the Empire is incompetent it lacks data, proof, and
empiricism.
Most of Empire is an exercise in nominalism, in the attempt to name, rather than to describe, to analyze, or even to
condemn, the new order that its authors see emerging. Although it is presumably devoted to outlining the contours of
a new mode of production, the book contains no data, offers no effort to demonstrate who owns what or holds power
over whom, and provides no indicators of any of the deplorable conditions that it discusses. As if once again to
distinguish itself from Marx, Empire, like the left Hegelians whom Marx once attacked, moves entirely at the level
of ideas. Unlike the left Hegelians, however, Hardt and Negri handle ideas incompetently.]
The notion of refusing the Empire will fail due to Hardt and Negris false view of social
production.
Post, 2002 (Charlie, member of Solidaritys National Committee, Review: Empire and Revolution, International
Viewpoint Magazine, http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/article.php3?id_article=435)
The notion of the multitude confronting the Empire, at all points and through all acts of refusal, rests on the
questionable claims that production has been informationalised and social production has become decentred and
smoothly diffused across the globe. As we have seen, the reality is quite different: industrial production remains
dominant within capitalism, and the centres of industrial production remain geographically concentrated in the
advanced capitalist north and select parts of the south. Not surprisingly, the potential and actual power of
industrial working class activity has diminished in the past thirty years.
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Clearly twenty years of political defeats and economic restructuring at the hands of capital, undermine the
confidence and ability of workers to take action at the point of production and in the streets. However, in the past
decade we have begun to see a turn-around in the class struggle, that again demonstrates the power of organized
workers in strategic sectors of the economy. Beginning with the public sector strikes in France - spearheaded by the
transport, postal and telecommunications workers - we have seen a new rise of industrial action across western
Europe, and to a lesser extent in the US (the UPS strike in 1997 being the most important example).
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AT: Empire Alternative Fails (Multitude Bad)

Hardt and Negris definition of the multitude is inconsistent with capitalism todaytheir
idea of the multitude will not achieve global justice.
[Hardt and Negris notion of the multitude is not only an unrealistic representation of the relationship between
labour and capital today: it has a long and problematic political history. Negri first argued that a new revolutionary
subject had displaced the collective worker in the large factories of northern Italy in the late 1970s, as growing
unemployment and employer victimization of worker militants crushed the wave of industrial militancy that began
in 1968-69. Negri and the autonomist current in the Italian revolutionary left argued that the social worker - all
those oppressed by capitalism, whether employed or unemployed - had become the new force for social revolution.
In fact, Negri and his cothinkers privileged the unemployed - those who refused work. These ideas provided solace
to a political current whose support among employed workers in the large factories had disappeared by the late
1970s, reducing them to a base among students and unemployed youth. However, these notions also justified acts of
political desperation: most notably, autonomist youth mounting ideological and physical attacks on organized and
employed workers for their unwillingness to refuse work. [11]
Today, none of the currents influenced by Negri and autonomism, like the Tute Bianche in Italy, engage in physical
attacks on organized workers. While the Tute Bianche have engaged in solely non-violent forms of direct action,
they often take action against the police without regard to the real relationship of forces in society. In practice, they
often substitute their own courageous, non-violent action for mass action by working people. Negri and Hardts
theories do not simply justify such practices, but actively discourage the hard strategic thinking, about building
alliances between anti-capitalist youth and rank and file workers, that is crucial to the long-term success of the new
struggle for global justice.]
The multitude will never be unifiedthe workers will stand for different objectives, fail
to communicate, and desire to murder each other.
[Never saying so explicitly, the authors of this book, in identifying their hopes with such disparate movements of
protest whatever their targets or their political coloration, are throwing over the most central proposition of
Marxism: class consciousness. Workers no longer need to be aware of themselves as workers in order to bring down
capitalism. They need not develop a revolutionary strategy, for under contemporary conditions "it may no longer be
useful to insist on the old distinction between strategy and tactics." They do not even need to be workers. All that is
required is that they set themselves up against power, whatever and wherever power happens to be.
Never mind that movements that do so can stand for wildly different objectives an open society here, a closed
society there; or that they are also, as Hardt and Negri point out, often unable or unwilling to communicate with
each other. Indeed, as Hardt and Negri do not point out, they might, if they had the chance, prefer to kill one
another. But this lack of communication and mutual appreciation "is in fact a strength rather than a weakness."
Traditional Marxism aimed to find the weakest link in the capitalist system and to exploit it. But there are no more
weak links. Capital has become so pervasive that it exposes itself nowhere, but this means that it is really exposed
everywhere. Protest movements simply cannot be peripheral: since there is no center, there is no periphery.
Everything that dissents even "piercings, tattoos, punk fashion and its various imitations" foreshadows the
stirrings that are necessary to challenge the new forms that capitalism is taking.]
Hardt and Negri offer no political alternative to empire.

[The success of Empire is astonishing when you cut through the jargon and see exactly what it says. Hardt and Negri
fall prey to every destructive error that has characterized radical antibourgeois thought, of the left and right, from
Lenin to Heidegger to Foucault to Islamism. Though the book seems on first inspection to be something new, it is
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really very old news.

Like their radical predecessors, Hardt and Negri fail to think politicallyfail to explore the real possibilities and
dangers of political reality and take measure of the lessons of history. Though the authors say they want to mine the
dense complex of experiencea praiseworthy aim for any political thoughta reader of Empire will wander
through hundreds of pages of arid theory before he encounters a fleshandblood political actor or a real decision or
historical event or institution. The book, like much contemporary political theory, is inhumanly abstract. The same
abstraction was abundantly evident when Hardt appeared on The Charlie Rose Show. To the hosts commonsense
questions, Hardt could only respond in hallucinatory theoryspeak. To anyone unfamiliar with the latest academic
buzzwords, he sounded like a space alien. Rose seemedjustifiablycompletely befuddled.]
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AT: Empire Alternative Fails (Multitude Bad)

No alternative - Hardt and Negri offer no advice for resistance.
To such movements of resistance, Hardt and Negri offer praise but no advice. Never has a revolutionary manifesto
been so devoid of actual content as the one contained in this book. The real militant against Empire, Hardt and Negri
insist, is not one "who acts on the basis of duty and discipline, who pretends that his or her actions are deducted [sic]
from an ideal plan." (The Jesuits are, somewhat bizarrely, offered as an example of such discipline, but any Marxist
would read this as a rejection of a Leninist revolutionary vanguard.) No, to be a militant you must turn the biopower directed against you inside out, by exploring "the productive cooperation of mass intellectuality and affective
networks, the productivity of postmodern biopolitics." Hobsbawm wrote of the chiliastic bandits of the nineteenth
century that, whatever their other differences, they shared "a fundamental vagueness about the actual way in which
the new society will be brought about," and no better description of anarchism in its postmodern form has yet been
written.
Hardt and Negri admit they have no idea how the multitude will rise up and throw over the
multitude.
[And redemption will come from the multitude, who despite their oppression under empire or Empire remain
pure in heart. In them, one can see the emergence of the new city that will put us at one with the world. Unlike
Augustine's, of course, their city cannot be the divine one, since "the multitude today...resides on the imperial
surfaces where there is no God the Father and no transcendence." Instead, they will create "the earthly city of the
multitude," which the authors esoterically define as "the absolute constitution of labor and cooperation." About the
practical question of how this can be done, Hardt and Negri have nothing significant to say. "The only response that
we can give to these questions is that the action of the multitude becomes political primarily when it begins to
confront directly and with an adequate consciousness the central repressive operations of Empire." This, too, is a
Christian conception of revolution. We cannot know how we will be saved; we must recognize that if only we have
faith, a way will be found.]
Voting for the critique will not affect the overall trends of globalization Hardt and Negri
have no means to operationalize their alternative
[ But such a sensible and decent left will not emerge if Empire a lazy person's guide to revolution has its way.
The authors of this book, having taken no steps to learn anything about what globalization actually is and what its
continuation would actually mean, cannot inspire their readers to do likewise. Rather than developing a tutorial
attitude toward protest, bringing to younger militants the knowledge of history and the wisdom of experience, they
glorify know-nothingism and turn obsequious before fascists. Instead of reminding protesters that politics is a
demanding business, they romanticize the self-indulgence of punks and freaks. Faced with the difficulties of
constructing a theoretical account of how an ever-changing capitalism has changed once again, they paper over their
contradictions with jargon and borrow promiscuously from every academic fashion. There is indeed corruption in
the contemporary world and none more noteworthy in this context than the intellectual corruption that can enable
a book as shabby as this one to be taken seriously by anyone.]
Empire does nothing to advance the goals of the left it pretends that revolution is easily
achievable.
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Empire is to social and political criticism what pornography is to literature. It flirts with revolution as if one society
can be replaced by another as easily as one body can be substituted for another. It gives academic readers the thrill
of engaging with the ideas of the New Left's most insurrectionary days, all the while pretending that the author of
these ideas is an "independent researcher and writer," as Harvard's book jacket calls Negri, while secretly hoping
imagine the glamour in radical academic circles that this would give him! that he really was guilty of the acts for
which he was imprisoned. For angry militants who have never read Bakunin but who understand in their gut that
every destructive urge is a creative one, Empire offers the support of professors who are supposed to know what
they are talking about; and if one is too busy running through the streets to grasp the full implications of what Homi
K. Bhabha says about binary divisions, or to reflect on Althusser's reading of The Prince, one can at least come away
rinsed in the appropriate critique. Empire is a thoroughly non-serious book on a most serious topic, an outrageously
irresponsible tour through questions of power and violence questions that, as we cannot help but remember as we
mourn our dead in Manhattan and Washington, demand the greatest responsibility on the part of both writers and
readers.]
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AT: Empire Alt Suffering (No rule of law)

The alternative will result in more suffering due to the absence of morality and rule of law.
[Hardt and Negris final delusion is their cartoon version of the modern world as completely secularized. Tell that to
the Islamist fanatics who made bombs out of planes, praying to Allah as they died, or to the friends and relatives of
those they killed who have crowded into churches and synagogues seeking meaning and solace for their suffering.
For both good and ill, as Andr Malraux predicted, the twentyfirst century clearly will be religious, not secular.
Hardt and Negri believe that something decent will arise from their lawless atheism. But why assume justice will
prevail from such nihilism, when everything we know from historythe wounded history of the twentieth century
above allsays that it results invariably in the law of the jungle? Without morality and the rule of law, the powerful
simply feel free to rape and pillage; the weak can only tremble and hide.]
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AT: Empire Imperialism Inevitable

Claims of a global economy and new world government are dubiousimperialism is
inevitable.
Assumption 2: The old nation-state governments have been superseded by a new world government, made up of the
heads of the IFI, the WTO, and the heads of the MNCs (p. 326). This is an argument that is based on a superficial
discussion of epiphenomena, rather than a deeper analytical view of the structure of power. While it is true that the
IFIs make many important decisions in a great many geographical locations affecting significant economic and
social sectors, these decisions and the decision-makers are closely linked to the imperial states and the MNCs which
influence them. All top IFI officials are appointed by their national/imperial governments. All their crucial policy
guide lines that dictate their loans and conditions for lending are set by the finance, treasury and economy ministers
of the imperial states. The vast majority of funds for the IFIs come from the imperial states. Representation on the
executive board of the IFI is based on the proportion of funding by the imperial states. The IMF and the WB have
always been led by individuals from the U.S. or E.U.
Hardt and Negri's vision of IFI power is based on a discussion of derived power not its imperial states source. In
this sense, international power is based in the imperial states not on supra-national entities. The latter concept
grossly overestimates the autonomy of the IFIs and underestimates their subordination to the imperial states. The
real significance of the IFIs is how they magnify, extend and deepen the power of the imperial states and how they
become terrain for competition between rival imperial states. Far from superseding the old states, the IFIs have
strengthened their positions.
Assumption 3: One of the common arguments of globalist theorists like Hardt and Negri is that an information
revolution has taken place that has eliminated state borders, transformed capitalism and created a new epoch (p.145)
by providing a new impetus to the development of the productive forces. The claims that information technologies
have revolutionized economies and thus created a new global economy in which nation states and national
economies have become superfluous is extremely dubious.
A comparison of productivity growth in the U.S. over the past half century fails to support the globalist argument.
Between 1953-72, before the so-called information revolution in the U.S. productivity grew an average 2.5%; with
the introduction of computers, productivity growth between 1973-95 was less than half. Even in the so-called boom
period of 1995-99, productivity growth was 2.5% about the same as the pre-computer period. Japan which makes
the most extensive use of computers and robots has witnessed a decade of stagnation and crises. During the year
2000-01, the information sector went into a deep crises, tens of thousands were fired, hundreds of firms went
bankrupt, stocks dropped in value some 80%. The speculative bubble, that defined the so-called information
economy, burst. Moreover, the major source of growth of productivity claimed by the globalists was in the
computerization of the area of computer manufacture. Studies have shown that computer use in offices is directed
more toward personal use than to exchanging ideas. Estimates run up to 60% of computer time is spent in activity
unrelated to the enterprise. Computer manufacturers account for 1.2% of the U.S. economy and less than 5% of
capital stock.
Moreover, the U.S. population census provides another explanation for the higher productivity figures - the 5
million illegal immigrants who have flooded the U.S. labor market in the 1990s. Since productivity is measured by
the output per estimated worker, the 5 million uncounted workers inflate the productivity data. If the 5 million are
included the productivity figures would deflate.
With the decline of the information economy and its stock valuations it becomes clear that the "information
revolution" is not the transcendent force defining the economies of the major imperial states, let alone defining a
new world order. The fact that most people have computers and browse, that some firms have better control over
their inventories does not mean that power has shifted beyond the nation-state. The publicists' claims about the
"information revolution" ring hollow, as the investors in the world stock markets move funds toward the real
economy and away from the high tech firms which show no profits and increasing losses.]
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AT: Empire Imperialism Inevitable

Neo-liberalism as an alternative is a fabricationimperial states and power will always
exist.
[ Neo-liberalism was always a myth: the imperial states have never completely opened their markets, eliminated all
subsidies or failed to intervene to prop up or protect strategic economic sectors, either for political or social reasons.
Neo-liberal imperialism always meant selective openness to selective countries over specified time periods in
selective product areas. Markets were opened by the U.S. government to products produced by U.S. affiliates in
overseas countries. "Free trade" in the imperial country was not based on economic but political criteria. On the
other hand Euro-U.S. policymakers and their employees in the IMF-World Bank preached "market fundamentalism"
to the Third World: elimination of all trade barriers, subsidies and regulations for all products and services in all
sectors. Imperial states' selective free market practices allowed their multi-nationals to capitalize on market
opportunities in target countries practicing market fundamentalism while protecting domestic economic sectors
which included important political constituencies. Conflict erupted when the two imperial rivals, the U.S. and
Europe (both selective free marketers) attempted to pry open the others' markets while protecting important political
constituencies.
With the advent of the triple crises of recession, speculative collapse and intensified competition, the imperial
countries have resorted to greater state intervention in a multiplicity of sectors: increased agricultural and other state
subsidies - $30 billion in the U.S. in 2001.; increased resort to interfering in trade to impose "quotas" on imports
(Bush's commitment to the U.S. steel industry) and intensified exploitation of Third World regions to increase the
flow of profits, interests and trading advantages (the U.S. "Free Trade of the Americas" proposal) and war, military
Keynsianism as in the US attack on Afghanistan.
State managed trade that combines protection of home markets and aggressive intervention to secure monopoly
market advantages and investment profits defines the content of neo-mercantilist imperialism. Neo-liberal
imperialism with its free market rhetoric and selective opening of markets is being replaced by a neo-mercantilism
that looks toward greater monopolization of regional trading zones, greater unilateral political decisions to maximize
trade advantages and protection of domestic producers and greater reliance on military strategies to deepen control
over crises ridden neo-liberal economies run by discredited clients and to increase military Keynsianism.]
The new form of imperialism exercised by the United States cannot be equated with
colonial takeoverthe emphasis on free trade is too strong.
Steinmetz, Associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, 2003 [George, The State of
Emergency and the Revival of American Imperialism: Toward an Authoritarian Post-Fordism, Public Culture 15.2
(2003) 323-345, p. project muse]
[There are at least two crucial differences between this nascent (neo)imperialism and colonialism. The first
distinction is especially important for the inhabitants of the periphery. Imperialism, unlike colonialism, allows
powerful members of the periphery to retain at least nominal control over their own states, even if peripheral states
and economies are still subject to asymmetrical pressures from the core and to the uncontrollable dynamics of global
capitalism. The difference between imperialism and colonialism also matters for the analysis of the core countries.
Were we to diagnose current American policy as moving toward a form of colonialism, this would suggest a decline
rather than a reconsolidation of American hegemony. It would also predict tendencies toward the formal control of
peripheries by other core powers, as in the late-nineteenth-century scramble. Niall Ferguson (2001: 79), among
many others, claims to discern such a colonial trend since September 11: he perceives the movement of the United
States "from informal to formal imperialism" and toward the creation of a "new kind of colony." Tellingly, this
diagnosis is summarized as a "White Man's Burden" rather than a "rich man's burden," calling attention to the "rule
of difference" that distinguishes colonial from noncolonial states (Chatterjee 1993; Steinmetz 2002).
Yet the United States is not taking control of peripheral governments, nor does it seem to be focusing primarily on
securing markets in particular parts of the periphery for specifically American capital. Critics of the new national
security policy have failed to emphasize its differences from both the decentered multilateralism of Empire and the
channeled direct control of colonial governance. In addition to preserving American military and political
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supremacy, the goals of the Bush administration, according to its September 2002 paper on national security, include
"igniting" a "new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade." Indeed, free trade is described
here as a basic "moral principle" (White House 2002: 17-20). 9 Whatever one's views of the drawbacks of free
[End Page 333] trade for poor and developing countries and of the limits of the American version of democracy that
is to be exported with it, this program cannot be equated with colonial takeover. Even in the discussions of a postwar
occupation of Iraq, U.S. planners have been quick to insist that there is no intention of installing a permanent
colonial government. 10 And one characteristic of the campaign in Afghanistan has been a division of labor
between the United States, which has arrogated to itself responsibility for overall decision making and military
interventions, and the European powers, which have been left with the responsibility for postwar sociopolitical
reconstruction and transferring power to an Afghan-controlled government (Ignatieff 2002).]
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AT: Empire Capitalism Inevitable

A New Economy does not exist capitalist crisis still occur
Assumption 4: Related to the prior assumption, globalists NH argue that we are living in a New Economy that has
superseded the Old Economy, of manufacturers, mining, agriculture and social services (pp. 3-21). According to the
globalists the 'market' creates new efficiencies produced by the new technologies and ensures high growth. The
recession of late 2000-2002 certainly refutes the claims of the New Economy ideologues: the business cycle
continues to operate and, moreover, the cycle is particularly accentuated by the highly speculative nature of the 'New
Economy'. As it turns out, the 'New Economy' demonstrates all the features of a volatile speculative economy,
driven by exorbitant claims of high returns. In the absence of profits or even revenues, it turns out that much of what
was touted as a 'New Economy' was a colossal financial swindle, where the high returns to the early investors led to
financial ruin to the later investors.
The "new efficiencies" promised did not overcome the logic of the capitalist business cycle. "Just in time
production" was premised on stable and continuous growth of demand. The recession of 2000-2002, the sudden
decline in demand, led to an accumulation of inventories among producers and sellers, and the resultant lay-offs.
Cash-flow problems, increased indebtedness and bankruptcies characteristic of the "Old Economy" reappeared with
a vengence.
It is clear that the so-called "New Economy" does not transcend capitalist crisis, in fact it is more vulnerable and
has fewer resources to fall back on since most of its cash flow depends on speculative expectations of continuous
high returns. The sharp decline in commercial advertising earnings on the web sites and the saturation of the
computer market has led to a structural crisis for both producers of hardware and software, leading to a giant shakedown in the 'industry' -- the exorbitant 'paper value' of the stocks have tumbled to a fraction of their value and the
major Internet companies are struggling to survive, let along define the nature of a 'new capitalist epoch'.
Hardt and Negri concede that Empire only exists as a concept collapse of capitalism is not
inevitable
[Empire is Hardts and Negris term for that transnational, capitalist entityor perhaps it is a process: it is difficult
to saythat has supposedly succeeded the nation state. (The nation state they regard as a dinosaur that is well on its
way to the dust-bin of history.) Hence Empire is not coterminous with the United States, though Hardt and Negri
clearly believe that the U.S. figures prominently in the architecture of Empire. In fact, what they call Empire does
not really exist. Hardt and Negri sometimes come close to acknowledging this (though a page later they are
populating Empire with all sorts of powers and attributes). In their preface, Hardt and Negri boldly claim that
Empire is not a metaphor but a concept, which calls primarily for a theoretical approach.
The words theoretical approach should send a shiver down the spine of any sensible person. The burden of their
remark is to declare intellectual open season. When it comes to applying a theoretical approach to a concept, the
bottom line is: anything goes. Still, using a capital letter whenever Empire is mentioned was a sound rhetorical
move. It helps to give this airy nothing local habitation and a name, and people who are reassured by being told that
something is not a metaphor but a concept will be grateful for that. Eakins writes that Hardt and Negri believe
Empire is good news. In truth, they excoriate it on virtually every page. In Empire corruption is everywhere,
they write in one typical passage. It is the cornerstone and keystone of domination. One of their central questions
is how the multitude (their term for what Marx called the proletariat) can become political and overcome the
central repressive operations of Empire. (The answer, which comes on page 400: We cannot say at this point.)
Does this sound like good news? No, Hardt and Negri do not regard Empire as good news. They regard it as Marx
regarded capitalism: something so bad that it would necessarily perish of its own badness. (Marx, being a Hegelian,
substituted contradictions for badness in order to invest the process with the appearance of logical necessity, but
there is no reason to dignify that philosophical sleight-of-hand by perpetuating the linguistic solecism.)
Eakins is also wrong to suggest that Empire may represent the Next Big Idea. This is mainly because Empire is
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based on a laughably tiny idea, and one that is also old and wrong. The idea, again, is Marxs idea about the
inevitable collapse of capitalism. It seemed big once upon a time. It is now as thoroughly discredited as an historical
or political idea can be. Hardt and Negri gussy up Marx with a formidable panoply of New Age rhetoric about
globalization. But the creaking you hear as you make your way through the book is the rusty grinding of the
dialectic: it goes nowhere, it means nothing, but it keeps creaking along.]
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AT: Empire Capitalism Inevitable

Hardt and Negris critique of capitalism fails to account for the realities of modern
economics.
[While Hardt and Negris critique of the politics of post-modernism is both insightful and salutary, their embrace of
its substantive analysis reduces Empire to yet another example of what Kim Moody called globaloney. [3] Put
simply, the analysis Hardt and Negri present in Empire of the contemporary capitalist world economy is unrealistic it does not correspond to the realities of capitalist production and accumulation today.
At the centre of Hardt and Negris notion of empire is that they call the postmodernisation, or the informationalisation of production. In this schema, the transition
from modernity and postmodernity involves an historic shift from an economic paradigm where "industry and the manufacture of durable goods occupied the
privileged position" to one where "providing services and manipulating information are at the heart of economic production". [4]
(p. 280) Freed from the spatial constraints associated with industrial production, the production of services and information allows for rapid and easy geographic
mobility of capital and the creation of a smooth - relatively evenly developed - global economic space .
The reality of the capitalist world economy is quite different. It is true that the percentage of workers employed in
industry - the production of material goods and services - has declined continuously for over a century. As Harry
Braverman argued in his classic Labor and Monopoly Capital, [5] this is the inevitable result of capitalisms
continuous mechanization of production, and the resultant reduction in the percentage of workers needed to produce
goods. However, the number of industrial workers, in most industrialized societies, has remained stable or grown
slightly. Even more important, the proportion of total output industrial workers produce has increased over the past
fifty years. [6]]
Hardt and Negri refuse to accept the reality of the permanent existence of capitalismthis
makes all their judgments ridiculous.
It is not just the style of Empire that is rebarbative. Its judgments are too. They are mostly a tapestry of Marxist
chestnuts updated for contemporary circumstances. Remember the Cold War? Leftist dogma maintains that it is
impossible that the United States won the Cold War. Ergo, the fact that the United States did win itthat the policies
of the Reagan administration brought about the collapse of the Soviet Unionmust be denied at every turn. So it is
business as usual when Hardt and Negri solemnly assure us that the United States did not defeat the socialist
enemy in the Cold War; rather The Soviet Union collapsed under the burden of its own internal contradictions.
Internal contradictions? We require permits for handguns: why not for lethal concepts such as the HegelianMarxist dialectic? Its careless use is clearly a public intellectual-health hazard. The dialectic is the ultimate sophists
tool. Marx himself realized this. In an 1857 letter to Engels about an election prediction, Marx wrote: Its possible that I shall make an ass of
myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way .
Hardt and Negri are not as cautious as the master. They are adept at deploying the dialectic, but they havent
mastered the art of duplicitous ambiguity. Thus they baldly conclude that the Gulf War was really an operation of
oppressionperpetrated, of course, not by Saddam Hussein but by the United States. The Los Angeles riots they
describe as one of the most radical and powerful struggles of the final years of the twentieth century. High praise
indeed! Most of us, looking back over the history of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century, would conclude that
there was no international proletarian revolution as Marx predicted there would be. But according to Hardt and
Negri such a judgment would be superficial and short-sighted: actually, they write, the proletariat won because
nation states are not as powerful now as they once were.
I suspect that part of the reason Empire is such a hit in the academy is its superior insulation. Hardt and Negri have
sealed every point of ingress: no hint of reality is allowed to seep in. The single greatest embarrassment to Marxist
theory has always been the longevity of capitalism. It was supposed to implode from internal contradictions long
ago. But here it is 2001 and capitalism is still going strong and making the world richer and richer. Attempting to
explain this is the greatest test of a Marxists ingenuity. Here is how Hardt and Negri handle the problem:
As we write this book and the twentieth century draws to a close, capitalism is miraculously healthy, its
accumulation more robust than ever. How can we reconcile this fact with the careful analyses of numerous Marxist
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authors at the beginning of the century who point to the imperialist conflicts as symptoms of an impending
ecological disaster running up against the limits of nature?
They offer three hypotheses for this imponderable situation. One, that capitalism has reformed itself and so is no
longer in danger of collapse (an option they dismiss out of hand). Two, that the Marxist theory is right except for the
timetable: Sooner or later the once abundant resources of nature will run out. Threewell, it is a little difficult to
say what the third hypothesis is. It has to do, they say, with the idea that capitalisms expansion is internal rather
than external, that it subsumes not the noncapitalist environment but its own capitalist terrain that is, that the
subsumption is no longer formal but real. I wont attempt to explain this for the simple reason that I havent a clue
about what it means.
Is there any important option they have neglected? Could it, just possibly, be that the careful analyses of numerous
Marxist authors was just plain wrong? This is a possibility apparently too awful to contemplate, for Hardt and
Negri never raise it.]
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AT: Empire No Tech Revolution

The third technological revolution never occurredinformation technology has seen a
negative growth in recent years.
[N and H's second major argument is that we are living in a totally new epoch. A new capitalism thanks to the third
scientific technological revolution (TSTR). Detailed empirical studies on the 1990s economy has effectively refuted
the argument that IT, fiber optics and biotechnology inaugurated a "new epoch of capitalism" by revolutionizing the
forces of production.
Japan which early on "robotized" its factories and engineered and applied many of the new IT products has been
stagnant (average growth of about 1 percent for the past 11 years) and entering a deep recession in 2001). The U.S.
manufacturing sector has been in negative growth since the end of August 2000 and continues for 12 consecutive
months - the longest period of negative growth on record since the end of the World War. The recession is expected
to continue for an uncertain period - estimates run from 1 to 3 years. The IT growth rates were negative throughout
2001. The prospects for an early recovery are dim as negative savings rates, huge deficits, a strong dollar inhibit
domestic or export powered growth. As structural and cyclical crises coincide it is highly likely that the recession
will continue for some time ahead. The recession totally undermines the IT ideologues who declared that the "New
Economy" has made the business cycle obsolete. In fact, the IT companies have been the hardest hit in the current
downturn. Over 80 percent of the dot.coms are not profitable.
Secondly, the IT economy today is less competitive and more concentrated than ever, where a few giants have
survived and many have failed. While thousands of dot.coms went under, the top 5 IT companies retained their
position among the top 10 rankings world-wide.
The productivity revolution - growth of 2.5% - was based on a short interval of four year (1996-2000) and was
followed by a decline in productivity to a negative 1.2% during the first quarter of 2001.
The multi-billion dollar investment in IT drained investment from more productive uses, led to vast
overcapitalization in one sector that had low returns and little spill-over effects. Moreover, the biggest boost for IT
came from the Y-2 scam - the hype of a system breakdown, with the onset of the new Millenium. Hundreds of
billions were spent on IT between 1996 through 1999 to avoid a dubious project with virtually no long term effects.
No serious critical evaluation and comparative analysis was conducted between countries like Russia, China,
Finland and a few others which spent a fraction of what was spent in Europe and North America on Y-2, without
suffering a "catastrophic breakdown." This raises the question of whether the IT bubble was itself an artifact of a
massive promotional fraud. In any case, the data base for IT claims of a productivity revolution are extremely
limited and problematical.
A recent study by Paul Strassman, a leading critic of IT ideologues, based on a study of 3,000 European companies
demonstrates no relationship between investment in computers and profitability. Thus the three basic claims of the
IT revolution, that it has put to rest the business cycle, has generated a sustained productivity revolution and
produces high profits are not in accordance with reality. In fact, the irrationalities of capitalism have been amplified
by the IT bubble: the business cycle operates in full force, productivity tends to stagnation and there is a tendency
for the rate of profit to decline.
A recent article by Robert Gordon which analyzes the increase in productivity (between 1995-99) raises serious
doubts about the claims of the Hardt and Negri of a "new epoch." He argues that almost 70% of the improvement in
productivity can be accounted for by improved measurements of inflation (lower estimates of inflation necessarily
mean higher growth of real output, thus productivity) and the response of productivity to the exceptionally rapid
output growth of the 3 year period. Thus, only 30% of the 1% increase in productivity (or .3%) during the 199599 period can be attributed to computerization of the so-called "information revolution", hardly a revolution.]
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AT: Empire AT: Sovereignty Links

Hardt and Negri fail to distinguish between the different types of crisisthe type of
sovereignty they describe isnt realistic.
Steinmetz, Associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, 2003 [George, The State of
Emergency and the Revival of American Imperialism: Toward an Authoritarian Post-Fordism, Public Culture 15.2
(2003) 323-345, p. project muse]
[How can we tell whether the United States is in fact emerging as a new hegemon? One criterion is provided by Carl
Schmitt ([1922] 1985: 5): "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception." Hardt and Negri (2000: 377-78) dismiss
Schmitt's decisionism as both "irrational" and irrelevant; for them, the current condition of Empire is a permanent
state of exception. Hardt and Negri equate the endemic shattering of all social relations and identities characteristic
of capitalism in general with crisis tout court. Yet it makes a great deal of difference whether we are faced with a
crisis of employment, a crisis of profits, or both; it also matters immensely whether social actors understand
themselves as living through a crisis.
We need to distinguish between three meanings of crisis: (1) the permanent crisis that is equivalent to capitalism for
Hardt and Negri, (2) the crisis of capitalist accumulation (falling rates of profit) or of employment, both of which
may or may not be expressed in a language of crisis, and (3) crises that are discursively articulated as such on a
society-wide scale. To collapse the first into the second is to fail to recognize the periodic intensification of pressures
urging social actors to seek a change in regulatory frameworks. Indeed, Hardt and Negri's account of transitions
between modes of regulation is rooted in a style of Marxism according to which capitalist crisis in the second, more
punctual, sense plays a central propelling role. 15 To collapse the third sense of crisisthat is, crisis as a
discursively constructed objectinto the other senses is to fall back into the sort of sociomaterialist objectivism that
Marxists and other social theorists have been trying to overcome for some time. Yet it is this third sense of crisis
crisis as a publicly articulated and widely acknowledged conditionthat leads us to the real test of sovereignty. It
is possible to identify the locus of sovereignty only when the future direction of a society (or indeed its very
existence) is at stake and when most social actors are focused on strategic questions. In a period like the 1990s, by
contrast, American society was not generally perceived as being in crisis, and as a result, politically, questions of
"who decides" were much [End Page 336] less urgent. It is therefore not surprising that this era gave rise to
theories of a decline of the state.]
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AT: Empire AT: Nation-State Links

Hardt and Negris claims that there is sovereignty/imperialism beyond the nation-state
lacks plausibility.
[The result of the internationalisation of lean production over the past two decades has not been a smooth or
decentred global network or empire that Hardt and Negri claim. Quite the opposite, the centres of accumulation
and social power remain in the centres of advanced capitalism in Western Europe, the US and Japan. Global uneven
and combined development - the growing gap in incomes, production and the like - between this global north and
the global south has only grown wider. Some regions of the former third world have become centres of labourintensive assembly and parts production (the Newly Industrialized Countries of Mexico, Brazil, South Africa,
South Korea, Taiwan), becoming extensions of capitalist accumulation cantered in the north. However, vast
expanses of the globe (sub-Saharan Africa) remain at best sites of raw material extraction, or at worst huge labour
reserves, marked by extreme poverty and capitalist-created famine and natural disasters.
Hardt and Negris claims that the nation-state and inter-imperialist rivalry have declined in importance with the rise
of empire and various institutions of global governance (World Bank, IMF, WTO, G7, EU, NATO, etc) lack
theoretical and even empirical plausibility. The declining effectiveness of the nation-state can be traced clearly
through the evolution of a whole series of global juridico-economic bodies, such as GATT, the World Trade
Organization, the World Bank, and the IMF. The globalisation of production and circulation, supported by this
supranational juridical scaffolding, supersedes the effectiveness of national juridical structures (p 337).
Clearly, this supranational juridical scaffolding has been crucial in changing the political environment for capitalist
accumulation over the past two decades. Clearly, neo-liberalism - the dismantling of the rules that restrict
corporations at home and abroad - would be impossible without these global juridico-economic bodies.
However, the growing importance of these trans-national organizations does not mean that, in the words of Hardt
and Negri state functions and constitutional elements have effectively been displaced to other levels and domains
(p. 307). On the contrary, the ability of these global political bodies to operate effectively requires, in many ways,
the strengthening of the national-capitalist state.
[Kim Moody presents a compelling alternative analysis. The trans-national corporations (TNCs) have neither the
desire nor ability to create a world state. They have opted instead for a system of multilateral agreements and
institutions that they hope will provide coherence and order the world market. Through their home governments,
the TNCs have attempted to negotiate forms of regulation through the GATT, the new WTO, and the various
regional and multilateral trade agreements. They have also transformed some of the old Bretton Woods institutions,
notably the World Bank and IMF. [9]
To ensure the unhindered operations of the trans-nationals and protect private business property, these global
political institutions require national capitalist states capable of denationalising industries, abolishing social welfare
programs and labour regulations, generally deregulating their capital, labour and commodities markets, and
containing challenges from below. Put simply, rather than representing a simple shift of political powers upward
from the nation-state to the global juridico-economic bodies, the development of the WTO, EU, and the like
actually enhance the role of the nation-state.
Hardt and Negris go further along this path. They claim that Empire "is a decentred and deterritorialising
apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its expanding frontiers" (p xii) in
which "what used to be conflict or competition among several imperialist powers has in important respects been
replaced by the idea of a single power that overdetermines them all, structures them in a unitary way, and treats them
under the one common notion of right that is decidedly postcolonial and postimperialist" (p 9).]
The imperial state has not disappearedthe rise of the nation state in the world economy
proves.
[ Let us start with Negri's and Hardt's (NH) assertion of the decline of the nation or imperial state. Their argument
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for a state-less empire exaggerates the autonomy of capital from the state and parrots the false propositions of the
free market ideologues who argue that the "world market" is supreme. Contrary to NH, in the contemporary world,
the national state, in both its imperial and neo-colonial form, has expanded its activity. Far from being an
anachronism, the state has become a central element in the world economy and within nation- states. However, the
activities of the state vary according to their class character and whether they are imperial or neo-colonial states.
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AT: Empire Borders Links

Empires claims of fluidity are wrong borders were more fluid before World War I than
the status quo.
Bliwise, 2001 (Robert J. Empire: Not So Evil, Duke Magazine, November-December,
http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukemag/issues/111201/empire.html)
Other analysts point out that borders were, if anything, more fluid in the past. Exactly one month before the events
of September 11, The New York Times offered a skeptical look at the novelty of today's globalization. Before World
War I, "There were no passports and virtually no restrictions on immigration, making for perhaps the biggest
migration in human history." By one estimate reported in the article, one-seventh of the world's working-age
population migrated across national boundaries between 1870 and 1925. In more recent times, the U.S. may be the
only country to have boasted a relatively open immigration policy.
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AT: Empire MNCs

Multi-national corporations are not fluidthe assumptions of Empire are based on flawed
studies and analysis.
[In conclusion the imperial states, far from being superceded by the overseas expansion of capital, have grown and
become essential components of the world political economy. NH concept of empire mystifies the role of the
imperial state, thus undermining an essential adversary, in the front lines of the defense of the privileges and power
of the MNCs.
Hardt and Negri base their argument about a state-less, class-less empire without imperialism on the notion of a
world market dominated by multi-national corporations (MNC) which, they argue, "must eventually overcome
imperialism and destroy the barriers between inside and outside." (p. 234) These "global" MNCs have turned the
nations and imperial states into anachronisms.
NH provide no data on the internal organization of the MNCs, no analysis of the decision-making structure, no
discussion of their relations to states. Theorizing by fiat is a convenient way of evading inconvenient empirical
studies. Essentially Hardt and Negri's argument is based on six unsubstantiated assumptions.
Assumption 1: MNC are global corporations which have no specific location in any particular nation-state. They
form a new world economy divorced from national controls and are part of a new world ruling class.
This assumption is based on the fact that large scale corporations operate in a number of countries, they are mobile
and they have the power to evade taxes, regulations in many national jurisdictions. There are several conceptual and
empirical problems with this assumption.
First, the fact that MNCs operate in many countries does not detract from the fact that the headquarters, where most
of the strategic decisions, directors and profits are concentrated, are located in the U.S., E.U. and Japan.
Secondly, mobility is based on strategic decisions taken by directors in the headquarters in the imperial centers.
These decisions depend on the political and economic conditions created by the imperial state and its representatives
in the IFIs. Mobility is contingent on interstate relations.
Thirdly, evasion of taxes and regulations, is possible because of deliberate policies in the imperial states and their
multi-national banks. Non-enforcement of laws against transfers of illicit earnings from the neo-colonial countries to
the imperial countries is a form of state activity favoring large scale transfers of wealth that strengthen external
accounts. The MNCs' flouting of neo-colonial state regulations is part of a broader set of power relations anchored in
the imperial, neo-colonial state relations.]
MNCs do not exist absent from the state Hardt and Negri fail to recognize the combined
forces of MNCs and imperial states
Assumption 5: Globalist theorists like NH write of an 'imperial system' as opposed to imperialist states (preface),
as if one could not exist without the other. The 'system' has no 'center' since all states have lost their special
significance before the all powerful MNC who dominate markets. Systems approaches fail to recognize the class and
institutional power of nationally owned and directed banks and industries. Even more fatal, the systems theorists fail
to link the structures, operations, legal codes and linkages between imperial states, the multi- national corporations
and their offspring in the IFI's and the vast reach of their power and concentration of profits, interest, rents and
royalties in the imperialist countries. The 'system' is derived from and is sustained by the combined forces of the
imperial state and its MNCs. To abstract from the specificities of ownership and state power in order to describe an
imperial system is to lose sight of the basic contradictions and conflicts, the inter-state imperial rivalries and the
class struggles for state power.
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AT: Empire AT: Biopower Impact

Hardt and Negri have the concept of biopower backwardsfor powerless human beings,
autonomy leads to extinction.
[It would, I think, be difficult for Hardt and Negri to turn their argument around in this way. Although they recognise
the function of society in the production of individual subjectivities they barely acknowledge its role in the
production of power. Using Foucault's model of biopower, they argue that power constitutes society, not the other
way round: 'Power, as it produces, organises; as it organises, it speaks and expresses itself as authority.' In reply to
Machiavelli's observation that the project of constructing a new society needs arms and money, they cite Spinoza
and ask: 'Don't we already possess them? Don't the necessary weapons reside precisely within the creative and
prophetic power of the multitude?' No one is powerless; even the old, the sick and the unemployed are engaged in
the 'immaterial labour' that produces 'total social capital'. Sounding a bit like Ali G, they conclude: 'The poor itself is
power. There is World Poverty, but there is above all World Possibility, and only the poor is capable of this.'
It is difficult to see how this analysis comprehends the reality of powerlessness. You may be able to threaten the
world with a Stanley knife, but you cannot build a new society with one. Insofar as the problems of the powerless
have been addressed in recent years it is often through a dynamic that works in the opposite direction to the one
Hardt and Negri suggest. Their response to globalisation is to maintain that since we have not contracted into global
society, we still have all the power we need to change it. The alternative is to argue that a geographically boundless
society must also be a totally inclusive society. The latter is an extension of what used to be called the politics of
recognition. Globalisation may have replaced multiculturalism as the focus of contemporary political debate, but
there is an underlying continuity: the concern of anti-globalisation protesters with remote regions of the world, with
the lives of people unlike themselves, and with species of animals and plants that most have seen only on TV is
predicated on an unparalleled imaginative identification with the Other. This totalisation of the politics of
recognition from the local to the global is what has given momentum to campaigns such as the one for African Aids
victims; here, it is a question of sympathy rather than sovereignty, of justice rather than power. In many cases, unless
the powerful recognised some kinship with them, the powerless would just die. Capitalism has no need for the
'immaterial labour' of millions now living. For powerless human beings, as for other species, autonomy leads to
extinction.]
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AT: IR Fem Focus on identity exclusion

The criticisms focus on identity creates a politics of exclusion that prevents meaningful
critiques and turns the very superior identification they try to solve
Jarvis 2k [DSL, International Relations and the Challenge of Postmodernism, February, University of
South Carolina Publishing, pg. 160-162]

[[Critical research agendas of this type, however, are not found easily in International Relations. Critics of
feminist perspectives run the risk of denouncement as either a misogynist malcontent or an androcentric
keeper of the gate. At work in much of this discourse is an unstated political correctness, where the
historical marginalization of women bestows intellectual autonomy, excluding those outside the identity
group from legitimate participation in its discourse. Only feminist women can do real, legitimate, feminist
theory since, in the mantra of identity politics, discourse must emanate from a positional (personal)
ontology. Those sensitive or sympathetic to the identity politics of par ticular groups are, of course,
welcome to lend support and encouragement, but only on terms delineated by the groups themselves. In
this way, they enjoy an uncontested sovereign hegemony oyer their own self-identification, insuring the
group discourse is self constituted and that its parameters, operative methodology, ,uu\ standards of
argument, appraisal, and evidentiary provisions are self defined. Thus, for example, when Sylvester calls
lor a "home.steading"
does so "by [a] repetitive feminist insistence that we be included on our terms" (my emphasis). Rather
than an invitation to engage in dialogue, this is an ultimatum that a sovereign intellectual space be
provided and insulated from critics who question the merits of identity-based political discourse. Instead,
Sylvester calls upon International Relations to "share space, respect, and trust in a re-formed endeavor,"
but one otherwise proscribed as committed to demonstrating not only "that the secure homes constructed
by IR's many debaters are chimerical," but, as a consequence, to ending International Relations and
remaking it along lines grounded in feminist postmodernism. 93 Such stipulative provisions might be
likened to a form of negotiated sovereign territoriality where, as part of the settlement for the historically
aggrieved, border incursions are to be allowed but may not be met with resistance or reciprocity.
Demands for entry to the discipline are thus predicated on conditions that insure two sets of rules,
cocooning postmodern feminist spaces from systematic analyses while "respecting" this discourse as it
hastens about the project of deconstructing International Relations as a "male space." Sylvester's
impassioned plea for tolerance and "emphatic cooperation" is thus confined to like-minded individuals,
those who do not challenge feminist epistemologies but accept them as a necessary means of reinventing
the discipline as a discourse between postmodern identitiesthe most important of which is gender. 94
Intolerance or misogyny thus become the ironic epithets attached to those who question the wisdom of
this reinvention or the merits of the return of identity in international theory.'"' Most strategic of all,
however, demands for entry to the discipline and calls for intellectual spaces betray a self-imposed,
politically motivated marginality. After all, where are such calls issued from other than the discipline and
the intellectualand well establishedspaces of feminist International Relations?
Much like the strategies employed by male dissidents, then, feminist postmodernists too deflect as
illegitimate any criticism that derives from skeptics whose vantage points are labeled privileged. And
privilege is variously interpreted historically, especially along lines of race, color, and sex where the
denotations white and male, to name but two, serve as generational mediums to assess the injustices of
past histories. White males, for example, become generic signifiers for historical oppression, indicating an
ontologicallv privileged group by which the historical experiences of the "other" can then be reclaimed in
the context of their related oppression, exploitation, AND exclusion. Legitimacy, in this context, can then
be claimed in terms of one's group identity and the extent to which the history of that particular group has
been "silenced." In this same way, self-identification or "self-situation" establishes one's credentials,
allowing admittance to the group and legitimating the "authoritative" vantage point from which one
speaks and writes. Thus, for example, Jan Jindy Pettman includes among the introductory pages to her
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most recent book, Worldinjj Women, a section titled "A (personal) politics of location," in which her
identity as a woman, a feminist, and an academic, makes apparent her particular (marginal) identities and
group loyalties.96 Similarly, Christine Sylvester, in the introduction to her book, insists, "It is important to
provide a context for one's work in the often-denied politics of the personal." Accordingly, selfdeclaration reveals to the reader that she is a feminist, went to a Catholic girls school where she was
schooled to "develop your brains and confess something called 'sins' to always male forever priests," and
that these provide some pieces to her dynamic objectivity.97 Like territorial markers, self-identification
permits entry to intellectual spaces whose sovereign authority is "policed" as much by marginal
subjectivities as they allege of the oppressors who "police" the discourse of realism, or who are said to
walk the corridors of the discipline insuring the replication of patriarchy, hierarchical agendas, and
"malestream" theory. If Sylvester's version of feminist postmodernism is projected as tolerant, perspectivist, and encompassing of a multiplicity of approaches, in reality it is as selective, exclusionary, and
dismissive of alternative perspectives as mainstream approaches are accused of being.]]
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AT: IR Fem Focus on identity exclusion

They criticize the notion of generalizing women while grouping men into a patriarchal stereo-type
which perpetuates the gender categories they try to solve.
We might also extend a contextualist lens to analyze Sylvester's formulations, much as she insists her
epistemological approach does. Sylvester, for example, is adamant that we can not really know who
"women" are, since to do so would be to invoke an essentialist concept, concealing the diversity inherent
in this category. "Women" don't really exist in Sylvester's estimation since there are black women, white
women, Hispanic, disabled, lesbian, poor, rich, middle class, and illiterate women, to name but a few. The
point, for Sylvester, is that to speak of "women" is to do violence to the diversity encapsulated in this
category and, in its own wav, to silence those women who remain unnamed. Well and good. Yet this same
analytical respect for diversity seems lost with men. Politics and international relations become the
"places of men." But which men? All men? Or just white men, or rich, educated, elite, upper class, heterosexual men? To speak of political places as the places of men ignores the fact that most men, in fact the
overwhelming majority of men, are not in these political places at all, are not decision makers, elite,
affluent, or powerful. Much as with Svlxester's categories, there are poor, lower class, illiterate, gav,
black, and white men, many of whom suffer the vestiges of hunger, poverty, despair, AND
disenfranchisement just as much as women. So why invoke the category "men" in such essentialist and
ubiquitousways while cognizant only of the diversity' in tiie category "women." These are double
standards, not erudite theoretical formulations, betraying, dare one say, sexism toward men by invoking
male gender generalizations and crude caricatures.]]
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The focus on identity politics creates a self-identifying race to the bottom that fractures
their movement and turns International Relations into identity group wars
Jarvis 2k [DSL, International Relations and the Challenge of Postmodernism, February, University of South
Carolina Publishing, pg. 163-164]
[[Problems of this nature, however, are really manifestations of a deeper, underlying ailment endemic to
discourses derived from identity politics. At base, the most elemental question for identity discourse, as
Zalewski and Enloe note, is "Who am I?" The personal becomes the political, evolving a discourse
where self-identification, but also one's identification by others, presupposes multiple identities that are
fleeting, overlapping, and changing at any particular moment in time or place. "We have multiple
identities," argues V. Spike Peterson, "e.g., Canadian, homemaker, Jewish, Hispanic, socialist.""" And
these identities are variously depicted as transient, polymorphic, interactive, discursive, and never fixed.
As Richard Brown notes, "Identity is given neither institutionally nor biologically. It evolves as one
orders continuities on one's conception of oneself." 102 Yet, if we accept this, the analytical utility of
identity politics seems problematic at best. Which identity, for example, do we choose from the many that
any one subject might display affinity for? Are we to assume that all identities are of equal importance or
that some are more important than others? How do we know which of these identities might be transient
and less consequential to one's sense of self and, in turn, politically significant to understanding inter national politics? Why, for example, should we place gender identity onto-logically prior to class, sexual
orientation, ethnic origin, ideological perspective, or national identity?" 13 As Zalewski and Enloe ask,
"Why do we consider states to be a major referent? Why not men? Or women?" 104 But by the same token,
why not dogs, shipping magnates, movie stars, or trade regimes? Why is gender more constitutive of
global politics than, say, class, or an identity as a cancer survivor, laborer, or social worker? Most of all,
why is gender essentialized in feminist discourse, reified into the most pre eminent of all identities as the
primary lens through which international relations must be viewed? Perhaps, for example, people
understand difference in the context of identities outside of gender. As Jane Martin notes, "How do we
know that difference . . . does not turn on being tat or religious or in an abusive relationship?""15 The
point, perhaps flippantly made, is that identity is such a nebulous concept, its meaning so obtuse and so
inherently subjective, that it is near meaningless as a conduit for under standing global politics if only
because it can mean anything to anybody.
For others like Ann Tickner, however, identity challenges the assumption ot state sovereignty.
"Becoming curious about identity formation below the state and surrendering the simplistic assumption
that the state is sovereign will," Tickner suggests, "make us much more realistic describers and explainers
of die current international system."106 The multiple subjects and their identities that constitute the nationstate are, for Tickner, what are important. In a way, of course, she is correct. States are constitutive
entities drawn from the amalgam of their citizens. But such observations are somewhat trite and banal and
lead International Relations into a devolving and perpetually dividing discourse based upon everemergent and transforming identities. Surely the more important observation, however, concerns the
bounds of this enterprise. Where do we stop? Are there limits to this exercise or is it a boundless project?
And how do we theorize the notion of multiple levels of identities harbored in each subject person? If
each of us is fractured into multiple identities, must we then lunge into commentaries specific to each
group? Well we might imagine, for example, a discourse in International Relations between white
feminist heterosexual women, white middle class heterosexual physically challenged men, working class
gay Latinos, txansgendered persons, ethnic Italian New York female garment workers, and Asian lesbian
ecofeminists. Each would represent a self-constituted knowledge and nomenclature, a discourse reflective
of specific identity-group concerns. Knowledge and understanding would suffer from a diaspora,
becoming unattainable in any perspicacious sense except in localities so specific that its general
understanding, or inter-group applicability, would be obviated. Identity groups would become so
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splintered and disparate that International Relations would approach a form of identity tribalism with each
group forming a kind of intellectual territory, jealously policing its knowledge borders from intrusions by
other groups otherwise seen as illegitimate, nonrepresentative, or opposed to the interests of the group.
Nor is it improbable to suppose that identity politics in International Relations would evolve a realpolitik
between groups, a realist power-struggle for intergroup legitimacy or hegemonic control over par ticular
knowledges or, in the broader polity', situations of intergroup conflict. With what legitimacy, for example,
do middle class, by and large white, affluent, feminist, women International Relations scholars speak and
write for black, poor, illiterate, gay, working class, others who might object, resist, or denounce such
empathetic musings? The legitimacy with which Sylvester or Enloe write, for example, might be
questioned on grounds of their identities as elite, educated, privileged women, unrepresentative of the
experiences and realities of those at the coal face of international politics.]
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Their focus on identity politics creates global fragmentation and seclusion. Only using the
commonality of ethical humans can we unite to solve power relations, war, and disease
[[Lurking behind such positions, of course, is the highly problematic assumption that a fundamental shift in the political, social,
and economic worlds has occurred; that "people, machinery and money, images and ideas now follow increasingly
nonisomorphic paths, and that because of this there is a "deterritorializing mobility of peoples, ideas, and images," one
overcoming the "laborious moves of statism to project an image of the world divided along territorially discontinuous (separated)
sovereign spaces, each supposedly with homogeneous cultures and impervious essences." 111 In this new world where global space
as-territory has been obliterated, where discrete national cultures no longer exist but are dissolved by cosmopolitanism and
ubiquitous images peddled by hypermodern communications, all that remains as tangible referents for knowledge and
understanding, we are told, are our own fractured identities."2 While, lor tcminists, this is profoundly liberating, allowing them to
recognize a "multiplicity of identities," each engaged in a "differing politics," it also betrays how narrow is the intent of feminist
postmodernism, which stands lot no other end except the eradication of essentialism." 3 Much as Ashley saw m positivism
tyrannical structures of oppression, so in essentialism postmodern feminists see the subjugation of diversity amid universal nari.itiws Vet the reification of difference as the penultimate ontological beginning and end point seems disingenuous in the extreme.
The question is not whether there are differencesof course there arebut whether these are significant for International
Relations, and if so in what capacity? Historically, the brief of International Relations has been to go out in search of those things
that unite us, not divide us. Division, disunitv, and difference have been the unmistakable problems endemic to global politics,
and overcoming them the objective that has provided scholars with both their motivating purpose and moral compass. In
venerating difference, identity politics unwittingly reproduces this problematique; exacerbating differences beyond their
significance, fabricating disunity contributing to social AND political cleavage. Yes, we are not all the SAME. BUT the things that
unite us air surely more important, more numerous, and more fundamental to the human condition than those that divide us. We
all share a conviction that war is bad, for example, that violence is objectionable, global poverty unconscionable, and that
peaceful interstate relations are desirable. Likewise, we all inhabit one earth and have similar environmental concerns, have the
same basic needs in terms of developmental requirements, nutrition, personal security, education, and shelter. To suppose that
these modernist concerns are divisible on the basis of gender, color, sexuality, or religious inclination seems specious, promot ing
contrariety where none really exists from the perspective of Interna tional Relations. How, for example, amid the reification of
ever-divisible difference, do we foster political community and solidarity, hope to foster greater global collectivity, or unite
antithetically inclined religious, segrega tionist, or racial groups on the basis of their professed difference? How this is meant to
secure new visions of international politics, solve the divisions of previous disputations, or avert violent factionalisms in the
future remains curiously absent from the discourse of identity politics.'14]]
The Alt doesnt solveRadical disagreements within the feminist framework will hinder
your movement. A holistic feminist advocacy cant solve.
Jarvis 2k [DSL, International Relations and the Challenge of Postmodernism, February, University of South
Carolina Publishing, pg. 146]
[[But if the call to begin afresh the study of international relations resounds loudest among feminists, the
respective approaches they proffer fall victim to radical disagreement. Postmodern feminism, feminist
postmodernism, feminist empiricism, cultural feminism, or standpoint feminism, to name but a few, are
among the many feminisms whose respective approaches either embrace women, reject their existence
altogether, invoke the categories of gender, sexuality, patriarchy, or masculinism, or wish to repudiate all
of these on the basis of their socially constructed nature. For feminists, the conundrum is manifest by
problems of identity, representation, and language. Simply to "add women and stir" presupposes the
subordinate importance of gender and, more importantly, that the category "women" is ubiquitous. For
some feminists, for example, we can never really know "who are women," "where are women," or even
"what are women."31 Do women really exist or is the category "women" merely inscribed by patriarchal
norms that represent little more than socially constructed fabrications? And if women do exist, does this
singular noun presuppose a shared experience, a sisterhood, in short, a sex similarity? Attempting to
dismantle the masculinist hegemony of International Relations thus proves discursive for feminists who
tend to divaricate between two dominant schools of thought. These we might term con-structivist or
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epistemological feminism, and the second essentialist, onto-logical or standpoint feminism. 33]]
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AT: IR Fem Reify Difference Falsely (Alt Fails)

Feminist critiques reify difference falsely and recreate the same epistemological problems
under a mask of sensitivity

Celebrating and reifying difference as a political end in itself thus run the risk of creating increasingly divisive and
incommensurate discourses where each group claims a knowledge or experienced based legitimacy but, in doing so,
precluding the possibility of common understanding or intergroup political discourse. Instead, difference produces
antithetical discord and political-tribalism: only working class Hispanics living in South Central Los
Angeles, for instance, can speak of, for, and about their community, its concerns, interests and needs; only female
African Americans living in the projects of Chicago can speak "legitimately" of the housing and social problems
endemic to inner city living. Discourse becomes confined not to conversations between identity groups since this is
impossible, but story telling of personal/group experiences where the "other" listens intently until their turn comes
to tell their own stories and experiences. Appropriating the voice or pain of others by speaking, writing, or theorizing
on issues, perspectives, or events not indicative of one's group-identity becomes not only illegitimate but a medium of
oppression and a means to silence others. The very activity of theory and political discourse as it has been understood
traditionally in International Relations, and the social sciences more generally, is thus rendered inappropriate in the
new milieu of identity politics.
Politically, progressives obviously see a danger in this type of discourse an d, from a social scientific perspective,
understand it to be less than rig orous. Generalizing, as with theorizing, for example, has fallen victim to
postmodern feminist reactions against methodological essentialism and the adoption of what Jane Martin calls the
instillation of false difference into identity discourse. By reacting against the assumption that "all individuals in the
world called `women' were exactly like us" (i.e. white, middle class, educated, etc.), feminists now tend "a priori to
give privileged status to a predetermined set of analytic categories and to affirm the existence of nothing but
difference." In avoiding the "pitfall of false unity," feminists have thus "walked straight into the trap of false
difference. Club words now dominate the discourse. Essentialism, ahistoricism, universalism, and androcentrism,
for example, have become the "prime idiom[s] of intellectual terrorism and the privileged instrument[s] of political
orthodoxy." While sympathetic to the cause, even feminists like Jane Martin are critical of the methods that have
arisen to circumvent the evils of essentialism, characterizing contemporary feminist scholarship as imposing
its own "chilly climate" on those who question the method ological proclivity for difference and historicism.
Postmodern feminists, she argues, have fallen victim to compulsory historicism, and by "rejecting one kind of essence
talk but adopting another," have followed a course "whose logical conclusion all but precludes the use of
language." For Martin, this approaches a "dogmatism on the methodological level that we do not countenance in other
contexts.... It rules out theories, categories, and research projects in advance; prejudges the extent of difference and
the nonexistence of similarity." In all, it speaks to a methodological trap that produces many of the same problems as
before, but this time in a language otherwise viewed as progressive, sensitive to the particularities of identity and
gender, and destructive of conventional boundaries in disciplinary knowledge and theoretical endeavor.
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AT: IR Fem Makes Discipline Meaningless (Alt Fails)

Feminist criticism of international relations makes the discipline meaningless- including
cultural politics into international relations strips the discipline of any capacity to inform
policy

Methodologically, the implications of reifying false difference are also far from benign for International Relations,
but betray a devolution of disciplinary knowledge and theory amid sundry narratives captive to personal
"travelogues," attempts to recreate histories or enumerate a catalogue of previous "silences" simply on the basis that
such has not been done before. The result is a type of agenda inflation, sprawling research topics that, from a more
traditionalist perspective, would seem unrelated to International Relations. Consider, for example, Birigit Weiss, who attempted
to extol the virtues of an identity-based research agenda for International Relations, suggesting that we think of "symbols such as phone boxes,
mail boxes, or the little green man flashing electronically above pedestrian crossings. [These] are national (identity) symbols which we seldom
notice as such," she writes. "Only: (sic) once we are away from home do we perceive them as different. First deduction. Being abroad we learn to
know what home means." Travel, and the distance associated with it, for Weiss "helps us to define who we are (and where we come from)-which
is a necessary condition for developing an international perspective." The old adage that "travel does round the individual" is now reiterated in
postmodern form, and International Relations exalted to become "interNETional" or "intercultural" studies where, for example, Weiss notes that
with the internet "one can travel from ocean to ocean, from continent to continent, from country to country and around the globe in one nightthrough cyberspace." One can only suppose that play on the internet assists in the formation of our personal identities, makes us better scholars,
and that reflections on this can constitute discourse in "InterNETional" studies. As a final rdkction on what "intercultural" as opposed to
International Rela- tions might look like, Weiss recalls the Container 96---Art across Oceans exhibition held in Copenhagen, where "artists
coming from 96 seaport cities. . . created art works inside the containers. The visitors were able to 'circumnavigate the globe in just a few hours'
and could 'take a walk from continent to continent, from climazone to climazone and from seaport to seaport and enter into visions and realities,
as perceived by artists from near and far."'115 "In my view," Weiss writes, "this exhibition is an example for an alternative vision of international
relations, and might help us look beyond the scope of the discipline." 116 Similarly, Marysia Zalewski concerns herself "with the intersection
between the international political economy and pregnant women's bodies," and addresses concerns such as the "ethics of 'quality-controlled
babies,'" the relationship between eugenics and economic ideologies, and how the "ubiquitous use of ultrasound is incrementally erasing the presence of the mother" while "the fetus is imagined as a sort of extra-terrestrial floating in 'space.'" Her discussion is counterpoised against questions
that reflect on popular cultural images like the movies Three Men and a Baby, Junior, and Tootsie. Ultimately, she is concerned vvith "what might
happen when men can have babies? Or when the boundary between women and machine collapses? What might this do to our notions of
subjectivity? Have reproductive technologies heralded the arrival of the posthuman body-the cyborg-at the end of the twentieth century?"117
Likewise, Cynthia Enloe sees the purview of International Relations extending to such topics as the dating practices of American soldiers and the
rumors surrounding "'barracks girls,' young British girls who leave home and in time become resident sexual partners of American male
soldiers."118 Issues and topics germane to International Relations Enloe extends to interracial liaisons and romances between African American
GIs and British women; the sexual proclivities of U.S. soldiers; and observations that "Women can seem as much a threat as a comfort to the
modern warrior. A women is to be destroyed just as the enemy is to be destroyed"; or that some soldiers are "far more ambivalent about women as
a direct result of their militarized sexuality."119 While interesting, one wonders if the disciplinary parameters of International
Relations are now so porous as to be meaningless. If, as Martin Griffiths and Terry O'Callaghan suggest, "Anyone
can 'join' IR, regardless of their formal training," is there any longer an intrinsic meaning or purpose to what we do
other than engage in academic musings for their own sake? 121 Does this mean, for example, that no formal training or grounding
in world politics will suffice as preparation for studying them, that there is no core to our subject, no central conccrns or rccurring themes that
warrant at least rudimentary attention if one is to have an elementary grasp of things international? The obliteration of intellectual
boundaries, the suggestion that there is "no valid distinction between the international and domestic spheres,"I21 and
that all issues are germane to International Relations supposes that we can not only "forget IR theory," as Roland
Bleiker urges, but read, write, and research anything of nominal interest to us and call this international politics.
Birigit Weiss's vision of container art exhibitions or Cynthia Enloe's reflections on the posthuman body-the cyborg-threatens not just to expand
the vistas of our discipline but, in doing so, make us little more than a compendium of the visual arts, science fiction, identities, personal stories,
and research whims whose intellectual agendas are so disparate as to be meaningless. Indeed, precisely how this makes for better
knowledge and a better understanding of global politics or how such agendas or concerns are related to global events
and processes, we are never told. The only objective evident in the new identity politics seems to be the
"transgression of boundaries," where everything no matter how disparate is assumed to be related to international
politics and where the purview of our disciplinary lenses are counseled to have no focus but be encompassing of all
things social, political, and economic.
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AT: IR Fem Ignores Suffering of Men

Their critiques over-focus on gender violence only serves to mask other forms of violence,
particularly towards men

Yet, according to V. Spike Peterson, male violence constitutes a global war against women, perpetrated with state
complicity because of patriarchal relations that invariably see women suffer far more than men." In Peterson's
estimation, women suffer a heavier burden than do men, suffer more emotional stress and bear the burden of patriarchal
state expenditures that benefit men at the expense of women. "Systematic violence," things like "sexual
harassment, battery, rape, and torture," Peterson and Runyan argue, "is the persistent price that women pay for the
maintenance of large militaries." The implication, of course, is that men pay no price and enjoy freedom from violence
when, in fact, we know that hazing rituals, physical and verbal abuse, torture, and mental torment are daily
occurrences throughout the armies of the world and these staffed almost exclusively by men. Human rights too suggest
Peterson and Runyan, are compromised by militarization. "Amnesty International vividly documents examples of military and police forces around the world terrorizing, imprisoning, and even torturing women who seek information
about family members who have `disappeared' at the hands of government-sponsored death squads." What
Peterson and Runyan forget to add , however, is that by Amnesty Interna tional's own estimation, the overwhelming
number of political prisoners in the world who suffer cruel and inhumane treatment happen to be men; that
those who "disappeared" under Argentina's military junta and Nicaragua's and El Salvador's U.S.-sponsored
death squads in the 1980s were disproportionately male; and that torture of political prisoners by sheer weight
of numbers therefore concerns, disproportionately, the torture of male political prisoners.
Their critique ignores the suffering of males


Even the traditional concerns of International Relations, war and conflict studies, are not spared from the biased
framing of the gender variable. Cynthia Enloe, for instance, tells of the plight of women during the Bosnian war and
how Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian men used rape as an instrument of terror. By implication, however, we are left to
assume that men in the Bosnian conflict endured no terror, brutality, or deprivations, but were simply the perpetrators of
atrocities. Similarly, in discussing the Gulf War, Enloe is highly exclusive in dealing with gender, adequately
narrating the plight of female migrant workers in Kuwait who suffered atrocities like rape and torture at the hands of
Iraqi troops, but neglecting the "wider Iraqi process of detention, torture, execution, and forced removal ... of tens
of thousands of Kuwaitis" that, "judging from the human-rights and media reports, [were] virtually all male."
Narratives of this type reveal how exclusive has been the framing of the "gender variable" in International
Relations, where men are characterized as a hegemonic gender-class whose interests, concerns, actions, and writings are opposed to the interests and well-being of women. As Sylvester writes, "states and their regimes connect
with people called women only to ensure ... that the benefits of regime participation will flow from `women' to `men'
and not ever the other way round." With such a mindset, facts become superfluous to the argument(s), leading to a
fallacy of composition where assertive prose is itself offered as evidence of the disproportionate level of burden or
victimization that women suffer. Thus, for example, Jones is plainly bemused at Ann Tickner's assertion that women
have been forced to enter "the military primarily in the lower ranks." But, asks Jones, "how else does one enter the
military, except at the lower levels? Likewise, Peterson and Runyan assert that "the plight of both Third World
and Western women has been exacerbated by the debt crisis." Third World and Western men, apparently, were
untouched by this same debt crisis. And when commenting on the migration south of the border of "the jobs of
many working-class women in the United States," Peterson and Runyan announce with horror how, between "1979
and 1983, 35% of the workers who lost jobs because of plant closings in the United States were women." What they
fail to point out, of course, is that this means that fully 65 percent of those who lost their jobs because of these same
plant closings were men."' Moreover, if we look at the available evidence for issues like mur der, suicide,
homelessness, life expectancy, and mortality rates, we find that rather than a hegemonic gender-class, statistically men
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kill each other at a far greater rate than they do women, commit suicide at a rate almost three times that of women,
constitute about 80 percent of the homeless in the United States, throughout virtually every community in the world
live shorter lives than do women, and in the developed world suffer a mortality rate due to disease twice that for
women.
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AT: IR Fem Alt Fails

Rethinking fails - The kritik is essentialist, reproducing the exact stereotypes produced
under patriarchy
Whitworth, Assistant Professor of Political Science York University, 1994
(Sandra, Feminism and International Relations: Towards a Political Economy of Gender in Interstate and NonGovernmental Institutions, p. 20)
< Even when not concerned with mothering as such, much of the politics that emerge from radical feminism within
IR depend upon a 're-thinking' from the perspective of women. What is left unexplained is how simply thinking
differently will alter the material realities of relations of domination between men and women.46 Structural
(patriarchal) relations are acknowledged, but not analysed in radical feminism's reliance on the expe riences,
behaviours and perceptions of 'women'. As Sandra Harding notes, the essential and universal 'man', long the focus of
feminist critiques, has merely been replaced here with the essential and universal 'woman'.47
And indeed, that notion of 'woman' not only ignores important differences amongst women, but it also reproduces
exactly the stereotypical vision of women and men, masculine and feminine, that has been produced under
patriarchy.48 Those women who do not fit the mould - who, for example, take up arms in military struggle - are
quickly dismissed as expressing 'negative' or 'inauthentic' feminine values (the same accusation is more rarely made
against men).49 In this way, it comes as no surprise when mainstream IR theorists such as Robert Keohane happily
embrace the tenets of radical feminism.50 It requires little in the way of re-thinking or movement from accepted and
comfortable assumptions and stereotypes. Radical feminists find themselves defending the same account of women
as nurturing, pacifist, submissive mothers as do men under patriarchy, anti-feminists and the New Right. As some
writers suggest, this in itself should give feminists pause to reconsider this position. 51>
Their alternative is nihilistit rejects all forms of political action that could improve the
way society views gender.
Whitworth, Assistant Professor of Political Science York University, 1994
(Sandra, Feminism and International Relations: Towards a Political Economy of Gender in Interstate and NonGovernmental Institutions, p. 22-23)
This points also to the serious limitations involved in feminist post-modernist understandings of 'social construction'.
While acknowledging that identities and meanings are never natural or universal, postmodernists locate the
construction of those meanings almost exclusively in the play of an ambiguously defined power, organised through
discourse. This means that identities and meanings are constructed in the absence of knowing actors, and more importantly, that there is very
little that knowing actors can do to challenge those meanings or identities. The ways in which power manifests itself, the particular
meanings and identities that emerge, seem almost inevitable. They are unrelated to prevailing material conditions or
the activities of agents and institutions. Similarly, critics may describe the play of power in the construction of
meaning, but cannot participate in changing it.63 As Marysia Zalewski writes: The post-modernist intention to
challenge the power of dominant discourses in an attempt to lead those discourses into disarray is at first glance
appealing, but we have to ask what will the replacement be? If we are to believe that all is contingent and we have
no base on to which we can ground claims to truth, then 'power alone will determine the outcome of competing truth
claims'. Post-modernist discourse does not offer any criteria for choosing among competing explanations and thus
has a tendency to lead towards nihilism - an accusation often levelled at the purveyors of post-modernism and to which they seem
unable to provide any answer, except perhaps in the words of one post-modernist scholar 'what's wrong with nihilism'?64 Postmodernists are
equally post-feminist, a title they sometimes adopt, for their analysis loses sight of the political imperatives which inform
feminism: to uncover and change inequalities between women and men. As Ann Marie Goetz suggests, when many
of the issues surrounding women and international relations are ones which concern the very survival of those
women, postmodernism's continued back-pedalling and disclaimers are not only politically unacceptable, they are,
more importantly, politically irresponsible.
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AT: IR Fem No Gender Bias

No evidence exists for gender bias in international relations feminists substitute facts for
feelings and create theory based upon isolated personal experiences

Crude characterizations of a hegemonic gender class thus display an anomalous capacity to ignore completely those
facts that do not accord with ideological belief. And postmodern feminists have been most adroit at this, substituting
the evidentiary requirements of systematic observation and reasoned argument for identity discourses that rely on
"perceptions" and "feelings." In a recent survey conducted for the International Studies Association (ISA) by the Committee for Study on
the Status of Women in International Relations, for example, Marie Henehan and Meredith Reid Sarkees frame their survey in such a way as to
measure the subjective perceptions of respondents. "The respondents were asked whether they had perceived gender bias in the course of their
career."139 In an alternate survey conducted for the same ISA committee, Christine Sylvester notes that "many respondents report feeling isolated
within their departments and from major networks in the field."140 Aside from the obvious fact that perceptions of bias or feelings of isolation
are not exclusive to women, questions of the methodological appropriateness of anecdotal evidence need also to be
explored. That the reality of any situation can be gauged from personal narratives based exclusively upon perception
makes for bad social science and leads, ultimately, to destructive debates that hurl about subjective accusations. 141
Witness, for example, the claims of matriarchal superiority when standpoint feminists insist that "women have a distinctive,
superior view of the world, distinctive because shaped by those features of their experiences that distinguish them from men, superior on the . . .
basis that the oppressed are capable of a higher form of awareness than the oppressor."142 This is simply inverted patriarchy, premised on little
more than fanciful whims about the innate characteristics of women vis-a-vis men. It replicates the privileging of one gender over
another and discharges all hope of equality between genders on the basis of merit alone. Moreover, it invokes a
crude and unsubstantiated argument derived through intuition, that women feel more deeply, are better knowers, and
thus have better understandings of international politics. But how is this different from patriarchal-chauvinist claims
that men are more rational, logical, strategic and women more emotional, less reasoned, and captive to their
biological cycles? Both such arguments are equally as preposterous and need to be abandoned, not invoked as a
means forward for understanding international relations. More obviously, such silly methods tend toward a perverse
hierarchical index of who suffers the most, who bears the most burden, feels the most hurt.
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AT: IR Fem Permutation (Realism)

The only way to reconceptualize the feminist role in international relations is through
empiricism working within a realist framework is necessary for change
Keohane 1991
(Robert, Professof of International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, International
Relations Theory: Contributions of a Feminist Standpoint, Gender and International Relations, ed. Rebecca Grant
and Kathleen Newland, p. 45-6)
<Nevertheless, emphasizing the victimization of women by 'the patriarchal state' or 'the interstate system'
provides only li mi t ed insights into international relations. Some an al yst s succumb to the temptation to
discuss, in sweeping terips, 'the patriarchal state' or 'the war system' without making distinctions among states or
international systems. To do so commits the analytical error of reifying a stylized 'patriarchal state' or 'war system'.
Furthermore, excoriating universal repression seems to lead more toward moralizing about its in iq u i ty than
toward the analysis of sources of variation in its incidence.
At a descriptive level, a valuable contribution of f e m i ni s t empiricism would be to document the extent to
which the inter-state system depends on the under-rewarded labour of women or on gendered structures of society
that disadvantage women. One can ask, as Cynthia Enloe has started to do, to what extent the inter-state system is
dependent on gendered roles (diplomat, soldier) that sharply differentiate, by gender, p u b l i c and private
real ms.'' More ambitiously, feminist empiricism coul d seek to explore the conditions under which repression of
women is more or less severe: what types of states and international systems have more adverse consequences for
women's lives than others?
To make a major impact on thinking about international relations, however, it will not be sufficient explicitl y
to point out that women have been marginalized in the state and in inter-state politics. This r eal i t y is well
known, even if conventional international relations theory has tended to ignore it! Feminist empiricism will be
most significant, it seems to me, if used in conjunction with feminist standpoint re-conceptualizations to reexamine central concepts of international relations theory by asking about their values for empirical research.
Feminist empiricism, guided by feminist reconceptualization, could go beyond the quest i on of 'the' role of
women in international relations' to a critical a n a l ys i s of the extent to which
contemporary international relations theory helps us to understand what is happening in world politics today.>
Only the permutation solves working within the realist framework is the only way to
deny nihilism and include those outside of the feminist circle necessary for change
Keohane 1991
(Robert, Professof of International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, International
Relations Theory: Contributions of a Feminist Standpoint, Gender and International Relations, ed. Rebecca Grant
and Kathleen Newland, p. 46-7)
It seems to me that this post-modernist project is a dead end in the study of international relations - and that it
would be disastrous for feminist international relations theory to pursue this path. Of course I am aware that social
knowledge is always value laden and that objectivit y is an aspiration rather than an accomplishment. But I object
to the notion that because social science cannot attain any perfectly reliable knowledge, it is justifiable for
students of society to 'obliterate the validity of reality' . 2 4 I also object to the notion that we should happily accept
the existence of multiple incommensurable epistemologies, each equ al l y valid. Such a view seems to me to lead
away from our knowledge of the external world and ultimately to a sort of nihilism. Hawkesworth argues that 'the
world is more than a text' and that feminists should avoid 'the postmodernist tendency to reject all reasons'."' I
would go further and say that agreement on epistemological essentials constitutes a valuable scientific asset that
should not be discarded lightly. With such agreement, people with different commensurable terms can perhaps come
to an agreement with the aid of evidence. As philosophers of science such as Imre Lakatos have argued, the
invalidity of naive falsificationism does not destroy the possibility of establishing standards for scientific research:
participants in the process apply criteria having to do with resolution of anomalies, discovery of new facts, and what
Lakatos calls 'the requirement of continuous growth'.26
A major aim of science, even social science, is to provide us with a common set of epistemological tools, in a
discipline, for ascertaining the nature of reality and therefore testing the adequacy of our theories. This is not to
pretend that any knowledge is perfectly 'objective': clearly our values, our upbringing, our bodily experiences and
our positions in society - gender, class, culture, race -all affect what we believe. But science has the value of
narrowing gaps in belief by providing common standards to test beliefs, and therefore disciplining our minds,
protecting us to some extent from bias. The very difficulty of achieving social scientific knowledge is an argument
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for cherishing rather than discarding social science and the aspiration for a more or less unified epistemology.
I fear that many feminist theorists of international relations may follow the
c u r r e n t l y fashionable path of fragmenting epistemology, denying the possib i l i t y of social science. But I think
this would be an intellectual and moral disaster. As Linda Alcoff points out, 'post-structuralist critiques of subjec t i v i t y pertain to the construction of all subjects or they pertain to none. . . . Nominalism threatens to wipe out
feminism itself.' 2 7 That is, feminist theory cannot be without a positive standpoint it cannot be only adversarial.
Retreating to post-modern adversarial analysis would foreclose the relations that could be regarded as valuable by
people outside the feminist circle. Scientifically, it would lead away from what 1 think feminist theory should do:
generate novel hypotheses that could then be evaluated with evidence, in a way that could lead to convincing
results. Politically, as Hawkesworth declares,
should postmodernism's seductive text gain ascendancy, it will not be an accident that power remains in the
hands of the white males who currently possess it. In a world of radical inequality, relativist resignation
reinforces the status quo.28>
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AT: Anthropocentrism Anthro Romance nature = extinction

Rejection of anthropocentrism is reductionist, recreating hierarchies by romanticizing
Nature this causes humans to stop fearing death, causing extinction
Hand editor of TCRNews.com and an advocate for the homeless 2002 [Stephen, 2-21-2002, The Image of
God vs. Animaility, http://tcrnews2.com/nihil.html]
Today, so-called
Eco-theologians, like Matthew Fox and a host of others, are heard calling for an "end to
anthropocentrism". Human beings, they urge, should no longer consider themselves as the center of creation, having "dominion" over
the animal world because Genesis, wherein this natural hierarchy is first declared, is said to be outdated, fit only for demythologization. Moreover
they press their views urgently, suggesting that Holy Mother the Planet will "die" if the new course is not taken. And because
their
theories are essentially the fruit of religious apostasy, they will brook no opposition. They have
replaced God the Father with the morally indifferent Earth-Mother. All that matters to this new goddess is that she become efficiently organized.
Under the pretext of doing precisely that new modalities of power are being put in place worldwide. These
powers are generally

globalist in orientation and seek to unite the peoples of the world under one religion ---or agreed upon
religious principles--- and one "world government". The Popes were warning about this pantheistic one-worldism at the very beginning of this
century, as witness Pius X's Apostolic letter to the Sillon in France.
Obviously, when
the Bible's creation-based, antropocentric, revelation is rejected, and an

evolutionary animal continuum (from amoeba to man) is presupposed as the only reality, then men begin
taking their cues for behavior from the animal world. This rationalization has reached tragically
absurd levels, as witness post-modernist writer Steven Shaviro's longing for the sexual autonomy
of bacteria. He speaks longingly of the "fluid promiscuity" of bacteria, "the earths most primordial inhabitants" which are "free from any
concerns about origins, any metaphysical nostalgia". Most importantly for Shaviro, bacteria induge in a guilt free
"perpetual orgy" where there is no "clear distinction between copulation and infection". . .and
where there is no linkage between sexuality and reproduction.7 Shaviro suggests that bacterial
and insect models are "nature's" antidote to culture. He is far from alone in this kind of
reductionism.
One cannot watch the "nature" shows on television without being inundated with this incessant
propaganda. Thus the "freedom" of the ape is coveted. Nature is romanticized. And the dark side
of the jungle is jauntily rationalized as if it were all just fine. Only the spiritually blind can
suppress the existential horror which this picture should evoke in man, precisely because he is
rational. Such horror, if modern man had his wits about him, would be viewed as teleological, i.e., pointing to the truth and goal (Telos) of
human existence. If man were a mere animal or the moral equivalent of bacteria he should not fear
death. If his death were as "natural" as an autumn leave falling, he would hardly consider death
an existential shock. Unlike the animals,8 however, which are "irrational...created by nature for
capture and destruction" (2 Peter 2:12), man is oriented to another Telos, to God Who is man's
Freedom and Life who is the Alpha and Omega of existence.
The negative essentializes nature frustrating their alternative
Barry, lecturer in the Department of Politics at Keele University, 1999 [John, Rethinking Green Politics, p. 52]
Similarly we can think of other animal categories such as 'pet' or 'food animal', which like 'vermin' both describe the
particular relation in which that animal stands to us as well as prescribing the appropriate treatment. The point is the
ubiquity of this normative 'background' that animals are not mere 'things'. Morally relevant categories in regard to
the inanimate world are less common but conceptualizations such as 'private property', 'garden', 'national park', 'city'
and in less enlightened times 'forest', 'uncharted lands', 'wasteland' and 'wilderness' are testament to the ubiquity and
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naturalness of human moral categorization of the external world.' This human concern with categorizing the natural
world demonstrates that because we do not interact with an entity called 'nature' or the 'environment', there can be no
single moral principle to govern this multifaceted and complex relation. In short, such moral categories and the
process of categorization are partly constitutive of that relation.
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AT: Anthropocentrism Anthro key to action/ecological conscience

(alt fails)
Concerns over humans and the well being of ecosystems cannot be separated
anthropocentrism is key to creating an ecological conscience, you dont solve your
alternative
Johnson 1996 [Pamela C., Development of an Ecological Conscience: Is Ecocentrism a Prerequisite? The
Academy of Management Review peer reviewed journal, July]
Non-anthropocentric appeals won't mobilize action

Light, professor of environmental philosophy and director of the Environmental Conservation Education Program,
2002 (Andrew, Applied Philosophy Group at New York University, METAPHILOSOPHY, v33, n4, July, p. 441)
Even if Katz and Oechsli's arguments are technically correct as a possible statement of the implications of
anthropocentrism in environmental policy and environmental activism, the facts of the case do not bear out their
worries. And we can imagine this to be so in many other cases. Even if sound nonanthropocentric motivations can be
described for other policies or acts of environmental heroism, at best we would expect that any motivation for any
action would be mixed, especially when it is a human performing that action. An environmental ethic that ignored
this lesson would be one that would be ill fitted to participate in policy decisions where the context always involves
an appeal to a variety of intuitions and not only to a discrete set. We must ask ourselves eventually: What is more
important, settling debates in value theory correct or actually motivating people to act, with the commitment of
someone like Mendes, to preserve nature? The pressing timeframe of environmental problems should at least
warrant a consideration of the latter.
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AT: Anthropocentrism Anthro key to protect

environment/ecological conscience (alt fails)
Acceptance of the prevalence of the anthropocentric mindset is necessary and must be
incorporated or the critique fails.
Light, Andrew, Assistant Professor of Environmental Philosophy and Director, Environmental Conservation
Education Program, 2002 (Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters What Really Works David Schmidtz and
Elizabeth Willott, p. 561)
It should be clear by now that endorsing a methodological environmental pragmatism requires an acceptance of
some form of anthropocentrism in environmental ethics, if only because we have sound empirical evidence that
humans think about the value of nature in human terms and pragmatists insist that we must pay attention to how
humans think about the value of nature. Indeed, as I said above, it is a common presupposition among committed
nonanthropocentrists that the proposition that humans are anthropocentrist is true, though regrettable. There are
many problems involved in the wholesale rejection of anthropocentrism by most environmental philosophers. While
I cannot adequately explain my reservations to this rejection, for now I hope the reader will accept the premise that
not expressing reasons for environmental priorities in human terms seriously hinders our ability to communicate a
moral basis for better environmental policies to the public. Both anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric claims
should be open to us.
Anthropocentrism helps create an environmental ethic necessary to protect humans and

nature
Barry, lecturer in the Department of Politics at Keele University, 1999[John, Rethinking Green Politics, p. 5758]
For example, by claiming part of nature as property people are obliged to treat it differently than if it were unowned.
Individuals now stand in a different relation to that part of nature, because they now stand in a different relation to
other humans. Thus, the treatment of nature viewed purely as a human resource can be guided, at least in part, by
ethical considerations. In discussing the question of how we ought to treat the non-human world the focus should be
on the evaluation of the reasons given for particular types of usage. Much of environmental ethics concerns itself
with establishing that treatment be premised on the independent moral status of non-humans, rather than focusing on
the primacy of the relational character of human/nonhuman affairs. One possible reason for this proprietarian view
suggested earlier is the non-anthropocentric conviction that a human-centred environmental ethic, resting on human
interests in and valuations of nature, cannot guarantee the a priori preservation of nature from human use that many
deep ecologists and environmental ethicists see as the mark of any 'true' environmental ethic. Anthropocentric moral
reasoning is held to be a precarious and insufficient ethical basis for the protection of nature. If, however, we reject
the notion that an environmental ethic must be judged by whether or not it secures this a priori protection for the
natural world, and instead see the job of any environmental ethic as regulating actual human uses of nature and
identifying abuses, then anthropocentrism per se (as opposed to particular conceptions of it) need not stand accused
of being part of the problem rather than part of the solution. It is the conviction of those who believe that nonanthropocentrism is necessary for an environmental ethic that leads to an emphasis on the non-anthropocentric
powers, values or capacities, and which marks much of what I have called the proprietarian strand of environmental
ethics. This nonanthropocentric ethic presents us with a picture of the world in which humans are disinterested
valuers. The naturalistic anthropocentrism of an ethic of use sees humans as 'interested and partial valuers', and
active transformers of that world. Because a relational view ultimately turns on human interests and concerns, it is
viewed as capable only of an 'ethic for the use of the environment' as opposed to a genuine 'environmental ethic'
(Regan, 1982), defined as an ethic which gives non-anthropocentric reasons for the protection of nature. What I wish
to do in this section is to argue that an 'ethics of use' which regulates social-environmental interaction is a sensible
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ethical platform upon which actual, concrete human-nature conflicts and decisions can be resolved, and upon which
green politics can base itself.
Anthropocentrism must be the basis of our green politics the K fails in its rejection
This chapter looks at deep ecology as the pre-eminent ecocentric approach within green moral theory. The aim of
this chapter is not to offer a comprehensive overview of deep ecology, but to argue that as it stands deep ecology is
insufficient to ground green political claims and policy prescriptions. The basic argument is that deep ecology is
unable to provide the necessary normative basis for green political theory. A central reason for this failure is that
deep ecology's non-anthropocentrism is premised on a false understanding of anthropocentrism. Allied to this is the
particular understanding of morality and ethics within deep ecology, an understanding which gives little attention to
the collective, intersubjective character of the ethical as a sphere of human action. The aim of this chapter is to clear
the ground for the argument in the next where it is argued that anthropocentric moral reasoning is not only perfectly
legitimate but fundamentally necessary to green politics if the gap between its political and philosophical claims is
to be overcome.
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AT: Anthropocentrism Anthro Wont Hurt the Environment

Anthropocentrism is not inherently destructive toward the environment theyve simply
defined it that way
Sensitivity to the various gradations within anthropocentrism is blunted by the definition of anthropocentrism used
by deep ecologists. Eckersley defines it as the belief that there is a clear and morally relevant dividing line between
humankind and the rest of nature, that humankind is the only or principal source of value and meaning in the world,
and that non-human nature is there for no other purpose but to serve humankind. (1992a: 51, emphasis added)
Breaking this statement down into three propositions, we can discern different aspects of the deep ecological critique
of anthropocentrism. Firstly, that there is a morally relevant divide between humans and non-humans is a statement
that all except committed biospheric egalitarians would agree with. As explained in the next chapter, being human
counts for something in a way which the charge that anthropocentrism is simply 'ungrounded speciesism' fails to
register (Routley and Routley, 1979). That the difference between humans and non-humans may be one of degree
rather than kind does not deflate the importance of this basic distinction between how humans interact with each
other and how they interact with the rest of the world. As will be recalled, in the introduction I argued that the moral
basis of green political theory is a composite one, made up of two moral spheres, one human only and the other
concerning social-environmental relations. The second statement, that humans are the only morally relevant beings
in the world, does not follow from the first. Accepting our status as the only or main source of value and meaning in
the world can ground widely different attitudes to the world. From this perspective anything from the complete and
unhindered exploitation of the world (the third statement) to the widespread protection of vast tracts of nature from
human interference can be forthcoming. For purely human reasons, informed by the idea that we attribute value in
an otherwise valueless world, our action in the world can be either extensive or minimal, and is compatible with
extending moral considerations to human interaction with the non-human world. And finally, there is nothing
inherently ecologically unfriendly about the fact that humans, as far as we know, are the only species with a moral
sense. It is the third statement that goes to the heart of the deep ecology position, where anthropocentrism is
understood as expressing an exclusively strong instrumentalist conception of the world. In Eckersley's formulation
the non-human is said to be exclusively of instrumental concern to the anthropocentrist. However, it does not follow,
either logically or in practice, that the first two positions lead to this instrumentalist one. This hypothesis can be
viewed as, in part, a metaphysical claim, the idea that the world exists solely for human tine and enjoyment. Without
such a metaphysical context it is difficult to sets how this statement can be meaningful. Unlike the previous two
arguments, which can be thought of as expressing general ethical features, the presumption that the non-human
world is there purely for human use is a meta-ethical claim. The problem with anthropocentrism, for deep ecology, is
thus not how it operates as an ethical theory, since ethics is meaningless outside an anthropocentric context, but how
it operates as a metaphysical position about the place it accords humans within the natural order. Yet there is no
necessary reason why this strange claim - which, religious justifications apart, would be extremely difficult to
establish - should be thought of as essential to anthropocentrism. The real reason why deep ecologists are suspicious
of reformed anthropocentrism is that the status of the non-human world remains contingent: that is, it does not enjoy
permanently protected status. This suspicion rests on the fact that deep ecology has at its heart an a priori position
which privileges the preservation of nature over the human use of nature (see below).
Anthropocentrism doesnt exclude environmental protection
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We may think of environmental virtue as having to do with the refinement of moral discernment in regard to the
place of nature as a constitutive aspect of the human good. The cultivation of environmental virtues can then be
regarded as a matter of discerning the place nature has within some particular human good or interest. A more
positive statement would be to say that those who destroy nature are motivated by an unnecessarily narrow view of
the human good, and that 'what they count as important is too narrowly confined' (Hill, 1983: 219). In so doing the
inherent plurality of the 'human good' is occluded. That is, forms of anthropocentrism which narrow the human good
and human interests can be criticized as vices, or potential vices. At the same time, those who destroy nature also
often have a mistaken appreciation of the 'seriousness' (Taylor, 1989) of the human interest or good in the service of
which nature is destroyed. However, to reject anthropocentrism is not the solution, but is rather itself a vice of which
we need to be aware. A virtue approach is thus anthropocentric in that its reference point is some human good or
interest, but as argued in the next chapter, this ethical (as opposed to metaphysical) anthropocentrism is compatible
with including considerations of non-human interests and welfare.
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AT: Anthropocentrism Humans and Nature are not zero-sum

No internal link human/nature relations are not zero-sum
The point about the virtues is that they are both partly constitutive of human well-being, while also being
instrumentally valuable to human well-being. The claim that the practice of ecological virtues is constitutive of wellbeing helps to offset the notion that green politics necessitates sacrificing human welfare, a common view premised
on the idea that the relationship between humans and nature is necessarily a zero-sum game. This leads to parasitic
forms of social-environmental relations. Green politics, in the search for symbiotic relations, can take inspiration
from the deep ecology notion that while human flourishing is compatible with decreasing human impact on the
world, the flourishing of the natural world requires such a decrease.
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AT: Anthropocentrism Perm Solves Best

Immanent critique of anthropocentrism is better than rejection only our permutation
solves
Barry, lecturer in the Department of Politics at Keele University, 1999 [John, Rethinking Green Politics, p. 7-8]
Ecological stewardship, unlike ecocentrism, seeks to emphasize that a self-reflexive, long-term anthropocentrism, as
opposed to an 'arrogant' or 'strong' anthropocentrism, can secure many of the policy objectives of ecocentrism, in
terms of environmental preservation and conservation. As argued in Chapter 3, a reformed, reflexive
anthropocentrism is premised on critically evaluating human uses of the non-human world, and distinguishing
'permissible' from 'impermissible' uses. That is, an 'ethics of use', though anthropocentric and rooted in human
interests, seeks to regulate human interaction with the environment by distinguishing legitimate 'use' from
unjustified 'abuse'. The premise for this defence of anthropocentric moral reasoning is that an immanent critique of
'arrogant humanism' is a much more defensible and effective way to express green moral concerns than rejecting
anthropocentrism and developing a 'new ecocentric ethic'. As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, ecocentric demands are
premised on an over-hasty dismissal of anthropocentrism which precludes a recognition of the positive resources
within anthropocentrism for developing an appropriate and practicable moral idiom to cover social-environmental
interaction.
The permutation solves - only an immanent critique of anthropocentrism can spur a

successful environmental movement
On the one hand there is the idea that green politics ought to be aimed at securing public support for green policies
and practices, which is of course essential for the democratic legitimacy of green politics as argued in Chapter 7. On
the other hand any agreement must begin from an awareness of the political nature of many of the existing moral
injunctions concerning human-nature relations. Prime examples are the various laws prohibiting cruelty to animals
in most countries. Building on what was suggested in the last chapter, I wish to make the argument that the heart of
the green political project lies in the exposition of the contradictions within contemporary moral thought and culture,
rather than proclaiming the total crisis of Western culture and the bankruptcy of its anthropocentric moral tradition.
It is the supposed bankruptcy, coupled with arguments concerning the 'dangerousness', of anthropocentrism that
leads to calls for a 'new' (i.e. external) non-anthropocentric environmental ethic. However, since anthropocentrism
has not been demonstrated to be either bankrupt or a 'dangerous' orientation to the non-human world (Fox, 1990),
the compulsion to search beyond anthropocentrism for an appropriate moral idiom loses much of its force. An
immanent critique of anthropocentrism ought therefore to be the strategy adopted in order to achieve public support
for the normative ends of green politics. For example, it would seem more likely that greens would secure normative
agreement for their position by identifying discrepancies within the present normative underpinning of current
human-nature interaction. If greens present their normative case in terms of the contradictory and/or the incomplete
nature of the current dominant moral consensus on human-nature relations, the immanence of their position means
that it would be both stronger (because non-anthropocentric accounts do not hold up under scrutiny) and expressed
in a language readily understood by those to whom its message is addressed.
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AT: Global local: Permutation Solvency

Perm solvency- global and local communities are interconnected. We shouldnt give up our
local identity, but we should look at the world community first.
Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics at University of Chicago Law School, 1994 [Martha,
Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism, The Boston Review, www.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Kapitan/nussbaum1.html]
<The Stoics stress that to be a citizen of the world one does not need to give up local
identifications, which can frequently be a source of great richness in life. They suggest that we
think of ourselves not as devoid of local affiliations, but as surrounded by a series of concentric
circles. The first one is drawn around the self; the next takes in one's immediate family; then
follows the extended family; then, in order, one's neighbors or local group, one's fellow citydwellers, one's fellow countrymen -- and we can easily add to this list groupings based on ethnic,
linguistic, historical, professional, gender and sexual identities. Outside all these circles is the
largest one, that of humanity as a whole. Our task as citizens of the world will be to "draw the
circles somehow toward the center" (Stoic philosopher Hierocles, 1st 2nd CE), making all human
beings more like our fellow city dwellers, and so on. In other words, we need not give up our
special affections and identifications, whether ethnic or gender-based or religious. We need not
think of them as superficial, and we may think of our identity as in part constituted by them. We
may and should devote special attention to them in education. But we should work to make all
human beings part of our community of dialogue and concern, base our political deliberations on
that interlocking commonality, and give the circle that defines our humanity a special attention
and respect. >
Our argument is not that we should eliminate local levels, but rather that the global levels
should be looked a first
Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics at University of Chicago Law School, 1994
[Martha, Patriotism and
Cosmopolitanism, The Boston Review, www.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Kapitan/nussbaum1.html]
<This clearly did not mean that the Stoics were proposing the abolition of local and national forms of political
organization and the creation of a world state. The point was more radical still: that we should give our first
allegiance to no mere form of government, no temporal power, but to the moral community made up by the
humanity of all human beings. The idea of the world citizen is in this way the ancestor and source of Kant's idea of
the "kingdom of ends," and has a similar function in inspiring and regulating moral and political conduct. One
should always behave so as to treat with equal respect the dignity of reason and moral choice in every human being.
It is this conception, as well, that inspires Tagore's novel, as the cosmopolitan landlord struggles to stem the tide of
nationalism and factionalism by appeals to universal moral norms. Many of the speeches of the character Nikhil
were drawn from Tagore's own cosmopolitan political writings. >
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AT: Global local: Global Action Good

We have a moral obligation to the global community, where we were born and where we
live are all just accidents, we all belong to the global community
Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics at University of Chicago Law School, 1994
[Martha, Patriotism and
<Asked where he came from, the ancient Greek Cynic philosopher Diogenes replied, "I am a citizen of the world."
He meant by this, it appears, that he refused to be defined by his local origins and local group memberships, so
central to the self-image of a conventional Greek male; he insisted on defining himself in terms of more universal
aspirations and concerns. The Stoics who followed his lead developed his image of the kosmou polits or world
citizen more fully, arguing that each of us dwells, in effect, in two communities -- the local community of our birth,
and the community of human argument and aspiration that "is truly great and truly common, in which we look
neither to this corner nor to that, but measure the boundaries of our nation by the sun" (Seneca, De Otio). It is this
community that is, most fundamentally, the source of our moral obligations. With respect to the most basic moral
values such as justice, "we should regard all human beings as our fellow citizens and neighbors" (Plutarch, On the
Fortunes of Alexander). We should regard our deliberations as, first and foremost, deliberations about human
problems of people in particular concrete situations, not problems growing out of a national identity that is
altogether unlike that of others. Diogenes knew that the invitation to think as a world citizen was, in a sense, an
invitation to be an exile from the comfort of patriotism and its easy sentiments, to see our own ways of life from the
point of view of justice and the good. The accident of where one is born is just that, an accident; any human being
might have been born in any nation. Recognizing this, his Stoic successors held, we should not allow differences of
nationality or class or ethnic membership or even gender to erect barriers between us and our fellow human beings.
We should recognize humanity wherever it occurs, and give its fundamental ingredients, reason and moral capacity,
our first allegiance and respect. >
Working global allows us to have self knowledge, solve our problems better, and allows us
to recognize the value of each and every person
<Stoics who hold that good civic education is education for world citizenship recommend this attitude on three
grounds. First, they hold that the study of humanity as it is realized in the whole world is valuable for selfknowledge: we see ourselves more clearly when we see our ways in relation to those of other reasonable people.
Second, they argue, as does Tagore, that we will be better able to solve our problems if we face them in this way. No
theme is deeper in Stoicism than the damage done by faction and local allegiances to the political life of a group.
Political deliberation, they argue, is sabotaged again and again by partisan loyalties, whether to one's team at the
Circus or to one's nation. Only by making our fundamental allegiance that to the world community of justice and
reason do we avoid these dangers.
Finally, they insist that the stance of the kosmou polits is intrinsically valuable. For it recognizes in persons what is
especially fundamental about them, most worthy of respect and acknowledgment: their aspirations to justice and
goodness and their capacities for reasoning in this connection. This aspect may be less colorful than local or national
traditions and identities -- and it is on this basis that the young wife in Tagore's novel spurns it in favor of qualities in
the nationalist orator Sandip that she later comes to see as superficial; it is, the Stoics argue, both lasting and deep.>
Global planning and global knowledge are key to survival

Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics at University of Chicago Law School, 1994 [Martha, Patriotism and
<We make headway solving problems that require international cooperation. The air does not obey national
boundaries. This simple fact can be, for children, the beginning of the recognition that, like it or not, we live in a
world in which the destinies of nations are closely intertwined with respect to basic goods and survival itself. The
pollution of third-world nations who are attempting to attain our high standard of living will, in some cases, end up
in our air. No matter what account of these matters we will finally adopt, any intelligent deliberation about ecology
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-- as, also, about the food supply and population -- requires global planning, global knowledge, and the recognition
of a shared future. >
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AT: Global local: Global Action Good

Working at a global level is key to understanding problems in the world, a local approach
focuses strictly on our problems, and disregards the struggles of other peoples in other
nations
<But is it sufficient? As students here grow up, is it sufficient for them to learn that they are
above all citizens of the United States, but that they ought to respect the basic human rights of
citizens of India, Bolivia, Nigeria, and Norway? Or should they, as I think -- in addition to giving
special attention to the history and current situation of their own nation -- learn a good deal more
than is frequently the case about the rest of the world in which they live, about India and Bolivia
and Nigeria and Norway and their histories, problems, and comparative successes? Should they
learn only that citizens of India have equal basic human rights, or should they also learn about
the problems of hunger and pollution in India, and the implications of these problems for larger
problems of global hunger and global ecology? Most important, should they be taught that they
are above all citizens of the United States, or should they instead be taught that they are above all
citizens of a world of human beings, and that, while they themselves happen to be situated in the
United States, they have to share this world of human beings with the citizens of other countries?
I shall shortly suggest four arguments for the second conception of education, which I shall call
cosmopolitan education. But first I introduce a historical digression, which will trace
cosmopolitanism to its origins, in the process recovering some excellent arguments that
originally motivated it as an educational project. >
Global resistance has the power to create broad coalitions

In this sense, we may conclude that we are living through the (gradual or sudden?) demise of the old world order
and the (slow or sudden?) birth of a new one. Economically, this new order is based on an increased level of global
economic integration and unison. Politically, however, it is premised on the need to translate grassroots participatory
political action into increasingly popular democratic forms of governance at local, national, regional, and global
levels (Gills 2000c; 2001). Moreover, it is also based on a real need to combine the peoples and social forces of
North and South in new ways, bringing together new coalitions drawn from movements around the world. The
governments and the corporations of the world must now listen to and accommodate the demands of the peoples of
the whole world, who represent the voice of the governed. This new reality, which in my view is an objective one
and not mere idealism, therefore requires a new [*169] paradigm. This new paradigm of world order must be based
profoundly on multicivilizational dialogue and universal inclusion. Rather than a political order based on one nation,
we are moving toward the need for a political order based on one humanity, and only democratic norms can
accommodate such a form of governance.
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AT: Global local Alt Ignores Human Rights

Working strictly on a local level disregards human rights
<Proponents of nationalism in politics and in education frequently make a thin concession to

cosmopolitanism. They may argue, for example, that although nations should in general base
education and political deliberation on shared national values, a commitment to basic human
rights should be part of any national educational system, and that this commitment will in a sense
serve to hold many nations together.3 This seems to be a fair comment on practical reality; and
the emphasis on human rights is certainly necessary for a world in which nations interact all the
time on terms, let us hope, of justice and mutual respect. >
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AT: Global local: No Alternative

Nayar concedes that his philosophy is vague and that there is no alternative to the problems
he presents
Nayar 99(Jayan Nayar, professor of law at the University of Warwick, Orders of Inhumanity, lexis)
<And so, what might I contribute to the present collective exercise toward a futuristic imaging of human
possibilities? I am unsure. It is only from my view of the "world," after all, that I can project my visions. These
visions do not go so far as to visualize any "world" in its totality; they are uncertain even with regard to worlds
closer to home, worlds requiring transformatory actions all the same. Instead of fulfilling this task of imagining
future therefore I simply submit the following two "poems.">
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AT: Global local: Checks on globalization now (no need for global
state)
A centralized state is unnecessary, we have a system of checks and balances to check back
globalization
Brecheretal, Historian, Activist, and Analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, 2000 [Jeremy, Tim Costello and
Brendan Smith, Globalization from Below, p. 42-43]
<A centralized global state is not required to address these prob lems. Indeed, the difficult}7 of establishing such an
institution and the equally important difficulty of making it democratically accountable make such a state a dubious
objective for the advocates of globalization from below. But supranational regulation does not require such
centralization; the pattern of overlapping authority and multi ple loyalties that is now emerging suggests the
possibility of a system of checks and balances within an emerging global polity.19 As Filipino activist and scholar
Walden Bello put it,
Today's need is not another centralized global institution, reformed or unreformed, but the deconcentration and
decentralization of institutional power and the creation of a pluralistic system of institutions and organizations
interacting with one another amid broadly defined and flexible agreements and understandings.2"
Instead of counterposing local, national, global, and other levels of power , advocates of globalization from below
should argue for a strengthening in both state and civil society at every level of those non-market functions that are
necessary to protect people and planet. People need to be empowered at even,' level vis-a-vis corporations and the
market. The needed non-market functions should be initiated at any appropriate level, in state and/or civil society, in
ways that strengthen the grassroots movement and raise those at the bottom.21>
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AT: Nietzsche /Nihilism Replicates Status Quo Problems

Nihilism is an ineffective means of resistance that replicates everything bad about the status
quo
Mann, Professor of English at Pomona, 1995
(Paul, Stupid Undergrounds, PostModern Culture 5:3, Project MUSE)
One might find it amusing to assume the pose of someone who states problems with brutal simplicity. As in this
little nugget: Every historical form of cultural and political revolt, transgression, opposition, and escape has turned
out to be nothing more than a systemic function. The notion of recuperation has encountered a thousand alibis and
counter-tropes but still constitutes the closest thing cultural study has to a natural law. Collage, antimelodic highdecibel music, antimasterpieces, romantic primitivism, drunkenness and drugs, renegade sexuality, criticism itself: it
is amazing that a single radical claim can still be made for any of this, and entirely characteristic that it is. Every
conceivable form of negation has been dialectically coordinated into the mechanism of progress. The future of the
anti has not yet been reconceived. That is why it is ridiculous to accuse some poor kid with a bad attitude or some
putative grownup with a critique but no "positive program for change" of being nihilistic: strictly speaking, nihilism
doesn't exist. What was once called nihilism has long since revealed itself as a general, integral function of a culture
that, in all its glorious positivism, is far more destructive than the most vehement no. Nothing could be more
destructive, more cancerous, than the positive proliferation of civilization (now there's a critical clich), and all the
forms of opposition have long since revealed themselves as means of advancing it. As for the ethos of "resistance":
just because something feels like resistance and still manages to offend a few people (usually not even the right
people) hardly makes it effective. It is merely ressentiment in one or another ideological drag. And how can anyone
still be deluded by youth, by its tedious shrugs of revolt? Even the young no longer believe their myth, although they
are quite willing to promote it when convenient. Punk nihilism was never more than the nihilism of the commodity
itself. You should not credit Malcolm McLaren with having realized this just because he was once pro-situ. All he
wanted was to sell more trousers without boring himself to death; indeed he is proof that the guy with the flashiest
ressentiment sells the most rags. And if he wasn't bored, can he be said to have advanced the same favor to us?
Nihilism entrenches ideas that promote arrogance and victimization

Dyson, 05, (Maurice R., Assistant Professor of law at SMU, Awakening an Empire of Liberty: Exploring the Root
of Socratic Inquiry and Political Nihilism in American Democracy, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against
Imperialism, v. 83 no2 p. 575-602, Wash Univ Law Quarterly, ISSN: 004-0862, Wilsonselect plus)
Furthermore, for West, these three entrenched dogmas are in turn driven by three forms of "political nihilism." These
are evangelical nihilism, paternalistic nihilism, and sentimental nihilism. "Evangelical nihilism" is a notion of
arrogant superiority that justifies might as right, or in other words, the belief that the U.S. would not be so powerful
if we were not right. West terms it "evangelical" because of its perceived militant intolerance for dissension as well
as blind faith to the belief that the exercise of power is a predicate to ensuring security and prosperity. For West, the
quintessential evangelical nihilist is derived from Plato's Republic in the form of Thrasymachus who debates with
Socrates the moral superiority of might.(FN1)
Paternal nihilism, on the other hand, treats American citizens as victims of deception by government actors who in
turn attempt to superficially appease the masses. These governmental leaders fundamentally accept corrupt regimes
and policies rather than question them. He finds in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov the literary
metaphor for paternal nihilism in the form of the Grand Inquisitor. As West points out, this character knows full well
the atrocities of the Inquisition represent a gross distortion of the Christian gospel, but nonetheless, personally takes
part in condemning infidels to death sentences because he believes the corrupted church is the best that mankind can
hope for.(FN2) The political nihilist is faulted here not just for his failure of imagination to envison a truer
democracy, but for his lack of conviction to battle corrupt elites even when history has shown these battles can be
vigorously waged.(FN3)
Sentimental nihilism refers to West's belief that the news media's oversimplification and sensationalized reporting
of global events sacrifices truth for distraction. Sentimental nihilism pacifies the American people by blunting the
critical aspects of news events that implicate corruption in government.
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Results in No Value to Life

Nietszches denying of being leads to nihilism by removing all meaning in life. This leads to
an endless search for power which never is successful
<Here again, one might raise objections to Heidegger's equating of Nietzsche's doctrine of will to power with the
metaphysics of subjectivity. After all, Nietzsche often attacked Descartes's ego cogito as a logical or linguistic
fiction (cf. BGE, 16, 54). Yet according to Heidegger, Nietzsche still follows Descartes's lead in making human
beings the subject or foundation of things. Unlike Descartes, however, Nietzsche's subject is not a fixed mental
substance, but the body interpreted as a center of instincts, drives, affects, and sublimations, i.e., as will to power.
Heidegger claims that this body as given idea still involves Nietzsche in a fixity that brings him into the
philosophy of presence: Nietzsche argues that being is as fixated, as permanent (N, 2:200). And this forced sense
of presence, Heidegger thinks, leads to the dangers of radical objectifiability and to the disposability of beings ,
i.e., treating beings as nothing but objects of use, control, and management. 32 Moreover, like its Cartesian
counterpart, the Nietzschean subject reins supreme over the whole of beings and posits the measure for the
beingness of every being (N, 4:121). 33 In claiming that truths are illusions and that Being is an empty
fiction, Nietzsche fashions for the subject an absolute power to enjoin what is true and what is false and hence to
define what it means to be or not to be a being (N, 4:145). According to Nietzsche, what is truewhat has being
is that which serves the interest of the subject whose essence is will to power (in the mode of existence of eternal
recurrence; cf. N, 2:203). Being is thus reduced to the status of a value or a condition of the preservation and
enhancement of the will to power (N, 4:176). This is why Heidegger considers Nietzsche the consummation, and
not the overcoming, of Western metaphysics: by reducing Being to a value, the doctrine of will to power makes the
nihilism of the metaphysical tradition (the assumption that Being itself is nothing and the human will everything) a
matter of philosophical principle. 34 Thus Nietzsche's counter-ideals of will to power and eternal recurrence, far
from overcoming nihilism, actually express or exemplify the loss of any sense of Being, or the withdrawal of Being
itself, in favor of beings (i.e., products of human will). As Heidegger reads him, Nietzsche understands Being in
terms of value (or what is useful for enhancing the human will) because Being itself has totally withdrawn in
default. And this brings to completion traditional metaphysics, which, according to Heidegger, is the history of
Being in its withdrawal. As Heidegger sees it, Nietzsche's metaphysics of will to power is the most extreme
withdrawal of Being and thus the fulfillment of nihilism proper (N, 4:204, 232). So Nietzsche brings to
completion, in his denial of Being, the very nihilism he wanted to overcome.
Far from twisting free of the ascetic ideal, Heidegger claims, Nietzsche 's doctrine of will to power actually provides
the basis for its most complete expression in the modern secularized ascetic will-tocontrol everything. In other
words, instead of seeking salvation in a transcendent world by means of ascetic self-denialthe aspect of
metaphysics that Nietzsche most obviously rejectssalvation is now, Heidegger claims, sought exclusively in the
free self-development of all the creative powers of man (N, 4:89). This unlimited expanding of power for power's
sake parallels in many ways what Nietzsche characterized as the most terrifying aspect of the ascetic ideal: the
pursuit of truth for truth's sake. It is, according to Heidegger, the hidden thorn in the side of modern humanity
(cf. N, 4:99). This hidden thorn expresses itself variously in the Protestant work ethic and in the iron cage of
bureaucratic-technological rationality (discussed in the works of Max Weber); it also expresses itself in the various
power aims of modern scientific/technological culture as well as in the frenzied impulse to produce and consume
things at ever faster rates. Heidegger even suggests that Nietzsche's own figure of the Overman (Ubermensch)
foreshadows the calculating, technological attitude of modern secularized asceticism: His Overman [stands] for the
technological worker-soldier who would disclose all entities as standingreserve necessary for enhancing the
ultimately aimless quest for power for its own sake. 35 This emerging technological human, grounded in a
control-oriented anthropocentrism, compels entities to reveal only those one-dimensional aspects of themselves that
are consistent with the power aims of a technological/productionist culture. Instead of dwelling and thinking in a
world unified by what Heidegger metaphorically terms the fourfold of earth and sky, gods and mortals,
impoverished modern technocrats occupy a world bereft of gods in which thinking becomes calculating, and
dwelling becomes tantamount to the technological domination of nature and what Nietzsche calls the common
economic management of the earth in which mankind will be able to find its best meaning as a machine in the service of this economy (WP, 866).
Thus citizens come to be viewed primarily as consumers, wilderness is looked upon in terms of wildlife management areas, and genuine human freedom is
replaced by the organized global conquest of the earth, and the thrust into outer space (N, 4:248). As Heidegger sees it, our era entertains the illusion that man,
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having become free for his humanity, has freely taken the universe into his power and disposition (N, 4:248).
In summary, Nietzsche tried to combat the nihilism of the ascetic ideal (e.g., the collapse of the Christian table of values) by bringing forth new nonascetic values that
would enhance rather than devalue humanity's will to power. According to Heidegger, however ,
instead of overcoming nihilism, Nietzsche

simply reinforced it. By characterizing Being as an empty fiction and the last smoke of a vaporized reality (TI,
2:2, 481), and by degrading it to the status of a value for enhancing the subject's will to power, Nietzsche loses any
sense of Being as such. For him it is a mere nothing, a nihil. And this brings to completion the fundamental
movement of history in the West, which is nihilism: the withdrawal of Being itself and the consequent focus on
beings as objects for consolidating the power of Will and for expanding it out beyond itself in an ever-increasing
spiral. 36 As Heidegger sees it, this eternally recurring will to power, or will to will, is a will-to-control that
only reinforces the nihilism Nietzsche feared: the loss of meaning or direction, the devaluation of the highest
values, the constructs of domination, and the devotion to frenzied consumption and production.>
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Justifies Holocaust

Nietzsches philosophies legitimized Nazism and the holocaust
Ortega-Cowan, 03, (Roman, B.A. Boston College, J.D. with honors @ Florida State University College of Law,
Dubious Means to Final Solutions: Extracting Light from the Darkness of Ein F Hrer and Brother Number One,
Florida State University Law Review, Fall, 31 Fla. St. U.L. Rev. 163)
Finally, Nietzsche's emphasis on the triumph of the will over emotion gave the Nazis the mental strength to
accomplish the horrors of the Holocaust. n35 The choice of self-definition through hardness was seen as central to
the establishment and assertion of a new national identity, and such emphasis led to a devaluation of human
compassion and other emotions. n36
With a set ideology of hatred founded upon angry anti-Semitism, a belief in "scientific" racial superiority, and a will
immune from emotional influence, the Nazis embarked on a catastrophic mission targeting a clearly defined enemy.
After taking control of the government, they quickly built a wall of legal repression around the Jews, which
culminated in the Nuremberg Laws and Kristallnacht decrees and left the Jews vulnerable to the violence that lay
ahead. n37
Nietzsches philosophies were the driving forces behind Hitlers dictatorship - - placing
supreme value on the higher man legitimizes all atrocities
May, 99, (Simon, College Research Fellow in Philosophy @ Birkbeck College, Nietzsches Ethics and his War on
Morality, Nietzsches ethic versus morality: The new ideal, p. 132-133)
An apologist for Nietzsche might suggest that his ethic is not alone in effectively legitimizing inhumanity. He might
argue, for example, that some forms of utilitarianism could not prevent millions being sacrificed if greater numbers
could thereby be saved; or that heinous maxims could be consistently universalized by Kant's Categorical
Imperativemaxims against which Kant's injunction to treat all human beings as ends in themselves would afford
no reliable protection, both because its conception of 'humanity' is vague and because it would be overridden by our
duty, as rational agents, to respect just such universalized maxims. To this apologist one would reply that with
Nietzsche there is not even an attempt to produce a systematic safety net against cruelty, especially if one judges
oneself to be a 'higher' type of person with life-enhancing pursuitsand, to this extent, his philosophy licenses the
atrocities of a Hitler even though, by his personal table of values, he excoriates anti-Semitism and virulent nationalism. Indeed, to that extent it is irrelevant
whether or not Nietzsche himself advocates violence and bloodshed or whether he is the gentle person described by
his contemporaries. The reality is that the supreme value he places on individual life-enhancement and selflegislation leaves room for, and in some cases explicitly justifies, unfettered brutality.
In sum: the point here is not to rebut Nietzsche's claim that 'everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man' serves his enhancement 'as much as its opposite does' (BGE, 44my emphasis)for such
. It is rather to suggest that the necessary balance between danger and safety
which Nietzsche himself regards as a condition for flourishing (for example, in this quote from BGE, 44) is not vouchsafed by his
extreme individualism. Indeed, such individualism seems not only self-defeating, but also quite unnecessary: for
safeguards against those who have pretensions to sovereignty but lack nobility could be accepted on Nietzsche's
theory of value as just another 'condition for the preservation' of 'higher' types. Since the overriding aim of his attack
on morality is to liberate people from the repressiveness of the 'herd' instinct, this unrelieved potential danger to the
'higher' individual must count decisively against the successand the possibility of successof his project.
a rebuttal would be a major ethical undertaking in its own right
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Justifies Holocaust

Nietzsches philosophies legitimized the Holocaust - - his notions of master morality fueled the fire behind
genocides of the weak and imperfect through framing them as mans greatest danger
Aschheim, 97, (Steven E., German Cultural and Intellectual History professor @ the Hebrew University, Jersalem,
Nietzsche and Jewish Culture, Nietzsche, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, ed. Jacob Golomb, p. 13-16)
At any rate, what I am proposing here is that both in its overall bio-eugenic political and medical vision, its programmatic obsession with degeneration and regeneration, whether in parodistic
Nazism is about
the "medicalisation of killing". Its genocidal impulses were implicit within a bio-medical vision and its vast, selfproclaimed programmatic task of racial and eugenic-hygiene. On an unprecedented scale it would assume control of
the human biological future, assuring health to positive racial stock and purging humanity of its sick, degenerative
elements. Its vision of "violent cure", of murder and genocide as a "therapeutic imperative", Lifton argues, resonates with
such Nietzschean themes.40
While every generation may emphasize their particular Nietzsche, there can be little doubt that in the first half of
this century various European political circles came to regard him as the deepest diagnostician of sickness and
degeneration and its most thoroughgoing regenerative therapist. "The sick", he wrote, "are man's greatest danger; not
the evil, not the 'beasts of prey'."41 To be sure, as was his wont, he employed these notions in multiple, shifting ways, as metaphor and irony (he even has a section on
form or not, there are clear informing parallels with key Nietzschean categories and goals. From one perspective, as Robert Jay Lifton has recently persuasively argued,
"ennoblement through degeneration"42) but most often, most crucially, it was represented (and understood) as a substantial literal danger whose overcoming through drastic measures was the
Although he was not alone in the wider nineteenth-century quasibio-medical, moral, discourse of "degeneration"43 - that highly flexible, politically adjustable tool that cut across the
ideological spectrum, able simultaneously to locate, diagnose and resolve a prevalent, though inchoate, sense of
social and cultural crisis through an exercise of eugenic labeling and a language of bio-social pathology and
potential renewal44 - he formed an integral part in defining and radicalizing it. He certainly constituted its most important conduit into the
emerging radical right. What else was Nietzsche's Lebensphilosophie , his reassertion of instinct and his proposed transvaluation whereby the
healthy naturalistic ethic replaced the sickly moral one (a central theme conveniently ignored or elided by the current post-structuralist champions of
precondition for the urgent re-creation of a "naturalized", non-decadent humankind.
Nietzsche). "Tell me, my brothers", Zarathustra asks, "what do we consider bad and worst of all? Is it not degeneration}'"15 In this world, the reassertion of all that is natural and healthy is
dependent upon the ruthless extirpation of those anti-natural ressentiment sources of degeneration who have thoroughly weakened and falsified the natural and aristocratic bases of life. Over and
over again, and in different ways, Nietzsche declared that "The species requires that the ill-constituted, weak, degenerate, perish".46
The Nazi bio-political understanding of, and solution to "degeneration", as I have tried to show here and elsewhere,
was in multilayered ways explicitly Nietzsche-inspired. From the World War I through its Nazi implementation,
Nietzschean exhortations to prevent procreation of "anti-life" elements and his advocacy of euthanasia, of what he
called "holy cruelty" - "The Biblical prohibition 'thou shalt not kill'", he noted in The Will to Power, "is a piece of naivete compared with the seriousness of the prohibition of life
to decadents: 'thou shalt not procreate!'. . . Sympathy for decadents, equal rights for the ill-constituted - that would be the profoundest immorality, that would be antinature itself as morality!"47 both inspired and provided a "higher" rationale for theorists and practitioners off such measures.48
The translation of traditional anti-Jewish impulses into genocide and the murderous policies adopted in different
degrees to other labeled outsiders (Gypsies, physically and mentally handicapped, homosexuals, criminals, inferior Eastern peoples and Communist political enemies)
occurred within the distinct context of this medico-bio-eugenic vision. There were, to be sure, many buildingblocks that went into conceiving and implementing genocide and mass murder but I would argue that this
Nietzschean framework of thinking provided a crucial conceptual precondition and his radical sensibility a partial
trigger for its implementation.
Related to but also going beyond these programmatic parallels and links we must raise another highly speculative, though necessary, issue: the vexed question of enabling preconditions and
psychological motivations. Clearly, for events as thick and complex as these no single theoretical or methodological approach or methodology will suffice. Yet, given the extraordinary nature of
the events, more conventional modes of historical analysis soon reach their limits and demand novel answers (the study of Nazism has provided them in abundance, some more, some less
convincing49). I am not thus claiming exclusiveness for the Nietzschean element at this level of explanation, but rather arguing for his continued and important relevance. To be sure, of late,
many accounts of the ideas behind, and the psychological wellsprings enabling, mass murder have been, if anything, anti-Nietzschean in content. For Christopher Browning it was hardly
Nietzschean intoxication, the nihilistic belief that "all is permitted", that motivated the "ordinary killers" - but rather prosaic inuring psychological mechanisms such as group conformity,
deference to authority, the dulling powers of alcohol and simple (but powerful) processes of routinization.50 For George L. Mosse, far from indicating a dynamic anti-bourgeois Nietzschean
revolt, the mass murders represented a defense of bourgeois morality, the attempt to preserve a clean, orderly middle-class world against all those outsider and deviant groups that threatened it.51
These contain important insights but, in my view, leave out crucial experiential ingredients, closely related to the Nietzschean dimension, which must form at least part of the picture. At some
point or another, the realization must have dawned on the conceivers and perpetrators of this event that something quite extraordinary, unprecedented, was occurring and that ordinary and middleclass men were committing radically transgressive, taboo-breaking, quite "un-bourgeois" acts.52 Even if we grant the problematic proposition that such acts were done in order to defend
bourgeois interests and values, we would want to know about the galvanizing, radicalizing trigger that allowed decision-makers and perpetrators alike to set out in this direction and do the deed.
To argue that it was "racism" merely pushes the argument a step backward, for "racism" on its own -while always pernicious - has to be made genocidal.
We are left with the issue of the radicalizing, triggering forces. These may be many in number but it seems to me
that Nietzsche's determined anti-humanism (an atheism that, as George Lichtheim has noted, differs from the Feuerbachian attempt to replace theism with
humanism33), apocalyptic imaginings and exhortatory visions, rendered such a possibility, such an act, conceivable in the
first place (or, at the very least, once thought of and given the correct selective readings easily able to provide the
appropriate ideological cover). This Nietzschean kind of thought, vocabulary and sensibility constitutes an important
(if not the only) long-term enabling precondition of such radical elements in Nazism. With all its affinities to an
older conservatism, it was the radically experimental, morality-challenging, tradition-shattering Nietzschean
sensibility that made the vast transformative scale of the Nazi project thinkable. Nietzsche, as one contemporary
commentator has pointed out, "prepared a consciousness that excluded nothing that anyone might think, feel, or do,
including unimaginable atrocities carried out on a gigantic order".54
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Of course, Nazism was a manifold historical phenomenon and its revolutionary thrust sat side by side with petit-bourgeois, provincial, traditional and conservative impulses.55 But surely,
beyond its doctrinal emphases on destruction and violent regeneration, health and disease, the moral and historical
significance of Nazism lies precisely in its unprecedented transvaluations and boundary-breaking extremities, its
transgressive acts and shattering of previously intact taboos. It is here - however parodistic, selectively mediated or debased
- that the sense of Nazism, its informing project and experiential dynamic, as a kind of Nietzschean Great Politics
continues to haunt us.
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Leads to Classism

Nietzsches calls for distinctions between the weak and the strong are notions of
classism and serve to reinforce patriarchal dominance
Schutte, 84, (Ofelia, assistant professor of philosophy @ University of Florida, Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche without
Masks, Nietzsches Politics, p. 186-188)
As long as one gives philosophical credibility to the rhetoric of the "superior type" or "higher" person and sets aside the political and practical implications of how this rhetoric is instantiated,
While the logic of

unspecified prejudice calls for the higher/lower distinction without committing itself to any particulars to fill those
categories, Nietzsche has made it quite clear what groups by "nature" or "destiny" are higher and what lower. Here are
two statements regarding women and workers, two groups Nietzsche has condemned to the "low." Reversing Goethe's statement
both by Nietzsche and by the historical patriarchal tradition in which we still live, we are defending what I shall call "the politics of unspecified prejudice."
that "the eternal feminine draws us higher," the author of Beyond Good and Evil wrote: "I do not doubt that every nobler woman will resist this faith, for she believes the same about the Eternal-
. This insidious rhetoric is also applied to

the slave, who is urged to believe that his exploitation is justified because the master/aristocrat is more noble than
he. When one unmasks the realities of this rhetoric, one sees that the practical advantages do not go to "superior"
personseven assuming there were so pure a typebut simply to the privileged classes of the established society .
Masculine."62 The criterion of a woman's "nobility," then, is her "faith" that the male, as male, is more noble than herself
Nietzsche himself points this out in Twilight of the Idols:

The labor question. The stupidityat bottom, the degeneration of instinct, which is today the cause of all stupiditiesis that there is a labor question at all. Certain things one does
not question: that is the first imperative of instinct. . . . But what was done? . . . The instincts by virtue of which the worker becomes possible as a class, possible in his own eyes,
have been destroyed through and through with the most irresponsible thoughtlessness. The worker was qualified for military service, granted the right to organize and to vote: is it
any wonder that the worker today experiences his own existence as distressingmorally speaking, as an injustice? But what is wanted? ... If one wants an end, one must also want
the means: if one wants slaves, one is a fool if one educates them to be masters.63
The theme of the "strength" of not questioning the structure of power that serves the interests of a privileged class is
not simply anti-liberal to the point of malice (as Nietzsche suggests in the aphorism that precedes this one). It is anti-critical to the point of malice. These
statements on women, the working class, and the need of the privileged class for thoughtless and obedient "slaves"
are not simply isolated opinions on Nietzsche's part, as sometimes they tend to be read. They are logically tied to
other notions that Nietzsche is commended for holdingsuch as the distinction between the "superior" person and
the "herd," the belief in a "strong" culture, and even the love of one's fate. The fact that we ignore the concrete side of the issue while holding on
to the more abstract side shows that in this case we are much less logical than Nietzsche, for we are the ones caught in a logical dilemma, while Nietzsche is not. Nietzsche, however, is caught in
a much larger type of contradiction even though his logic is tight with respect to the connection between elitism and oppression. This is the contradiction between his intended affirmation of life
and his reactionary and nihilistic politics. Still, the political implications of Nietzsche's thought can be turned around to some extent if we ask: was not Nietzsche correct in insisting upon a
logical connection between a "strong" masculine ideal, a "strong" culture, and a blind system of political exploitation and psychological repression? Is it not true that if the goal of one's values is
to implement a "strong" patriarchal system where a few will command and the rest will obey, it is then foolish to allow moral codes which favor the notions of the universal brotherhood and
sisterhood of human beings? Does not the morality of universal human dignity entail in theory, if not also in practice, the elimination of all forms of elitism, domination, and oppression? In
thanks to his uninhibited articulation of the extreme he

has exposed the logic of patriarchal domination in its essence. While Nietzsche has outlined various incentives for overturning the democratic influences
of modern times and for instituting a "purer" system of patriarchal domination under the banner of overcoming the "evils" of "effeminacy" and "decadence," it is up to us, not him,
to make the choice as to what we want our political future and our moral values to be. His appeals to destiny,
intolerance, and the suspension of critical questioning of authoritarian political institutions are not convincing.
Nietzsche's idea of "greatness" one finds the logic of the extremeof this he was well aware. But
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Justifies Terrorism

Nihilism is the root of all terrorism - - it perverts the notion of nationalism and pride and
legitimizes unending cycles of violence
Ignatieff - 2004, (Michael, Carr Professor of Human Rights at Harvards Kenndy School of Government, excerpt
from The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, Princeton University Press, New England Review v. 25
no1/2 (2004) p. 54-74, Journal: N Engl Rev, ISSN: 1053:1297)
Neither side in a war on terror is immune from this temptation of coming to see violence as an end in itself. Agents of a
democratic state may find themselves driven by the horror of terror to torture, to assassinate, to kill innocent
civilians, all in the name of rights and democracy. Succumbing to this inversion is the principal way that both groups slip from the lesser evil to the greater.
If, however, this temptation is strong, a strategy of combating it with lesser evils may not be plausible at all. A lesser evil morality may be too rational. It makes the assumption that violence by
a liberal democratic state faced with terror can be controlled in the name of ethically appropriate ends like rights and dignity. A lesser evil approach to a war on terror would assume, for example,
that agents of a liberal democratic state should be able to hold the line that divides intensive interrogation from torture, or the line that separates targeted assassination of enemy combatants from
assassinations that entail the death of innocent civilians. Current U.S. policy does not allow assassination of civilians in peacetime but does permit killing of enemy combatants in wartime, with
the proviso that such assassinations must be discriminate and avoid collateral damage. This policy--a lesser evil approach if there ever was one--implies that the agents charged with defending a
state have the strength of character, together with a clear enough sense of the values of the society they are defending, to be trusted with morally ambiguous means. But a perfectionist case
against such an approach would argue that morally equivocal means are hard to control and thus liable to end in betrayal of the values that a liberal democracy should stand for. Hence liberal
states should not allow those who defend them to have any of the moral discretion implied in lesser evil approaches. States should absolutely ban extreme interrogations, targeted assassinations,
and other uses of violence, because once you start with means like these, it becomes next to impossible to prevent the lesser from shading into the greater evil.
Another problem with the lesser evil would be that liberal democratic regimes encourage a kind of moral narcissism, a blinding belief that because this kind of society authorizes such means,
they must be acceptable. Thus democratic values, instead of preventing the lesser from shading into the greater evil, may actually blind democratic agents to the moral reality of their actions. The
nobility of ends is no guarantee against resort to evil means; indeed, the more noble they are, the more ruthlessness they can endorse. This is why democracy depends on distrust, why freedom's
defense requires submitting even noble intentions to the test of adversarial review.
I can see three distinct ways--the tragic, the cynical, and the fanatical--in which nihilism can come to dominate both a
terrorist campaign and a war on terror. The first might be called tragic because it occurs despite the political
intentions of all concerned, when terrorists and counterterrorists become trapped in a downward spiral of reprisal
and counterreprisal. One side kills to avenge its last victim; the other side replies to avenge its last victim. Both sides
start with an ethic of restraint and end up in a struggle without end.
Here shedding of blood creates two communities--the terrorists and the counterterrorists--in which loyalty to the group prevails
over institutional accountability or individual principle. Both sides are bonded to their own because both have blood on their hands or
blood to avenge. Their bonds to the group are stronger than any they have to the institutions that could possibly restrain their behavior. Violence creates belonging
and belonging produces closure. Terrorists listen only to themselves and no longer to restraining messages from the
communities their violence is supposed to serve. Counterterrorist agencies, having suffered losses, bond with each other, view
their civilian superiors as spineless libertarians, chafe under operational restrictions on their use of force, seek to
evade these wherever possible, covering up as they do so, and seek to fight the terrorists on their own terms. At the
bottom of this downward spiral, constitutional police forces and counterterror units can end up behaving no better than the
terrorist cells they are trying to extirpate. Their moral conduct becomes dependent on the increasingly repellent
conduct of the other side. This is the unintentional path to nihilism, taken by constitutional forces to defend the fallen and
to revenge their losses. In the process, torture and extrajudicial killing may become routine. Gillo Pontecorvo's masterful film The Battle of
Algiers (I965) portrays the Algerian war for independence, between i955 and 196Z, as a tragic duel in which two sides, conscientiously believing in the rightness of their course, become trapped
in just such a downward spiral as we have been considering. The film may be fictional, but it is drawn from extensive documentary research into the actual history of the Algerian struggle. While
clearly siding with the Algerian revolution, Pontecorvo takes care to avoid any moral caricature of the French, and shows why torture could be seen as a rational and effective way to break up the
terrorist cells working in the Algiers Casbah. Nor does the filmmaker conceal the bloody reality of the liberation struggle, showing the full horror of an attack on a caf that leaves the street
strewn with mangled bodies and traumatized survivors. The film maintains an extraordinarily subtle moral balance, supporting the Algerian struggle for freedom without mitigating the crimes
committed in its name, condemning the French use of torture without failing to do justice to the reality that it was committed not by brutes but by people with dedicated convictions. The Battle of
Algiers thus becomes a testament to the tragedy of terrorist war.
Calling this path tragic is not to excuse it, merely to distinguish it from a second path, which is altogether more cynical. In the tragic path, violence, once used as a
means, becomes an end in itself, to the horror of those who are trapped by the conduct of the other side. In the
second path, violence doesn't begin as a means to noble ends. It is used, from the beginning, in the service of cynical or self-serving
ones. On both the terrorist and counterterrorist sides, there are bound to be individuals who actually enjoy violence
for its own sake. Violence and weapons exert a fascination all their own, and their possession and use satisfy deep
psychological needs. It isn't necessary to delve into the question of why human beings love violence and seek to use weapons as instruments of power and even of sexual
gratification. The fact that violence attracts as well as repels is a recurring challenge to the ethics of a lesser evil, since it explains why the appetite for violence can become insatiable, seeking
ever more spectacular effects even though these fail to produce any discernible political result. Many terrorist groups use political language to mask the absence of any genuine commitment to
the cause they defend. In their cynicism, they can become uncontrollable, because once violence is severed from the pursuit of determinate political ends, violence will not cease even if these
goals are achieved.
What is true of terrorists can also characterize counterterrorists. The type of personnel attracted to police and antiterrorist squads may be recruited because they are drawn to violent means.
These means confer power, boost sexual confidence, and enable them to swagger and intimidate others. The type of personality attracted into a counterterror campaign may not have any intrinsic
or reflective commitment to democratic values of restraint. Rules of engagement for the use of deadly force need be obeyed only when superiors are watching and can be disregarded at any other
time.
There may always be a gap, therefore, between the values of a liberal democracy when it is under attack and the conduct of the counterterrorist forces who have to take the war to the enemy.
There is no necessary reason to suppose that those who defend a democracy do so out of any convinced belief in its values. Their chief motivation may be only the thrill of the chase and the
glamour of licensed violence. Liberal states cannot be protected by herbivores. But if we need carnivores to defend us, keeping them in check, keeping them aware of what it is they are
defending, is a recurrent challenge.
On the terrorist side, there will always be a gap between those who take the political goals of a terrorist campaign seriously and those who are drawn to the cause because it offers glamour,
violence, money, and power. It is anyone's guess how many actual believers in the dream of a united Ireland there are in the ranks of the IRA. But it is a fair bet to suppose that many recruits join
up because they want to benefit from the IRA's profitable protection rackets. The IRA bears as much relation to the Mafia as it does to an insurrectionary cell or a radical political party, and the
motivations that draw young people into the movement are often as criminal as they are political. When criminal goals predominate over political ones, it becomes difficult for leaders to prevent
their followers from turning violence into an end in itself.
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The criminal allure of terrorist groups and the cynicism of those who join them are additional reasons why it is a mistake to conciliate or appease a group like the IRA with political
concessions. Their political goals may be subsidiary to their criminal interests, and like any criminal enterprise they can be driven out of business only by the force of the law. Equally, to express
surprise that they tarnish political ideals with squalid tactics, or that they seem to be indifferent to the costs that their violence imposes on the communities they purport to represent, would be to
misunderstand their real nature and purpose.
Not all terrorists, however, are moral cynics. Not all terrorist groups use politics as an excuse for other straightforwardly violent ends. There are other groups whose
political purposes are genuine, but who nonetheless end up turning violence into a way of life. These are the groups
that have the characteristics, not of criminal gangs, but of fanatic sects. Here nihilism takes the form, not of
believing in nothing, but of believing in too much. What I mean is a form of conviction so intense, a devotion so
blind, that it becomes impossible to see that violence necessarily betrays the ends that conviction seeks to achieve.
Here the delusion is not tragic, as in the first case, because believers are not trapped into violence by the conduct of
the other side. Nor is it cynical: for these are true believers. They initiate violence as a sacred and redemptive duty.
This is the third path to nihilism, the fanatical use of high principle to justify atrocity. What is nihilistic is the belief
that such goals license all possible means, indeed obviate any consideration of the human costs. Nihilism here is
willed indifference to the human agents sacrificed on the altar of principle. Here nihilism is not a belief in nothing at
all; it is, rather, the belief that nothing about particular groups of human beings matters enough to require
minimizing harm to them.
The high principles commonly used to justify terrorism were once predominantly secular--varieties of conspiratorial Marxism--but today most of the justifying ideologies are religious. To call
religious justifications of violence nihilistic is, of course, to make a certain kind of value judgment, to assert that there cannot be, in principle, any metaphysical or God-commanded justification
for the slaughter of civilians. From a human rights standpoint, the claim that such inhumanity can be divinely inspired is a piece of nihilism, an inhuman devaluation of the respect owed to all
persons, and moreover a piece of hubris, since, by definition, human beings have no access to divine intentions, whatever they may be.
The hubris is not confined to vocalizing divine intention. It also consists in hijacking scriptural tradition. The devil can always quote scripture to his use, and there is never a shortage in any
faith of texts justifying the use of force. Equally, all religions contain sacred texts urging believers to treat human beings decently. Some may be more universalistic in these claims than others.
Some may confine the duties of benevolence to fellow believers, while others may extend these duties to the whole of humankind. But whatever the ambit of their moral concern, all religious
teaching offers some resistance to the idea that it is justifiable to kill or abuse other human beings. This resistance may range from outright condemnation to qualified justification as a last resort.
nihilist use of religious doctrine is one that perverts the doctrine into a justification for inhuman deeds and ignores
any part of the doctrine which is resistant to its violent purposes. The nihilism here engages in a characteristic
inversion: adjusting religious doctrine to rationalize the terrorist goal, rather than subjecting it to the genuine
interrogation of true faith.
A
It is unnecessary here to document the extent to which Al Qaeda has exploited and distorted the true faith of Islam. To take but one example, the tradition of jihad, which refers to the
obligation of the believer to struggle against inner weakness and corruption, has been distorted into an obligation to wage war against Jews and Americans. In the hands of Osama bin Laden, the
specifically religious and inner-directed content of jihad has been emptied out and replaced by a doctrine justifying acts of terror. This type of religious justification dramatically amplifies the
political impact of terrorist actions. When Al Qaeda strikes, it can claim that it acts on behalf of a billion Muslims. This may be a lie, but it is an influential one nonetheless.
Appropriating religious doctrine in this way also enables the group to offer potential recruits the promise of martyrdom. Immortality complicates the relationship between violent means and
political ends, for the promise of eternal life has the effect of making it a secondary matter to the suicide bomber whether or not the act achieves anything political at all. What matters most is
securing entry into Paradise. Here political violence becomes subservient not to a political end but to a personal one.
Once violent means cease to serve determinate political ends, they take on a life of their own. When personal
immortality becomes the goal, the terrorists cease to think like political actors, susceptible to rational calculation of
effect, and begin to act like fanatics.
It is not easy to turn human beings into fanatics. In order to do so, terrorist groups that use suicide bombers have to create a cult of death and sacrifice, anchored in powerful languages of
belief. Osama bin Laden used an interview with an American journalist in May I998 in Afghanistan to justify terrorism in the language of faith:
The terrorism we practice is of the commendable kind for it is directed at the tyrants and the aggressors and the enemies of Allah, the tyrants, the traitors who commit acts of treason against
.
What is noticeable here is the use of religion not just to justify killing the infidel but to override the much more
serious taboo against killing fellow believers. The function of nihilism here is to recast real, living members of the
Islamic faith as traitors deserving death. Nihilism takes the form of nullifying the human reality of people and
turning them into targets.
their own countries and their own faith and their own prophet and their own nation
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Root of all violence

Nihilism is the root of all violence and manifests permanent death cults in societies
Ignatieff - 2004, (Michael, Carr Professor of Human Rights at Harvards Kenndy School of Government, excerpt
from The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, Princeton University Press, New England Review v. 25
no1/2 (2004) p. 54-74, Journal: N Engl Rev, ISSN: 1053:1297)
Nihilism--which is the blunt name for taking the gloves off--holds real dangers for both sides. When a democratic
state licenses all means to repress a terrorist group, it may only play into the hands of its enemy. Some terrorist
groups deliberately seek to draw reprisals upon themselves in order to radicalize their own population. As the state's
repression increases, the terrorists respond by tightening their screws on their base of support, replacing a political
relation to their own side with one of unvarnished tyranny, killing or intimidating anyone who questions whether the
costs of the campaign are outweighing the gains. Populations that once supported armed struggle for reasons of
conviction become trapped either in fanaticism or in complicit silence. In the process, political regulation of terrorist
groups by their community at large becomes impossible. Moderate voices who might persuade a community to
withdraw their support from terror are silenced. In place of a properly political culture, in which groups and interests
compete for leadership, a people represented by suicide bombers ceases to be a political community at all and
becomes a cult, with all the attendant hysteria, intimidation, and fear. This is the process by which nihilism leads to a
war without end.
In such a terrorist cult, many praiseworthy moral virtues are inverted, so that they serve not life but death.
Terrorist groups typically expropriate the virtues of the young--their courage, their headstrong disregard for
consequences, their burning desire to establish their own significance--and use these to create an army of the
doomed. In this way, violence becomes a career, a way of life that leads only to death.
Once violence becomes part of a community death cult, the only rational response by a state under attack must be
to eliminate the enemy one by one, either by capture and lifelong imprisonment or by execution. Those for whom
violence has become the driving rationale of conduct cannot be convinced to desist. They are in a deathly embrace
with what they do, and argument cannot reach them. Nor can failure. It counts for nothing that violence fails to
achieve their political objective because such achievement has long since ceased to be the test of their effectiveness.
It is redemption they are after, and they seek death sure that they have attained it. They have nothing to negotiate for,
and we have nothing to gain by negotiating with them. They will take gestures of conciliation as weakness and our
desire to replace violence with dialogue as contemptible na"ivet. To say we are at war with Al Qaeda and suicide
bombers in general is to say that political dialogue is at an end. We have nothing to say to them nor they to us. Either
we prevail or they do, and force must be the arbiter.
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AT: Nietzsche /Nihilism Leads to Violence

Nietzsche is a nihilist the alternative causes violence and annihilation because it destroys
ontology
<This response, however, only succeeds in postponing Heidegger's real objection. For according to Heidegger,
psychology (and indeed, all of the human sciences) are caught up in the web of traditional metaphysical thinking. As
such, Nietzsche's 'psychology' is simply coterminous with metaphysics . [it] lies grounded in the very essence of
modern metaphysics (N, 4:2, 8). Heidegger argues that modern metaphysics is defined precisely by the fact that
man becomes the measure and center of beings, and this, in turn, results in the modern technological
understanding of beings as objects for use and control, or as Heidegger says, entities wholly present as standingreserve (Bestand) (QT, 17). 26 This extends even to human beings themselves, who are increasingly transformed
by the human sciences (and their technological systems) into resources for objectification and control (cf. N,
4:23445). Here, Heidegger anticipates Foucault's claim that modern technological systems attempt to make human
beings wholly present as bio-power, or subjects completely present for surveillance and control via the
disciplinary practices of institutions (psychological, juridical, carceral) whose aim is to normalize human life. 27
Thus from Heidegger's perspective, the actual nihilism Nietzsche feared annihilation, spreading violence, and
so forthis evoked by the preponderance, in the modern world, of this productionist, technological objectification
of being, and by the complete ordering of all beings in the sense of a systematic securing of stockpiles for
further technological usage, control, and domination (N, 4:22934). The relentlessness of [this] usage extends so
far that the abode of Beingthat is, the essence of manis omitted; man is threatened with the annihilation of
his essence, and Being itself is endangered (N, 4:245). Ironically, Heidegger argues, it was precisely Nietzsche's
proposing of Being as a value posited by the will to power that led to this final [nihilistic] step of modern
metaphysics, in which Being comes to appear as will to power (N, 4:234). Simply put, Nietzsche's doctrine of the
will to power succeeds in reducing the whole question of Being to the status of a value; and this completes the
metaphysics of subjectivity initiated by Descartes, which in turn results in a blindness to the whole question as
to what Being itself is. This blindness to Being, Heidegger argues, is at the root of all nihilism and is connected
to the modern technological/productionist attitude toward the world (cf. N, 4:23132). Why does Heidegger make
this claim?
Heidegger believes that metaphysics is essentially the history of Being, a history in which Being discloses itself as
withdrawn in default or concealed (cf. N, 4:23032). He basically reads the whole history of Western philosophy
as the history of Being and its gradual self-concealment. In this context, Heidegger praises Nietzsche for his insight
into the basic development of that history: In his [Nietzsche's] view it is nihilism . The phrase 'God Is Dead' is
not an atheistic proclamation; it is a formula for the fundamental experience of an event in Occidental history (N,
1:156). Heidegger even suggests that Nietzsche came close to recognizing (albeit opaquely) that the fundamental
question of Being had been omitted, forgotten, or suppressed within the metaphysical tradition of previous
philosophy, and that this omission of the default of Being in its unconcealment is the very essence of nihilism
(cf. N, 4:23032). For example, when Nietzsche denies truth or refers to Being as an empty fiction (see TI, 481),
Heidegger claims that he is actually experiencing and expressing the nothing or omission of Being itself in the
history of Western philosophy, which is tantamount to nihilism:
Nihilism culiminates in authoritarianism

Christenson, 85, (Gordon A., Nippert Professor of Law and Dean @ University of Cincinnati College of Law,
Uncertainty in Law and its Negation: Reflections, University of Cincinnati Law Review, 54 U. Cin. L. Rev. 347)
Some dramatically characterize the trends just described as legal nihilism or the negation of the exercise of legitimate power without the assertion of substantive theory in its place. As Michael
nihilism, whether real or imagined, leads [*357] inexorably to authoritarian responses and to the
rise of ideology. The second phenomenon which gave rise to our particular predicament thus emerged from the conversion of subjective moral judgment into ideology. Whether
Polanyi so cogently has noted,
derived from the twentieth century revolutions based on socialism or Marxism, on the human rights movement, or on a resurgence of neo-conservatism, the intellectual roots of such movements
resulting in the negation of law and value, are Neitzche's

moral and ethical superiority, Dostoyevski's novels and short stories and the works of the phenomenologists, existentialists and structuralists. All ask similar questions. Postare well described in European and Latin American literatures. Symbolic of that literature, and
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If there is
no common basis for law or morality other than through a subjective or ideological construct, then the question is
not what values underpin a particular legal system, but how one's subjective preferences may be infused with power,
strategy and tactics throughout the general community or imposed by coercion. The lawyer-advocate has long used various techniques based
Marxist thinkers -- Habermas, Foucault and Berger and other non-legal critical scholars -- have gained influence in legal scholarship which finds them to be useful analytic tools.
on pragmatic ideas of progress, the frontier and change. These have been associated with the romanticism of the defender of the poor and downtrodden, the fighter for civil rights, the humanrights warrior and the social reformer, who use courts and law as instruments of social change. In this construct, law as a secular system has no normative content that is not ultimately subjective.
If God is dead, all things are morally possible. The main claim to legitimacy or validity rests in process; namely that the advocates who represent a particular morality or a particular social
philosophy fight and prevail as warriors and advocates in an existing decisionmaking process, akin to chivalry, aimed at changing official behavior or custom by fighting injustice, admittedly a
subjective construct. Once, however, the subjective advocacy model of changing the social structure is an accepted way of life, the natural reaction is that sauce for the goose is sauce for the
gander. If the objective validity of the normative system tacitly is rejected by those who seek to change it, then radicals holding an opposite belief might just as well produce a similar claim by an
activism with subjective preferences even more firmly rooted within the vices of common life. The dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis that seemed to move outward from the subjective to
an objective world-view could work for the radical right just as well as for the Marxist left!
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism AT: Christianity

Nietzsches condemnation of Christianity contradicts itself - - his accusations of
Christianitys faults are self-serving without support - - this accusations of Christ are
actually his faults
Thompson, 51, (R. Motson, M.A., Nietzsche and Christian Ethics, Nietzsches Doctrines Examined, p. 48-51)
Nietzsche condemns Christianity chiefly on the grounds that its earliest followers
misrepresented its teaching. But here again Nietzsche's thinking is uncertain and somewhat confused. He
condemns the Christian religion because of its adherents, and yet that is the very thing he tells his readers not to do.
At least he declares that the 'first adherents of a creed do not prove anything against it', and Anthony Ludovici has
said in his Preface to The Twilight of the Idols that Nietzsche cleverly guarded himself against 'bad company'.
We would point out, however, that Nietzsche never seems to apply the same guard to Christ as he did to himself .
It is further to be noticed that
Nietzsche says that Christ's followers mutilated his teaching so much that, were He here today, He would not recognize it as His own; and he, moreover, refers to the New Testament in a
decidedly uncomplimentary way, calling it (as we have seen earlier) a literary fraud, an invention of ideas. We may well ask the pertinent question therefore, What, according to Nietzsche, is
Christ's real teaching? If the New Testament is not Christ's teaching, then where are we to look for it? Does Nietzsche mean that Christ's teaching in reality was opposed to the New Testament
and really conformed more to his own ideal of great teaching in Thus Spake Zarathustra? If Nietzsche calls the New Testament a 'literary fraud', what justification has he for regarding Jesus as a
It is
without any historical evidence. No wonder Nietzsche displays uncertainty and inconsistency4 in his opinion of the
Founder of Christianity (i.e. Christ, not Paul). Nietzsche is doubtless right in his insistence on the fact that the
Gospels are the outcome of the very Early Church, but to dismiss all the teaching contained therein as frauds and
inventions designed purely for ends of self-interest is a huge blunder. The New Testament reflects the current
conceptions of the Early Church concerning Christ, His life, teaching, and work; but if the teaching contained
therein is purely invention and a weapon of power in the hands of the masses, then a fortiori to speak of Christ at all
is sheer nonsense, for the Gospels supply the primary data for a portrait of Christ together with His teaching.
Nietzsche's 'inconceivable corruption' (to use Nietzsche's own phrase) of the New Testament can only be put down
to a mind coloured by preconceived ideas and irrational, unscientific prejudice. He attempts (and the attempts are
not very convincing) to fit all the facts into his particular theory and schemes of things. With Nietzsche, it is a
question of rnal-adjusting the facts to suit his arguments. He gives the facts a little twist and so they are found to
support his thesis. We can only smile at his weak attempts to explain the life and teaching of Christ. To hit upon an isolated
decadent or disillusioned dreamer? If the New Testament represents ideas invented by the early Christians, then it stands to reason that Nietzsche's scanty portrait of Christ is false.
saying like the so called cry of despair and disillusionment from the Cross (i.e. 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?') and base a belief on it is dangerous.6 One strongly suspects that
in the light of recent research in New Testament criticism, Nietzsche would be constrained to discard some of his theories regarding the New Testament. We should do well to remind the reader at
this point that Nietzsche is a poor hand at New Testament exegesis. His interpretation, for instance, of the Book of Revelation found in The Genealogy of Morals (p. 54) is entirely false.
(Organized Christianity has always had to suffer at the hands of men who are not competent New Testament scholars at all and are not recognized as such, yet who dogmatize freely on the
interpretation of the Bible. A modern instance of this is found in George Bernard Shaw's Adventures of a Black Girl in her Search for God.)
Furthermore, to speak of Jesus as out of touch with reality and living in a vain world of dreams and images, is a
complete misrepresentation of the facts. (We saw just previously that Nietzsche is hardly competent to pass any judgment at all on Christ in face of his peculiar theory
of the New Testament.) The Idealist and the Realist are both perfectly blended in Jesus. He was well aware of the facts and contradictions of life; He was alive to the reality of sin; His
sayings and parables reveal that He was constantly in touch with the actual. His temptations show that He
underwent great moral and spiritual conflicts which did not leave Him when He left the wilderness. No other
great teacher has had such command of the problems of life as Jesus or been so thoroughly acquainted with its
sorrow and pain. We might add here that Nietzsche himself, living his hermit life in Italy and Switzerland, was
hardly the man to speak of Jesus as out of touch with the reality of life. It was Nietzsche who was the vain dreamer,
not Christ. It was Nietzsche who withdrew himself from the surge of an angry world, not Christ.
Nietzsche opposes Christianity - - his ideas sought to strip Christianity of its values
Jaspers, 63, (Karl, German psychiatrist and philosopher Nietzsche and Christianity, Introduction, p. 1)
The shocking savagery of Nietzsche's stand against Christianity is well known. To quote an example: "If one
equivocates nowadays in his relation to Christianity, I will not give him the last finger of my two hands. Here there
is only one righteousness: utter rejection." Nietzsche proceeds to unmask Christianity with indignation and
contempt, in a style which runs from calm inquiry to strident pamphleteering. Christian realities are stripped bare
under an extraordinary wealth of aspects. Absorbing the logic of earlier oppositions, Nietzsche became the new
fountainhead of anti-Christianity, which had perhaps never before been so radical and so aware of its ultimate
implications.
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Alt Fails

Nietzsches calls for the affirmation of life fail - - the dual nature of good and evil results in
nihilism and precludes the affirmation of human life
Masks, Conclusion, p. 189-190)
The main problem that appears to delimit Nietzsche's philosophical affirmation of life is his failure to value human
life as much as life in its totality. His advances over nihilism are rooted in the notion that there is no need to invent a
more perfect form of life (as in the notion of an afterlife) since life already has sufficient meaning and value. The
Dionysian struggle against the Socratic approach to existence is based on the view that reason has exceeded its role
when it purports to define the meaning of life in terms of reason itself. And yet, the same opportunity that Nietzsche
would like to see given to life is denied to human life. There is an irresistible tendency on Nietzsche's part to deny
the value of human life as such and to accept it as valuable only if it is perfect, noble, or strong. The dualism
between good and evil is maintained as a measure of human worth. The fact that the dualism remains, however,
means that the broader project of the affirmation of life in its totality is blocked.
Zarathustra's position serves as an illustration of this dilemma. His love of life is stifled by the torture he experiences
at the thought that "small" human beings will recur eternally. Human weakness and failure elicit in Zarathustra a
sense of nausea for the whole of existence. His perception and appraisal of reality appear to be out of balance. Even
though Zarathustra finally accepts the idea of the recurrence, he makes his choice at the cost of his separation from
humanity. He drops all human contact and stays in the mountains, desiring intercourse with eternity alone. There is
an important split between his desire to affirm life and his inability to affirm human life. Human life still appears to
be too small, too insignificant and wretched to Nietzsche. Thus he constantly seeks grandeur.
Nietzsche noted that human life has dwindled because human beings lack opportunities for integrated and creative
activities. It is a mistake, however, to link creativity and integration with the quality of greatness. The demand for
greatness involves a value judgment against anything that is not exceptionally powerful or distinguished. This
involves a devaluation of the ordinary aspects of human life. If these aspects do not count toward making human life
meaningful, however, then one is still exhibiting a nihilistic attitude toward human existence. Nietzsche is right in
claiming that nihilism must be overcome in order for human beings to lead creative and resourceful lives. On the
other hand, when he associates the latter values with the creation of a strong and majestic culture, he delimits the
meaning of creativity. The expectations he places upon it are nihilistic as long as creativity is made to fit under a
paradigm of domination.
The alternative fails - - calls for overcoming nihilism reinstates the notion of self division
which results in a constant state of nihilism
Masks, Conclusion, p. 190)
Traditionally, the answer to the split between Nietzsche's critique of human life and his affirmation of life has been
to explain his reaction against human weakness as a reaction against nihilism. His position might be justified this
way if one viewed the rejection of human nature not as a devaluation of human nature as such but as a rejection of
the nihilism that has "overtaken" humanity. Certainly, Nietzsche's workat least significant portions of itlends
support to this hypothesis. Nevertheless, his analysis of nihilism is insufficiently radical. It does not point to the
dualism inherent in the notions of strong versus weak, of master versus slave. In order to overcome nihilism, one
must transcend all forms of dualism, not merely some of them. The use of the notion of nihilism as one of two poles
of an opposition between "right" and "wrong" must also be avoided. If "nihilistic" human life stands to "lifeaffirming" human life as evil to the good, and if, furthermore, one considers the "prolific" forces as being
commanded by "destiny" to chastise the "evil" forces, then one falls back precisely upon the problem of self-division
that plagues the nihilistic consciousness. The question that emerges out of this is whether it is indeed possible for
human beings to transcend dualism.
Nietzsches theories dont apply - - the only way to effectively criticize Western culture is to
experience it
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Jay, 88, (Martin, Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History @ University of Berkeley, Fin de Siecle: Socialism
and other essays, From Intellectual History to Cultural Criticism: Reflections on the Habermas-Gadamer Debate,
p. 33)
One final implication of Gadamer's hermeneutics that merits comment concerns the notion of a fusion of horizons.
Putting aside its problematic harmonistic implications, what this fusion suggests is, first, that historians themselves
must be aware of their own historicity and, second, that they are themselves irrevocably changed by their reflective
involvement with the past. Although it would be wrong to characterize this involvement simply as a form of
surrender,57 it is nonetheless more ambiguous in this regard than either the outmoded positivist objectification of
the past or the more recent structuralist version of the historian as a detached decoder of the synchronic relations of
the past preserved in the present.38 Gadamer's defense of prejudice may well have conservative implications, but it
reminds us that we delude ourselves if we think our present vantage point is somehow outside of history.
Participation as well as distanciation is necessary to our understanding of the past. It is impossible, as some of the
French post-structuralists seem to imply, to criticize the Western tradition from a position external to it.
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Alt Fails

Nietzsche is a nihilist he can never overcome nihilism because his philosophy is rooted in
it
<In his lectures on Nietzsche, Heidegger poses the following question: In Nietzsche's philosophy, which for the
first time expresses and thinks nihilism as such, is nihilism overcome or is it not? (N, 4:200). Heidegger 's direct
answer: Nietzsche's philosophy is nihilism proper, and this implies not only that Nietzsche's philosophy does not
overcome nihilism, but also that it can never overcome it because it is the ultimate entanglement in nihilism
(N, 4:203). Despite Nietzsche's valiant efforts to formulate a nonascetic/antinihilistic ideal in terms of which
humanity could affirm rather than devalue the natural world, Heidegger argues that Nietzsche fails precisely because
he posits new [nonascetic] values from the [perspective of] will to power (N, 4:203). According to Heidegger, this
is simply the culmination of the history of traditional (productionist) metaphysics, which , in turn, results in the
very nihilistic constructs of domination that Nietzsche feared the most. Such utterly completed, perfect
nihilism is the fulfillment of nihilism proper (N, 4:203). Why does Heidegger claim that Nietzsche 's philosophy is
the ultimate fulfillment of nihilism and not its overcoming?
Heidegger believes that Nietzsche's doctrines of will to power and eternal recurrence are themselves
metaphysical doctrines; that is to say, they are intended as answers to traditional metaphysical questions concerning
essence and existence. As such, Heidegger argues, they are connected to the whole history of nihilism and to the
modern technological/productionist attitude toward the world which that history entails. Let me enlarge on this.
As we have seen, Nietzsche basically understands traditional metaphysics as the acceptance of a true or
transcendent world that ultimately devalues this (ordinary, everyday) world. This eventually leads to the idealization
of asceticism, which in turn leads to nihilism when the values propped up by metaphysics and its ascetic ideal are
devalued. Nietzsche aims to overcome nihilism and asceticism by overcoming metaphysics, and this he attempts to
do, in part at least, by means of his doctrines of will to power (which provides the basis for a new kind of valuation)
and eternal recurrence (which rules out a true or transcendent world). Heidegger argues, however, that these
supposed nonascetic doctrines are themselves thoroughly metaphysical since they claim to offer Nietzsche's answer
to the old question concerning the Being of beings: will to power is the ultimate essence of the world under the
mode of existence of eternal recurrence (cf. N, 2:203). 21>
The alternative fails - - attempts to move beyond nihilism only brings back its return
Research in Phenomenology, 03, (Dennis Keenan, Nietzsche and the Eternal Return of Sacrifice, 33 167-85
2003, wilsonselectplus)
In the work of Nietzsche, sacrifice can only sacrifice itself over and over (in an eternal return of the same) because
what it seeks to overcome (the nihilistic revelation of truth that sublates sacrifice's negation) makes this sacrifice of
itself both necessary and useless. The truth is eternally postponed in a necessary sacrificial gesture that can only
sacrifice itself, thereby rendering itself useless. In the attempt to step beyond nihilism, that is, in the attempt to
negate (or sacrifice) nihilism, one repeats the negation characteristic of nihilism. One becomes inextricably
implicated in the move of nihilistic sacrifice. The sacrifice of the sacrifice characteristic of nihilism, that is, the
sacrifice of sacrifice, can only take place as (perform itself as) the impossibility (or eternally postponed possibility)
of its realization. One, therefore, produces or performs an interminable step/not beyond, an incessant step beyond
that eternally returns.
Sacrifice is to be overcome. What could be more obvious to a reader of the work of Nietzsche? And yet, is it that
obvious? A careful reading of the work of Nietzsche will reveal that in the attempt to step beyond sacrifice, one
becomes inextricably implicated in the move of nihilistic sacrifice. Sacrifice returns ... eternally.
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Alt Fails (Power Relations)

Nietzsches alternative fails to create change - - it fails to provide an alternative to power
relations and results in complete obedience to the state
Despite Nietzsche's contribution to the problem of resentment, he cannot see through completely to its solution
because he fails to reconsider the meaning of authority under a "trans-valuated" perspective on values. The answer
he sought at this levelthe idea of will to power as dominationis in no way a radical answer to what authority
would mean under a new system of values. It simply reconfirms the traditional meaning of authoritynamely, the
power of command and the enforcement of rulesalthough, instead of grounding the power of command upon a
"sublime" or a "moral" basis, Nietzsche gives it an extra-moral foundation. In doing this he is not carrying Western
culture to a new ground of values. He is simply taking away some of the more hypocritical trimmings from the
attitude toward power that has generally prevailed in the culture. A reconsideration of the meaning of authority
would question the need for appealing to authority under a life-affirming conception of values. If the aim of
overcoming nihilism is the healing of human beings from fragmentation and alienation, and if it is the philosopher's
task to achieve this aim, should the philosopher invent various appeals to the authority of reason or life to make his
or her contributions to human understanding more acceptable or enticing? Must the approach to the investigation of
a vital issue be mystified in this manner? Obedience to authority binds the self. To end an argument by stating "Thus
life wills it" does not lend any additional support to the argument. Moreover, it would seem that dependence upon
authority is the mark of a restless consciousness, of a consciousness that cannot provide its own foundations for
values. Such a consciousness seeks to lose itself in an authoritarian formula or, if it is somewhat bolder, it will seek
compliance with its values by others as a way of reassuring itself that its values have a foundation.
The call for distinguishing individuals as superior or inferior reinforces the dependence on
authoritative systems of power - - the alternative will never solve because it relies on higher
powers - - it is impossible to produce change until individuals are able to overcome the
desire for a superior/inferior dichotomy
The ideology of superior/inferior reinforces the dependence of individuals upon authoritative systems of value.
Because one can always be judged inferior to something superior to oneself, one is always subject to the power of
that which is deemed superior to one's performance and values. This creates in some the desire to conform to
external standards of conduct so as to prove one's value. However, the result of this type of alienation is the
mentality of the "herd" criticized by Nietzsche. On the other hand, in others the ideology of superior/inferior may
create a need to compete and either rival or overcome the previous authorities. And yet there seems to be only one
permissible way of being successful in this respect, and that is to become a "new" authority. The circle of alienation,
however, is not broken by the latter procedure. The person who attains the more valuable or "superior" status simply
moves to a different position in the circle of nihilism.
Moreover, because one cannot be "superior" in every respect, the organism remains fragmented and alienated.
Standards of values outside its own needs are held up as measures of its value in every conceivable area of the
individual's appearance and performance. Indeed, this panorama of existence yields the scene laid out by Nietzsche
where modern human beings are depicted as either completely manipulated by standards of value external to
themselves or else, in rebellion against this, rising as dictators over the masses. In a society or culture where
everyone has to account for one's value to a "higher" authority, the possibility of emptiness and fragmentation will
always stay with human beings. The need to prove one's value to a higher authority may keep one from developing
those talents and virtues that would be most meaningful to oneself. The origin of the depreciation of human life,
then, is in the need to make human life fit the expectations of a "superior" authority.
The divided consciousness resulting from this cannot transcend nihilism until and unless it can transcend the
dependence on authoritarianism. The nihilistic mind wants to control reality; it does not want reality simply to be.
Where it can no longer control, it only knows how to suspend its desire to grasp by submitting to a higher force.
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This reinforces its sense of helplessness and its inordinate need always to keep in control of things. Like "superior"
and "inferior," the opposites "good" and "evil" serve to reinforce the authoritarian mentality. It is not so much the
opposition of terms as the authoritative confinement into which the self is trapped when these terms are employed
that reveals their nihilistic nature. One must remember that Zarathustra, the superior teacher, is just as confined to
his mountain topdespite the appearance of freedomas the "inferior" people living in the valley. Once the
ideology of superior/inferior and good/evil sets in, one is confined, restricted, and immobilized in the quest for
personal integration and a healthy sense of values. One escapes individuality by placing one's identity within the
boundaries of one or both of these categories (superior/inferior, good/evil). Escaping individuality, one never
succeeds in learning what it means to be a healthy individual.
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AT: Nietzsche/Nihilism Alt Fails (Superman)

The concept of the Superman fails - - it fails to make progress and contradicts the doctrine
of Eternal Recurrence and culminates in totalitarianism and tyranny- - Napoleon proves
Thompson, 1951, (R. Motson, M.A., Nietzsche and Christian Ethics, Nietzsches Doctrines Examined, p. 38-40)
Nietzsche thought that his doctrine of the Superman gave direction and purpose to life. Moreover, it was to him an
adequate substitute for God, the goal of mankind found in mankind, which would evoke from man his best in a
creative endeavour to fulfill those conditions where the Superman could have full sway.
The great disappointment about this doctrine is that the work is done for the Superman; he is the creation of the
centuries, a product of a direct elimination of the weak and the survival of the strong (though on Nietzsche's theory
there hardly seems to be any 'survival' at all, Survival implies at least struggle, and yet Nietzsche's Superman seems
to come into his own without any effort on his part). Superman has risen to his high place of honour not by his own
efforts, but by the achievement of those whom he regards as his inferiorsmere laughing-stocks. Furthermore, the
idea of the Superman seems to lose meaning and force in the light of the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence. If mankind
is caught up in an eternal round of events, Superman merely becomes a cog in the wheel which is destined for ever
to revolve. He is, as it were, fated to appear every so often in the time-series whatever happens. Professor Eric
Waterhouse14 has said that the reductio ad absurdum of evolutionary ethics is Nietzsche's doctrine of the
Superman. Nietzsche asks why should the evolutionary process stop at man? We may equally well ask, why should
it stop at Superman? A race of Super-supermen would be the next step. Nietzsche seems to identify progress with
evolution, but they do not necessarily mean the same thing. Mr. Stephen Ward, in his excellent little book, Ethics:
An Historical Introduction, says: 'The idea of evolution is not to be identified with the idea of growth. . . . In the
evolutionary process all the stages seem equally unimportant. Growth has a culminating point; evolution has
none. . . . Evolution must not be used as a means of introducing the old ideas of progress and perfectibility under a
new name.' In any case, it is hard to see, in view of the Eternal Return, how progress has any meaning in Nietzsche's
system. Nietzsche cites Napoleon as an example in history of a higher type of life, yet his influence was mainly
destructive. Like Nietzsche's ideal, he ignored the herd. Men to him were mere instruments of power and personal
ambition. He claimed to be governed by his own code of laws; he was an expression of the Will to Power ungoverned by any thought of the 'divine right of living'; his energy was directed purely along selfish lines: he bled
Europe to death in order to gain the world. But those same Napoleonic characteristics when canalized along the line
of service and selflessness become creative forces. Napoleon did the very things that Nietzsche required of his
Superman and was a failure. (The reason for this emerges later on Elba when Napoleon, with one of those flashes
of real insight often given to powerful men, in weighing up the worth of his work compared with that of Christ,
said: 'Other great conquerors won their kingdoms with the sword. There has only been One who has established His
kingdom by love, and to this day millions would die for Him.). We can see, therefore, that a doctrine like the
Superman leaves room for tremendous licence. Any man as Professor Simmel has pointed out, may think
himself a Superman, which would give him the right, on Nietzsche's principles, to consider himself 'a law unto
himself. This is dangerous: for it would lead to tyranny and a complete disregard of any social responsibilities
or obligations. But what else can one expect of a doctrine, the animating principle of which is merely a blind will
to power? Moreover, the uncertainty of the results of such a doctrine lead one to wonder what would happen next.
As Walter Lippmann has asked in his Preface to Morals, who can say, after Nietzsche has shot his arrow of longing
to the other shore, whether he will find Caesar Borgia, Henry Ford, or Isadora Duncan?19
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AT: Hiedegger Alt Fails

Heideggers alternative is based on dogmatic authoritarianism that can never lead to
positive change
<The pursuit of knowledge continues unabated for the skeptic. Yet it proceeds with a suspicious eye. There are
inherent limitations to and a price to pay forthe pursuit of knowledge. Charles Scott describes Foucault's efforts
in this regard: Far from the skepticism that argues that nothing is really knowablegenealogies embody a sense of
the historical limits that define our capacities for knowing and believing. Things are known. But they are known in
ways that have considerable social and cultural costs. 8 Both Heidegger and Foucault maintain that there is no
legitimate basis for the radical skeptic's conviction that knowledge is impossible or unworthy of pursuit. This sort of
skepticism, Heidegger states, consists merely in an addiction to doubt. 9 The skeptical nature of political
philosophical thought, in contrast, is grounded in the imperative of endless inquiry. The point for Heidegger and
Foucault is to inquire not in order to sustain doubt, but to doubt that one might better sustain inquiry. At the same
time, inquiry is tempered with a sensibility of the ethico-political costs of any knowledge that is gained.
Doing political philosophy of this sort might be likened to walking on a tightrope. If vertigo is experienced, a
precarious balance may be lost. Falling to one side leaves one mired in apathy, cynicism, and apoliticism. This
results when skeptical inquiry degenerates into a radical skepticism, an addictive doubt that denies the value of (the
search for) knowledge and undermines the engagements of collective life, which invariably demand commitment
(based on tentatively embraced knowledge). Falling to the other side of the tightrope leaves one mired in dogmatic
belief or blind activism. Authoritarian ideologies come to serve as stable foundations, or a reactive iconoclasm
leads to irresponsible defiance. Apathy, cynicism, and apoliticism, on the one side, and dogmatic authoritarianism or
reactive iconoclasm, on the other, are the dangerous consequences of losing one's balance. These states of mind and
their corresponding patterns of behavior relieve the vertigo of political philosophical inquiry, but at a prohibitive
cost.
It has been argued that Foucault did not so much walk the tightrope of political philosophy as straddle it, at times
leaving his readers hopeless and cynical, at times egging them on to an irresponsible monkeywrenching. For some,
the Foucauldian flight from the ubiquitous powers of normalization undermines any defensible normative position.
Hopelessness accompanies lost innocence. Cynicism or nihilism become the only alternatives for those who spurn
all ethical and political foundations. By refusing to paint a picture of a better future, Foucault is said to undercut the
impetus to struggle. Others focus on Foucault's development of a tool kit whose contents are to be employed to
deconstruct the apparatuses of modern power. Yet the danger remains that Foucault's hyperactive tool-kit users
will be unprincipled activists, Luddites at best, terrorists at worst. In either case, Foucault provides no overarching
theoretical vision. Indeed, Foucault is upfront about his rejection of ethical and political theories and ideals. I think
that to imagine another system is to extend our participation in the present system, Foucault stipulates. Reject
theory and all forms of general discourse. This need for theory is still part of the system we reject. 10 One might
worry whether action is meant to take the place of thought.
If Foucault occasionally straddles the tightrope of political philosophy, Heidegger obviously stumbled off it. In the
19305, Heidegger enclosed himself within an authoritarian system of thought grounded in ontological reifications
of a folk and its history. Heidegger's historicization of metaphysics led him to believe that a new philosophic
epoch was about to be inaugurated. It implicitly called for a philosophical Fuehrer who could put an end to two
millennia of ontological forgetting. 11 The temptation for Heidegger to identify himself as this intellectual messiah
and to attach himself to an authoritarian social and political movement capable of sustaining cultural renewal proved
irresistible. Whether Heidegger ever fully recovered his balance has been the topic of much discussion. Some argue
that Heidegger's prerogative for political philosophizing was wholly undermined by his infatuation with folk destiny,
salvational gods, and political authority. 12>
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AT: Hiedegger Alt Fails

Hiedeggers philosophy does not apply and is dangerous in the political realm because
metaphysical results will not result from politics
Wolin, Professor of Modern European Intellectual History at Rice, 1990
(Richard, The Politics of Being, p. 117-118)
Moreover, as Harries indicates, Heidegger's theory of the state as a "work" is modeled upon his theory of the work of art. Thus, as we have seen, in Heidegger's view, both works of art and the
state are examples of the "setting-to-work of truth." In essence, the state becomes a giant work of art: like the work of art, it participates in the revelation of truth, yet on a much more grandiose
and fundamental scale, since it is the Gesamtkunstwerk within which all the other sub-works enact their preassigned roles. However, the idea of basing political judgments on analogy with
Though we may readily accept and even welcome Heidegger's claim that works
of art reveal the truth or essence of beings ("The work [of art] ... is not the reproduction of some particular entity that happens to be pres ent at any given time,"
observes Heidegger; "it is, on the contrary, the reproduction of the thing's general essence"), we must question the attempt to transpose aestheticometaphysical criteria to the realm of political life proper. Is it in point of fact meaningful to speak of the "unveiling
of truth" as the raison d'etre of politics in the same way one can say this of a work of art or a philosophical work? Is
not politics rather a nonmetaphysical sphere of human interaction, in which the content of collective human
projects, institutions, and laws is articulated, discussed, and agreed upon? Is it not, moreover, in some sense dangerous to
expect "metaphysical results" from politics? For is not politics instead a sphere of hu man plurality, difference, and
multiplicity; hence, a realm in which the more exacting criteria of philosophical truth must play a sub ordinate role? And
thus, would it not in fact be to place a type of totalitarian constraint on politics to expect it to deliver over truth in
such pristine and unambiguous fashion? And even if Heidegger's own conception of truth (which we shall turn to shortly) is sufficiently tolerant and pluralistic to allay
such fears, shouldn't the main category of political life be justice instead of truth? Undoubtedly, Heidegger's long-standing
prejudices against "value-philosophy prevented him from seriously entertaining this proposition; and thus, as a
category of political judgment, justice would not stand in sufficiently close proximity to Being . In all of the aforementioned
instances, we see that Heideggers political philosophy is overburdened with ontological considerations that end up
stifling the inner logic of politics as an independent sphere of human action.
aesthetic judgments is an extremely tenuous proposition.
66
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AT: Hiedegger Alt Suffering/Extinction

Heideggers philosophy is reminiscent of Nietzhes nihilism rejecting all technology makes
life meaningless, culminating in extinction
<Why a philosophical shock? The answer, in part, may be that from Foucault's perspective, Heidegger's insightful
reading of Nietzsche and the problem of nihilism is itself too ascetic. Heidegger's emphasis on silence as proper
to Dasein's being, his frequent use of quasireligious (even Schopenhauerean) terms of grace and call of
conscience, his many references to the destiny of the German Volk, his avoidance of politics and the serious
quietistic tone of Heideggerian Gelassenheit are all reminiscent of the life-denying ascetic ideal Nietzsche sought
to avoid. 65 Moreover, Foucault seems to join with Derrida and other neo-Nietzscheans in regarding Heidegger's
idea of letting Being behis vision of those who have left traditional metaphysics behind and with it the
obsession with mastery and technology that drives contemporary civilizationas too passive or apathetic a response
to the legitimate problems of post-Nietzschean nihilism that Heidegger's own analysis uncovers. 66 Here we have
arrived at a key difference between Heidegger and Foucault: for Foucault, Heidegger takes insufficient account of
the playful and even irreverent elements in Nietzsche and of Nietzsche's critique of the dangers of the ascetic ideal.
Foucault joins with other new Nietzscheans in promoting, as an alternative to Heideggerian Gelassenheit, the more
Nietzschean vision of playing with the textwhich in Foucault's case means promulgating active and willful
images of resistance and struggle against particular practices of domination, rebellion against micro-powers, and
blatant disregard for tradition (cf. DP, 27). 67 This context-specific, unambiguously confrontational nature of
Foucault's critique of the forms of domination and technologies of power lodged in modern institutions offers a more
Nietzsche-like response than the one Heidegger offers to the nihilistic problems of Western civilization. As Foucault
sees it, the lessons Heidegger would have us draw from Nietzsche throw us back to the passive nihilism of
emptiness that Nietzsche feared. While not predicting the emergence of better times, Foucault tries to offer a better
(less passive, less ascetic) model for reforming our background practices and for cultivating an affirmative attitude
toward life that he and other neo-Nietzscheans think may be our only chance to keep from extinguishing life on
earth altogether. 68>
Heidegger undermines morals and politics the alternative will only cause suffering and
the destroy all ethics
<The complementarity of Heidegger's and Foucault's accounts of modern demons and saving graces should not be
too surprising. Foucault's indebtedness to and fascination with Heidegger is well documented. 1 My intent in this
chapter is neither to focus on the complementarity of these visions, nor to outline the striking philosophical and
political differences that remain in Heidegger's and Foucault's work. Rather, I attempt to make a claim for what at
first blush might appear a lost cause. Despite their originality and intellectual brilliance, Heidegger and Foucault are
often castigated as ethico-political dead-ends. They are criticized for their unwillingness or inability to supply the
grounds for sound moral and political judgment. Heidegger's embrace of Nazism, in particular, is frequently
identified as proof positive that he has little, if anything, to contribute to the ethico-political domain. The standard
charge is that his highly abstract form of philosophizing, empyrean ontological vantage point, and depreciation of
das Man undermines moral principle and political responsibility. From his philosophical heights, it is
suggested, Heidegger remained blind to human sufferings, ethical imperatives, and political practicalities. He
immunized himself against the moral sensitivity, compassion, and prudence that might have dissuaded him from
endorsing and identifying with a brutal regime. Those who embrace his philosophy, critics warn, court similar
dangers.
In like fashion, it is held that Foucault dug himself into an equally deep, though ideologically relocated, moral and
political hole. Genealogical studies left Foucault convinced of the ubiquity of the disciplinary matrix. There would
be no final liberation. The sticky, normalizing webs of power were inescapable and a hermeneutics of suspicion
quashed any hope of gaining the ethical and political high ground. 2 As such, critics charge, Foucault stripped from
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us all reason for resistance to unjust power and all hope of legitimating alternative ethico-political institutions. In a
Foucauldian world of panoptic power that shapes wants, needs, and selves, critics worry, one would have no
justification for fighting and nothing worth fighting for. 3
In sum, Heidegger's and Foucault's critics suggest that both thinkers undermine the foundations of the practical
wisdom needed to ethically and politically navigate late modernity. Despite the brilliance and originality of their
thought, arguably the greatest philosopher and the greatest social and political theorist of the twentieth century
remain ungrounded ethically and divorced from political responsibility. Critics argue that Heidegger's statements
and actions endorsing and defending Nazi authoritarianism and Foucault's radical anarchism, as displayed in his
discussions of popular justice with Maoists, demonstrate that neither thinker is capable of supplying us with the
resources for sound moral and political judgment.>
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AT: Hiedegger Alt fails (justifies Holocaust)

Heideggerians are in a constant search for truth. Their beliefs are the reason Germans
became Nazis by justifying the bringing out of certain inner greatnesses. This blind
attitude assures s that calls for an ontological shift will inevitably fail
Zizek, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences in Ljubljana, 1999
(Slavoj, The Ticklish Subject, p. 13-15)
<Apropos of this precise point, I myself run into my first trouble with Heidegger (since I began as a Heideggerian my first published hook was on Heidegger and language). When, in my youth, I was bombarded by the official
Communist philosophers' stories of Heidegger's Nazi engagement, they left me rather cold; I was definitely more on
the side of the Yugoslav Heideggarians. All of a sudden, however, I became aware of how these Yugoslav
Heideggarians were doing exactly the sauce thing with respect to the Yugoslav ideology of self-management as
Heidegger himself did with respect to Nazism: in ex-Yugoslavia, Heideggerians entertained the same ambiguously
assertive relationship towards Socialist self- management, the official ideology of the Communist regime - in their
eyes, the essence of sell-management was the very essence of modern man, which is why the philosophical notion of
self-managemrnt suits the ontological essence of our epoch, while the standard political ideology of the regime
misses this 'inner greatness' of self-management ... Heideggerians are thus eternally in search of a positive, ontic
political system that would come closest to the epochal ontological truth, a strategy which inevitably leads to error
(which, of course, is always acknowledged only retroactively, post factum, after the disastrous outcome of one's
engagement).
As Heidegger himself put it, those who carne closest to the Ontological Truth are condemned to err at the ontic level
... err about what? Precisely about the line of separation between ontic and ontological. The paradox not to be
underestimated is that the very philosopher who focused his interest on the enigma of ontological difference - who
warned again and again against the metaphysical mistake of conferring ontological dignity on some ontic content
(God as the highest Entity, for example) - fell into the trap of conferring on Nazism the ontological dignity of suiting
the essence of modern man. The standard defence of Heidegger against the reproach of his Nazi past consists of two
points: not only was his Nazi engagement a simple personal error (a stupidity [Dummheit]', as Heidegger himself
put it) in no way inherently related to his philosophical project; the main counter-argument is that it is Heidegger's
own philosophy that enables us to discern the true epochal roots of modern totalitarianism. However, what remains
unthought here is the hidden complicity between the ontological indifference towards concrete social systems
(capitalism, Fascism. Communism), in so far as they all belong to the same horizon of modern technology, and the
secret privileging of a concrete sociopolitical model (Nazism with Heidegger, Communism with some 'Heideggerian
Marxists') as closer to the ontological truth of our epoch.
Here one should avoid the trap that caught Heidegger's defenders, who dismissed Heideggers Nazi engagement as
simple an anomaly, a fall into the ontic level, in blatant contradiction to his thought, which teaches us not to confuse
ontological horizon with ontic choices (as we have already seen, Heidegger is at his strongest when he demonstrates
how, on a deeper structural level, ecological, conservative, and so on, oppositions to the modern universe of
technology are already embedded in the horizon of what they purport to reject: the ecological critique of the
technological exploitation of nature ultimately leads to a more 'environmentally sound' technology. etc.). Heidegger
did not engage in the Nazi political project 'in spite of' his ontological philosophical approach, but because of it; this
engagement was not 'beneath' his philosophical level - on the contrary if one is to understand Heidegger, the key
point is to grasp the complicity (in Hegelese: 'speculative identity') between the elevation above ontic concerns and
the passionate 'ontic' Nazi political engagement.
One can now see the ideological trap that caught Heidegger: when he criticizes Nazi racism on behalf of the true
'inner greatness' of the Nazi movement, he repeats the elementary ideological gesture of maintaining an inner
distance towards the ideological text - of claiming that there is something more beneath it, a non-ideological kernel:
ideology exerts its hold over us by means of this very insistence that the Cause we adhere to is not 'merely'
ideological. So where is the trap? When the disappointed Heidegger turns away from active engagement in the Nazi
movement, he does so because the Nazi movement did not maintain the level of its 'inner greatness', but legitimized
itself with inadequate (racial) ideology. In other words, what he expected from it was that it should legitimize itself
through direct awareness of its 'inner greatness'. And the problemlies in this very expectation that a political
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movement that will directly refer to its historico-ontological foundation is possible. This expectation, however, is in
itself profoundly metaphysical, in so far as it fails to recognize that the gap separating the direct ideological
legitimization of a movement from its 'inner greatness' (its historico-ontological essence) is constitutive, a positive
condition of its 'functioning'. To use the terms of the later Heidegger, ontological insight necessarily entails ontic
blindness and error, and vice versa - that is to say, in order to be 'effective' at the ontic level, one must disregard
the ontological horizon of one's activity. (In this sense, Heidegger emphasizes that 'science doesn't think' and that,
far from being its limitation, this inability is the very motor of scientific progress.) In other words, what Heidegger
seems unable to endorse is a concrete political engagement that would accept its necessary, constitutive blindness
- as if the moment we acknowledge the gap separating the awareness of the ontological horizon from ontic engage ment, any ontic engagement is depreciated, loses its authentic dignity.>
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AT: Hiedegger Alt Fails (justifies Holocaust)

Heideggers philosophy has moral consequences and leads to paralysis It justifies sitting
back and allowing for the Holocaust while criticizing the technology used to kill the Jews
Bookchin, Founder of the Institute for Social Ecology and Former Professor at Ramapo College,
1995
(Murray, Re-enchanting Humanity, p. 168-170)
"Insofar as Heidegger can be said to have had a project to shape human lifeways, it was as an endeavor to resist, or should I say, demur from, what he conceived to he an all-encroaching
technocratic mentality and civilization that rendered human beings 'inauthentic' in their relationship to a presumably self-generative reality, 'isness', or more esoterically, 'Being' (Sein). Not unlike
Heidegger viewed modernity' with its democratic spirit, rationalism, respect for the individual,
and technological advances as a 'falling' (Gefallen) from a primal and naive innocence in which humanity once
'dwelled, remnants of which he believed existed in the rustic world into which he was born a century ago.
'Authenticity', it can be said without any philosophical frills, lay in the pristine Teutonic world of the tribal Germans
who retained their ties with the Gods, and with later peoples who still tried to nourish their past amidst the blighted
traits of the modern world. Since some authors try to muddy Heidegger's prelapsarian message by focusing on his assumed belief in individual freedom and ignoring his hatred
many German reactionaries,
of the French Revolution and its egalitarian, 'herd'-like democracy of the 'They', it is worth emphasizing that such a view withers m the light of his denial of individuality. The individual by
As a member of
the Nazi party, which he remained up to the defeat of Germany twelve years later, his antihumanism reached
strident, often blatantly reactionary proportions. Newly appointed as the rector of the University of Freiburg upon
Hitler's ascent to power, he readily adopted the Fuehrer-principle of German fascism and preferred the title RektorFuhrer, hailing the spirit of National Socialism as an antidote to 'the darkening of the world, the flight of the gods,
the destruction of the earth [by technology], the transformation of men into a mass, the hatred and suspicion of
everything free and creative. His most unsavory remarks were directed in the lectures, from which these lines are taken, 'from a metaphysical point of view', against 'the
pincers' created by America and Russia that threaten to squeeze 'the farthermost corner of the globe ... by technology and ... economic exploitation.' Technology, as Heidegger
construes it, is 'no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm
for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing , i.e., of truth.30 After which
Heidegger rolls out technology's transformations, indeed mutations, which give rise to a mood of anxiety and finally
hubris, anthropocentricity, and the mechanical coercion of things into mere objects for human use and exploitation.
himself counts for nothing', he declared after becoming a member of the National Socialist party in 1933. 'The fate of our Volk m its state counts for everything.' 22
28
29
Heidegger's views on technology are part of a larger weltanschauung which is too multicolored to discuss here, and demands a degree of inter pretive effort we must forgo for the present in the
Suffice it to say that there is a good deal of primitivistic animism in Heidegger's treatment of
the 'revealing' that occurs when techne is a 'clearing' for the 'expression' of a crafted material - not unlike the Eskimo
sculptor who believes (quite wrongly, I may add) that he is 'bringing out' a hidden form that lies in the walrus ivory he is
carving. But this issue must be seen more as a matter of metaphysics than of a spir itually charged technique. Thus,
when Heidegger praises a windmill, in contrast to the 'challenge' to a tract of land from which the hauling out of
coal and ore' is subjected, he is not being 'ecological'. Heidegger is concerned with a windmill, not as an ecological
technology, but more metaphysically with the notion that 'its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they are left entirely to
the wind's blowing'. The windmill 'does not unlock energy from the air currents, in order to store it'. 31 Like man in
relation to Being, it is a medium for the 'realization' of wind, not an artifact for acquiring power. Basically, this
interpretation of a technological interrelationship reflects a regression - socially and psychologically as well as
metaphysically into quietism. Heidegger advances a message of passivity or passivity conceived as a human
activity, an endeavor to let things be and 'disclose' themselves. 'Letting things be' would be little more than a trite
Maoist and Buddhist precept were it not that Heidegger as a National Socialist became all too ideologically
engaged, rather than 'letting things be', when he was busily undoing 'intellectualism,' democracy, and techno logical
intervention into the 'world'. Considering the time, the place, and the abstract way in which Heidegger treated
humanity's 'Fall' into technological inauthenticity a Fall that he, like Ellul, regarded as inevitable, albeit a
metaphysical, nightmare - it is not hard to see why he could trivialize the Holocaust, when he deigned to notice it at
all, as part of a techno-industrial condition. 'Agriculture is now a motorized (motorsierte) food industry, in essence
the same as the manufacturing of corpses in the gas chambers and extermination camps,' he coldly observed, 'the
same as the blockade and starvation of the countryside, the same as the production of the hydrogen bombs. 32 In
placing the industrial means by which many Jews were killed before the ideological ends that guided their Nazi
exterminators, Heidegger essentially displaces the barbarism of a specific state apparatus, of which he was a part, by
the technical proficiency he can attribute to the world at large! These immensely revealing offhanded remarks,
drawn from a speech he gave in Bremen m 1949, are beneath contempt. But they point to a way of thinking that
context of a criticism of technophobia.
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gave an autonomy to technique that has fearful moral consequences which we are living with these days in the name
of the sacred, a phraseology that Heidegger would find very congenial were he alive today. Indeed, technophobia, followed
to its logical and crudely primitivistic conclusions, finally devolves into a dark reactionism and a paralyzing quietism. For if our
confrontation with civilization turns on passivity before a disclosing of Being, a mere dwelling on the earth, and
a letting things be, to use Heideggers verbiage much of which has slipped into deep ecologys vocabulary as
well the choice between supporting barbarism and enlightened humanism has no ethical foundations to sustain
it. Freed of values grounded in objectivity, we are lost in a quasi-religious antihumanism, a spirituality that can
with the same equanimity hear the cry of a bird and ignore the anguish of six million once-living people who were
put to death by the National Socialist state.
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AT: Hiedegger Hes a Nazi

Heidegger is a Nazi and that is the basis of his philosophy
<Heidegger was a Nazi, and a rather unrepentent one at that. Some suggest Heidegger's Nazism cannot be separated
from his philosophy, that indeed the former follows from the latter. The argument, in short, is that Heidegger's
political biography pretty well tells the whole story. This position has been rearticulated periodically since the end of
the Second World War, each time creating something of an academic row. 16 To be sure, the story of Heidegger's life
does not well illustrate an education in sound moral and political judgment, except perhaps as an example of a
lesson left unlearned. Yet the story that Heidegger himself tells about human life, about human being in history, can
do much to cultivate moral and political judgment. I assert this despite insightful critiques of Heidegger that accuse
him of ignoring and eliding phronesis as a human potentiality. 17 My argument, then, is not that Heidegger's work
explicitly celebrates prudence, but that his philosophical narrative facilitates its cultivation.>
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AT: Hiedegger Humanism Good

Liberal humanism liberates more than it destroys and stops the worst oppression in history
the Wests fight against communism proves
Kors, Professor of History at University of Pennsylvania and Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy
Research Institute, 2001
(Alan Charles, Triumph without Self-Belief, Orbis, Summer, ebsco)
For generations, and to this day, the great defenders of the humane consequences of the allocation of capital by free markets--Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, for
example--have remained unexplored, marginalized, or dismissed as absurd by most American intellectuals. The lionized intellectuals were and are, in sentimental memory, those who dreamed
about and debated how one would make the transition from unproductive and unjust capitalism to the cornucopia of central planning. For a full generation, academic intellectual culture above all
generally viewed the West's anticommunist military strength, let alone its willingness to project that strength, as the great obstacle to international justice and peace, and derided the doctrine of
peace through strength as the slogan of the demented. For at least a generation, Western intellectual contempt for the West as a civilization, a set of ideals, and the object of hope for the potentials
of humanity has been the curriculum of the humanities and "soft" social sciences. Given these ineffably sad phenomena, the seeming triumph of the West (both the collapse of neo-Marxist theory
at universities outside the West, and especially the downfall of the Soviet empire) will be understood by Western intellectuals as showing, in the latter case, how absurd Western fears were from
the start, and, in both cases, not so much a victory for the West as merely the economic collapse of communists who in various ways betrayed their ideals or failed to temper them with adequate
pragmatism or relativism. One must recall, however, the years 1975-76 in the world of the intellectual Left: the joy at American defeat in Indochina; the excitement over Eurocommunism; the
anticipation of one, ten, a hundred Vietnams; the contempt for Jean-Francois Revel's The Totalitarian Temptation; the ubiquitous theories of moral equivalence; the thrill Of hammers and sickles
in Portugal; the justifications of the movement of Cuban troops into those great hopes for mankind, Angola and Mozambique; the loathing of all efforts to preserve Western strategic superiority
or even parity. One must recall, indeed, the early 1980s: the romanticization of the kleptomaniacal and antidemocratic Castroite Sandinistas and the homicidal megalomaniac Mengistu of
Ethiopia; the demonization of Reagan's foreign policy; the outrage when Susan Sontag declared the audience of Reader's Digest better informed than readers of The Nation about the history of
the USSR; the mockery of the president's description of the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" and of communism as a vision that would end on "the dustbin of history"; and the academic
associations that approved politically correct resolutions for a nuclear freeze. The latter included the American Historical Association, which voted in overwhelming numbers to inform the
American government and public that, as professional historians, they knew that Reagan's rearmament program and deployment of missiles in Europe would lead to a severe worsening of U.S.Soviet relations, end the possibilities of peace, and culminate in an exchange of weapons in an ineluctable conflict. All of that will be rewritten, forgotten, indirectly justified, and incorporated
The initial appeal of communism and romanticized Third

World leaders--Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Sekou Toure, and Daniel Ortega--who would redefine human well-being and productivity
(well, they certainly redefined something) reflected the Western pathology whereby intellectuals delude themselves systematically
about the non-West, about that "Other" standing against and apart from the society that does not appreciate those intellectuals' moral and
practical authority and status. However, when an enemy arose that truly hated Western intellectuals--namely, fascism--and whose defeat depended upon the West's self-belief, Western
into a world view that still portrays the West as empire and the rest of the world as victim.
intellectuals quickly became masters of judgments of absolute superiority and had no difficulty in defining a contest between good and evil. Cognitive dissonance is an astonishing phenomenon,
the most murderous regime in all of human history, the

Bolsheviks in power, has fallen: its agents were guilty of irredeemable crimes against humanity, and its apologists
should do penance for the remainder of their lives. Anticommunists within the law were warriors for human freedom; communists and anti-anticommunists,
whatever their intentions, were warriors for human misery and slavery. The most that can be said in communism's favor is that it was capable of
building, by means of. slave labor and terror, a simulacrum of Gary, Indiana, once only, without ongoing maintenance, and minus the good stuff. Secondly,
voluntary exchange among individuals held morally responsible under the rule of law has demonstrably created the
means of both prosperity and diverse social options. Such a model has been a precondition of individuation and
freedom, whereas regimes of central planning have created poverty, and (as Hayek foresaw) ineluctable
developments toward totalitarianism and the worst abuses of power. Dynamic free-market societies, grounded in rights-based individualism, have
and in academic circles, it prevents three essential historical truths from being told. First,
altered the entire human conception of freedom and dignity for formerly marginalized groups. The entire "socialist experiment," by contrast, ended in stasis, ethnic hatreds, the absence of even
Thirdly, the willingness to

contain communism, to fight its expansion overtly and covertly, to sacrifice wealth and often lives against its
heinous efforts at extension--in Europe, Vietnam, Central Asia, Central America, Korea, Laos, Cambodia, and, indeed, Grenada--was, with the
struggle against Nazism over a much briefer period, the great gift of American taxpayers and the American people to planet earth. As Britain
the minimal preconditions of economic, social, and political renewal, and categorical contempt for both individuation and minority rights.
under Churchill was "the West" in 1940, so was the United States from 1945 to 1989, drawing from its values to stand against what was simultaneously its mutant offspring and its antithesis. In
the twentieth century, the West met and survived its greatest trial. On the whole, however, Western intellectuals do not revel in these triumphs, to say the least. Where is the celebration? Just as
important, where is the accounting? On the Left, to have either would be to implicate one's own thought and will in the largest crime and folly in the history of mankind. We have seen myriad
documentaries on the collective and individual suffering of the victims of Nazism, but where is the Shoah, or the Night and Fog, let alone the Nuremberg trails of the postcommunist present? As
the countless victims who froze to death or were maimed in the Arctic death
camps would go unremembered; the officers and guards who broke their bodies and often their souls would live out
their lives on pensions, unmolested; and those who gave the orders would die peacefully and unpunished. Our documentary makers and moral intellectuals do not let us forget any
victim of the Holocaust. We hunt down ninety-year-old guards so that the bones of the dead might have justice, and properly so . The bones of Lenin's and Stalin's and
Brezhnev's camps cry out for justice, as do the bones of North Vietnam's exterminations, and those of Poi Pot's
millions, and Mao's tens of millions. In those cases, however, the same intellectuals cry out against--what is their phrase?--"witch-hunts," and ask us to let the past be the
Solzhenitsyn predicted repeatedly in The Gulag Archipelago,
past. We celebrated the millennium with jubilation; we have not yet celebrated the triumph of the West. Ask American high school or even college students to number Hitler's victims and
Columbus's victims, and they will answer, for both, in the tens of millions. Ask them to number Stalin's victims and, if my experience is typical, they will answer in the thousands. Such is their
Convinced that the

West above all has been the source of artificial relationships of dominance and subservience, the commodification of
human life, and ecocide, leftist intellectuals have little interest in objectively analyzing the manifest data about
societies of voluntary exchange, or in coming to terms with the slowly and newly released data about the conditions of life and death under the Bolsheviks and their heirs, or
education, even now. The absence of celebration, of teaching the lessons learned, and of demands for accountability is perhaps easily understood on the Left.
in confirming or refuting various theories on the outcome of the Cold War (let alone, given their contemporary concerns, in analyzing ecological or gender politics under communist or Third
World regimes). Less obvious, but equally striking in some ways, has been the absence of celebration on so much of the intellectual Right, because it is not at all certain something worth calling
Western civilization did in fact survive the twentieth century.
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Strengthening human virtues is the only way to maintain peace by preventing horrible
atrocities like the Holocaust from ever happening
<[*46] THE political bestiality of our age is abetted by our willingness to tolerate the deconstructing of humanist
values. The process begins with the cynical manipulation of language. It often ends in stupefying murderousness
before which the world stands silent, frozen in impotent "attentism"--a wait-and-see stance as unsuited to the human
plight as a pacifier is to stopping up the hunger of a starving child.
We have let lapse our pledge to the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust that their deaths might somehow be
transfiguring for humankind. We allow "slaughterhouse men" tactical status at U.N. tables and "cast down our eyes
when the depraved roar past." n1 Peacemakers, delegated by us and circumscribed by our fears, temporize with thugs who have revived
lebensraum claims more boldly than Hitler did.
In the Germany of the 1930s, a demonic idea was born in a demented brain; the word went forth; orders were given, repeated, widely broadcast;
and men, women, and children were herded into death camps. Their offshore signals, cries for help, did not summon us to rescue. We had become
inured to the reality of human suffering. We could no longer hear what the words meant or did not credit them or not enough of us joined the
chorus. Shrieking victims perished in the cold blankness of inhumane silence.
We were deaf to the apocalyptic urgency in Solzhenitsyn's declaration from the Gulag that we must check the disastrous course of history. We
were heedless of the lesson of his experience that only the unbending strength of the human spirit, fully taking its stand on the
shifting frontier of encroaching violence and declaring "not one step further," though death may be the end of it-only this unwavering firmness offers any genuine defense of peace for the individual, of genuine peace for mankind
at large. n2
In past human crises, writers and thinkers strained language to the breaking point to keep alive the memory of the unimaginable, to keep the
human conscience from forgetting. In the current context, however, intellectuals seem more devoted to abstract assaults on values than to
thoughtful probing of the moral dimensions of human experience.
"Heirs of the ancient possessions of higher knowledge and literacy skills," n3 we seem to have lost our nerve, and not only because
of Holocaust history and its tragic aftermath. We feel insecure before the empirical absolutes of hard science. We are
intimidated by the "high modernist rage against mimesis and content," n4 monstrous progeny of the union between
Nietzsche and philosophical formalism, the grim proposal we have bought into that there is no truth, no objectivity,
and no disinterested knowledge. n5
Less certain about the power of language, that "oldest flame of the [*47] humanist soul," n6 to frame a credo to live
by or criteria to judge by, we are vulnerable even to the discredited Paul de Man's indecent hint that "wars and
revolutions are not empirical events . . . but 'texts' masquerading as facts." n7 Truth and reality seem more elusive
than they ever were in the past; values are pronounced to be mere fictions of ruling elites to retain power. We are
embarrassed by virtue.
Words collide and crack under these new skeptical strains, dissolving into banalities the colossal enormity of what must be expressed lest we
forget. Remembering for the future has become doubly dispiriting by our having to remember for the present, too, our having to register and
confront what is wrong here and now.
The reality to be fixed in memory shifts as we seek words for it; the memory we set down is flawed by our subjectivities. It is selective,
deceptive, partial, unreliable, and amoral. It plays tricks and can be invented. It stops up its ears to shut out what it does not dare to face. n8
Lodged in our brains, such axioms, certified by science and statistics, tempt us to concede the final irrelevance of words and memory. We have to
get on with our lives. Besides, memories reconstructed in words, even when they are documented by evidence, have not often changed the world
or fended off the powerful seductions to silence, forgetting, or denying.
Especially denying, which, in the case of the Holocaust, has become an obscene industry competing in the open market of ideas for control of our
sense of the past. It is said that the Holocaust never happened. Revisionist history with a vengeance is purveyed in words; something in words
must be set against it. Yet what? How do we nerve to the task when we are increasingly disposed to cast both words and memory in a condition of
cryogenic dubiety?
Not only before but also since 1945, the criminality of governments, paraded as politics and fattening on linguistic manipulation and deliberately
reimplanted memory of past real or imagined grievance, has spread calamity across the planet. "The cancer that has eaten at the entrails of
Yugoslavia since Tito's death [has] Kosovo for its locus," but not merely as a piece of land. The country's rogue adventurers use the word
"Kosovo" to reinvoke as sacred the land where Serbs were defeated by Turks in 1389! n9 Memory of bloody massacres in 1389, sloganized and
distorted in 1989, demands the bloody revenge of new massacres and returns civilization not to its past glory but to its gory tribal wars. As Matija
Beckovic, the bard of Serb nationalism, writes, "It is as if the Serbian people waged only one battle--by widening the Kosovo charnel-house, by
adding wailing upon wailing, by counting new martyrs to the martyrs of Kosovo. . . . Kosovo is the Serbianized [*48] history of the Flood--the
Serbian New Testament." n10
A cover of Suddeutsche Zeitung in 1994 was printed with blood donated by refugee women from Bosnia in an eerily perverse afterbirth of
violence revisited. n11
We stand benumbed before multiplying horrors. As Vaclav Havel warned more than a decade ago, regimes that
generate them "are the avant garde of a global crisis in civilization." The depersonalization of power in "system,
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ideology and apparat," pathological suspicions about human motives and meanings, the loosening of individual
responsibility, the swiftness by which disastrous events follow one upon another "have deprived us of our
conscience, of our common sense and natural speech and thereby, of our actual humanity." n12 Nothing less than
the transformation of human consciousness is likely to rescue us.>
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Anti-humanism justified the Holocaust by using an all-or-nothing mentality. We must
challenge the reduction in humanist values in order to prevent another Holocaust from
happening
<History has survived them and provides a regenerative, other view against nihilism and detachment. It testifies that
our terror of being found guilty of phrases too smooth or judgment too simple is not in itself a value. Some longing
for transcendence persists in the human spirit, some tenacious faith that truth and goodness exist and can prevail.
What happened in the death camps, the invasion of Prague by Russian tanks, the rape of Muslim women, the
dismembering of Bosnian men, the degrading of a sophisticated society to subsistence and barbarous banditry: these
things do not become fictions simply because we cannot speak of them adequately or because composing
abstractions is safer than responding to the heinous reality of criminal acts.
No response to the Holocaust and its murderous wake or to the carnage in the former Yugoslavia could possibly be
adequate to the atrocities alphabetized in file folders of perpetrators or to the unspeakable experiences burned into
brains and bodies of survivors. But no response at all breeds new catastrophe. Saul Bellow warned about the
"humanistic civilized moral imagination" that, seized with despair, "declines into lethargy and sleep." n15 Imagine
the plight of human creatures if it were to be silenced altogether, extinguished or forgotten. "Humanism did not
produce the Holocaust, and the Holocaust, knowing its enemies, was bent on the extermination of humanism. It is
an odd consequence of an all-or-nothing mentality to repudiate humanist values because they are inadequate as an
antidote to evil." n16
Basic human rights asserted in words cannot be restored in reality unless they are matched to practices in all the
spheres of influence we occupy. We feel revulsion at the repudiation of humanist values so visible in the savagery of
the battlefield and the councils of war. Yet we seem inoculated against seeing the brutalities of daily human
interactions, the devaluing of values in our own intellectual spheres, the moral and ethical debunking formally
incorporated into scholarly exegesis in literature, philosophy, the social sciences, and linguistics, the very disciplines
that cradled humanist values. Remembering for the future by rehearsing the record, then, is not enough, as the most
eloquent witnesses to Holocaust history have sorrowfully attested. We must also respond to the record with
strategies that challenge humanist reductionism in places where we tend to overlook it or think it harmless. Our
moral outrage should be intensified, not subdued, [*50] by what we know. We must search out alternatives to the
anomie that seizes us when the linguistic distance between words and reality seems unbridgeably vast, and
reflections upon historical events ill matched to the dark complexities of the human experience we would illumine.>
Anti-humanism destroys human dignity

<Liberalism is thus insufficient for human dignity because the election that justifies man "comes from a god or
Godwho beholds him in the face of the other man, his neighbor, the original 'site' of the Revelation."34 Similarly,
humanism is insufficient, and "modern antihuman-ism ... is true over and beyond the reasons it gives itself." What
Levinas finds laudable in antihumanism is that it " abandoned the idea of per son, goal and origin of itself, in which
the ego is still a thing because it is still a being." As such, antihumanism does not eradicate the human, but "clears
the place for subjectivity positing itself in abnegation , in sacrifice, in a substitution which precedes the will." It
would therefore be a grave error to conclude in haste that Levinas's antihumanism is either inhuman or inhumane. To
the contrary. Levinas declares that "humanism has to be denounced only because it is not sufficiently human,"3''
because it is insufficiently attuned to alterity. If one understood "hu manism" to mean a "humanism of the Other,"
then there would be no greater humanist than Levinas.36>
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AT: Spanos Alt Fails

There is no alternative, disclosure just leads back to where it started, it wont destroy
humanism
Lewandowski 1994 (Joseph D, associate Professor and the Philosophy Program Coordinator at Central Missouri
State University, Heidegger Literary Theory and Social Criticism PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CRITICISM Vol.
20 No. 3 pp. 109-122, 1994.)
But radicalized or not, Spanos's trading of any possibility of 'determinate truth' for Heideggerian disclosure as
eventing of truth/untruth robs his critical theory of the necessary yardstick needed to measure 'emancipation'.
Heidegger's disclosure is a cryptonormative truth; it is an event before which any critical judgment necessarily fails.
Disclosure is not a process of inquiry, but rather a revealing/concealing that befalls or overtakes us. In his eagerness
to draw out the enabling features and 'post'-humanist dimension of Heidegger's disclosure, Spanos fails to see the
inevitable and internal limits to truth as disclosure.5 Gadamer encounters similar problems, despite his keen insights,
when he holds on to a Heideggerian disclosure that too often undermines the power of critical reflection. And the
postmodern Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo encounters a related problem when he attempts to take leave of
modernity and proclaim a liberating postmodernity via Heidegger's disclosure. 6 But while a purely aesthetic theory
interested in 'textuality' can quite justifiably be grounded in truth as disclosure (as American deconstruction or
Vattimo's il pensiero debole is), a truly critical theory interested in emancipation simply cannot: some types of
'emancipation' are false and need to be rejected. Texts may very well 'disclose' worlds in the same way that, say, the
Greek temple does for Heidegger. But a genuinely critical theory needs to be able to say what worlds are better or
worse for actual agents in actual worlds - a need, I might add, that Spanos is constantly aware of and typifies in his
denunciation of American imperialism in Vietnam (and elsewhere) in Heidegger and Criticism.
In the strongest sections of Heidegger and Criticism, Spanos rightly faults deconstruction (and earlier forms of
immanent textualism -from formalism to the New Criticism) for making world-disclosure the only function of texts,
thereby divorcing them from the actual world and rendering many forms of deconstruction a 'sterile textual game' (p.
123). He criticizes deconstruction for 'its oversight both to the worldliness of the text under scrutiny and to the
positive, the pro-jective, that is, worldly possibilities it discloses' (p. 122, original emphasis). In this 'oversight',
deconstruction misses what, according to Spanos, a positive account of destruction sees: the 'positive'
possibilities of disclosive texts. But the 'positive' possibilities of a destructive hermeneutics as disclosure - if by
'positive' we mean 'other', possibly freer or better, worlds - cannot be critically assessed. The limits of the one-sided
disclosive account of 'textuality' Spanos finds troublesome in deconstruction presents no less a limit to his
appropriation of Heidegger's hermeneutics that also preserves Heidegger's 'post'humanist notion of truth as
disclosure. Spanos's Heideggerian destruction, despite its positive, emancipatory intentions, is caught in the same
acritical 'game' in which he finds critics such as Barbara Johnson, J. Hillis Miller and Paul de Man, and the same
cryptonormativity of other contemporary appropriators of Heidegger such as Gadamer and Vattimo. The question is
not one of humanism, posthumanism, or even Nazism (labels I think we should use sparingly: 'isms', as Heidegger
himself said, are suspect), but rather of what is an adequate ground for a critical theory oriented toward
emancipation, and how best to situate literary theory upon such a ground.
Spanos use of genealogy is not emancipatory

Lewandowski 1994 (Joseph D, associate Professor and the Philosophy Program Coordinator at Central Missouri
State University, Heidegger Literary Theory and Social Criticism PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CRITICISM Vol.
20 No. 3 pp. 109-122, 1994.)
Spanos, however, thinks Foucault can provide an alternative materialist grounding for an emancipatory critical
theory that would
obviate the objections of someone such as Marcuse. But the turn to Foucault is no less problematic than the original
turn to Heidegger Genealogy is not critical in any real way. Nor can it tame or augment what Spanos calls
Heidegger's 'overdetermination of the ontologka of power and not, as Spanos thinks, a 'concrete diagnosis' (p 138) of
power mechanisms. Thus it dramatizes, on a different level the same shortcomings of Heideggers fundamental
ontology. The affliative relationship (p. 138) that Spanos tries to develop between Heidegger and Foucault in order
to avoid the problem Marcuse faced simply cannot work. Where Heidegger ontologizes Being, Foucault ontologizes
power. The latter sees power as a strategic and intentional but subjectless mechanism that endows itself and
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punches out docile bodies, whereas the formed seese Being as that neutered term and no-thing that call us
Foucault (like Spanos) never works out how genealogy is emancipatory, or how emancipation could be realized
collectives by actual agents in the world. The 'undefined work of freedom' the later Foucault speaks of in his work.
The genealogy of power is as much a hypostatization as is fundamental ontology: such hypostatizations tend to
institute the impossibility of practical resistance or freedom. In short, I dont think the Heideggerian 'dialogue' with
Foucault sufficiency tames or complements Heidegger, nor does it make his discourse (or Foucaults, for that matter)
any more emancipatory or oppositional. Indeed, Foucaults reified theory of power seems to undermine the very
notion of Opposition since there is no subject (but rather a 'docile' body) to do the resisting (or in his later work, a
privatized self to be within a regime of truth), nor an object to be resisted. As Said rightly points out in the The
World, The Text, and the Critic, Foucault more or less eliminates the central dialectic of opposed forces that still
underlies modern society (p. 221) Foucault's theory of power is shot through with false empirical analysis, yet
Spanos seems to accept them as valid diagnoses. Spanos fails to see, to paraphrase Saids criticism of Foucaults
theory of power, that power is neither a spider's web without the spider, nor a smoothly functioning diagram (p. 221)
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AT: Spanos Alt Fails

Spanos rejection of Humanism destroys any political project and/ or allies and allows the
right to take over
Perkin 1993 (J. Russell, Professor of English at Saint Mary's University, Theorizing the Culture Wars, Postmodern
Culture PMC 3.3, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v003/3.3r_perkin.html)
My final criticism is that Spanos, by his attempt to put all humanists into the same category and to break
totally with the tradition of humanism, isolates himself in a posture of ultraleftist purity that cuts him off from many
potential political allies, especially when, as I will note in conclusion, his practical recommendations for the
practical role of an adversarial intellectual seem similar to those of the liberal pluralists he attacks. He seems illinformed about what goes on in the everyday work of the academy, for instance, in the field of composition studies.
Spanos laments the "unwarranted neglect" (202) of the work of Paulo Freire, yet in reading composition and
pedagogy journals over the last few years, I have noticed few thinkers who have been so consistently cited. Spanos
refers several times to the fact that the discourse of the documents comprising The Pentagon Papers was linked to
the kind of discourse that first-year composition courses produce (this was Richard Ohmann's argument); here again,
however, Spanos is not up to date. For the last decade the field of composition studies has been the most vigorous
site of the kind of oppositional practices The End of Education recommends. The academy, in short, is more diverse,
more complex, more genuinely full of difference than Spanos allows, and it is precisely that difference that
neoconservatives want to erase.
By seeking to separate out only the pure (posthumanist) believers, Spanos seems to me to ensure his selfmarginalization. For example, several times he includes pluralists like Wayne Booth and even Gerald Graff in lists
of "humanists" that include William Bennett, Roger Kimball and Dinesh D'Souza. Of course, there is a polemical
purpose to this, but it is one that is counterproductive. In fact, I would even question the validity of calling shoddy
and often inaccurate journalists like Kimball and D'Souza with the title "humanist intellectuals." Henry Louis
Gates's final chapter contains some cogent criticism of the kind of position which Spanos has taken. Gates argues
that the "hard" left's opposition to liberalism is as mistaken as its opposition to conservatism, and refers to Cornel
West's remarks about the field of critical legal studies, "If you don't build on liberalism, you build on air" (187).
Building on air seems to me precisely what Spanos is recommending. Gates, on the other hand, criticizes "those
massively totalizing theories that marginalize practical political action as a jejune indulgence" (192), and endorses a
coalition of liberalism and the left.
Spanos cant escape western metaphysics

Perkin 1993 (J. Russell, Professor of English at Saint Mary's University, Theorizing the Culture Wars, Postmodern
Culture PMC 3.3, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v003/3.3r_perkin.html)
There are further problems with the narrative built into The End of Education. Humanism is always and everywhere,
for Spanos, panoptic, repressive, characterized by "the metaphysics of the centered circle," which is repeatedly
attacked by reference to the same overcited passage from Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the
Human Sciences"--not coincidentally one of the places where Derrida allows himself to make large claims
unqualified by their derivation from reading a particular text. In order to make this assertion, Spanos must show that
all apparent difference is in fact contained by the same old metaphysical discourse. Thus, within the space of four
pages, in the context of making absolute claims about Western education (or thought, or theory), Spanos uses the
following constructions:
1."whatever its historically specific permutations,"
2. "despite the historically specific permutations,"
3. "Apparent historical dissimilarities,"
4. "Despite the historically specific ruptures."
(12-15)
Western thought, he repeats, has "always reaffirmed a nostalgic and recuperative circuitous educational journey
back to the origin" (15). This over-insistence suggests to me that Spanos is a poor reader of Derrida, for he is not
attentive to difference at particular moments or within particular texts. He seems to believe that one can leap bodily
out of the metaphysical tradition simply by compiling enough citations from Heidegger, whereas his rather
anticlimactic final chapter shows, as Derrida recognizes more explicitly, that one cannot escape logocentrism simply
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by wishing to.
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AT: Baudrillard No Alt

Baudrillards alterntive is nihilism
Rojek 1993 (Chris, Deputy Director, Theory, Culture & Society Centre , Professor of Sociology and Culture at
Nottingham Trent University, Forget Buadrillard? Edited by Chris Rojek, pgs 109)
What end is this strategy designed to secure? Baudrillard is regularly criticized for the sourness of his analysis. He is
accused of yearning for the end of everything and leading us to the very gates of nihilism. However, this is to
underestimate Baudrillard's desire to provoke. He wants to be accused of talking nonsense in order to compel critics
to confront the nonsense which lies behind their own assumptions and proposals. The strategy is one of defusion and
opposition. Instead of pinning one's hopes upon collectivism and Utopia Baudrillard emphasizes the dispersal of
bodies, the circulation of signs and the decentring of politics. There is also a clear anti-intellectualism in
Baudrillard's writing. It may seem surprising to make this observation for Baudrillard's dense and wordy prose
seems calculated to appeal only to intellectuals. However, his work radiates distrust of intellectuals who claim to
show us reality or to trace our present condition to origins or fixed causal networks. In part Baudrillard's dislike of
intellectuals and intellectualism reflects his personal background. His family have their roots in the nonconformist
peasantry. His parents were minor administrators in the civil service and he is the first of the line to go to university
(Gane 1993). Also he can hardly have been left unaffected by the events of 1968 in Paris and the collapse of leftwing aspirations for fundamental change in society. Baudrillard gained his first university post at a time when the
Left were painfully coming to terms with the horrors of statist rule in Eastern Europe. In the 1950s and 1960s when
the grand old men of western Marxism reasserted the underlying veracity of Marxist theory, Baudrillard's thought
was being formed in a climate of broken promises. His drift into the 'gesturial' politics of the Situationists reflects an
impatience with mainstream Marxism. And although he has moved on rather sharply from Situationism with its
youthful hope of revolution and revelation of the Spectacle he has, in interviews, often expressed his nostalgia for
the joyful anarchism of Situationist times. Baudrillard then is concerned with examining society at a molecular level.
He wants to show us the extraordinary character of the times from the most ordinary standpoint imaginable: the
standpoint of the consumer. And if his language is elliptical, multilayered, discontinuous and suffused with poetical
insight who is to say that this is not an accurate reflection of ordinary consumer consciousness? Is Baudrillard
perhaps finding words for what goes through all of our minds as we participate in the ad-drenched, mediamanipulated world of the present-day metropolis?
Baudrillards strategies will inevitably fail, they have no place to go

Pop Art dated rather quickly. By the early 1970s most of the key helmsmen had abandoned ship. Peter Blake flirted
with an erratic choTa e-box version of English pastoralism; and Warhol swapped Ws leather jacket for an Armani
suit and became increasing^ absorbed in his business affairs. Pop Art's preoccupation with Ad-Mass culture was
unable to sustain itself. In refusing to consder to culmre as a produced set of processes it was unable to explore he
roots of its complicity with the Ad-Mass worid. Without critical
distance it inevitably became the servant of Ad-Mass. Warhol died as the court painter of German industrialists, Texan
entrepreneurs and the Hollywood aristocracy. Baudrillard's severe self-irony and the mobility of his commentaries will
probably save him from the collaborationism to which the Pop Art movement eventually succumbed. Nevertheless he
faces the same strategic problem that faced Warhol, Jim Dine, Robert Indiana and the others in the 1960s. How to
outdo your last provocative statement? A sociology of provocation is pregnant with the crisis of inertia. In old age
parody tends to be the only way in which it can deal with the triumphs of its youthful radicalism. Nietzsche and
Marx avoided this fate because they never lost their disappointment with existing conditions. But their tones of rage,
ferocity and optimism are unknown to Baudrillard. Having destroyed the world as we know it and dismissed Utopia as a
snare and a delusion where is there left for Baudrillard to go?
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AT: Baudrillard No Alt

Baudrillards alternative fails, mostly because he doesnt have one
In the aftermath of the 1960s, novel and conflicting conceptions of postmodern politics emerged. Postmodern
politics thus take a variety of forms and would include the anti-politics of Baudrillard and his followers, who
exhibit a cynical, despairing rejection of the belief in emancipatory social transformation, as well as a variety of
efforts to create a new or reconstructed politics. On the extreme and apolitical position of a Baudrillard, we are
stranded at the end of history, paralyzed and frozen, as the masses collapse into inertia and indifference, and
simulacra and technology triumph over agency. Thus, from Baudrillard's perspective, all we can do is
"accommodate ourselves to the time left to us." [3]
Baudrillard speaks from an egoistic position of privilege his criticism is just a narcissistic
game
THE SEDUCTIONS OF THE SELF
Baudrillard's emphasis upon dispersal, aesthetics, irony and poetic sensibility is often taken as evidence that he is
enraptured with egoism. His sternest critics accuse him of treating social life as a sort of electronic fashion parade
and reducing social analysis to nothing but a narcissistic game (Kellner 1989). There is some justice in these
criticisms. As Bauman (1992: 154-5) has quipped, Baudrillard sometimes gives the impression of viewing the world
exclusively through the window of a speeding automobile or through the flicker of images on the TV screen. There
is an undoubted irony that this apostle of mobility and pathology also seems to be the most sedentary and
ecapsulated of commentators. Whether he is commentating on the Gulf War from the safety of his Paris apartment or
traversing the USA in the compartment of his AirAmerica plane, ever watchful, ever ready with the appropriate bon
mot, Baudrillard gives the impression of being the buddha of cool.
Baudrillards alternative fails, mostly because he doesnt have one
In the aftermath of the 1960s, novel and conflicting conceptions of postmodern politics emerged. Postmodern
politics thus take a variety of forms and would include the anti-politics of Baudrillard and his followers, who
exhibit a cynical, despairing rejection of the belief in emancipatory social transformation, as well as a variety of
efforts to create a new or reconstructed politics. On the extreme and apolitical position of a Baudrillard, we are
stranded at the end of history, paralyzed and frozen, as the masses collapse into inertia and indifference, and
simulacra and technology triumph over agency. Thus, from Baudrillard's perspective, all we can do is
"accommodate ourselves to the time left to us." [3]
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AT: Baudrillard Alt reintrench modernism

Baudrillards criticism doesnt move past modernism instead it reentrenches it
Rojek 1993(Chris, Deputy Director, Theory, Culture & Society Centre , Professor of Sociology and Culture at
His lacerating nihilism, his readiness to prick any cause, his devotion to experience for experience s sake, are all
recurring tropes of at least one type of modernism. To be sure, modernism is a multi-faceted concept. Rather than
speak of the project of modernism it is perhaps more accurate to speak o projects of modernism. These projects
work around a central dichotomy: reflecting the order of things and exposing the fundamental disorder of things. In
the political realm the keynote projects designed to reflect the order of things have been (a) providing a theory of
liberal democracy which legitimates the operation of he market; (b) the socialist critiques of capitalism and the plan
for the reconstruction of society; and (c) the feminist transformation of the male order of things. These are all
constructive projects. They either aim to give shape to people's lives or they seek to replace the easing set of
politico-economic conditions with a state of affairs that is judged to be superior on rational or moral grounds.
Baudrillard it might be said, traces the dispersal of these projects He relishes being the imp of the perverse, the
ruthless exponent of the disorder of things His work exposes the posturing and circularities of constructive
arguments. But in doing this Baudrillard is not acting as the harbinger of a new postmodern state of affairs. Rather
he is treading the well worn paths of one type of modernist sceptism and excess a path which has no other destiny
than repletion. His message of no future does not transcend the political dilemma of modernism, it exemplifies it.
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AT: Baudrillard Alt ignores exploitation and destruction

Debates over reality and hyperreality ignore economic exploitation, environmental
destruction and government deception and propaganda
Norris 1992 (Christopher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wales in Cardiff, Uncritical Theory:
Postmodernism, Intellectuals, and the Gulf War, pg 29)
One could start to clear away some of the sources of contusion by pointing out that post-structuralism rests on
highly questionable premises; that there exist alternative, more cogent ways of treating the same basic issues; 28 and
that Baudrillard theses cannot hold up when subjected to any kind of reasoned critical scrutiny. Of course I am not
suggesting that the best thing to do in these present bad times is to sit around endlessly debating such specialized
matters of truth, language and representation. Much better leave off these discussions for now and devote all one's
time and energy to protesting the massive injustice of a war whose causes were inextricably tied up with the history
of US and British regional policy; whose high-sounding justificatory rhetoric was a cover for crude economic selfinterest; whose conduct involved unprecedented levels of coercive propaganda and mass-media distortion; and
whose cost in terms of civilian casualties and environmental impact will most likely never be known, since any
details coming back are subject to the tightest 'security' restrictions.
Baudrillard ignores societal interest in destroying the real

Norris 1992 (Christopher, professor of philosophy at the University of Wales-Cardiff, Uncritical Theory: Uncritical
Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals, and the Gulf War, pg 127)
The same applies to Baudrillard with his placid postmodernist assumption that truth and critique are
hopelessly outmoded concepts notions scarcely to be thought of in a world given over to the infinitized
play of simulacra. Here again, the one question that
Buadrillard never asks is a question concerning the social determinants- the specific modes of knowledgeconstitutive (or knowledge-denying) interest - that have worked to engender this outlook of terminal cognitive and
ethicc-political abandon. And so it becomes possible, as Eagleton writes, 'in a cynical "left" wisdom, to celebrate this
catatonic state as some cunning last-ditch resistance to ideological meaning - to revel in the very spiritual blankness
of the late bourgeois order as a welcome relief from the boring old human nostalgia for truth, value and reality'.6
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NEG INDICTS OF RORTY/PRAG

Turn - Rortys public/private distinction destroys action by the masses against hegemonic
forces
Thus for Rorty it is the chief merit of a 'postmodern liberal bourgeois' society that it allows individuals to cultivate
the private virtues (tolerance, compassion, moral refinement, aesthetic appreciation etc) while respecting the
crucial distinction between private and public realms, and thus discouraging those same individuals from getting
mixed up with political issues beyond their proper range of concern. Hence the title of his recent book Contingency,
Irony and Solidarity, where Rorty argues the case for a scaled-down conception of the intellectual's role in public
affairs which speaks directly to this current mood of laissez-faire liberal consensus thinking.12 'Irony' figures on
Rorty's list since it signifies the readiness to treat one's own ideas, attitudes and values as a set of shifting and
provisional beliefs, arrived at through an open-ended process of 'self-creation' that gives no right to pronounce or
criticize in matters of wider socio-political debate. 'Contingency' denotes the clear-eyed recognition that those
beliefs take rise within some given cultural context, or in response to a transient phase in the ongoing 'conversation
of mankind', and can therefore claim nothing more in the way of ultimate validity or truth. And 'solidarity' is best
served - in Rorty's view - by maintaining the liberalist-pluralist outlook, upholding the separation of private and
public realms, and acknowledging (in good pragmatist fashion) that it is pointless to criticize this current consensus
when it offers the only chance of conversing on relevant, socially-acceptable terms.
Thus the liberal ironist is one who has followed Rorty in abandoning all those delusive truth-claims that were once
thought to distinguish 'philosophy' (or 'theory') from other, less demanding activities of thought. He or she will be
readily persuaded 1) that philosophy has outlived its purpose, at least as a discipline supposedly specialized in
adjudicating issues of truth, argumentative validity, ethical warrant, political justice and so forth; 2) that imaginative
literature is now our main source of intellectual stimulus, not only in the form of novels and poems but also in the
work of those 'post-philosophers' (Derrida among them) who set out to level such old-fashioned genre distinctions;
3) that we are mistaken - still hung up on Enlightenment beliefs about the 'political responsibility of the intellectuals'
- if we seek to bridge the gap between private and public spheres; and 4) that since the only arguments that count are
those with some measure of consensus appeal, therefore 'solidarity' (rather than critique) is the best - indeed the only
- means of promoting the wider communal good. Any discrepancies that might arise between, for example, George
Bush's vision of America's role in the 'New World Order' and the evidence of US interventionist designs in the Gulf
and elsewhere would then be a matter for delicate adjustment on the part of those wise individuals who had learned
not to confuse issues of moral conscience with issues of legitimacy in the public-political realm. Thus in Rorty's
ideal society, as Eagleton remarks, 'the intellectuals will be ironists, practising a suitably cavalier, laid-back attitude
to their own beliefs, while the masses, for whom such self-ironizing might prove too subversive a weapon, will
continue to salute the flag and take life seriously'.13
This seems to me a fair statement of the consequences of Rorty's position when applied to the Gulf War, its coverage
in the mass-media, and the attitude of many intellectuals who perceived the mendacity of 'Allied' propaganda but
failed to take a stand on moral or principled grounds. But there was another, in some ways more creditable motive
for this reluctance to apply the standards of 'enlightened' critique to a situation that seemed to challenge every last
truth-claim, principle or value of Western ethnocentric discourse. Kevin Robins put this case in an article for
Marxism Today that took its bearings from Edward Said's powerful indictment of the way that European and US
perceptions of 'the Orient' have constructed a stereotyped image of the Arab 'mentality' - irrational, despotic,
shiftless, violently unpredictable etc -as a foil to their own superior forms of self-assured 'universal' reason. This
characterization of those outside the Western Enlightenment tradition as being incapable of reason and therefore
inferior is a legitimate critique of that tradition in its imperialist or ethnocentric form. Scholars, diplomats, military
strategists and 'experts' of every kind have colluded through the ages in producing this hegemonic discourse which
can then be used - in situations like the Gulf War - to generate a whipped-up propaganda campaign of racist
sentiment and anti-Arab hysteria. Thus in Robins's words, in this quest to appropriate the world the West learned to
define its own uniqueness against the other, against 'non-Europe'. If the political reality has always been one of
conflict and disunity, the construction of an imaginary Orient helped to give unity and coherence to the idea of the
West. This-Orient was, moreover, a mirror in which Europe (and subsequently America) could see reflected its own
supremacy. . . . Fundamental to both its difference and its inherent superiority, it seemed, was the principle of
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rationality. . . . Modernity is defined against pre-modernity, reason against irrationality and superstition, and this
divide is mapped on to a symbolic geography that counterposes the West and its Orient. Its Orient, because if 'the
West' did not exist, then the Orient could not exist either. . . . And the existence and identity it has bestowed is one of
constitutive inferiority and deficit.14
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NEG INDICTS OF RORTY/PRAG

Pragmatism precludes critical assessment of its own ideas and is motivated by societal
interests to promote Western liberalism
Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals, and the Gulf War, pg 149-150)
In short, the upshot of a thoroughgoing neo-pragmatism - an ethics and a politics of Hegelian Sittlichkeit pushed to
its logical extreme - is to cut away the grounds for any critical assessment ot the prejudices, the blindspots or
ideological motives that inhabit our own discourses of power/knowledge. And if the pragmatist in question ,just
happens to speak, like Rorty, from the vantage-point of a privileged hegemonic culture with the power to impose its
own values and be ids on a well-nigh global scale, then there is reason to suspect that societal interests are at
work behind the liberal-pluralist rhetoric. One such motive - as Eagleton notes - is to discredit the very
notion of 'ideology' (along with that of Ideologiekntik) as belonging to a discourse whose grounding suppositions
have now been shown up as either philosophicllly naive or politically beside the point, since we ave lately moved
on mto a phase of the 'cultural conversation where such .dealcount for nothing in terms of their persuasive efficacy.
However one chooses to describe this phase - 'postmodern post Enlightenment', 'postphilosophical' anti foundationalist, neo-pragmatist or whatever - it leaves no room for the outmoded idea that
criticism could come up with cogent reasons for abandoning this or that convenient item of socially-acceptable
belief In which case we should have little choice but to agree with Baudrillard's terminal prognosis, tha isZ say, his
argument - amounting to a kind of inverted Platonic metaphysics - that 'it is no longer a question of a false
representation of Tahty (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer
"tome thinkers on the left - Fredric Jameson preeminent among; them _ have striven to articulate a theory of this
'postmodern condition that wo Jd treat it pretty much as a cultural given, a product o present-day (i e late-capitalist)
socio-economic developments, while none the less maintaining that it still gives room for certain forms of localized
res stance and critique." It seems to me that Eagleton is nearer the mark wh h ata ks postmodernism as a direct
reflex of the interests bound Ip with consumer capitalism in its latest, avowedly post-ideo og caj phase, and hence
as a symptom of mere bad faith on d Pto conformist intellectuals. After all, as Eagleton pointedly rmarksno
ndividual life, not even Baudrillard's, can survive entirely bereft of meaning, and society which took this nihilistic
road would simply be Nurturing massive social disruption'- From this point of view lanced' capitalism can be
seen to oscillate 'between meaning and non-meaning, pitched from moralism to cymc.sm and plagued by the
embarrassing discrepancy between the two'- In which case what really nTeds explaining is the readiness of so many
thinkers - including Matists and radicals of various persuasion - to regard postmodernism as anything more than a
short-lived sw,ng of intellectual fashion brought about by the widespread retreat from .ssues of real-world political
import.
Rorty, by refusing to acknowledge politcal alternatives, foroges criticizing consensus beliefs

like racism and sexism.
The trouble with all of as I have suggested already is that it offers no hold for understanding how that same
communal rhetoric can give rise to the kind of populaist fervour, the crusading zeal and rampant zenophobia that
formed so pervasive and depressing a feature of American responses to the Gulf War. More precisely: Rortys
argument doesnt so much fail to explain such phenomena as make them appear well-nigh inevitable, given his tour
court identiification of American values with that is good in the way of belief for memebrs of the relevant cultural
community. Where it does miss the point in a massive way is in refusing to acknowledge any possible alternative,
any means of criticizing consensus-beliefs for their narrow, parochial, self-serving, exploitative, class-based,
chauvinistic or downright racist character, and of doing somorever in accord with those principles of justice,
freedom and truth supposedely enshrined within the social institutions of Western liberal democracy.
7.
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Before using this file, you should know:

Pragmatism Solvency Best Action........................................1

Pragmatism Solvency Best Action

Pragmatism Solvency Best Action (Need nation-state action)

Pragmatism Solvency Best Action (Need nation-state action)

Pragmatism Solvency Alt can work within framework

Pragmatism Solvency Critical Theory Alone Fails

Failure to advocate concrete reforms paralyzes progress

Pragmatism Solvency Moral Purity Alone Fails

it would be a big help to American efforts for

They should be able to see, as Whitman and Dewey did,

Pragmatism Solvency Disengagement war and tyranny

If the proles can be distracted from their

One thing that is very likely to

the Left should put a moratorium on theory

AT: Pragmatism Key to the Feminist Movement

Ignoring the state prevents mediation needed to save millions

State Good Zizek

State Good Zizek (AT: Cooption)

Util Good Morality Hurts Policymaking

Util Good Ok to Use People as Means to an End

AT: Framework Debate Good

AT: Framework Debate Good

AT: Framework Debate Good

A primary value of switch-side debate, that of encouraging research skills is

AT: Framework Debate Good

Switch side debate prevents relativism while respecting different beliefs.

AT: Framework Debate Good

AT: Methods K No Alt

AT: Postmodernism K Postmodernism Fails

AT: Postmodernism K Permutation Solvency

AT: Podemodernism K Permutation Solvency

AT: Postmodernism K Modernism Good

AT: Postmodernism K Cultural Relativism T/

truly new cultural complex. Radical

AT: Postmodernism K Cultural Relativism T/

Postmodernism K K Destroys Coalitions (Krishna)

AT: Truth Ks Truth Good

AT: Truth Ks Truth Good

AT: Truth Ks Truth Good

epistemological agnosticism simply won't suffice, at

Ross notes that

If all is discourse and ``text,'' then

AT: Truth Ks K of Truth Bad

A narrow focus on postmodern interests is profoundly irresponsible

AT: Truth Ks Truth Good

AT: Fear of Death Love and Fear Compatible

AT: Fear of Death Love = destructive (Fear key)

AT: Fear of Death Love = Bad (Fear Key to Peace)

AT: Fear of Death Mobilizes people/compassion

Fear is necessary to mobilize people into action

AT: Fear of Death Mobilizes people/compassion

AT: Fear of Death Fear Key to Value to Life

Fear and Knowledge of Death is key to value to life

AT: Fear of Death Fear Key to Value to Life

Fear of death is key to purpose in life

AT: Fear of Death Key to Human Survival

AT: Fear of Death Fear Key to Leadership

B. Inset Leadership Impact

AT: Fear of Death Key to Prevent State Annihilation

AT: Fear of Death Plan Solves