1NC vs. Iman and Sofia

FW
A Interpretation: Topical affirmatives must affirm the

resolution through instrumental defense of action by the
United States federal government.
B Definitions:
1. Should denotes an expectation of enacting a plan
American Heritage Dictionary 2000 (Dictionary.com)
should. The will to do something or have something take place: I shall go
out if I feel like it.
2. Federal government is the central government in

Washington DC
Encarta Online 2005,
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_1741500781_6/Unite
d_States_(Government).html#howtocite
United States (Government), the combination of federal, state, and local
laws, bodies, and agencies that is responsible for carrying out the
operations of the United States. The federal government of the
United States is centered in Washington, D.C.
3. Resolved implies a policy

Louisiana House 3-8-2005, http://house.louisiana.gov/house-
glossary.htm
Resolution A legislative instrument that generally is used for making
declarations, stating policies, and making decisions where some other form
is not required. A bill includes the constitutionally required enacting clause; a
resolution uses the term "resolved". Not subject to a time limit for
introduction nor to governor's veto. ( Const. Art. III, 17(B) and House Rules
8.11 , 13.1 , 6.8 , and 7.4)
C Vote neg:
First is Decision-making
The primary purpose of debate should be to improve our
skills as decision-makers. We are all individual policy-
makers who make choices every day that affect us and
those around us. We have an obligation to the people
affected by our decisions to use debate as a method for
honing these critical thinking and information processing
abilities.
Austin J. Freeley and David L. Steinberg John Carroll University / U
Miami 2009, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned
Decision Making, p. 1-4, googlebooks
After several days of intense debate, first the United States House of
Representatives and then the U.S. Senate voted to authorize President
George W. Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refused to give up
weapons of mass destruction as required by United Nations's resolutions.
Debate about a possible military* action against Iraq continued in various
governmental bodies and in the public for six months, until President Bush
ordered an attack on Baghdad, beginning Operation Iraqi Freedom, the
military campaign against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. He did so
despite the unwillingness of the U.N. Security Council to support the military
action, and in the face of significant international opposition. Meanwhile,
and perhaps equally difficult for the parties involved, a young couple
deliberated over whether they should purchase a large home to
accommodate their growing family or should sacrifice living space to
reside in an area with better public schools; elsewhere a college
sophomore reconsidered his major and a senior her choice of law
school, graduate school, or a job. Each of these* situations called for
decisions to be made. Each decision maker worked hard to make well-
reasoned decisions. Decision making is a thoughtful process of choosing
among a variety of options for acting or thinking. It requires that the decider
make a choice. Life demands decision making. We make countless
individual decisions every day. To make some of those decisions, we work
hard to employ care and consideration; others seem to just happen.
Couples, families, groups of friends, and coworkers come together to
make choices, and decision-making bodies from committees to juries
to the U.S. Congress and the United Nations make decisions that
impact us all. Every profession requires effective and ethical
decision making, as do our school, community, and social
organizations. We all make many decisions every day. To refinance or
sell one's home, to buy a high-performance SUV or an economical
hybrid car. what major to select, what to have for dinner, what
candidate to vote for, paper or plastic, all present us with choices.
Should the president deal with an international crisis through
military invasion or diplomacy? How should the U.S. Congress act to
address illegal immigration? Is the defendant guilty as accused? The
Daily Show or the ball game? And upon what information should I rely
to make my decision? Certainly some of these decisions are more
consequential than others. Which amendment to vote for, what television
program to watch, what course to take, which phone plan to purchase, and
which diet to pursue all present unique challenges. At our best, we seek
out research and data to inform our decisions. Yet even the choice of
which information to attend to requires decision making. In 2006,
TIME magazine named YOU its "Person of the Year." Congratulations! Its
selection was based on the participation not of ''great men" in the creation of
history, but rather on the contributions of a community of anonymous
participants in the evolution of information. Through blogs. online networking.
You Tube. Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, and many other "wikis," knowledge
and "truth" are created from the bottom up, bypassing the authoritarian
control of newspeople, academics, and publishers. We have access to
infinite quantities of information, but how do we sort through it and
select the best information for our needs? The ability of every
decision maker to make good, reasoned, and ethical decisions relies
heavily upon their ability to think critically. Critical thinking enables
one to break argumentation down to its component parts in order to
evaluate its relative validity and strength. Critical thinkers are
better users of information, as well as better advocates. Colleges and
universities expect their students to develop their critical thinking skills and
may require students to take designated courses to that end. The importance
and value of such study is widely recognized. Much of the most significant
communication of our lives is conducted in the form of debates. These may
take place in intrapersonal communications, in which we weigh the pros and
cons of an important decision in our own minds, or they may take place in
interpersonal communications, in which we listen to arguments intended to
influence our decision or participate in exchanges to influence the decisions
of others. Our success or failure in life is largely determined by our
ability to make wise decisions for ourselves and to influence the
decisions of others in ways that are beneficial to us. Much of our
significant, purposeful activity is concerned with making decisions.
Whether to join a campus organization, go to graduate school, accept a job
oiler, buy a car or house, move to another city, invest in a certain stock, or
vote for Garciathese are just a few of the thousands of decisions we may
have to make. Often, intelligent self-interest or a sense of responsibility will
require us to win the support of others. We may want a scholarship or a
particular job for ourselves, a customer for out product, or a vote for our
favored political candidate.
Specifically, through discussing paths of government
action, debate teaches us to be better organizational
decision makers. Learning about the uniquely different
considerations of organizations is necessary to affecting
change in a world overwhelmingly dominated by
institutions.
Algoso 2011 Masters in Public Administration (May 31, Dave, Why I got
an MPA: Because organizations matter
http://findwhatworks.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/why-i-got-an-mpa-because-
organizations-matter/)
Because organizations matter. Forget the stories of heroic individuals
written in your middle school civics textbook. Nothing of great importance
is ever accomplished by a single person. Thomas Edison had lab
assistants, George Washingtons army had thousands of troops, and Mother
Teresas Missionaries of Charity had over a million staff and volunteers when
she passed away. Even Jesus had a 12-man posse. In different ways and in
vastly different contexts, these were all organizations. Pick your favorite
historical figure or contemporary hero, and I can almost guarantee
that their greatest successes occurred as part of an organization.
Even the most charismatic, visionary and inspiring leaders have to be able to
manage people, or find someone who can do it for them. International
development work is no different. Regardless of your issue of interest
whether private sector investment, rural development, basic health care,
government capacity, girls education, or democracy promotion your work
will almost always involve operating within an organization. How well or
poorly that organization functions will have dramatic implications for the
results of your work. A well-run organization makes better decisions
about staffing and operations; learns more from its mistakes;
generates resources and commitment from external stakeholders;
and structures itself to better promote its goals. None of this is easy or
straightforward. We screw it up fairly often. Complaints about NGO
management and government bureaucracy are not new. We all
recognize the need for improvement. In my mind, the greatest challenges
and constraints facing international development are managerial
and organizational, rather than technical. Put another way: the
greatest opportunities and leverage points lie in how we run our
organizations. Yet our discourse about the international development
industry focuses largely on how much money donors should commit to
development and what technical solutions (e.g. deworming, elections, roads,
whatever) deserve the funds. We give short shrift to the questions
around how organizations can actually turn those funds into the
technical solutions. The closest we come is to discuss the incentives facing
organizations due to donor or political requirements. I think we can go deeper
in addressing the management and organizational issues mentioned above.
This thinking led me to an MPA degree because it straddles that space
between organizations and issues. A degree in economics or
international affairs could teach you all about the problems in the
world, and you may even learn how to address them. But if you dont
learn how to operate in an organization, you may not be able to
channel the resources needed to implement solutions. On the flip side,
a typical degree in management offers relevant skills, but without the content
knowledge necessary to understand the context and the issues. I think the
MPA, if you choose the right program for you and use your time well, can do
both.
Second is Predictable Limits - The resolution proposes the
question the negative is prepared to answer and creates a
bounded list of potential affs for us to think about.
Debate has unique potential to change attitudes and
grow critical thinking skills because it forces pre-round
internal deliberation on a of a focused, common ground of
debate
Robert E. Goodin and Simon J. Niemeyer- Australian National
University- 2003,
When Does Deliberation Begin? Internal Reflection versus Public Discussion in
Deliberative Democracy, POLITICAL STUDIES: 2003 VOL 51, 627649,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0032-3217.2003.00450.x/pdf
What happened in this particular case, as in any particular case, was in some
respects peculiar unto itself. The problem of the Bloomfield Track had been
well known and much discussed in the local community for a long time.
Exaggerated claims and counter-claims had become entrenched, and
unreflective public opinion polarized around them. In this
circumstance, the effect of the information phase of deliberative
processes was to brush away those highly polarized attitudes, dispel
the myths and symbolic posturing on both sides that had come to
dominate the debate, and liberate people to act upon their attitudes
toward the protection of rainforest itself. The key point, from the perspective
of democratic deliberation within, is that that happened in the earlier
stages of deliberation before the formal discussions (deliberations, in the
discursive sense) of the jury process ever began. The simple process of jurors seeing the site for themselves, focusing
their minds on the issues and listening to what experts had to say did virtually all the work in changing jurors attitudes.
Talking among themselves, as a jury, did very little of it. However, the same might happen in cases very different from this
one. Suppose that instead of highly polarized symbolic attitudes, what we have at the outset is mass ignorance or mass
apathy or non-attitudes. There again, peoples engaging with the issue focusing on it, acquiring information about it,
thinking hard about it would be something that is likely to occur earlier rather than later in the deliberative process. And
more to our point, it is something that is most likely to occur within individuals themselves or in informal interactions, well
in advance of any formal, organized group discussion. There is much in the large literature on attitudes and the
mechanisms by which they change to support that speculation.31 Consider, for example, the literature on central versus
peripheral routes to the formation of attitudes. Before deliberation, individuals may not have given the issue much
thought or bothered to engage in an extensive process of reflection.32 In such cases, positions may be arrived at via
peripheral routes, taking cognitive shortcuts or arriving at top of the head conclusions or even simply following the lead
of others believed to hold similar attitudes or values (Lupia, 1994). These shorthand approaches involve the use of
available cues such as expertness or attractiveness (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986) not deliberation in the internal-
reflective sense we have described. Where peripheral shortcuts are employed, there may be inconsistencies in logic and
the formation of positions, based on partial information or incomplete information processing. In contrast, central routes
to the development of attitudes involve the application of more deliberate effort to the matter at hand, in a way that is
more akin to the internal-reflective deliberative ideal. Importantly for our thesis, there is nothing intrinsic to the central
route that requires group deliberation. Research in this area stresses instead the importance simply of sufficient impetus
for engaging in deliberation, such as when an individual is stimulated by personal involvement in the issue.33 The same is
The suggestion here is that we
true of on-line versus memory-based processes of attitude change.34
lead our ordinary lives largely on autopilot, doing routine things in
routine ways without much thought or reflection. When we come
across something new, we update our routines our running
beliefs and pro cedures, attitudes and evaluations accordingly. But
having updated, we then drop the impetus for the update into deep-
stored memory. A consequence of this procedure is that, when asked in
the ordinary course of events what we believe or what attitude we
take toward something, we easily retrieve what we think but we
cannot so easily retrieve the reasons why. That more fully reasoned
assessment the sort of thing we have been calling internal-
reflective deliberation requires us to call up reasons from stored
memory rather than just consulting our running on-line summary
judgments. Crucially for our present discussion, once again, what prompts that shift from online to more deeply
reflective deliberation is not necessarily interpersonal discussion. The impetus for fixing ones attention on a topic, and
retrieving reasons from stored memory, might come from any of a number sources: group discussion is only one. And
again, even in the context of a group discussion, this shift from online to memory-based processing is likely to occur
earlier rather than later in the process, often before the formal discussion ever begins. All this is simply to say that, on a
elements of the
great many models and in a great many different sorts of settings, it seems likely that
pre-discursive process are likely to prove crucial to the shaping and
reshaping of peoples attitudes in a citizens jury-style process. The
initial processes of focusing attention on a topic, providing
information about it and inviting people to think hard about it is
likely to provide a strong impetus to internal-reflective deliberation ,
altering not just the information people have about the issue but
also the way people process that information and hence (perhaps)
what they think about the issue. What happens once people have shifted
into this more internal-reflective mode is, obviously, an open question. Maybe
people would then come to an easy consensus, as they did in their attitudes
toward the Daintree rainforest.35 Or maybe people would come to divergent
conclusions; and they then may (or may not) be open to argument and
counter-argument, with talk actually changing minds. Our claim is not that
group discussion will always matter as little as it did in our citizens jury.36
Our claim is instead merely that the earliest steps in the jury process the
sheer focusing of attention on the issue at hand and acquiring more
information about it, and the internal-reflective deliberation that that prompts
will invariably matter more than deliberative democrats of a more
discursive stripe would have us believe. However much or little difference
formal group discussions might make, on any given occasion, the pre-
discursive phases of the jury process will invariably have a considerable
impact on changing the way jurors approach an issue. From Citizens Juries to
Ordinary Mass Politics? In a citizens jury sort of setting, then, it seems that
informal, pre-group deliberation deliberation within will inevitably do
much of the work that deliberative democrats ordinarily want to attribute to
the more formal discursive processes. What are the preconditions for that
happening? To what extent, in that sense, can findings about citizens juries
be extended to other larger or less well-ordered deliberative settings? Even in
citizens juries, deliberation will work only if people are attentive, open and
willing to change their minds as appropriate. So, too, in mass politics. In
citizens juries the need to participate (or the anticipation of
participating) in formally organized group discussions might be
the prompt that evokes those attributes. But there might be many
other possible prompts that can be found in less formally structured mass-
political settings. Here are a few ways citizens juries (and all cognate
micro-deliberative processes)37 might be different from mass politics,
and in which lessons drawn from that experience might not therefore
carry over to ordinary politics: A citizens jury concentrates peoples
minds on a single issue. Ordinary politics involve many issues at once.
A citizens jury is often supplied a background briefing that has been
agreed by all stakeholders (Smith and Wales, 2000, p. 58). In ordinary
mass politics, there is rarely any equivalent common ground on which
debates are conducted. A citizens jury separates the process of acquiring information from that of
discussing the issues. In ordinary mass politics, those processes are invariably intertwined. A citizens jury is provided
with a set of experts. They can be questioned, debated or discounted. But there is a strictly limited set of competing
experts on the same subject. In ordinary mass politics, claims and sources of expertise often seem virtually limitless,
allowing for much greater selective perception. Participating in something called a citizens jury evokes certain very
particular norms: norms concerning the impartiality appropriate to jurors; norms concerning the common good
orientation appropriate to people in their capacity as citizens.38 There is a very different ethos at work in ordinary mass
politics, which are typically driven by flagrantly partisan appeals to sectional interest (or utter disinterest and voter
apathy). In a citizens jury, we think and listen in anticipation of the
discussion phase, knowing that we soon will have to defend
our views in a discursive setting where they will be probed
intensively.39 In ordinary mass-political settings, there is no such incentive
for paying attention. It is perfectly true that citizens juries are special in all
those ways. But if being special in all those ways makes for a better
more reflective, more deliberative political process, then those are
design features that we ought try to mimic as best we can in ordinary
mass politics as well. There are various ways that that might be done. Briefing books might be prepared by
sponsors of American presidential debates (the League of Women Voters, and such like) in consultation with the
stakeholders involved. Agreed panels of experts might be questioned on prime-time television. Issues might be sequenced
for debate and resolution, to avoid too much competition for peoples time and attention. Variations on the Ackerman and
Fishkin (2002) proposal for a deliberation day before every election might be generalized, with a day every few months
being given over to small meetings in local schools to discuss public issues. All that is pretty visionary, perhaps. And
(although it is clearly beyond the scope of the present paper to explore them in depth) there are doubtless many other
more-or-less visionary ways of introducing into real-world politics analogues of the elements that induce citizens jurors to
practice democratic deliberation within, even before the jury discussion gets underway. Here, we have to content
ourselves with identifying those features that need to be replicated in real-world politics in order to achieve that goal
and with the possibility theorem that is established by the fact that (as sketched immediately above) there is at least one
possible way of doing that for each of those key features.
Third is Dogmatism Most problems are not black and

white but have complex, uncertain interactions. By
declaring that capitalism is always bad, they prevent us
from understanding the nuances of an incredibly
important and complex issue. This is the epitome of
dogmatism
Keller, et. al, Asst. professor School of Social Service Administration U. of
Chicago - 2001
(Thomas E., James K., and Tracly K., Asst. professor School of Social Service
Administration U. of Chicago, professor of Social Work, and doctoral student
School of Social Work, Student debates in policy courses: promoting policy
practice skills and knowledge through active learning, Journal of Social Work
Education, Spr/Summer 2001, EBSCOhost)
John Dewey, the philosopher and educational reformer, suggested
that the initial advance in the development of reflective thought
occurs in the transition from holding fixed, static ideas to an attitude
of doubt and questioning engendered by exposure to alternative
views in social discourse (Baker, 1955, pp. 36-40). Doubt, confusion,
and conflict resulting from discussion of diverse perspectives "force
comparison, selection, and reformulation of ideas and meanings "
(Baker, 1955, p. 45). Subsequent educational theorists have contended that
learning requires openness to divergent ideas in combination with
the ability to synthesize disparate views into a purposeful resolution
(Kolb, 1984; Perry, 1970). On the one hand, clinging to the certainty of
one's beliefs risks dogmatism, rigidity, and the inability to learn
from new experiences. On the other hand, if one's opinion is altered by
every new experience, the result is insecurity, paralysis, and the inability to
take effective action. The educator's role is to help students develop the
capacity to incorporate new and sometimes conflicting ideas and experiences
into a coherent cognitive framework. Kolb suggests that, "if the education
process begins by bringing out the learner's beliefs and theories, examining
and testing them, and then integrating the new, more refined ideas in the
person's belief systems, the learning process will be facilitated" (p. 28).
The authors believe that involving students in substantive debates
challenges them to learn and grow in the fashion described by Dewey
and Kolb. Participation in a debate stimulates clarification and critical
evaluation of the evidence, logic, and values underlying one's own
policy position. In addition, to debate effectively students must
understand and accurately evaluate the opposing perspective . The
ensuing tension between two distinct but legitimate views is
designed to yield a reevaluation and reconstruction of knowledge
and beliefs pertaining to the issue.
Our method solves Even if the resolution is wrong,

having a devils advocate in deliberation is vitally
important to critical thinking skills and avoiding
groupthink
Hugo Mercier and Hlne Landemore- 2011
(Philosophy, Politics and Economics prof @ U of Penn, Poli
Sci prof @ Yale), Reasoning is for arguing: Understanding
the successes and failures of deliberation, Political
Psychology,
http://sites.google.com/site/hugomercier/publications
Reasoning can function outside of its normal conditions when it is used purely internally. But it
is not enough for reasoning to be done in public to achieve good results. And indeed the
problems of individual reasoning highlighted above, such as polarization and
overconfidence, can also be found in group reasoning (Janis, 1982;
Stasser & Titus, 1985; Sunstein, 2002). Polarization and overconfidence
happen because not all group discussion is deliberative. According to
some definitions of deliberation, including the one used in this paper,
reasoning has to be applied to the same thread of argument from
different opinions for deliberation to occur. As a consequence, If the
participants are mostly like-minded or hold the same views before
they enter into the discussion, they are not situated in the
circumstances of deliberation. (Thompson, 2008: 502). We will presently review evidence
showing that the absence or the silencing of dissent is a quasi-necessary condition for polarization or overconfidence to
occur in groups. Group polarization has received substantial empirical support. 11 So much support in fact that Sunstein
has granted group polarization the status of law (Sunstein, 2002). There is however an important caveat: group
polarization will mostly happen when people share an opinion to begin with. In defense of his claim, Sunstein reviews an
impressive number of empirical studies showing that many groups tend to form more extreme opinions following
discussion. The examples he uses, however, offer as convincing an illustration of group polarization than of the necessity
of having group members that share similar beliefs at the outset for polarization to happen (e.g. Sunstein, 2002: 178).
Likewise, in his review of the group polarization literature, Baron notes that The crucial antecedent condition for group
polarization to occur is the presence of a likeminded group; i.e. individuals who share a preference for one side of the
issue. (Baron, 2005). Accordingly, when groups do not share an opinion, they tend to depolarize. This has been shown in
several experiments in the laboratory (e.g. Kogan & Wallach, 1966; Vinokur & Burnstein, 1978). Likewise, studies of
deliberation about political or legal issues report that many groups do not polarize (Kaplan & Miller, 1987; Luskin, Fishkin,
& Hahn, 2007; Luskin et al., 2002; Luskin, Iyengar, & Fishkin, 2004; Mendelberg & Karpowitz, 2000). On the contrary,
some groups show a homogenization of their attitude (they depolarize) (Luskin et al., 2007; Luskin et al., 2002). The
contrasting effect of discussions with a supportive versus dissenting audience is transparent in the results reported by
Hansen ( 2003 reported by Fishkin & Luskin, 2005). Participants had been exposed to new information about a political
issue. When they discussed it with their family and friends, they learned more facts supporting their initial position. On the
other hand, during the deliberative weekendand the exposition to other opinions that took placethey learned more of
the facts supporting the view they disagreed with. The present theory, far from being contradicted by the observation that
groups of likeminded people reasoning together tend to polarize, can in fact account straightforwardly for this
When people are engaged in a genuine deliberation, the
observation.
confirmation bias present in each individuals reasoning is checked,
compensated by the confirmation bias of individuals who defend
another opinion. When no other opinion is present (or expressed,
or listened to), people will be disinclined to use reasoning to
critically examine the arguments put forward by other discussants,
since they share their opinion. Instead, they will use reasoning to
strengthen these arguments or find other arguments supporting the
same opinion. In most cases the reasons each individual has for holding the same opinion will be partially non-
overlapping. Each participant will then be exposed to new reasons supporting the common opinion, reasons that she is
unlikely to criticize. It is then only to be expected that group members should strengthen their support for the common
opinion in light of these new arguments. In fact,
groups of like-minded people should
have little endogenous motivation to start reasoning together: what
is the point of arguing with people we agree with? In most cases,
such groups are lead to argue because of some external constraint.
These constraints can be more or less artificiala psychologist telling participants to deliberate or a judge asking a jury
for a well supported verdictbut they have to be factored in the explanation of the phenomenon. 4. Conclusion: a
situational approach to improving reasoning We have argued that reasoning should not be evaluated primarily, if at all, as
a device that helps us generate knowledge and make better decisions through private reflection. Reasoning, in fact, does
not do those things very well. Instead, we rely on the hypothesis that the function of reasoning is to find and evaluate
arguments in deliberative contexts. This evolutionary hypothesis explains why, when reasoning is used in its normal
conditionsin a deliberationit can be expected to lead to better outcomes, consistently allowing deliberating groups to
reach epistemically superior outcomes and improve their epistemic status. Moreover, seeing reasoning as an
argumentative device also provides a straightforward account of the otherwise puzzling confirmation biasthe tendency
to search for arguments that favor our opinion. The confirmation bias, in turn, generates most of the problems people face
when they reason in abnormal conditions when they are not deliberating. This will happen to people who reason alone
while failing to entertain other opinions in a private deliberation and to groups in which one opinion is so dominant as to
make all others opinionsif they are even presentunable to voice arguments. In both cases, the confirmation bias will
go unchecked and create polarization and overconfidence. We believe that the argumentative theory offers a good
explanation of the most salient facts about private and public reasoning. This explanation is meant to supplement, rather
than replace, existing psychological theories by providing both an answer to the why-questions and a coherent integrative
framework for many previously disparate findings. The present article was mostly aimed at comparing deliberative vs.
non-deliberative situations, but the theory could also be used to make finer grained predictions within deliberative
situations. It is important to stress that the theory used as the backbone for the article is a theory of reasoning. The theory
can only make predictions about reasoning, and not about the various other psychological mechanisms that impact the
outcome of group discussion. We did not aim at providing a general theory of group processes that could account for all
the results in this domain. But it is our contention that the best way to reach this end is by investigating the relevant
psychological mechanisms and their interaction. For these reasons, the present article should only be considered a first
step towards more fined grained predictions of when and why deliberation is efficient. Turning now to the consequences of
the present theory, we can note first that our emphasis on the efficiency of diverse groups sits well with another recent a
priori account of group competence. According to Hong and Pages Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem for example, under
certain plausible conditions, a diverse sample of moderately competent individuals will outperform a group of the most
competent individuals (Hong & Page, 2004). Specifically, what explains the superiority of some groups of average people
over smaller groups of experts is the fact that cognitive diversity (roughly, the ability to interpret the world differently) can
be more crucial to group competence than individual ability (Page, 2007). That argument has been carried over from
groups of problem-solvers in business and practical matters to democratically deliberating groups in politics (e.g.,
Anderson, 2006; Author, 2007, In press). At the practical level, the present theory potentially has important implications.
Given that individual reasoning works best when confronted to different opinions, the present theory supports the
improvement of the presence or expression of dissenting opinions in deliberative settings. Evidently, many people, in the
field of deliberative democracy or elsewhere, are also advocating such changes. While these common sense suggestions
have been made in the past (e.g., Bohman,
2007; Sunstein, 2003, 2006), the present theory provides additional arguments for them. It also explains why approaches
focusing on individual rather than collective reasoning are not likely to be successful. Specifically tailored practical
suggestions can also be made by using departures from the normal conditions of reasoning as diagnostic tools. Thus,
different departures will entail different solutions. Accountabilityhaving to defends ones opinion in front of an audience
can be used to bring individual reasoners closer to a situation of private deliberation. The use of different aggregation
mechanisms could help identify the risk of deliberation among like-minded people. For example, before a group launches
If this
a discussion, a preliminary vote or poll could establish the extent to which different opinions are represented.
procedure shows that people agree on the issue at hand, then skipping the
discussion may save the group some efforts and reduce the risk of
polarization. Alternatively, a devils advocate could be introduced in
the group to defend an alternative opinion (e.g. Schweiger, Sandberg, &
Ragan, 1986).
K
The affirmatives ludic theorization of the world inherently
supports bourgeois ideology and forecloses materiality
their analysis is confined to mediation severed from the
economic ties critical to understanding social positions
and oppressive structures
Ebert 95 (Teresa, Professor of Humanities at the College of Arts
and Sciences at the University at Albany who specializes in
Critical and Cultural Theory, Feminist Critique, Marxist Theory and
Globalization Theory, (Untimely) Critiques for a Red Feminism
from Post-Ality, Marxism and Postmodernism, edited by Masud
Zavarzadeh, Teresa Ebert and Donald Morton,
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/e
bert.htm)//meb
No matter how much ludic theorists try to erase questions of class, poverty
and the economic from their work, their analysis is haunted by the relations
of production and divisions of labour. We find this "return of the repressed" of the relations of production in
Butler's ludic analysis in the opening chapter of Bodies that Matter, in which she attempts to "discern the history of sexual difference encoded
in the history of matter" through a "rude and provocative" re-reading of Plato (54, 36). She begins by positing matter within the metaphysical
binary of matter and form, and confines her argument to this metaphysical circuit. But at two points in her text, when she attempts to explain
forced to move beyond the

why Plato has constituted the category of the "excluded" in the way he has, she is
domain of discourse to the relations of production and the division of labour.

As Butler explains, "This xenophobic exclusion operates through the production of racialised others, and those whose 'natures' are considered
less rational by virtue of their appointed task in the process of labouring to reproduce the conditions of private life" (48, emphasis added). And
again, she says, "There is no singular outside, for the Forms require a number of exclusions; they are and replicate themselves through what
they exclude, through not being animal, not being the woman, not being the slave, whose propriety is purchased through property, national
All these exclusions are part of the

and racial boundary, masculinism, and compulsory heterosexuality" (52 ).
same "singular outside": the material relations of production which construct

all of the social divisions and differences around labour and the appropriation
of social resources. In other words, for all Butler's discursive displacements, the concealed, sutured
over base of her own theory-as it is of any theory or knowledge practice-is still the
(occluded) economic base. We can see the consequences of these different theories of materialism by briefly examining
the construction or "materialisation" of female gender-what Butler calls "girling." To describe this process, Butler adapts Althusser's concept of
"interpellation" which means the ideological process of "calling" a person to take up (identify with) the position "named" (e.g., girl). According
to Butler, medical interpellation ... (the sonogram notwithstanding) ... shifts an infant from an 'it' to a 'she' or a 'he,' and in that naming, the
girl is 'girled,' brought into the domain of language and kinship through the interpellation of gender.... The naming is at once the setting of a
boundary, and also the repeated inculcation of a norm. (7-8) Butler understands this naming ("girling") as placing the infant in a "regulatory
regime" of discourse (language and kinship). But for historical materialists, ideological interpellation does not simply place the infant in
discourse, but more important it also places the child in the relations of production, in the social division of labour (according to gender,
heterosexuality, race, nationality). Butler's theory of performativity completely eclipses this dialectical relation between ideology and the
But without relating

economic. Butler is concerned with changing how "bodies matter," how they are valued.
ideological "interpellation" to the relations of production, no amount of

resignification in the symbolic can change "What counts as a valued body"-for
what makes a body valuable in the world is its economic value. This truth is painfully
clear if we move beyond the privileged boundaries of the upper-middle class in the industrialised West (for whom basic needs are readily
fulfilled) and see what is happening to "girling" in the international division of labour especially among the impoverished classes in India.
Here the "medical interpellation" (naming) of infants/foetuses, particularly through the use of the sonogram, immediately places "girled"
foetuses not only in discourse but also in the gender division of labour and unequal access to social resources. About 60 per cent of the
"girled" foetuses are being immediately aborted or murdered upon birth (female infanticide) because the families cannot afford to keep them.
The citational acts, rituals, and "performatives" by which individuals are repeatedly "girled" such as expensive ear-piercing ceremonies and
exorbitant bride dowries-are not simply acts of discourse, but economic practices. In India, under postcolonial capitalism, the appropriation of
women's surplus labour is increasing to such an extent that these rituals and "performatives" of "girling" are becoming highly popular and
widely exploited sources of capital and direct extraction of surplus labour. So much so, the unmarried woman's family is itself being "girled" in
order for its combined labour to collectively produce the surplus value taken from the "girled body" (e.g., bride dowries). Revolutionary praxis
and not simply "resignification" is necessary to end the exploitation and murdering of hundreds of thousands of economically de-valued
How is making discourse or the matter of the body the ground of
"girled" bodies. Six
politics and social analytic any less reductive than the economic base? Yet,
while economic reductionism is to be avoided at all costs according to ludic
theories, a discursive reductionism or a theological matterism is widely
embraced as a complex, sophisticated, and open multiplicity. The issue here
is not whether "reductionism" is negative: it is not-ask any rigorous scientist (Weinberg, "Two Cheers for
Reductionism"). To articulate the relations connecting seemingly disparate events and phenomena is in fact a necessary and unavoidable part
of effective knowledge of the real. Rather the question is why are some reductions-
particularly those connecting the exploitation and gender division of labour to
the accumulation of capital-suppressed and rendered taboo in ludic (socialist)
feminism while other reductions-such as the discursive construction of
sex/gender or a matterist resistance as performance-are championed and
widely circulated? The answer, of course, does not lie in the "logic" of the argument, although that is the way it is commonly
represented. On a purely epistemological or logical level both moves establish a necessary relation between
two phenomena. Instead, the answer is in the economic, social and political
interests these two forms of "reductionism" support and the power

of bourgeois ideology to discredit historical materialist knowledges.
Thus what is at stake in this displacement of the economic by discourse is the
elision of issues of exploitation and the substitution of a discursive identity politics for the
struggle for full social and economic emancipation . Marx and Engels' critique of the radical "Young
Hegelians" applies equally to ludic cultural materialists: they are only fighting against 'phrases.'
They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are

only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating
the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases
of this world. (The German Ideology 41) This is not to say that the conflicts over ideology, cultural practices and significations
are not an important part of the social struggle for emancipation: the issue is how do we explain the relation of the discursive to the non-
the relation of cultural practices to the "real existing world" -whose objectivity is
discursive,
for ludic
the fact of the "working day"-in order to transform it? Obviously this relation is a highly mediated one. But
materialists the relation is so radically displaced that it is entirely suppressed :

mediations are taken as autonomous sites of signification and consequently the actual practice of ludic
cultural analysis is confined entirely to institutional and cultural points of

mediation severed from the economic conditions producing them. The analysis of
"mediations" becomes a goal in itself, and the operation of "mediations" is deployed to obscure the "origin" (surplus labour) and the "end"
(class differences) that in fact frame the "mediations." It is only in the context of historical materialism that one can point up the politics of this
erasure of "origin" (arche) and "end " (telos) in poststructuralist theory. In ludic feminism the arche and telos are erased as if they were merely
metaphysical concepts. My point is that the erasure of arche and telos serves a more immediate and concrete purpose: it makes it impossible
to connect the "mediated" to other social practices, and consequently the inquiry into and analysis of the "mediations," themselves, take the
For historical materialist

place of knowledge of the social totality in which mediations are relays of underlying connections.
feminists, however, cultural and ideological practices are not autonomous but
are instead primary sites for reproducing the meanings and subjectivities
supporting the unequal gender, sexual and race divisions of labour, and thus
a main arena for the struggle against economic exploitation as well as
cultural oppression. The untimely time of red feminism has come.
Theory must contribute to material changethe aff
forecloses theorys ability to cause material action. Their
characterization of performance as preferable to theory
essentializes experience and opposes knowledge
production for social change
Globalization Theory, Ludic Feminism, the Body, Performance,
and Labor: Bringing Materialism Back into Feminist Cultural
Studies https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1354189.pdf)//meb
But first I need to address the question of theory. It has become customary , among ludic postmodernists, to dissociate oneself
from "theory ": theory is seen as an act of "totalizing" that, as I have already indicated,has become
synonymous in ludic cir- cleswith "totalitarianism." For instance, Judith Butler-who is, in spite of her disclaimers, one of the elite theorists-distances her-
self from theory by assuming the familiar pose of "ignorance" (which, of course, in ludic discourses is the genuine mark of "knowing"). She states, in a recent essay, that she "do[es] not understand the notion of
'theory,' and [is] hardly interested in being cast as its defender . . ." ("Imitation and Gender Insubor dination" 14). J. Hillis Miller, another elite theorist, regards him- self basically as a "local" reader-a producer of
pleasure or what he calls the 'joys of reading"-and claims that he is a "theorist" almost by accident; he practices theory, as the title of his most recent book indicates, only "now and then" (Theory Now and Then).
Similar acts of distancing have almost become part of a ludic ritual among those elite theorists who command considerable power and prestige in the academy precisely because they are theorists. Jane Gallop, for
example, prefaces her well-known book on Lacan by not only proclaiming her "inadequacy" and her "attempt to read (Lacan) from that position" but also granting it a special status as "both Lacanian and feminist"
distancing from theory gesture is itself

(Reading Lacan 20). How- ever, we should not take literally their of themselves : this
theoretical in that it puts in question one notion of theory ) and (theory as explanatory critique
favors another (theory as play, as affirmation and not explanation). Since I oppose the notion of theory as play-affirmation of that which already exists-and argue for theory as explanatory
critique, I need to say more about the role of this "different" kind of theory that I am producing here. It is not enough to write a "different" theory if such difference does not fundamentally challenge the way theory
. A new and different theory must contribute to the struggle to

often par- ticipates in power relations
build a more multicultural and equal socioeconomic order. But the "new" and "different" are easily commodified
in patriarchal capitalism as mere variety in a sup- posedly "free marketplace" of choice, thus promoting the illusion of diversity and free will and concealing the oppressive restric- tions on people's possibilities. In
the idea of theory as play and the notion of theory as explanatory

other words,
critique are treated in the contemporary academy as simply two different

choices the
. In such a view choices are understood as merely a matter of personal taste or preference, as if such tastes and preferences are not themselves historically produced. However,
two understandings of theory are not only related to each other but they also
contest each other in their assumptions and presuppositions and in the socio-
economic orders they legitimate. They are two contesting , in other words, not simply two different choices, but
modes of understanding existing social institutions and political

arrangements as well as the role of gender, sexuality, race, and class in such
arrangements. Theory as play or performance and
In short, there are material and historical conflicts between them.
theory as materialist explanatory critique should not be just pluralistically ac- cepted as two (free) choices but
rigorously examined so that their historicity and their (political) role in

rather
contemporary feminism are clearly articulated. Feminist theory must , I believe,
be a politically transformative practice that not only disrupts the : one
specific conditions and features of a racist, patriarchal, and

capitalist oppression but also transforms the systematic relations of
exploitation and moves toward producing nonexploitative social
arrangements . At the same time, feminist theory needs to be especially self-reflexive and adept at critiquing its own historical situation and limits; at resisting the patriarchal
appropriation and usurpation of its oppositional logic; and at insuring that its alternative practices and modes of knowing circulate and are used on behalf of an emancipatory agenda. While many may agree with
this principle, its realization is the most difficult and hotly contested issue in feminist theory today. In addressing these issues, I thus speak as a feminist engaged in a self-reflexive dialog with other feminists over a
critique of the limits, aporias, and presuppositions, in short, the problematic of feminist theory as it struggles to end exploitation. As I have already made clear, I am also speaking from an oppositional space within
Theory , is seen as masculinist, abstract, elitist, and

the postmodern that is a resistance postmodernism. , for many feminists
phallogocentric, and as a form of instrumental reason . Above all theory is considered antithetical to women's experience
and thus betrays feminism. At the core of this controversy over theory is the issue of the relation of theory and experience- whether the humanist notion of the experience of the moral self (as in cultural feminism)
or the postmodern celebration of the experience of the ethical subject of pleasure, the jouissance of the body (as in ludic feminism).6 Much postmodern theory is, in fact, an "antitheoretical theory." We need only
look at Derrida's Post Card, Lyotard's Just Gaming, de Man's The Resistance to Theory, Gallop's Thinking through the Body, or Fish's Doing What Comes Nat- urally to see this opposition to theory as a phallogocentric
ratio nalism and the use of such "ludic" strategies as the play of tropes, parody, punning, autobiography (what Ulmer calls "mystory"), and anecdote to deconstruct theory, its concepts and principles. This
antitheoretical stance also informs ludic postmodern cultural studies as the anthology Cultural Studies demonstrates. In writing the afterword to the volume, in which she both sums up its major themes and
comments on the current state of cultural studies, Angela McRobbie celebrates "the absence of the tyranny of theory," which has been displaced by a "speculative 'writerly' approach" (Grossberg et al. 724).
But this view of theory, whether adopted by humanists, postmodernists, or

feminists, is, politically very disenabling.Instead of conventionally
to my mind, (and conveniently)
dismissing theory as a masculinist and rationalist instrumentalism that acts as an abstract
we need to reunderstand theory as a historical

metalanguage or a violent closure of meaning,
critique of the politics of intelligibility theory is most effectively . By this I mean
understood as an explanatory critique of the

in resistance postmodernism not in an "idealist" way (theory as metalanguage) but
ways in which meanings are materially formed and social reality is

constructed in relation to various strategies of power This reunderstanding .
of theory enables us to acquire a historical knowledge of social to-

talities and the relations of power, profit, and labor rendering certain
forms of daily practices legitimate and marking others as ("meaningful")
"meaningless." it is both the frame of intelligibility through

Theory, in this sense, is a dou- ble operation:
which we organize and make sense of reality, and the critical inquiry into and
contestation over these modes of meaning making. Practice is inscribed in theory as I am articulating it here. Thus
theory is a historical site of social struggle over how we represent

not simply a cognitivism but
reality a political practice and not

, that is, over how we construct reality and the ways to change it.7 Theory, in other words, is
simply a metaphysical abstraction or discursive play. This means that even such a seemingly natural
and nonthe- oretical practice as common sense (as Gramsci argues in Prison Notebooks) is a frame of intelligibility, a theory, but one that con- ceals its mode of knowing, representing it as the "way things are."
theory
Theory, then, is not opposed to experience but is the necessary supplement of experience (to use Derrida's term in order to decon struct his deconstruction of theory):
historicizes experience and displays the social relations that have enabled it
to be experienced as "experience." prevents us from essentializing Such a knowledge
experience and makes it possible to produce new experiences by

transforming the dominant social relations. The pressing issue for social
change then is to critique how specific theories are
not to reject theory (knowledge) but first
produced and used and to engage in the struggle to

, in the interests of what power relations, second
produce new opposing theories (contesting knowledges)-in short, to participate in the struggle over opposing ways of constructing and changing the world.
to produce opposing
To theorize postmodernism and difference in the terms I am proposing here is an instance of such a contestation over theory: an effort
knowledge for social change .
Turns case, the affs reinforcement of the patriarchy is a

direct result of capitalism which guts all possibility of
solvency and makes violence against the feminine other
inevitable
Menon 13 (Nivedita, feminist writer and Professor of Political
Thought at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Capitalism, Sexual
Violence, and Sexism: Kavita Krishnan Kafila,
https://kafila.org/2013/05/23/capitalism-sexual-violence-and-
sexism-kavita-krishnan/)//meb
Sexual violence cannot be attributed simply to some men behaving
in anti-social or inhuman ways: it has everything to do with the
way society is structured: i.e., the way in which our society
organizes production and accordingly structures social relationships.
Once we understand this, we can also recognize that society can be
structured differently, in ways that do not require or benefit from the
subordination of women or of any section of society. What are the material structures
that underpin sexual violence? As I address this question I will also engage with some of the arguments
made in two recent articles which offer a professedly Marxist analysis of sexual violence and womens
subordination in India; one is On the Empowerment of Women by Prabhat Patnaik, Peoples Democracy,
January 27, 2013, and the other is Class Societies and Sexual Violence: Towards a Marxist Understanding
of Rape, by Maya John, Radical Notes, May 8, 2013. Prabhat Patnaik analyses the differences between
gender oppression in advanced capitalist countries and countries like India. He notes, rightly, that the
development of capitalism in the advanced capitalist countries was
accompanied by a destruction of their pre-capitalist structures , facilitated by
colonialism and the resulting large-scale emigration into the so-called new world. Whereas in India, the
old community associated with our pre-capitalist structurecontinues to remain with us. The
persistence of pre-capitalist structures and extremely stubborn feudal survivals in India is undoubtedly
significant in producing the specifically Indian variant of patriarchal oppression. A glaring instance of this is
the phenomenon of khap panchayats that pass diktats and death sentences on couples who marry by
some of Prabhat Patnaiks
choice, especially those that do so in defiance of caste norms. However,
arguments and conclusions are questionable. Among them is his assumption
that it is only pre-capitalist structures that provide a base for patriarchy; and
consequently that in the advanced capitalist countries, gender oppression
remained only in the form of patriarchal attitudes , essentially as a part of the
superstructure. This goes against the grain of Marxist analysis, and an entire
body of work which has painstakingly mapped out the structural basis of
gender oppression in capitalism. Central to this understanding is the role of
the gendered division of labour, whereby the burden of reproductive labour
has been privatized and assigned to women. Production (involving wage labour that
produces surplus value) and reproduction (of life in a literal sense as well as of the necessities of life,
involving womens unpaid household labour) are both equally central to capitalism.
The gendering and privatization of reproductive labour , whereby the socially
necessary labour of child-care, cooking, cleaning, etc became womens work
to be done inside the household, took place in class societies pre-dating capitalism.
Capitalism itself displays contradictory impulses. On the one hand it seeks to draw
everyone men, women, children into production. On the other, it has an interest in retaining
reproductive labour as womens work so as to ensure that the cost of such
labour is minimized both for the wage-paying capitalist as well as for the
capitalist State. Patriarchy is therefore one of the axes of the capitalist
system; part and parcel of the structural edifice of capitalism. Patriarchal ideology does not
hang unsupported in the air; it is not a matter of mindset or attitude alone: notions of
feminine nature, duties, good and bad women, and sexual propriety for women,
are produced, nourished, and deployed to mask, mystify, and justify womens
unpaid reproductive labour and the patriarchal family where such labour
takes place. The tension between women entering the workforce and continuing to bear the burden of
housework, has been a factor in forcing the State, in some countries, to concede State-funded child-care,
healthcare, education, and so on. But in neoliberal times, with the State adopting austerity measures to
bail out capitalism in crisis, we are witnessing a global cut-back in such social spending. Any State that
pursues such policies, needs to persuade women to accept the burden of housework as womens work,
and to dissuade women from rejecting traditional roles. It is notable that some of the worst rape culture
remarks by US Republican Senators (who could compete with Indias patriarchal lawmakers in misogyny)
The enormous
have been made recently to promote arguments against the right to abortion.
resistance to, and organized reaction against conceding the right to
abortion or same-sex marriage in the US is an instance of how much
the capitalist class still invests in the family institution and the
control of womens sexuality and reproduction within it. One should also be
wary of locating the structural basis for gender oppression in India, solely in pre-capitalist structures.
Capitalism in India, and the Indian State also have a stake in the gender division of labour and the
patriarchal ideology that supports it. The character of capitalist development in India, too, is such that it
promotes caste and gender oppression, including several of the regressive elements associated with the
pre-capitalist structures. Moreover, global capital too is implicated in the project of Indian patriarchy.
International media coverage of the Indian anti-rape protests tended to discuss the issue as unique to
Indian/Asian culture. They chose to overlook the fact that gender violence, sexism and rape culture are
thriving in the West, and moreover that neoliberal policies pursued by global capital are complicit in
perpetuating womens oppression and redeploying patriarchal structures and attitudes in order to exploit
womens labour in, say, Bangladesh or India! The case of Bangladeshi women producing for Walmart in
exploitative and unsafe sweatshops, that prey on and promote their insecurity and subordination, has
come to light time and again, especially in the recent tragedies of factory fire and building collapse that
killed hundreds of young working women. The Indian reality is equally grim. In Tirupur and Coimbatore
districts of Tamil Nadu, under the Sumangali scheme (Sumangali means auspicious married woman in
Tamil), MNC garments manufacturers including those who produce for prominent European and US
garment companies like C&A, GAP, Diesel, Marks & Spencer, Tommy Hilfiger and others, would get young
minor girls, many of them Dalits, to work in virtual bondage and highly exploitative conditions, to be paid a
lump-sum amount that, as the Schemes name indicates, is meant to be a thinly veiled dowry! Caste
oppression and patriarchal anxieties about marriage and dowry are thus mediating the entry of women
into the global labour market. Their insecure working conditions create greater hurdles and challenges for
these women in their struggle against patriarchy. And, of course, primitive accumulation by multi-national
corporations that grab land, minerals and other resources in India, is not only, as Prabhat Patnaik correctly
notes, a source of corruption, it also unleashes state repression and sexual violence against women who
are the forefronts of movements against corporate land grab. The global upswing in gender
violence (including sexual violence and domestic violence) and misogynistic
rape culture, ought then to be traced at least in part to the imperatives of
global capitalism and imperialism and their local agents, to justify an
increased burden of social reproduction for women, the availability of women
from the former colonies as pliant labour, and rape as a weapon against
peoples movements resisting primitive accumulation. The fear of violence
contributes to disciplining women into suitable labourers, both for global
production as well as reproduction. That is why the abusive husband and the rapist cannot be
understood as isolated perpetrators who are anti-social aberrations that pose a threat to the system. It
is no coincidence that perpetrators of gender violence find powerful
advocates (not just in India but across the world) in the misogynistic and rape
culture statements by the custodians of the political, religious, and
law-and-order institutions.
The alternative is to reject the aff in favor of a feminist

material analysissuch an analysis opens space for both
cultural and transformative politics that directly
challenges the way institutions distribute resources and
cultural power
Globalization Theory, Ludic Feminism, the Body, Performance,
and Labor: Bringing Materialism Back into Feminist Cultural
Studies https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1354189.pdf)//meb
materialist feminism is
Contemporary feminism has, for the most part, retreated from "materialist" politics into a form of "discursive" or what I call "ludic" politics.1 Broadly,
a political practice aimed at social transformation of dominant institutions

that distribute economic resources and cultural power asymmetrically
, as a totality,
according to gender . But this project has been put in question by postmodern theories that announce the end of transformative politics (indeed, the end of history itself) and sub-
possibility of a postmodern feminist cultural

stitute a ludic cultural politics in its place. In this essay, I will argue for the
studies de- voted to materialist politics-transformative social change- and indicate why I find
ludic or discursive politics ineffective for feminism I will thus use a materialist .
frame to engage both levels of politics: cultural politics (intervening in and changing cultural representations,
as well as transformative politics

specifically those concerning gender, sexuality, and race) (radical social inter- ventions in the historical economic, political,
and labor relations underlying cultural representations). My discussion, however, will focus on a critique of and engagement with cultural politics, first, because cultural politics, in its ludic mode, has become the pri-
a materialist critique of cultural representations

mary form of dominant feminism and, second, because
is an effective inaugural move in opening up a space for

transformative politics. Whether postmodernism is seen as what Fredric Jameson calls "the cultural logic of late capitalism" or is associated with the writings of
, the dominant
Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, with Derridean poststructuralists or Lacanian psychoanalysts, it has in- timated the end of transformative politics. In short
postmodern theories have problematized the notion of

-what I have called "ludic" postmodern- ism2-
politics and rearticulated it as solely a cultural politics that is, as a language- :
effect, a mode of rhetoric aimed at changing cultural representations, rather

than as a collective practice through which existing social institutions are
changed so that resources and cultural power can be distributed without
(economic)
regard to gender, race, class, sexuality . This prevailing ludic postmodernism has so displaced and discredited politics as emancipation as to
make it nearly impossible. After Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and such ludic feminists as Luce Irigaray, Alice Jardine, Susan Suleiman, and Donna Haraway, emancipation-the collective social struggle to
The appropriate critical and political stance is

end exploitation-becomes simply a metaphysical project: a meta- narrative.
thus incredulity toward metanarratives

, in Lyotard's words, an " in short, " (The Postmodern Condition xxiv): an incredulity,
toward emancipation as the necessary social struggle against "real"

systems of exploitation, like patriarchy or capitalism. 3 Such social systems (totalities) are, for ludic postmodernists,
merely discredited metanarratives rather than social "realities" to be contested. As a leading ludic social critic, Ernesto Laclau, claims, even "'society,' as a founding totality . . . is an impossible object" ("Transfor-
mations" 40). Moreover, power, as Foucault argues, is now seen as a "multiplicity of force relations" engendering "local and unstable" states of power that are "everywhere" (92-93). Power, then, is diffuse,
asystematic, and "aleatory" (that is, marked by chance and arbi trariness) rather than historically determined. It produces its own immanent "plurality of resistances": for as Foucault says, "where there is power,
The ludic notion of power, in short, substitutes a

there is resistance" (95), rather like the natural resistance to a physical force.
logic of contingency for the logic of social necessity . In doing so, it preempts any need for collective, organized social
transformation-any need, in other words, for emancipation, and more important, it dispenses with the necessity for organized social and political revolution to overthrow dominant power relations. All we need to
do, according to ludic postmodernists, is recognize and validate the multiplicity of local points of resistance power itself already generates. As a result, it is increasingly common to call our age "postpolitical." The
new postmodern culture studies taking hold in the United States , Britain, and a number of
subscribes to these ludic assumptions

Commonwealth countries, notably Canada and Australia, , in large part, and in the name of the political it be-
comes, in effect, "postpolitical." Increasingly it substitutes validation for critique and affirmation for opposition. John Fiske, for instance, argues for a "cultural theory that can both account for and validate popular
the affirmation of already existing differences

social difference."4 In other words, (rather than explaining why and how these have
is largely seen as in itself an effective mode of social resistance to the

become differences)
hegemonic . Obviously this position has widespread appeal for many feminist critics-especially for those who regard the affirmation of women's experience, in and of itself, as the political basis
but we need to ask difficult and by now quite unpopular questions: What
for feminism-
is the effect of such validation? Does it affirm "what is" rather than critique
how these differences have been produced out of regimes of exploitation-and
perhaps support these regimes and even be "necessary" to their continued
existence and domination? Can we afford to dispense with critique if we are
to transform these regimes and the differences they produce? Is critique necessary to social struggle
and to a transformative cultural studies? Instead of an interventionist critique, (ludic) postmodern cultural studies tends to focus on pleasure-pleasure in/of textu- ality, the local, the popular, and, above all, the
body (jouissance)-as in and of itself-a form of resistance. This is a "new generation" of intellectuals, according to Andrew Ross, who "appeal to the liberatory body, and the creativity of consumption" (11).
hus, postmodern feminist cultural critics

T increasingly engage not in like Constance Penley
critique but in affirmative descriptions of local sites of pleasure . For instance, in Penley's popular studies
of a genre of Star Trek fan magazines (called "slash zines" because they eroticize and sexualize the relationship between Kirk and Spock and are designated by a code with a slash, "K/S") her "aim" is to "show" the
"range and diversity of identifications and object relations" in these texts because "once shown, it will then be possible to give a fuller and more complex account of what women do with popular culture, how it
Ludic feminist cultural studies

gives them pleasure, and how it can be consciously and unconsciously reworked to give them more pleasure" ("Feminism" 488). , in
describe but not explain through conceptualization, for

other words, seeks to "show" or "give . . . account," that is, to to
any attempt to "conceptualize as a violent erasure of the " experience or pleasure is seen by ludic critics
unique, local, specific, and concrete individual : to conceptualize is to totalize and to totalize is seen, at all levels, as totalitarian.
But such a validating, affirmative, and pleasure-ful culture studies-

concerned primarily with the liberation of (individual) desire and the
body as zone of sensuousness-is to my mind a very class-specific
inquiry . Pleasure and desire can be the over- riding concern only for the classes of people (middle and upper) who are already "free" from economic want and have the means to pursue or, more
This
specifically in commodity cultures, to consume the means for pleasure. It is also these classes who have the relative luxury of displacing the body as means of labor onto the body as pleasure zone.
fetishization of pleasure validates the priorities and privileges of the

middle class-in spite of its attention to the "pleasures" of others-
for it produces a cultural studies that largely erases the needs,
conditions, and exploitation of the working poor and the
impoverished underclass in this country and globally : an underclass that is denied basic economic and
human rights, an underclass that is overwhelmingly not "white."5 This ludic valorization of "pleasure" as liberation, the affirmation of existing social differences, and the fetishization of the "local" and specific
raise serious problems for feminist and oppositional culture critique . It will not take us far in
understanding or explaining the socioeconomic conditions and desperation underlying the uprising in Los Angeles or causing women in India to sell their kidneys and women in the United States to rent out their
uteruses in order to feed their children; nor will it help us much to intervene in and change these conditions. The verdict in the Rodney King trial-for many of us-was not a local, contingent, arbitrary, and aleatory
play of power; rather, it was part of the systematic exercise of inequality, injustice, and oppression against African Americans in this country. It urgently impresses on us the need not simply to "account for and
validate social differences" but to critique them in order to explain the underlying social relations of exploitation and to transform them. Perhaps I need to clarify here what I mean by critique. First, I do not regard
Critique is a practice through which the subject develops historical

"critique" as an end in itself.
knowledge of the social totality : she or he acquires, in other words, an understanding of how the existing social institutions ("motherhood," "child care,"
Critique is that knowledge-practice

"love," "paternity," "taxation," "family," etc.) have in fact come about and how they can be changed. , in other words,
that historically situates the conditions of possibility of what empirically

exists under patriarchal- capitalist labor relations and, more importantly,
points to what is suppressed by the empirically existing : what could be (instead of what actually is).
Critique indicates, in other words, that what "is" is not necessarily the
real/true but rather only the existing actu- ality which is transformable. The role of critique
the production of historical knowledges that mark the

in resistance postmodern feminism is exactly this:
transformability of existing social arrangements and the possibility of a

different social organization- an organization free from exploitation . Quite simply then, critique
is a mode of knowing that inquires into what is not said, into the silences and the suppressed or missing, in order to uncover the concealed operations of power and underlying socioeconomic relations connecting
seemingly disconnected zones of culture

the myriad details and seemingly disparate events and representations of our lives. It shows how
are in fact linked through the highly differentiated and dispersed operation of
a systematic logic of exploitation informing all practices of society critique . In sum,
disrupts that which represents itself as what is, as natural, as in-

evitable, as the way things are and exposes the way "what is" is
historically and socially produced out of social contradictions and
how it supports inequality . Critique enables us to explain how gender, race, sexual, and class oppression operate so we can change it. A number of
if
contemporary feminists, from Haraway and Penley to Jane Gallop and Judith Butler, have embraced the ludic mode of postmodern cultural studies and argued for its liberatory potential. But I believe
feminists are to engage in postmodern cultural studies without

jeopardizing feminism's political effec- tiveness, we need to
rigorously critique postmodernism's funda- mental presuppositions
and, above all, to write a materialist politics back into
postmodernism. My essay is a contribution to this effort. Thus it insists on a transformative emancipatory politics in postmodernism and on the necessity of critique for an opposi-
tional culture studies. In other words, I contend that the ludic postmodern erasure of the political in the name of discursive difference is only one way of constructing postmodern difference. In contrast, I want to
argue for feminism to radically retheorize postmodern difference itself and to articulate what I call a resistance postmodernism that will be the basis for postmodern materialist feminist culture critique .
Case
Absent questions of engagement with existing institutions
their aff is useless individual change is overshadowed by
dominant structures
Wight Professor of IR @ University of Sydney 6
(Colin, Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology,
pgs. 48-50
One important aspect of this relational ontology is that these relations
constitute our identity as social actors. According to this relational
model of societies, one is what one is, by virtue of the relations within
which one is embedded. A worker is only a worker by virtue of his/her
relationship to his/her employer and vice versa. Our social being is
constituted by relations and our social acts presuppose them. At any
particular moment in time an individual may be implicated in all
manner of relations, each exerting its own peculiar causal effects.
This lattice-work of relations constitutes the structure of particular
societies and endures despite changes in the individuals occupying
them. Thus, the relations, the structures, are ontologically distinct from
the individuals who enter into them. At a minimum, the social sciences
are concerned with two distinct, although mutually interdependent, strata.
There is an ontological difference between people and structures: people
are not relations, societies are not conscious agents. Any attempt to
explain one in terms of the other should be rejected. If there is an
ontological difference between society and people, however, we need
to elaborate on the relationship between them. Bhaskar argues that we need
a system of mediating concepts, encompassing both aspects of the duality of
praxis into which active subjects must fit in order to reproduce it: that is, a
system of concepts designating the point of contact between
human agency and social structures. This is known as a positioned
practice system. In many respects, the idea of positioned practice is very
similar to Pierre Bourdieus notion of habitus. Bourdieu is primarily
concerned with what individuals do in their daily lives. He is keen to refute
the idea that social activity can be understood solely in terms of
individual decision-making, or as determined by surpa-individual objective
structures. Bourdieus notion of the habitus can be viewed as a bridge-
building exercise across the explanatory gap between two extremes.
Importantly, the notion of a habitus can only be understood in relation
to the concept of a social field. According to Bourdieu, a social field is a
network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions
objectively defined. A social field, then, refers to a structured system
of social positions occupied by individuals and/or institutions the
nature of which defines the situation for their occupants. This is a
social field whose form is constituted in terms of the relations which define it
as a field of a certain type. A habitus (positioned practices) is a mediating link
between individuals subjective worlds and the socio-cultural world into which
they are born and which they share with others. The power of the habitus
derives from the thoughtlessness of habit and habituation, rather than
consciously learned rules. The habitus is imprinted and encoded in a
socializing process that commences during early childhood. It is
inculcated more by experience than by explicit teaching. Socially
competent performances are produced as a matter of routine,
without explicit reference to a body of codified knowledge, and
without the actors necessarily knowing what they are doing (in the sense of
being able adequately to explain what they are doing). As such, the habitus
can be seen as the site of internalization of reality and the externalization of
internality. Thus social practices are produced in, and by, the
encounter between: (1) the habitus and its dispositions; (2) the
constraints and demands of the socio-cultural field to which the
habitus is appropriate or within; and (3) the dispositions of the individual
agents located within both the socio-cultural field and the habitus. When
placed within Bhaskars stratified complex social ontology the model we have
is as depicted in Figure 1. The explanation of practices will require all three
levels. Society, as field of relations, exists prior to, and is independent
of, individual and collective understandings at any particular
moment in time; that is, social action requires the conditions for action.
Likewise, given that behavior is seemingly recurrent, patterned, ordered,
institutionalised, and displays a degree of stability over time, there
must be sets of relations and rules that govern it. Contrary to
individualist theory, these relations, rules and roles are not dependent
upon either knowledge of them by particular individuals, or the
existence of actions by particular individuals; that is, their
explanation cannot be reduced to consciousness or to the attributes of
individuals. These emergent social forms must possess emergent powers.
This leads on to arguments for the reality of society based on a causal
criterion. Society, as opposed to the individuals that constitute it, is,
as Foucault has put it, a complex and independent reality that has its
own laws and mechanisms of reaction, its regulations as well as its
possibility of disturbance. This new reality is societyIt becomes
necessary to reflect upon it, upon its specific characteristics, its constants
and its variables.
Participating in organizations checks impulses to care

about short-term personal issues
Cole 2011 - Professor, Georgetown University Law Center (Winter, David,
WHERE LIBERTY LIES: CIVIL SOCIETY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AFTER 9/11,
57 Wayne L. Rev. 1203, Lexis)
But the engagement that "civil society constitutionalism" identifies as
essential has a more particular focus, on constitutionalism itself. Groups like
the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Bill of Rights Defense
Committee are defined by their commitment to such rights. But they are only
the most obvious opportunities for engagement. Civil society offers a
broad range of ways in which individuals may become involved in
constitutional discourse--by attending lectures or demonstrations;
participating in ad hoc groups focused on issues of rights; writing letters to
the editor, blogs, or op-eds; teaching one's children; or debating with one's
neighbors. There are an almost infinite variety of ways to engage with
constitutionalism. But organized collective endeavors, with existing
rights groups or through the creation of new ones, are probably the most
effective. Joining a group defined by its commitment to constitutional
and human rights is itself a check on one's own temptations to short-
circuit rights, or to waver in one's attention or commitment to
rights. The collective not only magnifies the impact that an
individual might have, but also helps to hold individuals to their
commitments. Thus, "civil society constitutionalism" is not just a
direction for scholarship, or a justification for constitutional doctrine, but a
pragmatic directive to citizens: get involved in the defense of your
Constitution, or you may find it wanting when it is needed most.
Their narcissistic movement begs for attention, ensuring

hegemonic elites will notice it and crush it
Carlson 96 (Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature
in the Ph.D. Program at the City University of New York, Marvin A.,
Performance: A critical Introduction, p. 181)
So much attention has been given to the social importance of visibility, in fact, that Peggy Phelan, in her
the operations of visibility itself
recent book Unmarked (1993), has cautioned that
need to be subjected to more critical inquiry. In stressing performances ability to
make visible, feminists have not considered the power of the invisible, nor the unmarked quality of live
performance, which becomes itself through disappearance. Without seeking to preserve
itself through a stabilized copy, it plunges into visibility in a
maniacally charged present and disappears into memory, into the
realm of invisibility and the unconscious where it eludes regulation
and control. Phelan cites the performance works of Angelika Festa as work in which she appears in
order to disappear appearing as a motionless figure wearing a mirror as a
mask (You Are Obsessive, Eat Something, 1984) or hanging for hours from a slanted pole, her eyes
covered and her body wrapped in cocoon like sheets (Untitled Dance (with fish and others), 1987).
Traditional representation, committed to resemblance and
repetition, attempts to establish and control the other as same.
This is the strategy of voyeurism, fetishism, and fixity, the ideology
of the visible. If performance can be conceived as representation
without reproduction, it can disrupt the attempted totalizing of the
gaze and thus open a more diverse and inclusive representational
landscape. As Elwes has noted, women performers should never
stay the same long enough to be named, fetishized .

1NC vs. Iman and Sofia

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

1NC vs. Iman and Sofia

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

FW

A Interpretation: Topical affirmatives must affirm the

2. Federal government is the central government in

3. Resolved implies a policy

Third is Dogmatism Most problems are not black and

Our method solves Even if the resolution is wrong,

forced to move beyond the

domain of discourse to the relations of production and the division of labour.

All these exclusions are part of the

same "singular outside": the material relations of production which construct

But without relating

ideological "interpellation" to the relations of production, no amount of

interests these two forms of "reductionism" support and the power

They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are

materialists the relation is so radically displaced that it is entirely suppressed :

cultural analysis is confined entirely to institutional and cultural points of

For historical materialist

distancing from theory gesture is itself

. A new and different theory must contribute to the struggle to

the idea of theory as play and the notion of theory as explanatory

critique are treated in the contemporary academy as simply two different

modes of under- standing existing social institutions and political

rigorously examined so that their historicity and their (political) role in

contemporary feminism are clearly articulated. Feminist theory must , I believe,

specific conditions and features of a racist, patriarchal, and

Theory , is seen as masculinist, abstract, elitist, and

But this view of theory, whether adopted by humanists, postmodernists, or

we need to reunderstand theory as a historical

understood as an explanatory critique of the

ways in which meanings are materially formed and social reality is

of theory enables us to acquire a historical knowledge of social to-

"meaningless." it is both the frame of intelligibility through

theory is a historical site of social struggle over how we represent

reality a political practice and not

experience and makes it possible to produce new experiences by

produced and used and to engage in the struggle to

knowledge for social change .

Turns case, the affs reinforcement of the patriarchy is a

The alternative is to reject the aff in favor of a feminist

a political prac- tice aimed at social transformation of dominant institutions

possibility of a postmodern feminist cultural

as well as transformative politics

a mate- rialist critique of cultural representations

is an effective inaugural move in opening up a space for

postmodern theories have problematized the notion of

politics and rearticulated it as solely a cultural politics that is, as a language- :

effect, a mode of rhetoric aimed at changing cultural representations, rather

The appropriate critical and political stance is

thus incredulity toward metanarratives

toward eman- cipation as the necessary social struggle against "real"

The ludic notion of power, in short, substitutes a

subscribes to these ludic assumptions

the af- firmation of already existing differences

is largely seen as in itself an effective mode of social resistance to the

hus, postmodern feminist cultural critics

Ludic feminist cultural studies

describe but not explain through conceptualization, for

But such a validating, affirmative, and pleasure-ful culture studies-

fetishization of pleasure validates the priorities and privileges of the

Critique is a practice through which the subject develops historical

Critique is that knowledge-practice

that historically situates the con- ditions of possibility of what empirically

the production of historical knowledges that mark the

transformability of existing social ar- rangements and the possibility of a