A/T Spanos Georgia Debate Blog 09 (http://www.georgiadebate.

org/2009/11/the-project-and-switch-sidedebate) Another argument I hear is the use of a paragraph from William Spanos in the book Cross-X in which he argues that debates potential for disinterested argumentative skills becomes a training ground for neoconservative ideology. It is important to note that Spanos understanding of debate is marginal at best, but more importantly, even if hes right that debate can produce neocons, thats not the only outcome. It can, and has, also produced strong advocates for antineocon causes. For example, Neal Katyal, the attorney who successfully argued Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in the Supreme Court, was a debater. Also, I would quibble with the terminology of disinterested argumentation that Spanos uses and project teams pick up on. Just because I argue for something institutional in nature in a debate round doesnt mean that Im taking a disinterested view. In fact, the process of arguing unfamiliar points is a really good way for me to become interested and gain a personal connection to the arguments that I make in rounds, even if that personal connection isnt the same as ones that project teams discuss. Believe me, I could just as easily go off on policy teams for not really switching sides on many big arguments (with the exception of the occasional impact turn debate, we pretty much presume that hegemony is good and nuclear war is bad, regardless of side). My basic point here is that project teams do themselves a disservice by closing off new ways to approach argumentation that are allowed by switch side debate. We dont have to take a full-tilt, anything goes approach, but dont throw it all out either. Even if some potential for abuse exists, its a risk worth taking.

Rogers 05 (Juliet, law, culture and the humanities, sage, university of Melbourne law school, Unquestionable Freedom in a Psychotic West) The moment of the subject's formation in relation to his desires and desirability in the face of the Other, is well articulated by Desmond Manderson in his discussion of Maurice Sendak's children's book Where the Wild Things Are.19 For Manderson, the journey of the protagonist of the book - the child Max's journey - is the recognition of the instantiation of law qua "justice." Manderson's description, mutatis mutandis, is helpful to understand the instantiation of the praxis of the subject of democracy qua free choice. Max, having been described as a "wild thing" by his mother, wants to wear his "wolf suit," brandish his fork at the family dog and "eat [his mother] up." His needs are thwarted however, when she responds to his (cannibalistic - and arguably oedipal) statement with a metonymic "no" in the form of sending him to bed without supper. Max then journeys across the ocean in his mind and his boat (called "Max") to a narcissistic fantasy land where the "wild things" do all that he needs; one could say they perform his needs. Max is quickly lonely and dissatisfied with this and returns to his bedroom to find his supper waiting for him. He then removes his "wolf suit" and appears to relinquish his wildness or, one could argue, his freedom. Max's Mother, having exercised the "no" as, what Lacan would describe, the "paternal function,"20 offers him supper (and arguably her care) as a substitute for his loss of "wildness." Through his removal of his wolf suit, as Manderson describes,21 Max appears to accept the limits of the law as justice, as fair. The desire of Max's Mother (not to be eaten) becomes the needs of the Other; but Max has lost something of himself. Arguably, he has lost elements of his freedom. Manderson's suggestion is that Max now recognises that there are limits to the achievement of his needs in an intersubjective world.22 He relinquishes much of his narcissistic orientation in the interests of achieving harmony, and arguably love, with an-other. He becomes what he perceives the Other wants him to be. His "free choice" as a wild thing is subjectivized through the moment of encounter with the needs of an-other by being subjected to his desire for the desire of the Other. His freedom is compromised, and what remains and is apparently still understood as a "free choice," (if Max were a "normal neurotic,") would become an object of constant question. Max

has lost something of his freedom and, if he isn't traumatized to the point of psychosis through this moment, he will retain a question about this loss. The difference between the hysteric (as a normal neurotic) and a psychotic exists precisely in how Max will or will not accept the "no." Max as a neurotic, at the point of loss, will wonder what he has lost; just as West if he too were an hysteric23 at the point of encounter with the democracy of/as Other, will question the loss instantiated through democratic rule qua law. The hysteric will question how the law can be enacted upon him (and for him in the case of "Operation Iraqi Freedom") while still professing to offer freedom to him. It is West's psychosis which dismantles this question. The distinction between Max and West, however, is precisely the question of the heterogeneity of subjects before democracy and before socio-psychoanalysis. While Man- derson suggests that Max accepts "justice" as the limits of the law, we really do not know what Max has done with this limit, this "no." He, as the subject of socio-psychoanalysis,24 may be many subjects before this limit. I am suggesting that West's position is specific, however. West assumes a psychotic position. As the subject of liberal democracy - as desirable to the Other - West is a subject who appears not to retain the capacity to wonder about the limits of the freedom he may, or may not, retain beyond the originary instantiation of democracy. In contemporary times, he is not a subject who questions those limits.