Afrofuturism Case Neg - DDI 2014 SWS

Notes
I dont even know where to begin.

T, Marx (or other K), PIC (maybe multiple), and Case
Turns=solid 1NC strat
Good luck and dont let them get shifty on you!
Case Neg
Not exploration of oceans

A. Interpretation: explore means to travel in or through
an area for the purpose of learning about it
Oxford 14 (Oxford Dictionaries 2014
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/explore)
explore Syllabification: explore Pronunciation: /iksplr verb [with object]
1Travel in or through (an unfamiliar country or area) in order to learn about or
familiarize oneself with it: the best way to explore Icelands northwest
figurative the project encourages children to explore the world of
photography More example sentencesSynonyms 1.1 [no object] (explore for)
Search for resources such as mineral deposits: the company explored for oil
More example sentences 1.2Inquire into or discuss (a subject or issue) in
detail: he sets out to explore fundamental questions More example sentences
1.3Examine or evaluate (an option or possibility): you continue to explore
new ways to generate income
Ocean is the single continuous body of salt water

Science Dictionary 2 The American Heritage Science Dictionary
Copyright 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ocean
ocean ('shn) Pronunciation Key The continuous body of salt water that
covers 72 percent of the Earth's surface. The average salinity of ocean water
is approximately three percent. The deepest known area of the ocean, at
11,034 m (36,192 ft) is the Mariana Trench , located in the western Pacific
Ocean. Any of the principal divisions of this body of water, including the
Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic Oceans. Our Living Language : The word
ocean refers to one of the Earth's four distinct, large areas of salt water, the
Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic Oceans. The word can also mean the entire
network of water that covers almost three quarters of our planet. It comes
from the Greek Okeanos, a river believed to circle the globe. The word sea
can also mean the vast ocean covering most of the world. But it more
commonly refers to large landlocked or almost landlocked salty waters
smaller than the great oceans, such as the Mediterranean Sea or the Bering
Sea. Sailors have long referred to all the world's waters as the seven seas.
Although the origin of this phrase is not known for certain, many people
believe it referred to the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf,
the Black Sea, the Adriatic Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Indian Ocean, which
were the waters of primary interest to Europeans before Columbus.
B. Violation the affirmatives historical re-presentation

of transatlantic slavery is physically removed from the
single continuous body of salt water and is not
exploration of the ocean
C. The affirmative interpretation unlimits by eliminating
the bright line boundary of the ocean. Exploration could
be from any location and involve any number of
contemplation or analytic methods. There is no other way
to distinguish exploration from any thought process or
the ocean from any physical location, making it
impossible for the negative to be adequately prepared
and clash.
Timmons 12 Bob Timmons, Artist - Author Speaker, the Artist for the
Ocean October 21, 2012 Ocean Guardians
http://oceanguardians.com.au/artist-for-the-ocean-bob-timmons/
Everything is connected and everything affects the ocean in the end since its
majority of the planets surface and subsurface
D. T is a voter because its necessary for good, wellprepared debating
Ks
Drexciyans K
Notes
Drexciyans are a bad starting point
Using black motherhood as a starting point for understanding slave or African
experiences is bad b/c 1.) slave masters interacted with mothers from
privilege and 2. ) we only know about them from a single notionwe only see
them as mothers which limits their potential
You can read this stuff on case as solvency take-outs/case

turns or as an off case PIC or as a DA to the aff. Choices
on choices on choices.
Cards
Using Black motherhood as a starting point is badit
devalues the women and subjects their bodies to white
supremacist state controlalso entrenches their role as
property because they are viewed as carrying slave
masters children culminating in sterilization
Roberts, 97, (Dorothy E., acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law,
at the University of Pennsylvania, UNSHACKLING BLACK MOTHERHOOD,
Michigan Law Review, (1997): 938-964,
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1290050?
uid=3739800&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104544992673)//erg
The diversionary strategy might be worth the neglect of Black women's particular injuries if it presented
this tactic has other disadvantages that

weaken its power to challenge policies that devalue Black
childbearing. By di- verting attention from race, this strategy fails to connect numerous policies that
the only feasible route to victory. Yet
degrade Black women's procreation. In addition to the prosecutions, for example, lawmakers across the
country have been considering schemes to distribute Norplant to poor women, as well as measures that
these
developments appear to be isolated policies that can be justified by some
neutral government objective. When all are connected by the race of
the women most affected, a clear and horrible pattern emerges. Lynn
penalize welfare mothers for having addi- tional children.115 Viewed separately,
Paltrow recently stated, "'for the first time in American history.., what a pregnant woman does to her own
body becomes a matter for the juries and the court.' ",116 Paltrow is correct that the criminal regulation of
it continues the legacy

of the degrada- tion of Black motherhood. A pregnant slave woman's
body was subject to legal fiat centuries ago because the fetus she
was carrying already belonged to her master. Over the course of this century,
government policies have regulated Black women's reproductive
decisionmaking based on the theory that Black childbearing causes social
problems." 8 Although the prosecution of women for prenatal crimes is relatively recent, it should
be considered in conjunction with the sterilization of Black welfare mothers during
pregnancy that occurs today is in some ways unprecedented. 117 Yet
the 1970s and the promotion of Norplant as a solution to Black poverty.
These images are traumaticthey trivialize the black

mothers who were abused and mistreated.
woman who was pregnant at the time of her arrest sat in a jail cell waiting
to give birth.32 Lori Griffin was transported weekly from the jail to the hospital in handcuffs and leg
At least one
irons for prenatal care. Three weeks after her arrest, she went into labor and was taken, still in handcuffs
and shackles, to MUSC. Once at the hospital, Ms. Griffin was kept handcuffed to her bed during the entire
the recollection of an ex-slave

about the method slave masters used to discipline their pregnant
delivery.33 I opened PunishingDrugAddicts Who Have Babies with
slaves while protecting the fetus from harm:
A former slave named Lizzie Williams

recounted the beating of pregnant slave women on a Mississippi cotton plantation: "I[']s seen nigger
women dat was fixin' to be confined do somethin' de white folks didn't like .
Dey [the white folks]

would dig a hole in de ground just big 'nuff fo' her stomach, make her lie face
down an whip her on de back to keep from hurtin' de child."34 Thinking
about an expectant Black mother chained to a belt around her
swollen belly to protect her unborn child, I cannot help but recall
this scene from Black women's bondage. The sight of a pregnant Black
woman bound in shackles is a modern-day reincarnation of the horrors of
slavemasters' degrading treatment of their female chattel.
Monstrous portrayals of black mothers justified sexual

abuse and devaluationyou fundamentally
mischaracterize images of black women
By focusing on maternal crack use, which is more prevalent in inner-city neighborhoods and stereotypically
associated with Blacks,70 the media left the impression that the pregnant addict is typically a Black
woman.71 Even more than a "metaphor for women's alienation from instinctual motherhood, '72 the
The monstrous cracksmoking mother was added to the iconog- raphy of depraved Black
maternity, alongside the matriarch and the welfare queen. For centuries, a
popular mythology has degraded Black women and portrayed them
as less deserving of motherhood. Slave owners forced slave women to
perform strenuous labor that contradicted the Victorian female roles
prevalent in the dominant white society.73 One of the most prevalent images of slave
women was the character of Jezebel, a woman governed by her sexual desires, which
legitimated white men's sexual abuse of Black women .74 The
stereotype of Black women as sexually promiscuous helped to
perpetuate their devaluation as mothers. This devaluation of Black
motherhood has been reinforced by stereotypes that blame Black
mothers for the problems of the Black family, such as the myth of the Black matriarch - the
pregnant crack addict was the latest embodiment of the bad Black mother.
domineering female head of the Black family. White sociologists have held Black matriarchs responsible for
the disintegration of the Black family and the consequent failure of Black people to achieve success in
America.75 Daniel Patrick Moynihan popularized this theory in his 1965 report, The Negro Family: The
Casefor National Action, which claimed, "At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is
the deterioration of the Negro family." 76 Moynihan blamed domineering Black mothers for the demise of
their families, arguing that "the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which,
because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group
as a whole.177
Their use of the state and the re-living of the social order
means black women are objects to be abused and raped
by their male slave masters entrenching a violent
patriarchal mindset
at the University of Pennsylvania, RACISM AND PATRIARCHY IN THE
MEANING OF MOTHERHOOD, Am. UJ Gender & L. 1 (1993): 1.
http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1199&context=jgspl&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F
%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fq%3Dblack%2Bmotherhood
%2Bportrayal%2Bbad%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%26as_vis%3D1%26oi
%3Dscholart%26sa%3DX%26ei%3DgqnaU7S5K_XJsQS0hoKwCg%26ved
%3D0CB0QgQMwAA#search=%22black%20motherhood%20portrayal
%20bad%22)//erg
The intimate intertwining of race and gender in the very structure of slavery
makes it practically impossible to speak of one without the other . The social
order established by white slaveowners was founded on two
inseparable ingredients: the dehumanization of Africans on the basis
of race, and the control of women's sexuality and reproduction . The
American legal order is rooted in this horrible combination of race and
gender. America's first laws concerned the status of children born to slave
mothers and fathered by white men: a 1662 Virginia statute made these children slaves.27
The experience of Black women during slavery provides the most brutal
example of the denial of autonomy over reproduction. Fe- male slaves were
commercially valuable to their masters not only for their labor, but also for
their ability to produce more slaves.28 White masters, therefore, could
increase their wealth by controlling their slaves' reproductive
capacity - by rewarding pregnancy; pun- ishing slavewomen who did not bear children;
forcing them to breed; and raping them.29 Racism created for white slaveowners the possibility of
unrestrained reproductive control. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes about the autobiography of a slave
the choices
she makes are defined by her reduction to a sexual object, an object to be
raped, bred or abused."'30 The radical feminist model of motherhood, which is
characterized by the patriarchal male's use of a woman's body for
reproduction, is epitomized in slavery.-3 Slavery allowed the perfection of
patriarchal motherhood. Patriarchy devised the most dehumanizing
form of slavery. Compulsory childbirth was a critical element of the oppression of both Black and
white women of the time. A racist patriarchy required that both Black and
white women bear children, although these women served different
and complementary functions. Black women produced children who were
legally Black to replenish the master's supply of slaves .3 2 White women produced
named Harriet A.Jacobs, it "charts in vivid detail precisely how the shape of her life and
white children to continue the master's legacy.33 The racial purity of white women's children was
guaranteed by a violently enforced taboo against sexual relations between white women and Black men
and by an- timiscegenation laws that punished interracial marriages 3 4 There was a critical difference in
the white patriarch's relationship to these two classes of women. White men accorded some degree of
White
patriarchs, however, owed nothing to their female slaves, who were
denied even the status of "woman." 3 5 Black mothers reproduced for
white patriarchy, but gained nothing from it.
respect and protection to white women, who were their wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters.
They metaphor of Black motherhood limits black womens

potential because they are limited to being property to
rapethat limits the potential of Black Motherhood.
James Madison University, 10, (The Effects of Slavery on the
Psyche of Motherhood, James Madison University, 2010,
http://www.jmu.edu/mwa/docs/2010b/maddox.pdf)//erg
many slave mothersas womenalso had to deal

with sexual harassment. Linda Brent is the primary example of this, due to her encounters with
Along with struggles for ownership,
Dr. Flint: My master met me at every turn, she wrote, reminding me that I belonged to him, and
swearing...that he would compel me to submit to him (Jacobs 38). Dr. Flint pursued Linda
with an appalling doggednesshe wrote her letters when he found out that she could read, routinely
visited her at her grandmothers home, and even followed her when she went to visit her mothers grave.
Dr. Flint was not the only example of such harassment, eitherstatistics of the slave population in 1860
female slaves gave

birth to their masters children, which does not include how many were violated
but not impregnated (Roberts 29). In addition, the rape of a black slave woman
was not considered a crime. White slave holders could do it without
fear of the lawand, in fact, as Roberts asserts, used rape or the threat of rape
as a weapon of terror that reinforced whites domination over their
human property (29). Sexual abuse then, essentially, was a psychological
tool used by slave owners to keep slave women submissive , in addition to a way to
show that 10% of slaves were mulatto, demonstrating just how often
keep slave women pregnant and producing more slaves. Although Linda was never raped, the way that she
avoided such a fate was simply another form of sexual abuse. Pressured and feeling as if she had no other
choice, she used her body without her full assentby becoming pregnant with another white mans child
to escape from her current situation. Despite the fact that [she knew what [she] did, and [she] did it with
deliberate calculation (Jacobs 66), she should not have had to do it at all. In addition, despite her
Lindas situation as a pregnant slave only added to her emotional

and psychological stress. Although no longer sexually harassed, she was instead plagued by guilt,
calculations,
Dr. Flints fury, and the disappointment of her respected grandmother.
Re-presentation K
Derrida K
The 1ACs call to re-present the events of transatlantic
slavery in fictional form further entrenches the
destructive violence they isolate through a kind of psychic
plagiarism that seeks to assimilate the other into the
narcissistic self
Kirkby, 06 (Joan, Department of Critical and Cultural Studies at Macquarie
University, Remembrance of the Future: Derrida on Mourning, Social
Semiotics Vol. 16, No. 3, September 2006,
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=df402c47-70d24356-80fc-d0a1d8f6c5dd%40sessionmgr4002&vid=2&hid=4206, AW)
Derrida also recalls de Mans insistence on the performative structure of the
text in general as promise (1986, 93), and goes on to argue that the
essence of speech is the promise, that there is no speaking that does not
promise, which at the same time means a commitment toward the future
through . . . a speech act and a commitment to keep the memory of the said
act, to keep the acts of this act (1986, 97). He also reflects upon the
significance of the word aporia in de Mans last texts, in which an absence of
path gives or promises the thinking of the path and provokes the thinking
of what still remains unthinkable or unthought (Derrida 1986, 132). The
aporia provokes a leap of memory and a displacement of thinking which
leads toward a new thinking. Aporicity promises an other thinking, an other
text, the future of another promise. All at once the impasse . . . becomes the
most trustworthy, reliable place or moment for reopening a question . . .
which remains difficult to think. (Derrida 1986, 132/133) The aporia
engenders, stimulates, makes one write, provokes thought . . .. There is in
it the incalculable order of a wholly other: the coming or the call of the
other (Derrida 1986, 137). The aporia of de Mans death has provoked
Derridas re-reading of de Man and a re-casting of the process of mourning.
These ideas from de Man are then segued into the psychoanalytic model of
mourning to produce what I would argue is a new, intellectually and
emotionally nuanced model of mourning, a model wherein healthy psychic
functioning depends neither on a refusal to mourn or abandoning the dead.
The Derridean model offers a respect for the (dead) Other as Other; it allows
agency to the mourner in the possibility of an ongoing creative encounter
with the Other in an externalising, productive, future-oriented memory; it
emphasises the importance of acting out the entrusted responsibility, which
is their legacy to us; it upholds the idea of community and reminds us of our
interconnectedness with our dead. And in a sort of irreligious religiosity, it
enables us to conceive of a bond greater than ourselves, the far away
within us. To summarise then. First, with regard to mourning, Derrida
privileges the process of incorporation, which classical psychoanalysis has
been seen as the pathological response to loss. He does this essentially
because incorporation acknowledges the other as other, while the so-called
normal process of mourning (introjection) merely assimilates the other into
the self in a kind of psychic plagiarism. Second, however, it is not an
unreconstructed incorporation that he recommends; he makes two important
theoretical moves. In the distinction between memory as interiorisation

(erinnerung) and memory as a giving over to thinking and inscription
(gedachtnis), he appropriates gedachtnis to integrate with incorporation. So
that what we internalise upon the death of the other is their dynamic
engagements with the other*/their modus vivendi, their animating principle,
their dialogue with the world. We do not have to give them up*/we do not
murder them and find a substitute for the dead are irreplaceable. Third, the
other important thing about gedachtnis is that it is an externalising memory;
it is linked with technical or mechanical inscription, with writing and rhetoric.
It is productive; it leads to external engagement in an ongoing dialogue with
the other. It is, as he says, a remembrance of the future (Derrida 1986,
29). In conclusion, Derrida asks What is love, friendship, memory?
The Alternative is to deconstruct the 1AC with an

unconditional ethic to the Other in the form of an aporia
this is the only way to embrace the paradox of
remembrance and prevent total-interiorization and
introjection that lead to violence towards the Other
Derrida, 86 (Jacques, Professor of the Humanities at the University of
California Irvine, Mnemosyne, in Memoires for Paul de Man, translated by

Cecile Lindsay, 1986, its a book, AW)
Everything remains in me or in us, between us, upon the death of the
other. Everything is entrusted to me; everything is bequeathed or given to us,
and first of all to what I call memory-to the memory, the place of this strange
dative. All we seem to have left is memory since nothing appears able to
come to us any longer, nothing is coming or to come, form the other to the
present. This is probably true, but is this truth true, or true enough? The
preceding sentences seem to suppose a certain clarity in respect to what we
mean by in me, in us, death of the other, memory, present, to
come, and so on. But still more light (plus de lumiere is needed. The me
or the us of which we speak then aris and are delimited in the way that
they are only through this experience of the other , and of the other as other
who can die, leaving in me or in us this memory of the other. This terrible
solitude which is mine or ours at the death fo the other is what constitutes
that relationship to self which we call me, us, between us,
subjectivity, intersubjectivity, memory. The possibility of death
happens, so to speak, before these different instances, and makes them
possible. Or, more precisely, the possibility of the death of the other as mine
or ours in-forms any relations to the other and the finitude of memory. We
weep precisely over what happens to us when everything is entrusted to the
sole memory that is in me or in us. But we must also recall, in another
turn of memory, that the within me and the within us do not arise or
appear before this terrible experience. Or at least not before its possibility,
actually felt and inscribed in us, signed. The within me and the within us
acquire their sense and their bearing only by carrying within themselves the
death and the memory of the other; of an other who is greater than them,
greater than what they or we can bear, carry, or comprehend, since we then
lament being no more than memory, in memory. Which is another way of
remaining inconsolable before the finitude of memory. We know, we knew, we
remember before the death of the loved one-that being-in-me or being-in-us

is constituted out of the possibility of mourning . We are only ourselves from
the perspective of this knowledge that is older than ourselves; and this is why
I say that we being by recalling this to ourselves: we come to ourselves
through this memory of possible mourning. In other words this is precisely the
allegory, this memory of impossible mourning. Paul de man would perhaps
say: of the unreadability of mourning. The possibility of the impossible
commands here the whole rhetoric of mourning, and describes the essence of
memory. Upon the death of the other we are given to memory, and thus to
interiorization, since the other, outside us, is now nothing. And with the dark
light of this nothing, we learn that the other resists the closure of our
interiorizing memory. With the noting of this irrevocable memory. With the
nothing of this irrevocable absence, the other appears as other, and as other
for us, upon his death or at least in the anticipated possibility of a death,
since death constitutes and makes manifest the limits of a me or an us who
are obliged to harbor something that is greater and other then them;
something outside of within them. Memory and interiorization: since Freud
this is how the normal work of mourning is often described. It entails a
movement in which an interiorizing idealization takes in itself or upon itself
the body and voice of the other, the others visage and person, ideally and
quasi-literally devouring them. This mimetic interiorization is not fictive; it is
the origin of fiction, of apocryphal figuration. It takes place in a body. Or
rather, it makes a place for a body, a voice, and a soul which, although
ours, did not exist and had no meaning before this possibility that one must
always begin by remembering, and whose trace must be followed. II faut, one
must: it is the law, that law of the (necessary) relation of Being to law. We can
only live this experience in the form of an aporia: the aporia of mourning and
of prosopopeia, where the possible remains impossible. Where success fails.
And where faithful interiorization bears the other and constitutes him in me
(in us), at once living and dead. It makes the other no longer quite seems to
be the other, because we grieve for him and bear him in us, like an unborn
child, like a future. And inversely, the failure succeeds: an aborted
interiorization is at the same time a respect for the other as other, a sort of
tender rejection, a movement of renunciation which leaves the other alone ,
outside, over there, in his death, outside of us.
Cards
See Middle Passage case neg for extension cards
Marx
Links
The affirmatives knowledge production will be
incorporated into the system and sold as a new market for
capitals infiltration. The aff commodifies knowledge by
attaching a marketable metaphor of the Drexciyan to it.
Class is key to understand how to interact with difference.
<THIS MIGHT BE THE BEST CARD YOULL EVER READ>
Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren, 03, (Valerie, University
of Windsor, Peter, University of California, Los Angeles, The Strategic
Centrality of Class in the Politics of Race and Difference Sage
Publications, Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, Volume 3 Number 2,
2003 148-175, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/mclaren/mclaren%20and
%20valerie.pdf)//erg
theories of difference often circumvent the material dimen- sions

of difference and tend to segregate questions of difference from analyses of
class formation and capitalist social relations, we contend that it is
necessary to (re)conceptualize difference by drawing on Marxs
materialist and historical formulations. Difference needs to be
understood as the product of social contradictions and in relation
to political and economic organization. Because systems of difference
almost always involve relations of domination and oppression, we must
concern ourselves with the economies of relations of difference that exist in
specific contexts. Drawing on the Marxist concept of mediation enables
us to unsettle the categorical (and sometimes overly rigid)
approaches to both class and difference for it was Marx himself who warned against
Because post-al
creating false dichotomies at the heart of our politicsthat it was absurd to choose between
consciousness and the world, subjectivity and social organization, personal or collective will, and historical
it is equally absurd to see difference as a

historical form of consciousness unconnected to class formation,
development of capital and class politics (Bannerji, 1995, p. 30). Bannerji has
pointed to the need to historicize difference in relation to the history and
social organization of capital and class (inclusive of imperialist and colonialist legacies) and
to acknowledge the changing configurations of difference and otherness. Apprehending the
meaning and function of difference in this manner necessarily highlights the
importance of exploring (a) the institutional and structural aspects of difference; (b) the meanings and connotations that are attached to categories of
difference; (c) how differences are produced out of, and lived within, specific
his- 154 Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies May 2003 torical, social, and political
formations; and (d) the production of difference in relation to the
complexities, contradictions, and exploitative relations of capitalism. Moreover,
it presents a challenge to identitarian understandings of difference based almost exclusively on questions of cultural and/or racial
hegemony. In such approaches, the answer to oppression often amounts to creating greater cultural
space for the formerly excluded to have their voices heard (repre- sented). Much of what is called
the politics of difference is little more than a demand for an end to
monocultural quarantine and for inclusion into the metropolitan salons of
or structural determination. In a simi- lar vein,
bourgeois representationa posture that reinscribes a neoliberal pluralist

stance rooted in the ideology of free market capitalism . In short, the political
sphere is modeled on the marketplace, and freedom amounts to the
liberty of all vendors to display their different cultural goods . A
paradigmatic expression of this position is encapsulated in the following passage that champions a form
of difference politics whose presumed aim is to make social groups appear. Minority and immigrant ethnic
groups have laid claim to the street as a legitimate forum for the promotion and exhibition of traditional
dress, food, and culture. . . . [This] is a politics of visibility and invisibil- ity. Because it must deal with a
tradition of representation that insists on sub- suming varied social practices to a standard norm, its
struggle is as much on the page, screen . . . as it is at the barricade and in the parliament, traditional
forums of political intervention before the postmodern. (Fuery & Mansfield, 2000, p. 150) This position
fosters a fetishized understanding of difference in terms of pri- mordial and seemingly autonomous
cultural identities and treats such differences as inherent, as ontologically secure cultural traits of the
Rather than exploring the construction of

difference within specific contexts mediated by the conjunctural
embeddedness of power differentials, we are instead presented with an overflowing cornucopia of cultural particularities that serve as markers of
ethnicity, race, group boundaries, and so forth. In this instance, the discourse of
difference operates ideologicallycultural recognition derived from
the rhetoric of tolerance averts our gaze from relations of
production and presents a strategy for attending to difference as
solely an ethnic, racial, or cultural issue. What advocates of such an approach fail to
acknowledge is that the forces of diversity and difference are allowed to
flourish provided that they remain within the prevailing forms of
capitalist social arrangements. The neopluralism of difference politics cannot adequately
individuals of particular cultural communities.
pose a substantive challenge to the productive system of capitalism that is able to accommodate a vast
themes of identity, difference,

diversity, and the like mesh quite nicely with contemporary corporate
interests precisely because they revere lifestylethe quest for, and the
cultivation of, the selfand often encourage the fetishization of identities in
the marketplace as Scatamburlo-DAnnibale, McLaren Centrality of Class 155 they compete
for visibility (Boggs, 2000; Field, 1997). Moreover, the uncritical, celebratory tone of
various forms of difference politics can also lead to some disturbing
conclusions. For example, if we take to their logical conclusion the statements that postmodern
pluralism of ideas and cultural practices. In fact, the post-al
political activism fiercely contests the reduction of the other to the same, that post-al narratives believe
that difference needs to be recognized and respected at all levels (Fuery & Mansfield, 2000, p. 148),
and that the recognition of different subject positions is paramount (Mouffe, 1988, pp. 35-36), their
political folly becomes clear. Eagleton (1996) sardonically commented on the implications: Almost all
postmodern theorists would seem to imagine that difference, variabil- ity and heterogeneity are absolute
goods, and it is a position I have long held myself. It has always struck me as unduly impoverishing of
British social life that we can muster a mere two or three fascist parties. . . . The opinion that plurality is a
good in itself is emptily formalistic and alarmingly unhistorical. (pp. 126-127) The liberal pluralism manifest
discourses of difference politics often means a plurality without conflict,

contestation, or contradiction. The inherent limita- tions of this position
are also evident if we turn our attention to issues of class . Expanding on
in
Eagletons observations and adopting the logic that seems to inform the unqualified celebration of
the
differences between the 475 billionaires whose combined wealth now equals
the combined yearly incomes of more than 50% of the worlds population are
to be celebrateda posturing that would undoubtedly lend itself to a
triumphant endorsement of capitalism and inequitable and exploitative
conditions. San Juan (1995) noted that the cardinal flaw in current instantiations of culturalism lies in
difference, one would be compelled to champion class differences as well. Presumably,
its decapi- tation of discourses of intelligibility from the politics of antagonistic relations. He framed the
question quite pointedly: In a society stratified by uneven property relations, by asymmetrical allocation
of resources and of power, can there be equality of cultures and genuine toleration of differences? (pp.
232- 233).
Black science fiction focuses on historical particularities

past and futureprecludes historical analysis of broader
class exploitation
Reynolds, The Guardian, 1997
(Simon, The Gaurdian, KODWO ESHUN, More Brilliant
Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction,
http://bringthenoisesimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2008/01/bringnoise-deleted-scene-45-kodwo.html, accessed 7/29/14
bh@ddi)
More Brilliant Than The Sun is a survey of the
and
'black science fiction' tendency in music, from Lee Perry and George Clinton to
'Afro-futurism'
contemporary sonic wizards like Tricky

Goldie. Although the idea of
has been broached before (most notably
by American critics Mark Dery and Greg Tate), Kodwo Eshun's book is the most sustained and penetrating analysis to date of what the author
calls 'sonic fiction': the otherworldly vistas and alien mindscapes conjured by genres like dub reggae, hip hop, techno, and jungle. The book
kicks off at blitzkrieg pace and ferocity, with a manifesto that excoriates music journalists and cultural studies academics for being 'future
shock absorbers', forever domesticating the strangeness of music. Dance music hacks are rightly ticked off for their abject failure to deal with
rhythm, dance music's absolute raison d'etre and primary zone of impact on its listeners. As for the academy, Eshun is particularly scathing
about treatments of black pop that analyse it in terms of soul, roots and 'the street'. Rejecting these notions of raw expression and social
realism, Eshun instead celebrates a lineage of black conceptualists, speculators and fabulists. These renegade autodidacts - Sun Ra,
Rammellzee, Dr Octagon, Underground Resistance's Mike Banks and Jeff Mills - weave syncretic and idiosyncratic cosmologies using an array
of esoteric sources. Eshun tracks this 'MythScience' through lyrics, songs and album titles, cover artwork, and (in Underground Resistance's
case) hermetic slogans etched into the run-out vinyl of 12-inch singles. As well as decoding these encrypted expressions of the Afro-Futurist
materiality of the music -- jungle's convoluted breakbeat rhythms, the headwrecking

But Eshun's brand of "sub-bass materialism"
has nothing in common with Marxist historical materialism . Instead of
causality or continuity, Eshun looks for breaks, those moments when the future
seems to leap out of music; his punning name for the Afro-futurist canon he's erected in More Brilliant is a discontinuum. It's a
imagination, Eshun
focuses on
the
delirium of dub production and 'remixology', the timbral violence of the hip hop DJ's scratching.
provocative stance, for sure, but at times you wonder if the baby hasn't been thrown out with the proverbial bathwater. Jungle, for instance, is
probably best understood as a tangle of 'roots and future', to borrow a phrase from drum & bass outfit Phuture Assassins; as a subculture and
a sound, it has one foot in the concrete jungles of Kingston, Jamaica, and the other in the data jungles of cyberspace. And is it really true, as
Eshun seems to insist, that hip hop or reggae are diminished by attempts to locate them in a social context? 'The streets' may be a
journalistic cliche too often marking a condescending attitude towards black

creativity, but the phrase also contains a kernel of truth that can't be blithely brushed aside: the material realities
of exclusion, disadvantage and exploitation that simultaneously hamper and energise all
forms of underclass music, black and white.
Impact
Capitalism is the overarching totality that governs all
oppression their discursive focus on categories of
difference ALLOWS the much larger CLASS CONFLICT to
continue.
McLaren and Scatamburlo-DAnnibale, 4 (Peter and
Valerie, University of Windsor, Ontario, University of
California, 2004, Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol
36 No 2, Class Dismissed? Historical Materialism and the
politics of difference,)
exploitation and oppression are

related internally to the extent that they are located in the same totality one
which is currently defined by capitalist class rule. Capitalism is an overarching totality
that is, unfortunately, becoming increasingly invisible in post-Marxist discursive
narratives that valorize difference as a primary explanatory construct. For
example, E. San Juan (2003) argues that race relations and race conflict are necessarily
structured by the larger totality of the political economy of a given society, as well as
The cohesiveness of this position suggests that forms of
by modifications in the structure of the world economy. He further notes that the capitalist mode of
production has articulated race with class in a peculiar way. He too is worth a substantial quotation:
While the stagnation of rural life imposed a racial or castelike rigidity to the peasantry, the rapid
accumulation of wealth through the ever more intensifying exploitation of labor by capital could not so
easily racialize the wage-workers of a particular nation, given the alienability of labor- powerunless
certain physical or cultural characteristics can be utilized to divide the workers or render one group an
In the capitalist development of

U.S. society, African, Mexican, and Asian bodiesmore precisely, their labor power
and its reproductive efficacywere colonized and racialized ; hence the idea of internal
colonialism retains explanatory validity. Race is thus constructed out of raw materials
furnished by class relations, the history of class conflicts, and the vicissitudes
of colonial/capitalist expansion and the building of imperial hegemony. It is dialectically
accented and operationalized not just to differentiate the price of wage labor within and outside
the territory of the metropolitan power, but also to reproduce relations of domination
outcast or pariah removed from the domain of free labor.
subordination invested with an aura of naturality and fatality. The refunctioning of physical or cultural traits
as ideological and political signifiers of class identity reifies social relations. Such racial markers enter the
field of the alienated labor process, concealing the artificial nature of meanings and norms, and
essentializing or naturalizing historical traditions and values which are contingent on mutable
racism and nationalism are modalities in which class

struggles articulate themselves at strategic points in history . He argues that
racism arose with the creation and expansion of the capitalist world economy.
circumstances. For San Juan,
He maintains, rightly in our view, that racial or ethnic group solidarity is given meaning and value in terms
of their place within the social organization of production and reproduction of the ideological-political
order; ideologies of racism as collective social evaluation of solidarities arise to reinforce structural
constraints which preserve the exploited and oppressed position of these racial solidarities. It is
so much of contemporary social theory has largely

abandoned the problems of labor, capitalist exploitation, and class analysis at
remarkable, in our opinion, that
a time when capitalism is becoming more universal, more ruthless and more deadly. The metaphor of a
contemporary tower of Babel seems appropriate hereacademics striking radical poses in the seminar
their seemingly radical discursive

maneuvers do nothing to further the struggles against oppression and
exploitation which continue to be real, material, and not merely discursive
problems of the contemporary world (Dirlik, 1997, p. 176). Harvey (1998, pp. 2931) indicts the new
rooms while remaining oblivious to the possibility that
academic entrepreneurs, the masters of theory-in-and-for-itself whose discourse radicalism has deftly
side-stepped the enduring conundrums of class struggle and who have, against a sobering background of
cheapened discourse and opportunistic politics, been stripped of their self-advertised radicalism. For
years, they contested socialism, ridiculed Marxists, and promoted their own alternative theories of
liberatory politics but now they have largely been reduced to the role of supplicants in the most degraded
form of pluralist politics imaginable.
As they pursue the politics of difference , the class
war rages unabated and they seem either unwilling or unable to focus on the unprecedented
economic carnage occurring around the globe. Harveys searing criticism suggests that post-Marxists
have been busy fiddling while Rome burns and his comments echo those made by Marx (1978, p. 149) in
his critique of the Young Hegelians who were, in spite of their allegedly world- shattering statements,
the staunchest conservatives. Marx lamented that the Young Hegelians were simply fighting phrases and
that they failed to acknowledge that in offering only counter-phrases, they were in no way combating the
real existing world but merely combating the phrases of the world. Taking a cue from Marx and
substituting phrases with discourses or resignifications we would contend that the practitioners of
difference politics who operate within exaggerated culturalist frameworks that privilege the realm of
representation as the primary arena of political struggle question some discourses of power while
because they lack a class perspective, their gestures of

radicalism are belied by their own class positions .10 As Ahmad (1997a, p. 104) notes:
legitimating others. Moreover,
One may speak of any number of disorientations and even oppressions, but one cultivates all kinds of
politeness and indirection about the structure of capitalist class relations in which those oppressions are
embedded. To speak of any of that directly and simply is to be vulgar. In this climate of Aesopian
it is absolutely essential to reiterate that most things are a matter of

class. That kind of statement is ... surprising only in a culture like that of the North American
languages
university ... But it is precisely in that kind of culture that people need to hear such obvious truths.
Ahmads provocative observations imply that substantive analyses of the carnage wrought by globalized
class exploitation have, for the most part, been marginalized by the kind of radicalism that has been
instituted among the academic Left in North America. He further suggests that while various post-Marxists
have invited us to join their euphoric celebrations honoring the decentering of capitalism, the
abandonment of class politics, and the decline of metanarratives (particularly those of Marxism and
socialism), they have failed to see that the most meta of all metanarratives of the past three centuries,
the creeping annexation of the globe for the dominance of capital over laboring humanity has met, during
those same decades, with stunning success (Ahmad, 1997b, p. 364). As such, Ahmad invites us to ask
anew, the proverbial question: What, then, must be done? To this question we offer no simple theoretical,
pedagogical or political prescriptions. Yet we would argue that if social change is the aim, progressive
educators and
theorists must cease displacing class analysis with the politics of
difference.
Class is fundamentally different from race and gender

Race struggles downplays class struggles and negate the
importance of class
Gimenez 2001 (Martha, Professor of Sociology at CU Boulder, Marxism
and Class, Gender and Race, Race Gender and Class, Volume 8)
There are many competing theories of race, gender, class, American society, political
economy, power, etc. but no specific theory is invoked to define how the terms race,
gender and class are used, or to identify how they are related to the rest of the social
system. To some extent, race, gender and class and their intersections and interlockings have
become a mantra to be invoked in any and all theoretical contexts, for a tacit agreement about their
ubiquitousness and meaning seems to have developed among RGC studies advocates, so that all that
everything that
happens is, by definition, raced, classed, and gendered. This pragmatic acceptance
of race, gender and class, as givens, results in the downplaying of theory, and the
resort to experience as the source of knowledge . The emphasis on experience in the
remains to be done is empirically to document their intersections everywhere, for
construction of knowledge is intended as a corrective to theories that, presumably, reflect only the
experience of the powerful. RGC seems to offer a subjectivist understanding of theory as simply a
reflection of the experience and consciousness of the individual theorist, rather than as a body of
propositions which is collectively and systematically produced under historically specific conditions of
possibility which grant them historical validity for as long as those conditions prevail. Instead, knowledge
and theory are pragmatically conceived as the products or reflection of experience and, as such,
unavoidably partial, so that greater accuracy and relative completeness can be approximated only through
gathering the experiential accounts of all groups. Such is the importance given to the role of experience in
the production of knowledge that in the eight page introduction to the first section of an RGC anthology,
the word experience is repeated thirty six times (Andersen and Collins, 1995:1-9). I agree with the
importance of learning from the experience of all groups, especially those who have been silenced by
oppression and exclusion and by the effects of ideologies that mystify their actual conditions of existence.
To learn how people describe their understanding of their lives is very illuminating, for "ideas are the
conscious expression -- real or illusory -- of (our) actual relations and activities" (Marx, 1994:111), because
"social existence determines consciousness" (Marx, 1994: 211). Given that our existence is shaped by the
capitalist mode of production, experience, to be fully understood in its broader social and political
implications, has to be situated in the context of the capitalist forces and relations that produce it.
Experience in itself, however, is suspect because, dialectically, it is a unity of opposites; it is, at the same
time, unique, personal, insightful and revealing and, at the same time, thoroughly social, partial,
mystifying, itself the product of historical forces about which individuals may know little or nothing about
(for a critical assessment of experience as a source of knowledge see Sherry Gorelick, "Contradictions of
feminist methodology," in Chow, Wilkinson, and Baca Zinn, 1996; applicable to the role of experience in
contemporary RGC and feminist research is Jacoby's critique of the 1960s politics of subjectivity: Jacoby,
1973:37-49). Given the emancipatory goals of the RGC perspective, it is through the analytical tools of
Marxist theory that it can move forward, beyond the impasse revealed by the constant reiteration of
variations on the "interlocking" metaphor. This would require, however, a) a rethinking and modification of
the postulated relationships between race, class and gender, and b) a reconsideration of the notion that,
because everyone is located at the intersection of these structures, all social relations and interactions are
race, gender and class are

presented as equivalent systems of oppression with extremely negative
consequences for the oppressed. It is also asserted that the theorization of
the connections between these systems require "a working hypothesis of
equivalency" (Collins, 1997:74). Whether or not it is possible to view class as just
another system of oppression depends on the theoretical framework within
class is defined. If defined within the traditional sociology of stratification perspective, in terms of a
"raced," "classed," and "gendered." In the RGC perspective,
gradation perspective, class refers simply to strata or population aggregates ranked on the basis of
standard SES indicators (income, occupation, and education) (for an excellent discussion of the difference
between gradational and relational concepts of class, see Ossowski, 1963). Class in this non-relational,
descriptive sense has no claims to being more fundamental than gender or racial oppression; it simply
refers to the set of individual attributes that place individuals within an aggregate or strata arbitrarily
defined by the researcher (i.e., depending on their data and research purposes, anywhere from three or
class is
qualitatively different from gender and race and cannot be
considered just another system of oppression. As Eagleton points out, whereas
racism and sexism are unremittingly bad, class is not entirely a "bad thing" even though socialists would
four to twelve "classes" can be identified). From the standpoint of Marxist theory, however,
like to abolish it. The bourgeoisie in its revolutionary stage was instrumental in ushering a new era in
historical development, one which liberated the average person from the oppressions of feudalism and put
has an unquestionably
negative role to play as it expands and deepens the rule of capital over the
entire globe. The working class, on the other hand, is pivotally located to
wage the final struggle against capital and, consequently, it is "an excellent
thing" (Eagleton, 1996:57). While racism and sexism have no redeeming feature,
class relations are, dialectically, a unity of opposites; both a site of
exploitation and, objectively, a site where the potential agents of social
change are forged. To argue that the working class is the fundamental agent of change does not
entail the notion that it is the only agent of change. The working class is of course
composed of women and men who belong to different races, ethnicities,
national origins, cultures, and so forth, so that gender and racial/ethnic
struggles have the potential of fueling class struggles because, given the
patterns of wealth ownership and income distribution in this and all capitalist
countries, those who raise the banners of gender and racial struggles are
overwhelmingly propertyless workers, technically members of the working class, people who
forth the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Today, however, it
need to work for economic survival whether it is for a wage or a salary, for whom racism, sexism and class
exploitation matter. But this vision of a mobilized working class where gender and racial struggles are not
subsumed but are nevertheless related requires a class conscious effort to link RGC studies to the Marxist
analysis of historical change. In so far as the "class" in RGC remains a neutral concept, open to any and all
theoretical meanings, just one oppression among others, intersectionality will not realize its revolutionary
potential. Nevertheless,
I want to argue against the notion that class should be
considered equivalent to gender and race. I find the grounds for my argument
not only on the crucial role class struggles play in processes of epochal change
but also in the very assumptions of RGC studies and the ethnomethodological insights put forth by West
and Fenstermaker (1994). The assumption of the simultaneity of experience (i.e., all interactions are raced,
classed, gendered) together with the ambiguity inherent in the interactions themselves, so that while one
person might think he or she is "doing gender," another might interpret those "doings" in terms of "doing
class," highlight the basic issue that Collins accurately identifies when she argues that ethnomethodology
ignores power relations. Power relations underlie all processes of social interaction and this is why social
facts are constraining upon people. But the pervasiveness of power ought not to obfuscate the fact that
some power relations are more important and consequential than others. For example, the power that
physical attractiveness might confer a woman in her interactions with her less attractive female supervisor
or employer does not match the economic power of the latter over the former. In my view, the flattening or
erasure of the qualitative difference between class, race and gender in the RGC perspective is the
foundation for the recognition that it is important to deal with "basic relations of domination and
In the effort to reject

"class reductionism," by postulating the equivalence between class
and other forms of oppression, the RGC perspective both negates
the fundamental importance of class but it is forced to acknowledge
its importance by postulating some other "basic" structures of
domination. Class relations -- whether we are referring to the relations between capitalist and wage
subordination" which now appear disembodied, outside class relations.
workers, or to the relations between workers (salaried and waged) and their managers and supervisors,
those who are placed in "contradictory class locations," (Wright, 1978) -- are of paramount importance, for
most people's economic survival is determined by them. Those in dominant class positions do exert power
over their employees and subordinates and a crucial way in which that power is used is through their
Whatever identity workers might claim or

"do," employers can, in turn, disregard their claims and "read" their "doings"
differently as "raced" or "gendered" or both, rather than as "classed," thus downplaying
their class location and the class nature of their grievances. To argue,
choosing the identity they impute their workers.
then, that class is fundamental is not to "reduce" gender or racial oppression to class, but to acknowledge
that the underlying basic and "nameless" power at the root of what happens in social interactions
grounded in "intersectionality" is class power.
Alt
Our historical materialist analysis is the only way to

understand the structural forces and class inequalities
behind racial oppression.
Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren, 03, (Valerie, University
of Windsor, Peter, University of California, Los Angeles, The Strategic
Centrality of Class in the Politics of Race and Difference Sage
Publications, Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, Volume 3 Number 2,
2003 148-175, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/mclaren/mclaren%20and
%20valerie.pdf)//erg
A historical materialist approach adopts the imperative that categories of

difference are social/political constructs that are often encoded in dominant
ideological formations and that they often play a role in moral and legal
state-mediated forms of ruling. It also acknowledges the material
force of ideologiesparticularly racist ideologiesthat assign
separate cultural and/or biological essences to different segments of
the population that, in turn, serve to reinforce and rationalize
existing relations of power. But more than this, a historical materialist
understanding foregrounds the manner in which difference is central to the
exploitative production/reproduction dialectic of capital , its labor organization
and processes, and the way labor is valued and renumer- ate d. The real
problem is the internal or dialectical relation that exists between capital and
labor within the capitalist production process itselfa social rela-tion in which
capitalism is intransigently rooted. This social relationessential or fundamental to the production of
abstract labordeals with how already existing value is preserved and surplus vale is created. If, for example, the process
of actual exploitation and the accumulation of surplus value are to be seen as a state of constant manipulation and as a
realization process of concrete labor in actual labor timewithin a given cost-production system and a labor market
we cannot underestimate the ways in which difference racial as well as

gender differenceis encapsulated in the production/reproduction dialectic of
capital. It is this relationship that is mainly responsible for the inequitable and unjust distribution of resources . Hence, we applaud E. San Juans goal of
racial/ethnic semiotics that is committed to the elimination of the hegemonic
discourse of race in which peoples of color are produced and reproduced
daily for exploitation and oppression under the banner of individualized
freedom and pluralist, liberal democracy (1992, p. 96). A deepened
understanding of this phenomenon is essential for understanding
the emergence of an acutely polarized labor market and the fact that
disproportionately high percentages of people of color are
trapped in the lower rungs of domestic and global labor markets
(McLaren & Farahmandpur, 1999). Difference in the era of global capitalism is
crucial to the workings, movements, and profit levels of
multinational corporations, but those types of complex relations
cannot be mapped out without attending to capitalist class
formations (Ahmad, 1998). To sever issues of difference from class conveniently draws attention away from the
crucially important ways in which people of color (and more specifically women of color) provide capital with its
superexploited labor poolsa phenomenon that is on the rise all over the world. Most social relations constitutive of
racialized differences are considerably shaped by the relations of production, and there is undoubtedly a racialized and
gendered division of labor whose severity and function vary depending on where one is situated in the capitalist global
economy (Meyerson, 2000; Stabile, 1997). That racism and sexism are necessary social relations for the organization of
capitalism and new forms of emerging neoco- lonialism seems to escape the collective imaginations of those who theorize
difference in a truncated and exclusively culturalist manner. Bannerji (2000, pp. 8-9) forcefully argued that culturalist
discourses of difference have had the effect of deflecting critical attention from an increasingly racialized political
economy.
A historical materialist analysis is key to understanding

the oppression of all categories of difference the
dialectic of capital creates the material structures of
exploitation.
McLaren and Scatamburlo-DAnnibale, 4 (Peter and
Valerie, University of Windsor, Ontario, University of
California, 2004, Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol
36 No 2, Class Dismissed? Historical Materialism and the
politics of difference,)
An historical materialist approach understands that categories of difference

are social/political constructs that are often encoded in dominant ideological
formations and that they often play a role in moral and legal statemediated forms of ruling. It also acknowledges the material force of
ideologiesparticularly racist ideologiesthat assign separate cultural and/or
biological essences to different segments of the population which, in turn,
serve to reinforce and rationalize existing relations of power. But more than
this, an historical materialist understanding foregrounds the manner in which
difference is central to the exploitative production / reproduction dialectic of
capital, its labor organization and processes, and in the way labor is valued
and renumerated. The real problem is the internal or dialectical relation that
exists between capital and labor within the capitalist production process itself
a social relation in which capitalism is intransigently rooted. This social
relationessential to the production of abstract labordeals with how
already existing value is preserved and new value (surplus value) is created
(Allman, 2001). If, for example, the process of actual exploitation and the
accumulation of surplus value is to be seen as a state of constant
manipulation and as a realization process of concrete labor in actual labor
timewithin a given cost-production system and a labor marketwe cannot
underestimate the ways in which difference (racial as well as gender
difference) is encapsulated in the production/reproduction dialectic of capital.
It is this relationship that is mainly responsible for the inequitable and unjust
distribution of resources. A deepened understanding of this phenomenon is
essential for understanding the emergence of an acutely polarized labor
market and the fact that disproportionately high percentages of people of
color are trapped in the lower rungs of domestic and global labor markets
(McLaren & Farahmandpur, 1999). Difference in the era of global capitalism
is crucial to the workings, movements and profit levels of multinational
corporations but those types of complex relations cannot be mapped out by
using truncated post-Marxist, culturalist conceptualiza- tions of difference.
To sever issues of difference from class conveniently draws attention away
from the crucially important ways in which people of color (and, more
specifically, women of color) provide capital with its superexploited labor
poolsa phenomenon that is on the rise all over the world. Most social
relations constitutive of racialized differences are considerably shaped by the
relations of production and there is undoubtedly a racialized and gendered

division of labor whose severity and function vary depending on where one is
situated in the capitalist global economy (Meyerson, 2000).6
PIKs
The United States federal government should
substantially increase its exploration of the Earths
oceans via an encounter with the transatlantic slavery
without their use of the phrase middle passage, the
term afrofuturism, or depiction of slaves as monsters.
Middle Passage PIC

The phrase middle passage imposes a linear
progression of slave history with a known end point. This
turns the 1ACs historical analysis by restricting it within
a set timeframe strategically omitting the slaves ongoing
captivity.
Stephanie E. Smallwood 2007 Associate Professor of history University of
Washington, Ph.D. Duke University in 1999 saltwater slavery

Sibell's story reflects an important truth underlying the distinctive out Ines of
our respective narratives: hers is a window not onto the experience of the
slave ship, but rather on to the memory of it. The effort to construct a history
tracing the movement of captives from Africa to Americastands quite
apart from the effort to integrate a memorylooking from America to Africa
through the experience of the slave ship. Sibells supplies a narrative that is
less about enduring the crisis of the slave ship than about surviving it.
Indeed, what is most striking about 'Sibell's story is its unambiguous message
that the trauma of the slave ship survivor lay in the effort of integrationthe
challenge to integrate pieces of a narrative that do not fit neatly together to
suture the jagged edges and bleeding boundaries of lives fragmented by
captive migration. In this regard, it is intriguing also to consider the ways her
narrative differs from Equiano's Narrative. Because Equiano shaped his text in
response to eighteenth-century British antislavery sentiments specifically,
and Enlightenment humanism and moral reformism generally, he wove a tale
of migration and progressive displacement that, like this book, moves along a
trajectory that any reader familiar with the tropes of early modern travel
literature would recognize. In stark contrast, the fractured state of 'Sibell's
account reflects the nonlinear temporality of a nonwestern subject and the
familiar rhythms of oral, as distinct from written, narrative expression.
'Sibell's account reflects also the ways trauma disrupts normative narrative
structures (whatever the cultural background of the subject) and the role that
storytelling plays in the integration of traumatic memory. It is not just that
"traumatic events" disrupt "attachments of family, friendship, love, and
community" or "shatter the construction of the self that is formed and
sustained in relation to others." More fundamentally, trauma specialist Judith
Herman asserts, trauma directly disrupts the very "systems of attachment
and meaning that link individual and community." Thus, another specialist
has defined traumatic events as ones "that cannot be assimilated with the
victim's 'inner schemata' of self in relation to the world." The "work of
reconstruction," Herman writes, "actually transforms the traumatic memory,
so that it can be integrated into the survivor's life story. Especially difficult to
discipline was 'Sibell's recollection of the transaction that set her on the
irreversible journey into saltwater slavery. The act of sale did more than
transfer property rights to her person. In her reminiscence, it also propelled
her, seemingly in an instant, into a new worlda world molded by the
European Atlantic political economythe world of white people, big ships, the
expanse of the sea, and its ominous soundscape. In memory, the transaction
also had a messy social dimension that belied the seeming simple exchange
of economic values, for it drew 'Sibell, the brother-in-law, gun, and
gunpowder together in a moment of collective embrace. This was the
moment when social and mercantile values collided. By the rationalized logic
of the market, this was a clean bartering of goods, one in which the girl, the
gun, and the powder exchanged hands smoothly. But the transaction held the
opposite meaning in 'Sibell's experience: it was not a smooth exchange but
rather one marked by friction. She clung to her kinsman, and he could not let
her go as long as her voice continued to resound in his ears. Only when she
finally fell silent did he let her go. Sibells remembered experience cannot fit
into the neat temporal and spatial categories that frame my narration of the
"middle passage " with its orderly narrative progression from African captivity
through Atlantic commodification to American slavery. It is the meaning of
remembered events rather than their temporal order that governs their place
in 'Sibell's narrative. 'Sibell "finds" the people who she will remember in
Barbados, already constructed as American subjects on the slave ship,
already answering to what will be their plantation slave names, Sally, Dublin,
and so on. The temporal and spatial categories of her remembered middle
passage overlap, as past, present, and future comfortably commingle ("in de
way me meet a Man, and de Man know my Dahdy and all my Family.Ah!
Budder . . . you see me here now but dere has bin grandee fight in my
Country for me, for he will tell my Family"). 'Sibell's story conveys the very
important truth that hers is a narrative that cannot come to closurer, because
the events that give it shape have not yet exhausted their dramatic content.
Her original captivity is not a past event; rather, it remains unresolved: her
father and family continue to look for her; she is here in American slavery
now, but her return to the world that framed her remembered African self is
imminent. 'Sibell's narrative suggests that the slave ship charted no course of
narrative continuity between the African past and American present, but
rather memorialized an indeterminate passage marked by the impossibility of
full narrative closure. The saltwater in African memory, then was perhaps the
antithesis of a "middle" passage, with all that phrase implies about a smooth,
linear progression leading to a known end. For many in the pioneering
generations of slaves, there could be no such integration of the terror of
Atlantic memory.
Monsters PIC
Their depiction of slaves as monsters is a racist
construction that creates new categories of difference
Holtz and Wagner, 2009
(Peter and Wolfgang, Johannes Kepler University of Linz,
Australia, Journal of Community and Applied Social
Psychology, Essentialism and Attribution of Monstrosity
in Racist Discourse: Right-wing Internet Postings about
Africans and Jews, January 5th, 2009, wiley interscience,
accessed 7/29/14 bh@ddi)
Mixing essentialized categories at the biological level. The most interesting aspect of the depiction of
Blacks on this discussion board is the forum users horror of the procreation of Blacks and Whites, which is
biological reification and natural consequence of categorical or symbolic

hybridization. Hybridization, in which two incompatible natural essences are
merged in one organism, creates disgust in the realm of animals and humans, the latter
particularly for the racist. The resulting hybrid of such merging is perceived as
monstrous, which is a . . . cognitive statement about the being not belonging
to any accepted category of things where normal patterns of categorizations do not apply
(Wagner et al., 2006). In a sense, the monster is the harbinger of a category crisis
(Cohen, 1996) and hybrids are rejected in a highly affective way and must be physically
removed:
the
Afrofuturism PIC
The term afrofuturism appropriates black culture under

the cultural choice of white science fiction writers and
inhibits self-determination of black science fiction culture
Jones, Ojetade, and Khoe, members of State of Black
Science Fiction 2012, 2012
(chronicles of harriet, WHATS IN A NAME? Afrofuturism
vs. Black Speculative Fiction!, 7/24/14,
http://chroniclesofharriet.com/2014/07/24/afrofuturism/ , accessed
7/29/14 bh@ddi)
Why
is there no clear cut definition of Afrofuturism? Is it because the term was

not coined by a person of African descent, thus the examination comes from an external
lens? Just wondering. Thoughts? I received several responses. Here are a few: Mark Dery, father of
Afrofuturism...yep. Mark Dery, father of Afrofuturismyep. Ronald Jones: Afrofuturism wasnt coined by a
This is
why self-defining terms like Sword and Soul, Steamfunk, Dieselfunk, Rococoa
and Urban (capital U) Fantasy are so important. Ronald Jones: Now that is interesting! It
black person? :-o Balogun Ojetade: Nope, it was coined by Mark Dery, Ronald. Balogun Ojetade:
just shows, we not only have to participate in all areas of speculative fiction, we have to claim them! Make
them ours! Balogun Ojetade: Even Black Speculative Fiction works, even though Speculative Fiction was
coined by Robert Heinlein a posterboy for racism in 1941 (or so it has been said), because WE added
Black. No one added it FOR us. Ronald Jones: Thats right! Its like jumping into a public pool and daring
the other swimmers to say something crazy!
other people define our culture.
Pharoah Ama Khoe: We gotta stop letting
Extension
The phrase middle passage forces the slaves narrative
into linearity when it is based in disorientation
(SIMON CUTHBERT-KERR 2008 Simon, senior Policy Lead, Health
Protection Team at The Scottish Government, and Lecturer in the Department

of History at University of Dundee, Journal of American Studies / Volume 42 /
Issue 02 / August 2008 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?
type=1&fid=2135140&jid=AMS&volumeId=42&issueId=02&aid=2135132)
The most satisfying section of the book considers the psychological impact of
the Middle Passage. Smallwood argues convincingly that the market forces of
enslavement and commodification defined a straightforward temporal
narrative of slavery for Europeans (as implied the term "Middle Passage"), a
narrative that was denied to slaves. The very alienness of the ocean, which
for land-based West African cultures was a place of supernatural power,
caused slaves spatial and temporal disorientation, and contributed to their
commodification, and to "the complete disintegration of personhood" (r 2;)Smallwood suggests that a linear narrative did not exist for slaves because
the trauma of enslavement did not end-it remained unresolved for each
individual until he or she was reunited with their kin, physically or spiritually
after death. Yet spiritual return was unlikely because the deaths of so many
Africans during the Middle Passage were not attended by the rituals which
allowed the soul to pass to the next realm and rejoin the community of the
living, the not-yet-born and the ancestors. ln the Americas, a diasporic Africa
emerged among those who were bound together by the shared Atlantic
experience, formed from the "plurality of remembered places immigrant
slaves carried with them" (189). As American-born generations became
established, the one-way migration from Africa to America led to creole
culture valuing the African diaspora in America more highly than that of Africa
itself. For saltwater slaves, however, Smallwood argues that the memory of
enslavement and the Atlantic journey remained unresolved, an experience
too traumatic to be understood as part of one's own life, and an event which
prevented such individuals assimilating fully into the creole slave community.
Case
Analytics
1. They dont break down linear temporality because
they imagine Drexciyans to fill in these spaces. They
fill in holes of history which is the same linear logic
they try to prevent.
2. No such thing as linear in regards to blackness
blackness just exists.
3. Privilege turnnot everyone can sit around and
imagine science fiction. People in the world who are
suffering from white supremacist structures dont have
time to philosophize or go to the future/past because the
present is a time of survival strategiesthey need
material change and plans. That logic turns the case.
<card would be nice but couldnt find one so just read
these as analytics>
4. Negativity turn--We should re-contextualize history
from positive perspectivesthats key to inspire activism
and changeconstantly focusing on the negativity of the
past means we cannot ever envision a better future. A
better starting point would be powerful and strong
African tribes. <a card would be nice but couldnt find
one>
State Bad
They appeal to the same legal apparatus they cite as the
source of oppression for help. Their use of the legal
system reinforces the oppression they seek to eradicate
because the law has safe limits as to how far it will go
to achieve justice
Ansley 89
Frances Lee Ansley, Professor of Law at University of Tennessee. Cornell Law Review September, 1989 74
Cornell L. Rev. 993, STIRRING THE ASHES: RACE, CLASS AND THE FUTURE OF CIVIL RIGHTS
SCHOLARSHIP
[*1031] Law plays an important role. Law functions not as a weapon wielded
so that, say, bosses win and workers lose in every legal conflict, but more
subtly and powerfully by convincing us that the status quo is natural and just.
Law plays a "fundamental social role . . . as legitimation of existing social and
power relations." n150 According to Freeman, the redress of centuries of
discrimination was simply too unsettling for the system to accommodate.
n151 Undoing black subordination turned out to require massive social
dislocation and redistribution. But our legal ideas and institutions are
strongly, centrally anti-redistributionist. Concepts like the legitimacy of
existing rights, the myth of equal opportunity and the sacredness of formal
equality are lynch-pins in rationalizing class domination, and in justifying
substantive inequalities in our class system. For Freeman, this account
explains the uneven shape of Supreme Court civil rights doctrine. n152
Having committed itself to ending race discrimination, the Court soon found
itself under tremendous pressure (both external and internal) to achieve
results. In ordering remedies, n153 and sometimes even in finding violations,
n154 the Court was pushed to try to end conditions of injustice, not simply
instances of discrimination. In attempting to do so, the Court stretched
traditional jurisprudence quite far. Eventually, however, this impulse was
contained and anti-discrimination law was restricted within "safer" bounds
not so potentially destabilizing to the system.
By using formal legal structures to correct injustice, they

only reify the legal systems mechanistic conception of
justice. The concept that the system has always been bad
is a myth used to extend its preferential existence.
Glen 7
[Patrick. Attorney with the Office of Immigration Litigation, Former Law Lecturer @
Georgetown and Northern Ohio. The Deconstruction and Reification of Law in Franz Kafkas
Before the Law and the Trial Southern Interdisciplinary Law Journal, Vol 23 No 2. Winter
2007. ln/khirn]
the formalization of the legal apparatus, a total

operates on the basis of the
cogs and wheels put into place by initial and subsequent codifications. This
mechanistic conception of justice creates the appearance of the empty norm
and, in severing the question of origin from its societal bases, obscures even those foundational
premises that should shed light on what the essence of the law is. An examination
The reification of law is made complete by
generalization of legal principles that no longer requires man and
of Kafka's law and the legal relationships in Kafka's stories displays this phenomenon with remarkable
consistency. From an objective perspective, it is clear that the law in these stories has become reified,
transformed into a formalistic system. Although Kafka does not write a great deal on the history of the
court, through hearsay a few "legends" are conveyed. Titorelli, when apprising K. of the possible
notes that definite acquittal is no longer granted , though it had

Block, even though he has employed Huld and an
array of pettifogging attorneys, yearns to employ one of the "great lawyers," those brilliant jurists
talked about only in legends who could secure any outcome they desired. These
decisional outcomes,
been in the legends told of the court. The ever-active
references are brief and come to the reader after passing through many ears and mouths, yet these
The objective
reification creates this image of eternity and the notion that the system has
always been the way it is. By concealing these legends and chalking them up to
fantasy the system is able to perpetuate its own existence not only into the future,
legends paint a portrait of a system that has not always been so rigid and formal.
but also as a fiction that extends into the past. Subjectively, the relationships of all who come into contact
with the Law are reified. "Before the Law" is simplistic in its overt construction; the sole relationship that
consumes the reader is between the man from the country and the doorkeeper. The law remains forever
on the periphery. If the task of the man is truly to attain the law, has he achieved this goal? It seems not.
Yet if this is so, it is less a function of an emptiness behind the gate than of the formalism alluded to by
Weber. Viewing the law as reified one is led to the conception of the judge, and by obvious extension the
law, [*58] that Weber characterized as necessary in capitalist society. Justice becomes a matter of
computation; the law is given information and a judgment is disgorged. The man has given the doorkeeper
some information, for the doorkeeper knows that he has come from the city seeking admittance to the law.
That being the case, non-admittance must be the result of one of two things, both endemic to a reified
system. First, the law might be in the process of computing the judgment. It may have attained all
necessary information and is simply passing it through the necessary channels to decide the judgment.
Perhaps the matter is extremely complex, requiring the consultation of any number of codifications. Or
perhaps the light shining in the dimness of the dying man's eyes is evidence of an imminence of judgment.
Maybe the process itself is infinite, tracing Deleuze and Guattari's field of immanence, the information
passed on from room to room, another functionary always waiting behind the closed door to prolong the
process indefinitely. The waiting may simply be a function of this processing. In any event, this function
itself is a result of the reification of law which expels the exhortations of the man from its midst to focus
solely on the thingified relation he has brought to the gate. Second, if the law has become reified and thus
formal, then surely the rules of invocation are also formal and rigid. This matter has already been touched
upon, but it is worth repeating in this context. German law was impersonal and formal and no doubt
required a certain form of invocation to summon it forth. Previously I had noted the doctrines of standing
and justiciability. Obviously it could be something far more mundane, such as a complaint being filed on
paper of the wrong color or the improper structure of the man's question of entrance. No matter the
reason,
the rules of the law have not been complied with and the law itself has
not taken notice of the man. A machine will only work if certain levers are pulled
and buttons pushed. If the exact sequence is not held to nothing will happen. Law as
machine, reified law, has this exact characteristic; one must call it forth very specifically, taking care in the
structure of the sentence, the order of the words, the color of the complaint, etc. If not, no audience will be
granted. Whether the non-admittance of the man from the country is a function of the first or second
scenario is not important. In either case it is the reification of law that has alienated the man, leaving him
alone on the slopes of despair waiting for a judgment that may or may not come, depending solely on how
well the machine is working or the question of whether it is even in the process of functioning. Ernst
Fischer paints this portrait succinctly: "The law is no longer a living being, but a petrified institution, no
longer timely, only still intimidating." 272 In such a stark portrait one is inevitably reminded again of
Kafka's own words, recast through the reified and clouded consciousness of the man: " How
modest
this man is. He comes to the Law and begs. Instead of storming the Law [*59]
and smashing it to pieces he comes and begs." This isn't technically a quote - just my rephrasing of a
statement Kafka had made.
Kappler
Their focus on the atrocities that the government creates
trades off with recognizing our own personal complicity
with violence. Only by refusing to make statements like
the United States Federal Government should allows us
to transform our own personal will to violence that is the
root of their impacts
Susanne Kappeler (Associate Professor at Al-Akhawayn University) 1995
The Will to Violence: The Politics of Personal Behaviour, pg. 75-76)
War does not suddenly break out in a peaceful society ; sexual violence is not the
disturbance of otherwise equal gender relations. Racist attacks do not shoot like lightning out of a nonracist sky, and the sexual exploitation of children is no solitary problem in a world otherwise just to
The violence of our most commonsense everyday thinking, and

especially our personal will to violence, constitute the conceptual
preparation, the ideological armament and the intellectual mobilization which
make the 'outbreak' of war, of sexual violence, of racist attacks, of murder
and destruction possible at all. 'We are the war', writes Slavenka Drakulic at the end of her
children.
existential analysis of the question, 'what is war?': I do not know what war is, I want to tell [my friend], but
I see it everywhere. It is in the blood-soaked street in Sarajevo, after 20 people have been killed while they
queued for bread. But it is also in your non-comprehension, in my unconscious cruelty towards you, in the
fact that you have a yellow form [for refugees] and I don't, in the way in which it grows inside ourselves
and changes our feelings, relationships, values - in short: us. We are the war . . . And I am afraid that we
cannot hold anyone else responsible. We make this war possible, we permit it to happen.5 'We are the war'
- and we also 'are' the sexual violence, the racist violence, the exploitation and the will to violence in all its
manifestations in a society in so-called 'peacetime', for we make them possible and we permit them to
happen. 'We are the war' does not mean that the responsibility for a war is shared collectively and diffusely
by an entire society - which would be equivalent to exonerating warlords and politicians and profiteers or,
as Ulrich Beck says, upholding the notion of'collective irresponsibility', where people are no longer held
responsible for their actions, and where the conception of universal responsibility becomes the equivalent
the object is precisely to analyse the specific

and differential responsibility of everyone in their diverse situations.
Decisions to unleash a war are indeed taken at particular levels of power by
those in a position to make them and to command such collective action . We
of a universal acquittal.6 On the contrary,
need to hold them clearly responsible for their decisions and actions without lessening theirs by any
Yet our habit of focusing on the stage where the

major dramas of power take place tends to obscure our sight in relation to
our own sphere of competence, our own power and our own responsibility
leading to the -well-known illusion of our apparent 'powerlessness' and its
accompanying phenomenon, our so-called political disillusionment. Single
citizens even more so those of other nations - have come to feel secure in their
obvious non-responsibility for such large-scale political events as, say, the wars in
Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina or Somalia - since the decisions for such events are
always made elsewhere. Yet our insight that indeed we are not responsible for
the decisions of a Serbian general or a Croatian president tends to mislead us into
thinking that therefore we have no responsibility at all, not even for forming
our own judgement, and thus into underrating the responsibility we do have
within our own sphere of action. In particular, it seems to absolve us from having
to try to see any relation between our own actions and those events, or to
recognize the connections between those political decisions and our own
personal decisions. It not only shows that we participate in what Beck calls 'organized
collective 'assumption' of responsibility.
irresponsibility', upholding the apparent lack of connection between bureaucratically, institutionally,
nationally and also individually organized separate competences. It also proves the phenomenal and
For we
tend to think that we cannot 'do' anything , say, about a war, because we
deem ourselves to be in the wrong situation ; because we are not where the major
decisions are made. Which is why many of those not yet entirely disillusioned with
politics tend to engage in a form of mental deputy politics, in the style of
'What would I do if I were the general, the prime minister, the president, the foreign minister
unquestioned alliance of our personal thinking with the thinking of the major powermongers.
or the minister of defence?' Since we seem to regard their mega spheres of action as the only worthwhile
and truly effective ones, and since our political analyses tend to dwell there first of all, any question of
what I would do if I were indeed myself tends to peter out in the comparative insignificance of having what
is perceived as 'virtually no possibilities': what I could do seems petty and futile. For my own action I
obviously desire the range of action of a general, a prime minister, or a General Secretary of the UN
finding expression in ever more prevalent formulations like 'I want to stop this war', 'I want military
'We are this war',

even if we do not command the troops or participate in so-called peace talks,
namely as Drakulic says, in our 'non-comprehension': our willed refusal to feel
responsible for our own thinking and for working out our own understanding,
preferring innocently to drift along the ideological current of prefabricated
arguments or less than innocently taking advantage of the advantages these offer. And we 'are' the
intervention', 'I want to stop this backlash', or 'I want a moral revolution.'7
however,
war in our 'unconscious cruelty towards you', our tolerance of the 'fact that you have a yellow form for
refugees and I don't' - our readiness, in other words, to build identities, one for ourselves and one for
refugees, one of our own and one for the 'others'. We share in the responsibility for this war and its
violence in the way we let them grow inside us, that is, in the way we shape 'our feelings, our
relationships, our values' according to the structures and the values of war and violence
Focus on largescale politics absolves us of personal

responsibilitytriggers violence
Kappeler 95 (Susanne, Prof @ Al-Akhawayn U, The Will to
Violence: The Politics of Personal Behavior, p. 10-11)
that the responsibility for a war is shared collectively

by an entire society - which would be equivalent to exonerating warlords and
politicians and profiteers or, as, Ulrich Beck says, upholding the notion of' collective irresponsibility',
'We are the war' does not mean
and diffusely
where people are no longer held responsible for their actions, and where the conception of universal
responsibility becomes the equivalent of a universal acquittal. 6 On the contrary, the
object is precisely to analyse the specific and differential responsibility of everyone in their diverse
Decisions to unleash a war are indeed taken at particular levels of

power by those in a position to make them and to command such collective action. We
need to hold them clearly responsible for their decisions and actions without lessening theirs
by any collective 'assumption' of responsibility. Yet our habit of focusing on the stage
where the major dramas of power take place tends to obscure our sight in relation
to our own sphere of competence, our own power and our own responsibility leading to the well-known illusion of our apparent 'powerlessness' and its
accompanying phenomenon, our so-called political disillusionment. Single citizens even more so those of other nations - have come to feel secure in their obvious nonresponsibility for such large-scale political events as, say, the wars in Croatia and BosniaHercegovina or Somalia - since the decisions for such events are always made
elsewhere. Yet our insight that indeed we are not responsible for the decisions of a
Serbian general or a Croatian president tends to mislead us into thinking that therefore
we have no responsibility at all, not even for forming our own judgement, and thus into
underrating the responsibility we do have within our own sphere of action. In particular, it seems to
absolve us from having to try to see any relation between our own actions and those events, or
to recognize the connections between those political decisions and our own personal decisions. It
situations.
not only shows that we participate in what Beck calls 'organized irresponsibility', upholding the apparent
lack of connection between bureaucratically, institutionally, nationally and also individually organized
separate competences. It also proves the phenomenal and unquestioned alliance of our personal thinking
we tend to think that we cannot 'do'

anything, say, about a war, because we deem ourselves to be in the wrong
situation; because we are not where the major decisions are made. Which is why
many of those not yet entirely disillusioned with politics tend to engage in a form of mental deputy
politics, in the style of 'What would I do if I were the general, the prime minister, the
president, the foreign minister or the minister of defence?' Since we seem to
regard their mega spheres of action as the only worthwhile and truly effective
ones, and since our political analyses tend to dwell there first of all, any
question of what I would do if I were indeed myself tends to peter out in the
with the thinking of the major powermongers. For
comparative insignificance of having what is perceived as 'virtually no possibilities': what I could do seems
petty and futile. For my own action I obviously desire the range of action of a general, a prime minister, or
a General Secretary of the UN - finding expression in ever more prevalent formulations like 'I want to stop
this war', 'I want military intervention', 'I want to stop this backlash', or 'I want a moral revolution. 'We are
this war', however, even if we do not command the troops or participate in co-called peace talks, namely
in our non-comprehension': our willed refusal to feel responsible for our

own thinking and for working out our own understanding, preferring innocently to drift along the
as Drakulic says,
ideological current of prefabricated arguments or less than innocently taking advantage of the advantages
these offer. And we 'are' the war in our 'unconscious cruelty towards you', our tolerance of the 'fact that
you have a yellow form for refugees and I don't'- our readiness, in other words, to build identities, one for
We share in the
responsibility for this war and its violence in the way we let them grow inside
us, that is, in the way we shape 'our feelings, our relationships, our values' according: to the structures
ourselves and one for refugees, one of our own and one for the 'others.'
and the values of war and violence. So if we move beyond the usual frame of violence, towards the
this also means making an analysis of

action. This seems all the more urgent as action seems barely to be perceived any longer. There is
talk of the government doing 'nothing', of its 'inaction', of the need for action, the
structures of thought employed in decisions to act,
time for action, the need for strategies, our inability to act as well as our desire to become 'active' again.
We seem to deem ourselves in a kind of action vacuum which, like the cosmic black hole, tends to
consume any renewed effort only to increase its size. Hence this is also an attempt to shift the focus again
to the fact that we are continually acting and doing, and that there is no such thing as not acting or doing
nothing. Rather, the binary opposition of 'action' and 'no action' seems to serve the
simple evaluation of the good and the bad. We speak of being 'active' or wanting to be active again, where
being active in its simple vacuity is 'good', 'doing nothing' is rather bad, and where the quality of
the action seems secondary to the fact of action as such . Quite the reverse, however,
if we analyse the past: there, having 'done' anything bears the danger of it having been bad, since the
results are available for analysis. Consequently, analyses of the past tend to feature an abundance of
victims, who as victims cannot by definition have done anything, and therefore cannot either be 'guilty'.
While descriptions of our future actions are thus distinguished by their vacuity - saying nothing about the
kind of activity and explaining nothing about its purpose - the past on the contrary seems to cry out for the
writing of histories that explain everything. In these rewritings of history asjustification, the mark of
distinction for personal identity is no longer to have 'been active', but on the contrary, to have been the
passive victim - if not of actual deeds by others, at least of circumstances. In other words, in the past we
tend to have been passive, while in the future "we may become active. The present, however, is the
eternal present in which we inhabit states of being, our identity.
Emancipation Turn
The 1ACs focus on the events of transatlantic slavery
prevents change and uses suffering narratives to distract
from emancipation
Hartman, 02 (Saidiya, professor of African American literature and history
at Columbia University, The Time of Slavery, The South Atlantic Quarterly,
101, 4, Fall 2002, Duke University Press, EBSCO Publishing, AW)
History that hurts. The dungeon provides no redemption. Reckoning with our responsibility to
the dead cannot save them. The victor has already won. It is not possible
to undo the past. So, to what end do we conjure up the ghost? Of what use is an
itinerary of terror? Does it provide little more than evidence of what we cannot
change, or quell the uncertainty and doubt regarding millions Jost and u nknown? The debate
still rages as lo how many were transported to the Americas, killed in the raids and wars Lhat supplied the
trade, perished on the long journey to the coast, committed suicide, died of dehydration during the Middle
Passage. or were beaten or worked to death-22 million. 30 million, 60 million, or more? 21 Isn't it enough
to know that for each captive who survived the ordea l of captivity and season ing, at least one did not? At
best, the backdrop of this defeat makes visible the diffuse violence and the everyday routines of
domination, which continue to characterize black life but are obscured by their everydayness. The
normative character of ter ror insures i ts i nvisibility; i t defies detection behind rational categories l ike
the necessity to underscore the centrality

of the event. defined here in terms of captivity, deportation , and social
death, is a symptom of the difficulty of representing "terror as usual." The
oscillation between then and now distills the past four hundred years into one
definitive moment. And, at the same time, the still-unfolding narrative of captivity
and dispossession exceeds the discrete parameters of the event . In itemizing the
long list of violations, are we any closer to freedom , or do such litanies only confirm
what is feared-history is an injury that has yet to cease happening? Given the
irreparable nature of this event, which Jamaica Ki ncaid describes as a wrong that can
be assuaged only by the impossible, that is, by undoing the past. is acting out the past the
best approximation of work ing through available to us? By suffering the past are we better
able to grasp hold of an elusive freedom and make it substantial ? Is pain the
guarantee of compensation? Beyond con templating injury or apportioning blam e, how can
this encounter with the past fuel emancipatory efforts? Is it enough that these acts of
crime,povert y, and pathology. ln other words,
commemoration rescue the u n named and unaccounted for from obscurity and obl ivion , counter the
disavowals constitutive or the U.S. nalionaJ community, and unveil the complicitou s discretion of the
scholar shi p of the trade?
Past focus bad

Past-oriented approaches towards whiteness neglect the
way future discourse affects the present futurity is key
to full awareness
Baldwin, 11 (Andrew, Co-Director of the Institute of Hazard at the
University of Durhams Department of Geography, Whiteness and futurity:
Towards a research agenda, Progress in Human Geography 2012, originally
published August 3, 2011, http://phg.sagepub.com/content/36/2/172, AW)
My argument is that a past-oriented approach to accounting for geographies of
whiteness often neglects to consider how various forms of whiteness are
shaped by discourses of futurity. This is not to argue that a historicist approach to
conceptualizing white geographies is wrongheaded; the past continues to be a crucial time-space through
that such a past-focused orientation

obscures the way the category of the future is invoked in the articulation of
whiteness. As such, any analysis that seeks to understand how whitenesses of all kinds shape
which to understand whiteness. It is, however, to argue
contemporary (and indeed past) racisms operates with only a partial understanding of the time-spaces of
we can learn much about whitenesses and their

corresponding forms of racism by paying special attention to the ways in
which such whitenesses are constituted by futurity . I have offered some preliminary
whiteness. My argument is that
remarks on how we might conceptualize geographies of whiteness qua futurity, but these should only be
taken as starting points. Much more pragmatically, what seems to be required is a fulsome investigation
into the way the future shapes white geographies. What might such a project entail? For one, geographers
identify whether and how the practice of governing through the

future inaugurates new and repeats old forms of whiteness . It would also be worth
comparing and contrasting how the future is made present in various
dialectical accounts of whiteness. For instance, what becomes of whiteness when
understood through the binary actual-possible as opposed to an actual-virtual
binary, which has been my main concern ? Alternatively, what becomes of the
category of whiteness if it is shown to be constituted by a future that has no
ontology except as a virtual presence? And, perhaps more pressing, how might whiteness be
newly politicized? Futurity provides a productive vocabulary for thinking about and
challenging whiteness. It does not offer a means of overcoming white supremacy, nor does it
would do well to
provide white people with a normative prescription for living with their whiteness guilt- or worry-free.
a lacuna in the study of whiteness both in geography and

outside the discipline, and this alone suggests the need to take it seriously. But
equally, and perhaps more urgently, there is the need to study whiteness and futurity
given how central the future is to contemporary governance and politics .
Indeed, at a moment when the future features prominently in both political rhetoric
Futurity is, however,
in his inaugural speech, Obama implores America to carry forth that great gift of freedom and [deliver] it
and everyday life, how people orient themselves

towards the future is indelibly political . The future impels action. For Mann (2007), it is
central to interest. For Thrift (2008), value increasingly arises not from what is but
from what is not yet but can potentially become , that is fromthe pull of the future.
Attention to whiteness and futurity may at minimum enable us to see more clearly the
extent to which the pull of whiteness into the future reconfigures what is to
be valued in the decades ahead.
safely to future generations
No Solvency
The affs attempt at continued re-presentation of the
Middle Passage is a futile attempt of remembering that
will only eclipse over the place of the dead
Hartman, 02 (Saidiya, professor of African American literature and history
at Columbia University, The Time of Slavery, The South Atlantic Quarterly,
101, 4, Fall 2002, Duke University Press, EBSCO Publishing, AW)
At the portal that symbolized the finality of departure and the impossibility of reversion, the tensions that
Mourning is both an expression

o[ loss that tethers us to the dead and severs that connection or overcomes
loss by assuming the place of the dead. The excesses of empathy lead us to
mistake our return with the captives' . To the degree that the bereaved attempt to understand
this space of death by placing themselves in the position of the captive, loss is attenuated rather
than addressed, and the phantom presence of the departed and the dead eclipsed
by our simulated captivity. "You are back!" We are encouraged to see ou rselves as Lhe vessels
reside in mourning the dead are most intensely experienced.
for the captive's return; we stand in the ancestor's shoes. We imaginatively wi t ness the crimes of the past
and cry for those victimized -the enslaved, the ravaged, and the slaughtered . And the obliterative
assimilation of empathy enables us to cry for ou rselves, too. As we remember those ancestors held in Lhe
dungeons, we can't bul think of our own dishonored and devalued l ives and t he unrealized aspirations
and the broken promises of abolition, reconstruction, and the civil rights movemen t. The i n transigence of
our seemi ngly eternal secondclass status propels us Lo make recou rse to stories of origi n, unshakable
explanatory narratives, and sites of inju ry-the land where our blood has been spilt -asif some essen liaJ
as
if the location of the wound was itself the cure, or as if the weight of dead
generations could alone ensure our progress. lronica ll}1 the decla ration "You are back!"
ingredien t of ourselves can be recovered at the castles and forts tha t dot the western coast of Africa,
undermines the very violence that these memorial s assiduously work to present by claimi ng that the
tourist'sexcursion is theancestor'sreturn.Given this, what does the journey back bode for the present?
despite the emphasis placed on remembrance and return,

unable to articulate in any decisive fashion , other than the
reclamatio n or a true identity, what remembering yields. While the journey back is the vehicle of
remedy, recovery, and sel f-reckoni ng. the question begged is what exactly is the
redressive work actualized by remembrance. Is not the spectacular abjection of
slavery reproduced in facile representations of the horrors of the slave trade?
What ends are served by such representations, beyond remedying the failures of memory
What is surprisi ng is Lhat
these ceremonies are actually
through the dramatic reenactment of captivity and the incorporation of the dead? The most disturbing
aspect of these reenactments is the suggestion that the rupture of the Middle Passage is neither
irreparable nor irrevocable but bridged by the tourist who acts as the vessel for the ancestor. Inshort, the
captive finds his redemption in the tourist.

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Notes

I dont even know where to begin.

Not exploration of oceans

Ocean is the single continuous body of salt water

B. Violation the affirmatives historical re-presentation

D. T is a voter because its necessary for good, wellprepared debating

You can read this stuff on case as solvency take-outs/case

this tactic has other disadvantages that

it continues the legacy

the 1970s and the promotion of Norplant as a solution to Black poverty.

These images are traumaticthey trivialize the black

the recollection of an ex-slave

slaves while protecting the fetus from harm:

A former slave named Lizzie Williams

Dey [the white folks]

Monstrous portrayals of black mothers justified sexual

They metaphor of Black motherhood limits black womens

many slave mothersas womenalso had to deal

female slaves gave

Lindas situation as a pregnant slave only added to her emotional

Dr. Flints fury, and the disappointment of her respected grandmother.

theoretical moves. In the distinction between memory as interiorisation

The Alternative is to deconstruct the 1AC with an

California Irvine, Mnemosyne, in Memoires for Paul de Man, translated by

remember before the death of the loved one-that being-in-me or being-in-us

theories of difference often circumvent the material dimen- sions

it is equally absurd to see difference as a

bourgeois representationa posture that reinscribes a neoliberal pluralist

Rather than exploring the construction of

themes of identity, difference,

discourses of difference politics often means a plurality without conflict,

Black science fiction focuses on historical particularities

contemporary sonic wizards like Tricky

materiality of the music -- jungle's convoluted breakbeat rhythms, the headwrecking

journalistic cliche too often marking a condescending attitude towards black

exploitation and oppression are

In the capitalist development of

racism and nationalism are modalities in which class

so much of contemporary social theory has largely

their seemingly radical discursive

As they pursue the politics of difference , the class

because they lack a class perspective, their gestures of

it is absolutely essential to reiterate that most things are a matter of

theorists must cease displacing class analysis with the politics of

Class is fundamentally different from race and gender

race, gender and class are

I want to argue against the notion that class should be

In the effort to reject

Whatever identity workers might claim or

Our historical materialist analysis is the only way to

A historical materialist approach adopts the imperative that categories of

we cannot underestimate the ways in which difference racial as well as

A historical materialist analysis is key to understanding

An historical materialist approach understands that categories of difference

relations of production and there is undoubtedly a racialized and gendered

Middle Passage PIC

Washington, Ph.D. Duke University in 1999 saltwater slavery

biological reification and natural consequence of categorical or symbolic

The term afrofuturism appropriates black culture under

is there no clear cut definition of Afrofuturism? Is it because the term was

other people define our culture.

Pharoah Ama Khoe: We gotta stop letting

Protection Team at The Scottish Government, and Lecturer in the Department

By using formal legal structures to correct injustice, they