Kritiks Good

Definitions
Resolved means to be determined
Collins English Dictionary no date (http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/resolved)
resolved (rɪˈzɒlvd Pronunciation for resolved ) Definitions adjective fixed in purpose or intention; determined

Resolved doesn’t have to be a legal action

Merriam Webster no date (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolve)
resolve verb re·solve \ri-ˈzälv, -ˈzȯlv also -ˈzäv or -ˈzȯv\ : to find an answer or solution to (something) : to settle or solve (something) : to make a
definite and serious decision to do something

The USFG is a representational government where the citizens shape the policy
being created
Encyclopedia Britannica no date (http://www.britannica.com/topic/representation-government)
Representational government: representation, in government, a method or process of enabling the citizenry, or some of them, to
participate in the shaping of legislation and governmental policy through deputies chosen by
them. The rationale of representative government is that in large modern countries the people cannot all assemble, as they did in the marketplace of democratic Athens or Rome; and if, therefore, the
people are to participate in government, they must select and elect a small number from among themselves to represent and to act for them. In modern polities
with large populations, representation in some form is necessary if government is to be based on the consent of the governed. Elected representatives are also less likely to reflect the transitory political passions
of the moment than are the people, and thus they provide greater stability and continuity of policy to a government. Through the course of long historical evolution, various methods and devices have been
developed in attempts to solve the many problems that have arisen in connection with representation. These problems include the qualifications of electors (see suffrage); the apportionment of constituencies
(see constituency); apportionment (electoral); the basis of election (see plurality system; proportional representation); methods of nominating candidates (see primary election); and means of ascertaining the
wishes of electors (see referendum and initiative). Because of the need to formulate systematically the demands of citizens, political parties have come to act as intermediaries between the citizens and their
representatives. Political debate along party lines has thus become a characteristic feature of most representative systems of government. How answerable a representative should be to his electors is an issue
that has long been debated. The basic alternatives are that the representatives of the people act as delegates carrying out instructions or that they are free agents, acting in accordance with their best ability and
understanding. The representative principle is not limited to government: it is applied in electing executive officers of large social organizations such as trade unions and professional associations.
Policy Bad
Policy Debate Impacts
 General
the only way to control the potential for debate is embracing a will to power
and refusing to tie ourselves to certain practices
Schnurer 4 (Maxwell, Ph.D., Pittsburgh, Assistant Professor at Marist College, Spring
2004 “GAMING AS CONTROL: WILL TO POWER, THE PRISON OF DEBATE AND GAME CALLED
POTLATCH,” CONTEMPORARY ARGUMENTATION AND DEBATE”)

As pointed out in the last section, the

stakes for the game of debate are high. The method of debate contains
the possibility for revolutionary insight and revolutionary praxis. The question is how to
understand an activity without systematizing and controlling the potential of debate. What we
really must do is let free the will to power within debaters. In this sense, we can use gaming as the topoi to
launch our conversation to a debate game that might encourage revolution. But what does will to power look like?
How do we encourage it? Lets get a feeling from George Bataille, who orients the Nietzschean impulse of will to power alongside a
quote from Nietzsche himself: Through the shutters into my window comes an infinite wind, carrying
with it unleashed struggles, raging disasters of the ages. And don’t I too carry within me a blood
rage, a blindness satisfied by the hunger to mete out blows? How I would enjoy being a pure
snarl of hatred, demanding death: the upshot being no prettier than two dogs going at it tooth
and nail! Though I am tired and feverish . . . “Now the air all around is alive with the heat, earth
breathing a fiery breath. Now everyone walks naked, the good and bad, side by side. And for
those in love with knowledge, it’s a celebration.” (The Will to Power) (4). Will to power can be the
outgrowth of debate that challenges existing structures. Bataille and Nietzsche desire a wild emancipation from
traditional structures, far beyond conventional morality. Coupling Nietzsche’s theorizing with the practice of
debate something new can emerge, but only if we free ourselves from the shackles of
conventional debate, including gaming. How to break these chains? How do we get beyond that
which has brought us so far? To help, I want to turn to Guy Debord and the Situationists.

Debate is a sisyphean activity that breeds ressentiment

Schnurer 4 (Maxwell, Ph.D., Pittsburgh, Assistant Professor at Marist College, Spring
2004 “GAMING AS CONTROL: WILL TO POWER, THE PRISON OF DEBATE AND GAME CALLED
POTLATCH,” CONTEMPORARY ARGUMENTATION AND DEBATE”)

The big question is: does gaming contribute to these revolutionary format changes? I will answer no. Rather,
I would like to position gaming as a controlling force. Gaming is a challenging, innovative, and
adaptable theory but, fundamentally, a theory of control. Gaming works as an answer to the question of what
debates do. But while we can answer that we play a game (albeit a serious and complex one), we
also say something about the players and why we play the game. Gaming became a tool for
control – convincing debaters that energies of criticism should be reinvested into the debate community. The very
parameters of Snider’s goals, to encourage more participants in debate, belie a rigged question.
We are intended to succeed through gaming to bring a few other voices into debate. But like the plus-one activist
struggle that simply seeks representation, this approach is doomed to failure. We should not be
surprised that the traditional agents of social control have a brilliant new theory that encourages
limited change. Gaming in fact operates to metastasize the crisis-politics of modern policy debate, covering over the rotting
corpse with a sweet perfume. For example, gaming minimizes and cripples the increasing tension over
activist-oriented arguments in debate rounds. Gaming encourages such argument innovation not
for the world community but for the debate community, teaching students to passionately
plead for change to an empty room. How can a theory understand the desire of debaters to crack open the debate
methods and introduce something “outside” of debate as Snider points to in his most recent gaming essay? The answer is that it
can’t. Debate as a model can only create more debate, and so long as our goal for debate is more
debate, then we will never emerge to challenge larger forces of control. Worse than being satisfied with
shouting at walls, approaching debate from the perspective of games encourages a god-complex that
teaches debaters that saying something poignant in a debate round translates into something
larger in the world. Christopher Douglas, a professor of English at Furman University, explores how games teach us to adore
the replay: “This is the experience structured into the gaming process—the multiple tries at the same space-time moment. Like
Superman after Lois Lane dies, we can in a sense turn back the clock and replay the challenge, to a better end” (2002, p. 7). What
kind of academic activity encourages students to fantasize about making change without
considering for the slightest bit how to bring that change about? Douglas positions this impulse alongside the
Sisyphean burden of trying to make the world into a structured, controlled, sterile environment. Sisyphus and the reset
button on a videogame console share a common ancestor with the debate model that has thirty
debate teams advocating different policies in separate rooms at exactly the same time. All of these
examples showcase humans desperately attempting to construct meaning out of a confusing world, where the human will to power
forces the world to fit a structure. Douglas reminds us that games
help to structure an oft-confusing world,
imbuing the person imagining with god-like powers (McGuire, 1980; Nietzsche 1966): Games therefore do
not threaten film’s status so much as they threaten religion, because they perform the same
existentially soothing task as religion. They proffer a world of meaning, in which we not only have a task to perform,
but a world that is made with us in mind. And indeed, the game world is made with us, or at least our avatar in mind. (Douglas, 2002,
p. 9). Gaming
draws forth a natural impulse of humans – to make the world in our image. But
debate and videogames contain the same fantastic lure that encourages people to pore their
energies into debate. Fiat and utopian flights of fancy are both seductions of our will to power,
encouraging us to commit to becoming better debaters.

Self creation is a prior question to engaging the state

Newman 2k (saul, Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths College, anarchism and the politics of ressentiment,
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/theory_and_event/v004/4.3newman.html)

Rather than having an external enemy — like the State — in opposition to which one’s political
identity is formed, we must work on ourselves. As political subjects we must overcome ressentiment
by transforming our relationship with power. One can only do this, according to Nietzsche, through eternal return.
To affirm eternal return is to acknowledge and indeed positively affirm the continual ‘return’ of
same life with its harsh realities. Because it is an active willing of nihilism, it is at the same time a transcendence of
nihilism. Perhaps in the same way, eternal return refers to power. We must acknowledge and affirm the ‘return’ of
power, the fact that it will always be with us. To overcome ressentiment we must, in other
words, will power. We must affirm a will to power — in the form of creative, life-affirming
values, according to Nietzsche.[56] This is to accept the notion of self-overcoming’.[57] To ‘overcome’ oneself in this
sense, would mean an overcoming of the essentialist identities and categories that limit us. As
Foucault has shown, we are constructed as essential political subjects in ways that that dominate us — this is what he calls
subjectification.[58] We
hide behind essentialist identities that deny power, and produce through this
denial, a Manichean politics of absolute opposition that only reflects and reaffirms the very
domination it claims to oppose. This we have seen in the case of anarchism. In order to avoid this Manichean logic,
anarchism must no longer rely on essentialist identities and concepts, and instead positively affirm the eternal return of power. This
is not a grim realization but rather a ‘happy positivism’. It is characterized by political strategies aimed at minimizing the possibilities
of domination, and increasing the possibilities for freedom. If one rejects essentialist identities, what is one left
with? Can one have a notion of radical politics and resistance without an essential subject? One
might, however, ask the opposite question: how can radical politics continue without ‘overcoming’
essentialist identities, without, in Nietzsche’s terms, ‘overcoming’ man? Nietzsche says: “The most
cautious people ask today: ‘How may man still be preserved?’ Zarathustra, however, asks as the sole and first one to do so: ‘How
shall man be overcome?’”[59] I would argue that anarchism would be greatly enhanced as a
political and ethical philosophy if it eschewed essentialist categories, leaving itself open to
different and contingent identities — a post-anarchism. To affirm difference and contingency would be to
become a philosophy of the strong, rather than the weak. Nietzsche exhorts us to ‘live dangerously’, to do away
with certainties, to break with essences and structures, and to embrace uncertainty. “Build your
cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into unchartered seas!” he says.[60] The politics of
resistance against domination must take place in a world without guarantees. To remain open to
difference and contingency, to affirm the eternal return of power, would be to become what Nietzsche calls the superman or
Overman. The overman is man ‘overcome’ — the overcoming of man: “God has died: now we desire — that the Superman shall
live.”[61] For Nietzsche the Superman replaces God and Man — it comes to redeem a humanity crippled by nihilism, joyously
affirming power and eternal return. However I would like to propose a somewhat gentler, more ironic version of the Superman for
radical politics. Ernesto Laclau speaks of “a
hero of a new type who still has not been created by our
culture, but one whose creation is absolutely necessary if our time is going to live up to its most
radical and exhilarating possibilities.”[62]

Debate is key to analyze questions of oppression

Reid-Brinkley 8 (Dr. Shanara R. Reid-Brinkley, professor at the University of Georgia focusing on racial studies, argument
and performance, and black feminist theory, she is also the director of debate, “The Harsh Realities of" acting Black": How African-
American Policy Debaters Negotiate Representation Through Racial Performance and Style”, https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/reid-
brinkley_shanara_r_200805_phd.pdf)

The attempts at educational reform are not limited to institutional actors such as the local,
state, and federal governments. Non-profit organizations dedicated to alleviating the black/white achievement gap have also proliferated. One such organization, the Urban
Debate League, claims that “Urban Debate Leagues have proven to increase literacy scores by 25%, to improve grade-point averages by 8 to 10%, to achieve high school graduation rates of nearly 100%, and to
produce college matriculation rates of 71 to 91%.” The UDL program is housed in over fourteen American cities and targets inner city youths of color to increase their access to debate training. Such training of
students defined as “at risk” is designed to offset the negative statistics associated with black educational achievement. The program has been fairly successful and has received wide scale media attention. The
success of the program has also generated renewed interest amongst college debate programs in increasing direct efforts at recruitment of racial and ethnic minorities. The UDL program creates a substantial pool

The debate community serves as a

of racial minorities with debate training coming out of high school, that college debate directors may tap to diversify their own teams.

microcosm of the broader educational space within which racial ideologies are operating. It is a
space in which academic achievement is performed according to the intelligibility of one’s race,
gender, class, and sexuality. As policy debate is intellectually rigorous and has historically been
closed to those marked by social difference, it offers a unique opportunity to engage the impact
of desegregation and diversification of American education. How are black students integrated into a competitive educational community
from which they have traditionally been excluded? How are they represented in public and media discourse about their participation, and how do they rhetorically respond to such representations? If

racial ideology is perpetuated within discourse through the stereotype, then mapping the
intelligibility of the stereotype within public discourse and the attempts to resist such
intelligibility is a critical tool in the battle to end racial domination.
The traditional framework of policy debate assumes that discourse is a neutral
medium through which thoughts are transmitted. This whitewashes the fact
that discourses are produced such that they define what can and cannot be said
through a violent process of control and exclusion
Roland Bleiker 97 (Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge,
Humboldt, Tampere, Yonsei and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague “Forget IR Theory,” Alternatives)

The doorkeepers of IR are those who, knowingly or unknowingly, make sure that the discipline’s discursive
boundaries remain intact. Discourses, in a Foucaultian sense, are subtle mechanisms that frame our
thinking process. They determine the limits of what can be thought, talked, and written of in a
normal and rational way. In every society the production of discourses is controlled, selected,
organized, and diffused by certain procedures. They create systems of exclusion that elevate
one group of discourses to a hegemonic status while condemning others to exile. Although the
boundaries of discourses change, at times gradually, at times abruptly, they maintain a certain unity across time, a unity that
dominates and transgresses individual authors, texts, or social practices. They
explain, to return to Nietzsche, why “all
things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their origin in unreason
thereby becomes improbable.”28 Academic disciplines are powerful mechanisms to direct and
control the production and diffusion of discourses. They establish the rules of intellectual
exchange and define the methods, techniques, and instruments that are considered proper for
the pursuit of knowledge. Within these margins, each discipline recognizes true and false
propositions based on the standards of evaluation it established to assess them.29 <63-64>

Critique solves - Dissent at the epistemological and ontological level runs

through the discursive cracks of hegemony to the heart of social change.
Bleiker 2k Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt,
Tampere, Yonsei and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, (Roland, Popular Dissent, Human
Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University Press)

This chapter has mapped out some of the discursive terrains in which transversal dissent takes place. Discourses
are not
invincible monolithic forces that subsume everything in reach. Despite their power to frame
social practices, a discursively entrenched hegemonic order can be fragmented and thin at
times. To excavate the possibilities for dissent that linger in these cracks, a shift of foci from
epistemological to ontological issues is necessary. Scrutinising the level of Being reveals how individuals can
escape aspects of hegemony. Dasein, the existential awareness of Being, always already contains the potential to become something
else than what it is. By shifting back and forth etween hyphenated identities, an individual can travel across various discursive fields
of power and gain the critical insight necessary to escape at least some aspect of the prevailing order. Transversal
practices
of dissent that issue from such mobile subjectivities operate at the level of dailiness. Through
a range of seemingly mundane acts of resistance, people can gradually transform societal
values and thus promote powerful processes of social change. Theses transformations are not
limited to existing boundaries of sovereignty. The power of discursive practices is not
circumscribed by some ultimate spatial delineation, and neither are the practices of dissent
that interfere with them. At a time when the flow of capital and information is increasingly
trans-territorial, the sphere of everyday life has become an integral aspect of global politics —
one that deserves the attention of scholars who devote themselves to the analysis of
international relations. The remaining chapters seek to sustain this claim and, in doing so, articulate a viable and non-
essentialist concept of human agency.
 Debate = Bad Decision Skills
Winning a debate relies on persuading someone to vote for you—the set of
skills necessary for that rely on bad models of reasoning since persuasion is
more important than truth
Cohen 11 (Patricia, writer for the New York Times citing the work of cognitive social scientists Mercier
and Sperber, “Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth,” New York Times, June 14)

Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to
win arguments.
Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we’ll get to that) is nothing more or less than a
servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena. According to this view, bias,
lack of logic and other supposed flaws that pollute the stream of reason are instead social
adaptations that enable one group to persuade (and defeat) another. Certitude works, however
sharply it may depart from the truth. The idea, labeled the argumentative theory of reasoning, is the brainchild of
French cognitive social scientists, and it has stirred excited discussion (and appalled dissent) among philosophers, political scientists,
educators and psychologists, some of whom say it offers profound insight into the way people think and behave. The Journal of
Behavioral and Brain Sciences devoted its April issue to debates over the theory, with participants challenging everything from the
definition of reason to the origins of verbal communication. “Reasoning doesn’t have this function of helping us
to get better beliefs and make better decisions,” said Hugo Mercier, who is a co-author of the journal article, with
Dan Sperber. “It was a purely social phenomenon. It evolved to help us convince others and to be careful
when others try to convince us.” Truth and accuracy were beside the point. Indeed, Mr. Sperber, a member of the
Jean-Nicod research institute in Paris, first developed a version of the theory in 2000 to explain why evolution did not make the
manifold flaws in reasoning go the way of the prehensile tail and the four-legged stride. Looking at a large body of psychological
research, Mr. Sperber wanted to figure out why people persisted in picking out evidence that supported their views and ignored the
rest — what is known as confirmation bias — leading them to hold on to a belief doggedly in the face of overwhelming contrary
evidence. Other scholars have previously argued that reasoning and irrationality are both products of evolution. But they usually
assume that the purpose of reasoning is to help an individual arrive at the truth, and that irrationality is a kink in that process, a sort
of mental myopia. Gary F. Marcus, for example, a psychology professor at New York University and the author of “Kluge: The
Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind,” says distortions in reasoning are unintended side effects of blind evolution. They are a
result of the way that the brain, a Rube Goldberg mental contraption, processes memory. People are more likely to remember items
they are familiar with, like their own beliefs, rather than those of others. What is revolutionary about argumentative theory is that it
presumes that since reason has a different purpose — to win over an opposing group — flawed
reasoning is an
adaptation in itself, useful for bolstering debating skills. Mr. Mercier, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of
Pennsylvania, contends that attempts to rid people of biases have failed because reasoning does exactly
what it is supposed to do: help win an argument. “People have been trying to reform something
that works perfectly well,” he said, “as if they had decided that hands were made for walking and
that everybody should be taught that.”

Better decision-making comes from better collaborative deliberation, not more

competitive debate
Cohen 11 (Patricia, writer for the New York Times citing the work of cognitive social scientists Mercier
and Sperber, “Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth,” New York Times, June 14)

“At least in
some cultural contexts, this results in a kind of arms race towards greater
sophistication in the production and evaluation of arguments,” they write. “When people are
motivated to reason, they do a better job at accepting only sound arguments, which is quite generally
to their advantage.” Groups are more likely than individuals to come up with better results, they say, because they will be exposed
to the best arguments. Mr. Mercier is enthusiastic about the theory’s potential applications. He suggests, for example, that children
may have an easier time learning abstract topics in mathematics or physics if they are put into a group and allowed to reason
through a problem together. He has also recently been at work applying the theory to politics. In a new paper, he and Hélène
Landemore, an assistant professor of political science at Yale, propose that the arguing and assessment skills employed by groups
make democratic debate the best form of government for evolutionary reasons, regardless of philosophical or moral rationales.
How, then, do the academics explain the endless stalemates in Congress? “It doesn’t seem to
work in the U.S.,” Mr. Mercier conceded. He and Ms. Landemore suggest that reasoned discussion works
best in smaller, cooperative environments rather than in America’s high-decibel adversarial
system, in which partisans seek to score political advantage rather than arrive at consensus.
Because “individual reasoning mechanisms work best when used to produce and evaluate
arguments during a public deliberation,” Mr. Mercier and Ms. Landemore, as a practical matter, endorse
the theory of deliberative democracy, an approach that arose in the 1980s, which envisions cooperative
town-hall-style deliberations. Championed by the philosophers John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, this sort of
collaborative forum can overcome the tendency of groups to polarize at the extremes and
deadlock, Ms. Landemore and Mr. Mercier said
 Debate Won’t Cause the Plan
Debate won’t result in anything like the plan—switch-side debate doesn’t
resolve issues but requires structural dispute, which causes us to devalue the
issues to maintain social harmony
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)

There is already ample qualitative evidence in support of the idea that people avoid politics as a
means of maintaining interpersonal social harmony. For example, in the mid-1950s, Rosenberg noted in his in-
depth interviews that the threat to interpersonal harmony was a significant deterrent to political activity.48 More recent case
studies have provided further support for this thesis. In her study of New England town meetings and an alternative workplace,
Mansbridge observed that conflict avoidance was an important deterrent to participation.49 Still others have described in great
detail the lengths to which people will go in order to maintain an uncontroversial atmosphere.50 Likewise,
in focus group
discussions of political topics, people report being aware of, and wary of, the risks of political
discussion for interpersonal relationships.51 As one focus group participant put it, “It’s not worth it . . . to try and
have an open discussion if it gets them [other citizens] upset.”52 In the early 1970s, Verba and Nie applied a similar theoretical logic
to a quantitative analysis of political participation by differentiating activities on the basis of the extent to which conflict with others
was involved. Their results were inconsistent on this finding,53 but in a more recent analysis of national survey data analyzed from
this same theoretical perspective, people high
in conflict avoidance were less likely to participate in some
ways, particularly in more public participatory acts such as protesting, working on a campaign,
and having political discussions.54 The idea that conflict avoidance discourages participation is
also consistent with social psychological studies of how people handle nonpolitical interpersonal
disagreements. When a person confronted with a difference of opinion does not shift to the
other person’s views or persuade the person to adopt his or her own views, the most common
reaction is to devalue the issue forming the basis of the conflict.55 By devaluing politics and
avoiding political controversy, people effectively resolve the problem. One experiment aptly illustrates the
problem of social accountability. Subjects were told they would be asked to justify their opinions either to a group that was in
consensus on an issue or to a group with mixed views on the same issue. The
subjects who anticipated the
crosspressured group engaged in many decision-evasion tactics (including buckpassing, procrastination, and
exit from the situation) in order to avoid accountability to contradictory constituencies.56 If we
generalize these findings outside the laboratory, we would expect those with high levels of
cross-cutting exposure in their personal networks to put off political decisions as long as
possible or indefinitely, thus making their political participation particularly unlikely.
 A2: Policy Debate Solves Impacts
Challenging the epistemic basis for action is a prereq to ethical policymaking
Deloria 99 [Vine, Member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Professor at University of
Colorado Boulder, Former Executive Director for the National Congress of American Indians and
former Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of Arizona, “For This Land:
Writing on Religion in America,” p. 101-7, tony]
If there were any serious concern about liberation we would see thousands of people simply walk away from the vast economic, political, and
intellectual machine we call Western civilization and refuse to be enticed to participate in it any longer. Liberation
is not a difficult task
when one no longer finds value in a set of institutions or beliefs. We are liberated from the burden of
Santa Claus and the moral demand to be “good” when, as maturing adolescents, we reject the concept of Santa
Claus. Thereafter we have no sense of guilt in late November that we could have not behaved properly during the year, and no fear that a lump of
coal rather than a gift will await us Christmas morning. In the same manner, we are freed and liberated once we realize the insanity and fantasy of the
present manner interpreting our experiences in the world. Liberation, in its most fundamental sense, requires a rejection of
everything we have been taught and its replacement by only those things we have experienced as having values. But this
replacement only begins the task of liberation. For the history of Western thinking in the past eight centuries has been one of replacement of

ideas within a framework that has remained basically unchanged for nearly two millenia. Challenging this

framework of interpretation means a rearrangement of our manner of perceiving the world, and it involves a
reexamination of the body of human knowledge and its structural reconstruction into a new format. Such a task appears to be far from the struggles of
the present. It seems abstract and meaningless in the face of contemporary suffering. And it suggests that people can be made to change their
oppressive activity by intellectual reorientation alone. All these questions arise, however, because of the fundamental orientation of Western peoples
toward the world. We
assume that we know the structure of reality and must only make certain minor
adjustments in the machinery that operates it in order to bring our institutions into line. Immediate suffering is thus placed in
juxtaposition with abstract meta-physical conceptions of the world and, because we can see immediate suffering, we feel impelled to change
conditions quickly to relieve tensions, never coming to understand how the basic attitude toward life and its derivative attitudes toward minority
groups continues to dominate the goals and activities that appear designed to create reforms. Numerous examples can be cited to show that our

efforts to bring justice into the world have been short-circuited by the passage of events, and that those efforts are
unsuccessful because we have failed to consider the basic framework within which we pose questions,

analyze alternatives, and suggest solutions. Consider the examples from our immediate past. In the early sixties college application
forms included a blank line on which all prospective students were required to indicate their race. Such information was used to discriminate against
those of a minority background, and so reformers demanded that the question be dropped. By the time all colleges had been forced to eliminate
questions concerning the race of applicants, the Civil Rights Movement had so sensitized those involved in higher education that scholarships were
made available in great numbers to people of minority races. There was no way, however; to allocate such scholarships because college officials could
no longer determine the racial background of students on the basis of their applications for admission. Much of the impetus for low-cost housing in the
cities was based upon the premise that in the twentieth century people should not have to live in hovels but that adequate housing should be
constructed for them. Yet in the course of tearing down slums and building new housing projects, low income housing areas were eliminated. The
construction cost of the new projects made it necessary to charge higher rentals. Former residents of the low-income areas could not afford to live in
the new housing, so they moved to other parts of the city and created exactly the same conditions that had originally provoked the demand for low-
rent housing. Government schools had a very difficult time teaching American Indian children the English language. (One reason was the assumption of
teachers that all languages had Latin roots, and their inability to adapt the programs when they discovered that Indian languages were not so derived.)
Hence programs in bilingual teaching methods were authorized that would use the native language to teach the children English, an underhanded way
of eliminating the native language. Between the time that bilingual programs were conceived and the time that they were finally funded, other
programs that concentrated on adequate housing had an unexpected effect on the educational process. Hundreds of new houses were built in agency
towns, and Indians moved from remote areas of the different reservations into those towns where they could get good housing. Since they were
primarily younger couples with young children, the housing development meant that most Indian children were new growing up in the agency
communities and were learning English as a first language. Thus, the bilingual programs, which began as a means of teaching English as a second
language, became the method designed to preserve the native vernacular by teaching it as a second language to students who had grown up speaking
English. Example after example could be cited, each testifying to the devastating effect of a general attitude
toward the world that underlies the Western approach to human knowledge. The basis of this attitude is the assumption that
the world operates in certain predetermined ways, that it operates continuously under certain natural laws, and that the nature of every species is
homogeneous, with few real deviations. One can trace this attitude back into the Western past. Religious concepts, which have since been transformed
into Scientific and political beliefs, remain objects of belief as securely as if they had never been severed from their theological moorings. Let us trace a
few examples. Originally the continuity of the world was conceived as a demonstration of the divine plan and God, conceived as a lawgiver in the moral
sense, became a law-giver in the scientific sense also. Scientific data was classified in certain ways that in the eyes of
Western peoples became a part of the structure of nature. Phenomena that did not fit into the
structure that had been created were said to “violate” the laws of nature and hence to be untrue in the
religious sense and unimportant in the scientific sense. When evolution replaced the concept of creation in the book of Genesis, it
became an inviolable law in the eyes of Western people in much the same way that the literal interpretation of the biblical story had been accepted by
Western people in former centuries. The world was originally conceived in terms of the Near East as the center of reality. As awareness extended to
other peoples, this world gradually expanded until by the Middle Ages it encompassed those regions that were in commercial contact with Western
Europe. The discovery of the Western hemisphere created a certain degree of trauma, for suddenly there was an awareness of lands and peoples of
which Western Europeans had no previous knowledge. The only way that these people could be accounted for was by reference to the Scriptures. So it
was hypothesized that the aboriginal peoples in North and South America must have been the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel who had crossed into the New
World over a land bridge somewhere in northern Asia. The basic assumption of this theory was the creation of the human species as a single act,
performed by the Christian God, with its subsequent history one of populating the planet. The rise of social science, and the downgrading of theological
answers to what were considered scientific questions concerning the nature and history of human societies, meant that social science had to provide
answers to questions formulated within the theological context. With virtually no reconsideration of the basic question of the creation [or origination in
scientific terms) of our species as the product of a single act, anthropologists promptly adopted the old theological explanation of the peopling of the
Western Hemisphere, developing the Bering Strait theory of migration to account for the phenomenon. Whether secular or sacred, the classification of
American natives as a derivative, inferior group of Asian-European peoples, albeit far removed from those roots by the postularion of many millenia of
wandering, became a status from which American Indians have been unable to escape. The emphasis
on objective knowledge by
Western peoples has meant the development of an attitude that sees reality as basically physical, the knowledge

thereof basically mental or verbal, and the elimination of any middle ground between extremes. Thus
religion has become a matter of the proper exposition of doctrines, and non-Western religions have been judged on their

development of a systematic moral and ethical code rather than the manner in which they conducted themselves. When a religion
is conceived as a code of verbal importance rather than a way of life, loopholes in the code become more important than the code itself since, by
eliminating or escaping the direct violation of the code by a redelinition of the code or a relaxation of its intended effect, one can maintain two types of
behavior; easily discerned in a practical way, as if they were identical and consistent with a particular picture of reality. In recent decades Western
science had made an important discovery, important at least for Western peoples who had formerly confused themselves with their own belief system.
Western science was premised upon the proposition that God had made the world according to certain laws. These
laws were capable of discovery by human reason, and the task of science was to discover as many of
these laws as possible. So human knowledge was misconceived as the only description of physical

reality, a tendency Alfred North Whitehead called the principle of “misplaced concreteness.”' With the articulation of theories of
indeterminancy in modern physics, this naive attitude toward human knowledge radically shifted and
became an acknowledgement that what we had formerly called nature was simply our knowledge of
nature based upon the types of questions we had decided to use to organize the measurements we
were making of the physical world. The shift in emphasis meant that all knowledge became a relative
knowledge, valid only for the types of questions we were capable of formulating. Depending upon the types of information
sought, we could measure and observe certain patterns of phenomena, but these patterns existed in our
heads rather than in nature itself. Knowledge thus became a matter of cultural preference rather
than an indication of the ultimate structure of reality. Presumably if one culture asked a certain type of question while
another asked another type of question, the two different answers could form two valid perspectives on the world. Whether these two perspectives
could be reconciled in one theory of knowledge depended upon the broader pattern of interpretation that thinkers brought into play with respect to
the data. When this new factor of interpretation is applied specifically to different cultures and traditions, we can see that what have been called
primitive superstitions have the potential of being regarded as sophisticated insights into the nature of things, at least on an equal basis with
Western knowledge. The traditional manner in which Western peoples think is now only one of the possible ways of describing a natural
process. It may not, in fact, even be as accurate, insofar as it can relate specific facts without perverting

them, as non-Western ways of correlating knowledge. This uncertainty is liberating in a much more fundamental way
than any other development in the history of Western civilization. It means that religious, political, economic, and historical analyses of human
activities that have been derived from the Western tradition do not have an absolute claim upon us. We are free to seek a new synthesis that draws
information from every culture, and every period of human history has as a boundary only the requirement that it make more sense of more data than
any other synthesis. Even the initial premises of such a synthesis can be different from what we have previously used to begin our formulation of a
picture of reality. When we apply this new Freedom to some of the examples cited above, we see that the proper question we should have asked with
respect to housing did not concern housing at all, but covered the more general question of the nature of a community. We discover that the college
applications and the bilingual programs should have been transcended by questions concerning the nature of knowledge, how it is transmitted, and
how it can be expanded, rather than how specific pre- determined courses of action can be implemented. Once
we reject the absolute
nature of Western conceptions of problems, we are able to see different types of questions
inherent in our immediate problem areas. The immediacy we feel when observing conditions under which people live should enable
us to raise new issues that contain within themselves new ways of conceiving solutions. An old Indian saying captures the radical difference between
Indians and Western peoples quite adequately. The white man, the indians maintain, has ideas; Indians have visions. Ideas have a single dimension
and require a chain of connected ideas to make sense. The connections that are made between ideas can lead to great insights on the nature of things,
or they can lead to the inexorable logic of Catch-22 in which the logic inevitably leads to the polar opposite of the original proposition. The vision, on
the other hand, presents a whole picture of experience and has a central meaning that stands on its own feet as an independent revelation. It is said
that Albert Einstein could not conceive of his problems in physics in conceptual terms but instead had visions of a whole event. He then spent his time
attempting to translate elements of that event that could be separated into mathematical and verbal descriptions that could be communicated to
others. It is this difference, the change from inductive and deductive logic to transformation of perceived realities, that becomes the liberating facto;
not additional information or continual replacement of data and concepts within the traditional Framework of interpretation. Let us return, then, to
our discussion of the manner in which racial minorities have been perceived by the white community, particularly by the liberal establishment, in the
past decade and a half, Minority groups, conceived to be different from the white majority, are perceived to be lacking some critical element of
humanity that, once received, would bring them to some form of equality with the white majority. The trick has been in identifying that missing
element, and each new articulation of goals is immediately attributed to every minority group and appears to answer the question that has been posed
by the sincere but unreflective liberal community. Liberation is simply the manner in which this missing element is presently conceived by people
interested in reform. It will become another social movement fad and eventually fade away to be replaced with yet another instant analysis of the
situation. Until fundamental questions regarding the assumptions that form the basis for Western civilization are raised and new
articulations of reality are
discovered, the impulse to grab quickly and apparently easy answers will continue.
Social conditions will continue to be described in a cause-and-effect logic that has dominated Western thinking for its entire intellectual lifetime.
Programs will be designed that fail to account for the change in conditions that occurs continually in human societies. Ideas will continue to dominate
our concerns and visions will not come. lf we are then to talk seriously about the necessity of liberation, we are talking about the destruction of the
whole complex of Western theories of knowledge and the construction of a new and more comprehensive synthesis of human knowledge and
experience. This is no easy task and it cannot be accomplished by people who are encompassed within the traditional Western logic and the resulting
analyses such logic provides. If we change the very way that Western peoples think, the way they collect data, which data they gather and how they
arrange that information, then we are speaking truly of liberation. For it is the
manner in which people conceive reality that
motivates them to behave in certain ways, that provides them with a system of values, and that enables them to
justify their activities. A new picture of reality, a reality conceived as a vision and not as a series of related or connected ideas,
can accomplish over a longer period of time many changes we have been unable to effect while conceiving
solutions as short-term remedies. More important for our discussion is the recognition that all parts of human experience are
related and the proposed solution to any particular problem overlooks the changes that will occur in related activities because of their relationship.
Fundamental changes initiated by a new picture of reality will create a transformation, and will avoid the traditional replacement of words with new
words. In summary we now challenge the basic assumptions of Western man. To wit: 1] that time is uniform and continuous; 2) that our species
originated from a single source; 3) that our descriptions of nature are absolute knowledge; 4) that the world can be divided into subjective and
objective; 5) that our understanding of our species is homogeneous; 6) that ultimate reality, including divinity, is homogeneous; 7) that by projection of
present conditions we can understand human history, planetary history, or the universe; 8) that inductive and deductive reasoning are the primary
tools for gaining knowledge.

There’s no internal link between debate and any big impact—we can’t identify
explanations and solutions that work
Buchanan 2 (Mark, Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen, p. 62)
This book is not only about earthquakes. It is about ubiquitous patterns of change and organization that run through
our world at all levels. I have begun with earthquakes and discussed them at some length only to illustrate a way of thinking and to
introduce the remarkable dynamics of upheavals associated with the critical state, dynamics that we shall soon see at work in other settings. "When

it comes to disastrous episodes of financial collapse, revolutions, or catastrophic wars, we all

quite understandably long to identify the causes that make these things happen, so that we
might avoid them in the future. But we shall soon find power laws in these settings as well, very possibly
because the critical state underlies the dynamics of all of these different kinds of upheaval. It
appears that, at many levels, our world is at all times tuned to be on the edge of sudden, radical
change, and that these and other upheavals may all be strictly unavoidable and unforeseeable,
even just moments before they strike. Consequently, our human longing for explanation may
be terribly misplaced, and doomed always to go unsatisfied.
Violence is not rational—our theory is the only one that accounts for any of
their impacts so offense only goes one way—the realization that our “portable
skills” don’t really save the world is more likely to result in violence than the
failure of policy debate is
Baumeister et al 96 (Roy F. Baumeister Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve
University; Laura Smart Department of Psychology, University of Virginia Joseph M. Boden Department of
Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression:
The dark side of high self-esteem. By: Baumeister, Roy F., Smart, Laura, Boden, Joseph M., Psychological
Review, 0033295X, 1996, Vol. 103, Issue 1)

Only a minority of human violence can be understood as rational, instrumental behavior aimed
at securing or protecting material rewards. The pragmatic futility of most violence has been
widely recognized: Wars harm both sides, most crimes yield little financial gain, terrorism and
assassination almost never bring about the desired political changes, most rapes fail to bring sexual
pleasure, torture rarely elicits accurate or useful information, and most murderers soon regret their actions as pointless and self-
defeating ( Ford, 1985; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Groth, 1979; Keegan, 1993; Sampson & Laub, 1993; Scarry, 1985). What
drives people to commit violent and oppressive actions that so often are tangential or even
contrary to the rational pursuit of material self-interest? This article reviews literature relevant to the
hypothesis that one main source of such violence is threatened egotism, particularly when it consists of
favorable self-appraisals that may be inflated or ill-founded and that are confronted with an external evaluation that disputes them.
The focus on egotism (i.e., favorable self-appraisals) as one cause of violent aggression runs contrary to an
entrenched body of wisdom that has long pointed to low self-esteem as the root of violence and
other antisocial behavior. We shall examine the arguments for the low self-esteem view and treat it as a rival hypothesis to
our emphasis on high self-esteem. Clearly, there are abundant theoretical and practical implications that
attend the question of which level of self-esteem is associated with greater violence. The widely
publicized popular efforts to bolster the self-esteem of various segments of the American population in recent decades (e.g., see
California Task Force, 1990) may be valuable aids for reducing violence if low self-esteem is the culprit—or they may be making
the problems worse.
A2: Policymaking K2 Democracy
 Illusion of Democracy Turn (A2: Warming, Antipolitics)
Their faith that debate can change policy is exploited to support corporate
power—participation in traditional democracy is a trap, and the very worst
factions are already in charge
Media Lens 14 (Media Lens is a media watchdog group based in the UK, “The Illusion of Democracy,”
Dissident Voice, December 19, http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/12/the-illusion-of-democracy/)

In an era of permanent war, economic meltdown and climate ‘weirding’, we need all the
champions of truth and justice that we can find. But where are they? What happened to trade unions, the
green movement, human rights groups, campaigning newspapers, peace activists, strong-minded academics, progressive voices?
We are awash in state and corporate propaganda, with the ‘liberal’ media a key cog in the apparatus. We are
hemmed in by the powerful forces of greed, profit and control. We are struggling to get by, never mind
flourish as human beings. We are subject to increasingly insecure, poorly-paid and unfulfilling employment, the slashing of the
welfare system, the privatisation of the National Health Service, the erosion of civil rights, and even the criminalisation of protest
and dissent. The pillars of a genuinely liberal society have been so weakened, if not destroyed, that we are essentially living
under a system of corporate totalitarianism. In his 2010 book, Death of the Liberal Class, the former New York Times
reporter Chris Hedges notes that: The anemic liberal class continues to assert, despite ample evidence to
the contrary, that human freedom and equality can be achieved through the charade of
electoral politics and constitutional reform. It refuses to acknowledge the corporate domination
of traditional democratic channels for ensuring broad participatory power. (p. 8) Worse, the
liberal class has “lent its voice to hollow acts of political theater, and the pretense that
democratic debate and choice continue to exist.” (pp. 9-10) This pretense afflicts all the major western
‘democracies’, including the UK, and it is a virus that permeates corporate news reporting, not least the BBC. For example, the BBC’s
political editor Nick Robinson has a new book out with the cruelly apt title, ‘Live From Downing Street’. Why apt? Because Downing
Street is indeed the centre of the political editor’s worldview. As he explains in the book’s foreword: My job is to report on what
those in power are thinking and doing and on those who attempt to hold them to account in Parliament. (Added emphasis). Several
observations spring to mind: 1. How does Nick Robinson know what powerful politicians are thinking? 2. Does he believe that any
discrepancy between what they really think and what they tell him and his media colleagues is inconsequential? 3. Why does the
BBC’s political editor focus so heavily on what happens in Parliament? What about the wider spectrum of opinion outside
Parliament, so often improperly represented by MPs, if at all? What about attempts in the wider society to hold power to account,
away from Westminster corridors and the feeble, Whip-constrained platitudes of party careerists? No wonder Robinson might have
regrets over Iraq, as he later concedes when he says: The build-up to the invasion of Iraq is the point in my career when I have most
regretted not pushing harder and not asking more questions. (p. 332). 4. Thus, right from the start of his book Robinson concedes
unwittingly that his journalism cannot, by definition, be ‘balanced’. But, of course, corporate
media professionals have
long propped up the illusion that the public is offered an ‘impartial’ selection of facts, opinions
and perspectives from which any individual can derive a well-informed world view. Simply put,
‘impartiality’ is what the establishment says is impartial. The journalist and broadcaster Brian Walden once said:
‘The demand for impartiality is too jealously promoted by the political parties themselves. They count balance in seconds and
monitor it with stopwatches.’ (Quoted, Tim Luckhurst, ‘Time to take sides’, Independent, July 1, 2003). This nonsense suggests that
media ‘impartiality’ means that one major political party receives identical, or at least similar, coverage to another. But when
all
the major political parties have almost identical views on all the important issues, barring small
tactical differences, how can this possibly be deemed to constitute genuine impartiality? The
major political parties offer no real choice. They all represent essentially the same interests
crushing any moves towards meaningful public participation in the shaping of policy; or towards
genuine concern for all members of society, particularly the weak and the vulnerable. The essential truth was explained by political
scientist Thomas Ferguson in his book Golden Rule (University of Chicago Press, 1995). When major backers
of political
parties and elections agree on an issue -– such as international ‘free trade’ agreements, maintaining a massive
‘defence’ budget or refusing to make the necessary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions – then the parties will not
compete on that issue, even though the public might desire a real alternative. US media analyst Robert
McChesney observes: In many respects we now live in a society that is only formally democratic, as the
great mass of citizens have minimal say on the major public issues of the day, and such issues are
scarcely debated at all in any meaningful sense in the electoral arena. (McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy, The New Press,
2000, p. 260). As the Washington Post once noted, inadvertently echoing Ferguson’s Golden Rule, modern democracy works best
when the political “parties essentially agree on most of the major issues”. The Financial Times put it more bluntly: capitalist
democracy can best succeed when it focuses on ‘the process of depoliticizing the economy.’ (Cited
by McChesney, ibid., p. 112). The public recognises much of this for what it is. Opinion polls indicate the distrust they feel for politicians and business leaders, as well as the journalists who all too
frequently channel uncritical reporting on politics and business. A 2009 survey by the polling company Ipsos MORI found that only 13 per cent of the British public trust politicians to tell the truth: the lowest rating
in 25 years. Business leaders were trusted by just 25 per cent of the public, while journalists languished at 22 per cent. And yet recall that when Lord Justice Leveson published his long-awaited report into ‘the
culture, practices and ethics of the British press’ on November 29, he made the ludicrous assertion that “the British press – I repeat, all of it – serves the country very well for the vast majority of the time.” That
tells us much about the nature and value of his government-appointed inquiry. The Flagship Of Liberal Journalism On The Rocks Damning indictments of the liberal media were self-inflicted by its vanguard
newspaper, the Guardian, in two recent blows. First, consider Decca Aitkenhead’s hostile interview with Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange in which he is described as a “fugitive” who has been “holed up” in the
Ecuadorian embassy in London for six months. Aitkenhead casts doubts over his “frame of mind”, with a sly suggestion that he might even be suffering from “paranoia”. She claims Assange “seems more like an in-
patient than an interviewee […]. If you have ever visited someone convalescing after a breakdown, his demeanour would be instantly recognisable. Admirers cast him as the new Jason Bourne, but in these first
few minutes I worry he may be heading more towards Miss Havisham.” He “talks in the manner of a man who has worked out that the Earth is round, while everyone else is lumbering on under the impression
that it is flat.” Aitkenhead continues: “It’s hard to read his book without wondering, is Assange a hypocrite – and is he a reliable witness?” Indeed “some of his supporters despair of an impossible personality, and
blame his problems on hubris.” Aitkenhead asks him “about the fracture with close colleagues at WikiLeaks” and wants him to “explain why so many relationships have soured”. She gives a potted, one-sided
history of why the relationship between the Guardian and Wikileaks “soured”, saying dismissively that “the details of the dispute are of doubtful interest to a wider audience”. The character attack continues: “The
messianic grandiosity of his self-justification is a little disconcerting” and “he reminds me of a charismatic cult leader”. Aitkenhead concludes: “The only thing I could say with confidence is that he is a control
freak.” The hostile, condescending and flippant tone and content contrast starkly with the more respectable treatment afforded to establishment interviewees such as Michael Gove, Michael Heseltine,
Christopher Meyer and Alistair Darling. Aitkenhead almost fawns over Darling, then the Chancellor: His dry, deadpan humour lends itself to his ironic take on the grumpy old man, which he plays with gruff good
nature. […] He reminds me of childhood friends’ fathers who seemed fearsome until we got old enough to realise they were being funny. Darling says that “I was never really interested in the theory of achieving
things, just the practicality of doing things”, Aitkenhead sighs: One might say this has been Darling’s great strength. The pragmatic clarity made him a highly effective minister… But it may well also be his weakness
– for at times he seems almost too straightforward, even high-minded, for the low cunning of political warfare. Sometimes people would approach the Chancellor in public and demand that he fix the economy.
Darling recalls that one chap accosted him at a petrol station: I know it’s to do with oil prices – but what are you going to do about it? People think, Well, surely you can do something, you are responsible – so, of
course, it reflects on me. Aitkenhead asks him sweetly: “Is it painful to be blamed so personally?” Two days after the Guardian’s hit job on Julian Assange, it was followed by the paper’s low-key announcement of
its public poll for person of the year: Bradley Manning, the US soldier suspected of leaking state secrets to Wikileaks. The implication of the Guardian’s grudging note was that Manning had only won because of
“rather fishy voting patterns”: Manning secured 70 percent of the vote, the vast majority of them coming after a series of @Wikileaks tweets. Project editor Mark Rice-Oxley said: It was an interesting exercise that
told us a lot about our readers, our heroes and the reasons that people vote. Although the short entry appeared in the Guardian’s online news blog, there was no facility for adding reader comments, thus avoiding
any possible additional public embarrassment. Perhaps the paper is mortified that it has been shown up by Wikileaks and Manning for not doing its job of holding power to account. As Jonathan Cook, a former
Guardian journalist, wrote last year: The Guardian, like other mainstream media, is heavily invested – both financially and ideologically – in supporting the current global order. It was once able to exclude and
now, in the internet age, must vilify those elements of the left whose ideas risk questioning a system of corporate power and control of which the Guardian is a key institution. So much for the British flagship of

One of the biggest failures of the liberal class has been its inability to
liberal journalism then. Climate Betrayal And Deceptions

see, far less challenge, the inherently destructive and psychopathic nature of corporations. We
once wrote to Stephen Tindale, then executive director of Greenpeace UK, and asked him why they did not address this in their
campaigning: Let us see Greenpeace (and other pressure groups) doing more to oppose, not so much what corporations do, but
what they are; namely, undemocratic centralised institutions wielding illegitimate power. (Email, January 7, 2002) Ignoring or
missing the point, Tindale replied: We will continue to confront corporations where necessary […] we are an environmental group,
not an anti-corporate group. We will therefore work with companies when we can do so to promote our campaign goals. (Email,
January 28, 2002) Corporate Watch has pointedly asked of nongovernmental organisations, such as Greenpeace: “Why are NGOs
getting involved in these partnerships?” One important factor, it seems, is “follow the leader”. Corporate Watch notes: For many
NGOs, the debate on whether or not to engage with companies is already over. The attitude is “all the major NGOs engage with
companies so why shouldn’t we?’ (Corporate Watch, ‘What’s Wrong with Corporate Social Responsibility?’, 2006, p. 2). The
sad
reality is that Greenpeace and other major NGOs accept the ideological premise that the corporate
sector can be persuaded to act benignly. To focus instead on the illegitimate power and inherent
destructive nature of the corporation is a step too far for today’s emasculated ‘pressure groups’, whether they
are working on environmental protection, human rights or fighting poverty. Adding to the already overwhelming evidence of
corporate power protecting itself at almost any cost, a recent book titled Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark (Pluto Books, 2012) exposes
the covert methods of corporations to evade democratic accountability and to undermine legitimate public protest and activism.
Using exclusive access to previously confidential sources, Eveline Lubbers, an independent investigator with SpinWatch.org, provides
compelling case studies on companies such as Nestlé, Shell and McDonalds. “The aim of covert corporate strategy”,
she observes, “is not to win an argument, but to contain, intimidate and ultimately eliminate
opposition.” Lubbers also points out that dialogue, one of the key instruments of “corporate social
responsibility”, is exploited by big business “as a crucial tool to gather information, to keep
critics engaged and ultimately to divide and rule, by talking to some and demonizing others.”
Lubbers’ book, then, is yet another exposure of corporate efforts to prevent civil society from obtaining real
power. And yet virtually every day comes compelling evidence showing how disastrous this is for
humanity. A new scientific report this month reveals that global carbon emissions have hit a record high: In a development that
underscores the widening gap between the necessary steps to limit global warming and the policies that governments are actually
putting into place, a new report shows that global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will likely reach a record high of 35.6 billion
tonnes in 2012, up 2.6 percent from 2011. This is a disaster for climate stability. Meanwhile, a new study based on 20
years of satellite observations shows that the planet’s polar ice sheets are already melting three times faster than they were in the
the 1990s. In September, senior NASA climate scientist James Hansen had warned of a “planetary emergency” because of the
dangerous effects of Arctic ice melt, including methane gas released from permafrost regions currently under ice. “We
are in a
planetary emergency”,, said Hansen, decrying “the gap between what is understood by scientific community and what is
known by the public.” As ever, the latest UN Climate Summit in Doha was just another talking shop that paid lip service to the need
The failure of the liberal
for radical and immediate action in curbing greenhouse gas emissions in the face of climate chaos.
class to rein in, or seriously challenge, corporate power is typified by this appalling gap between
climate change rhetoric and reality. The rhetoric is typified by the political call to keep the average global temperature
rise to under 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. The appalling reality is that the rise is likely to be in the region of 4-6 deg C (but potentially
much higher if runaway global warming kicks in with the release of methane). This gap – actually a chasm of likely tragic proportions
– is graphically depicted by climate scientist Professor Kevin Anderson of Manchester University in a recent powerful and disturbing
presentation. Anderson cites an unnamed ‘very senior political scientist’ who often advises the government. This adviser says: Too much has been invested in two degrees
C for us to say it is not possible. It would undermine all that has been achieved. It would give a sense of hopelessness that we may as well just give in. Anderson also reports that
on the eve of the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2010, he had a 20-minute meeting in Manchester with Ed Miliband, then the of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate
Change. Miliband told Anderson: Our position is challenging enough. I can’t go with the message that two degrees C is impossible – it’s what we’ve all worked towards.
Anderson also relates that he attended a Chatham House event where the message from both “a very senior government scientist and someone very senior from an oil
company” – which he strongly hinted was Shell – was this: “[We] think we’re on for 4 to 6 degrees C but we just can’t be open about it.” Anderson warns that this deception is
“going on all the time behind the scenes” and “that somehow we can’t tell the public” the truth. The consequences could be terminal for large swathes of humanity and
planetary ecosystems. In short, we desperately need to hear the truth from people like Kevin Anderson, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. To return to Chris Hedges on “the

The liberal class is expected to mask the brutality of imperial war and corporate
death of the liberal class”:

malfeasance by deploring the most egregious excesses while studiously refusing to question the
legitimacy of the power elite’s actions and structures. When dissidents step outside these
boundaries, they become pariahs. Specific actions can be criticized, but motives, intentions, and
the moral probity of the power elite cannot be questioned. (Hedges, op. cit., pp. 152-153) and he warns: We
stand on the verge of one of the bleakest periods in human history, when the bright lights of
civilizations will blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The
elites, who successfully convinced us that we no longer possessed the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before
us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe, will use their resources to create
privileged little islands where they will have access to security and goods denied to the rest of us. (p. 197)We
must have the
vision to imagine that, however bleak things appear now, things can change: if we put our minds
to it and work together.
 Public = No Influence
The issues we train for won’t even be considered—the policy agenda is not
shaped by the public
Gilens & Page 14 (Martin Gilens is Professor of Politics at Princeton University; Benjamin I. Page is
Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University, “Testing Theories of
American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12.3, September)

Of course our findings speak most directly to the “first face” of power: the ability of actors to shape policy outcomes on
contested issues. But they also reflect—to some degree, at least—the “second face” of power: the ability to shape the
agenda of issues that policy makers consider. The set of policy alternatives that we analyze is
considerably broader than the set discussed seriously by policy makers or brought to a vote in
Congress, and our alternatives are (on average) more popular among the general public than among
interest groups. Thus the fate of these policies can reflect policy makers’ refusing to consider
them rather than considering but rejecting them. (From our data we cannot distinguish between the two.) Our
results speak less clearly to the “third face” of power: the ability of elites to shape the public’s preferences. 49 We know that
interest groups and policy makers themselves often devote considerable effort to shaping opinion. If they are successful, this might
help explain the high correlation we find between elite and mass preferences. But it cannot have greatly inflated our estimate of
average citizens’ influence on policy making, which is near zero. What do our findings say about democracy in
America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond
primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In
the United States, our findings indicate, the
majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they
generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system,
even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
 A2: Empirically Does Change Stuff
There’s only a correlation between public opinion and change because there’s
correlation in issue support—on things that the elite opposes, deliberative
democracy has no effect
Gilens & Page 14 (Martin Gilens is Professor of Politics at Princeton University; Benjamin I. Page is
Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University, “Testing Theories of
American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12.3, September)

What are we to make of findings that seem to go against volumes of persuasive theorizing and
much quantitative research, by asserting that the average citizen or the “median voter” has little
or no independent influence on public policy? As noted, our evidence does not indicate that in U.S.
policy making the average citizen always loses out. Since the preferences of ordinary citizens
tend to be positively correlated with the preferences of economic elites, ordinary citizens often
win the policies they want, even if they are more or less coincidental beneficiaries rather than
causes of the victory. There is not necessarily any contradiction at all between our findings and past bivariate findings of a
roughly two-thirds correspondence between actual policy and the wishes of the general public, or of a close correspondence
between the liberal/conservative “mood” of the public and changes in policy making. 42 Our main
point concerns causal
inference: if interpreted in terms of actual causal impact, the prior findings appear to be largely
or wholly spurious. Further, the issues about which economic elites and ordinary citizens
disagree reflect important matters, including many aspects of trade restrictions, tax policy, corporate regulation,
abortion, and school prayer, so that the resulting political losses by ordinary citizens are not trivial. Moreover, we must remember
that in our analyses the preferences of the affluent are serving as proxies for those of truly wealthy Americans, who may well have
more political clout than the affluent, and who tend to have policy preferences that differ more markedly from those of the average
citizens. Thus
even rather slight measured differences between preferences of the affluent and the
median citizen may signal situations in which economic-elites want something quite different
from most Americans and they generally get their way. A final point: Even in a bivariate, descriptive
sense, our evidence indicates that the responsiveness of the U.S. political system when the
general public wants government action is severely limited. Because of the impediments to
majority rule that were deliberately built into the U.S. political system—federalism, separation
of powers, bicameralism—together with further impediments due to anti-majoritarian
congressional rules and procedures, the system has a substantial status quo bias. Thus when
popular majorities favor the status quo, opposing a given policy change, they are likely to get
their way; but when a majority—even a very large majority—of the public favors change, it is
not likely to get what it wants. In our 1,779 policy cases, narrow pro-change majorities of the public got the policy
changes they wanted only about 30 percent of the time. More strikingly, even overwhelmingly large pro-change majorities, with 80
percent of the public favoring a policy change, got that change only about 43 percent of the time.

Even if changes have happened in line with public opinion, they aren’t causally
connected
Gilens & Page 14 (Martin Gilens is Professor of Politics at Princeton University; Benjamin I. Page is
Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University, “Testing Theories of
American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12.3, September)

Before we proceed further, it is important to note that even

if one of our predictor variables is found (when
controlling for the others) to have no independent impact on policy at all, it does not follow that
the actors whose preferences are reflected by that variable—average citizens, economic elites, or
organized interest groups of one sort or another—always “lose” in policy decisions. Policy making is not necessarily a
zero-sum game among these actors. When one set of actors wins, others may win as well, if their
preferences are positively correlated with each other. It turns out, in fact, that the preferences of
average citizens are positively and fairly highly correlated, across issues, with the preferences of
economic elites (refer to table 2). Rather often, average citizens and affluent citizens (our proxy for economic elites) want the
same things from government. This bivariate correlation affects how we should interpret our later multivariate findings in terms of
“winners” and “losers.” It also suggests a reason why serious scholars might keep adhering to both the Majoritarian Electoral
Democracy and the Economic-Elite Domination theoretical traditions, even if one of them may be dead wrong in terms of causal
impact. Ordinary citizens, for example, might often be observed to “win” (that is, to get their preferred policy
outcomes) even if they had no independent effect whatsoever on policy making, if elites (with whom
they often agree) actually prevail. But net interest-group stands are not substantially correlated with
the preferences of average citizens. Taking all interest groups together, the index of net interest-group alignment
correlates only a non-significant .04 with average citizens’ preferences! (Refer to table 2.) This casts grave doubt on David Truman’s
and others’ argument that organized interest groups tend to do a good job of representing the population as a whole. Indeed, as
table 2 indicates, even
the net alignments of the groups we have categorized as “mass-based”
correlate with average citizens’ preferences only at the very modest (though statistically significant) level
of .12.
 A2: Roleplaying
Cycles of oppression—standards like switch side debate and roleplaying
promote a disinterested approach to argumentation where we sever ourselves
from our in round representations and make it possible to advocate for ideas
that are bad or ideas that we don’t legitimately have an interest in solving.
Interrogations of structures of power from a standpoint of the oppressed are
key to challenge US exceptionalism. Professor William V. Spanos sat in on a
policy debate round and stated that….(begin reading card)
Spanos 6 [Spanos, William V. Prof of Comparative Literature at SUNY Binghamton. (quoted by Joe Miller in Cross-x, and
posted on edebate and cross-x.com, http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=945110)

Dear Joe Miller, Yes, the statement about the American debate circuit you refer to was made by me, though some years ago. I strongly believed then --and still do, even though a certain uneasiness about
"objectivity" has crept into the "philosophy of debate" -- that debate in both the high schools and colleges in this country is assumed to take place nowhere, even though the issues that are debated are profoundly

historical, which means that positions are always represented from the perspective of power, and a matter of life and death . I find it grotesque that in the debate world,
it doesn't matter which position you take on an issue -- say, the United States' unilateral wars of preemption -- as long as you "score
points". The world we live in is a world entirely dominated by an "exceptionalist" America which has perennially
claimed that it has been chosen by God or History to fulfill his/its "errand in the wilderness." That claim is powerful because
American economic and military power lies behind it. And any alternative position in such a world is virtually powerless. Given this inexorable historical reality, to assume, as the protocols of debate

do, that all positions are equal is to efface the imbalances of power that are the fundamental condition of
history and to annul the Moral authority inhering in the position of the oppressed. This is why I have said that the appropriation of my interested work on education and empire to this transcendental debate world

My scholarship is not "disinterested." It is militant and intended to ameliorate as much as possible the pain
constitute a travesty of my intentions.

and suffering of those who have been oppressed by the "democratic" institutions that have power precisely by way of
showing that their language if "truth," far from being "disinterested" or "objective" as it is always claimed, is informed by the will to power over all manner of "others." This is also why I told my interlocutor that he

[We] should call into question the traditional "objective" debate protocols
and those in the debate world who felt like him

in favor of a concept of debate and of language in which life and death matter[s]. I am very much aware
and the instrumentalist language they privilege

that the arrogant neocons who now saturate the government of the Bush administration -- judges, pentagon planners, state department officials,

etc. learned their "disinterested" argumentative skills in the high school and college debate societies and that, accordingly, they have

become masters at disarming the just causes of the oppressed. This kind leadership will reproduce itself (along
with the invisible oppression it perpetrates) as long as the training ground and the debate protocols from which it emerges
remains in tact. A revolution in the debate world must occur. It must force that unworldly world down into the historical arena
where positions make a difference. To invoke the late Edward Said, only such a revolution will be capable of "deterring democracy" (in Noam Chomsky's ironic phrase), of
instigating the secular critical consciousness that is, in my mind, the sine qua non for avoiding the immanent global disaster towards which the blind arrogance of Bush Administration and his neocon policy makers
is leading.

Under a detached worldview, the world must be represented according to an

image of thought. This reduces life to objects on the game board of life, like
Nazi doctors.
Makau 96 (Josina M., Western Michigan University, Hampton Press, Inc. Responsible Communication, Argumentation
Instruction in the Face of Global Perils 1996)

Weisel's critique of German education prior to world war II points to another danger of traditional argumentation instruction . Like the Nazi doctors, students in
traditional argumentation courses are taught "how to reduce life and the mystery of life to
abstraction." Weisel urges educators to teach students what the Nazi doctors never learned – that people are not abstractions. Weisel urges educators to learn from the
Nazi experience the importance of humanizing their charges, of teaching students to view life
as special, 'with its own secrets, its own treasures, its own sources of anguish and with some
measure of triumph.' Trained as technocrats with powerful sensory skills but little
understanding, students participating in traditional argumentation courses would have difficulty either grasping or appreciating the importance of Weisel's critique. Similarly, they
would have difficulty grasping or appreciating Christian's framework for an ethic of technology an approach that requires above all,

openness, trust and care. The notion of conviviality would be particularly alien to these trained technocrats. Traditionally trained debaters are also likely to fail to grasp the
complexity of issues Trained to view problems in black and white terms and conditioned to turn to
.

"expertise" for solutions, students, and traditional courses become subject to ethical
blindness. As Benhabib noted, 'Moral blindness implies not necessarily an evil or unprincipled person, but one who can not see the moral texture of the situation confronting him or her.' These
traditional debaters deprived of true dialogic encounter, fail to develop 'the capacity to represent' to themselves the 'multiplicity of viewpoints,
,

the variety of perspectives, the layers of meaning, etc. which constitute a situation'. They are
thus inclined to lack 'the kind of sensitivity to particulars, which most agree is essential for
good and perspicacious judgment.' Encouraging student to embrace the will to control and to
gain mastery, to accept uncritically a sovereign view of power, and to maintain distance from
their own and others 'situated ness the traditional argumentation course provides an unlikely site for nurturing guardians of our world's precious resources. It would
,'

appear, in fact, that the argumentation course foster precisely the 'aggressive and manipulative intellect

bred by modern science and discharged into the administration of things' associated with
most of the world's human made perils And is therefore understandable that feminist and others critics would write so harshly of traditional argumentation of
.

debate.

Their form of detached roleplaying displaces individual identity to that of

authority. When we imagine that we’re the government, we turn people into
statistics, and it becomes a legitimate practice to engage in apocalyptic or
dehumanizing rhetoric—Stanford Prison Experiment proves this
Reed 5 (Reed et al, Director of Command and Leadership Studies, U.S. Army War College, 2005 [Professor George E., Guy B.
Adams, Professor, Public Affairs, University of Missouri-Columbia, Danny L. Balfour, Professor, Public and Nonprofit Administration,
Grand Valley State University, “Putting Cruelty First: Abu Ghraib, Administrative Evil and Moral Inversion,” Paper prepared for
presentation to “Ethics and Integrity of Governance: A Transatlantic Dialogue,” Leuven, Belgium, June 2-5, 2005
http://soc.kuleuven.be/io/ethics/paper/Paper%20WS5_pdf/Guy%20Adams.pdf, 24-28)
Total guard aggression increased daily, even after prisoners had ceased any resistance and deterioration was visible. Prisoner rights were redefined as privileges, to be earned by obedient behavior. The experiment

Guards forced the

was planned for two weeks, but was terminated after six days. Five prisoners were released because of extreme emotional depression, crying, rage and/or acute anxiety.

prisoners to chant filthy songs, to defecate in buckets that were not emptied, and to clean toilets
with their bare hands. They acted as if the prisoners were less than human and so did the
prisoners (Haney, Banks and Zimbardo, 1973, p.94): At the end of only six days we had to close down our mock prison
because what we saw was frightening. It was no longer apparent to us or most of the subjects where they ended and their

roles began. The majority had indeed become "prisoners” or "guards," no longer able to clearly
differentiate between role-playing and self. There were dramatic changes in virtually every
aspect of their behavior, thinking and feeling. In less that a week, the experience of imprisonment undid (temporarily) a lifetime of learning; human values
were suspended, self-concepts were challenged, and the ugliest, most base, pathological side of human nature surfaced. We were horrified because we saw some boys ("guards") treat

other boys as if they were despicable animals, taking pleasure in cruelty, while other boys ("prisoners")
became servile, dehumanized robots who thought only of escape, of their own individual survival, and of
their mounting hatred of the guards. This experiment suggests that group and organizational roles and social structures play a far more

powerful part in everyday human behavior than most of us would consider. And we can see clearly how individual morality and ethics can be
swallowed and effectively erased by social roles and structures. One is rarely confronted with a
clear, up-or-down decision on an ethical issue; rather, a series of small, usually ambiguous choices
are made, and the weight of commitments and of habit drives out morality. One does not have to be morally degenerate to become caught in a web
of wrongdoing that may even cross the line into evil. The skids are further greased if the situation is defined or presented as

technical, or calling for expert judgment, or is legitimated, either tacitly or explicitly, by organizational authority,
as we shall see below. It becomes an even easier choice if the immoral behavior has itself been masked, redefined through a moral inversion as the "good" or "right" thing to do. Administrative Evil and

Dehumanization The Stanford prison experiment provides a fairly powerful explanation for at least some of what happened at
Abu Ghraib. But it also does not fully fit the specifics of the situation. Unlike the Stanford experiments, the guards did not act in an isolated and controlled environment, but were part of a larger
organizational structure and political environment. They interacted regularly with all sorts of personnel, both directly and indirectly involved with the prisoners. They were in a remarkably chaotic environment,
were by and large poorly prepared and trained for their roles, and were faced with both enormous danger and ambiguity. However, like the Stanford Prison Experiment, tacit permission was available to those who

a consensus for and the practice of mass

chose to accept it. In his ground-breaking book, The Destruction of the European Jews, Raul Hilberg observed that

murder coalesced among German bureaucrats in a manner that (Hilberg, 1985, p.55), “…was not so much a product of laws and commands as
it was a matter of spirit, of shared comprehension, of consonance and synchronization.” In another study of mid-level bureaucrats and the Holocaust, Christopher Browning describes this process in some detail as
he also found that direct orders were not needed for key functionaries to understand the direction that policy was to take (Browning, 1992, pp. 141-142): Instead, new signals and directions were given at the
center, and with a ripple effect, these new signals set in motions waves that radiated outward… with the situations they found themselves in and the contacts they made, these three bureaucrats could not help but
feel the ripples and be affected by the changing atmosphere and course of events. These were not stupid or inept people; they could read the signals, perceive what was expected of them, and adjust their behavior
accordingly… It was their receptivity to such signals, and the speed with which they aligned themselves to the new policy, that allowed the Final Solution to emerge with so little internal friction and so little formal

coordination If something as horrific and systematic as the Holocaust could be perpetrated based more on a common understanding than
upon direct orders, it should not be difficult to imagine how abuse of detainees in Iraq and elsewhere occurred, with otherwise unacceptable behaviors substituting for ambiguous,
While the Nazi Holocaust was far, far worse than anything that has happened during the American occupation of Iraq, it
standard operating procedures.

has been amply demonstrated that Americans are not immune to the types of social and organizational
conditions that make it possible and seemingly permissible to violate the boundaries of morality and human decency, in at least some cases, without believing that they were
doing anything wrong. It would be naïve to assume that the “few bad apples” acted alone, and that others in the system did not share and support the abuses as they went about their routines and did their jobs.
Before and surrounding overt acts of evil, there are many more and much less obviously evil administrative activities that lead to and support the worst forms of human behavior. Moreover, without these instances
of masked evil, the more overt and unmasked acts are less likely to occur (Staub, 1992, pp. 20-21). The apparent willingness and comfort level with taking photos and to be photographed while abusing prisoners
seems to reflect the “normalcy” of the acts within the context of at least the night shift on Tiers 1A and 1B at Abu Ghraib (and is hauntingly similar to photos of atrocities sent home by SS personnel in World War II).
In the camps and prisons run by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, orders and professional standards forbidding the abuse of prisoners and defining the boundaries of acceptable behavior for prison guards
could be found in at least some locations posted on some walls, but were widely ignored by the perpetrators. Instead, we find a high stress situation, in which the expectation was to It would be naïve to assume
that the “few bad apples” acted alone, and that others in the system did not share and support the abuses as they went about their routines and did their jobs. Before and surrounding overt acts of evil, there are
many more and much less obviously evil administrative activities that lead to and support the worst forms of human behavior. Moreover, without these instances of masked evil, the more overt and unmasked acts
are less likely to occur (Staub, 1992, pp. 20-21). The apparent willingness and comfort level with taking photos and to be photographed while abusing prisoners seems to reflect the “normalcy” of the acts within
the context of at least the night shift on Tiers 1A and 1B at Abu Ghraib (and is hauntingly similar to photos of atrocities sent home by SS personnel in World War II). In the camps and prisons run by the U.S. military
in Iraq and Afghanistan, orders and professional standards forbidding the abuse of prisoners and defining the boundaries of acceptable behavior for prison guards could be found in at least some locations posted
on some walls, but were widely ignored by the perpetrators. Instead, we find a high stress situation, in which the expectation was to extract usable intelligence from detainees in order to help their comrades
suppress a growing insurgency, find weapons of mass destruction, and prevent acts of terrorism. In this context, the power of group dynamics, social structures, and organizational ambiguities is readily seen. The
normal inhibitions that might have prevented those who perpetrated the abuses from doing these evil deeds may have been further weakened by the shared belief that the prisoners were somehow less than
human, and that getting information out of them was more important than protecting their rights and dignity as human beings. For example, in an interview with the BBC on June 15, 2004, Brig. General Janis
Karpinski stated that she was told by General Geoffrey Miller – later placed in charge of Iraqi prisons and former commander at Guantanamo Bay – that the Iraqi prisoners, “…are like dogs and if you allow them to
believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you’ve lost control of them.” Just as anti-Semitism was central to the attitudes of those who implemented the policy of mass murder in the Holocaust, the

at Abu Ghraib may have been facilitated by an atmosphere that dehumanized the detainees. In effect, these detainees, with their ambiguous
abuses

legal status, could be seen as a “surplus population,” living outside the protections of civilized
society (Rubenstein, 1983). And when organizational dynamics combine with a tendency to dehumanize
and/or demonize a vulnerable group, the stage is set for the mask of administrative evil.
Roleplaying is really bad
Antonio 95 (Robert, most qualified man in debate, nietzsche’s anti-sociology: subjectified
culture and the end of history, http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/17941)

According to Nietzsche, the"subject" is Socratic culture's most central, durable foundation. This prototypic expression
of ressentiment, master reification, and ultimate justification for slave morality and mass
discipline "separates strength from expressions of strength, as if there were a neutral substratum . . . free to express strength or
not to do so. But there is no such substratum; there is no 'being' behind the doing, effecting, becoming; 'the doer' is merely a fiction
added to the deed" (Nietzsche 19696, pp. 45-46). Leveling of Socratic culture's "objective" foundations makes its "subjective"
features all the more important. For example, the subject is a central focus of the new human sciences,
appearing prominently in its emphases on neutral standpoints, motives as causes, and selves as
entities, objects of inquiry, problems, and targets of care (Nietzsche 1966, pp. 19-21; 1968a, pp. 47-54). Arguing
that subjectified culture weakens the personality, Nietzsche spoke of a "remarkable antithesis between an interior
which fails to correspond to any exterior and an exterior which fails to correspond to any
interior" (Nietzsche 1983, pp. 78-79, 83). The "problem of the actor," Nietzsche said, "troubled me for the
longest time."1* He considered "roles" as "external," "surface," or "foreground" phenomena and
viewed close personal identification with them as symptomatic of estrangement. While modern
theorists saw differentiated roles and professions as a matrix of autonomy and reflexivity, Nietzsche held that persons
(especially male professionals) in specialized occupations overidentify with their positions and
engage in gross fabrications to obtain advancement. They look hesitantly to the opinion of
others, asking themselves, "How ought I feel about this?" They are so thoroughly absorbed in
simulating effective role players that they have trouble being anything but actors—"The role has
actually become the character." This highly subjectified social self or simulator suffers devastating inauthenticity. The
powerful authority given the social greatly amplifies Socratic culture's already self-indulgent "inwardness." Integrity,
decisiveness, spontaneity, and pleasure are undone by paralyzing overconcern about possible
causes, meanings, and consequences of acts and unending internal dialogue about what others
might think, expect, say, or do (Nietzsche 1983, pp. 83-86; 1986, pp. 39-40; 1974, pp. 302-4, 316-17). Nervous rotation of
socially appropriate "masks" reduces persons to hypostatized "shadows," "abstracts," or
simulacra. One adopts "many roles," playing them "badly and superficially" in the fashion of a stiff "puppet play." Nietzsche
asked, "Are you genuine? Or only an actor? A representative or that which is represented? . . . [Or] no
more than an imitation of an actor?" Simulation is so pervasive that it is hard to tell the copy from the
genuine article; social selves "prefer the copies to the originals" (Nietzsche 1983, pp. 84-86; 1986, p. 136; 1974, pp. 232— 33,
259; 19696, pp. 268, 300, 302; 1968a, pp. 26-27). Their inwardness and aleatory scripts foreclose genuine attachment to others. This
type of actor cannot plan for the long term or participate in enduring networks of interdependence; such a person is neither willing
nor able to be a "stone" in the societal "edifice" (Nietzsche 1974, pp. 302-4; 1986a, pp. 93-94). Superficiality rules in the arid
subjectivized landscape. Neitzsche (1974, p. 259) stated, "One thinks with a watch in one's hand, even as one eats one's midday
meal while reading the latest news of the stock market; one lives as if one always 'might miss out on something.' 'Rather do anything
than nothing': this principle, too, is merely a string to throttle all culture. . . . Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to
expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretense and overreaching and anticipating others." Pervasive
leveling, improvising, and faking foster an inflated sense of ability and an oblivious attitude
about the fortuitous circumstances that contribute to role attainment (e.g., class or ethnicity).
The most mediocre people believe they can fill any position, even cultural leadership. Nietzsche
respected the self-mastery of genuine ascetic priests, like Socrates, and praised their ability to redirect ressentiment creatively and
to render the "sick" harmless. But he deeply feared the new simulated versions. Lacking the "born physician's" capacities, these
impostors amplify the worst inclinations of the herd; they are "violent, envious, exploitative,
scheming, fawning, cringing, arrogant, all according to circumstances." Social selves are fodder for the
"great man of the masses." Nietzsche held that "the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one
covets someone who commands, who commands severely— a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor,
dogma, or party conscience." The deadly combination of desperate conforming and overreaching and
untrammeled ressentiment paves the way for a new type of tyrant (Nietzsche 1986, pp. 137, 168; 1974, pp.
117-18, 213, 288-89, 303-4).

No reason to prefer role playing over pure discussion- functionally the same for
education
Powner & Allendoerfer 8 (Leanne C. Powner, PhD in political science from the University of Michigan, where she
specialized in international relations, comparative politics, and research methods. Taught at the College of Wooster, OH, where she
was the Juliana Wilson Thompson Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, and American University's School of International
Service and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Michelle G. Allendoerfer, Assistant Professor of
Political Science at George Washington University as well as Program Coordinator for the U.S. and International Politics Cohort and
Women's Leadership Program. “Evaluating Hypotheses about Active Learning,” International Studies Perspectives, 2008.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1528-3585.2007.00317.x/asset/j.1528-
3585.2007.00317.x.pdf?v=1&t=ictftx08&s=6aa04c1c4f1c51743a4000533c64d1c333801c33)

We have several sets of findings. One is that, as expected, either treatment improves performance over lecture alone, holding
The
everything else constant; role play improves total quiz scores by about 2.4 points and discussion by 1.9 (both p < 0.05).23
effects of each treatment, however, are different. Role play boosts performance in the multiple-
choice section of the assessment, and discussion in the short-answer portion. This counters
theoretical predictions, which expect that performance on analytical tasks like open-ended
response items would improve from the more engaging treatment (simulation). Comparing the two
active learning techniques head to head, though, reveals that role-play does not produce significantly larger gains
than discussion. The coefficient on the simulation variable is statistically insignificant, though we do note that the sign is
contrary to our theoretical expectations. This finding holds even when controlling for major alternative explanations like class year,
days since the lecture, intensity of participation in the simulation, and the instructor’s teaching experience. We can conclude, then,
 both techniques are similarly effective; neither is superior to the other for the types of tasks
that
assessed here. That discussion sections add value to a course is probably not surprising; that is, after all, their
primary purpose — not just providing employment for graduate students. Many instructors and scholars are more interested,
though, in other types of active-learning methods, such as the role-play activities and simulations. One common concern with
integrating role-playing activities into classrooms is that these methods are less efficient, preventing instructors from covering as
Although the groups that
much material in a given time. Our results suggest that this concern may be unwarranted.
participated in the role-play activity did not perform statistically better than the groups that
were engaged in a traditional discussion section, the role-play groups also did not perform
significantly worse in two out of three evaluations (total quiz score and multiple choice score). The lack of
significance may be due to the small size and particular nature of the control group as much as it is to the effect of the activity itself.
Activities such as the bureaucratic politics role-playing game may serve to engage students whose learning styles benefit from more
active approaches to learning. Unfortunately, we were not able to evaluate the hypothesis that students with different learning
styles benefit differently from the two treatments in this experiment. Another hypothesis we were unable to evaluate here is
whether active learning approaches, such as simulations, produce a more substantial benefit in the long-term than in short-term. As
Meizlish and Bernstein (2003) find, the benefits of active learning methods may be more pronounced in long-term knowledge
retention than is demonstrated in a short-term recall instrument as we used. These unanswered questions provide interesting
directions for future research.
 Simulation
Simulation Bad
Mitchell 98 (Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Communications at University of Pittsburgh, in
1998 [Gordon, “Pedagogical Possibilities for Argumentative Agency in Academic Debate,”
Argumentation and Advocacy, Fall, ProQuest)

The sense of detachment associated with the spectator posture is highlighted during episodes of
alienation in which debaters cheer news of human suffering or misfortune. Instead of focusing on the
visceral negative responses to news accounts of human death and misery, debaters overcome with the
competitive zeal of contest round competition show a tendency to concentrate on the meanings that such
evidence might hold for the strength of their academic debate arguments. For example, news reports of
mass starvation might tidy up the “uniqueness of a disadvantage” or bolster the “inherence of an
affirmative case” (in the technical parlance of debate-speak). Murchland categorizes cultivation of this
“spectator” mentality as one of the most politically debilitating failures of contemporary
education: “Educational institutions have failed even more grievously to provide the kind of civic forums
we need. In fact, one could easily conclude that the principle purposes of our schools is to deprive
successor generations of their civic voice, to turn them into mute and uncomprehending spectators in the
drama of political life”The sense of argumentative agency produced through action research is different in
kind from those skills that are honed through academic simulation exercises such as policy debate
tournaments. Encounters with broader public spheres beyond the realm of the academy can deliver
unique pedagogical possibilities and opportunities. By anchoring their work in public spaces, students and
teachers can use their talents to change the trajectory of events, while events are still unfolding. These
experiences have the potential to trigger significant shifts in political awareness on the part of
participants. Academic debaters nourished on an exclusive diet of competitive contest round experience
often come to see politics like a picturesque landscape whirring by through the window of a
speeding train. They study this political landscape in great detail, rarely (if ever) entertaining the
idea of stopping the train and exiting to alter the course of unfolding events. The resulting
spectator mentality deflects attention away from the roads that could carry their arguments to wider
spheres of public argumentation. However, on the occasions when students and teachers set aside this
spectator mentality by directly engaging in broader public audiences, key aspects of the political
landscape change, because the point of reference for experiencing the landscape shifts fundamentally.

Simulation is bad
Stannard 2k (Matt, director of forensics and associate lecturer in the University of Wyoming
Department of Communication and Journalism, “Portraying the Ruling Class: Argument Fields
and the Material Antecedents of Policy Debate,”
http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/stannard300a.html)

Moreover, reliance on mass media sources, the journals of elitist think tanks, and public
relations-manufactured press services all serve to construct a particular possibility of argument
in policy debates. The advent of electronic research databases has exacerbated this
conservatizing tendency since most of these databases are mainstream in content. To
summarize, I am suggesting that discursive inequalities and marginalized identities are not the
only objects of criticism in policy debate. These problems are symptoms of the reproduction of
the policy field, a field which, in its institutionalized materiality, produces and contains both
inequality and marginalization. The field of policy debate is a ritualized and enhanced
reproduction of this larger material institution. Debaters are taught, through pedagogy and
reward, drawing from policy literature and traditional (uncritical) notions of governing, to
imitate the ruling class. Inequality and marginalization are part of the structure governing such
imitation.

Bureaucratic participation strips subjects of life and attempts to code them

within terms of rationality
Ossewaarde 10 (Marinus Ossewaarde, Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of
Twente, “The Tragic Turn in The Re-Imagination of Publics: Resentment and Ressentiment,”
Animus 14, 2010)

For Nietzsche, the Heraclitean vision sees the truth about reality while tragedy subsequently transforms this
unbearable absurdity of life into an aesthetic public, without masking the horror itself. The
Socratic dialectic and its Apollonian publics intellectually involve people who are incited to
search for the good in the realm of ideas, in spite of the phenomenological flux and absurdity of
things. Dionysian publics do not try to check the becoming of reality, but instead, incite the
participants to live it as art, by making them become part of the story itself. In Socratic dialogues, disputing friends
critically question all established orders in their search for the rational or good order. Both the Dionysian and the Apollonian publics
can disturb an established order and institutions. The urge to control drives bureaucracies, which, in order to
effectively fix one type of reality, have
to destroy all forms of publics that have the potential to upset
order. In modern societies, bureaucracies impose an enlightenment model of rational order devoid of
mythical content and uncertain self-knowledge, upon a reality that is thereby made fully
intelligible, controllable and correctible. Nietzsche considers the European enlightenment as the modern successor to
the Socratic myth-annihilation, which characterizes the Apollonian publics.8 The enlightenment movement’s
confidence in the capacity of reason and its belief in the rational order of reality are Socratic in
origin. However, Nietzsche suggests that the enlightenment goes steps further than Socrates in its annihilation of myth. Although
Socrates ridicules and destroys the legendary tales of the tragedians, his dialogues are premised upon the myth of the Delphic oracle
(which revealed that there was no one wiser than Socrates). And, although Socrates maintains that reason rather than myth is the
foundation of European culture, reason, the nous, is itself a mythical entity (Nietzsche 2000: 72): the ‘voice of reason’ is the ‘divine
voice’ of Socrates’ daimonion, which makes itself be heard in the dialogues (Nietzsche 2000: 75). In the Dialectic of Enlightenment,
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, inspired by Nietzsche (c.f., Wellmer 1991: 3), maintain that theenlightenment
movement postulates a vision of reason that is devoid of mythical content. Enlightenment
reason, in its origin, seeks to make people think for themselves and to liberate them from their
fears and superstitions, but, in the modernization process, it becomes an instrument that serves
bureaucratic objectives, such as enforcing laws effectively, fixing a machine, or making a business run more efficiently.9
Horkheimer and Adorno (2007: 57) emphasize that Nietzsche, like Hegel before him, had grasped this pathology of
enlightenment reason that turns into a bureaucratic instrument. The reduction of the Socratic nous to an
instrumental reason has far-reached political and cultural implications. Enlightenment reason provides the static
concepts, mummified categories, classifications and catalogues that are required to construct bureaucratic limits
and boundaries, which in turn rationally order reality (Honneth 2007: 70). Dialogical or democratic
practices have no place in such a technical organization of reality. Bureaucracies, whose function is to
implement the enlightenment or any other theoretical model of reality, have no need for the Socratic publics and consider dialogues
and the need for intellectual justification rather troublesome and disorderly (Gouldner 1973: 76; Gardiner 2004: 35). The
(potential) participants of Socratic dialogues are turned into bureaucratic subjects, like workers,
consumers and clients, that is, into ‘spectators without influence’, whose lives are governed by the
enlightened power elites and civil servants (Honneth 2007: 33). The identity of bureaucratic subjects is
determined by typically large and powerful organizations, such as government agencies and
enterprises (Mills 1956: 355). The Enlightenment movement is, in Nietzsche’s words (2000: 85), ‘the most illustrious opponent
of the tragic world-view.’ Horkheimer and Adorno stress that the enlightenment movement, or perhaps more exactly, some kind of
process deriving from it, eventually comes to substitute the plebeian entertainment of mass culture industries for the tragic art of
the aesthetic publics. According to Nietzsche, bureaucratic
subjects who live in a disenchanted world in
which myths are annihilated by Apollonian reason cannot bear the horrific and absurd truth
about their own existence.10 The subjects of the culture industries no longer have the
opportunity to participate in enchanting tragic myths that cultivate powerful passions and the
Dionysian will to live, which characterize Nietzsche’s ‘good European’. The entertainment provided by manufactured images
and commodity forms, like music productions, films, television programmes and glossy magazines, ensures that the absurdity of life
and the Dionysian abyss are forgotten (Horkheimer and Adorno 2007: 159).11 Being
thoroughly rationalized, such
subjects cannot develop the mythical imagination or a certain sensitivity that would have
allowed them to ‘live the tragedy’ in and through the aesthetic publics. In a bureaucratic culture,
subjects cannot experience, feel or live the tragic fate of the Dionysian hero, because, as Nietzsche
(2000: 45) insists, shielded by bureaucracies, they are not ‘equipped for the most delicate and
intense suffering.’ Bureaucracies expect and demand passive obedience from their subjects, which makes
cultural movement nearly impossible. Such passive spectators or so-called ‘consumers of art’ (Shrum 1991: 349; 371), are,
Horkheimer and Adorno (2007: 155; 166) point out, deluded en masse, governed to take refuge in comfortable,
boring and mindless bureaucratic forms of entertainment. Culture industries provide ready-
made experiences to a passive public that is willing to buy them to fill the emptiness of a
disenchanted world and appease the cowardly fear of living in the flux, which they explicitly experience in
temporary relationships and the continuous flow of new products and changed consumption patterns. The experience of
the flux can also be more implicit or unconscious, resulting in a sort of malaise, feeling of
insecurity or restlessness. However, the escape from life into a manufactured dream-world of
cultural productions does not really quench the thirst, as the Socratic dialogue and the Dionysian festival do,
which, therefore, allows the culture industry to carry on with its provision of manufactured dream-
worlds, to fill an emptiness that never decreases.

The aff is trapped within the tautological incoherency of the argument room
Schlag 90 (Pierre, Prof of Law @ U Colorado Boulder, Normative and Nowhere to Go, Stanford Law Review, Nov 1990,
https://www.pravo.unizg.hr/_download/repository/SchlagSLR.pdf)

So much for the top ten of normative legal thought in the eighties. Now you may have noticed that there are only five entries in the top ten. That is because the rhetorical
situation of normative legal thought is even more desperate than I had initially imagined. To be sure, one could add other entries to the list, but then the redundancy quotient
would rise intolerably and things would become rather repetitive and boring. But then again, that is precisely one of my points. And there is no point in overdoing it--

normative legal thought is overdoing it all by itself, getting more repetitive all the time, asking "What should we do?
What should the law be? What do you propose?" over and over again. In fact, even as you read and even as I write, normative legal thought is busy urging
us (you and me) to ask these very same questions of this very essay at this very moment. "What should we do? What's the point?" asks normative legal thought. "If normative
legal thought isn't going anywhere, what should we do instead?" "What do you  propose?" "What's the solution?" These familiar questions are usually

asked in searching, serious, somber tones. There is no trace of irony in their articulation--no self-consciousness at all. It is as if the intellectual
legitimacy, the political import, of the questions were themselves self-evident, beyond question.
[FN27] "Yes, yes--but what should we do? How do these observations help?" Usually, the questions

are asked with such earnest, self-assured self- certainty that it is as if the body of knowledge
that enables the questions to be stated in the first place were somehow outside the problem,
outside the difficulty--already intellectually whole, already politically competent to provide the
answers. [FN28] *178 "Right, right, but the question is, what should we do with all this?" Now you'll notice that here the "What should we do?" is an interruption. It is an
interruption posing as an origin. It poses as an origin in that it takes itself to be the original motivation for engaging in legal thought. [FN29] And yet here, the "What
should we do?" interrupts the process of trying to understand what enterprise we, as legal thinkers, are already engaged in.
It interrupts the process of attempting to reveal the character of our disciplines and our practices as legal thinkers. "O.K., O.K., but how would such revelations help us decide
what we should do?" You'll notice that here (as elsewhere) normative legal thought has a very pressing and urgent tone. It wants to know right away what should be done. Right
away. And true to its name, normative legal thought wants to engage right away in the enterprise of norm-selection. Normative legal thought wants to decide as quickly as
possible which norm (which doctrine, which rule, which theory) should govern a particular activity. Now as intellectually stifling and politically narrow as the enterprise of norm-
selection may be, [FN30] it still offers legal thinkers some residual possibility of posing interesting philosophical, social, psychological, economic, or semiotic inquiries about law.

Yet normative legal thought can't wait to shut down these intellectual and political openings as well. It
cannot wait to envelop these inquiries in its own highly stylized ethical-moral form of norm- justification. Normative legal thought cannot wait to enlist epistemology, semiotics,
social theory or any other enterprise in its own ethical-moral argument structures about the right, the good, the useful, the efficient (or any of their doctrinally crystallized
derivatives). It cannot wait to reduce world views, attitudes, demonstrations, provocations, and thought itself, to norms. In short, it cannot wait to tell you (or somebody else)
what to do. In fact, normative legal thought is so much in a hurry that it will tell you what to do even though there is not the slightest chance that you might actually be in a
position to do it. For instance, when was the last time you were in a position to put the difference principle [FN31] into effect, or to restructure *179 the doctrinal corpus of the
first amendment? "In the future, we should . . . . " When was the last time you were in a position to rule whether judges should become pragmatists, efficiency purveyors, civic
republicans, or Hercules surrogates? Normative legal thought doesn't seem overly concerned with such worldly questions about the character and the effectiveness of its own

despite its obvious desire to have worldly

discourse. It just goes along and proposes, recommends, prescribes, solves, and resolves. Yet

effects, worldly consequences, normative legal thought remains seemingly unconcerned that for
all practical purposes, its only consumers are legal academics and perhaps a few law students--
persons who are virtually never in a position to put any of its wonderful normative advice into
effect. [FN32)
 DSRB
Simulation ignores the colonialist legacy of the federal government
Reid-Brinkley 8 (Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley, University of Pittsburgh Department of Communications, “THE HARSH
REALITIES OF “ACTING BLACK”: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL
PERFORMANCE AND STYLE” 2008)

Genre Violation Four: Policymaker as Impersonal and the Rhetoric of Personal Experience. Debate is a competitive game.112 It
requires that its participants take on the positions of state actors (at least when they are affirming the
resolution). Debate resolutions normally call for federal action in some area of domestic or foreign
policy. Affirmative teams must support the resolution, while the negative negates it. The debate then becomes a “laboratory”
within which debaters may test policies.113 Argumentation scholar Gordon Mitchell notes that “Although they may
research and track public argument as it unfolds outside the confines of the laboratory for
research purposes, in this approach students witness argumentation beyond the walls of the
academy as spectators, with little or no apparent recourse to directly participate or alter the
course of events.”114 Although debaters spend a great deal of time discussing and researching
government action and articulating arguments relevant to such action, what happens in debate
rounds has limited or no real impact on contemporary governmental policy making. And
participation does not result in the majority of the debate community engaging in activism around the issues they research. Mitchell
observes that the stance of the policymaker in debate comes with a “sense of detachment associated
with the spectator posture.”115 In other words, its participants are able to engage in debates where
they are able to distance themselves from the events that are the subjects of debates. Debaters
can throw around terms like torture, terrorism, genocide and nuclear war without blinking. Debate
simulations can only serve to distance the debaters from real world participation in the political
contexts they debate about. As William Shanahan remarks: …the topic established a relationship through
interpellation that inhered irrespective of what the particular political affinities of the debaters
were. The relationship was both political and ethical, and needed to be debated as such. When
we blithely call for United States Federal Government policymaking, we are not immune to the
colonialist legacy that establishes our place on this continent. We cannot wish away the horrific
atrocities perpetrated everyday in our name simply by refusing to acknowledge these
implications” (emphasis in original).116The “objective” stance of the policymaker is an impersonal or
imperialist persona. The policymaker relies upon “acceptable” forms of evidence, engaging in logical
discussion, producing rational thoughts. As Shanahan, and the Louisville debaters’ note, such a stance is integrally linked
to the normative, historical and contemporary practices of power that produce and maintain
varying networks of oppression. In other words, the discursive practices of policy oriented
debate are developed within, through and from systems of power and privilege. Thus, these practices
are critically implicated in the maintenance of hegemony. So, rather than seeing themselves as government or
state actors, Jones and Green choose to perform themselves in debate, violating the more
“objective” stance of the “policymaker” and require their opponents to do the same.
 Education
Debate teaches terrible research skills—it requires quick decisions after
information overload and doesn’t universalize its benefits to policy skills or
democracy
Andrejevic 13 (Mark, Assoc Prof, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, U of Queensland, Infoglut:
How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know, Kindle edition)
If it is impossible to be fully informed, in the sense of knowing all of the available accounts of the world (and the accounts about the
accounts), it is also necessarily impossible for any particular account to be complete and anything other than partial - in both senses
of the word. We
have all become intelligence analysts sorting through more data than we can
absorb with - and tins is one of the recurring themes of the book - what are proving to be inadequate resources for
adjudicating amongst the diverse array of narratives. We have become, in a sense, like the intelligence analysts overwhelmed
by a tsunami of information or the market researcher trying to make sense of the exploding data “troves” they have created and
captured. In this regard, an era of information overload does not merely change our understanding of how- much
information is available to us; it also corresponds to changes in the way we think about the role of information in our
economic, political, and social lives. This book is, in large part, about the nature of these shifts. If it is, indeed, the case that a
growing number of people, from intelligence analysts to citizens, are facing the prospect of unprecedented access to mediated
forms of information, then it is worth exploring the ways in which people are adjusting to a changing understanding of how
information is treated in a data-saturated world. Unsurprisingly, oneof the characteristic responses to the perceived
surfeit of information has been the cultivation of techniques for cutting through the information clutter - shortcuts for
managing large amounts of information without necessarily having to delve into, engage with, or even
understand it. These techniques vary greatly according to one’s position with respect to the database: data miners, for
example, have access to resources for storing and sorting large quantities of data that are not available to the typical worker or
consumer. Nevertheless, the
data miner and the Web surfer are united by a common logic - the need to
make sense of a welter of information for the purposes of decision-making. The following chapters will
explore a range of diverse responses to the challenge of making sense of information in an era of data surfeit - one in which
traditional models of representation and comprehension are called into question not just by the sheer volume of data, but by a
reflexive awareness of its incompleteness: its partiality. These approaches to the challenges posed by information overload
range across disparate realms of social practice but share
a unifying thread: the attempt to find a shortcut that
bypasses the need to comprehend proliferating narrative or referential representations,
whether these are in the form of descriptive data, first-person accounts, or expert analysis. The
range of approaches covered in this book is meant to be indicative, rather than exhaustive, and includes the following: data mining
and predictive analytics (which automate information processing and displace explanation with correlation); sentiment analysis
(which purports to translate emotional response and individual opinions into machine readable data that can bemined); prediction
markets (which replace credentialed expertise with aggregate demand and calls this wisdom); body language analysis (which
privileges immediate bodily reactions over the vagaries of narrative content) and neuro-marketing (a form of body language analysis
that requires special equipment). These strategies for cutting through the information clutter vary widely in terms of the resources
and techniques they draw- on, not least because managing large amounts of data can be an expensive and resource intensive
proposition. At the same time, they are united not just by the problem they address - how- to make sense of more data than can be
fully understood or absorbed (or, and I will argue that this is a related development, how- to bypass the contrived character of
representation) - but also by the solution they envisage: an attempt to bypass or short-circuit the problem of comprehension and
the forms of discursive, narrative representation upon which it relies. This might sound at first like a somewhat opaque formulation,
but it is one that will become clearer with the help of the examples and case studies that follow. Because information is
crucial to the functioning of any society - and widespread access to information is an important aspect of a democratic
society - the shifting information environment has important consequences for questions of
power and politics. Thus, the following chapters will consider the societal implications of a new- information landscape in
which only the few- have access to the infrastructure for storing and making sense of large
amounts of data. It will also consider the political implications of the challenges to traditional models of sense-making posed
by a reflexive aw-areness of the partial character of mediated forms of representation. The Changing Landscape of Information and
Power Once upon a time, in an era of relative media and data scarcity, the political control of information relied upon
attempts to define and reinforce dominant narratives that accorded with the interests of those in power. Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels’s famous formulation in The German Ideology captured this version of ideological control: “The ideas of the ruling class are in
every epoch the ruling ideas ... The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time
over the means of mental production ... therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is
self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas. This
understanding of the relationship of ideas to power meant that attacks on dominant interests relied at least in part on challenges to
the dominant understandings of the world upon which they depended. Similarly, economic control of
information meant
securing the most accurate and up-to-date information about prices and the variables likely to affect them. In
still another register, police control of information meant targeting wTongdoers: finding the evidence to identify, catch, and
prosecute lawbreakers. In an era of information glut, however, new strategies of control emerge alongside
these: in the political realm, information control over information no longer necessarily depends upon
sustaining a dominant narrative; in the financial realm, as in that of policing and security, data collection leads to large-
scale strategies of correlation, prediction, and pre-emption that would have been impossible in the pre-digital era. This shift, to the
extent that it accurately characterizes a changing relationship between ways of knowing and forms of power, heralds a
reconfiguration of our understanding of the political implications of challenges to dominant narratives - of the
efficacy of “speaking truth to power.” It also augers a changed understanding of the role played by data in managing
markets and securing the population - themes that will be taken up in subsequent chapters. Consider an example from the political
realm, in which the
proliferation of narratives and counter-narratives, of fact-checking and critiques
of fact-checking, can all work to multiply the available accounts of reality to the point that it
becomes difficult to adjudicate between them based on the constantly moving evidence. The
George W. Bush administration relied on a proliferating tangle of multiple and conflicting narratives to manage the
revelation that US troops in the initial stages of the Iraq invasion had failed to secure the huge weapons cache at the Al QaQaa
facility - a site that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had repeatedly warned the administration about, describing it as
“the greatest explosives bonanza in history.”2 The revelation of the missing explosives, coming as it did in the midst of the 2004
presidential campaign, might have been devastating to Bush, whose administration had, despite repeated warnings and its alleged
goal of discovering “weapons of mass destruction,” apparently allowed some 380 tons of high-grade explosives, ideal for the
purposes of concealed, portable bombs, to fall into enemy hands, providing ample armaments for an extended and violent
resistance. The way the administration handled the revelation, which it had tried to keep under wTaps by preventing the IAEA from
inspecting the site, was instructive: rather
than providing a “dominant” narrative of what had happened, it did its
best to exploit the fog of war to throw- up a series of often contradictory explanations. This
might be described, following the philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s invocation of Freud, as the “borrowed kettle” alibi of
power. The term refers to the multiplication of contradictory- narratives refuting apparent facts:
confronted with the fact that a borrow-ed kettle was returned with a hole in it, the person accused of breaking it responds with
several mutually contradictory excuses: “there
was already a hole when I borrowed it; the hole wasn’t
there when I returned it; I didn’t even borrow- the kettle. Such forms of narrative multiplication
have become a hallmark of the media strategy of what might be described as the postmodern right for
handling political debates that they appear to be losing, such as that over climate change: global
warming does not exist; even if it does exist, it is not caused by man-made activity; if there is
global warming it could have beneficial effects (longer growing seasons, etc.); the world is actually
getting cooler, etc.
 Education Topic Specific
Their research perpetuates the errors of policy focus – it is controlled by
intermediary organizations dedicated solely to profit
Gulson & Lubienski 14 (Kalervo, sociologist of education at the University of New South
Wales and Christopher, professor of education policy at Indiana University, “The New Political
Economy of Education Policy: Cultural Politics, Mobility and the Market”, Knowledge Cultures,
June 2014,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265786744_Gulson_K_Lubienski_C_2014_The_New
_Political_Economy_of_Education_Policy_Cultural_Politics_Mobility_and_the_Market_Knowled
ge_Cultures_2_2_170-180)KJR
One of the key emphases in New Political Economy is the role of information in politics and policy making. One focus is on the ideas
of ‘imperfect information’ (Besley, 2007) – an epistemology, or more precisely the ontology of politics and decision making about
the possibility of completeness, and a priori notions of action, that derives from the idealisation of the rational decision maker in
Public Choice Theory. This work has tended to focus on formal politics and the role of politicians and voters (Besley, 2007). Other
related workhas examined, from what Besley calls the ‘informational perspective’, the role of
policy research and knowledge. ‘This informational perspective on politics leaves a role for the
study of information providers such as the media and civil society (thinktanks and policy
analysts) in improving politics’ (Besley, 2007: 581), and, we would add, policy. There is almost a delicate nativity to
this position of ‘improving’ that speaks to the need to conceptualise the power/ knowledge nexus. If we were to take an
informational perspective as part of the new political economy of policy, we might see that policy knowledge and
research can be part of what Dean calls ‘neoliberal thought collectives’. For Dean a thought collective: has spaces
for different voices and processes of discovery while at the same time permitting the crystallization of a new consensus. Such a view
allows for a multiplicity of viewpoints and different national and transnational developments, borrowings and mutations (Dean,
2012: 2). Crucially, these thought
collectives are part of creating, and contributing to, new forms of
educational markets at the policy-research nexus. As Ball has noted, there are significant changes to the
connections between civil society, the state and the market (Ball, 2012). We suggest that what has been taken up in recent studies
of education policy and politics is mapping and critiquing the nexus of power/ knowledge and new spatialities of knowledge
movement and mobility (Ball, 2012; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). This provides an extension to the comparative focus of new political
economy (Gamble et al., 1996), by providing a relational foci; it points to the limits to comparativism and the possibilities of
interconnections rather than contrast. Much recent work speaks to what we noted above – the combining of new conceptualisations
in policy studies with identification of the utility of policy research. We note that this research, some of which one of us has been
undertaking (Lubienski), is somewhat remedial in intent; seeking to 177 strengthen the weak link between research and education
policymaking, for example, by focusing on the availability of information, its advocacy and associated agendas. Unfortunately, this
can entail the neglect of symbolic production and consumption of research in policymaking
processes, as actors look to empirical evidence to legitimise structures of power and influence. Thus, the contestations of
power encourage traditional and new actors to shape research production and consumption
(Lubienski, Scott, & DeBray, In press). For as Lubienski, Scott and DeBray (2011) note, debates about the ‘effectiveness’ of
educational interventions are bringing to the fore the ways in which non-government dimensions are becoming crucial to
understanding education policy changes. In noting the rise of what are termed intermediary organisations —
that is, organisations that play a crucial role in selecting, interpreting, packaging and marketing research
evidence for policymakers — in knowledge production and advocacy around educational policy, they note: the
institutionalization of extra-governmental forces in the policy-making process. Indeed, we are seeing new institutional
forms emerging that re-shaping the political economy – that is, the institutional relationships –
of research production and use in education. Specifically, new intermediary organizations are
increasingly determining the body of research made available for the policymaking process by
‘brokering’ evidence (Lubienski, Scott, & DeBray, 2011: n.p.) Such analyses can be subversive in adopting
aspects of neoliberal analyses in conceiving of policymaking processes as markets, while
concurrently critiquing the encroachment of markets into public policymaking. For instance, in
conceptualizing research evidence as a consumable good, Lubienski, Scott and DeBray (In press) note the
limitations of markets as they advantage intermediaries “selling” research by capitalising on
informational asymmetries over consumers. Consequently, in these new policy (quasi)markets, success is
due to the marketing of ideas by these groups. It is thus possible to chart the trajectories of research
claims across, and echo chambers within, these networks (Jabbar, Goldie, Linick, & Lubienski, In press).

Their traditional understanding of policy favors the establishment in ways that

disadvantage society writ large
Trowler 2 (Paul, Professor in Higher Education at Lancaster University, “Higher Education
Policy and Institutional Change Intentions and Outcomes in Turbulent Environments”, The
Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press, 2002,
http://www.mheducation.co.uk/openup/chapters/033520919X.PDF)KJR
I want first to highlight the issue of agency and structure, which Bleiklie frames in terms of the actor’s perspective and the structural
perspective. Agentic understandings of the policy process prioritize actors’ perceptions,
perspectives, preferences, actions and interactions. By contrast structuralist perspectives
emphasize the ways in which these are conditioned by forces beyond the individual and which
consequently give rise to a certain degree of regularity and predictability in social behaviour
which would not be present if behaviour were wholly agentic. Ball (1994) highlights the significance of this
contrast for policy-making and implementation in his discussion of policy as text and policy as discourse. Viewing policy as
discourse draws attention to the ways in which discursive repertoires delimit what can and
cannot be thought about as well as what is on, and off, the policy agenda. Discourses do not simply
describe reality, they help create it by offering or denying the communicative resources available to
frame it. Here the emphasis is on the way behaviour and ideas are constrained by factors external to the individual and the
group. The perspective is a structural one; the constraining effect of the discursive context comes
to the fore, a context which can affect formal policy-makers as well as those at the ground level
(Bacchi 2000). Pring’s excellent book provides an illustration in relation to the language of business applied to higher education,
including the mechanistic language of educational outcomes much used by the British Quality Assurance Agency in its subject
reviews – the focus of Morley’s chapter: the
language of education through which we are asked to ‘think in
business terms’ constitutes a new way of thinking about the relation of teacher and learner. It employs different
metaphors, different ways of describing and evaluating educational activities. In so doing it changes those activities into something
else. It transforms the moral context in which education takes place and is judged successful or otherwise . . . So mesmerized have
we become with the importance of ‘cost efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’ that we have failed to see that the very nature of the
enterprise has been redefined . . . Oncethe teacher ‘delivers’ someone else’s curriculum with its precisely
defined ‘product’, there is little room for that transaction in which the teacher, rooted in a
particular cultural tradition, responds to the needs of the learner. When the learner becomes a
‘client’ or ‘customer’, there is no room for the traditional apprenticeship into the community of
learners. When the ‘product’ is Introduction 11 the measureable ‘target’ on which ‘performance’ is ‘audited’, then little
significance is attached to the ‘struggle to make sense’ or the deviant and creative response. (Pring 2000: 25–6; emphasis in original)
While we can see several examples of the unreflective use of managerialist discourse by further/higher education managers quoted
in Morgan-Klein and Murphy’s chapter, for example, Pring is overgeneralizing when he claims that we – educationists, researchers,
educational managers – have all become mesmerized by the language of outcomes and of business and finance. A
more
agentic perspective which views policy as text stresses the role of actors in the policy process,
including their ability to contest, negotiate and reconstruct both policy and the discourse in
which it is encoded (Trowler 2001). Policy decoding is an active (re)interpretive process from this
perspective – one involving creative reinvention by those who ‘receive’ policy texts.

Federal legislation is heavily influenced by political interest groups and harms

the oppressed
Khan 94 (Ali, Doctor of Law at Washburn University, Howard Law Journal Fall, 1994,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41558873_Lessons_from_Malcolm_X_Freedom_by_
Any_Means_Necessary)KJR

As compared to a constitutional amendment, a federal statute is easier to process, requiring a

lesser political consensus. [FN71] Federal statutes can also effect a national social change.
[FN72] In the past few decades, important federal legislation has been passed in the United
States to remove unacceptable encumbrances on the right to political participation in the affairs
of the state, to discourage employment discrimination on the basis of race and color, and to
strengthen civil and political liberties of the disadvantaged groups. Yet, even federal legislation
as a means of change does not always work to the advantage of politically weak groups. In
addition to prejudice and lack of sympathy that national representatives might have against an
oppressed group, the process of legislating is dependent upon wealthy and politically influential
interest groups. Due to the excessive cost of getting elected, the lawmakers pay special
attention to campaign contributors who may have no interest in fighting injustice in the society.
Consequently, oppression will continue to exist if *98 the oppressed group lacks the resources
to "purchase" a piece of national legislation. [FN73] At local and state levels, legislation offers
the most effective means of social change. Since local and state laws affect daily life in prosaic
details, they may determine, limit, and even frustrate the choices of an oppressed group with
respect to employment, education, marriage, and housing. [FN74] In the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, local and state laws established, maintained, and defended an intricate
network of slavery. [FN75] In the not too distant past, local and state laws segregated schools,
beaches, cemeteries, toilets, drinking fountains, seating in public transportation and
restaurants, and prohibited interracial marriage.

The structure of modern education blurs the line between the economic and non-economic to
promote neoliberalism

Gulson & Lubienski 14 (Kalervo, sociologist of education at the University of New South
Wales and Christopher, professor of education policy at Indiana University, “The New Political
Economy of Education Policy: Cultural Politics, Mobility and the Market”, Knowledge Cultures,
June 2014,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265786744_Gulson_K_Lubienski_C_2014_The_New
_Political_Economy_of_Education_Policy_Cultural_Politics_Mobility_and_the_Market_Knowled
ge_Cultures_2_2_170-180)KJR

The shifting boundaries between the economic and non-economic are endemic to late capitalist states
and forms of neoliberal governance. As Peters notes, the Scottish Enlightenment provides a way of seeing economics and
politics as separate subjects for the first time, at the advent of the era of classification and specialisation. This separation in political
economy, for writers such as Mill, Marx and Smith, was not there, rather ‘political economy was seen as a unified social science,
rather than simply as the science of the economy’ (Milonakis & Fine, 2009: 2). Twentieth century political economy
was most concerned with: …the relationship between the state and the economy. This involved
different visions of its ideal institutional form as well as theoretical and empirical analysis of agencies and structures, and debates on
the principles and substance of public policy (Gamble et al., 1996: 5) The separation occurs
in the move from
classical political economy to neoclassical economics, in which ‘political economy became
economics, through the desocialisation and dehistoricisation of the dismal science’ and that ‘this heralded the
separation of economics from the other social sciences at the beginning of the twentieth century’ (Milonakis & Fine, 2009: 1), as
economics claimed special legitimacy as a science with universal, if a-contextual, laws. Yet the
boundaries of the
economic and non-economic are paradoxical for while the study of the economy was separated
from the social sciences, the economic has come be the new set of assumptions that permeate
privileged attempts to understand social, cultural and political life (Lubienski, 2006; Lubienski & Lubienski,
2013) (more on this below). What we are interested in, then, is the emergence of 172 the New Political Economy as a conceptual
intervention into, and a disruption of the dominance of, economics in the social sciences, and in social, political and cultural life as
part of neoliberalism. Besley (2007) states that, ‘[t]he
aim of the New Political Economy is to understand
important issues that arise in the policy sphere’ (p.570). This, however, is not an exercise purely in evaluation,
though Besley does identify that there should be a concern with effectiveness. Rather, the New Political Economy re-articulates the
economic. Maier, in tracing the ways the state and the market have been examined, argues that political economy should
interrogate ‘economic doctrines to disclose their sociological and political premises’ (Maier, 1987: 4). The first editorial of the journal
New Political Economy (1996) pointed to the need for new theories, concepts and methodologies for a changing world. Specifically
the editors were concerned that ‘old’ political economy reinforced dichotomies of structure and agency, economy and politics. The
New Political Economy is thus required, or at least argued, to have a need for theoretical eclecticism that refuses dichotomies, in
which new theoretical developments are encouraged to understand the new terrain of the state and the economy. Besley
characterises this as a tool kit, where ‘the key issue in any analysis is to pick the theoretical framework that will give an insightful and
transparent account of the phenomenon at hand. There is no reason to believe that any single theoretical account will come to
dominate’ (Besley, 2007: 578) parallel to Ball’s call in 1993 for a diverse approach to policy analysis. Ball’s claim rested: in the
analysis of complex social issues – like policy – two theories are probably better than one, or to put it another way, the complexity
and scope of policy analysis – from an interest in the workings of the state to a concern with contexts of practice and the
distributional outcomes of policy – precludes the possibility of successful single theory explanations. What we need in policy analysis
is a toolbox of diverse concepts and theories… (Ball, 2006: 43, original emphasis) A key theoretical frame proposed by Gamble et al.
(1996) focuses on theories of cultural politics and identity, notably theories that ‘stress homogeneity and difference, the complexity
of identity in the circumstances of the modern world, its constantly shifting forms, and the role of discourses both in creating agency
and possibility as well as reflecting relationships of power and domination’ (p.8). This is firmly within the remit of critical orientations
to policy studies, including policy sociology, in which power is crucial. Specifically, ‘the focus on policy should be regarded as part of
the broader interest in power in education and 173 society’ (Simons, Olssen, & Peters, 2009: 37). This has been expanded to work
that has examined cultural politics and identity most specifically (e.g., Fataar, 2009; Gulson, 2011), but always in reference to the
political assumption that markets are naturalized. This is speak, not of a neoliberal state, but perhaps a form of governing – that is,
distinguishing between ‘the state and what might be called the regimes of government of and by the state’ (Dean, 2012: 6).
Critical studies of urban education policy have attempted to trace these new forms of governing
in the ways in which education policy processes and practices related to urban schooling create
new forms of urban life, while being constituted by urban changes. This focus on the mutually constitutive nature of
education policy and the city is part of what Lipman calls the ‘new political economy of urban education’, in which education is
part of ‘power and conflict, particularly the role of capital and race in the spatial structuring of
the city and urban life’ (Lipman, 2011: 3).
 A2: Freire indicts
No perm – revolutionary action requires concrete commitment, not shifting
Freire 68 (Paulo, Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical
pedagogy, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, originally published in Portuguese circa 1968,
published online at Archive.org, 3/11/16,
https://archive.org/stream/PedagogyOfTheOppressed-English-
PauloFriere/oppressed_djvu.txt)KJR**modified for gendered language

Those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly. This
conversion is so radical as not to allow for ambivalent behaviour. To affirm this commitment but to
consider oneself the proprietor of revolu-tionary wisdom - which must then be given to (or imposed on) the
people - is to retain the old ways. The man person** who proclaims devotion to the cause of liberation
yet is unable to enter into communion with the people, whom he they continues to regard as totally ignorant,
is grievously self-deceived. The convert who approaches the people but feels alarm at each step they take, each doubt
they express, and each suggestion they offer, and attempts to impose his their** ‘status’, remains nostalgic towards his their**
origins.

(Speaking for others) Invoking the voice of the oppressed without their active
participation is an attempt to transform them in to manipulatable masses – it
reintrenches oppression
Freire 68 (Paulo, Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical
pedagogy, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, originally published in Portuguese circa 1968,
published online at Archive.org, 3/11/16,
https://archive.org/stream/PedagogyOfTheOppressed-English-
PauloFriere/oppressed_djvu.txt)KJR**modified for gendered language

Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at
whatever stage their struggle for liberation has reached. The content of that dialogue can and should vary in
accordance, with historical conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality. But to substitute monologue,
slogans and communiqués for dialogue is to try to liberate the oppressed with the instruments of
domestication. Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the
act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building; it is to lead them
into the populist pitfall and transform them into masses which can be manipulated. At all stages of
their liberation, the oppressed must see themselves as men people** engaged in the ontological and historical vocation of becoming
more fully human. Reflection and action become imperative when one does not erroneously attempt to create a dichotomy
between the content of humanity and its historical forms. The insistence that the oppressed engage in reflection on their concrete
situation is not a call to armchair revolution. On the contrary, reflection - true reflection - leads to action. On the other
hand, when the situation calls for action, that action will constitute an authentic praxis only if its consequences become the object of
critical reflection. In this sense, the praxis is the new raison d’etre of the oppressed; and the revolution, which inaugurates the
historical moment of this raison d’etre, is not viable apart from their concomitant conscious involvement. Otherwise, action is pure
activism.
Language is a key component of a successful movement- our personal
experiences of the oppression allow for solidarity and later liberation
Hendricks 94 (Sarah, Director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, “Paulo Freire
publishes Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, History of Education,
http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_schugurensky/assignment1/1994pedhope.html) MJG

Freire carefully deconstructs language as a powerful tool capable of cultivating either

dominance or freedom. Freire begins by sharing his personal experience during a one day
seminar in the 1950s when he received "the clearest and most bruising lesson" (p. 24) in his life
as an educator. The lesson which influenced Freire so distinctly was delivered through a
labourer who sat in the audience that night listening to Freire's presentation. After Freire
concluded, the labourer stood up and directly challenged Freire to understand the world and its
reality of the people to whom he addressed. Through the use of his "labourer's syntax and
rhythm" (p. 26) and through the employment of metaphors "so common to popular discourse"
(p. 26), this labourer, whom Freire tells us he has never forgotten, painted a picture of the
people's existence, including their poverty, language, homes and families, and thus greatly
influenced the development of Freire's pedagogical conception of education. Consequently,
Freire shares and develops this challenge with all potential progressive educators: to
understand, appreciate, and respect the "knowledge of living experience"3 as expressed
through the specific language of popular discourse. Thus, the task of democratic progressive
education includes the enabling of "the popular classes to develop their language...which,
emerging from and returning upon their reality, sketches out the conjectures, the designs, the
anticipations of their new world" (p. 39). It is language which forms a knowledge of living
experience that is essential to the practice of a pedagogy of hope.

Freire’s method of liberation and language to employ it are different- he has

apologized and become more inclusive
Hendricks 94 (Sarah, Director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, “Paulo Freire
publishes Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, History of Education,
http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_schugurensky/assignment1/1994pedhope.html) MJG

Firstly, Freire responds to the criticism that erupted in the 1970s against the sexist language
which, in his words, "marks the whole book" (p. 65). Freire acknowledges and concurs with this
criticism, apologizing for his use of neo-colonial and discriminatory language which is
incompatible with his message of liberation (p. 65). Although some feminists remain critical
towards Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in spite of the inclusive Twentieth Anniversary Edition,
others seek to differentiate between his message of liberation and the language of which he
employed.8
A2: Neg Framework Args
Deliberation
 Deliberation Hurts Government
Deliberation decreases government legitimacy
Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)

But Cohen discovers that as

soon as the setting is shifted to one in which the decision maker, or allocator, might
receive differentiated payoffs depending upon the decision rendered, any salubrious effects of
voice vanish and are replaced by “frustration” effects (see also Folger 1977). The evidence is clear that when the
allocator and the recipient are in more of a zero-sum relationship, a real danger exists that people
will perceive a process permitting voice to be insincere. This only makes sense. Imagine two situations, both
involving a person (A) making a decision that benefits A at person B’s expense. In one situation, A makes the decision without any
input from B. In the other situation, A makes the decision after B has made an impassioned plea for an outcome more beneficial to
himself. Is it not likely that B would be less accepting of the outcome in the second situation? After all, B’s opportunity to provide
input into the decision makes it certain that A was aware of B’s plight. A looked B right in the eye and decided against B and for A. Is
there any reason to expect that such a situation would produce anything other than frustration effects? In the eyes of
participants, the opportunity for voice was obviously nothing but a sham.13 These results are incredibly
damaging to Lind and Tyler’s (1988) contentions about the beneficial consequences of voice. They try to pass them off by claiming
that if Cohen had permitted “stronger voice” in the process, subjects would have been happy. “Even under conditions of severe
conflict of interest . . . any relatively strong procedural justice difference will produce higher satisfaction and distributive fairness”
(183–4). But they offer no evidence for this contention and it seems more likely to us that stronger voice would lead only to stronger
frustrations with a high-handed and selfish decision maker. Lind and Tyler (1988) also try to refute Cohen’s contentions by saying
the frustration effect “is a very rare phenomenon indeed” (183) and that frustration effects tend to occur “only when there are
other reasons to be suspicious of the procedure” (201). They further claim that people have a “tendency to believe that procedures
function as they are said to function” (184). This is the key difference between our position and that of Lind and Tyler. Far from
being “rare,” we believe that such
situations are the norm, certainly in the political arena. People are
incredibly suspicious of the motivations of political decision makers. People believe almost every action by
members of Congress is produced by selfish desires: to get reelected, to raise campaign money, to get a free trip overseas or some
other gift, or to increase the chances of receiving a cushy, well-paying job upon leaving Congress. The accuracy of people’s
perceptions is not at issue here, only that these negative perceptions of politicians’ motives are extremely
common. People are always looking for ulterior reasons for the actions of decision makers, and unless heroic constraints are in
place (such as those surrounding judges), they assume such base motives are present. Evidence that voice in nonlegal
political settings leads to feelings of less legitimacy can be found in several places, including Tyler’s
own research on politics. He hypothesizes that the perceived ability to “make arguments to” or to “influence
decisions of” a political body (such as Congress) should lead an individual to be more favorable
toward that body, but he finds that this relationship never materializes. In fact, the relationship is
always negative and sometimes reaches statistical significance (see Tyler 1994; Tyler and Mitchell 1994),
suggesting that the greater a person’s perceived involvement with a political entity, the less that
person tends to like or respect that entity. In standard political situations, then, the research indicates that
participation generally leads people to be more frustrated and to view the process and outcome
as being less legitimate, not more. Further evidence that inclusive procedures do not increase and may decrease
satisfaction in standard political situations can be found in recent experimental work. As mentioned above, Amy Gangl
(2000) created an experimental setting by having respondents read passages describing different styles of congressional process.
Some subjects read of a legislative process that was procedurally fair (neutral decision makers, balanced discussion of the issue, and
a wide variety of voices included). Others read of a legislative process that was procedurally unfair (self-serving decision makers,
combative discussion of the issue, and only one side included). Gangl’s results show that, as she predicted, the “neutral, balanced”
process markedly increased subjects’ perceptions that the process is legitimate, as did the “non-self-serving decision maker,
combative” process.14 But Gangl was perplexed to find that the
“people have voice” process elicited no
significant increase in perceived legitimacy. In fact, the sign was usually negative. But such a result
is perfectly consistent with mounting evidence that voice, whether it be weak (vote) or strong
(deliberative), does not make people feel better about political processes. People want neutral, non-self-
serving decision makers, and if they can get them without having to participate themselves, they will be happy. Michael Morrell
(1999) presents similar results employing a completely different experimental approach. Rather than having subjects read about a
process, Morrell had them actually participate in one of two possible processes. His hypothesis was that “citizens participating in
strong democratic procedures will have higher levels of collective decision acceptance than citizens participating in traditional [i.e.,
weaker] liberal democratic procedures” (302). But he was surprised to discover that the
participatory decision-making
process did not lead to heightened satisfaction or to perceptions that the process was more
legitimate. In fact, in some manifestations of the experiment, the subjects involved in the participatory process
saw the process as less legitimate and, accordingly, were less satisfied with it. Morrell accurately
concludes that his results “do not support Barber’s contention that strong democratic procedures will create greater collective
decision acceptance” (310), because “the group using traditional liberal democratic procedures showed greater levels of collective
decision acceptance, assumption reevaluation, and group satisfaction than the group using strong democratic procedures” (313).
Morrell’s attempted explanation for his findings is directly in line with our beliefs. Participatory procedures
“require
participants to open themselves up in ways with which they may not be comfortable” (317) and
“can create an atmosphere of disconnection and dislike. Rather than bringing citizens together,
these types of structures of participation can only exacerbate already present divisions” (318). Tali
Mendelberg’s extremely thorough literature review of the psychological research on the
consequences of citizen deliberation in politics comes to a very similar conclusion. Noting that
deliberation typically brings inequality and greater conflict, she characterizes the empirical
evidence for the benefits of citizen deliberation as “thin or nonexistent” (2002: 4).

More deliberation makes government less efficient

Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)

On top of all this, people

are frustrated by the plodding pace and inefficient nature of government,
something largely attributable to deliberation. The central reason for inefficiencies is that
democracy requires everyone to have their say. As Stark (1995: 96) puts it, “the more a system values
giving everyone a voice . . . the less it can value speed and effectiveness. All those voices have to be
heard.” So in addition to the other delegitimizing elements of participation, it also is a direct
contributor to the governmental inefficiencies people dislike so much.

More deliberation means less government legitimacy

Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)

Why do people approve of the Supreme Court more than any other political institution? Is it
because people are routinely involved in Supreme Court decision making? No. The Court is more insular than any
other political institution, and people like it for that very reason. People do not have to participate in or even
see the deliberations of the Court (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1995). From the standpoint of preserving public support, Chief Justices
Warren and Rehnquist were quite right to fight to keep the press as far away from the Court as possible.15 If
someone made
a videotape of the justices vigorously debating in conference and showed it to everyone in the
nation, people would not feel warmed by the frank sharing of views, whether the exchanges
were characterized by reciprocity or not. If anything, deliberation reduces people’s satisfaction;
it does not increase it. This is true whether they are involved in the deliberation themselves or
whether they observe others doing it. The relentlessly open quality of congressional procedures
is one of the reasons Congress is among the least liked institutions, political or nonpolitical.
 Ressentiment
The deliberative model is both violent and ends any democracy they want to
create
Stuhr 7 (john, Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair,
pragmatism with ressentiment,
http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/USC/PD12.html)

Deliberative democratic theory holds out the hope that a people, or peoples, if you like, can talk
and reason together well enough to work out their differences and arrive at policy directions
that would be amenable to all involved. This hope is not shared by all. It is shared readily by many analytic
philosophers (those analysts who are willing, anyway, to dally with values), since analytic philosophers generally
accept that there is an objective and shared world that can be accessed and evaluated with
language. However, it is not generally shared or accepted by continental philosophers who harbor
a long suspicion, heralded by the masters of suspicion (Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud), that all is rarely what it
seems to be, that history is made behind the backs of men, that power is too often wielded out of ressentiment rather than
strength, and that what we say may be largely influenced by what we are unwilling and unable to acknowledge. As a result, there
is no easy fit between continental philosophy and most deliberative democratic theory. Those who
have been willing to venture there, such as Jürgen Habermas, share more of the analytic frame of mind than they do of the
continental, even though they are heirs of Marx and to a certain extent Freud. But they, at least Habermas, are no heirs of Nietzsche
and his account of ressentiment. There
is something about the Nietzschean suspicion of power, reason,
and truth that makes for a tortuous view of deliberative democratic theory and its cousins (e.g.,
Rawls’s late work on international theory and the laws of peoples). That Nietzsche is suspicious of democracy – for upholding the
common mentality and meager aspirations of the herd – is the least of the problem. The greater problem, again, is that in a
Nietzschean view what we say, and what we say is reasonable -- our very postulation of reason
and truth -- is often a will to power gone astray out of weak and malignant motivations steeped
in ressentiment. In their explorations into democracy, post-Nietzscheans are more likely to turn to an agonistic view of politics,
what Chantal Mouffe and others call “radical democracy,” brought on by Schmitt, rather than by any kind of deliberative hope.
Radical democrats think that any kind of consensus achieved through talking is the end of
democracy, not the beginning of it. One might even say that the continental left’s antipathy to deliberative theory is its
own longstanding ressentiment at the linguistic turn in political theory and practice and at the resurgence of democratic ideals that
aim toward consensus rather than valuing supposedly irreconcilable differences. The odd, often missing, figure in all this is Dewey,
and the odd, also often missing, philosophy more largely is pragmatism. The most mainstream of analytic philosophers of
deliberation will never mention John Dewey, though Dewey’s entire body of work lends itself to this kind of collective learning and
working out through communication what we as a people want to be. The more interesting philosophers of deliberative democratic
theory will turn to Dewey often. And as for pragmatism at large, one should recall Habermas’s reliance on Mead for his notion of
individuation and how one begins to converse with others in the first place. In light of this background, in my contribution to this
panel, I will trace the resources that deliberative theory has found in pragmatism, and I will inquire into why and how it is that
pragmatism avoids the continental left’s ressentiment toward any hope in deliberative talk. But in the main, the central question I
will address is this: Should
pragmatism hold out hope in deliberation when the Nietscheans may well
be right that ressentiment clouds and dogs all deliberative encounters and all political
arrangements? Given that the Deweyans and pragmatists more broadly don’t share the faith of most analytical philosophers in
the objective reality of the world, or at least of a world given ready-made and waiting prior to human interpretation, the Deweyans
share the continentals’ suspicion of language as a mere tool for accessing the real. How
far does this resemblance
continue, and how does this resemblance augur for a non-analytic philosophy of deliberative
democracy. Have Dewey and other pragmatists simply finessed the problem of ressentiment’s power to skew deliberative talk?
Or are there resources in pragmatism that actually help a deliberating people acknowledge and
work through ressentiment and its causes and consequences, in some kind of marriage of
Freudian “working through” and pragmatic problem solving? If pragmatism has been too naïve in its hope in
the “winged words” of conversation and their ability for a people to find new direction, might it still have resources to work through
the question properly? In the final sections of my presentation, I develop positive responses to these pressing questions for
pragmatic theory and democratic practice.

Framework is a politics of reactivity that rejects all alterity and creates the
conditions for violence
Newman 2k (saul, Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths College, anarchism and the politics of ressentiment,
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/theory_and_event/v004/4.3newman.html)

Political values also grew from this poisonous root. For Nietzsche, values of equality and democracy,
which form the cornerstone of radical political theory, arose out of the slave revolt in morality.
They are generated by the same spirit of revenge and hatred of the powerful. Nietzsche therefore condemns political
movements like liberal democracy, socialism, and indeed anarchism. He sees the democratic
movement as an expression of the herd-animal morality derived from the Judeo-Christian
revaluation of values.[6] Anarchism is for Nietzsche the most extreme heir to democratic values — the most rabid
expression of the herd instinct. It seeks to level the differences between individuals, to abolish class
distinctions, to raze hierarchies to the ground, and to equalize the powerful and the powerless,
the rich and the poor, the master and the slave. To Nietzsche this is bringing everything down to
level of the lowest common denominator — to erase the pathos of distance between the master
and slave, the sense of difference and superiority through which great values are created.
Nietzsche sees this as the worst excess of European nihilism — the death of values and creativity. Slave morality is
characterized by the attitude of ressentiment — the resentment and hatred of the powerless for
the powerful. Nietzsche sees ressentiment as an entirely negative sentiment — the attitude of
denying what is life-affirming, saying ‘no’ to what is different, what is ‘outside’ or ‘other’.
Ressentiment is characterized by an orientation to the outside, rather than the focus of noble morality, which is on the self.[7]
While the master says ‘I am good’ and adds as an afterthought, ‘therefore he is bad’; the slave
says the opposite — ‘He (the master) is bad, therefore I am good’. Thus the invention of values comes from a comparison or
opposition to that which is outside, other, different. Nietzsche says: “... in order to come about, slave morality first has to have an
opposing, external world, it needs, psychologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act all, — its action is basically a
reaction.”[8] This reactive stance, this inability to define anything except in opposition to something
else, is the attitude of ressentiment. It is the reactive stance of the weak who define themselves in opposition to the
strong. The weak need the existence of this external enemy to identify themselves as ‘good’. Thus the slave takes ‘imaginary
revenge’ upon the master, as he cannot act without the existence of the master to oppose. The
man of ressentiment hates the noble with an intense spite, a deep-seated, seething hatred and
jealousy. It is this ressentiment, according to Nietzsche, that has poisoned the modern consciousness, and finds its expression in
ideas of equality and democracy, and in radical political philosophies, like anarchism, that advocate it.

They aren’t a deliberative democracy but a rehierachization of oppression/At:

may
May et al 8 (todd, saul newman and Benjamin noys, Democracy, Anarchism and Radical
Politics Today: An Interview with Jacques Rancière,
https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-1626560811/democracy-anarchism-and-radical-
politics-today-an)

What I mean is man can

never be identified with a system of constitutional forms. Democratic ideas
and practices can of course inspire and animate constitutional forms and modes of public life. But
diese can never incarnate democracy because the demos is immediately double. On the one hand, it is the collective, which is the
source of power's legitimacy. In this sense 'democracy'
designates the system of forms actualizing the
power of the people in texts, institutions and institutional practices. It designates a certain
sovereignty, one similar to that of the monarch or 'superior class' (aristocracy). But at the same time, the
demos is the subject who even undermines the idea of sovereignty by undermining the principle
binding it to specific positions of a specific population [such as . . .] a king, a superior class,
savants or priests who are supposed to govern in the name of this position itself. For its part, the
people govern in the absence of these positions. This is the principle of arche: those who command are those who
possess the principle which gives them the right to command.1 The power of the people itself is anarchic in principle, for it is the
affirmation of the power of anyone, of those who have no title to it. It
is thus the affirmation of the ultimate
illegitimacy of domination. Such power can never be institutionalized. It can, on the other hand, be
practised, enacted by political collectives. But the latter precisely act beyond legal authority on the official public stage which is the
power, exercised in the name of the people, of petty oligarchies. Democratic
action allows the intervention of
subjects who are supplementary in relation to the simple figure of the citizen electorate
represented in the constitutional order, and these subjects intervene in places other than those
of executive and representative power (the street, workplace, school, etc.); they give rise to other voices and other
objects. Therefore there is indeed an institutional inscription of the 'power of the people', but in
light of that mere is an opposition between state logic, which is a logic of the restriction and the
privatisation of the public sphere, and democratic political logic which, on the contrary, aims to
extend tins power through its own forms of action.

Their framework ignores the violence inherent in our perspectives -- making

violence inevitable
Nayar 99 (Jayan, Critical Theorist, 9 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 599, Lexis)
Rightly, we are concerned with the question of what can be done to alleviate the sufferings that prevail. But there
are
necessary prerequisites to answering the "what do we do?" question. We must first ask the
intimately connected questions of "about what?" and "toward what end?" These questions, obviously, impinge on
our vision and judgment. When we attempt to imagine transformations toward preferred human futures,
we engage in the difficult task of judging the present. This is difficult not because we are oblivious to violence or that we
are numb to the resulting suffering, but because, outrage with "events" of violence aside, processes of violence embroil and
implicate our familiarities in ways that defy the simplicities of straightforward imputability. Despite our best efforts at categorizing
violence into convenient compartments--into "disciplines" of study and analysis such as "development" and "security" (health,
environment, population, being other examples of such compartmentalization)--the encroachments of order(ing) function at more
pervasive levels. And without
doubt, the perspectives of the observer, commentator, and actor become
crucial determinants. It is necessary, I believe, to question this, "our," perspective, to reflect upon a
perspective of violence which not only locates violence as a happening "out there" while we
stand as detached observers and critics, but is also one in which we are ourselves implicated in the
violence of ordered worlds where we stand very much as participants. For this purpose of a critique of
critique, it is necessary to consider the "technologies" of ordering.
 Openness key
Understanding and being open to different people’s arguments is the only way
to turn debate into a real deliberative democracy
Ralston 11 (Shane, interdisciplinary teacher-scholar-practitioner with graduate-level training
in Philosophy, Political Science, Public Administration, Human Resources and Labor Relations. He
teaches Philosophy at the Hazleton campus of Pennsylvania State University. He has also worked
in city government and private business. . Deliberating with Critical Friends. Teaching Philosophy
34 (4):393-410)

sarah stitzlein’s deliberative democracy in teacher education addresses how education professors
employ deliberative teaching methods and how deliberative democracy serves as an
aspirational ideal in teacher education. Although teacher education and philosophical training
might appear disconnected, this is certainly not the case if we consider the parallel process of
training philosophy students to become effective teachers. Sitzlein describes what it means to be part of a
deliberative learning process: to be active and informed participants..involves critically reflecting on
one’s own way of living and learning to give good reasons to support it, while simultaneously
being open to learning other, better ways from peers,. Students then need to learn and listen to
and appreciate the arguments and point of view of their peers. Furthermore stutzlein insists that
“students must master that ability to carefully listen to the ideas and arguments expressed by
others. They should learn how to ask insightful and respectful questions that clarify an
interlocutors perspective or request more exlpanatio. Students must learn to identify underlying
assumptions and biases. Deliberative learning involves self-criticism, openness to others’ perspectives
and the capacity to interrogate claims, not for the purpose of winning the argument but to each
a higher level of clarity and understanding. Besides teasing out the generic features of deliberative
learning, stutzlein identifies a form of reflexive critique at work in specific educational programs
with a deliberative learning component. For instance, as part of a social foundations of education course offered at
kent state university “students…reflect on the deliberative process, problematic aspects of reaching
consensus too quickly, participation patterns and on their own changing positions throughout
the endeavor.” While learning and deliberating about social justice issues, especially topics of
economic inequality and educational disparity, the students critically scrutinize their own
deliberations, including their tendency to marginalize some speakers and to force consensus in a
process known as group think. Most of the educational programs and courses with a
deliberation element, stutzlein notes, are at the graduate level
 Debate is not Deliberation
Debate the opposite of public deliberation—their model causes spectatorship,
partisan infighting, competitiveness, and bad citizenship
Kadlec & Friedman 9 (Alison and Will, Center for Advances in Public Engagement, “Beyond
Debate Impacts of Deliberative Issue Framing on Group Dialogue and Problem Solving,”
Occasional Paper No. 4,
http://www.publicagenda.org/files/pa_cape_paper4_beyonddebate.pdf)

The purpose of debate is to win an argument through persuasion, and it is therefore premised on the
assumption that there is a clear right answer that will be revealed through the force of the better argument. Because debate
is fundamentally competitive, it is a combative mechanism for information distribution and is
therefore better suited to a spectatorial model of public life in which citizens stand on the
sidelines and watch “experts” battle two sides of an issue in an effort to win the public over to one side or the
other. It is easy to see how a consumer model of citizenship might thrive under these circumstances but is it really best for our
democracy that citizens are reduced to spectators and consumers of prepackaged decisions? Is
it not reasonable to
expect that the soaring levels of dissatisfaction and disengagement that tend to characterize
public life (even during heady political times like these) might be directly connected to this model of
information distribution which both underscores the public’s exclusion from important public
decision-making processes and exacerbates the widespread feeling among citizens that the
public is always being manipulated by leaders and the media? In a society as complex as ours, public
deliberation might be viewed as a therapeutic alternative to the consumer/spectator model of politics that seems to only amplify
people’s sense of alienation from public life. While debates are entertaining to watch and can, in moderation, serve a useful purpose
in the American political landscape by helping people differentiate their choices, deliberation operates on a very
different set of principles about how people can and should be able to encounter and navigate complex political issues.
Whereas debate is competitive and spectatorial, public deliberation is collaborative and is
focused on solving shared problems. As such, it assumes that many people have many pieces of
the answer and is therefore fundamentally about listening to understand different points of
view and new ideas and discovering new options for addressing a problem. Upgrade Deliberation and Active,
Engaged Citizenship Having issues framed for deliberation, rather than persuasion, is important
because many of the issues we face in our communities and in our nation are highly complex and
laden with difficult trade-offs that can be hard to uncover, unpack and get a handle on. This is where the principles of
deliberation come in by helping people consider a variety of solutions and approaches and then
develop common ground around those approaches together. But it is important to understand
that deliberation is not a goal, it is a strategy and tool for overcoming hostile dead-end partisan
rhetoric, for ending deadlock, and for helping citizens become vital partners in public problem
solving.
 Exclusion Bad
Their attempt to exclude is reflects a sanitized version of the public sphere that
can never exist—this myth sustains immense violence worldwide
Deluca 13 (Kevin, Assoc. Prof at U of Utah, “PRACTICING RHETORIC BEYOND THE DANGEROUS DREAMS
OF DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY: ENGAGING A WORLD OF VIOLENCE AND PUBLIC SCREENS,”
Argumentation and Advocacy, Winter 2013)

Additionally, this idealized public sphere that Gross (2012) valorizes has never and can never exist, despite the
purported concern with "the world of our everyday experience" (p. 141). The mounting modifications of Habermas's work suggest
this and Habermas (1989) himself admits as much in discussing the world of new media: "the world fashioned by the
mass media is a public sphere in appearance only" (p. 171). [Schudson (1992) makes the case therenever was an
American public sphere.] There are many reasons for the impossibility of the Habermassian public sphere, with the
outlawing of force and the privileging of purified rationality paramount. Gross laments "a public sphere in which
rationality is sidelined in favor of alien components that undermine its force" (p. 142). Yet, what is
alien? Who decides? The evidence of history, politics, experience, and neurobiology make clear
that rationality is inextricably entwined with emotions, forces, violences, and any number of
"alien" components. Phiflips (1996) makes the key point that such alien components as dissensus,
resistance, and incivility are more vital than the imposed virtues of consensus, rationality, and
civility. Finally, even if we grant Habermas that 1700s Europe enacted his public sphere, the
historical judgment is grim. Ask the "irrational" indigenous peoples bereft of the benefits of the
Enlightenment about the pacifistic nature of the rational West and its deliberative democracies over
the past 300 years. Ask the "improper" citizens excluded via force from force-free public
spheres. We have ignored Horkheimer and Adomo's (1972) cautionary tale about the dialectic of Enlightenment at the world's
peril. In proselytizing for Habermas's rational public sphere cleansed of rhetorical force. Gross sacrifices rhetoric on the altar of
moral idealism. In trying to impose such a vision. Gross perforce performs and obscures the founding act
of originary violence at the heart of all moralisms while simultaneously deploring violence. I take
the opposite tack. Rhetoric is not a form of moral idealism. Ethics are irrelevant. Dreams of deliberative democracy
are dangerous. Rhetoric is force. The rhetorician's task is to understand and deploy forces that
transform worlds amidst the cataclysms of our times. It is not to promote a moral vision of an
idealized past from which to decry a lacking present. In our essay, contra Gross's (2012) assertion, violence is not
important simply because "it gamered media attention" (p. 142); rather, image events (violent or not) are central modes of
discourse that work to shatter worldviews and transform conditions of possibflity, opening spaces for thinking and acting differendy
(DeLuca & Peeples, 2002; DeLuca, Sun, & Peeples, 2011). Beyond a shattered Starbucks, engaging violence undermines
the comforting myth that violence is rhetoric's obscene Other. Violence is the heart of rhetoric.
Blanchott (1992) declares, "All speech is violence, a violence all the more formidable for being secret and
the secret center of violence" (p. 42). Zizek (2008) perversely echoes Isocrates, "What if, however, humans exceed
animals in their capacity for violence precisely because they speak?" (p. 61). In seeing violence as opposite rhetoric,
scholars smugly enable systemic violence, rendering invisible the catastrophic levels of violence
inflicted upon plants, animals, people, and ecosystems as part of the normal processes of the
techno-industrial capitalist juggernaut that ravages the earth.
 A2: Your Fault for Broadening
The aff’s claimed benefits for deliberation violate their theoretical basis—
attempting to account for both fairness and portable skills makes the benefits
of deliberation untestable
Mutz 8 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, “Is
Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory?” Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 11: 521-538)

Theorists are loath to exclude many kinds of political talk from the deliberative framework; in fact, the
trajectory has been toward progressively greater inclusiveness, incorporating emotional as well as rational
appeals, informal speech as well as rule-bound discourse, and so forth. This very openness delays
progress in understanding deliberation's consequences. If the deliberative umbrella is too broad,
then it is not clear how deliberative theory can be differentiated from any of dozens of other
theories. Indeed, much of the literature cited in overviews of evidence on deliberation does not
purport to be about deliberation so much as about persuasion, social interaction, procedural
fairness, etc. (see, e.g., Delli Carpini et al. 2004). Nor is it clear what a given confirmation or
disconfirmation says about deliberative theory. A more narrowly specified independent variable
might better serve progress toward understanding how to achieve the ends sought by advocates
of deliberation.
 A2: Some Kinds of Deliberation Better than Others
Their argument amounts to “good deliberation is good”—it’s circular and
untestable
Mutz 8 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, “Is
Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory?” Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 11: 521-538)

In short, my quarrel is not with how theorists have chosen to define deliberation but with the fact that
the concept itself is a moving target. If every theorist's definition is somewhat different from the next,
then it is impossible to study deliberation in a way that theorists collectively find relevant to their work.
Upon encountering an unsupportive (or supportive) finding, it is far too easy to dismiss it as
uninformative because the deliberation that took place in that particular study did not satisfy all
of the prerequisites offered collectively by deliberative theory, even if it did satisfy some
theorists’ definitions. The solution that theorists have generally offered is not a clear definition
of this phenomenon but an evaluative distinction between “good” deliberation and “bad”
deliberation. If we grade the many forms of deliberation along a continuous scale from good to
bad, then we can predict that more beneficial consequences will result from good deliberation
than from bad. To the extent that good deliberation actually brings about more of the beneficial
consequences than bad deliberation, we can conclude that deliberation is delivering the
benefits that the theory promises. The more that political discourse approaches the ideal of
equal opportunities to speak, for example, the more it will bring about the proposed benefits.
The more reason-giving that occurs, the more valuable should be the consequences of this activity.
Fishkin (1995, p. 41) calls this continuum “incompleteness”: When some citizens are unwilling to weigh
some of the arguments in the debate, the process is less deliberative because it is incomplete in the
manner specified. In practical contexts, a great deal of incompleteness must be tolerated. Hence, when
we talk of improving deliberation, it is a matter of improving the completeness of the debate and the
public's engagement in it, not a matter of perfecting it… It is unclear, however, at what point a
process of this kind is so “incomplete” as to be irrelevant to the study of deliberation. Moreover,
the logic behind the idea of a continuum of predictions is not as simple as it first appears. For
example, should bad deliberation merely produce fewer beneficial effects than good
deliberation? Or should bad deliberation produce deleterious effects, such that bad deliberation is
worse than no deliberation at all? Moreover, are some evaluative standards more important than
others, such that no beneficial consequences should be expected unless some minimal
conditions are first met? Because so many different criteria have been proposed for the
deliberative ideal, using evaluative standards is unfortunately no easier than establishing clear
conceptual criteria. In practice, good deliberation is often defined as deliberation that produces
the desired consequences outlined in the theory. This circularity makes it impossible to use this
approach to evaluate the claims of deliberative theory.

And their combination of link and impact arguments exacerbates this

Mutz 8 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, “Is
Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory?” Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 11: 521-538)

A related confounding of cause and effect manifests itself in two different kinds of claims involving
deliberation and its consequences. The more obviously difficult situation is when the independent
variable (deliberation) is defined in terms of its hypothesized effects. As Elster (1998, p. 9) notes,
empiricists tend to be interested in “whether and when the empirically identifiable
phenomenon of discussion has good results, rather than to define it such that it is intrinsically
desirable.” Theorists are more likely to treat deliberation as something to promote rather than
evaluate. As Fearon (1998, p. 63) notes, to facilitate meaningful empirical claims about
deliberation, “we should keep distinct (a) arguments for why more deliberation would be a good
thing and (b) arguments that in effect define deliberation or ‘deliberative democracy’ so that
these entail good things.”
 A2: Portable Skills
Their link arguments and portable skills impacts are separate research
questions—this doesn’t meet the standards of social science and good research
shows that procedural rules aren’t necessary to solve their impact
Mutz 8 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, “Is
Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory?” Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 11: 521-538)

A second source of confusion in understanding the consequences of deliberation is studies that “test”
deliberative theory by focusing on the extent to which political discourse meets some set of qualifications.
Based on such assessments, some scholars infer various benefits from the quality of the discussion.
Just as an analysis of the content of a political advertisement tells us nothing about its effects on
voters, the content of deliberation tells us nothing about whether it changes its participants in
the directions theorists hope. More importantly, this confusion means that those claiming to
“test” or “evaluate” deliberative theory are often testing completely different hypotheses. For
example, some of the “tests” of deliberative theory identified by Thompson (2008) are examinations
of whether political discussion in a particular time or place meets the standards to be
considered deliberative. Does the discussion involve reason-giving, equal participation, and so forth?
Other studies also reviewed as empirical tests of deliberative theory evaluate whether, once
discussion does meet one or more standards for deliberation, it produces any of its theoretically
claimed benefits. These are two very different research questions, and their conclusions are
logically independent of one another. A given instance of political discourse might meet all of a
given set of requirements for deliberation and yet still not produce the benefits that have been
assumed. Likewise, political discourse might not meet the criteria for deliberation but still
produce some of the beneficial consequences claimed by deliberative theory. For example, in my
social network studies (see Mutz 2002), I find that exposure to cross-cutting political discourse
produces greater tolerance and greater awareness of rationales for oppositional political views.
These effects result from exposure to oppositional political views even without all the trappings
of deliberative interaction. In our study of political discussions in the American workplace, Jeff Mondak
and I similarly find that people are influenced in the direction of political tolerance and greater
awareness of the rationales for oppositional views simply by listening to their coworkers talk
about their political views (Mutz & Mondak 2006). No one would call such experiences
deliberation; participation in the conversation is not even necessary. Yet understanding the
kinds of benefits that derive from simply listening to others is central to understanding the
benefits of the deliberative process as a whole (Mutz & Mondak 2006, Mondak & Mutz 2006).
 A2: Echo Chamber, Education, Tolerance
Education, the echo chamber argument, and tolerance are all wrong—debate
isn’t key to any of them
Mutz 8 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, “Is
Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory?” Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 11: 521-538)

For example, the kind of direct, face-to-face exchange that traditionally characterizes deliberation
need not occur in order for people to become better informed. There are undoubtedly easier, far
less expensive means of producing that end than hosting a deliberative poll, as successful
information campaigns have demonstrated (see, e.g., Klingemann & Roemmele 2007). Moreover,
enhancing the depth of understanding of one's own position relative to others’ probably does
not require a public forum; it happens commonly in private settings as well. If one wants to
enhance mutual respect among those of opposing views, then civility is probably a requirement
for the discourse to be effective, but requiring that the group reach a consensus seems
superfluous to this particular goal. If one envisions Table 1 as a matching game, in which everything on
the right must be matched to one or more factors on the left, then we have a primitive middle-range
theory generator for purposes of deliberative theory.
 A2: Info Processing/Education/Tolerance
Debate does not change preexisting opinions or promote tolerance
Mutz 8 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, “Is
Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory?” Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 11: 521-538)

Within political science, the most commonly investigated source of bias in processing new information is
the person doing the processing. Deliberative theory typically assumes that people come to the
table with opinions and that they are willing to justify those views publicly in a way that brings
people's views closer together rather than increases conflict. The problem with this assumption
is that people with different pre-existing opinions and partisan orientations are unlikely to
respond the same way to a given argument, regardless of its inherent rationality and appeal. In a
deliberative encounter, given the requirement of respectful attention, we should assume that
people will not be able to selectively expose themselves to different types of information.
Unfortunately, people may still selectively interpret the implications and importance of new
information, typically so that it does not threaten their initial predispositions. In the earliest
empirical studies of the impact of information on mass opinion, Campbell et al. (1960, p. 133)
noted, “Identification with a party raises a perceptual screen through which an individual tends
to see what is favorable to his partisan orientation.” Subsequent research has accentuated the
importance of this original observation. The now extensive literature on selective processing of
information calls into question the idea that deliberation, through the force of rational
argument, will gradually bring people closer together and make mutually agreeable compromise
possible (see Bartels 2002, cf. Gerber & Green 1998, 1999). When new information enters an
environment, opinionated citizens tend to adjust their views in the same general direction, but
they seldom converge—even when the new information seems to have obviously unidirectional
implications for the issue at hand. Of course, open-mindedness is also a prerequisite in some definitions
of deliberation, which might seem to eliminate the potential for this problem. But so long as people
hold initial opinions on an issue, as is true of most issues worth discussing among the public,
their information processing is likely to be influenced by them. People need not be closed-
minded and dogmatic in order for biased processing to be problematic.
 A2: Policymaking
There’s no internal link between better deliberation and better policymaking
Mutz 8 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, “Is
Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory?” Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 11: 521-538)

Whether social scientists like it or not, deliberative encounters are inevitably social situations.
Whenever people interact with one another, they will inevitably have many motives beyond
simply the desire to reach the best policy position. They also want to be perceived as likable and
smart, for example. Models of political reasoning must consider that political reasoning is often
motivated by goals other than accuracy (e.g., Taber et al. 2001). Most organizers of deliberative
events go to great lengths to assure us that the information provided is valid and unbiased
toward any particular outcome, but faith in the deliberative enterprise rests on believing that
organizers and moderators have somehow overcome their own biases and also counteracted
social psychological biases among their participants. Their efforts to ensure more deliberative group
dynamics are admirable, yet many possible dynamics are unlikely to be recognized based on casual
observation. And even when people are motivated purely by a desire to reach the best, most
accurate conclusion with their fellow deliberators, they are still subject to conscious and
unconscious biases as they process what they hear. These biases call into question whether the
process of persuasive argumentation will necessarily lead to a better outcome. For example, if
one person claims to have a larger number of arguments than another, he or she will be more
persuasive, even when both people in fact give the same number of arguments (see Petty &
Cacioppo 1981, Chaiken 1987). In addition, even if everyone in the deliberative encounter views one
another as equal in status, it is likely that some will attribute their views or arguments to entities
of higher status who are not present (e.g., God), thus making it impossible for the argument to
stand solely on the force of its own merit (see, e.g., Petty & Cacioppo 1981).
 A2: Ev from Debate People
Evidence from debate people should be ignored—it’s necessarily biased
Mutz 8 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, “Is
Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory?” Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 11: 521-538)

It is in some ways unfortunate that deliberative theory is a cause célèbre for its advocates, as well
as an important social theory. I say this not because I anticipate that it will necessarily have negative
effects on democracy when implemented, but rather because once a phenomenon acquires such a
head of steam as the deliberative democracy movement has, it seldom slows down for purposes
of advancing scientific understanding. Instead, there is a rush to implement deliberative
encounters willy-nilly, because advocates genuinely believe that its consequences must, of
necessity, be beneficial. Just as drug companies cannot be counted on to publicize the negative
side effects of their drugs, advocates—whether individuals or large organizations—who have
invested huge amounts of time, energy, and money into organizing and promoting deliberation
are not likely to be the first to perceive, let alone publicize, any shortcomings. Thus, whether the
consequences of deliberation are, in fact, consistently beneficial or not, without careful, methodical
study, we will not know why in either case. Attention has now turned to large-scale, institutional
implementation of deliberative practices. These projects are not oriented around the best
possible research designs for purposes of understanding what deliberation can and cannot
deliver so much as they are designed to spread an already accepted practice as widely as
possible. I think this kind of action is premature.
 A2: Portable Skills
Portable skills fail
Klopf & McCroskey no date Donald, Universities of Hawaii and West Virginia; and
James, West Virginia University, “Debating Both Sides Ethical? Controversy Pau!”
http://www.jamescmccroskey.com/publications/5.htm)
In brief, the game is not real life, it is training for real life. In academic debate neither the speaker nor the audience can
be likened to their counterparts in a regular public speaking situation. For both speaker and audience, the purpose is different, the
technique is different. The Directors of Forensics of the Western Conference Universities attempt to explain the nature of academic
debate. They state that the audience for a tournament debate is usually one "expert" judge who . . . will seek to apply rigorous
standards for the use of evidence and reasoning to the argument which he criticizes . . . By placing such specific emphasis upon the
use of skills of reasoned discourse, tournament debating may contribute uniquely to the development of these skills.10 This
pedagogical device is clearly outside the realm of public address. They indicate comprise the whole of
the skills
developed in tournament debating do not the rhetorical skills needed by a student for effective
participation in the public address of American Society . . . The fact that students have achieved proficiency in
competitive advocacy of tournament debating does not, in itself, qualify these students for appearance in
public debates before general audiences . . . . The skills developed in tournament debate are partial skills.11 We
would suggest that to apply the absolute ethic of public speaking to academic debating would be to
require total public speaking skills to be taught in tournament debate, or before tournament
debate. This is both impractical and unreasonable. Whether academic debate is pedagogically sound is another
question. Some vigorously contend that is not.12 They could be correct in their opinion. Appropriate experimental study could
provide insight into this question. One such study tends to indicate that the switch-sides aspect of the game has desirable effects on
the students involved.13 However, much more study will be needed before an accurate pedagogical evaluation of present day
debating can be achieved. Whatever one's opinion of the pedagogical value of present academic debating procedure may be, the
fact remains that present academic debate is a game with special rules which remove it from
the area of public speaking. Possibly it should not be so. Nevertheless, it is. The absolute ethic is made inapplicable by
these circumstances. The relative ethic has been accepted by a large majority of those involved directly with academic debate. Both
by their opinions and their actions they believe switch-sides debating is ethical. So do we. The controversy over the ethics of
debating both sides is pau! The controversy over the pedagogical value of debating both sides hardly has begun.

Fiat doesn’t teach portable skills—it miseducates us about the policy process
Claude 88 (Inis, Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia, States and the Global System, pages 18-20)
This view of the state as an institutional monolith is fostered by the notion of sovereignty, which calls up the image of the monarch, presiding over his
kingdom. Sovereignty emphasizes the singularity of the state, its monopoly of authority, its unity of command and its
capacity to speak with one voice. Thus, France wills, Iran demands, China intends, New Zealand promises and the Soviet

Union insists. One all too easily conjures up the picture of a single-minded and purposeful state
that decides exactly what it wants to achieve, adopts coherent policies intelligently adapted to its objectives,
knows what it is doing, does what it intends and always has its act together. This view of the state is reinforced

by political scientists’ emphasis upon the concept of policy and upon the thesis that governments derive policy from
calculations of national interest. We thus take it for granted that states act internationally in accordance

with rationally conceived and consciously constructed schemes of action, and we implicitly refuse to
consider the possibility that alternatives to policy-directed behaviour may have importance–alternatives such as random,
reactive, instinctual, habitual and conformist behaviour. Our rationalistic assumption that states do what they have planned to do

tends to inhibit the discovery that states sometimes do what they feel compelled to do, or what
they have the opportunity to do, or what they have usually done, or what other states are
doing, or whatever the line of least resistance would seem to suggest. Academic preoccupation
with the making of policy is accompanied by academic neglect of the execution of policy. We
seem to assume that once the state has calculated its interest and contrived a policy to further that interest, the carrying out of
policy is the virtually automatic result of the routine functioning of the bureaucratic mechanism of the state. I am inclined to
call this the Genesis theory of public administration, taking as my text the passage: ‘And God said, Let there
be light: and there was light’. I suspect that, in the realm of government, policy execution rarely follows so
promptly and inexorably from policy statement. Alternatively, one may dub it the Pooh-Bah/Ko-Ko theory, honouring those
denizens of William S. Gilbert’s Japan who took the position that when the Mikado ordered that something e done it was as good as done and might as
well be declared to have been done. In the real world, that which a state decides to do is not as good as done;
it may, in fact, never be done. And what states do, they may never have decided to do. Governments
are not automatic machines, grinding out decisions and converting decisions into actions. They are agglomerations of human

beings, like the rest of us inclined to be fallible, lazy, forgetful, indecisive, resistant to discipline
and authority, and likely to fail to get the word or to heed it. As in other large organizations, left and right
governmental hands are frequently ignorant of each other’s activities, official spokesmen contradict each other, ministries work at cross purposes, and
the creaking machinery of government often gives the impression that no one is really in charge. I hope that no one will attribute my jaundiced view of
government merely to the fact that I am an American–one, that is, whose personal experience is limited to a governmental system that is notoriously
complex, disjointed, erratic, cumbersome and unpredictable. The United States does not, I suspect, have the least effective government or the most
bumbling and incompetent bureaucracy in all the world. Here and there, now and then, governments do, of course perform
prodigious feats of organization and administration: an extraordinary war effort, a flight to the moon, a successful hostage-rescue
operation. More often, states have to make do with governments that are not notably clear about

their purposes or coordinated and disciplined in their operations. This means that, in international relations,
states are sometimes less dangerous, and sometimes less reliable, than one might think. Neither their threats nor their promises are to be taken with
absolute seriousness. Above
all, it means that we students of international politics must be cautious in
attributing purposefulness and responsibility to governments. To say the that the United States
was informed about an event is not to establish that the president acted in the light of that
knowledge; he may never have heard about it. To say that a Soviet pilot shot down an airliner is not to prove that the
Kremlin has adopted the policy of destroying all intruders into Soviet airspace; one wants to know how and by whom the decision to fire was made. To
observe that the representative of Zimbabwe voted in favour of a particular resolution in the United Nations General Assembly is not necessarily to
discover the nature of Zimbabwe’s policy on the affected matter; Zimbabwe may have no policy on that matter, and it may be that no one in the
national capital has ever heard of the issue. We can hardly dispense with the convenient notion that Pakistan claims, Cuba promises, and Italy insists,
it is essential that we
and we cannot well abandon the formal position that governments speak for and act on behalf of their states, but

bear constantly in mind the reality that governments are never fully in charge and never achieve
the unity, purposefulness and discipline that theory attributes to them–and that they
sometimes claim.

Making our skills portable only further entrenches inequality and magnifies the
relative privilege of people in debate—honing these skills disenfranchises and
humiliates people who don’t have access to them
Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)

A major problem with deliberation, as people see it, is the inequalities that quickly surface in public
discussions, especially given some people’s distaste for conflict. The best examples of this come from studies of direct
deliberative democracy in action: New England town meetings. Mansbridge’s (1983) fascinating account of the events and
sentiments surrounding town meetings in the real but fictitiously named New England town of Selby is the most revealing. After
observing town meetings, Mansbridge interviewed many of the par-ticipants and concluded that the
face-to-face
deliberative version of democracy actually “accentuates rather than redress[es] the
disadvantage of those with least power in a society” (277). The major reason for this exacerbation
is simply variation in people’s communication skills. As a retired businessman from Selby put it, “some
people are eloquent and can make others feel inferior. They can shut them down. I wouldn’t say a
word at town meetings unless they got me madder’n hell” (62). Another said, “[W]e have natural born orators, don’t we? I think we
do. It’s just the same as anything else. They carry more than their share of the weight” (83). A farmer had similar
sentiments: “There’s a few people who really are brave enough to get up and say what they think in town meetings . . . now, myself,
I feel inferior, in ways, to other people . . . forty percent of the people on this road that don’t show up for town meeting – a lot of
them feel that way” (60; see also Eliasoph 1998: ch. 2). All in all, it is difficult to dispute Mansbridge’s conclusion that
“participation in face-to-face democracies can make participants feel humiliated, frightened, and
even more powerless than before” (7). The fact that deliberation in real-world settings tends to
disempower the timid, quiet, and uneducated relative to the loquacious, extroverted, and well
schooled is particularly difficult for deliberation theorists to swallow, since much of the theory’s original
appeal was based on its radical elan. True justice and democracy, the claim went, is possible only with
noncoercive public debate. In the real as opposed to theoretical world, this position is patently
unrealistic. Nancy Fraser (1989, 1992) and others convincingly point out that Habermas’s model of radical, deliberative
democracy would produce serious negative consequences for the influence of women and the
lower, less-educated classes. For example, drawing on the work of Margolis (1992) and Tannen (1994), Susan Hansen
(1997: 75) notes that “the content and style of political discourse is alienating to many women.” Habermas himself has realized the
error of his ways. His more recent work (1996) supports representative democracy after his early work (1973) was dismissive of
The chorus in the interest-group pluralism heaven may sing
anything other than direct popular participation.
with a decidedly upper-class accent, but in direct deliberation heaven it sings with a decidedly
white, male, educated, confident, blowhard accent. As a result of disparities in elocution and
willingness to speak publicly, a widespread perception in Selby is that a small group of people
control decisions in the town meetings. The interviewees made countless references to “they.” The following remark is
typical: “If you don’t say what they want to hear you’re not even acknowledged. . . . If you don’t agree with them, they don’t want to
hear you” (Mansbridge 1983: 69). Needless to say, when deliberative democracy repeatedly fosters this kind of reaction, it is not
increasing the tendency of the people to view the political system as legitimate. If anything, it makes matters worse than would be
the case with representative democracy or nondeliberative direct democracy (ballot propositions). Seeing the process up close led
people in Selby to conclude that “no one likes each other” or there are too many “personalities involved” or “they get so darned
personal at town meeting” (63). The
unwillingness to get involved in conflict leads to a spiral of silence
(Noelle-Neumann 1984) in which only a small group of people speaks and the others seem to give their
assent but really are scared to participate. Soon, many decide they will not even attend the
deliberative sessions. Though systematic figures are difficult to marshal, there is little dispute that attendance at New
England town meetings is down sharply across the region. Hampson (1996) notes that in Hampton, Connecticut, there would be 900
people at town meetings in the old days, 200 even a few years ago, and now only 50, with nearly half of them town employees or
school board members. He continues: “The highlight of the political year used to be the town meeting where the budget was voice-
voted up or down. But for the past five years voters have insisted the Hampton budget be approved via referendum” (2A). It is
important to note that it is the ordinary town residents who ended deliberation on this key matter. No
evil, aggrandizing
power structure took away their opportunity to assemble. Rather, the people of Hampton did not want
to meet on this issue, probably for the same reasons the residents of Selby had such negative perceptions
of deliberative democracy: too much inequity, too much time wasted, and too much group
think. The people were not forced out of deliberative politics, they put themselves out.18

Ethics precedes political skills—teaching us to deliberate without making us

better people just means we can manipulate democracy to our own ends
Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)

John Zaller’s (1992) work on survey response casts further doubt

on people’s ability to give thorough,
dispassionate consideration to issues. Zaller’s findings follow those of Converse (1964) in suggesting that
respondents typically are influenced by information that is most accessible in their minds – usually
something that happened recently, not the most compelling and appropriate bit of evidence that may be
buried deep in their brains. And there is little reason to believe such a pattern of relying on easily remembered but
perhaps tangential information surfaces only when an interviewer happens to be on the telephone. In many circumstances,
particularly deliberative ones, people are easily manipulated and are susceptible to points that are not relevant or logically
consistent – especially if those events deal with the sensational. Individual
opinions do not become less
problematic in the context of deliberative settings. Group environments may even lead to worse
decisions (see Janis 1982). We fully agree with Lupia and McCubbins (1998: 226–7) when they write, were persuasion and
enlightenment the same things, deliberative environments would indeed be the ideal solution
to the mischiefs of complexity. Regrettably, they are not the same. Deliberation differs from
enlightenment when the most persuasive people in a group are not knowledgeable or . . . have an
incentive to mislead. . . . The mere construction of a deliberative setting does not guarantee that
the cream of the collective’s knowledge will rise to the top. Thoughtful adjustment to previously
held beliefs is not common, and when it does happen it is often not the result of reasoned
argument and relevant information. As our jury example illustrates, opinions are often altered by
irrational, rather than rational, factors. And the example provided is not an aberration. The “most influential book
ever written” on jury deliberations concludes that “deliberation changed votes less through the force of
reason and more through peer pressure and intimidation” (Abramson 1994: 197, summariz-ing the findings of
Kalven and Zeisel 1970: 488). This being the case, the edifying potential of deliberation is unrealized.

Governing debate based on what it will do in the outside “real world” corrupts
the whole thing—it becomes a political obsession instead of a game that allows
an outlet for competition
Caillois 1 (Roger, French anthropologist, Man, Play, and Games, trans Barash, orig. published 1958, p.
44)

In addition, a strict and absolute code governs amateur players, whose prior
assent seems like the very condition of
their participation in an isolated and entirely conventional activity. But what if the convention is no longer
accepted or regarded as applicable? Suppose the isolation is no longer respected? The forms or
the freedom of play surely can no longer survive. All that remains is the tyrannical and
compelling psychological attitude that selects one kind of game to play rather than another. It
should be recalled that these distinctive attitudes are four in number: the desire to win by one’s merit in regulated competition
(agon), the submission of one’s will in favor of anxious and passive anticipation of where the wheel will stop (alea), the desire to
assume a strange personality (mimicry), and, finally, the pursuit of vertigo (ilinx). In agon, the player relies only upon himself and his
utmost efforts; in alea, he counts on everything except himself, submitting to the powers that elude him; in mimicry, he imagines
that he is someone else, and he invents an imaginary universe; in ilinx, he gratifies the desire to temporarily destroy his bodily
equilibrium, escape the tyranny of his ordinary perception, and provoke the abdication of conscience. If
play consists in
providing formal, ideal, limited, and escapist satisfaction for these powerful drives, what
happens when every convention is rejected? When the universe of play is no longer tightly closed? When
it is contaminated by the real world in which every act has inescapable consequences?
Corresponding to each of the basic categories there is a specific perversion which results from the absence of both restraint and
protection. The
rule of instinct again becoming absolute, the tendency to interfere with the
isolated, sheltered, and neutralized kind of play spreads to daily life and tends to subordinate it
to its own needs, as much as possible. What used to be a pleasure becomes an obsession. What
was an escape becomes an obligation, and what was a pastime is now a passion, compulsion,
and source of anxiety.
This obsession with real-world policy effects makes disaster inevitable—when
the debate game is always judged by its policy effects, there is only space for
power-hungry competition
Caillois 1 (Roger, French anthropologist, Man, Play, and Games, trans Barash, orig. published 1958, p. 53-55)
What we set out to analyze was the corruption of the principles of play, or preferably, their free expansion without
check or convention. It was shown that such corruption is produced in identical ways. It entails consequences which
seem to be inordinately serious. Madness or intoxication may be sanctions that are disproportionate to the simple
overflow of one of the play instincts out of the domain in which it can spread without irreparable harm. In contrast, the superstitions
engendered by deviation from alea seem benign. Even more, when the spirit of competition freed from rules of
equilibrium and loyalty is added to unchecked ambition, it seems to be profitable for the daring one
who is abandoned to it. Moreover, the temptation to guide one’s behavior by resort to remote powers
and magic symbols in automatically applying a system of imaginary correspondences does not
aid man to exploit his basic abilities more efficiently. He becomes fatalistic. He becomes incapable
of deep appreciation of relationships between phenomena. Perseverance and trying to succeed
despite unfavorable circumstances are discouraged. Transposed to reality, the only goal of agon
is success. The rules of courteous rivalry are forgotten and scorned. They seem merely irksome and
hypocritical conventions. Implacable competition becomes the rule. Winning even justifies foul blows. If
the individual remains inhibited by fear of the law or public opinion, it nonetheless seems permissible, if not
meritorious, for nations to wage unlimited ruthless warfare. Various restrictions on violence fall
into disuse. Operations are no longer limited to frontier provinces, strongholds, and military objectives. They are no
longer conducted according to a strategy that once made war itself resemble a game. War is far
removed from the tournament or duel, i.e. from regulated combat in an enclosure, and now
finds its fulfillment in massive destruction and the massacre of entire populations. Any
corruption of the principles of play means the abandonment of those precarious and doubtful
conventions that it is always permissible, if not profitable, to deny, but the arduous adoption of
which is a milestone in the development of civilization. If the principles of play in effect
correspond to powerful instincts (competition, chance, simulation, vertigo), it is readily understood that they can be
positively and creatively gratified only under ideal and circumscribed conditions, which in every
case prevail in the rules of play. Left to themselves, destructive and frantic as are all instincts,
these basic impulses can hardly lead to any but disastrous consequences. Games discipline
instincts and institutionalize them. For the time that they afford formal and limited satisfaction,
they educate, enrich, and immunize the mind against their virulence. At the same time, they are made fit
to contribute usefully to the enrichment and the establishment of various patterns of culture.
 A2: Solves Groupthink
Deliberation doesn’t solve groupthink
Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)
Research from Solomon Asch and Muzafer Sherif provides the psychological underpinnings of one problem with the deliberative
setting: people’s tendency to conform. Asch (1951) and
Sherif (1935, 1937) discover in separate experimental
studies that people have a strong urge to conform to the group even when minimal pressure is
put on group members. Whereas Sherif finds that subjects conform to a group decision when there is no clear right answer,
Asch shows that many people conform to a group’s obviously wrong decision. Verba (1961: 22) summarizes
their findings: “When the opinions of other group members are revealed to the individual, even if no
other pressures are applied, he will change his views to conform more closely to that of the group.
This takes place even in those cases where the group opinion is not objectively more correct
than that of the individual or is objectively wrong” (emphasis added). Subsequent research has attempted to
clarify how and why conformity works as it does, but the fact remains that people are readily willing to conform in group settings.
 A2: Solves Extremism
Deliberation doesn’t result in greater understanding or tolerance—it enhances
preexisting views
Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)

Research on polarization effects suggests that group decisions can differ significantly from individual
decisions, and not always for the better. According to Fiske and Taylor (1991: 498), “Many people think that
groups represent the voice of reason and compromise; decisions made by committee are supposed to be safer
than decisions made by individuals. A closer look at group decisions reveals that this is not at all the case.” After group
deliberation, individuals’ attitudes become polarized toward more extreme alternatives. For
example, individuals who have a tendency to take more risk will come to a much riskier group
decision after discussion. This phenomenon is known as the “risky shift” (Stoner 1961, cited in Fiske and
Taylor 1991). Similarly, individuals tending toward caution will make a much more cautious group
decision (McCauley et al. 1973). A good example of polarization effects comes from Myers and Bishop (1970), who conducted an
experiment on people’s racial attitudes. They found that unprejudiced students became more unprejudiced after a group discussion
(moving +0.47 on a seven-point scale), whereas prejudiced students became more prejudiced after a group
discussion (moving a much greater -1.31 on a seven-point scale). Group discussions affect collective outcomes, but not always
for the best.
 A2: Better Debate Solves
Deliberation is worse than no discussion at all—increasing debate leads to
worse decision-making
Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)

The obvious inadequacies of voluntary groups have led many theorists to devise mechanisms
through which potentially dissimilar people can get together to discuss political issues. We discussed
several of these imaginative procedures, including policy juries and deliberative opinion polls, in Chapter 7. In light of the inability of
volunteer groups to improve political capital due, we believe, to the fact that such groups do not help members appreciate and deal
with diversity, it is perfectly reasonable to attempt to manufacture situations in which deliberation occurs among people who are
not particularly alike. Participation in a discussion of policy issues with a random sample of fellow Americans
should be a wonderful way to see the different concerns people hold as well as to see the difficulty of
pleasing everyone in the group. The instincts of the people who propose such ideas are correct in the abstract. Unfortunately,
in specific practice, getting people to participate in discussions of political issues with people
who do not have similar concerns is not a wise move. The reasons are numerous and usually
related to the difference between deliberation in the ideal and the real worlds. To their credit,
deliberation theorists are quite candid about the fact that they are describing something other than a realistic exchange. Habermas
(1987) uses the phrase “ideal speech situation” and Gutmann and Thompson (1996: 3) explicitly state that “actual deliberation is
inevitably defective.” But at some point recognition alone becomes insufficient. What
good does it do to describe a
type of situation that everyone agrees never occurs in the real world?7 The assumption of these
scholars seems to be that whereas less-than-ideal speech situations will generate fewer benefits
than ideal speech situations, any verbal interaction, however imperfect, is better than nothing. In
short, the prevailing assumption is that deliberation is a “no-lose” situation.8 We challenge this assumption and believe that
deliberation in the real world can be and often is dangerous, a point recognized previ-ously by others (see Riker
1982; Ackerman 1989) but all too often ignored. As is indicated by the empirical evidence we are about to summarize,
real-life deliberation can fan emotions unproductively, can exacerbate rather than diminish
power differentials among those deliberating, can make people feel frustrated with the system
that made them deliberate, is ill-suited to many issues, and can lead to worse decisions than
would have occurred if no deliberation had taken place. While inconsistent with the expectations of theorists,
all of these findings are right in line with what we reported in Part II. People dislike political disagreements or think
them unnecessary. They would rather continue with their comfortable fantasy that all
Americans pretty much have the same political interests and concerns than come face-to-face
with someone who seems reasonable but who has different interests and concerns. People get
frustrated by details and many simply tune out of the exchange because they feel
uncomfortable or inadequate discussing politics.

Even the best debate is worse than no debate

Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)

Care must be taken not to place too much emphasis on the quality of debate in determining
people’s satisfaction with the process and outcome. While, as shown by Gangl and also by Funk (2001), people
respond more favorably to balanced, civil, constructive debate than to shrill and unbalanced debate, the
more interesting point is that when a group being exposed to no debate is included in the
experiment, the subjects in that “no-debate” control group accord the greatest legitimacy to the
process (Morris and Witting 2001). In other words, people respond more favorably to a process with no
debate at all than to one with either civil or not-so-civil debate. People are sending the message
that improving the level of political debate is a good idea but getting rid of political debate is a
better one.
 A2: Solves Violence
Exposure to differing political views only causes retrenchment and violence
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)

And yet, when broadly considered, plenty of evidence points to the potential for negative outcomes as a
result of communication across lines of political difference. Most often, this evidence is taken from studies of
small groups in which polarization results from bringing those of opposing views together for
discussion. If cross-cutting contact produces defensiveness or causes people to dig in their heels
and counterargue, they may become all that much more strongly committed to their original
positions, thus making further conversation and compromise even more difficult. This same
“dark side” has been noted in considerations of the supposed benefits of “deliberation”
variously defined. Still other scholars note that violence can and sometimes does erupt when those of differing
views come into close contact. The threat of a violent outcome is particularly great when those who have been living in
segregated settings are first exposed to those of differing views.
 A2: Empathy
Deliberation makes us less tolerant of opposing views and creates interpersonal
conflict
Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)

Are we as people improved when we deliberate with other people? There is one stream of empirical
evidence that appears to be supportive of the argument that face-to-face interaction improves people – or at least makes them
behave more sympathetically to others. In Stanley Milgrim’s famous experiments on obedience, he found that people were less
likely to administer what they thought to be a lethal dose of electricity to another person if they could actually see the person.
Compliance was reduced even more if the experimental subject was required to physically push the “victim’s” hand onto the
electrode plate (Milgrim 1974; see also Tilker 1970). Similarly, Latane and Darley (1970) found that even a brief meeting with a
person who later had a (simulated) epileptic fit greatly increased the likelihood that the new acquaintance would respond to cries of
distress. While face-to-faceinteraction is likely to heighten positive emotions such as empathy, it is also likely to
heighten negativeemotions. As Mansbridge (1983: 273) accurately points out, “in conditions of open conflict,
the physical presence of one’s opponent may . . . heighten anger, aggression, and feelings of
competition.” As a result,“assemblies designed to produce feelings of community can . . . backfire.”
Gutmann and Thompson (1996: 42) concede that a greater reliance on deliberation will bring “previously excluded voices into
politics” and that this in turn brings the “risk of intensified conflict.” Amazingly, they see this as an advantage. “The positive face of
this risk is that deliberation also brings into the open legitimate moral dissatisfactions that would be suppressed by other ways of
dealing with disagreement” (42). If igniting the people’s dormant disagreements is the positive face of deliberative democracy, we
hesitate to consider the negative face. The truth of the matter is that, as we saw in Part II, most
people do not react well
when confronted with opposing views. We want people to agree with us, and deliberation
makes it more difficult to think everyone does. As mentioned in Chapter 6, psychologists have
convincingly demonstrated that humans have a strong desire to engage in false consensus, to
project their positions onto others.16 After all, our positions seem sensible, so other sensible people must agree with
us. When others disagree with us, we tend to denigrate their positions, to claim that their view is
atypical and perhaps the result of some “special” interest rather than a true, real-American
interest. Or else we harden our original stance. As Diana Mutz (1997: 107) discovered, “When exposed to
the contradictory opinions of others, a person strongly committed to his or her viewpoint would
be most likely to generate counter-arguments defending his or her initial position.”17 MacKuen
(1990) finds that people will usually just clam up when they sense that their interlocutor is not a
kindred spirit (see also Noelle-Neumann 1984). Whatever our response, research demonstrates that
disagreement creates a negative psychological tension (Petty and Cacioppo 1981; Eagly and Chaiken 1993).

Deliberation does not increase empathy and understanding—public

involvement often results in more conservative policy
Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2 (John, Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Elizabeth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work, ebook)

One final claim made by supporters of increased popular participation and deliberation is that
interaction with other ordinary people will lead individuals to be more other-regarding. As Dryzek
(2000: 21) puts it, through democratic participation people will become “more public-spirited, more tolerant, more knowledgeable, more attentive to
the interests of others.” Once again, however, empirical research casts doubt on the claim of theorists.
Experiments by Adam Simon and Tracy Sulkin (2000) on people’s generosity to others in small group settings confirm that “the
presence of
communication seems to encourage more exploitative outcomes” (16), a result directly at odds with the
expectations of theorists. And reallife behavior seems consistent with these experimental tendencies. William
Simonsen and Mark Robbins (2000) discuss the so-called “Eugene decisions,” an effort to engage citizens in local decision making. They found that,
contrary to expectations, themore citizens were involved in and knowledgeable about city decisions, the
more they wanted to cut taxes and cut services, especially in planning, park maintenance, and building maintenance. They
conclude that liberals should not support greater involvement by the public unless they are willing to

see governmental programs cut. Presumably, if the study had been done in a city that was not
so homogeneous (Eugene is 93 percent white), people would have been even more leery of government
spending. In light of the findings reported by Simonsen and Robbins, one reviewer of their book wisely asks, “Do we really need
more participation if it is going to result in policies that fail to take into account the common
good?” (Kraus 2000: 955).22 Deliberation will not work in the real world of politics where people are
different and where tough, zero-sum decisions must be made. Democracy in authentic, diverse
settings is not enhanced by town-meeting-style participation; it is probably diminished. Given the
predilections of the people, real deliberation is quite likely to make them hopping mad or
encourage them to suffer silently because of a reluctance to voice their own opinions in the
discussion. Representative democracy at least affords representation to those who shy away from the give and take of politics.
The bigger the role deliberation plays, the less influence such people have. When deliberation
alone is expected to produce a result (as Gutmann and Thompson advocate and as is illustrated by Etzioni’s “Navajo
democracy”), people who choose not to participate in deliberation would be left with no input
whatsoever.23
 A2: Galloway
Galloway is wrong
Patberg 15 (markus, faculty in the department of social science, Agonistic democracy:
Constituent power in the era of globalization, http://www.palgrave-
journals.com/cpt/journal/v14/n1/full/cpt20142a.html#aff1)

According to Wenman, agonistic democracy must ‘refuse all normativity’ (p. 280). This claim is rooted in two of
the aforementioned basic components of agonism: first, in the concept of ‘constitutive pluralism’ that describes
modern societies as communities featuring an ineradicable pluralism of conflicting values for
whose ordering we lack an objective standard and, second, in the ‘tragic view of the world’
according to which conflict, suffering and strife are inevitable phenomena of social and political
life and may never be ultimately overcome. From this perspective, it seems that theoretical attempts
to formulate normative requirements for legitimate political action represent unjustifiable
impositions with exclusionary effects. Accordingly, Wenman tracks down and criticizes any trace of normativity in the
accounts of agonistic democracy he discusses. For example, Tully’s concept of agonistic dialog, which demands
reciprocity and mutual respect from the participants of political processes, is said to represent
‘a dangerous digression from the properly tragic viewpoint of agonism’ (pp. 138–139). Although
Wenman is keen to emphasize that agonism is a non-normative ‘strategic and tactical doctrine’ (p. 39), it
seems that his own account of agonistic democracy cannot avoid drawing on certain minimal normative standards either. Of course,
even the ‘politics
of militant conviction’ (p. 265) he advocates is not supposed to proceed violently.
While Wenman refuses to explicate normative requirements for legitimate agonistic politics, he
clearly affirms
‘aconstructive mode of contest and rivalry’ (p. 46) and rejects forms of hostility. But how could we tell
acceptable and unacceptable forms of conflict apart without a normative standard of some kind? What distinguishes the
‘democratic actor’ (p. 286) from, say, the fundamentalist, if not the normative quality of her political actions? The need for a
corresponding standard shines through, for example, when Wenman suggests that agonistic political action should be
guided by ‘the public virtues associated with the art of persuasion’ (p. 287). In light of this, however, the
critique directed against Tully, among others, seems overstated. In general, doubts remain whether a convincing theory of agonistic
democracy can really abstain from any normative elements making a claim to context-transcending validity.
Predictability
 Predictability/games
The demand that debate be predictable is an attempt to discipline chance and
reduce politics to accumulation and work—critique is tolerated only within a
set of limits that hollow out its potential
Caillois 1 (Roger, French anthropologist, Man, Play, and Games, trans Barash, orig. published 1958, p.
157-158)
Vertigo and simulation are in principle and by nature in rebellion against every type of code, rule, and organization. Alea, on the contrary, like agon calls
for calculation and regulation. However, their essential solidarity in no way prevents their competing with each other. The principles they represent are
too strictly opposed not to tend toward mutual exclusion. Work is obviously incompatible with the passive
anticipation of chance, just as is the unfair favor of fortune with the legitimate rewards of effort and merit. The abandonment of
simulation and vertigo, mask and ecstasy, has never meant the departure of an incantational universe and the arrival of the rational world of
distributive justice. Problems remain to be resolved. In
such a situation, agon and alea no doubt represent the
contradictory and complementary principles of a new social order. Moreover, they must fulfill parallel
functions which are recognizably indispensable in one or the other situation. Agon, the principle of fair competition
and creative emulation, is regarded as valuable in itself. The entire social structure rests upon it.
Progress consists of developing it and improving its conditions, i.e. simply eliminating alea, more
and more. Alea, in fact, seems like the resistance posed by nature against the perfect equity of
human institutional goals. In addition, chance is not only a striking form of injustice, of gratuitous
and undeserved favor, but is also a mockery of work, of patient and persevering labor, of saving,
of willingly sacrificing for the future—in sum, a mockery of all the virtues needed in a world
dedicated to the accumulation of wealth. As a result, legislative efforts tend naturally to restrain
the scope and influence of chance. Of the various principles of play, regulated competition is the
only one that can be transposed as such to the domain of action and prove efficacious, if not
irreplaceable. The others are dreaded. They are regulated or even tolerated if kept within
permitted limits. If they spread throughout society or no longer submit to isolation and
neutralizing rules, they are viewed as fatal passions, vices, or manias.

This is the essential structure of fascism, an attempt to purify and order politics
such that catastrophic violence becomes possible in the name of saving the
polity—the worst possibility for debate is that policy skills really are portable
Land 92 (Nick Land is a lecturer in Continental Philosophy at Warwick University, The Thirst for
Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism, 138-140)
However great the revulsion that can be felt in contact with a single corpse, especially when it is in an advanced state of
decomposition, or marked with the traces of an ignoble extremity of agony (torture in particular), this is massively augmented—and
not merely quantitatively—when one is confronted by heaps or mounds of corpses; the stacked remains of an ossuary, the human
remnants from an extermination camp, piles of skulls, anonymous tangles of bodies in the Ugandan bush or at the edge of a
Kampuchean paddy field. The corpse not as a lost person, but as a disintegrating clot in the depersonalized refuse of death. Sade’s
writings are not without such images, but nor are the mass media of twentieth-century societies. It is only at the lip of such abysmal
indignities, when bodies are vomited as faceless masses of Herakleitean dung, that one glimpses the filthy and senseless death one
craves. Whatever the monstrosity of Sade, he does not point into Auschwitz; it is more true to suggest that he points out of it.
Despite the peculiar desperation in our attempts to give a moral interpretation to the somatic shock induced by traces of the Nazi
We treat Hitler as a
exterminations, our intellectual conscience remains offended by the sanctimonious inanities that ensue.
persuasive Satan, a figure that the church was unable to invent, in whom we vicariously live our evil (as if we
were masturbating over a magazine). In the aggregate, our squalid separation from the victims gapes its stale
complacency. Our lurch for innocence seals us against communion, and we are repulsed from the place
where their fate is also ours, as if death itself has been soiled by their torments. That we are an ineliminably massacreable
species of animal scarcely marks us. We engineer an apartheid of the dead. Partly this is due to the widespread dread of corpses,
Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals prevalent in our societies. All of which elements are consigned by morality to the same howl-
choked dungeon as desire, irresponsibility, and profound contact with the real. Our moral natures would complete the sanitization
of the 1940s’ pogroms, contributing to the elimination of sprawling bodies, and of the problematic affects they provoke. We are
even stupid enough to believe that between a KZ guard and a young Jew treading the edge of a death factory it is the latter who is
most profoundly caged. The technical core of the final solution was not merely an apparatus for mass
killings, but one that was also guided by the exigency of the utile disposal of corpses. We simplify out of anxiety when we conflate
the mounds of emaciated bodies strewn about the camps at the point of their liberation—the bodies of those annihilated by
epidemics during the collapse of the extermination system—with the reduced ash and shadows of those erased by the system in its
smooth functioning. The uneliminated corpse is not a submissive element within this or any other ‘final solution’, but an impersonal
resistance to it, a token of primordial community. The docility of the inert body is itself a fascist myth. The final solution is a myth
and a fact; each of its traces being invested by complex libidinal forces. The lamp-shades made from human skin, the meticulously
salvaged heaps of dentures and artificial limbs, the calm efficiency of the Nazi genocidebureaucrat: all are freely circulating tokens of
powerful affect. None of these images is more extraordinarily wounding to our sense of cosmic order than the bars of soap made
from the body fat of the exterminated, the transubstantiation of verminized flesh into an implement of hygiene; white, glistening,
malleable, inert. The soporific words of the allied propaganda machinery, with their insistence on fascist filthiness, are paralysed in
the throat. Here are purists; clean and dutiful men, and yet we would be more fastidious than they were? That there is
nothing to insulate us from falling prey to such things—that the slime and ash in a drainage ditch outside
Birkenau might be the residue of our own flesh—is a savagery of chance in which it is necessary to exult if we
are to connect. A wall that stood between us and such acute horror would still be a wall, and if a
God had existed to prevent the annihilation of Hitler’s victims life as a whole would be the camp (for the Nazi it is). Pain,
degradation, and death are one thing, the enslavement of desire something else. It is only because
our bodies are weak and die that it is impossible for there to be a perfect cage, or for the sun to be locked interminably in a fascist
health. To be protected by something more than zero is the final term of imprisonment. * * * There is poetry after
Auschwitz, just as there was poetry within it, and only because there was. There is poetry wherever there are droplets of the sun
who are not afraid to touch (however imperilled). I imagine there was even laughter amongst the doomed. There have been
shadow-spaces of the Earth such as are impossible to think, but ‘[w]hat does truth signify…if we do not think what exceeds the
possibility of thought…?’ [III 12]. It
is only at the edge of the impossible that the wretchedness of isolated
being is grated open, and ‘poetry is the impossible’ [III 520]. It is not out of innocence, but from out of a history
pock-marked by exterminations, that Bataille writes: ‘I would like to efface the trace of my steps…’ [III 161]. I efface the step i
efface the word space and breath are lacking [IV 28]. The alcohol Of poetry Is silence Unmade [of a
corpse] [III 372]. * Fascism is not so much a symptom of political desperation, as of libidino-religious
numbness, a kind of anti-poetry on the streets. Like all policy-obsessed behaviour patterns it is rooted
in the humanist dead-end characterized by hysterical struggle for autonomy: self-determination,
national self-management, master-races, autarky…all attempts to seal the blister from within, to
hide from the ocean. The thought that there might be a political response to fascism makes me
laugh. Shall we set our little fascism against their big one? Organize ourselves, become
disciplined, maybe we could make ourselves some smart uniforms and stomp about in the
street? Politics is the last great sentimental indulgence of mankind, and it has never achieved
anything except a deepened idiocy, more work, more repression, more pompous ass-holes
demanding obedience. Quite naturally we are bored of it to the point of acute sickness. I have
no interest at all in groping at power in the blister. What matters is burning a hole through the
wall.
Unpredictability is inevitable – embracing this fact, however, allows us to live
meaningful lives.
Bleiker & Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and
Martin, Senior Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Journal of International
Studies, 34(3), p. 729-730)
Dramatic, sublime events can uproot entrenched habits, but so can a more mundane cultivation of wonder and curiosity. Friedrich
Nietzsche pursued such a line of enquiry when reflecting upon what he called the ‘ after effects of knowledge’. He considered how
alternative ways of life open up through a simple awareness of the fallibility of knowledge. We
endure a series of non-dramatic learning experiences as we emerge from the illusions of childhood. We
are confronted with being uprooted from the safety of the house. At first, a plunge into despair
is likely, as one realises the contingent nature of the foundations on which we stand and the walls behind which we hide and
shiver in fear: All human life is sunk deep in untruth; the individual cannot pull it out of this well
without growing profoundly annoyed with his entire past, without finding his present motives (like honour) senseless,
and without opposing scorn and disdain to the passions that urge one on to the future and to the
happiness in it.43 The sense of meaninglessness, the anger at this situation, represents a reaction against
the habits of one’s upbringing and culture. One no longer feels certain, one no longer feels in control. The
sublime disruption of convention gives rise to the animosity of loss. The resentment may last a whole lifetime. Nietzsche insists,
however, that an alternative reaction is possible. A completely different ‘after effect of knowledge’ can
emerge over time if we are prepared to free ourselves from the standards we continue to apply, even if we do no
longer believe in them. To be sure, the: old motives of intense desire would still be strong at first , due to
old, inherited habit, but they would gradually grow weaker under the influence of cleansing
knowledge. Finally one would live among men and with oneself as in nature, without praise, reproaches, overzealousness,
delighting in many things as in a spectacle that one formerly had only to fear.44 The elements of fear and defensiveness are
displaced by delight if and when we become aware of our own role in constructing the scene around us. The ‘cleansing
knowledge’ of which Nietzsche speaks refers to exposing the entrenched habits of representation of
which we were ignorant. We realise, for example, that nature and culture are continuous rather than radically distinct. We
may have expected culture to be chosen by us, to satisfy our needs, to be consistent and harmonious, in contrast to the strife,
accident and instinct of nature. But just
as we can neither predict a thunderstorm striking nor prevent it,
so we are unable ever to eliminate the chance of a terrorist striking in our midst. We can
better reconcile ourselves to the unpredictability and ‘irrationality’ of politics and culture by
overcoming our childhood and idealistic illusions. The cultivation of the subliminal, then, can dilute our obsession with
control by questioning the assumptions about nature and culture in which this obsession is embedded. Without this work of
cultivation, we are far more vulnerable once hit by the after effects of knowledge. We find ourselves in a place we
never expected to be, overwhelmed by unexamined habits of fear and loathing. But if, as Nietzsche suggests, we
experiment with the subliminal disruptions encountered in the process of ‘growing up’, we
may become better prepared. We may follow Bachelard’s lead and recognise that the house not only offers us a space
to withdraw from the world when in fear, but also a shelter in which to daydream, to let our minds wander and explore subliminal
possibilities. That, Bachelard believes, is indeed the chief benefit of the house: ‘it protects the dreamer’ .45
 A2: Limits
A focus on limits engenders violent practices by stopping productive
discussions.
Bleiker & Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and
Martin, Senior Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Journal of International
Studies, 34(3), p. 733-734)

A subliminal orientation is attentive to what is bubbling along under the surface. It is mindful of how
conscious attemptsto understand conceal more than they reveal, and purposeful efforts of progressive
change may engender more violence than they erase. For these reasons, Connolly emphasises that ‘ethical
artistry’ has an element of naïveté and innocence. One is not quite sure what one is doing. Such naïveté need not lead us back
to the idealism of the romantic period. ‘One should not be naïve about naïveté’, Simon Critchley would say.56 Rather, the
challenge of change is an experiment. It is not locked up in a predetermined
conception of where one is going. It involves tentatively exploring the limits of one’s being in
the world, to see if different interpretations are possible, how those interpretations might
impact upon the affects below the level of conscious thought, and vice versa. This
approach entails drawing upon multiple levels of thinking and being, searching for changes in
sensibilities that could give more weight to minor feelings or to arguments that were
previously ignored.57 Wonder needs to be at the heart of such experiments, in
contrast to the resentment of an intellect angry with its own limitations. The ingre d i e n t of wonder is
necessary to disrupt and suspend the normal pre s s u res of returning to conscious habit and control.
This exploration beyond the conscious implies the need for an ethos of theorising and acting that is quite diff e rent from the
mode directed towards the cognitive justification of ideas and concepts. Stephen White talks about ‘circ u i t s of reflection,
affect and arg umentation’.58 Ideas
and principles provide an orientation to practice, the
implications of that practice feed back into our affective outlook, and processes of
argumentation introduce other ideas and affects. The shift, here, is from the ‘vertical’ search for
foundations in ‘skyhooks’ above or ‘foundations’ below, to a ‘horizontal’ movement into the unknown.

We must incorporate alternative perspectives in order to stop violence.

Bleiker 1 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, Millennium:
Journal of International Studies, 30(3), p. 519)

Hope for a better world will, indeed, remain slim if we put all our efforts into searching for
a mimetic understanding of the international. Issues of global war and Third World poverty are far
too serious and urgent to be left to only one form of inquiry, especially if this mode of
thought suppresses important faculties and fails to understand and engage the crucial problem of
representation. We need to employ the full register of human perception and intelligence
to understand the phenomena of world politics and to address the dilemmas that emanate from them. One of the
key challenges, thus, consists of legitimising a greater variety of approaches and insights to world politics. Aesthetics is an
important and necessary addition to our interpretative repertoire. It helps us understand why the
emergence, meaning and significance of a political event can be appreciated only once we
scrutinise the representational practices that have constituted the very nature of this
event.
 A2: Fairness
Fairness isn’t neutral or objective
Delgado 92 (Richard, Charles Inglis Thomson Professor of Law, University of Colorado. J.D. 1974, University of California at
Berkeley, "Shadowboxing: An Essay on Power,” L/N, AM)
We have cleverly built power's view of the appropriate standard of conduct into the very term
fair . n41 Thus, the stronger party is able to have [their] way and see [themselves] as principled at the
same time. n42 Imagine, for example, a [person’s] likely reaction to the suggestion that subjective considerations -- a woman's mood, her sense
of pressure or intimidation, how she felt about the man, her unexpressed fear of reprisals if she did not go ahead n43 -- ought to play a part in
determining whether the man is guilty of rape. Most men find this suggestion offensive; it requires them to do something they are not accustomed to
doing. "Why," they say, "I'd have to be a mind reader before I could have sex with anybody?" n44 "Who knows, anyway, what internal inhibitions the
woman might have been harboring?" And "what if the woman simply changed her mind later and charged me with rape?" n45 What we never notice is
that women can "read" men's minds perfectly well. The
male perspective is right out there in the world, plain as
day, inscribed in culture, song, and myth -- in all the prevailing narratives. n46 These narratives tell us that
men want and are entitled [*820] to sex, that it is a prime function of women to give it to them, n47
and that unless something unusual happens, the act of sex is ordinary and blameless. n48 We believe these things because that is the way we have
constructed women, men, and "normal" sexual intercourse. n49 Notice what the objective standard renders irrelevant: a downcast look; n50
ambivalence; n51 the question, "Do you really think we should?"; slowness in following the man's lead; n52 a reputation for sexual selectivity; n53
virginity; youth; and innocence. n54 Indeed, only a loud firm "no" counts, and probably only if it is repeated several times, overheard by others, and
accompanied by forceful body language such as pushing the man and walking away briskly. n55 Yet society and law accept only this latter message (or
something like it), and not the former, more nuanced ones, to mean refusal. Why? The "objective" approach is not inherently
better or more fair. Rather, it is accepted because it embodies the sense of the stronger party,
who centuries ago found himself in a position to dictate what permission meant. n56 Allowing ourselves to be drawn into

reflexive, predictable arguments about administrability, fairness, stability, and ease of

determination points us away from what [*821] really counts: the way in which stronger parties
have managed to inscribe their views and interests into "external" culture, so that we are now enamored
with that way of judging action. n57 First, we read our values and preferences into the culture; n58 then we pretend

to consult that culture meekly and humbly in order to judge our own acts. n59 A nice trick if you can get away
with it.

Censorship in the debate space prevents a colloquial sphere of information

freedom, killing education, autonomy, and replicates serial policy failure a la
Red Scare.
Newman 1 (Richard P., Address at the 2001 Franklin R. Shirley Dixie Classic Debate Tournament, November 18, 2001,
Director of Debate at University of Pittsburgh from 1952-1967, BA from the University of Redlands; MA from Oxford, Ph.D. in
Education from the University of Connecticut. For two years in between that educational progression, from 1943-1945, he served in
the U.S. Army. He was with the 257th Infantry Division at Camp Adair, Oregon as an 81mm mortar gunner. He was with the 70th
Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and in Europe as a half-track driver. He served in the Saar, Rhine, and
Central European Campaigns and won the Bronze Star medal; Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of
Pittsburgh for ten years; President of the University Senate; President of the American Forensic Association)

It’s good to be back at Wake Forest. It is evidence of my antiquity, of course, that the last time I was here, Wake Forest was in Wake
Forest. The redoubtable Franklin Shirley presided over the place. I loved the guy. He was every bit a southerner – charming,
intelligent, and he ran a hell of a good debate program. Gordon Mitchell has gotten me back, for which I am grateful. Al Louden and
Ross Smith have also given me this opportunity and I thank them for that. I have enjoyed what I’ve seen so far and am all in favor of
doing more of it. There is a current revival of interest in that war I participated in, due of course to Tom Brokaw, who produced
endless memories about that catastrophic event. Before that war, this country was in the grips of a very myopic isolationism. We
had no significant defense forces. We had great lethargy. But the challenge of the fascist powers was lethal. Since then we’ve had a
lot of unnecessary and unproductive wars, and this has derided the memory of World War II. Vietnam, Kuwait, Nicaragua, Panama –
these have crowded out the public memories of 1939-1945. Triumph over the fascists was a near thing. However dismal the planet
looks today, the prospects do not begin to approach the apocalypse we avoided in 1945. So there is hope. My
memories of
that war, and of the Cold War, are as episodic as most people’s. Gordon refreshed them for me
when he started talking about the activities at Pitt and invited me to renew my encounter with
the Cold War as a college debate coach. He’s already told you all of that. I don’t have to repeat
it. The trustees did phone the chancellor to say find out who this guy is and fire him. The
chancellor said no, he’s upholding the American tradition, and I was, and so are you. There were
a lot of colleges who did not debate that year. Gordon named a few of them. There were some
others. Fortunately, most colleges stuck with it. We wound up moving ahead with the idea that
the topic was debatable and that this was a democracy, which it was and is. Then there was
Newman who ran afoul of the Hearst newspapers. But so far as I can tell, it had no impact on my
employability. The Pitt trustees were satisfied by the chancellor’s explanation. The only thing
that developed from that was a big question in my mind: What makes a topic debatable? Well,
of course, I read up on the law of recognition. I knew that recognition was for convenience. It
did not imply approval. After all, we did recognize the evil empire. The Right-wing didn’t like it.
They constantly advocated derecognizing the Soviet Union. They did not prevail on that, but
they did prevail on China until Nixon made his historic trip in 1971. It is not clear that debating
that topic did anything to change Nixon’s mind eventually. But it might have. My opinions on the
Soviet menace become pertinent here, because during the occupation of Germany, I became
acquainted with some deserters from Stalin’s army. They convinced me that life in the USSR was
inimical to any kind of life that I wanted to live. After the occupation, as a student touring
Europe during vacations, I saw the pre-communist openness of Czechoslovakia and the
contrasting terror of the Polish regime. The most telling experience, which I had almost
forgotten until Gordon started me thinking about it again, was a visit to Norway in 1948. Here
was a small liberty-loving country that had experienced Nazi occupation and had a several-
hundred mile common border with the Soviet Union. Norway was totally free of the fearfulness
of Soviet attack that was building up in these United States. My Norwegian friends explained it
this way: "Yes, we know they could overrun us if they determined to. Yes, we have a fair number
of communists openly preaching their dogmas in Norway. But we know who and where the
communists are, and at the first Soviet salvo fired in our direction, every one of those guys will
be in jail. We will fight to the last citizen. Russians are effective soldiers only when defending
their homeland. Look at what the Finns did to them. Our terrain for defense is better than that
of Finland. The Soviets knew we would decimate their army were they to attack us and we are
not afraid of them." All this was on my mind when the American panic about the Soviet Union taking over the world
exploded in 1950. How could I regard the McCarthy frenzy as anything other than pathological? And as
for recognizing Peking, for heaven’s sake, if we had had a good ambassador in China, and did not have to depend on the Brits or the
dyspeptic Pakikkar of India to pass on Chou En-lai’s warning not to let MacArthur approach the Yalu River during the Korean War, we
might have been spared the ambush and destruction of the U.S. Eighth Army (which was the worst defeat of an American army in
history). We successfully completed the 1954-55 debate season. I had forgotten until two days ago that as a silly gesture of defiance
I announced as a topic for one of our series of high school assembly debates: "Resolved: That Joseph R. McCarthy should be replaced
as chairman of the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee." [Audience laughter] There were a few high school principals
who gagged at this, but we had a full series anyway with no serious repercussions. The
lasting outcome of my brush
with attempted censorship was my devotion of the next six years to study the problem of the
People’s Republic of China. This resulted in the 1961 book, Recognition of Communist China: A
Study in Argument got good reviews and sold about 20,000 copies. That was enough to pile up a
little nest egg for me to use on more expensive research for less sexy books. There were even
rumors in the Beltway, among news correspondents, that when Nixon went to Peking a couple
of years later, my book was on his desk. The circumstances of Nixon’s final disgrace were such
that I never really tried to find out if he had read the thing, not being sure whether that was
good or bad. [Audience laughter] The recognition book taught me one important lesson about
academic politics – some disciplines are more reactionary than others. Bert Carroll, chairman of
the Political Science Department at Pitt, told me somewhat enviously, "It’s a good thing you are
not in poli sci. You could never get a job if you published a book like that." After subsequent
exposure to poli sci types, I’m sorry, but I am going to say it anyway – I saw that Bert was right.
My snotty acronym for the American Political Science Association was the KKK – the Kirkpatrick-
Kampelmann club, after those who led that organization for about twenty years and kept it
Right-wing. Now we are in a new century. I welcome the embrace of the vital topic of the time
by Wake Forest at this tournament. And I have some opinions about the mood of the country,
and the spasm of blind rage to bomb somebody because terrorism has finally lodged on our soil.
This topic is also debatable, but like recognition of China, Right-wing opinion has coalesced
around a hawkish response without serious analysis of consequences. You know the outpouring
of jingoism that fills our media. Some of our normally-critical sources of public intelligence seem
to have been intimidated and have modified their stances. Even the Sierra Club, that eminent
organization of thoughtful people who look beyond the decadence of our current materialism to
a distant future, whose most prominent adviser and several times president is my office-mate at
Chapel Hill, Robbie Cox, even the Sierra Club felt the burn of xenophobic excess generated by
9/11. It has backed off on some of its attacks on the federal government. I do not join them. I
am here to tell you that the current bout of super-patriotism will run its course, that destroying
the Taliban will only increase the incidence of terrorism, that leveling Afghanistan solves
nothing. [Audience applause] Of course we should seek to neutralize Islamic terrorists, which can be
done only be securing the wholehearted support of the intelligence operations which
understand the territory, namely those of the moderate Islamic states. We are not doing this
yet, and in addition we are flirting with a new inquisition. Here I need to set forth a basic
premise. While I had long deplored America’s panicky reaction to Soviet power, as witnessed by
my comparison to the Norwegians, it was not until 2000 that I was able to understand that the
"blueprint" for the Cold War, National Security Council Document 68, NSC-68, was an incitement
to use terrorist methods in opposing the Soviet. This document was part and parcel of a
campaign of atrocities stretching from 1953 to the present, impacting every area of the globe,
especially the Islamic world. Islamic terrorism was stimulated by American Cold War operations?
Am I saying that? Yes I am. Am I saying we bear a substantial blame for Islamic hatred of the
U.S.? I am indeed. I am saying that Barbara Lee is a heroine, to go down in history with Wayne
Morse and Ernest Gruening, the two dissenters from the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. NSC-68
was written in 1950 by a team from State and Defense headed by Paul Nitze, the arch hawk of
all time. Nitze proclaimed that Stalin’s election-eve speech of 1946, which was clearly designed
to procure a 99.9% vote for the party, was a thinly-veiled declaration of war on the United
States. When Nitze reported to Eisenhower some years later on a scenario for fighting and
winning a nuclear war, Ike said, "We can’t have that war. There aren’t enough bulldozers to
scrape the bodies off the streets." And in 1950, Nitze conjured up a Soviet plan for world
conquest that had the Soviets capable of a first strike against the United States in 1954. Nitze
wrote this doomsday scenario into NSC-68 despite the protests of all the Kremlinologists in the
State Department (Kennan, Bohlen, Llewellyn Thompson) who knew that Stalin was interested
foremost in preserving his dictatorial power and securing Soviet borders. At least a half-dozen
State Department officials, in addition to the Kremlin specialists, objected to NSC-68 as alarmist.
Nitze ignored them and told Acheson the bald lie that comments on the document did not call
for any modification. This could not be known until finally the documents were unsealed and
declassified in 2000. The bottom line of NSC-68, however, was its warrant for terrorism. The
exact wording Nitze used describing the extent to which we could use force against Soviet
probes was: "The integrity of our system will not be jeopardized by any measures, covert or
overt, violent or non-violent, which serves the purposes of frustrating the Kremlin design . . ."
Those of you who know about the Schools of the Americas, which trained so many people down
south, this was in the document authorizing their operation. Torture and terrorism. That was
what came from NSC-68. Four examples. (1) Iran. It was the incredible terror of the Shah’s
SAVAK that first came to my attention, via the personal witness of a colleague at Pitt, Richard
Cottam, who had been one of the CIA operatives when we ousted Mossadeq and installed the
Shah. Cottam made the study of Iran his life’s work. How many thousands of Iranians were killed
by the Shah? Enough to justify hatred of the U.S. by that country into the 22nd century. (2)
Indonesia. Today this is the most populous nation with a Muslim majority. When we engineered
the replacement of the insufficiently anti-communist Sukarno with the Right-wing Suharto,
estimates of the slaughter ran from 500,000 to 1,000,000. Have you read accounts of Indonesian
opinion in the papers lately? Can you wonder why the Indonesian street supports bin Laden? (3)
The Gulf War and Iraq. I know of no one who doubts that Saddam is an evil tyrant. But the
damage we have done to his country and people is perceived throughout the Islamic world as
excessive and immoral. You will not understand how this Bush-engineered war is perceived in
the Great Crescent until you have read Fatima Mernissi’s Islam and Democracy. Mernissi is a
professor at University Mohammed V in Rabat; there is no escape from her narrative of how the
Gulf War is perceived by her co-religionists. (4) Finally, and most important, Israel. I was a
Zionist, enraptured by the brilliant case made for a Jewish homeland by Theodor Herzl and
Chaim Weizmann. Unfortunately, the Zion conceived by those two humane and secular Jews
never came into being. That Zion would have accommodated the interests of the Palestinians,
compensating anyone who lost property to Jewish colonization, investing in infrastructure and
education for the Palestinians, sharing water resources, and in the terms of the Balfour
Declaration, doing nothing to "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish
communities." But by the time the U.N. acted on Palestine in 1947, the Zionist movement had
been hijacked by a group of thugs: Jabotinsky, Stern, Begin, Shamir, and yes, Ariel Sharon. You
think I’m exaggerating? Without the excessive Jewish terrorism narrated in the 859 pages of
Benny Morris’ Righteous Victims there would have been no intifada, no Six-Day war, no farcical
Oslo agreements. Israel was founded in terror, the Israel Defense Forces are steeped in terror,
Mossad is the world expert in terror, a terror which impelled Weizmann to plead with the 1946
Zionist Congress in Basel to reject terror and to follow the path of righteousness. But it was too
late. Jewish terrorists had already left a trail of blood. Lord Moyne was assassinated on 6
November 1944, drawing from Churchill, a firm Zionist, the charge that Britain was now dealing
with "a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany." Weizmann immediately wrote an abject
letter of apology, promising Churchill that Palestinian Jewry would "cut out, root and branch,
this evil from its midst." Bad prediction. Three of the terrorists named above were welcomed
into the new muscular Israel, and became prime ministers. "Roots of evil" were in fact
nourished. They remain in Israel’s overkill retaliation policy, which kills three or four Palestinians
for every Jew killed. They remain in the use of American armor and helicopters to take out
juvenile Palestinian rock-throwers. They remain in the refusal to implement U.N. Resolutions
242 and 338. They remain in the rejection of an international observer team, which would
report to the world that Israel is an Apartheid state tyrannizing a series of Arab Bantustans. But
no observer team would be able to assess the key facilitator of Israeli hypocrisy and arrogance –
the power and munificence of the American Jewish lobby. Yesterday’s New York Times carried
the news that 89 U.S. senators had signed a letter to the President urging him not to restrain
Israel from retaliating fully against Palestinian violence. Every other country in the world regards
Israeli state violence as the root cause, Palestinian suicide bombers as an effect. Only when the
unthinking U.S. endorsement of Israel’s rogue actions ceases (the only time the U.S. forced Israel
to give up an illegitimate enterprise was when Eisenhower forced Israel out of the Sinai
Peninsula in 1956) – only then will the intifada cease and the gaping wounds of the Holy Land
begin to heal. Does all this mean that the U.S. bears sole responsibility for Islamic terror? Of course not. The terror comes also
from a fundamentalist strain of Islam, capable as we have seen of indefinite destructiveness, but still not as awful as the terror of the
first Christian crusade, or of Cromwell’s Christian righteousness, or of the wars of the Reformation. We can however mitigate Islamic
terror by reining in Israel, apologizing to Iran, lifting the economic embargo on Iraq while demanding international inspection of her
armament. We must also track down and immobilize the planners and activators of the recent attacks in New York and Washington.
Since our own bureaucratic, monolinguistic, gadget-obsessed intelligence services are not likely to pull this off, we must mend our
ways to secure the full cooperation from those Islamic lands that still are not totally alienated from us. I see no solution to the
expanding Wahabism coming from Saudi Arabia. Let us hope we repair our relations with Islamic moderates sufficiently to support
them in policing their own deviants. I
am here making a case for one program in dealing with our
predicament. In the next two years, I will be making that case more substantially in a book with
the co-authorship of a brilliant young Egyptian scholar, Dina Ibrahim, currently at the University
of Texas. It will be my task to show how force and violence were integral to the American Cold
War operational code. It will be Dina’s task to demonstrate how this code played out in Islamic
lands, exacerbating normally hostile reactions to America as the new, domineering imerpium.
We will never question the evil of terrorism. We will aim to establish the unforgivable hypocrisy
of the U.S. and its number one client state in denying to suppressed peoples an arena of protest
that we ourselves embraced. Look for this in 2003. Does all this mean that I think there is one
clear answer for Americans? No, no. The matter is still debatable. Cori Dauber, who favors the
bombings, debates this with me all the time, to the delight of our students. When David
Horowitz comes to Chapel Hill on November 28, as he has promised to do, to chastise us for
inheriting the anti-American, irresponsible mantle of the student radicals that once inhabited
Berkeley, telling us that we are woolly-minded innocents, we will listen to him, and, perhaps,
retain our composure. [Audience laughter] To you, who have ventured into this maelstrom already, I
say: Go to it. The Right-wing may go after you, but their Joe McCarthy has not yet appeared on
the horizon. This is still America; you still have freedom of speech. You are creating what in the
current neologism is called a public sphere. Keep it going. I wish you luck.
Rules
 Rules bad
Challenging the rules of the game is important- it allows for reflection on the
relationship between society, norms, and the self
Rodriguez 6- media theory professor at the City University of Hong Kong with a PhD from NYU
(Hector Rodriguez, December 2006, “The Playful and the Serious: An approximation to
Huizinga's Homo Ludens,” published in Game Studies, vol. 6 issue 1)

My suggestion is that serious games can address fundamental aspects of social philosophy and social
science. Once again, such games would not be designed with the intention of making the subject more "attractive" or
"entertaining" to students. The aim should be to reveal the playful features of societal institutions. Consider a game where
the boundaries of the magic circle are not yet clearly defined, and its rules not yet finalized; the
game itself would consist in the tentative and risky process of negotiating these rules and boundaries.
A competition could also be held without a referee, so that all or most decisions have to be reached by the negotiated consensus of
all players. This competition may even take place in a public space, without a precise starting or ending time. Whereas both Huizinga
and Caillois argue that the boundaries of the magic circle and the rules of the game must always be fixed in advance of the start of
play, this type of game would make both elements contingent on the decisions and responses of players. It remains an open
question whether this approach would lead to a sort of Hobbesian state of suspicion and aggression, or whether new forms of
creative association would arise through trial and error. Players could also
explore how different resources,
such as the internet, help to sustain or impede these emerging forms of community. The
experimental emergence, sustenance and transformation of a community would thus become the
core subject and aim of the game. Students would then write reports, keep research documents or conduct
seminars based on their design experience, and perhaps modify their design ideas iteratively on the basis of
successive runs of the game, leading to theoretical conclusions about the interpersonal process
of community formation. The magic circle offers many opportunities for game designers to address aspects of human
society. A familiar example is Eric Zimmerman's Suspicion, a conspiratorial game played in an everyday office environment where
each player started out not knowing the identity of the other players (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004). Game designers aiming to
highlight trust and suspicion sometimes take the radical step of rendering the boundaries of the magic circle deliberately ambiguous.
Phone calls or text messages received in the middle of the night may be real calls for help from a friend or part of the game's
conspiracy. Well-known examples include the Electronic Arts game Majestic and the plot of David Fincher's 1997 film The Game. This
uncertainty can generate experiences that resemble philosophical scepticism about reality. The designer becomes the equivalent of
a Cartesian evil genius capable of controlling, and potentially deceiving, our sense of the distinction between reality and make-
believe. From the designer's standpoint, the players become toys to be played with; the game designer is the only player who for
sure knows where the boundaries of the magic circle are. Sceptical uncertainty may well become a central topic in experimental
game design. The experiential correlate of this technique, in many cases, is paranoia. I am not here using this term in a strictly
clinical sense. Paranoia is a mode of perception that actively seeks out potential threats or secret plots.
The perceiver is always ready to turn any movement into a warning signal, and to respond by fleeing, attacking, or decoding. Play
is here underpinned by a defensive-aggressive attitude and an obsession with conspiratorial themes.[5] In
paranoid gaming, the player is led to question where the boundaries of the game actually lie,
sometimes even whether they exist at all. The location of the magic circle is no longer taken for
granted; it becomes the very subject of the game. In this context, I would take issue with one of
Huizinga's main theses. He repeatedly emphasizes that, within the magic circle, the rules of a game
hold absolutely. There is no room for scepticism. The player may reject the rules (for instance, by
refusing to play) or manipulate them by cheating, but it makes no sense to doubt them. While it is conceptually
possible to doubt the existence of a planet or the accuracy of a scientific model, Huizinga asserts, the rules of a game
are a priori not open to this sort of uncertainty. Epistemological scepticism has no place in this
arena. My objection to this conclusion is that sceptical doubt can sometimes become central to the play
experiences that I have described as paranoid, and this kind of experience can become a powerful springboard
for reflection about the relationship between society and the self.
 A2: Stasis
The resolution is not a stasis point—stasis is a retroactive judgment on what set
of arguments is important, not a predetermined point of clash
Zemlicka & Matheson 14 (Kurt; Calum; PhD candidates at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, “To Make a Desert and Call it Peace: Stasis and Judgment in the MX Missile Debate,”
Argumentation & Advocacy, Summer)
Apart from our interest in the Reagan administration’s justification for the MX program from an argument-level standpoint, the
President’s report on thetopic is significant from a theoretical perspective in that it challenges an
understanding of public deliberation that relies on an assumption of the fairly static nature of
argumentative clash. Because Congress was both a stakeholder and ultimately the judge of this debate in that it had to
authorize the MX program, this study problematizes a tripartite division of public debate constituted of
two competitors and a separate judge. The rhetorical construction and presentation of
arguments in the tripartite model conceives of a unidirectionality in the rhetorical act, from the
stakeholders to the judge, with the former attempting to persuade the latter. Instead, the Congressional decision
to approve the program demonstrates a necessary recursivity between the two parties, where the Reagan
administration and Congress both acted as stakeholders, but Congress also arranged and invented a decision in its capacity as the
agent of judgment. Demonstrating that the rhetoricity inherent in the public debate over the MX program stems from both the
stakeholders and the adjudicating body is significant in that it
alters what we normally perceive as the
preconditions for public debate. Instead of establishing the materially relevant facts of the issue
at hand in order to provide a point of stasis for formulating competing positions to facilitate
argumentative clash, in this case weighing questions of national security against the goal of nuclear disarmament, the decision
rendered by the Congress responds to justifications from both positions to formulate its policy. The
strategic maneuver deployed in the MX report thus provides insight into the way stasis points are established in public debates by
challenging the understanding that they are determined in advance of, and therefore become
the precondition for, public debate. Throughout the course of an argument, a competing mass
of issues and values arise. Debates are not organized around preexisting points of stasis but
rather such a point is established retroactively by the agent of judgment ratifying a point of
contact as if this point of stasis had organized the debate all along.

Stasis is a retroactive construct made in the judgment of a debate, not a

preexisting point of contestation
Zemlicka & Matheson 14 (Kurt; Calum; PhD candidates at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, “To Make a Desert and Call it Peace: Stasis and Judgment in the MX Missile Debate,”
Argumentation & Advocacy, Summer)

The call for a renewal of stasis theory presented here implicates more than just debates about arms policy. With an
increasingly polarized political climate in the United States’ Congress, along with the prevalence of partisan-
biased news commentary, it is essential that critics of public policy debates focus their attention not
just on the arguments made for a particular policy proposal, but also how that proposal is
framed within the American public imaginary. Instead of viewing the point of contestation over
controversial policy decisions as a fixed, immutable starting point, scholars of argument would
be well served in understanding the dynamic nature of the ways in which arguments are framed
and judgment rendered. Most importantly perhaps, is resisting the urge to understand the
justifications for a particular policy as determined in advance of the merits policy itself. Rather,
each level of argument is constantly evolving, oftentimes with the merits being used to frame
the justification instead of the other way around. Argument scholars would thus be well served in exploring how
points of stasis are not necessarily a precondition for policy debates, but rather, the debates
themselves serve as the antagonistic grounding from which stasis points are developed.
 Roleplaying contradicts rules
We can have policy simulation or enforce the rules, but not both—there are no
rules for the institutions that we simulate so insisting on limits means that their
game is not portable
Caillois 1 (Roger, French anthropologist, Man, Play, and Games, trans Barash, orig. published 1958, p. 8-9)
Many games do not imply rules. No fixed or rigid rules exist for playing with dolls, for playing soldiers, cops and robbers,
horses, locomotives, and airplanes—games, in general, which presuppose free improvisation, and the
chief attraction of which lies in the pleasure of playing a role, of acting as if one were someone
or something else, a machine for example. Despite the assertion’s paradoxical character, I will state that in this instance the
fiction, the sentiment of as if replaces and performs the same function as do rules. Rules
themselves create fictions. The one who plays chess, prisoner’s base, polo, or baccara, by the very fact of
complying with their respective rules, is separated from real life where there is no activity that
literally corresponds to any of these games. That is why chess, prisoner’s base, polo, and baccara are played for real. As if is
not necessary. On the contrary, each time that play consists in imitating life, the player on the one
hand lacks knowledge of how to invent and follow rules that do not exist in reality, and on the
other hand the game is accompanied by the knowledge that the required behavior is pretense, or
simple mimicry. This awareness of the basic unreality of the assumed behavior is separate from real
life and from the arbitrary legislation that defines other games. The equivalence is so precise that the one
who breaks up a game, the one who denounces the absurdity of the rules, now becomes the
one who breaks the spell, who brutally refuses to acquiesce in the proposed illusion, who
reminds the boy that he is not really a detective, pirate, horse, or submarine, or reminds the little girl that she is not
rocking a real baby or serving a real meal to real ladies on her miniature dishes. Thus games are not
ruled and make-believe. Rather, they are ruled or make-believe. It is to the point that if a game with rules
seems in certain circumstances like a serious activity and is beyond one unfamiliar with the rules, i.e. if it seems to him like real life,
this game can at once provide the framework for a diverting make-believe for the confused and curious layman. One easily can
conceive of children, in order to imitate adults, blindly manipulating real or imaginary pieces on an imaginary chessboard, and by
pleasant example, playing at “playing chess.”
State
 Reforms/State Fail
The state’s focus on well-being and emotional skill is rooted in the
reintrenchment of a passive neoliberal subject
Firth 14 (Rhiannon, research fellow at Cass School of Education and Communities active in the
International Centre for Public Pedagogies, “Somatic pedagogies: Critiquing and resisting the
affective discourse of the neoliberal state from an embodied anarchist perspective”, Ephemera,
6/25/14, http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/somatic-pedagogies-critiquing-and-
resisting-affective-discourse-neoliberal-state)KJR
Taking the UK as an example, one might be inclined to question whether discourses and debates surrounding well-being, therapy
and resilience are historically situated within the previous New Labour government’s agenda, and that the current Conservative
government conversely appears to be placing more emphasis on discipline and securitization and even militarization, which have
become key in the government’s attempts to create compliant subjects (Chadderton, 2013). Nonetheless, recent speeches and
policies by former Education Secretary Michael Gove and government initiatives continue to place emphasis on ‘emotional
intelligence’ and ‘resilience’ (see Walker, 2013; Williams, 2010). Discourses of well-being are explicitly linked to
the need to create compliant subjects in the UK research agenda. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Delivery Plan 2011–2015 places emphasis on ‘Influencing behaviour and informing interventions’ as one of three strategic priorities
for the time period. This is explicitly linked to a discourse of well-being: ‘How can interventions to improve health and wellbeing
draw upon advances in social science?’ and potentially coercive elements are made explicit: ‘What is the appropriate role of public
policy in terms of coercion through legislation, persuasion via incentives or social marketing, or coherent combinations of
approaches?’ (ESRC, 2011: 6). Well-being is linked in the document to willingness/ability to work,
meeting corporate interests, and the desire to reduce welfare expenditure (ibid.: 7). Furthermore,
emergent discourses of discipline and securitisation also mobilize affect in the form of fear. They rest on similar
assumptions of vulnerable subjects in need of state protection, and the desire to restrain and
control bodies (DeLeon, working paper). Aside from governmental standpoint and policy, a culture has become deeply
embedded whereby happiness and wellness are assumed to be moral imperatives, rather than matters of choice or privilege
(Cederström and Spicer, 2015). Critique of state discourse of affect Such discourse and interventions
are problematic
for many reasons. They individualize responsibility for economic problems and re-cast social problems
as emotional ones (Furedi, 2004: 24). This enables policy makers to evade discussion of material causes
and effects (Eccleston and Hayes, 2008: 12). The discourse promotes a particular kind of subject: one that is introspective and
narcissistic (ibid.: 136). It
erodes social ties as personal relationships are increasingly feared as potentially
dysfunctional, abusive and dependent (ibid.: 136; Furedi, 2004: 61), whilst discourses of ‘parenting skills’ and ‘social
skills’ presume homogenous desires and expert knowledge that colonise personal relationships (Furedi, 2004: 98). This
fragments the informal networks that people might previously have drawn on for support, which in turn
undermines the potential for collective political struggle (Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008: 141). It also leads to increased
dependence on professionals who are implicated in practices of surveillance as people are expected to reveal more and more of
their private and inner lives (ibid.: xiii). Staff appraisals and personal development expectations in the workplace integrate
therapeutic terms with performance targets (ibid.: 18) and student satisfaction surveys are used to discipline
academic staff (Amsler, 2011: 51). They promote a particular limited and limiting account of what it means to be human:
a ‘diminished self’ (Eccleston and Hayes, 2008: xi), who is lacking something essential (Cruikshank, 1999: 3) which
undermines the radical and transformative power of education and of human beings (Ecclestone and Hayes,
2008: 161). This lays the ground for the production of conformist neoliberal subjects with truncated
hopes, dreams and desires (Cruikshank, 1999: 2; Amsler, 2011: 50-51). Those who do not fit this image are
shaped and excluded through diagnoses and medication (Furedi, 2004: 99). Political interest in emotional skills is
integral to the demands of the market, particularly in the emerging service economy and public sector jobs: ‘the
education system plays a key role in socialising the “right” forms of emotional labour for
different jobs’ (Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008: 18). Therapeutic education is therefore a normative and
dangerous combination of discourses and policy. It has real effects on people’s bodies, which are subject to
surveillance, fragmented from social relationships, medicalised, and trained to conform to particular types of labour. This is all
ostensibly a response to – but actually reproduces – neoliberal anxiety and precarity. So the key questions become: How can we
‘unlearn’ dominant notions of well-being and resist neoliberal structurations of affect without inputting another normative notion of
physical and mental ‘good’? If subjects are trained to accept, adapt to and ultimately desire precarious life in neoliberal societies,
how might we persuade them otherwise without also assuming a ‘diminished subject’ or attempting to impose revolutionary
desires?

The state can never lead liberation efforts and roleplaying as a policy makers
resigns us to our role as the oppressed
Freire 68 (Paulo, Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical
pedagogy, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, originally published in Portuguese circa 1968,
published online at Archive.org, 3/11/16,
https://archive.org/stream/PedagogyOfTheOppressed-English-
PauloFriere/oppressed_djvu.txt)KJR**modified for gendered language

The ‘fear of freedom’ which afflicts the oppressed, a fear which may equally well lead them to desire
the role of oppressor or bind them to the role of oppressed, should be examined. One of the basic
elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one
man’s persons** choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the man person** prescribed to into one that conforms to
the prescriber’s consciousness. Thus, the behaviour of the oppressed is a prescribed behaviour, following as it does the guidelines of
the oppressor. The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his
their** guidelines are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it
with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued
constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man humanity**; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It
is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion. To surmount the situation of oppression,
men people** must first critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a
new situation - one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity. But the struggle to be more fully human has already
begun in the authentic struggle to transform the situation. Although the situation of oppression is a dehumanized and dehumanizing
totality affecting both the oppressors and those whom they oppress, it is the latter who must, from their stifled humanity, wage for
both the struggle for a fuller humanity; the
oppressor, who is himself themselves** dehumanized because
he they** dehumanizes others, is unable to lead this struggle. However, the oppressed, who have
adapted to the structure of domination in which they are immersed, and have become resigned to it, are
inhibited from waging the struggle for freedom so long as they feel incapable of running the risks it requires.
Moreover, their struggle for freedom threatens not only the oppressor, but also their own oppressed comrades who are fearful of
still greater repression. When they discover within themselves the yearning to be free, they perceive that this yearning can be
transformed into reality only when the same yearning is aroused in their comrades. But while domin-ated by the fear of freedom
they refuse to appeal to, or listen to the appeals of, others, or even to the appeals of their own conscience. They prefer
gregariousness to authentic comradeship; they
prefer the security of conformity with their state of
unfreedom to the creative communion produced by freedom and even the very pursuit of freedom.

The state can never implement truly liberating and humanist education - leads
to dehumanization
Freire 68 (Paulo, Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical
pedagogy, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, originally published in Portuguese circa 1968,
published online at Archive.org, 3/11/16,
https://archive.org/stream/PedagogyOfTheOppressed-English-
PauloFriere/oppressed_djvu.txt)KJR**modified for gendered language
For us, however,
the requirement is seen not in terms of explaining to, but rather entering into a dialogue with,
the people about their actions. In any event, no reality transforms itself, and the duty which Lukacs ascribes to the
revolutionary party of ‘explaining to the masses their own action’ coincides with our affirmation of the need for the critical
intervention of the people in reality through the praxis. The pedagogy of the oppressed, which is the pedagogy of men people**
engaged in the fight for their own liberation, has its roots here. And those who recognize, or begin to recognize, themselves as
oppressed must be among the developers of this pedagogy. No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the
oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The
oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption. The pedagogy of the oppressed, animated by authentic,
humanist (not humanitarian) generosity, presents itself as a pedagogy of man humanity. Pedagogy
which begins with
the egoistic interests of the oppressors (an egoism cloaked in the false generosity of paternalism) and makes of
the oppressed the objects of its humanitarianism, itself maintains and embodies oppression. It is
an instrument of dehumanization. This is why, as we affirmed earlier, the pedagogy of the oppressed
cannot be developed or practised by the oppressors. It would be a contradiction in terms if the
oppressors not only defended but actually implemented a liberating education. But if the
implementation of a liberating education requires political power and the oppressed have none, how then is it possible to carry out
the pedagogy of the oppressed prior to the revolution? This is a question of the greatest importance, the reply to which is at least
tentatively outlined in chapter 4. One aspect of the reply is to be found in the distinction between systematic education, which can
only be changed by political power, and educational projects, which should be carried out with the oppressed in the process of
organizing them. The pedagogy of the oppressed, as a humanist and libertarian pedagogy, has two distinct stages. In the first, the
oppressed unveil the world of oppression and through the praxis commit themselves to its
transformation. In the second stage, in which the reality of oppression has already been transformed, this pedagogy ceases to
belong to the oppressed and becomes a pedagogy of all men in the process of permanent liberation. In both stages, it is always
through action in depth that the culture of domination is culturally confronted. In the first stage this confrontation occurs through
the change in the way the oppressed perceive the world of oppression; in the second Stage, through the expulsion of the myths
created and developed in the old order, which like spectres haunt the new structure emerging from the revolutionary
transformation.

We must work outside the state, not conform to it

Freire 68 (Paulo, Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical
pedagogy, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, originally published in Portuguese circa 1968,
published online at Archive.org, 3/11/16,
https://archive.org/stream/PedagogyOfTheOppressed-English-
PauloFriere/oppressed_djvu.txt)KJR**modified for gendered language

The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not marginals, are not men people** living ‘outside’ society. They have always
been inside - inside the structure which made them “beings for others’. The solution is not to
‘integrate’ them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they
can become ‘beings for themselves’. Such transformation, of course, would undermine the oppressors’ purposes;
hence their utilization of the banking concept of education to avoid the threat of student conscientization. The banking
approach to adult education, for example, will never propose to students that they consider reality
critically. It will deal instead with such vital questions as whether Roger gave green grass to the goat, and insist upon the
importance of learning that, on the contrary, Roger gave green grass to the rabbit. The ‘humanism’ of the banking
approach masks the effort to turn men into automatons - the very negation of their ontological vocation to be
more fully human. Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or un-knowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned
bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves con-
tain contradictions about reality. But, sooner or later, these contradictions may lead formerly passive students to turn against their
domestication and the attempt to domesticate reality. They may discover through existential experience that their present way of
life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human. They may perceive through their relations with reality that reality is
really a process, undergoing constant trans-formation. If men people** are searchers and their ontological
vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contra-diction in which banking
education seeks to maintain them, and then engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation.

The state will use the tools of the oppressed against them under the guise of
false generosity
Freire 68 (Paulo, Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical
pedagogy, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, originally published in Portuguese circa 1968,
published online at Archive.org, 3/11/16,
https://archive.org/stream/PedagogyOfTheOppressed-English-
PauloFriere/oppressed_djvu.txt)KJR**modified for gendered language

We can legitimately say that in the process of oppression someone oppresses someone else; we cannot
say that in the process of revolution someone liberates someone else, nor yet that someone liberates
himself, but rather that men people** in com-munion liberate each other. This affirmation is not meant to undervalue the
importance of revolutionary leaders but, on the contrary, to emphasize their value. What could be more important than to live and
work with the oppressed, with the ‘rejects of life’, with the ‘wretched of the earth’? In this communion, the revolutionary leaders
should find not only their raison d’etre but a motive for rejoicing. By their very nature, revolu-tionary leaders can do
what the dominant elites - by their very nature - are unable to do in authentic terms. Every
approach to the oppressed by the elites, as a class, is couched in terms of the false generosity
described in chapter 1. But the revolutionary leaders cannot be falsely generous, nor can they manipulate. Whereas the
oppressor elites flourish by trampling the people underfoot, the revolutionary leaders can
flourish only in communion with the people. Thus it is that the activity of the oppressor cannot be
humanist, while that of the revolutionary is necessarily so. The inhumanity of the oppressors and
revolutionary human-ism both make use of science. But science and technology at the service of
the former are used to reduce men to the status of ‘things’; at the service of the latter, they are used to
promote humanization. The oppressed must become Subjects of the latter process, however, lest they continue to be seen as mere
objects of scientific interest.

Reforms fail
Freire 68 (Paulo, Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical
pedagogy, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, originally published in Portuguese circa 1968,
published online at Archive.org, 3/11/16,
https://archive.org/stream/PedagogyOfTheOppressed-English-
PauloFriere/oppressed_djvu.txt)KJR
The principal contradiction of dual societies is the relation-ship of dependency between them and the metropolitan society. Once
the contradiction has been superseded, the transformation hitherto effected through ‘aid’, which has primarily
benefited the metropolitan society, becomes true development, which benefits the ‘being for itself. For the
above reasons, the purely reformist solutions at-tempted by these societies (even though some of
the reforms may frighten and even panic the more reactionary members of the elite groups) do
not resolve their external and internal con-tradictions. Almost always the metropolitan society induces
these reformist solutions in response to the demands of the historical process, as a new way of
preserving its hegemony. It is as if the metropolitan society were saying: ‘Let us carry out reforms before the people carry
out a revolution.’ And in order to achieve this goal, the metropolitan society has no options other than
conquest, manipulation, economic and cul-tural (and sometimes military) invasion of the dependent society-an
invasion in which the elite leaders of the dominated society to a large extent act as mere brokers for the leaders of the metropolitan
society. To close this tentative analysis of the theory of anti-dialogical action, I wish to reaffirm that revolutionary leaders
must not use the same anti-dialogical procedures used by the oppressors; on the contrary, revolutionary
leaders must follow the path of dialogue and of communication.

The state is not reformable and only the oppressed can liberate themselves
Khan 94 (Ali, Doctor of Law at Washburn University, Howard Law Journal Fall, 1994,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41558873_Lessons_from_Malcolm_X_Freedom_
by_Any_Means_Necessary)KJR
In advocating a sense of urgency, Malcolm also rejected
the idea that oppressors are morally reformable.
[FN156] For him, the very existence of oppression was sufficient proof of moral bankruptcy in those
who practice it. [FN157] Oppression is not a moral oversight or a good faith mistake that needs to be pointed out. It is a
deliberate act perpetrated with premeditation and even malice. Hence, Malcolm did not see the need to engage in a drawn-out
dialogue with the oppressors in an effort to point out the moral flaws of their laws and their actions. [FN158] *124 In fact,
Malcolm went further and asserted that oppressors
use subtle, deceptive, and deceitful methods to create an
impression that things are getting better. [FN159] This observation is accurate to the extent the oppressors may
enact laws that appear to imply to the rest of the world that everyone receives equal respect and treatment in their system. In
reality, however, the system remains the same or sometimes even gets worse. [FN160] The amendments in the law
may remove the physical chains from the ankles of the oppressed. Malcolm warned, however, that
there is no need to celebrate this change in law if the oppressors have already chained the minds of
the oppressed. [FN161] To free the subjugated minds of the oppressed, Malcolm proposed a massive psychological
transformation. He attempted to restore their confidence in themselves and to sharpen their sense of responsibility.
Malcolm directly attacked the psychology of subordination, which portrays the oppressed as a
helpless crowd waiting for a savior from the ranks of the oppressors. Thus, the illusion that the oppressor
is the ultimate messiah was finally shattered. By taking their destiny in their own hands, the oppressed would
embrace self-help as the ultimate principle of durable freedom. [FN162]

State can’t solve oppression – absolute control means the oppressed can’t
access
Khan 94 (Ali, Doctor of Law at Washburn University, Howard Law Journal Fall, 1994,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41558873_Lessons_from_Malcolm_X_Freedom_by_
Any_Means_Necessary)KJR**modified for gendered language
Most systems of government have three branches all of which are involved in the law making process to some extent. These
branches comprise the legal means. Ifthe oppressor is in charge of the legislature, the judiciary, and the
enforcement agencies, the oppressor has absolute control over the legal means. [FN58] In other
words, any legal challenge to oppression can be preempted since the oppressor is the one who
makes the law when the law is needed, interprets the law when the law is challenged, and enforces the law when the law is
breached. From the viewpoint of the oppressed, the state of oppression is complete when the oppressed
have no access to the legislature, no influence with the judiciary, and no bond with the enforcement agencies. For example, in
South Africa, the white minority opposed the inclusion of the majority into the legal system because the white minority feared that
it would lose control over the legal means by which apartheid was created and maintained. Likewise, years ago when the slave
owner's control over the legal means to maintain slavery was challenged in the United States, the slave-owners took up arms to
resist change. I do not maintain that anyone who controls the legal means is an oppressor. Nor do I assert that social, political, and
economic means of oppression are secondary in nature or effect. I simply suggest that oppression
is more effectively
carried out when the oppressor gains exclusive authority over the legal means. There are many
reasons for the establishment to perpetuate oppressive policies, ranging from moral failure to irrational
prejudice. The methods by which the oppressor implements oppression also are varied ranging from slavery, to caste systems, and
then to socioeconomic discrimination. In order for state-sponsored oppression to exist, however, the oppressor must *93 gain
control over the legal means. Once the oppressor has the legislative, judicial, and enforcement means at his their**
disposal, the economic, social, and political means of oppression can be easily harnessed.

Working outside the state is critical to self-reliance, the reaffirmation of the

soul, and true liberation
Khan 94 (Ali, Doctor of Law at Washburn University, Howard Law Journal Fall, 1994,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41558873_Lessons_from_Malcolm_X_Freedom_by_
Any_Means_Necessary)KJR

Malcolm's message of liberation is pragmatic: it aims at changing the concrete conditions that
cause subjugation and helplessness. Malcolm challenges the oppressed to clean up their
communities by using their own political, economic, moral, and intellectual resources. [FN12] *82 Malcolm believed
that this change was the responsibility of each community that suffered "the effects of years of exploitation, neglect and apathy."
[FN13] This self-help mentality unleashes new energy in oppressed communities, minimizing
dependence upon a system that has been unjust. [FN14] This commitment to change from within, however, does
not make the oppressor less menacing. The threat from the outside is not minimized. The fight against oppression takes
on a new meaning: it is now rooted in the moral militancy of an organized and disciplined
community. There is a spiritual layer of Malcolm's message as well which goes beyond restoring the material welfare of
oppressed communities. It is a message that instills human dignity which oppressors have
systematically besieged through a spiritually deficient legal system. It restores the confidence of a people
who have been invaded, colonized, enslaved, segregated, and made inferior by force, manipulation, fraud, and miseducation. [FN15]
Malcolm emphasizes the restoration of human dignity -- the birthright of every man and woman without any distinction as to race,
color, language, religion, political opinion, social origin, property, birth, or any other status. [FN16]
To assert their human
dignity, Malcolm argues, the oppressed need not leave their own communities, nor need they
be timid, overly-friendly, or apologetic in *83 their dealings with the oppressor. [FN17] Some distance from the
oppressor is good for the soul, and perhaps necessary for maintaining a spiritual balance. [FN18]
Malcolm aspired to change the nature of discourse about oppression. He knew that historically, those who were oppressed did not
limit themselves to the language of the oppressor. In the United States, for example, the subjects of oppression created new forms
of communication first through slave songs then through jazz. [FN19] Thus, Malcolm invented a new language of liberation,
encouraging others not to be limited by the conversation of that time. For Malcolm, the
concepts of formal equality,
desegregation, and civil rights were the language of acquiescence, not liberation; for him, the
concepts of identity, self-reliance, and human rights were the language of liberation. By any
means necessary is a defiant phrase that threatens the establishment, opposes the notion of law
and order, and exposes the failure of the legal system to provide justice. It empowers the
oppressed by sowing seeds of militancy, forcing them to reflect upon their condition of
oppression and than daring to change the system. By any means necessary is also an intimidating utterance that
frightens *84 many citizens, instituting a state of terror in which their life, liberty, and property seem no longer secure. Taken in its
total effect, Malcolm's phrase offers a complex mix of defiance, fearlessness, and militancy with insurgence, fright and anarchy.

The oppressed can’t work within the system

Khan 94 (Ali, Doctor of Law at Washburn University, Howard Law Journal Fall, 1994,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41558873_Lessons_from_Malcolm_X_Freedom_by_
Any_Means_Necessary)KJR

In almost every legal system, some gap between law as written and law as enforced is inevitable. In a system of
oppression, however, many discriminatory exceptions to the written law operate to deal with the
oppressed. In an extreme case, it is quite possible that two distinct (formal) systems exist side by side: one for the oppressor and
the other for the oppressed. In any discriminatory system the police will stop, search, or arrest members of the oppressed group
more frequently and on a lower standard of suspicion. [FN113] The police will also coerce them to confess or supply the
incriminating evidence. Government
prosecutors will be more prone to indict them, charge them with
serious crimes, and bargain an uncompromising plea. [FN114] Juries will be more inclined to convict them.
[FN115] Judges will give them harsher sentences. [FN116] The oppressed face similarly degrading treatment in prisons. To further
support the enforcement of oppressive laws, sociological myths will be created to label the oppressed, such as they have *110 less
regard for the law; they are violent by nature; or they pose a threat to public safety. [FN117] The system of oppression works
without any internal threat if members of the oppressed group are excluded from enforcement agencies. [FN118] Furthermore, the
fear of law is more seriously grounded in the psyche of the oppressed when the police, prosecutors, magistrates, and prison
officials share the same mentality derived from the ruling class. A
total exclusion of the oppressed from the
enforcement agencies, however, is not absolutely necessary to operate a system of oppression.
The members of the oppressed group may be recruited in the lower ranks, vesting them with
some visibility but little or no authority. Even when recruited for more influential jobs in
enforcement agencies, members of the oppressed group will be trained in the psychology of law and
order, which would effectively seal them from any improper compassion for their own group.
Given the institutional role of enforcement agencies, which is to enforce laws as they are without evaluating their intrinsic justness,
officers recruited from the oppressed group begin to identify more with their jobs than with their condition of oppression.
Ultimately the
oppressor will do anything possible to remain in charge of enforcement policy and
its execution.

The system protect the interests of the oppressor

Khan 94 (Ali, Doctor of Law at Washburn University, Howard Law Journal Fall, 1994,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41558873_Lessons_from_Malcolm_X_Freedom_by_
Any_Means_Necessary)KJR

*114 Individuals are not likely to challenge law and order if they have a stake in the system. If the
system confers rights and benefits upon all without any unjust discrimination, the entire community will consider law and order a
necessary precondition for maintaining a civil society. If
the system protects life, liberty, and property on a
selective basis, however, only those who benefit from the system will respect and demand law and
order. For these citizens, law and order is still the essential condition for preserving a civil
society. Those who are denied the benefits of the system, however, have a different
perspective on the importance of this concept. For them, law and order represents misery, lack of liberty,
and defenselessness. For these people, law and order is a coercive force used to keep them
down. Thus, law and order acquires two different meanings within the same system -- a positive definition for those who profit
from its dictates and a negative one for those who suffer under its dicates. For those who suffer, law and order
loses its normative force and becomes a tool of oppression. [FN129] The system may provide some security to
the oppressed in terms of protecting their lives, but the chief purpose of law and order is to maintain the oppressor's control over
the legal means. Law
and order is then reduced to a simple proposition that the oppressed should
not break the law which is similar to the premise that a slave should not flee even if the master
is cruel. [FN130]
 State bad- Race
Past reform hasn’t gone far enough. Even if the law is steeped with rhetoric of
equal opportunity it doesn’t come to terms with subtle racism that is
normalized in US culture.
Dr. Reid-Brinkley 8 (Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Communication at the University of Pittsburgh, where she also serves as the Director of Debate
for the William Pitt Debating Union. “THE HARSH REALITIES OF “ACTING BLACK”: HOW AFRICAN-
AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE
AND STYLE” pgs. 7-9, 2008)

So, within public discourse, how race is coded rhetorically in public deliberation is of critical
importance in evaluating the efficacy of efforts to increase racial and ethnic diversity. We need
knowledge of how rhetorical style in American public deliberation functions within a race, class,
and gender hierarchy. How is race signified in public deliberations? How does this signification
impact efforts to create a more diverse or inclusive public sphere? How do language, social
structures, practices and styles signify race? And, how does white privilege affect the
deliberation process? These series of questions must inform our critical efforts at understanding
the rhetoric of race, ethnicity and diversity in American education discourse. Racism is ever so
much more subtle now than it has been in the past. It is this subtle nature of racism and white
privilege that provide a cover for the normal, “everyday practices” that reproduce racial
separations and social dominance.32 We can only study these normal, everyday practices of
subtle racism by studying localized examples of racial conflict. The dependence on standards
and accountability discourse is especially significant when attached to discussions of racial
inequity in student academic performance.33 In terms of the European context, Gillborn notes
that such reform efforts have resulted in higher rates of minority academic
underachievement.34 Educational psychology scholar Jerome Taylor argues that the conditions
are similar in the American context.35 In America, this persistent problem within public
education has been connected to the “black/ white achievement gap” mentioned above. The
last two decades have indicated a measured decline in the academic achievement of black
students in relation to white students in the U.S., particularly as measured by standardized
testing measures. Reform efforts designed to offset the inequities in the educational experience
of the poor and racial and ethnic minorities demonstrates a limited effectiveness in reversing
the current underachievement trend. Thus, America faces a grave difficulty in resolving this
situation. We find it difficult to understand why such a situation exists in the first place. In
essence, it is difficult to believe that the Civil Rights Movement and the passage of legal
legislation to end segregation and discriminatory practices, targeted at racial and ethnic
minorities, did not permanently resolve the problem. Theoretically, all Americans have equal
access to the tools that are necessary to lead a successful life with the full benefits of citizenship.
The Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement ensured that racial and ethnic
minorities and women achieved equality with white men and thus barriers to their successful
participation in society had been removed. If equality has been achieved, and yet we find that
the heretofore excluded populations are still unable to achieve the educational and economic
heights of the American dream, then one must look to that population for the explanation
rather than to American society in general.
 Authority Bad
State focused debates preclude discussions of individual action – kills
effectiveness and agency
Bleiker, professor of International Relations, 2k (Roland, “Popular Dissent, Human
Agency and Global Politics” pg. 8, Cambridge University Press, igm)
To expand the scope of international theory and to bring transversal struggles into focus is not to declare the state obsolete. States
remain central actors in international politics and they have to be recognised and theorised as such. In fact, my analysis will examine
various ways in which states and the boundaries between them have mediated the formation, functioning and impact of dissent.
However, my reading of dissent and agency makes the state neither its main focus nor its starting
point. There are compelling reasons for such a strategy, and they go beyond a mere recognition that a
state-centric approach to international theory engenders a form of representation that
privileges the authority of the state and thus precludes an adequate understand¬ing of the
radical transformations that are currently unfolding in global life. Michael Shapiro is among an increasing
number of theor¬ists who convincingly portray the state not only as an institution, but also, and primarily, as a set of 'stories' — of
which the state-centric approach to international theory is a perfect example. It
is part of a legitimisation process that
highlights, promotes and naturalises cer¬tain political practices and the territorial context within
which they take place. Taken together, these stories provide the state with a sense of identity, coherence and unity. They
create boundaries between an inside and an outside, between a people and its others. Shapiro stresses that such state-stories
also exclude, for they seek 'to repress or delegitimise other stories and the practices of identity and
space they reflect.' And it is these processes of exclusion that impose a cer¬tain political order
and provide the state with a legitimate rationale for violent encounters.22

Their framework confuses learning with training – they create ethically bankrupt
scholars who actively attempt to expel discussions of social justice
Giroux 11 (Henry A. Giroux, Professor of Education at Boston University, Fast Capitalism, Vol.
8, No. 2, “Rejecting Academic Labor as a Subaltern Class: Learning from Paulo Freire and the
Politics of Critical Pedagogy,” 2011,
http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/8_2/Giroux8_2.html)

I believe that too

many notions of academic freedom are defined through a privatized or individualized
notion of freedom and are largely removed from the issue of democratic governance that is the
primary foundation enabling academic freedom to become a reality in the first place. Right-wing
notions of teaching and learning that seek to standardize curricula, impose an audit culture, and
prioritize quantitative measures constitute a kind of anti-pedagogy, substituting conformity for
dialogue and ideological inflexibility for critical engagement. Such attacks on critical thought
should be named for what they are—an affirmation of thoughtlessness and an antidote to the difficult
process of self- and social criticism.[3] In spite of what conservatives claim, The outcome right-wing pedagogy
confuses training for education and enshrines a poisonous anti-intellectualism that produces a
flight from thinking, the self, society, and the obligations of social responsibility. The outcome of
this bare pedagogy of conformity—emptied of critical dialogue, critique, and ethical considerations—is not a
student who feels a responsibility to others, but one who feels the presence of difference and
troubling knowledge as an unbearable burden to be contained or expelled. In this way, it becomes
apparent that the current right-wing assault on higher education is directed not only against the
conditions that make critical pedagogy possible but also against the possibility of raising
questions about the real problems facing higher education and society today, such as the increasing
role of part-time labor, the instrumentalization of knowledge, the rise of an expanding national
security state, the hijacking of public spheres by corporate and militarized interests, and the increasing attempts by
right-wing extremists to turn education into job training and public pedagogy into an extended
exercise in patriotic xenophobia. All of these efforts undermine the idea of the university as
central to a functioning democracy in which people are encouraged to think, to engage
knowledge critically, to make judgments, to assume responsibility for what it means to know
something, and to understand the consequences of such knowledge for the world at large.

Mediation of action through legal means leads to the illusion that only the state
is capable of solving violence, necessitating the existence of the state, justifying
all atrocities and making ethics impossible
Rozo 4 (MA in philosophy and Cultural Analysis, 2004 Diego, Forgiving the Unforgivable: On
Violence, Power, and the Possibility of Justice p 19-21) //AMM

Within the legal order the relations between individuals will resemble this logic where suffering
is exchanged for more, but ‘legal’ suffering, because these relations are no longer regulated by
the “culture of the heart” [Kultur des Herzens]. (CV 245) As Benjamin describes it, the “legal system tries to erect, in all
areas where individual ends could be usefully pursued by violence, legal ends that can be
realized only by legal power.” (CV 238) The individual is not to take law in his [their] own hands [as
their responsibility]; no conflict should be susceptible of being solved without the direct
intervention of law, lest its authority will be undermined. Law has to present itself as
indispensable for any kind of conflict to be solved. The consequence of this infiltration of law throughout
the whole of human life is paradoxical: the more inescapable the rule of law is, the less
responsible the individual becomes. Legal and judicial institutions act as avengers in the name of
the individual. Even the possibility of forgiveness is monopolized by the state under the ‘right of mercy’. Hence the responsibility of
the person toward the others is now delegated on the authority and justness of the law. The legal
institutions, the very agents of (legal) vengeance exonerate me from my essential responsibility towards the

others, breaking the moral proximity that makes every ethics possible.20 Thus I am no longer
obliged to an other that by his/her very presence would demand me to be worthy of the occasion (of every
occasion), because law, by seeking to regulate affairs between individuals, makes this other anonymous,

virtual: his[their] otherness is equaled to that of every possible other. The Other becomes faceless,
making it all too easy for me to ignore his [their] demands of justice, and even to exert on him
[them] violence just for the sake of legality. The logic of evil, then, becomes not a means but an end in itself:21 state
violence for the sake of the state’s survival. Hence, the ever-present possibility of the worst takes the form of my unconditional
responsibility towards the other being delegated on the ideological and totalitarian institutions of a law gone astray in the
(its) logic of selfpreserving vengeance. The undecidability of the origin of law, and its consequent meddling all across human

affairs makes it possible that the worst could be exerted in the name of law. Even the very notion of
crimes against humanity, which seeks to protect the life of the population, can be overlooked by the state if it feels
threatened by other states or by its own population.22 From now on, my responsibility towards the Other is taken from

me, at the price of my own existence being constantly threatened by the imminent and fatal possibility of being signaled as guilty of an (for me)
indeterminate offence. In this picture, the modern state protects my existence while bringing on the terror of

state violence – the law infiltrates into and seeks to rule our most private conflicts.
We should reject notions of authority – institutions reproduce social integration
and create liberal violence
Antonio 95 (Robert, most qualified man in debate, nietzsche’s anti-sociology: subjectified
culture and the end of history, http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/17941)

Nietzsche held that the current wave of rationalization has depleted culture so severely that
virtually all of "our institutions are no longer fit for anything" (Nietzsche 1968a, p. 93). Because "shared"
values, norms, and ideas are no longer binding, culturally reproduced social integration has
dissolved. Rather than being normatively regulated, uncoerced behavior follows the grooves of habit, organizational routine, and
mass culture or is simply disoriented (Nietzsche 1974, pp. 302-4, 338; 19696, pp. 121-26; 1969c, p. 226; 19686, p. ISO). For
institutions to exist there must exist the kind of will, instinct, imperative which is anti-liberal to
the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to centuries-long responsibility, to
solidarity between succeeding generations backwards and forwards in infinitum. . . . The entire West
has lost those instincts out of which institutions grow, out of which the future grows. . . . One lives for today, one lives very fast—
one lives very irresponsibly: it is precisely this which one calls "freedom." That
which makes institutions institutions
is despised, hated, rejected: whenever the word "authority" is so much as heard one believes
oneself in danger of a new slavery. (Nietzsche 1968a, pp. 93-94) The state's newly developed top-to-
bottom officialdom is emblematic of this sweeping disintegration; its arsenal of disciplinary mechanisms fill
the breach left by the lack of legitimate authority. Nietzsche held that the state and culture are inherent
"antagonists." Pointing to the cultural stagnation that followed Germany's victory in the Franco-Prussian War, he stated,
"Coming to power is a costly business: power makes stupid. . . . The Germans—once they were called a nation of thinkers: Do they
still think at all? Nowadays the Germans are bored with intellect, . . . politics devours all seriousness for really intellectual things—
Deutschland, Deutschland iiber alles was, I fear, the end of German philosophy" (Nietzsche 1968a, p. 60). Immobilizing intellectual
and aesthetic creativity, the power state manipulates through a new mix of draconian law, welfare provision, propaganda, and
nationalism. It is a "new idol" and the focal point of dangerous currents of mass ressentiment
and regimentation (Nietzsche [1873-76] 1983, pp. 3-6; 1969c, 75-78; [1883] 19686, p. 48; [1888] 19826; [1888] 1967; 1968a,
62-63; [1888], 1969a, p. 319). Nietzsche viewed socialism as an outgrowth of Socratic culture's democratic ethos and expansionary
state.10 The self-righteous egalitarian, collectivist, and redemptive thrust of socialism's highly secularized Christian ressentiment
makes it all the more dangerous. Because socialists simply want to manage "more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more
uniformly," Nietzsche argued, they would, if they came to power, amplify all the pathologies inherent in "state power." He held that
socialism is a "younger brother" of ancient despotism, promising "iron chains," "fearful discipline," "abolition of the individualand
"complete subservience." It would re-create "Chinese conditions" of enduring stasis and absolutism
(Nietzsche [1878-80] 1986, pp. 173-74; [1881] 1982a, pp. 83, 109, 126-27; 1974, pp. 99, 338; 19686, pp. 77-78, 463-64).
 A2: State inevitable
State inevitable is literally ressentiment
Newman 2k (saul, Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths College, anarchism and the politics of ressentiment,
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/theory_and_event/v004/4.3newman.html)

This conception of the State ironically strikes a familiar note with Nietzsche. Nietzsche, like the anarchists, sees
modern man as ‘tamed’, fettered and made impotent by the State.[15] He also sees the State as an abstract
machine of domination, which precedes capitalism, and looms above class and economic concerns. The State is a mode of
domination that imposes a regulated ‘interiorization’ upon the populace. According to Nietzsche the
State emerged as a “terrible tyranny, as a repressive and ruthless machinery,” which subjugated,
made compliant, and shaped the population.[16] Moreover the origins of this State are violent. It is
imposed forcefully from without and has nothing to with ‘contracts’.[17] Nietzsche demolishes the “fantasy” of the social contract —
the theory that the State was formed by people voluntarily relinquishing their power in return
for the safety and security that would be provided by the State. This idea of the social contract has been
central to conservative and liberal political theory, from Hobbes to Locke. Anarchists also reject this theory of the
social contract. They too argue that the origins of the State are violent, and that it is absurd to
argue that people voluntarily gave up their power. It is a dangerous myth that legitimizes and
perpetuates State domination.

Claims of the inevitability of the state doom us to perpetual nihilism – the state
is an unnecessary evil
Newman 2k (saul, Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths College, anarchism and the politics of ressentiment,
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/theory_and_event/v004/4.3newman.html)

For Hobbes, State sovereignty is a necessary evil. There is no attempt to make a fetish of the State:
it does not descend from heaven, preordained by divine will. It is pure sovereignty, pure power,
and it is constructed out of the emptiness of society, precisely in order to prevent the warfare
immanent in the state of nature. The political content of the State is unimportant as long as it
quells unrest in society. Whether there be a democracy, or a sovereign assembly, or a monarchy, it does not matter: “the
power in all forms, if they be perfect enough to protect them, is the same.”[34] Like the anarchists,
Hobbes believes that the guise taken by power is irrelevant. Behind every mask there must be a pure, absolute
power. Hobbes’ political thought is centered around a desire for order, purely as an antidote to disorder, and the extent to which
individuals suffer under this order is incomparable to the suffering caused by war.[35] For anarchists, on the other hand, because
society regulates itself according to natural laws and because there is a natural ethics of
cooperation in man, the State is an unnecessary evil. Rather than preventing perpetual warfare between men,
the State engenders it: the State is based on war and conquest rather than embodying its resolution.
Anarchism can look beyond the State because it argues from the perspective of an essential point of departure — natural human
sociality. It can, therefore, conceive of an alternative to the State. Hobbes, on the other hand, has no such point of departure: there
is no standpoint that can act as an alternative to the State. Society, as we have seen with Hobbes, is characterized by rift and
antagonism. In fact, there is no essential society to speak of — it is an empty place. Society must therefore be
constructed artificially in the shape of the absolute State. While anarchism can rely on natural law, Hobbes can only rely on the law
of the State. At the
heart of the anarchist paradigm there is the essential fullness of society, while at
the heart of the Hobbesian paradigm there is nothing but emptiness and dislocation.
 A2: Agonism Good
Agonism is bad—encourages artificial disputes rather than cooperative
deliberation
Tannen 13 (Deborah, University Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Her recent books
include You Were Always Mom’s Favorite!: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives (2009), Talking Voices: Repetition,
Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse (2nd ed., 2007), and You’re Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and
Daughters in Conversation (2006). She is currently a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford
University, the argument culture: agonism and the common good,
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00211)

Key to my notion of the argument culture is the term agonism, which I have borrowed from the late Jesuit scholar Walter Ong.
From the Latin term for war, agon, agonism is taking a warlike stance to accomplish something
that is not literally a war. Agonism underlies our conviction that opposition leads to truth, so the best way to discuss an
idea is to have proponents of two opposing sides face off in a debate; the best way to cover news is to ½nd spokespeople for the
most extreme, polarized views and present them as “both sides”; the best way to settle disputes is litigation that pits one party
against the other, with a winner-take-all result; the best way to frame an article is an attack; and the best way to show you are really
thinking is to criticize. Agonism
surrounds us in the form of ubiquitous military metaphors: the war on
poverty, war on cancer, war on drugs, war on terror, and so on. War metaphors come so
naturally, and are so catchy, that we barely notice them. A survey of recent reality TV shows
reveals those entitled Weed Wars, Whale Wars, Shipping Wars, Storage Wars, and Parking
Wars–and these are only a few of innumerable examples. War metaphors are also everywhere in coverage of
political campaigns. For example, an exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., traces the history of press coverage of presidential
elections. It begins with a plaque saying: “Every four years, Americans elect a president. And every four years battle lines are drawn
as presidential candidates face off in the conflict zone known as the campaign trail.” “Battle lines,” “face off,” and “conflict zone”
seem self-evidently appropriate ways to frame presidential campaigns; indeed, the word campaign itself derives from a military
action. The next plaque goes on to say, “This exhibit examines the tactics used by politicians –and illuminated by the press–to put
democracy to the test and a candidate in the White House.” This formulation casts the press as a mere observer–illuminating
politicians’ tactics–whereas in fact the role played by the press is far more active. This is acknowledged in a later plaque, which also
makes use of war metaphors: “In the 20th century, new rules of engagement were drawn up between candidates and reporters. . . .
The battle for control of the story and image was on.” There is ample evidence in coverage of any electoral season that the press
does not just observe and report but also creates and reinforces the agonistic framework through which we view events. Any day’s
news contains a multitude of examples; here are just a few. A typical talk show host begins a discussion by saying that President
Obama “came out swinging” on the payroll tax cut. A New York Times headline reads, “The Calculations that Led Romney to the
Warpath.” And visual metaphors reinforce verbal ones. When New York magazine featured a story entitled “2012: The Bloodiest
Campaign Ever,” the cover displayed a photo of Romney’s and Obama’s faces literally bloodied, black and blue, and plastered with
bandaids and sutures. It
would be as telling, I think, to show the American people similarly bruised and
bloodied, because that is the result of the escalating agonism in our public discourse.
Switch-Side
 Greene and Hicks
Debaters are public speakers, and a public utterance is a public commitment.
Debaters have an ethical obligation to speak with genuine conviction and
sincerity about their own position. Anything other than this necessarily
undermines their ethos and makes debate a game of power.

Greene & Hicks 5 [Ronald Walter, Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at
University of Minnesota, Darrin, associate professor at University of Denver, “Lost Convictions:
Debating both sides and the ethical self-fashioning of liberal citizens” Cultural Studies Vol. 19,
No. 1, January 2005, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals] JH

Murphy’s case against the ethics of debating both sides rested on what he thought to be a simple and irrefutable rhetorical
principle: Apublic utterance is a public commitment. In Murphy’s opinion, debate was best imagined as a species of
debate is a form of public speaking, Murphy
public speaking akin to public advocacy on the affairs of the day. If
reasoned, and a public utterance entails a public commitment, then speakers have an ethical obligation to study
the question, discuss it with others until they know their position, take a stand and then 􏰀/ and
only then 􏰀/ engage in public advocacy in favour of their viewpoint. Murphy had no doubt that
intercollegiate debate was a form of public advocacy and was, hence, rhetorical, although this point would be severely attacked by
proponents of switch-side debating. Modern debating, Murphy claimed, ‘is geared to the public platform and
to rhetorical, rather than dialectical principles’ (p. 7). Intercollegiate debate was rhetorical, not dialectical, because
its propositions were specific and timely rather than speculative and universal. Debaters evidenced
their claims by appeals to authority and opinion rather than formal logic, and debaters appealed to an audience, even if
that audience was a single person sitting in the back of a room at a relatively isolated debate tournament. As such, debate as a
species of public argument should be held to the ethics of the platform. We would surely hold in
contempt any public actor who spoke with equal force, and without genuine conviction, for both
sides of a public policy question. Why, asked Murphy, would we exempt students from the same ethical obligation?
Murphy’s master ethic 􏰀/ that a public utterance entails a public commitment 􏰀/ rested on a classical rhetorical theory that refuses
the modern distinctions between cognitive claims of truth (referring to the objective world), normative claims of right (referring to
the intersubjective world), and expressive claims of sincerity (referring to the subjective state of the speaker), although this
distinction, and Murphy’s refusal to make it, would surface as a major point of contention in the 1960s for the proponents of
debating both sides. Murphy is avoiding the idea that the words spoken by a debater can be divorced from what the speaker actually
believes to be true, right, or good (expressive claims of sincerity). For Murphy, to
stand and publicly proclaim that one
affirmed the resolution entailed both a claim that the policy being advocated was indeed the
best possible choice, given extant social conditions, and that one sincerely believed that her or
his arguments were true and right. In other words, a judge should not make a distinction between
the merits of the case presented and the sincerity of the advocates presenting it; rather, the
reasons supporting a policy and the ethos of the speakers are mutually constitutive forms of
proof. The interdependency of logos and ethos was not only a matter of rhetorical principle for Murphy but also
a foundational premise of public reason in a democratic society. Although he never explicitly states why this
is true, most likely because he assumed it to be self-evident, a charitable interpretation of Murphy’s position, certainly a more
generous interpretation than his detractors were willing to give, would show that his axiom rests on the following argument: If
public reason is to have any legitimate force, auditors must believe that advocates are arguing
from conviction and not from greed, desire or naked self-interest. If auditors believe that
advocates are insincere, they will not afford legitimacy to their claims and will opt to settle
disputes through force or some seemingly neutral modus vivendi such as voting or arbitration.
Hence, sincerity is a necessary element of public reason and, therefore, a necessary condition of
critical deliberation in a democratic society. For Murphy, the assumption of sincerity is intimately articulated to the
notion of ethical argumentation in a democratic political culture. If
a speaker were to repudiate this assumption by
advocating contradictory positions in a public forum, it would completely undermine her or his
ethos and result in the loss of the means of identification with an audience. The real danger of
undermining the assumption of sincerity was not that individual speakers would be rendered ineffective 􏰀/ although this certainly
did make training students to debate both sides bad rhetorical pedagogy. The
ultimate danger of switch-side
debating was that it would engender a distrust of public advocates. The public would come to
see the debaters who would come to occupy public offices as ‘public liars’ more interested in
politics as vocation than as a calling. Debate would be seen as a game of power rather than the
method of democracy.

Debate is not an educational procedure designed to generate sound conviction;

debate is the platform in which you present the sound conviction generated
from alternate platforms such as roundtable discussions or informal practice
rounds where the debater can play devil’s advocate. SSD is a mere convenience;
it is inapplicable to public life and wholly unethical.

Greene & Hicks 5 [Ronald Walter, Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at
University of Minnesota, Darrin, associate professor at University of Denver, “Lost Convictions:
Debating both sides and the ethical self-fashioning of liberal citizens” Cultural Studies Vol. 19,
No. 1, January 2005, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals] JH

Baird’s defence of debating both sides 􏰀/ in which he defined it as an educational procedure

designed to generate sound conviction 􏰀/ was the most formidable of the defences of switch-
side debating. However, it was defeated, according to Murphy (1957), once educators understood that
there were many ways of teaching students to see both sides of an issue. He or she could
prepare briefs on both sides of the question, form roundtable discussions where students would
play devil’s advocate to test the strength of each other’s positions, and even have informal
practice rounds in a closed club setting where students debated both sides to test and
strengthen their convictions. It was not the fact that students explored all sides of an issue that worried Murphy. Rather,
Baird’s defence, and any defence that claimed debating both sides was ethical because it was a
pedagogical tool, ignored ‘a basic rhetorical principle that the speaker should read and discuss,
and inquire, and test his [sic] position before he [sic] takes the platform to present it’ (Murphy 1957,
p. 5). Of course, at this point, Murphy refuses to allow the professionalization of tournament debating to disconnect the educational
value of debate from the ethics associated with public life. In other words, Murphy
refuses to allow the tournament
to be understood as a pedagogical space distinct from the platform. For Murphy, the other defences
of debating both sides 􏰀/ that there was a fundamental distinction between school and public
debate and that school debate should be judged by its own ethical standard 􏰀/ were easily
dispatched once the educational soundness of debating both sides was called into question. For, if
it was understood that debating both sides was not necessary to generate sound conviction and that it was not a necessary practice
for the continuance of intercollegiate debate, then why would anyone continue to claim that there should be a split between the
platform and the classroom? Oncethe practice was exposed as a mere convenience and there was
unanimous agreement that genuine conviction should guide public advocacy, there was no
justifiable reason, for Murphy, to train students in a method that not only was inapplicable to public
life, but wholly unethical.
The switch-side debate – free speech assemblage demonstrates a commitment
to American exceptionalism that allows the US to claim the moral geography of
free speech that other countries must conform to. The US becomes the
concrete universal embodiment of democracy and gets access to moral claims
to world leadership.

Greene & Hicks 5 [Ronald Walter, Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at
University of Minnesota, Darrin, associate professor at University of Denver, “Lost Convictions:
Debating both sides and the ethical self-fashioning of liberal citizens” Cultural Studies Vol. 19,
No. 1, January 2005, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals] JH

The argument that we will develop in this section begins with the premise that a
key element of Cold War liberalism
was the attempt to re-position the United States as the leader of the Free World (Greene 1999). One
way Cold War liberalism made possible the emergence of US world leadership was by pulling together a national
and international commitment to ‘American exceptionalism’. According to Nikhil Pal Singh (1998), American
exception- alism is a product of the attempt to conceptualize the United States as a concrete representative of the universal norms
of democracy. In so doing, the
US is granted a status and history that is deemed unique from other
nations at the same time as that uniqueness qualifies the US to be the leader and judge of
democratic attributes, characteristics and norms. In the aftermath of World War II, the proliferation of
free speech as a characteristic of the US helped to warrant Cold War liberal claims to American
exceptionalism. As Paul Passavant (1996) suggests, the ‘Millian paradigm’ of free speech has been appropriated by U.S.
constitutional theorists to grant ‘America’ the status of a nation whereby ‘one legitimately claims the right to free speech’ (pp.
301􏰀/2). For Passavant, the process by which the US emerged as a nation whereby citizens claim the
right to free speech creates a moral geography in which other nations are not granted the
‘maturity’ necessary for free speech and/or simultaneously must conform to the U.S. vision of
free speech. It is our argument that during the cold war, the debate-free speech assemblage helped to
make possible the emergence of ‘America’s’ status as an exemplar of democracy. The Cold War
supported two reasons not to debate, or at least participate in affirming the ‘Red China’
resolution. First, the military academies maintained that they could not argue against
established US foreign policy, in particular while donning a military uniform, without committing
what Habermas (1979a) calls a ‘performative contradiction’. Moreover, they feared that a cadet arguing for
diplomatic recognition of Communist China would send a message of indecisiveness, division,
and weakness to the nation’s international enemies (Burns 1954, p. 12). Furthermore, given the on-going
hearings to expose communist infiltration in the Army, one might legitimately fear that he might not be
granted the privilege to suspend the sincerity principle nor to abstract from the particularity of
the uniform he might be wearing at the time of the debate. Second, the teacher colleges of
Nebraska, as well as many editorialists, claimed that by defending diplomatic recognition of ‘Red
China’, students would fall victim to Communist propaganda (Baird 1955, p. 6) Impressionable
students, critics feared, would not have the cognitive skills or experience to recognize propaganda
and would, thus, be susceptible to indoctrination and brainwashing. As hysterical as this argument
sounds 􏰀/ and it certainly was a product of the anti-Communist hysteria wrought by McCarthyism 􏰀/ it was not without
academic support. A hallmark of the Cold War liberalism of the late forties and fifties was the steadfast belief in 􏰀/ and fear of
􏰀/ the seductive appeal of totalitarianism for American youth. In 1949, in his Cold War liberal manifesto The Vital Center, the
influential historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr, argued that the lack of political commitment and
moral conviction among the US citizenry, in particular American youth, posed a considerable
threat to the continued existence of democracy. Schlesinger (1949) and other Cold War liberals (and conserva-
tives) feared that an alienated youth was especially vulnerable to the promises of certitude and solidarity contained in Communist
propaganda. Communism held a genuine appeal for those stricken with anxiety because it offered
both new social forms and a new social creed. US political culture, in contrast, was simply too thin
to provide a defense against the persistent neuroses of postindustrial modernity and, therefore, was in grave danger of
Communist infiltration. Because ‘[t] here is a Hitler and Stalin in the breast of every man [sic]’, Schlesinger proclaimed, the fate
of free society hinged upon the prospects for cultivating a youth dedicated to keeping constant
vigil over the strength of their own and their fellow citizens convictions (p. 250). Concurrently, the Army
Information and Education Group, which would become the core of the Hovland-Yale Communication and Persuasion Group, led by
Carl Hovland, was conducting experiments testing the relationship between inducement and internalized attitude change. In
1953, Hovland, Janis, and Kelley published their highly influential book Communication and
Persuasion, which established a positive relation between verbalization and the intensification
of belief and predicted that being forced to overtly defend a position discrepant from one’s own
private beliefs would result in the internalization of the overtly defended position. This prediction was
further supported by the forced-compliance and cognitive dissonance studies of Festinger (1957) and his colleagues at Stanford.
For decades, the ability to understand the merits of opposing arguments had been championed
as one of the prime pedagogical benefits of intercollegiate debate training. However, in the fall
of 1954, Hovland’s and Festinger’s studies coupled with the anti- Communist rhetoric of
Schlesinger, which would, much to Schlesinger’s dismay, come to underwrite McCarthy’s witch hunts, would be
articulated in such a way that debate’s ability to train students to take the other’s perspective
might be framed as a threat to national security. The fear that defending the diplomatic
recognition of ‘Red China’ would turn American youth into Communist sympathizers saturated
the debating both sides controversy with an anxiety over the virility of ‘democratic faith’. Those
choosing to defend the virtues of intercollegiate debate and the practice of debating both sides
were careful not to question the basic tenets of the anti- Communism that constituted the
ideological core of Cold War liberalism. Democracy, if it were to survive the seductive appeal of totalitarianism, had to
become a fighting faith, a faith born out of and tested in social and political conflict. Debate, in particular the format of
debating both sides of controversial issues embodied the sort of political conflict that could
engender sound conviction, rational decisions, and a committed youth impervious to
Communist propaganda. Moreover, debate provided the antidote to communist propaganda.
Baird concluded, ‘[c]ollege debate teams are the last groups in this nation where Communist propaganda has any chance of making
headway’ (1955, p. 7). No student wishing to win the debate, Burns argued, ‘would take the affirmative on the grounds that we must
love the Chinese or that they are merely agrarian radicals’ (p. 7). Burns, so confident in the anti- Communist sentiment of the
majority of students, contended that no student would dare argue in favour of Communism but ‘pitch his [sic]
case on the argument that recognition might help pull China out of the Moscow orbit, that it might help build a firmer anti-
Communist alliance, that it might make peaceful coexistence possible. He [sic] would, in short, be directing our attention to the very
questions that all American’s might well be debating’ (p. 7). For Schlesinger, however, the
ground of the anti-
Communist consensus Baird believed to be evident in ‘the majority of students’ was unstable.
Schlesinger performed a delicate balancing act in The Vital Center, disavowing the ‘guilt by association’ reasoning of the House Un-
American Activities Committee while advocating that the Communist Party represented a ‘clear and present danger’ to the national
security of the United States. Oneway to create the necessary faith in democracy was, for Schlesinger,
to defend free expression as a democratic norm worth fighting for because ‘free discussion [is
the] climate...democracy requires for responsible decision’ (1949, p. 203). For Schlesinger, the
democratic faith necessitated full and free discussion, a fundamental civil liberty that provided,
in his words, a ‘technique of freedom’ (p. 189). It was ‘the climate of freedom’ preserved by the
democratic method of free speech that authorized his ‘conviction that a free people will never vote for
totalitarianism’ (p. 199). Nikhil Pal Singh (1998) argues that to understand the stark opposition between
liberal democracy and totalitarianism permeating Cold War discourse requires an appreciation
of how the US asserted its moral claim to be the ‘leader of the free world’. Of particular
importance in this process was, according to Singh, ‘the widely held argument that the United States is
the world’s exemplary nation-state, already the bearer of universality within itself’ (p. 490). The discourse of
American exceptionalism is advanced in and through this description of the US as the concrete
representative of the universal norms of democracy. Singh supports his claim and discusses its
implications by focusing on the historical intersection between the Cold War and Jim Crow. To
defend the United States as the exemplar of universality required the fight against Jim Crow in
order to better project Cold War liberalism’s moral claim to world leadership in the battle with
Communism. From this perspective, the fight against Jim Crow, as Manning Marable (1984)
argues, was inextricably linked to the global requirements of US world power. For Singh,
Marable’s insight becomes the starting point for supporting his claim that Cold War liberalism’s
promotion of democratic norms both domestically and globally was held together by the
construction of ‘America’ as the container and advocate of universal democratic norms. This
concept of American exceptionalism was made possible by the transformation of the United
States into the ‘concrete universal’ embodiment of democracy. Singh’s reading of how civil rights worked to
promote American exceptionalism suggests a model for thinking about the the norm of free speech during the Cold War. For
Schlesinger, civil liberties and civil rights emerged as the two techniques of freedom. Schlesinger writes ‘in the world under the
shadow of the police state, we only strengthen our claim to moral leadership by creating here an environment for free and
responsible discussion’ (1949, p. 218). It
is Schlesinger’s ability to use the domestic need of free speech in
the United States as a moral claim to world leadership that gives the United States the ability to
embrace a faith in its role as the telos and exemplar of democracy. Singh’s revisionist history
and Schlesinger’s Cold War liberal advocacy of free speech suggest that we consider the
debating both sides controversy during the 1950s and 1960s beyond its parochial frame as
debate pedagogy and, instead, as a full-fledged element in a complex transformation in liberal
citizenship necessitated by the emergence of the US as a global super power. In Baird’s hands, the
interaction between the Cold War and debating both sides offers a close correspondence
between the function of rhetorical education and the needs of Cold War liberalism to generate
an anti- Communist consensus. It does so in two ways: First, it gives students the reasoning skills
necessary to make the shadowy propaganda of Communism transparent. Second, due to the
competitive character of the activity, students are not likely to argue for Communism, and,
therefore, they are not opening themselves up to the risks of being captured by its dangerous
seductions. Ten years later, Day (1966) would argue that ‘the ethics of democratic debate do not allow
for a pre-judgment of the reasonableness of discourse’ (p. 12) and he demonstrated a deep faith
in the power of debate to serve as a means of democratic decision making by promoting speech
against the grain of the reigning consensus. Day expressed a more radical possibility of debate and argument as
providing the ethical resources for rooting out error, generating consensus, and providing a universal norm of democracy. Day also
demonstrated his commitment to free speech more radically than Schlesinger by abandoning Schlesinger’s deployment of ‘clear and
present danger’ as an external value to regulate the reasonableness of speech. Yet, Day’s defence
of debating both
sides elides the national particularity of how free speech was being put to work in the global
struggle between liberal democracy and totalitarianism. One way that Cold War liberalism
helped to transform the national particularity of the United States into a universal form of
liberalism was through the constitution of free speech as a democratic norm. As a cultural technology
debating both sides contributed to American exceptionalism by transforming students into the
concrete embodied performers of the universal norms of free speech. In other words, by
instantiating a desire for full and free expression, the pedagogical technique of debating both
sides became a mechanism by which the student-debater-citizen becomes an exceptional
‘American’ 􏰀/ the bearer of universal norms of liberal democracy.
 Political Apathy
Switch-side debate causes uncertainty and indecision—this undermines
political participation
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)

There are at least two potential social psychological mechanisms that might explain why cross-cutting exposure
discourages participation. First, political inaction could be induced by the ambivalence that
crosscutting exposure is likely to engender within an individual. If citizens are embedded in
networks that do not reinforce their viewpoints, but instead tend to supply them with political
information that challenges their views, then cross-cutting exposure could make people
uncertain of their own positions with respect to issues or candidates and therefore less likely to take
political action as a result. In this case it is an internal (i.e., intrapersonal) conflict that drives the effect. The chain of
events leading to suppressed participation would be one in which crosscutting exposure leads to
ambivalent attitudes, which, in turn, reduce political participation because these individuals do
not have views that are sufficiently definite or strong to motivate them to political action. No
character has been criticized more for inaction that results from ambivalence than Hamlet, prince of Denmark. Laurence Olivier’s
Hamlet is described simply as “The Prince who could not make up his mind.”35 Readers of Shakespeare’s famous play have long
criticized Hamlet for indecisiveness and they frequently cite that quality as the cause of his ultimate downfall. His failure to kill
Claudius when he had the chance resulted in a tragic series of events that ultimately led to his own death, as well as his mother’s.
And yet, could one not also argue that his extensive weighing of the pros and cons was entirely appropriate under the
circumstances? Hamlet is painfully self-aware, as are many of Shakespeare’s characters. His motives may be
noble, but his constant questioning of himself is not practical, and he experiences a paralyzing
ambivalence as a result. His slow, plodding, deliberative decision-making process produces ambivalence and leads him to
act “with wings as swift as meditation,” which is to say, not swiftly at all. Although Hamlet might be the poster child
for the deliberative process, the price he pays for it is enormous. In today’s popular parlance, the very
kind of deliberation that theorists advocate – one that involves careful, time-consuming
weighing of pros and cons, and exposure to a multitude of different viewpoints – is popularly chided
as the antithesis of action. As H. Ross Perot put it, “I come from an environment where, if you see a snake, you kill
it.” He contrasts this with the more deliberative style of corporations such as General Motors (GM): “At GM, if you see a
snake, the first thing you do is go hire a consultant on snakes. Then you get a committee on
snakes, and then you discuss it for a couple of years. The likely course of action is – nothing. You
figure the snake hasn’t bitten anybody yet, so you just let him crawl around on the factory
floor.”36

Switch-side debate hurts political participation by causing delayed opinion

formation
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)

Yet another way in which cross-pressures have been argued to reduce

political participation is by promoting
political decisions that are made later in the campaign season. If people make up their minds
late in an election year, then there is little time or opportunity for actively partisan forms of
political participation. In Figure 4.4, I illustrate the effects of network composition on the timing of presidential voting
decisions. Although this figure looks a bit more complicated, it tells essentially the same story: Exposure to dissonant views
encourages people to make up their minds later in the campaign, thus discouraging partisan forms of participation. As illustrated,
the probability of deciding only the week before the election increases dramatically with greater cross-cutting exposure in a person’s
network. The likelihood of deciding on a presidential candidate early, say, before or during the summer,
declines with more heterogeneous networks. Although this measure does not directly tap participation, it seems
inevitable that the later one makes up his or her mind, the less time there is for actively
promoting one’s political preferences. In Figure 4.5 I draw on a completely different national survey
and find that intent to vote in a preelection survey – this time in the 1996 presidential election – is also negatively
influenced by cross-cutting exposure. Even employing the more stringent controls included in
this survey (political knowledge in addition to political interest), crosscutting exposure encourages respondents
to report no intent to vote. Drawing on every available indicator of political participation across
these two surveys, my findings are extremely consistent: crosscutting exposure discourages political
participation. This pattern of findings is extremely robust even when using two different surveys
with slightly different ways of tapping network composition and participation. Nonetheless, given that
these are cross-sectional surveys, it is important to acknowledge the possibility that causality might run in
the reverse direction. In other words, is it plausible that participating in political activities could lead one to associate with a
more politically homogeneous group of contacts? If so, political participation could be causing lower levels of cross-cutting exposure
rather than the other way around. If we call to mind highly social participatory acts such as working on a campaign or attending a
fundraiser, it is relatively easy to entertain this possibility; through these kinds of events, one would make more like-minded friends
and acquaintances. But for the remaining, equally supportive results, reverse
causation makes no theoretical
sense. The act of voting or of making up one’s mind does not require a person to be in a
particular social environment that is more conducive to like-minded views. Thus the bulk of
evidence so far supports the idea that the degree of supportiveness of people’s social
environments influences their likelihood of political participation.

Switch-side debate is bad even when it succeeds—exposure to other a broad

range of political views causes paralysis and decreases political participation
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)
In all of the examples provided thus far, the potential for negative outcomes from cross-cutting exposure occurs strictly because
cross-cutting contact has failed to produce the benefits that deliberative theory and intergroup contact ideally might bring about.
For example, if conversations across lines of difference lead participants to polarize their positions, then cross-cutting exposure has
failed to create mutual understanding. Likewise, if contact among members of different groups only brings about greater animosity
and resentment, then communication across lines of difference has failed to improve intergroup relations. In contrast, this chapter
examines the potential for an
undesirable outcome that occurs as a result of the success of cross-cutting
exposure in giving people of opposing perspectives an understanding of the other side’s views.
Although the potential benefits of these interactions have received the most attention, other theories hint at the potential
drawbacks of cross-cutting exposure for one democratic outcome in particular – political participation. Within political science,
exposure to those of differing political perspectives was first raised to the status of a research concept under the designation of
“cross-pressures.” Authors of some of the earliest research on American elections voiced concerns about the potentially deleterious
impact of cross-pressures, defined as the presence of people of inconsistent political views within an individual’s social environment.
Interest in cross-pressures emerged from observations of how neatly social groups mapped onto patterns of voting behavior.
Indeed, one of the strongest messages conveyed by the earliest studies of American voting was the theme of the social homogeneity
of political behavior. For example, The People’s Choice and Voting both stressed the social nature of political decisions. As Lazarsfeld
and colleagues put it, “More than anything else, people can move other people.”6 They suggested that the social nature of political
decisions extended not only to decisions about whether to vote for a given candidate, but also whether to participate politically at
all. The People’s Choice was the first study to suggest that conflicts
and inconsistencies among the factors
influencing an individual’s vote decision had implications for political participation: “Whatever the
source of the conflicting pressures, whether from social status or class identification, from voting traditions or the attitudes of
associates, the consistent result was to delay the voter’s final decision.”7 Subsequently, The American Voter more directly
acknowledged the problem of conflicting considerations surrounding political choices: The person who experiences
some degree of conflict tends to cast his vote for President with substantially less enthusiasm . . .
and he is somewhat less likely to vote at all than is the person whose partisan feelings are entirely
consistent. . . . If attitude conflict leaves its impress on several aspects of behavior it also influences what we will call the
individual’s involvement in the election.8 Likewise, Carl Hovland and colleagues suggested that the effects of conflicting social
influences included “vacillation, apathy, and loss of interest in conflict-laden issues.”9 Cross-pressures that arise from affiliations
with multiple groups had long been of interest in political sociology as well. Georg Simmel, for example, attributed great significance
to the “web of affiliations” and cross-cutting social relationships, as contrasted with the highly homogeneous kinship-linked groups
of an earlier era.10 Those exposed to a variety of different cues about appropriate social and political attitudes were assumed to
experience discomfort as a result, though arguments about how people resolved this discomfort varied. More specifically, these
researchers surmised that personal
associations that push individuals in opposite directions with
respect to their vote choices cause a kind of paralysis with respect to political action. Given that
most people have multiple roles and identities, perfect consistency in the social environment is
unlikely, and citizens are likely to experience varying degrees of dissonance when their various
group identities have contradictory implications for their political preferences. So, for example, a citizen
who was white-collar and Catholic or Protestant and a member of a labor union was assumed to be crosspressured by this
combination of religion and occupational status.

Switch side debate discourages political participation—exposure to opposite

views causes quiescence and alienates others
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)

A careful reading of social movement research suggests that these connective

structures encourage participation
particularly when they form connections among those of similar opinion and experience. As Tarrow
suggests, social networks “lower the costs of bringing people into collective action, induce
confidence that they are not alone, and give broader meaning to their claims.”33 Thus it is not
social networks per se that are implicated in stimulating collective action, but networks among
those who are like-minded. But how exactly do interpersonal networks draw people into political activism? And why might
heterogeneous networks discourage participation as the cross-pressures hypothesis first suggested? The social movement literature
casts this theory in a rational choice framework: “Refusing to respond to the call of network partners means the potential loss of all
the benefits provided by that tie. These benefits may be social, such as friendship or social honor, but they may also be material.
Network ties provide people with jobs, and people are tied, in network fashion, to those with whom and for whom they work.”34
Although one cannot deny that material benefits often flow from social networks, it requires a highly cynical disposition to believe
that all or even the majority of people’s social ties are formed on the basis of a desire for material gain. That
people want to
be liked by others and that they value their reputations are sufficient to explain why members
of their social networks might be effective in recruiting them into participation. Extending this
argument about the social costs of not cooperating with a network partner to understand what
happens when people are surrounded by those of opposing views provides a logical explanation
for why heterogeneity in the network should promote avoidance of political involvement.
Declaring one’s self partisan in a politically mixed setting puts one in a position to potentially
alienate others. Doing the same in a homogeneous environment does not incur these same
risks.
Switch-side debate inculcates the values of American exceptionalism
Green & Hicks 5 (GREEN Dpt of Comm Studies, Univ of Minn & HICKS Assoc. Prof of Human
Comm Studies, Univ of Denver, 2005)
Day also demonstrated his commitment to free speech more radically than Schlesinger by abandoning Schlesinger’s deployment of
‘clear and present danger’ as an external value to regulate the reasonableness of speech. Yet, Day’s defence of debating both sides
elides the national particularity of how free speech was being put to work in the global struggle between liberal democracy and
totalitarianism. One way that Cold War liberalism helped to transform the national particularity of the United States into a universal
form of liberalism was through the constitution of free speech as a democratic norm. As a cultural technology
debating both sides contributed to American exceptionalism by transforming students
into the concrete embodied performers of the universal norms of free speech . In other words,
by instantiating a desire for full and free expression, the pedagogical technique of debating both sides became
a mechanism by which the student-debater-citizen becomes an exceptional ‘American’
the bearer of universal norms of liberal democracy.

Switch-sides debate is a value-laden imposition of western culture

Green & Hicks 5 (GREEN Dpt of Comm Studies, Univ of Minn & HICKS Assoc. Prof of Human
Comm Studies, Univ of Denver, 2005)
The ethical problematization of debating both sides suggests that the globalization of liberalism is not so much registered by
universal norms of interaction as the circulation of techniques required for internalizing a series of ethical attributes conducive to
democratic citizenship. Surely debate is not alone in the circulation of liberal attributes, one might suggest that teaching
professional journalistic norms of objectivity and balance _/ norms operationalized by the attempt to offer ‘two-sides’ to every
political issue _/ offers a functional equivalent to debating both sides. Increasingly, journalistic norms find uptake as a spectacle of
partisan spin and the rhetoric of commitment, far away from the ethical pedagogy of debating both sides. A unique value of
debating both sides is that it works as a technique of embodied speech performance. To produce a liberal citizen requires more than
the presentation of different points of view to a third party, it requires the empathetic advocacy of views that are not one’s own. In
a world increasingly dominated by fundamentalism (religious and otherwise) the development of a respect for pluralism, tolerance
and free speech remains politically valuable. However, the technical history of cultivating these norms must be evaluated if we
might hope to govern ourselves differently. What this paper demonstrates is that debating both sides helps
liberalism to produce a governing field between a person’s first order convictions and his/her commitment to the
process norms of debate, discussion and persuasion. This field is then managed in and through the alteration of different
The production and management of this field of governance allows
communicative practices.
liberalism to trade in cultural technologies in the global cosmopolitan marketplace at the
same time as it creates a field of intervention to transform and change the world one subject
(regime) at a time.
 Echo Chamber Good
Echo chambers are good—forcing us to debate alternative political perspectives
undermines political participation and activism
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)

If it were possible to control the characteristics of people’s social environments in order to

maximize democratic ends, what kind of political network would we ideally want them to have?
Should the people in it be politically like-minded or have opposing political views? Those who are quick to jump to the
conclusion that this network should be one that exposes people to as many oppositional
political views as possible need to consider the quandary posed by the findings in Chapters 3 and 4: the kind
of network that encourages an open and tolerant society is not necessarily the same kind that
produces an enthusiastically participative citizenry. To be sure, some individual characteristics, such as levels
of education and political knowledge, have uniformly positive implications for what is generally
valued in democratic citizens. But the political diversity of people’s face-to-face networks is
unfortunately not one of these. Political diversity poses a disturbing dilemma for images of the
ideal citizen. There is a tendency to see the model citizen as a neat package of characteristics
that all fit comfortably together into a single composite portrait. The problem is that for some
very logical reasons these characteristics do not cohere. We want the democratic citizen to be
enthusiastically politically active and strongly partisan, yet not to be surrounded by like-minded
others.We want this citizen to be aware of all of the rationales for opposing sides of an issue, yet
not to be paralyzed by all of this conflicting information and the cross-pressures it brings to bear. We
want tight-knit, close networks of mutual trust, but we want them to be among people who
frequently disagree. And we want frequent conversations involving political disagreement that have no repercussions for
people’s personal relationships. At the very least this is a difficult bill to fill. I can offer no easy solution to this dilemma. No amount
of torturing the data made it possible for me to explain away this contradiction, nor to contrive a reason why the practical impact of
this contradiction should be benign. Nonetheless, if the nature of people’s political networks involves important trade-offs, it seems
incumbent upon political theorists to take this into account. How do we conceptualize a framework within which a diverse array of
ordinary people can live their lives as both active citizens in a competitive political system and as compassionate fellow human
brings? In particular, how do we accomplish this when one of these tasks appears to require strong partisanship and confident
judgments about which political choices are right and which are wrong, while the other requires a tolerant, openminded,
nonjudgmental nature, and an acceptance of people’s worth on their own terms, however disagreeable we may find their political
views? There are, of course, times and places in which this determination is not so difficult. When politics becomes extreme enough
or so clear-cut that even the most timid are enjoined to take sides, then it is easy to see the good citizen and the good human being
as one and the same in their actions. But what
is surprising in the United States, given our general lack of politically
extreme groups, is just how difficult people nonetheless find it to negotiate their political and apolitical
identities. When they are among like-minded others, this is not a problem. But in the company of strangers or those known to be
of oppositional views, people find this quite difficult. A highly politicized mindset of “us” versus “them” is easy so long as we do not
work with “them” and our kids do not play with their kids. But how do we maintain this same fervor and political
drive against “them” when we carpool together? For the most part, I think we do this by downgrading
the importance of politics in our everyday lives. We reconcile these identities by pointing out
that politics is merely one of many different dimensions of who we are as human beings.We avoid head-
to-head political discussions in order to maintain the kind of social harmony that we also value.
We implicitly, nonconsciously choose a point along a scale forcing a trade-off between a strong
political identity that silently (or not so silently) disparages those of opposing views and a more politically diverse
social life that is made possible (in part) by its apolitical nature. Those whose identities are more explicitly political will
tend to attract and seek out those of like mind. And this camaraderie will further encourage the kind of activism valued by
enthusiasts of participatory democracy. Those who do not wear their politics on their sleeves will have more opportunities to hear
the other side from others in their environments. But those mixed allegiances, cross-pressures, and (most likely)
moderate political positions will come with a reduced likelihood of political activism. The voice
of moderation is seldom very loud. And it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to foment political
fervor over middle-of-the-road views. Further, although successful deliberation may elicit compromises, these will
seldom elicit the cheers and enthusiasm that go along with “beating” the other side. People within homogeneous
networks encourage and reinforce one another in their viewpoints, and this tendency makes
activism and fomenting of fervor far easier. Like-minded social environments are ideal for purposes of
encouraging political mobilization. “Enclave deliberation,” that is, conversation among like-
minded people, promotes recognition of common problems and helps individuals spur one
another on to collective action.1 For this reason, participation and involvement are best encouraged
by social networks that offer reinforcement and encouragement, not networks that demand
compromise or that raise the social costs of political engagement. Paradoxically, the prospects for
deliberative democracy could be dwindling at the same time that prospects for participation and political activism are escalating.
 Hurts Voting
The greater the exposure to the “other side,” the less likely we are to vote
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)
Figure 4.2 summarizes the strength of the relationship between cross-cutting exposure and the likelihood of voting in presidential
and congressional elections, after
controlling for political interest, strength of partisanship (both
Democratic and Republican), education, income, age, sex, frequency of political talk, and size of
the person’s political discussion network.59 In these data the likelihood of voting is a function of the usual predictors
such as high levels of political interest, strong partisanship, education, and the frequency of political discussion. But as shown in
Figure 4.2, there is also a sizable and significant negative influence that stems from the extent of
cross-cutting exposure in one’s personal network. Having friends and associates of opposing
political views makes it less likely that a person will vote. This relationship is particularly pronounced for
nonvoting in congressional elections, although it also applies to nonvoting in the presidential context. The greater the cross-
cutting exposure in the person’s network, the more likely he or she is to abstain from voting.
Cross-cutting exposure also demonstrated a negative influence on an index of six participation items similar to the American
National Election Studies participation battery. Not surprisingly, a
high frequency of talk and large network size
encourage recruitment into activities such as donating money to candidates and putting up
signs. But here again, as shown in Figure 4.3, cross-cutting exposure is negatively related to
participation. The probability that an individual will report not participating in any of these
activities steadily increases with higher levels of cross-cutting exposure; in contrast, the
likelihood of participating in two or more activities steadily declines. Political activists are likely
to inhabit an information environment full of like-minded others who spur them on to additional
political activity.
 No Spillover
Even if debate is awesome, structured deliberative fora are so rare that it won’t
spill over to policy change
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)

Given the difficulties in finding naturally occurring examples of political talk that live up to the
high standards of deliberation, some might think it preferable to study carefully constructed
public forums, town meetings, or deliberative polls in which the standards of deliberative encounters are
at least approximated through extensive advance planning, discussion mediators, rules of
engagement, a supply of information and expertise, and so forth. I do not question whether these events
have beneficial consequences of various kinds; in fact, my presumption and the preponderance of evidence suggest that they do,
particularly for levels of citizen information. But I do question
whether such attempts could ever be
successfully generalized to large numbers of people and issues. Some see such potential in the Internet,
which provides a low-cost means of communicating, but the eventual impact of its use for these purposes remains to be seen. For
most of us, the ideal deliberative encounter is almost otherworldly, bearing little resemblance to
the conversations about politics that occur over the water cooler, at the neighborhood bar, or even in our civic
groups. The consequences of an ideal deliberative encounter will make little difference if there
are few, if any, such exchanges. For this reason I concur with theorists who suggest that everyday talk
should receive at least as much theoretical attention as formal deliberation in public arenas
designed for these purposes.15

Normal people don’t want to listen to devil’s advocacy—there’s no spillover

Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)

But if everyone is so deliriously enthusiastic about the potential bene- fits of exposing people to
oppositional political perspectives, then what exactly is the problem? Given the unusually strong
consensus surrounding its assumed value, one would assume this activity to be widespread. Why
don’t people go home, to church, or to work and discuss politics with their non–like-minded friends or acquaintances? Social
network studies have long suggested that likes talk to likes; in other words, people tend to
selectively expose themselves to people who do not challenge their view of the world.30
Network survey after network survey has shown that people talk more to those who are like
them than to those who are not, and political agreement is no exception to this general
pattern.31 Moreover, many people do not have much desire to engage in political debate to
begin with, even the informal variety. Exposure to diverse political viewpoints may be widely
advocated in theory, but it is much less popular in actual practice. In this sense, the extent to which people
are exposed to oppositional views demonstrates some of the same patterns as exposure to diversity along other dimensions, such as
race and class. While
diversity is a much-lauded public goal in the aggregate, few individual people
live their everyday lives so as to maximize their exposure to difference.
 Discussion Solves
Political discussion solves our turns and the value of switch-side—it’s the
necessity of the ballot makes debate bad
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)

To be fair, although
Hibbing and Theiss-Morse make some strong statements about why
deliberation per se is a waste of time, they never suggest that all of people’s informal
conversations about politics are similarly worthless, particularly conversations that take place
among those of differing views. In their critique, they are referring primarily to situations in which
people must reach a conclusion of some kind as a result of their interactions. In most real world
scenarios, the group or dyad does not need to reach a consensus; the talk occurs for its own
sake, without any end result in mind.5
 SSD = Bad Arguments
Not everything has two sides—switch-side debate encourages unethical and
bad arguments
Tannen 13 (Deborah, University Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Her recent books
include You Were Always Mom’s Favorite!: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives (2009), Talking Voices: Repetition,
Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse (2nd ed., 2007), and You’re Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and
Daughters in Conversation (2006). She is currently a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford
University, the argument culture: agonism and the common good,
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00211)

The second form of agonism that characterizes the press is the “everything has two sides” ethic.
This sounds at first eminently reasonable. The problem, though, is that most issues have more than two
sides–and some have only one. Religion scholar and historian Deborah Lipstadt experienced the fatuousness and
destructiveness of this conviction when her book Denying the Holocaust was published. The producers of one
television talk show invited her on, but only if she agreed to appear alongside Holocaust deniers.
When Lipstadt refused, saying she did not want to provide a platform for the propagation of the
very lies her book condemned, the producers challenged, “Don’t you think viewers have a right
to hear the other side?” Among the tactics deniers successfully employed was taking out ads in college newspapers. The
editor of one such newspaper was explicit in explaining why he accepted the deniers’ ad: “There are two sides to every
issue and both have a place on the pages of any open-minded paper’s editorial page.” The
ability to masquerade as the other side in a debate has resulted in Holocaust denial having more
success in the United States than in any other country. This is just one of many problems that
result from our overreliance on the “two sides” metaphor. Another is that it creates the impression
that both sides are equally valid: for example, when one side, such as scientists providing
evidence of global climate change, is “balanced” by a tiny minority of scientists (typically funded by the
fossil fuel industry) who deny that claim. A recent interview with the Detroit TV reporter Charlie LeDuff highlighted how the
commitment to providing “two sides” can give credence to false information. On the npr show Fresh
Air, LeDuff, who had a successful career with both The Detroit News and The New York Times, was asked why he gave up writing for
newspapers. Among his comments about the limits of print journalism, he said, “There’s this construct, equal credence to what you
think the truth is and what’s probably false, but they both get some stature.” The “two sides” metaphor also creates
the appearance of moral equivalence, such as the case where the Unabomber’s deranged
manifesto was published side by side with the writings of a university professor who was
maimed by a bomb he sent. Indeed, so immutable is the assumption that every story must have two sides that some
journalists ½nd their stories rejected if they cannot ½nd an opposing side to provide “balance.” This parade of agonism
has many unfortunate effects on members of society and on the common good. Readers often
throw up their hands, concluding that it is impossible to know where the truth lies. It becomes
difficult for policy to be informed by research, because ½ndings seem to be questioned as
quickly as they are reported. Perhaps most destructively, whereas democracy requires an
informed electorate, the argument culture creates the opposite, as more and more people are
so alienated by the agonistic rhetoric of political coverage that they cease to listen to it. Indeed, Dr.
Andrew Weil recommends that people go on a “news fast” to preserve their equilibrium and mental health. The agonism in
politics that I described in the late 1990s has now reached unforeseen heights. In 1996, fourteen
senators left Congress voluntarily, an unprecedented event that Norman Ornstein documented in his book Lessons and Legacies:
Farewell Addresses from the Senate, a collection of essays by thirteen of the departing senators. Many named the increasing
agonism of the Senate as their reason for leaving. Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, who had been one of the few remaining
centrist Republicans, has recently left Congress. In explaining her reasons for leaving, she decried the destructive extremism that has
made it impossible to craft legislation, because every vote has become “a take-it-or-leave-it showdown intended to embarrass the
opposition.” In other words, whereas political campaigns once were staged only in the run-up to elections,
we now have campaign tactics year-round, and they pervade the daily work of governance. The
rise of the filibuster is often cited as evidence. In the 1950s, the use of this tactic averaged one per Congress. In the
110th Congress (2007– 2008), it was employed ½fty-two times. A supermajority is now required to pass almost
any significant legislation.
 A2: Empathy
Switch-side debate causes people to identify with their own side—researching
both sides is not good
Lilly 12 (Emily, Assistant Professor in Biology at the Virginia Military Institute. Her pedagological
research examines active learning strategies to increase student motivation and learning retention in
science curricula, “Assigned Positions for In-Class Debates Influence Student Opinions,” International
Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 24.1)
In the first semester, most students (83%) agreed with their assigned positions when surveyed one week after the debate. Because
pre-debate opinions were not surveyed in those classes, it was not possible to say whether the students just happened to be
assigned positions that agreed with their original positions. In this study, the
pre-debate surveys showed that the
prior opinions of only 41% of students happened to agree with the positions they were later
assigned to debate, while after the debates 77% of students agreed with their assigned position.
Thus, after the debates students were significantly more likely (p = 0.0000005) to agree with their
assigned positions. This indicates that some aspect of the debate assignment had a profound
influence on their opinions. The students’ tendency to change their opinion to agree with an
assigned position is troubling. One of my objectives in using debates was to enable students to
make informed decisions on important issues. This may have been the influence behind some shifts in opinion, but
the directionality of the shift toward agreement with the assigned position, as opposed to towards either the yes or no
position, should not have been so strong were students simply moving to the more compelling
argument. One worry in debates is that students will devote more energy to researching the position
with which they agree, and therefore create a stronger argument for themselves. Indeed, prior
research has shown that when observing debates, opinions are likely to be strengthened (Sears, 1964), not change. When preparing
for a debate in which they will participate, individuals are more likely to seek information that validates their own opinions (Turner
et al., 2010), and may even ignore information that contradicts their personal opinions (Bell, 2004). Such behavior in debates serves
to reinforce students’ existing opinions (Kennedy, 2007). If that were the case in this exercise, students should have reinforced the
positions that they held prior to the debate. Instead, they were likely to change positions. It is possible that the students put more
effort into researching the position they were assigned. To prevent this one-sided approach, students were forewarned of the
debate format and of the opposing side’s position, thus increasing their likelihood to thoroughly research both sides of the issue
(Turner et al., 2010). Based on the written assignments they prepared in preparation for the debate, students did research both
viewpoints. However, in a future debate, it might be advisable to not assign students to a position prior to the debate. Students
would research both positions, and then be assigned to one team or the other only at the beginning of class. This would increase the
chances that they would invest equally in their research for both positions. It is also possible that it was not preparation, but the act
of arguing for a certain position, that influenced the students’ opinions. The
act of debating has been shown to be
slightly more effective in changing opinions than other discussion or role-play activities (D’Eon,
2007; Simonneaux, 2001). Additionally, watching peers on their team argue for the assigned position may
have been influential as well. Research has shown that modeled opinions are likely to influence
subjects to agree with those opinions when the subject sees him/herself as similar to the
modeler (Hilmert, Kulik, & Christenfeld, 2006). Additionally, it has been shown that people are more likely to be
swayed to agree with opinions that they hear from multiple individuals or that are repeated
multiple times (Weaver, Garcia, Schwarz, & Miller, 2007). In our class activity, students spent considerable time (three 15-20
minute sessions) discussing their research and debate strategies within their assigned groups. In these discussions, the assigned
position was voiced many times by several different students. When the teams presented their arguments during their debates,
each student heard the opposing argument from only one student presenter on that team, and the presentation was typically less
than one minute. Thus, students had
more exposure in terms of time and numbers of students to their
assigned position than to the alternate position. It seems possible that the experience of arguing
and defending a position during the in-class debate was the factor contributing to their opinion
change.
Requiring people to switch sides undermines the benefits of debate—people
are more likely to believe the side they’re on
Lilly 12 (Emily, Assistant Professor in Biology at the Virginia Military Institute. Her pedagological
research examines active learning strategies to increase student motivation and learning retention in
science curricula, “Assigned Positions for In-Class Debates Influence Student Opinions,” International
Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 24.1)

Previous research has shown that students may change position after debate. One study found that 23 to 45% of
students holding opinions contrary to their assigned debate position changed their views following in-class debates, compared to
22% of students who change opinion to agree with the professor’s opinion after a lecture (Gervey, 2009). This indicates that debate
could be useful in shaping student opinions. Ideally,
after preparing material for both sides of the debate and
participating in the two-sided debate, students
would be better able to form their own, well-informed,
opinions. However, after one semester, surveys showed a very large portion (83%, n = 90) of students
expressed views that agreed with the debate position to which they had been randomly
assigned. This indicates that students were not forming new opinions based solely on new
material learned during the debate. Instead, the data indicate that students were more likely to
take on the position that they argued during the debate, regardless of their initial view. To
explore this finding, a study was conducted using a large lecture course (144 students) of Environmental
Science, where student opinions before and after in-class debate were evaluated in light of the
debate position to which the student was assigned.
 A2: Makes Better Activists
Partisanship and deliberation are mutually exclusive
Mutz 6 (Diana C. Mutz is Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and
Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory
Democracy, ebook)

The problem with much of what deliberative democracy asks of participatory democrats is that both of these tasks – activism
and deliberation – have been embedded in a single model as simultaneous responsibilities of
the individual. For example, Muirhead suggests it is inaccurate to separate the impassioned partisans and the disinterested
observers as Mill does. Instead, a given person must serve as both partisan and disinterested observer: “One part of us gives
ourselves over to what we intuit, feel, and know – which gives rise to our particular perspective on things. But the giving over might
be less than complete, thus preserving an observing self that looks at our own commitment from a distance.”13 While this is
an extremely attractive possibility in theory, I am skeptical that it could ever occur on a
meaningful scale. The detached perspective on one’s own views is certainly possible, but its
likelihood varies in inverse proportion to the extent of participation. It is important for citizens
to have an understanding of the other side, to be aware of legitimate rationales for views other
than their own. But is it realistic to expect activists to continually reconsider their preferences?
 Mutz Prodicts
Mutz uses good methods and accurate data
O’Connor 5 (R.E., National Science Foundation, “Hearing the other side: deliberative versus
participatory democracy” (Review), Choice, December)

Mutz (political science and communication, Univ. of Pennsylvania) uses survey data to show that people are most
likely to participate in politics if they discuss issues only with people with whom they agree. The
author's compelling analysis leads to this starling conclusion, that in practice two important democratic values-active participation
and considered deliberation-are seemingly in conflict. The
book creatively blends democratic theory with the
analysis of national surveys, including data from the National Election Survey and an instrument
Mutz designed to explore interpersonal political communications. The book is a primer on how to convey
accurately and clearly the subtleties of empirical results. By using references to published
articles to satisfy readers who want details of measurement and statistical methods, the author
maintains the highest academic standards of transparent scholarship without ruining her engaging story.
By exploring the complexities involved in reconciling desires for a tolerantly deliberative political culture with high levels of political
participation, the book will stimulate a new research agenda. This is an important book accessible to all levels. Summing Up: Highly
recommended. All readership levels.-R. E. O'Connor, National Science Foundation
K Helpers
Discourse First
 Methodology First
Methodology is key to effective policy making – vital to true education
Bartlett 90 (Katharine T., Professor of Law @ Duke University, (Feminist Legal Methods, Harvard Law Review, February)
Feminists have developed extensive critiques of law n2 and proposals for legal reform. n3 Feminists have had much less to say,
however, about what the "doing" of law should entail and what truth status to give to the legal claims that follow. These
methodological issues matter because methods shape one's view of the possibilities for legal
practice and reform. Method "organizes the apprehension of truth; it determines what counts
as evidence and defines what is taken as verification." n4 Feminists cannot ignore method,
because if they seek to challenge existing structures of power with the same methods that
[*831] have defined what counts within those structures, they may instead "recreate the
illegitimate power structures [that they are] trying to identify and undermine." n5 Method
matters also because without an understanding of feminist methods, feminist claims in the law will
not be perceived as legitimate or "correct." I suspect that many who dismiss feminism as trivial
or inconsequential misunderstand it. Feminists have tended to focus on defending their various
substantive positions or political agendas, even among themselves. Greater attention to issues
of method may help to anchor these defenses, to explain why feminist agendas often appear so
radical (or not radical enough), and even to establish some common ground among feminists. As
feminists articulate their methods, they can become more aware of the nature of what they do,
and thus do it better. Thinking about method is empowering. When I require myself to explain
what I do, I am likely to discover how to improve what I earlier may have taken for granted. In
the process, I am likely to become more committed to what it is that I have improved. This
likelihood, at least, is a central premise of this Article and its primary motivation.
 Reps First
Reps must be evaluated prior to questions of policy
Doty 96 (Roxanne Lynn Doty, assistant professor of political science at arizona state university, imperial encounters, p. 5-6,
1996)

This study begins with the premise that representation is an inherent and important aspect of global political life and
therefore a critical and legitimate area of inquiry. International relations are inextricably bound up with discursive practices that put into circulation
representations that are taken as "truth." The goal of analyzing these practices is not to reveal essential truths that have been obscured, but rather to examine how certain

representations underlie the production of knowledge and, identities and how these
representations make various courses of action possible. As Said (1979: 21) notes, there is no such thing as a delivered presence, but there is a
re-presence, or representation. Such an assertion does not deny the existence of the material world, but rather

suggests that material objects and subjects are constituted as such within discourse. So, for
example, when U.S. troops march into Grenada, this is certainly "real," though the march of troops across a piece of
geographic space is in itself singularly uninteresting and socially irrelevant outside of the representations that produce meaning. It is only when "American" is

attached to the troops and "Grenada" to the geographic space that meaning is created. What
the physical behavior itself is, though, is still far from certain until discursive practices
constitute it as an "invasion," a "show of force," a "training exercise," a "rescue," and so on. What is "really" going on in such a
situation is inextricably linked to the discourse within which it is located. To attempt a neat
separation between discursive and nondiscursive practices, understanding the former as purely
linguistic, assumes a series of dichotomies—thought/reality, appearance/essence, mind/matter, word/world,
subjective/objective—that a critical genealogy calls into question. Against this, the perspective taken here affirms the material
and'performative character of discourse.'In suggesting that global politics, and specifically the aspect that has to do with relations between the North and the South, is linked to representational practices I am
suggesting that the issues and concerns that constitute these relations occur within a "reality" whose content has for the most part been defined by the representational practices of the “first world”.

Focusing on discursive practices enables one to examine how the processes that produce "truth"
and "knowledge" work and how they are articulated with the exercise of political, military, and
economic power.

Representations are the most important questions—the representations used

are pivotal in determining the persuasiveness of the policy and the likelihood of
implementation.
Gorham 99 (Bradley, University of Wisconsin, Howard Journal of Communications, Spring, ebsco)
Racial stereotypes in the media : So what ? Why are stereotypes in the media important, and why should we care ? At first glance, it seems absurd that such questions need to be answered. It is almost a truism
that racial stereotypes in the media are important; so much research has been done about stereotypes in the media that they must be important. Similarly, there is the intuitively appealing notion that stereotypes
in the media are harmful. Stereotypes are often viewed as false overgeneralizations made by socially dominant groups about socially oppressed groups, and since they have been prevalent in the media to varying
degrees for many years ( Stroman, Merritt, & Matabane, 1989–1990) , they must be bad. But why ? If so many people consciously disavow any belief in or endorsement of the stereotypes that circulate through
society (Devine, Monteith, Zuwerink, & Elliot, 1991) , why are they important, and why are they bad ? How do they exercise their ‘‘badness’’ ? These are important questions to answer for several reasons. Critical
scholars and others who are concerned about the ideological and social effects of stereotypical media representations need to be able to point to more concrete mechanisms than simply ‘‘learning’’ or ‘‘modeling’’

those concerned with the ideological effects of

if they expect their arguments to carry any weight outside of the academic world. That is,

persistent stereotypical portrayals need to be able to lay out the mechanisms by which these
representations lead to these effects. By doing so, researchers can not only make their
arguments against these representations more convincing, but they can also make it easier to
identify areas that are most susceptible to real-world intervention and change. This could also have the added
benefit of making it easier for message producers, consumers, and policymakers to see how scholars’ theory and research might have practical implications. Conversely, researchers

in the empirical tradition must acknowledge the very real ideological effects that may arise from
these repeated stereotypical representations. Although the term may make some empirical
researchers uncomfortable, ‘‘ideology’’ clearly seems to be an important concept in
understanding the effects of stereotypical representations. After all, if ideology is ‘‘a kind of
collective symbolic self-expression’’ that works to promote and legitimate the interests of social
groups through ‘‘action-oriented discourse’’ ( adapted from Eagleton, 1991, p. 29) , then stereotypical images in the
media can certainly convey messages about what are not only appropriate thoughts for
members of particular social groups, but also what are appropriate actions and roles. These thus
become important effects to understand.

Framework questions should be resolved prior to policymaking because they

determine the effectiveness and outcome of policy
The Frameworks Institute 3 (“The FrameWorks Perspective: Strategic Frame Analysis”,
http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/strategicanalysis/perspective.shtml)
This interdisciplinary work is made possible by the fact that the concept of framing is found in the literatures of numerous academic disciplines across the social, behavioral and cognitive sciences. Put simply,

By
framing refers to the construct of a communication — its language, visuals and messengers — and the way it signals to the listener or observer how to interpret and classify new information.

framing, we mean how messages are encoded with meaning so that they can be efficiently
interpreted in relationship to existing beliefs or ideas. Frames trigger meaning. The questions we ask, in applying the
concept of frames to the arena of social policy, are as follows: How does the public think about a particular social or political issue? What is the public discourse on the issue? And how is this discourse influenced

by the way media frames that issue? How do these public and private frames affect public choices? How can an issue be reframed to evoke a
different way of thinking, one that illuminates a broader range of alternative policy choices?
This approach is strategic in that it not only deconstructs the dominant frames of reference that
drive reasoning on public issues, but it also identifies those alternative frames most likely to
stimulate public reconsideration and enumerates their elements (reframing). We use the term reframe to mean changing "the context of the message exchange" so that different
interpretations and probable outcomes become visible to the public (Dearing & Rogers, 1994: 98). Strategic frame analysis offers policy advocates a

way to work systematically through the challenges that are likely to confront the introduction of
new legislation or social policies, to anticipate attitudinal barriers to support, and to develop
research-based strategies to overcome public misunderstanding. What Is Communications and Why Does It Matter? The domain of
communications has not changed markedly since 1948 when Harold Lasswell formulated his famous equation: who says what to whom through what channel with what effect? But what many social policy
practitioners have overlooked in their quests to formulate effective strategies for social change is that communications merits their attention because it is an inextricable part of the agenda-setting function in this
country. Communications plays a vital role in determining which issues the public prioritizes for policy resolution, which issues will move from the private realm to the public, which issues will become pressure
points for policymakers, and which issues will win or lose in the competition for scarce resources. No organization can approach such tasks as issue advocacy, constituency-building, or promoting best practices
without taking into account the critical role that mass media has to play in shaping the way Americans think about social issues. As William Gamson and his colleagues at the Media Research and Action Project like
to say, media is "an arena of contest in its own right, and part of a larger strategy of social change." One source of our confusion over communications comes in not recognizing that each new push for public
understanding and acceptance happens against a backdrop of long-term media coverage, of perceptions formed over time, of scripts we have learned since childhood to help us make sense of our world, and folk
beliefs we use to interpret new information. As we go about making sense of our world, mass media serves an important function as the mediator of meaning — telling us what to think about (agenda-setting) and
how to think about it (media effects) by organizing the information in such a way (framing) that it comes to us fully conflated with directives (cues) about who is responsible for the social problem in the first place
and who gets to fix it (responsibility). It is often the case that nonprofit organizations want communications to be easy. Ironically, they want soundbite answers to the same social problems whose complexity they
understand all too well. While policy research and formulation are given their due as tough, demanding areas of an organization's workplan, communications is seen as "soft." While program development and
practice are seen as requiring expertise and the thoughtful consideration of best practices, communications is an "anyone can do it if you have to" task. It is time to retire this thinking. Doing communications

In his seminal
strategically requires the same investment of intellect and study that these other areas of nonprofit practice have been accorded. A Simple Explanation of Frame Analysis

book Public Opinion (1921:16), Walter Lippmann was perhaps the first to connect mass
communications to public attitudes and policy preferences by recognizing that the "the way in
which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do." The modern extension
of Lippmann's observation is based on the concept of "frames." People use mental shortcuts to make sense of the world. Since most people are looking to process incoming information quickly and efficiently,
they rely upon cues within that new information to signal to them how to connect it with their stored images of the world. The "pictures in our heads," as Lippmann called them, might better be thought of as
vividly labeled storage boxes - filled with pictures, images, and stories from our past encounters with the world and labeled youth, marriage, poverty, fairness, etc. The incoming information provides cues about

Put another way, how an

which is the right container for that idea or experience. And the efficient thinker makes the connection, a process called "indexing," and moves on.

issue is framed is a trigger to these shared and durable cultural models that help us make sense
of our world. When a frame ignites a cultural model, or calls it into play in the interpretation, the whole model is operative. This allows people to reason about an issue, to make inferences, to fill in
the blanks for missing information by referring to the robustness of the model, not the sketchy frame.

Questions of policy can’t even be attempted to be answered without first

examining representations—it proves our framework is critical to more
effective policymaking.
Doty 96 (Roxanne, assistant professor of political science at ASU, Imperial Encounters, p. 170-171)
North-South relations have been constituted as a structure of deferral. The center of the structure (alternatively white man, modern man, the united States, the West, real states), has never been absolutely
present outside a system of differences. It has itself been constituted as trace-the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates itself, displaces itself, refers itself (ibid.). Because the center is not a fixed locus but a
function in which an infinite number of sign substitutions come into play, the domain and play of signification is extended indefinitely (Derrida 1978: z8o). This both opens up and limits possibilities, generates
alternative sites of meanings and political resistances that give rise to practices of reinscription that seek to reaffirm identities and relationships. The inherently incomplete and open nature of discourse makes this
reaffirmation an ongoing and never finally completed project. In this study I have sought, through an engagement with various discourses in which claims to truth have been staked, to challenge the validity of the
structures of meaning and to make visible their complicity with practices of power and domination. By examining the ways in which structures of meaning have been associated with imperial practices, I have

construction of meaning and the construction of social, political, and economic power
suggested that the

are inextricably linked. This suggests an ethical dimension to making meaning and an ethical
imperative that is incumbent upon those who toil in the construction of struc-tures of meaning.
This is especially urgent in North-South relations today: one does not have to search very far to find a continuing complicity with colonial representations that ranges from a politics of silence and neglect to

The political stakes

constructions of terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, international drug trafficking, and Southern immigration to the North as new threats to global stability and peace.

raised by this analysis revolve around the question of being able to "get beyond" the
representations or speak outside of the discourses that historically have constructed the North
and the South. I do not believe that there are any pure alternatives by which we can escape the
infinity of traces to which Gramsci refers. Nor do I wish to suggest that we are always hopelessly
imprisoned in a dominant and all-pervasive discourse. Before this question can be answered-
indeed. before we can even proceed to attempt an answer—attention must be given to the
politics of representation. The price that international relations scholarship pays for its
inattention to the issue of representation is perpetuation of the dominant modes of making
meaning and deferral of its responsibility and complicity in dominant representations.

Their framework depoliticizes debate and ensures the cooptation of all politics
Holloway 2 (Johnny Holloway, Professor of political science at The American University, 2002, The Military Reflex of the Body
Politic: Thinking Critically About the United States’ "War on Drugs,” March, http://www.isanet.org/noarchive/holloway.html)

What separates critical theory most significantly from other modes of analysis is the value placed on cognition. While
critical theory does encompass the positivist elements of reality like observable events and
physical matter, its larger focus is on the non-observable elements of reality – thoughts, beliefs, values, language–
that govern human interaction (Alway 1995, 105; Campbell 1992, 4-5; Guess 1981, 56). As is elegantly stated in the passage from Michel Foucault above, to be
critical is not simply a matter of proffering criticism. Mere disparagement and other expressions of disapproval towards existing conditions are
inadequate; true critical theory must address the dominant ideology – the basic thoughts and beliefs that form

the bedrock of specific behaviors, policies, actions, etc that in turn formulate, reinforce, and
perpetuate existing conditions. The basis of this address is reflection, the intellectual act of
holding up a mirror to truly examine – and question – the world-view embraced by both the individual
and the larger society of which he or she is a member (Leonard 1990, 4). By weighing the beliefs and assumptions held about (for example) society
against the knowledge of the origins of those beliefs and assumptions combined with observable facts (e.g. consistently disproportionate allocation of resources, pervasive injustice, etc), real and rigorous

turning things on its head, the individual becomes enlightened;

reflection undermines and eventually shatters this world-view. By

aware of those coercive elements (both self-imposed and produced and reproduced by the institutions of society) that have formed the
ideology that had heretofore permitted the justification of a hypocrisy of incommensurate words and deeds. Moreover, this realization will not permit a
simple acknowledgment; it compels action and understandably so – the world (or some aspect of it) as one knew it to be is no 2more. “Although
reflection alone can’t do away with real social oppression, it can free ... agents from unconscious
complicity in thwarting their own legitimate desires” (Guess 1981, 75). At a minimum, reflection can bring about an intellectual freedom that
compels advocacy for change through a basic rationality (i.e., one plus one is supposed to equal two; not six). After outlining these elements of critical theory – cognition, reflection, enlightenment – it becomes
increasing evident as to the utility of this approach in regards to the question of the War on Drugs. Measurements of such things as total tons of cocaine seized or annual budgets for the Drug Enforcement Agency

Americans
(DEA) in and of themselves can only offer a description of events – not an explanation for them or the policies that promulgate them. Consider the following assessment: Many

approach questions of drug ... policy with standard-issue drug war eyeglasses ... crafted from
particular beliefs and values rooted in American political culture. When they hear the word narcotics, they hear danger and crime ... When they consider how the government
should respond, they think “get tough”; and when the problem does not improve, they conclude that more force and more threats are needed (Bertram, et al: 57). In order to get to the

why’s at the heart of the matter (e.g. Why view through this lens and not another? Why use the military metaphor?, etc), any meaningful
analysis is going to have address the thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, and language that privileges
certain responses over others. Confronted with a policy focused on eradication and interdiction that has been pursued for roughly twenty years, at a cost of billions of dollars,
with advocates who claim that “victory” is imminent on one hand and wide scale evidence of an ever increasing supply of drugs at stable (and sometimes decreasing) prices essentially unaffected by that policy on

the other, a “what is wrong with the is picture?” frame of analysis is imperative. Recognition of the
wrongness of that picture and the reasons why is inherently emancipating – a freedom that may be limited to a personal
refusal to accept the platitudes that shroud hypocrisy or may result in adding another voice to the call for greater introspection and larger understanding

Their demand to work only within the policy community forecloses options and
prevents real change.
Smith 97 (Steve Smith, Professor of Political Science at the University of Wales, Power and truth; a reply to William Wallace,
Review of International Studies, Issue 04, Volume 23, October 1997, Cambridge Journals)
In summary, I think that Wallace fundamentally misrepresents the relationship between theory and practice. His article works very effectively, but only because of its internal logical and political structure. By his
setting up of two alternatives (cooption or scholasticism) the logical structure of the article performs a disciplining function by placing anyone outside of his logic of the policy–theory relationship in a predefined
position of being self-righteous, self-indulgent, opposed to empirical work, too detached from the world of practice and too fond of theory. Note also the very revealing way in which those defined as having to
‘struggle with the dilemmas of power’ are policy-makers; there are massive normative and ethical assumptions at work here, ones that undermine his very notion of theory as explanatory and reveal his political
project. The trouble is that Wallace’s logical structure is a textual construction and is therefore never subjected to any self-critical analysis in the article. My worry is that his prescriptions would make academic

academics will run the risk of having to work

International Relations a servant of the state, responding to today’s headlines. Agreeing with Wallace means that

within the agenda of the policy community, of being unable to stand back and examine the
moral, ethical and political implications of that choice. Giving policy advice is not the problem; the problem is if those
who give it are unaware of the extent to which they are standing on the policy conveyor-belt of
the state. It means problem-solving, it means taking the ‘givens’ of policy-makers as the starting points of
analysis. It means walking the thin line between influence and fitting the values of policymakers. Clearly the discipline wants and needs to give advice on policy, but to whom? Is doing so for policy-
makers a requirement for academics in discharging their responsibility to the state? My worry is that policy advice all too often means talking to

governments; unfortunately, they may not be the right people to talk to if one’s concern is really with ‘those who have
to struggle with the dilemmas of power’. And, crucially, are policy-makers listening to ideas or are they searching for an intellectual justification for their existing
values? Ultimately, Wallace’s picture worries me because he has a very restricted view of politics and its relationship to academia. Politics for Wallace is a far more limited activity than I think it is, and that is why I

it is not so much a question of

find no academic activity more political or ethical than showing the epistemological assumptions of International Relations theory. For me

speaking truth to power as of showing how various versions of the power/truth relationship
operate between civil society and the state. In that relationship it may well be that those who espouse a restrictive
view of theory are the ones who are hiding behind walls, preaching sermons of self-righteousness, and ultimately acting as the
discipliners of the discipline. For all of us interested in international relations, Wallace has raised important questions concerning our responsibilities and our self-awareness. I
hope that this reply has shown why the picture is not quite as simple as his beguiling argument suggests and why, ultimately, it may be impossible for ‘truth to speak to power’ in the liberal way that he suggests.

if ‘truth’ itself only gets meaning from the regimes of truth within which it operates, then
After all,

how can it speak to power when it is itself a construction of those same power relationships? How
do we know that it is truth rather than power that we speak when we are speaking to policy-makers? Surely the task of academics is to show how these

very relationships between truth and power, and between the empirical and the theoretical, operate. That, rather than
the search for influence within the policy-making community, is the ultimate ethical and political
engagement with the civil society in which we work and to which we are responsible.

Roleplaying releases sadistic desires and promotes violence—Stanford prison

experiment proves
Sherrer 2k (Hans Sherrer, author living in Auburn, Washington, The Inhumanity of Government Bureaucracies, The
Independent Review, v.V, n.2, Fall 2000, http://www.21learn.org/arch/articles/sherrer_one.htm)

Bureaucratic structures increase sadistic behavior by permitting and even encouraging it.2 This
effect is produced by the systematic lessening of the moral restraints inherent in personal
agency (Kelman 1973, 52). Stanford psychology professor Philip Zim- bardo's "Stanford County Prison" experiment in the early 1970s confirmed this rela- tionship in dramatic fashion (Zimbardo, Haney,
and Banks 1973). The experiment revealed that the sadism of people unhealthily obedient to authority can

be tapped into and given an expressive outlet by their association with a bureaucratic
organization, demonstrating that placing people in an environment in which they can freely
exercise their sadistic impulses can have a liberating effect on their doing so. Zimbardo
conducted the experiment by setting up a mock jail in the basement of a building and using
participants from the general public who had been selected for their normality. Those chosen to
participate were randomly assigned the role of a guard or an inmate. To Zimbardo and his fellow
researchers' surprise, a majority of the guards began to behave sadistically toward the inmates
within hours of initiation of the experiment (1973, 87-97). Just as surprising, the inmates meekly
accepted their subservient role and mistreatment. In writing about this experiment, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman noted a "sudden
transmogrification of likable and decent American boys into near monsters of the kind allegedly to be found
only in places like Auschwitz or Treblinka" (Bauman 1989, 167). What began as a make-believe experiment soon
degenrated into an all too real microcosm of the interpersonal dynamics of real jails and
prisons. The universality of Zimbardo's finding is confirmed by the fact that the over- whelming majority of the heinous acts
committed in Europe during the Nazi era were not perpetrated by fanatics or deranged people.
To the contrary, those acts were per- formed by ordinary Germans, French, Poles, Czechs, and others

who considered themselves to be legally authorized to act in ways that we retrospectively view
as inhumane (Browning 1993, 159-89; Kren and Rappoport 1994, 70, 81-83).

Roleplaying is bad – it overlooks our own role in creating violence

Jayan Nayar, Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, 99 (Symposium: Re-
Framing International Law For The 21st Century: Orders of Inhumanity, Transnational Law &
Contemporary Problems, Fall, 9 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 599)
The description of the continuities of violence in Section II in many ways is familiar to those who adopt a critical perspective of the world. "We" are accustomed to narrating human wrongs in this way. The failures
and betrayals, the victims and perpetrators, are familiar to our critical understanding. From this position of judgment, commonly held within the "mainstream" of the "non-mainstream," there is also a familiarity

Despite this proliferation of

of solutions commonly advocated for transformation; the "marketplace" for critique is a thriving one as evidenced by the abundance of literature in this respect.

enlightenment and the profession of so many good ideas, however, "things" appear to remain as they are, or, worse
still, [*620] deteriorate. And so, the cycle of critique, proposals for transformation and disappointment
continues. Rightly, we are concerned with the question of what can be done to alleviate the sufferings that prevail.
But there are necessary prerequisites to answering the "what do we do?" question. We must
first ask the intimately connected questions of "about what?" and "toward what end?" These questions,
obviously, impinge on our vision and judgment. When we attempt to imagine transformations toward preferred human

futures, we engage in the difficult task of judging the present. This is difficult not because we are oblivious to violence or that we are
numb to the resulting suffering, but because, outrage with "events" of violence aside, processes of violence embroil and implicate our familiarities in ways that defy the simplicities of straightforward imputability.
Despite our best efforts at categorizing violence into convenient compartments--into "disciplines" of study and analysis such as "development" and "security" (health, environment, population, being other
examples of such compartmentalization)--the encroachments of order(ing) function at more pervasive levels. And without doubt, the perspectives of the observer, commentator, and actor become crucial

It is necessary, I believe, to question this, "our," perspective, to reflect upon a perspective of violence which not
determinants.

only locates violence as a happening "out there" while we stand as detached observers and
critics, but is also one in which we are ourselves implicated in the violence of ordered worlds
where we stand very much as participants. For this purpose of a critique of critique, it is necessary to
consider the "technologies" of ordering.

Even Rawls agrees that the framework must be debatable

Ed Wingeenbach, Professor at the University of South Carolina, 99 (Unjust Context:
The Priority of Stability in Rawls's Contextualized Theory of Justice, American Journal of Political
Science, Vol. 43, No. 1 January)

The recognition that we share no common doctrine except the fundamental intuition that no
common doctrine can ever gain widespread acceptance involves a recognition of the underlying
indeterminacy of modern democratic politics. Any conception of the political realm appropriate to such
conditions must be one that accepts and institutionalizes this indeterminacy. Democracy should be

seen as the political practice which meets these demands, if by democracy we understand a form of politics which recognizes that the
context of politics itself must also be an object of contestation. This means that the framework within which political activity takes
place, in Rawls's case the political conception of justice, must be open to debate and reform.
Any attempt to take certain subjects or practices "off the table" violates Rawls's fundamental
insight into modern democratic societies, namely, that no common doctrine licensing such a removal can achieve legitimate acceptance.
 Intelligibility
Discourse key: it is within discourse that the chaos of the world
transubstantiates into experience. Serving as the dynamo of normalcy and
judgment, discourse renders the world and the social intelligible.
Bleiker 2k (Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt,
Tampere, Yonsei and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague,(Roland, Popular Dissent, Human
Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University Press)

Power is not a stable and steady force, something that exists on its own. There is no essence to power,
for its exercise is dependent upon forms of knowledge that imbue certain actions with power.
This is to say that the manner in which we view and frame power also influences how it functions in practice. 'It is within
discourse,' Foucault claims, 'that power and knowledge articulate each other.' 31 Discourses are
subtle mechanisms that frame our thinking process. They determine the limits of what can be
thought, talked and written in a normal and rational way. In every society the production of
discourses is controlled, selected, organised and diffused by certain procedures. This process
creates systems of exclusion in which one group of discourses is elevated to a hegemonic
status while others are condemned to exile. Discourses give rise to social rules that decide
which statements most people recognise as valid, as debatable or as undoubtedly false. They
guide the selection process that ascertains which propositions from previous periods or foreign cultures are retained, imported,
valued, and which are forgotten or neglected. 32 Although these boundaries change, at times gradually, at times abruptly, they
maintain a certain unity across time, a unity that dominates and transgresses individual authors, texts or social practices. Not
everything is discourse, but everything is in discourse. Things exist independently of discourses,
but we can only assess them through the lenses of discourse, through the practices of knowing, perceiving
and sensing which we have acquired over time. Nietzsche: That mountain there! That cloud there! What is 'real' in that? Subtract
the phantasm and every human contribution from it, my sober friends! If you can! If you can forget your descent, your past, your
training — all of your humanity and animality. There is no 'reality' for us — not for you either, my sober friends… 33 Nietzsche's
point, of course, is not that mountains and clouds do not exist as such. To claim such would be absurd. Mountains and clouds exist
no matter what we think about them. And so do more tangible social practices. But they are not 'real' by some objective standard.
Their appearance, meaning and significance is part of human experiences, part of a specific way of life. A Nietzschean position
emphasises that discourses
render social practices intelligible and rational — and by doing so mask
the ways in which they have been constituted and framed. Systems of domination gradually
become accepted as normal and silently penetrate every aspect of society. They cling to the most
remote corners of our mind, for 'all things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their emergence out of unreason
Discourses are more than just masking agents. They provide us with
thereby becomes improbable'. 34
frameworks to view the world, and by doing so influence its course. Discourses express ways of
life that actively shape social practices. But more is needed to demonstrate how the concept of discourse can be of
use to illuminate transversal dissident practices. More is needed to outline a positive notion of human agency that is not based on
stable foundations. This section has merely located the terrains that are to be explored. It is now up to the following chapters to
introduce, step by step, the arguments and evidence necessary to develop and sustain a discursive understanding of transversal
dissent and its ability to exert human agency.
 Policy Making
Discourse and epistemology comes first – an investigation of representations is
the prerequisite to meaningful policies
Jourde 6 (Ph.D., Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.A., Political Science, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, B.Sc., Political Science, Université de Montréal (Cedric, 2006, “1995 Hegemony or Empire?:
The redefinition of US Power under George W Bush,” Ed. David and Grondin p. 182-3)

Relations between states are, at least in part, constructed upon representations. Representations
are interpretative prismsthrough which decision-makers make sense of a political reality, through
which they define and assign a subjective valueto the other states and non-state actors of the international
system, and through which they determine what are significant international political issues.2 For instance,
officials of a given state will represent other states as 'allies', 'rivals', or simply 'insignificant', thus assigning a subjective value to
these states. Such subjective categorizations often derive from representations of these states' domestic politics, which can for
instance be perceived as 'unstable*, 'prosperous', or 'ethnically divided'. It must be clear thatrepresentations are not
objective or truthful depictions of reality; rather they are subjective and political ways of seeing the
world, making certain things 'seen' by and significant for an actor while making other things 'unseen' and 'insignificant'.3 In other
words, they are founded on each actor's and group of actors' cognitive, cultural-social, and emotional
standpoints. Being fundamentally political, representations are the object of tense struggles
and tensions, as some actors or groups of actors can impose on others their own representations of the world, of what they
consider to be appropriate political orders, or appropriate economic relations, while others may in turn accept, subvert or contest
these representations.Representations of a foreign political reality influence how decision-making
actors will act upon that reality. In other words,as subjective and politically infused interpretations of
reality, representations constrain and enable the policies that decision-makers will adopt vis-a-vis other states; they
limit the courses of action that are politically thinkable and imaginable, making certain policies conceivable while relegating other
policies to the realm of the unthinkable.4 Accordingly,identifying how a state represents another state or non-state actor helps
to understandhow and why certain foreign policies have been adopted while other policies have
been excluded. To take a now famous example, if a transnational organization is represented as a group of 'freedom fighters',
such as the multi-national mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, then military cooperation is conceivable with that organization; if
on the other hand the same organization is represented as a 'terrorist network', such as Al-Qaida, then military cooperation as a
policy is simply not an option. In sum. the way in which one sees, interprets and imagines the 'other* delineates the course of action
one will adopt in order to deal with this 'other'

Policymaking cannot escape the nature of actions as preconstituted in

language- the creation of a single acceptable description of actions is vital to
preventing engagement or discussion of these acts, meaning that in a vacuum
there is no way to evaluate policy without kritik.
Patton 97 (professor of philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (Paul, “The
World Seen From Within: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Events”, Theory and Event 1:1, 1997)

There is a parallel here with the views of Anscombe and others in the philosophy of action, according to which actions (a special
class of events) are
always events under a description. This is because actions involve intentions and
intentions presuppose some description of what it is that the agent intends to do. On this view,
the bare occurrence (or numerical identity) of actions might be specifiable in purely physical terms,
but their identity as actions of a particular kind involves reference to appropriate descriptions.
4 There is thus a necessary connection between the identity of the action and the manner in
which it would be described by the agent. Moreover, to the degree that events involving non-
human agencies such as corporate bodies, political movements and nation states are
understood in terms of the model of rational action, this connection applies in the case of a
broad range of social and political events. Thus, while it may be true that by installing offensive missiles the Soviet
authorities reinforced the defensive capabilities of Cuba, this might not be an appropriate description of their action. 5 The same
action may have multiple (true) descriptions, but it is not always possible to substitute one description of an action for another in
contexts that involve reference to the beliefs or intentions of agents. This thesis about the dependence of actions upon
descriptions implies that the nature of such events is not exhausted by any particular description or
set of descriptions. Ian Hacking explores some surprising consequences of this thesis. One is the phenomena to which
Nietzsche and Foucault drew attention, namely that new forms of description of human behavior make
possible new kinds of action. Only after the discursive characterization of behavior in terms of
juvenile delinquency or split personality was established did it become possible for individuals
to conceive of themselves and therefore to act as delinquents or splits. Not all discursive
constructions of subjectivity open up new possibilities for action: some may serve to
invalidate or remove possibilities for action. Hacking cites the case of a bill brought before the British Parliament
which sought to pardon retrospectively several hundred soldiers who were shot for desertion during the First World War, on the
grounds that they would now be regarded as suffering from post-traumatic stress. 6 Such a redescription would pathologize the
action of the deserters, retrospectively transforming their actions into symptoms. In other cases, the aim of retroactive redescription
is to render reprehensible behavior that was formerly acceptable, as for example, when the European 'settlement' of Aboriginal land
in the Australian colonies is redescribed as invasion. The second surprising conclusion which Hacking draws from this account of
the nature of actions is that there is no simple fact of the matter which enables us to say whether such
redescriptions are correct or incorrect. It follows that the nature of past actions is essentially
indeterminate: one and the same event may be expressed in an open-ended series of
statements. In other words, generalizing the Anscombe thesis about actions points in the same direction as Deleuze's Stoic
thesis about the relationship between events and the forms of their linguistic expression: while the event proper or
pure event is not reducible to the manner in which it appears or is incarnated in particular
states of affairs, the nature of the incarnate or impure event is closely bound up with the
forms of its expression. Moreover, since the manner in which a given occurrence is described or
'represented' within a given social context determines it as a particular kind of event, there is
good reason for political actors to contest accepted descriptions.

Discourses are intrinsic to political calculation- ignoring their importance is

tantamount to saying that the president has no role in shaping policymaking.
Campbell et al 7 (David, Professor of Geography at the University of Durham, (Alison J.
Williams, Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the International Boundaries Research Unit in the
Department of Geography at Durham University; Luiza Bialasiewicz, Professor of Geography at
Royal Halloway University, London; Stuart Elden, Professor of Geography at Durham; Alex
Jeffrey, Professor of Geography, Politics & Sociology at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne;
Stephen Graham, Professor of Geography at Durham, “Performing security: The imaginary
geographies of current US strategy”, Political Geography, Vol. 26, p. 406-407)

It is, finally, important to call attention to the difference between performativity and performance. Performativity
is a
discursive mode through which ontological effects (the idea of the autonomous subject or the notion of the pre-
existing state) are established. Performativity thereby challenges the notion of the naturally
existing subject. But it does not eradicate the appearance of the subject or the idea of agency .
Performance presumes a subject and occurs within the conditions of possibility brought into
being by the infrastructure of performativity. This is especially important when it comes to considering the role of
named individuals in the development and furtherance of security policy. Although the citation of such names gives the appearance
of wilful subjects exercising agency with volition, we argue in this paper, despitecalling attention to the
performances of individuals or policies, that the continuities between groups of security
officials and the arguments they propagate demonstrate the importance of performativity
(especially recitation and reiteration as constraints on those performances) in the production of policy. Methodologically
this approach requires an alternative model of explanation, one best explicated by the argument of William Connolly (2005: 869)
that classical models of explanation based on ‘‘efficient causality’’ – whereby ‘‘you first separate factors and then show how one is
the basic cause, or they cause each other, or how they together reflect a more basic cause’’ – need to give way to the idea of
‘‘emergent causality’’. In this conception, politics
is understood as a resonant process in which diverse
elements infiltrate into the others, metabolizing into a moving complex – causation as resonance
between elements that become fused together to a considerable degree. Here causality, as relations of dependence between
separate factors, morphs into energized complexities of mutual imbrication and interinvolvement, in which heretofore unconnected
or loosely associated elements fold, blend, emulsify, and dissolve into each other, forging a qualitative assemblage resistant to
classical models of explanation (Connolly, 2005: 870. See also Connolly, 2004). In this context, it
is important to
understand what an individually named subject signifies, and how we can understand the
place of agency within performativity once pre-given subjectivity is contested. In his account of the
contemporary American political condition, William Connolly argues that, in contradistinction to any idea of a conspiratorial cabal
exercising command, the US is run by a ‘‘theo-econopolitical [resonance] machine’’ in which the Republican party, evangelical
Christians, elements of the electronic media and ‘‘cowboy capitalists’’ come together in emergent and resonant, rather than
efficient, relationships (Connolly, 2005: 878). This means the major
public figures like the President and prominent
media commentators need to be understood in particular ways. As Connolly (2005: 877) argues: It is
pertinent to see how figures such as Bush and O’Reilly dramatize the resonance machine. But
while doing so, it is critical to remember that they would merely be oddball characters unless
they triggered, expressed and amplified a resonance machine larger than them. They are
catalyzing agents and shimmering points in the machine; their departure will weaken it only if it does not
spawn new persona to replace them.

Discourse is intrinsically tied to policy-making. Discourse is shaped by policy

formation.
Jones 9 (Harry Jones, researcher for the ODI, August 2009, “Policy-making as discourse: a
review of recent knowledge-to-policy literature,” IKM Working Papers, No. 5, pg. 14,
http://wiki.ikmemergent.net/files/090911-ikm-working-paper-5-policy-making-as-discourse.pdf)
KVA

Approaching policy as discourse involves seeing knowledge and power as intertwined, for
example Foucault argues that the act of governing has become interdependent with certain
sorts of institutionalised analyses, reflections and knowledge (Foucault 1991). Discourse
encompasses the concepts and ideas relevant for policy, and the interactive processes of
communication and policy formulation that serve to generate and disseminate these ideas
(Schmidt and Radaelli 2004). These discursive structures (concepts, metaphors, linguistic codes,
rules of logic, etc), often taken for granted, contain cognitive and normative elements that
determine what policy-makers can more easily understand and articulate, and hence which
policy ideas they are likely to adopt (Campbell 2002). This perspective offers an extremely rich
way into understanding the link between knowledge and policy in development, and has the
potential to bring together elements of the institution- and actor focused approaches in relation
to the role of knowledge. Discourse plays a key role in shaping new institutional structures as a
set of ideas about new rules, values and practices, and also as a resource used by actors in the
processes of interaction focused on policy formulation and communication; and the policy
network theories and discursive institutionalism show how these in turn shape discourse
(Schmidt and Radaelli 2004).

Discourse key: it is within discourse that the chaos of the world

transubstantiates into experience. Serving as the dynamo of normalcy and
judgment, discourse renders the world and the social intelligible.
Bleiker 2k Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt, Tampere, Yonsei
and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in
The Hague (Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University Press)

Power is not a stable and steady force, something that exists on its own. There is no essence to power,
for its exercise is dependent upon forms of knowledge that imbue certain actions with power.
This is to say that the manner in which we view and frame power also influences how it functions in practice. 'It is within
discourse,' Foucault claims, 'that power and knowledge articulate each other.' 31 Discourses are
subtle mechanisms that frame our thinking process. They determine the limits of what can be
thought, talked and written in a normal and rational way. In every society the production of
discourses is controlled, selected, organised and diffused by certain procedures. This process
creates systems of exclusion in which one group of discourses is elevated to a hegemonic
status while others are condemned to exile. Discourses give rise to social rules that decide
which statements most people recognise as valid, as debatable or as undoubtedly false. They
guide the selection process that ascertains which propositions from previous periods or foreign cultures are retained, imported,
valued, and which are forgotten or neglected. 32 Although these boundaries change, at times gradually, at times abruptly, they
maintain a certain unity across time, a unity that dominates and transgresses individual authors, texts or social practices. Not
everything is discourse, but everything is in discourse. Things exist independently of discourses,
but we can only assess them through the lenses of discourse, through the practices of knowing, perceiving
and sensing which we have acquired over time. Nietzsche: That mountain there! That cloud there! What is 'real' in that? Subtract
the phantasm and every human contribution from it, my sober friends! If you can! If you can forget your descent, your past, your
training — all of your humanity and animality. There is no 'reality' for us — not for you either, my sober friends… 33 Nietzsche's
point, of course, is not that mountains and clouds do not exist as such. To claim such would be absurd. Mountains and clouds exist
no matter what we think about them. And so do more tangible social practices. But they are not 'real' by some objective standard.
Their appearance, meaning and significance is part of human experiences, part of a specific way of life. A Nietzschean position
emphasises that discourses
render social practices intelligible and rational — and by doing so mask
the ways in which they have been constituted and framed. Systems of domination gradually
become accepted as normal and silently penetrate every aspect of society. They cling to the most
remote corners of our mind, for 'all things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their emergence out of unreason
Discourses are more than just masking agents. They provide us with
thereby becomes improbable'. 34
frameworks to view the world, and by doing so influence its course. Discourses express ways of
life that actively shape social practices. But more is needed to demonstrate how the concept of discourse can be of
use to illuminate transversal dissident practices. More is needed to outline a positive notion of human agency that is not based on
stable foundations. This section has merely located the terrains that are to be explored. It is now up to the following chapters to
introduce, step by step, the arguments and evidence necessary to develop and sustain a discursive understanding of transversal
dissent and its ability to exert human agency.

Discourses are intrinsic to political calculation- ignoring their importance is

tantamount to saying that the president has no role in shaping policymaking.
Campbell et al 7, David, Professor of Geography at the University of Durham, (Alison J. Williams, Post-Doctoral
Research Associate in the International Boundaries Research Unit in the Department of Geography at Durham
University; Luiza Bialasiewicz, Professor of Geography at Royal Halloway University, London; Stuart Elden, Professor of
Geography at Durham; Alex Jeffrey, Professor of Geography, Politics & Sociology at the University of Newcastle-upon-
Tyne; Stephen Graham, Professor of Geography at Durham, “Performing security: The imaginary geographies of
current US strategy”, Political Geography, Vol. 26, p. 406-407)

It is, finally, important to call attention to the difference between performativity and performance. Performativity is a
discursive mode through which ontological effects (the idea of the autonomous subject or the notion of the pre-
existing state) are established. Performativity thereby challenges the notion of the naturally
existing subject. But it does not eradicate the appearance of the subject or the idea of agency .
Performance presumes a subject and occurs within the conditions of possibility brought into
being by the infrastructure of performativity. This is especially important when it comes to considering the role of
named individuals in the development and furtherance of security policy. Although the citation of such names gives the appearance
of wilful subjects exercising agency with volition, we argue in this paper, despite calling
attention to the
performances of individuals or policies, that the continuities between groups of security
officials and the arguments they propagate demonstrate the importance of performativity
(especially recitation and reiteration as constraints on those performances) in the production of policy. Methodologically
this approach requires an alternative model of explanation, one best explicated by the argument of William Connolly (2005: 869)
that classical models of explanation based on ‘‘efficient causality’’ – whereby ‘‘you first separate factors and then show how one is
the basic cause, or they cause each other, or how they together reflect a more basic cause’’ – need to give way to the idea of
‘‘emergent causality’’. In this conception, politics
is understood as a resonant process in which diverse
elements infiltrate into the others, metabolizing into a moving complex – causation as resonance
between elements that become fused together to a considerable degree. Here causality, as relations of dependence between
separate factors, morphs into energized complexities of mutual imbrication and interinvolvement, in which heretofore unconnected
or loosely associated elements fold, blend, emulsify, and dissolve into each other, forging a qualitative assemblage resistant to
classical models of explanation (Connolly, 2005: 870. See also Connolly, 2004). In this context, it
is important to
understand what an individually named subject signifies, and how we can understand the
place of agency within performativity once pre-given subjectivity is contested. In his account of the
contemporary American political condition, William Connolly argues that, in contradistinction to any idea of a conspiratorial cabal
exercising command, the US is run by a ‘‘theo-econopolitical [resonance] machine’’ in which the Republican party, evangelical
Christians, elements of the electronic media and ‘‘cowboy capitalists’’ come together in emergent and resonant, rather than
efficient, relationships (Connolly, 2005: 878). This means the major
public figures like the President and prominent
media commentators need to be understood in particular ways. As Connolly (2005: 877) argues: It is
pertinent to see how figures such as Bush and O’Reilly dramatize the resonance machine. But
while doing so, it is critical to remember that they would merely be oddball characters unless
they triggered, expressed and amplified a resonance machine larger than them. They are
catalyzing agents and shimmering points in the machine; their departure will weaken it only if it does not
spawn new persona to replace them.
 K2 Change
Arguments without a call to activism cannot spur change
Freire 68 (Pablo, Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical
pedagogy, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, originally published in Portuguese circa 1968,
published online at Archive.org, 3/11/16,
https://archive.org/stream/PedagogyOfTheOppressed-English-
PauloFriere/oppressed_djvu.txt)KJR**modified for gendered language
As we attempt to analyse dialogue as a human phenomenon, we discover something which is the essence of dialogue itself: the
word. But the word is more than just an instrument which makes dialogue possible; accordingly, we must seek its con-stituent
elements. Within the word we find two dimensions, reflection and action, in such radical
interaction that if one is sacrificed - even in part - the other immediately suffers. There is no true word
that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world. An unauthentic
word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its
constituent elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection
automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated
and alienating ‘blah’. It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is
impossible without a commit-ment to transform, and there is no transformation without action. On the other hand, if action is
emphasized exclusively, to the detriment of reflection, the word is converted into activism. The latter - action for action’s sake -
negates the true praxis and makes dialogue impossible. Either dichotomy, by creating unauthentic forms of existence, also creates
unauthentic forms of thought, which reinforce the original dichotomy. Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by
false words, but only by true words, with which men **people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to
change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namer as a problem and requires of them a new naming. Men
**People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection. But while to say the true word - which
is work, which is praxis - is to transform the world, saying that word is not the privilege of some few men **persons, but the right of
every man person**. Con-sequently, no one can say a true word alone - nor can he they** say it for another, in a prescriptive Set
which robs others of their words.

Language and politics is indistinct since language is the field under which all
things, including politics, are constituted.
Bleiker 2k (Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt,
Tampere, Yonsei and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague,(Roland, Popular Dissent, Human
Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University Press)
But were these poetic dissident activities, as some fear, a mere play with words, intellectual games devoid of social significance? Not
necessarily. Languageis always already politics. The links between words and what they signify
may not be authentic, but they are constituted as real through the language in which they are
embedded. And the ensuing forms of representation, partial and subjective as they are,
become our social and political realities. Hence, to engage with language is to engage directly
in social struggle. In this sense, poetic dissent is as real and often as effective as the practices of international Realpolitik.

Discourse is better than policymaking, it creates the possibility for alternative

modes of expression which policymaking automatically rules out.
Bleiker 98 (asst. prof. of International Studies at Pusan National University (Roland, “Retracing
and redrawing the boundaries of events: Postmodern interferences with international theory”,
Alternatives, Oct-Dec 1998, Vol. 23, Issue 4)
"Inventions from the unknown," the poet Arthur Rimbaud says, "demand new forms."[37] New forms of speaking create
preconditions for new forms of acting. Opening up different ways of identifying events, of seeing and
feeling reality, can occur only through language. It is a process saturated with obstacles and
contradictions, obscurities and frustrations. It is never complete. It may not even happen. It
certainly does not happen always. Language has no outside. Only different insides. There is no easy language. There
are only worn-out metaphors. (How to locate forms of writing and thinking that may turn into new forms of acting and living? The
point is to stretch language up to its limits: beyond the encrusted layers of silencing speech
habits, but only as far as the roots still touch the ground. Disentangle knots of words, liberate
from them laughter, shouts, gazes, variations, sensitivities, multiplicities. But do not disregard
the manner in which a particular language is embedded in concrete social practices. "Any war
against a form of language," Michael Shapiro says, "must come from within.")[38] Contracting Contradictions Live the life of
contradictions. The contradictions of life. Think through contradictions, not against them. Write about contradictions, not around
them. Don't cut off the edges that bother you. They will never fit into your box, even without edges. (Instead
of
continuously trying to fill the void left by the fallen God, postmodern thought no longer
searches for alternative Archimedean foundations. The increasingly transversal events of
contemporary world politics require more than ever that one accepts ambiguities and deals
with the fragmented nature of life in the late twentieth century. One must try to comprehend international relations
by relying on various forms of insight and levels of analysis even if they are incommensurable and contradict each other's internal
logic. An
event like the fall of the Berlin Wall has multiple faces. It is too complex to be viewed adequately
through one set of lenses. The masses of people that took to the streets in November 1989 were only one of many factors
that contributed to the downfall of the existing regime. Other crucial influences include the evolution of the Sovietled alliance
system, the existence of a second German state, economic decay, or the obsolescence of domestic systems of threats and privileges.
Each of these political sites offers possibilities for different readings of the event in question,
readings that may contradict each other. Each provides a unique fragment of insight into the fall of
the Berlin Wall. None of them can have the last word. Only in their incomplete and perhaps
contradictory complementariness can these insights provide something that resembles an
adequate understanding of what happened.)

Critical consciousness by the oppressed is key to effective action and change

Freire 68 (Paulo, Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical
pedagogy, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, originally published in Portuguese circa 1968,
published online at Archive.org, 3/11/16,
https://archive.org/stream/PedagogyOfTheOppressed-English-
PauloFriere/oppressed_djvu.txt)KJR**modified for gendered language

Authentic revolution attempts to transform the reality which begets this dehumanizing state of affairs. Those whose
interests are served by that reality cannot carry out this transformation; it must be achieved by
the tyrannized, with their leaders. This truth, however, must become radically consequential; that is, the leaders must
incarnate it, through communion with the people. In this communion both groups grow together, and the leaders,
instead of being simply self-appointed, are installed or authenticated in their praxis with the praxis of the people. Many
persons, bound to a mechanistic view of reality, do not perceive that the concrete situation of men people**
conditions their consciousness of the world, and that in turn this consciousness conditions their attitudes and their ways of dealing
with reality. They think
that reality can be transformed mechanistically without posing men’s
people’s** false consciousness of reality as a problem or, through revolutionary action, developing a
consciousness which is less and less false. There is no historical reality which is not human. There is no history without men
people**, and no history for men people**; there is only history of men people**, made by men people** and (as Marx pointed
out) in turn making them. It is when the majorities are denied their right to participate in history as Subjects
that they become dominated and alienated. Thus, to supersede their condition as objects by the status of Subjects -
the objective of any true revolution - requires the people to act, as well as reflect, upon the reality to be transformed.
 K2 Education
Social dynamics cannot be understood through the opposition of dominant and
marginalized discourses: discursive analysis reveals that domination and
marginalization are constantly shifting, and by their very discursive nature
transgress the traditional categories of thought. Critique is key for thought to
reach that discursive void around which oppression and resistance orbit.
Bleiker 2k (Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt,
Tampere, Yonsei and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague,(Roland, Popular Dissent, Human
Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University Press)

But how are we to understand a void? How are we to appreciate the dynamics that evolve within it, the ways in which
it plays out the forces that linger on all of its multiple points of entry and exit? The first step in this direction entails a
departure from the deeply entrenched Western practice of viewing the world in dualistic
terms. Much of modern thought has revolved around the juxtaposition of antagonistic bipolar
opposites, such as rational/non-rational, good/ evil, just/unjust, chaos/order,
domestic/international or, precisely, strong/weak. One side of the pairing is considered to be
analytically and conceptually separate from the other. The relationship between them generally expresses the
superiority, dominance or desirability of one entity (such as strong/order) over the other (such as weak/chaos). The crucial spaces
between them, the grey and indefinable voids, remain unexplored. Departing from this long tradition would, by contrast, emphasise
the complementariness of opposites and the overlapping relationships between them. Since one side of the pairing (such as order)
Non-dualistic
can only exist by virtue of its opposite (such as chaos), both form an inseparable and interdependent unit. 4
conceptualising recognises that social dynamics cannot be understood by juxtaposing
dominant and marginalised discourses, or local and global spheres. Discourses overlap,
influence each other. They transgress boundaries. They are in a constant state of flux, and so
are their multiple and cross-territorial relationships with political practice. A dominant
discourse usually incorporates elements of discursive practices that are squeezed into the
margins. The influence of these exiled discourses, in turn, may increase to the point of their becoming dominant. The dividing
lines between discourses always changes and may be blurred to the point that one needs to accept, as Foucault
does, that multiple discursive elements interact at various strategic levels. 5 What deserves our attention, then, is
the discursive void, the space where these multiple and overlapping discourses clash, where
silent and sometimes not so silent arguments are exchanged, where boundaries are drawn
and redrawn. The second step in appreciating how the discursive void influences transversal struggles requires a break with
some aspects of Foucault's thought. It may be the case that confrontations in the discursive void do not
take place among equals, that, indeed, the only drama staged there is an endlessly repeated
play of domination. 6 But resistance to these plays of domination is an equally constant theme.
Foucault, of course, would not necessarily disagree, for he argues that 'wherever there is power, there is resistance'. 7 He is simply
less optimistic about the chances of precisely locating and directing these forms of resistance. He even goes as far as arguing that
because the dynamic in the space between the strong and the weak takes place in an interstice, a 'non-place' where adversaries do
not meet directly, no one is responsible for its outcome. 8 Such an interpretation can easily lead to a fatalistic interpretation that
annihilates altogether the concept of human agency — an interpretation that is neither compelling nor necessarily compatible with
most of Foucault's remaining arguments.
 A2: Shively
It is no longer a question of searching for Truth, but rather of accepting
difference and facilitating dialog within that difference
Bleiker 98 (asst. prof. of International Studies at Pusan National University (Roland, “Retracing
and redrawing the boundaries of events: Postmodern interferences with international theory”,
Alternatives, Oct-Dec 1998, Vol. 23, Issue 4)

Accepting
In the absence of authentic knowledge, the formulation of theoretical positions and practical action requires modesty.
difference and facilitating dialogue becomes more important than searching for the elusive
Truth. But dialogue is a process, an ideal, not an end point. Often there is no common discursive
ground, no language that can establish a link between the inside and the outside. The link has
to be searched first. But the celebration of difference is a process, an ideal, not an end point. A call for tolerance and
inclusion cannot be void of power. Every social order, even the ones that are based on the acceptance of
difference, excludes what does not fit into their view of the world. Every form of thinking, some
international theorists recognize, expresses a will to power, a will that cannot but "privilege, oppress, and create in some
manner."[54] There is no all-encompassing gaze. Every process of revealing is at the same time a process of
concealing. By opening up a particular perspective, no matter how insightful it is, one conceals
everything that is invisible from this vantage point. The enframing that occurs by such processes of
revealing, Martin Heidegger argues, runs the risk of making us forget that enframing is a claim, a
disciplinary act that "banishes man into that kind of revealing that is an ordering ." And where this
ordering holds sway, Heidegger continues, "it drives out every other possibility for revealing."[55] This is why one must move
back and forth between different, sometimes incommensurable forms of insights. Such an
approach recognizes that the key to circumventing the ordering mechanisms of revealing is to
think in circles--not to rest too long at one point, but to pay at least as much attention to linkages between than to contents of
mental resting places. Inclusiveness does not lie in the search for a utopian, all-encompassing
worldview, but in the acceptance of the will to power--in the recognition that we need to evaluate and judge,
but that no form of knowledge can serve as the ultimate arbiter for thought and action. As a critical practice, postmodernism must
deal with its own will to power and to subvert that of others. This is not to avoid accountability, but to take on responsibility in the
form of bringing modesty to a majority.

Truth seeking is bad – Truth to power is key

Mourard 1 (Roger, Wastenaw CC-College of educ,
http://inkido.indiana.edu/research/onlinemanu/papers/focault.pdf)

The political task is not to discover the truth and thereby free humanity from domination or alienation. Truth is a
function of power/knowledge. Rather, the task is to conduct “a battle about the status of truth
and the economic and political role that it plays.” Foucault’s approach is to challenge the existing
social order of the present by showing how it emerged from the will to dominate through the creation of a fictitious individual
self and its equally manufactured objectification as an entity to be investigated scientifically.
 Framing Key – Frameworks Institute
Rhetoric matters --- the way the plan is framed determines its meaning
Frameworks Institute 5 (“The FrameWorks Perspective: Strategic Frame Analysis,”
http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/strategicanalysis/perspective.shtml)

Strategic frame analysis is an approach to communications research and practice that pays attention to the
public’s deeply held worldviews and widely held assumptions. This approach was developed at the
FrameWorks Institute by a multi-disciplinary team of people capable of studying those assumptions and testing them to determine
their impact on social policies. Recognizing that there is more than one way to tell a story, strategic frame analysis taps into decades
of research on how people think and communicate. The result is an empirically-driven communications process that makes
academic research understandable, interesting, and usable to help people solve social problems. This interdisciplinary work is made
possible by the fact that the concept of framing is found in the literatures of numerous academic disciplines across the social,
behavioral and cognitive sciences. Put simply, framing refers to the construct of a communication — its language,
visuals and messengers — and the way it signals to the listener or observer how to interpret and classify
new information. By framing, we mean how messages are encoded with meaning so that they can be efficiently interpreted in
relationship to existing beliefs or ideas. Frames trigger meaning. The questions we ask, in applying the concept of frames to
the arena of social policy, are as follows: How does the public think about a particular social or political issue? What is the public
discourse on the issue? And how is this discourse influenced by the way media frames that issue? How do these public and private
frames affect public choices? How can an issue be reframed to evoke a different way of thinking, one that illuminates a broader
range of alternative policy choices? This
approach is strategic in that it not only deconstructs the dominant frames
of reference that drive reasoning on public issues, but it also identifies those alternative frames
most likely to stimulate public reconsideration and enumerates their elements (reframing). We use the
term reframe to mean changing “the context of the message exchange” so that different interpretations and probable outcomes
become visible to the public (Dearing & Rogers, 1994: 98). Strategic frame analysis offers policy advocates a way to work
systematically through the challenges that are likely to confront the introduction of new legislation or social policies, to anticipate
attitudinal barriers to support, and to develop research-based strategies to overcome public misunderstanding. What Is
Communications and Why Does It Matter? The domain of communications has not changed markedly since 1948 when Harold
Lasswell formulated his famous equation: who says what to whom through what channel with what effect? But what many social
policy practitioners have overlooked in their quests to formulate effective strategies for social change is that communications merits
their attention because it is an inextricable part of the agenda-setting function in this country. Communications plays a
vital role in determining which issues the public prioritizes for policy resolution, which issues will move
from the private realm to the public, which issues will become pressure points for policymakers, and which issues will win or lose in
the competition for scarce resources. No organization can approach such tasks as issue advocacy, constituency-building, or
promoting best practices without taking into account the critical role that mass media has to play in shaping the way Americans
think about social issues. As William Gamson and his colleagues at the Media Research and Action Project like to say, media is “an
arena of contest in its own right, and part of a larger strategy of social change.” One source of our confusion over communications
comes in not recognizing that each new push for public understanding and acceptance happens against a backdrop of long-term
media coverage, of perceptions formed over time, of scripts we have learned since childhood to help us make sense of our world,
and folk beliefs we use to interpret new information. As we go about making sense of our world, mass media
serves an
important function as the mediator of meaning — telling us what to think about (agenda-setting) and
how to think about it (media effects) by organizing the information in such a way (framing) that it comes to us
fully conflated with directives (cues) about who is responsible for the social problem in the first
place and who gets to fix it (responsibility).
 Micropolitics Good
Micropolitics are a necessary form of resistance and political action
Willner, University of Hamburg, 11 (Roland, “Micro-politics: An Underestimated Field of
Qualitative Research in Political Science”, German Policy Studies, pp. 155-185,
https://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/sowi/politik/methoden/Roland/GPS_3-
2011_Willner.pdf)
2 Micro-analysis and micro-politics¶ Political science and especially policy studies focus on political¶ processes, among other things,
in order to understand specific¶ policies or institutional pathways of decision-making (Blum and¶ Schubert 2011). The majority of
empirical studies concentrate on ¶ macro- as well as meso-phenomena. A micro-analytical perspective¶ does not challenge this focus
but tries to answer macro- and¶ meso-questions using discoveries on the micro-level. The prefix¶ “micro” implies a focus on the
smallest unit of action between¶ specific actors. Hence, the objects of research are primarily actors¶ and their behavior, but not
from a psychological perspective¶ which tries to explain behavior with individual skills or personality¶ traits. Micro-analyses
instead examine daily routines, selfevident¶ behavior patterns, and informal processes (Schöne
2010:¶ 15). As Patzelt emphasizes, micro-analysis explores the construction,¶ reproduction, modification,
and transformation of political¶ policies, processes and structures in concrete situations (Patzelt¶
2000). Micro-analyses facilitate understanding the inner workings¶ of politics and the decision-
making process which leads to¶ specific policies (Nullmeier et al. 2003).¶ In relation to this perspective arises the
idea of micro-politics¶ as a specific research concept2¶ For the discussion of micro-political studies in political¶
science, it is necessary to direct the focus onto political organizations.¶ Political, in this case, means the
alignment to generally¶ binding decisions. In fact, the vast majority of political decisions¶ are made in political organizations such as
parties, parliaments,¶ or ministerial bureaucracies. As a consequence, it is impossible¶ . The research interest is on organizations¶
which are confronted with different actors and their interests,¶ strategies, and power struggles. The underlying definition¶ of
organization is based upon March and Simon (1958, 1976).¶ They see organizations as systems of coordinated acts between¶
individuals and groups which have different preferences, information,¶ interests, and knowledge. Organizations
from this
perspective¶ transform conflict into cooperation. This perspective¶ stresses the role of actors
and analyzes structure through the interactions¶ within an organization (Miebach 2007: 11f).
Micropolitical¶ concepts share the basic premise of this actor- and¶ process-centered
perspective. Organizing is an interactive social¶ process in which actors shape organizations.
Hence, organizations¶ are “socially constructed artifacts” (Letiche 2007: 188). to understand politics
without examining the organizational context¶ in which decisions are made (Bogumil and Schmid 2001:¶
21f; Miebach 2007: 11). With this in mind, it is remarkable that¶ political science has neglected the concrete focus on organizations¶
for so long. As early as 1950 Merriam had written that it is¶ confusing to draw a “sharp and exclusive line between political¶ and
other forms of organizations” (Merriam 1950: 9). With micro-politics¶as a heuristic framework it is possible to
highlight the¶ similarities in the way of thinking about micro-processes and the¶ fruitful transfer
of analytical instruments.¶ Because micro-politics did not evolve out of a systematic research¶ tradition, the development
of a common understanding¶ has so far been difficult (Nullmeier et al. 2003: 14). The origins¶ of micro-politics can be found in
economic organization theory.¶ The term micro-politics was first mentioned by Burns in his 1961¶ article on “Mechanism of
Institutional Change,” which emphasizes¶ the role of actors and their interactions. For Burns the
main¶ feature of micro-
politics is the use of individual power resources¶ to create and change formal structure. Other
early papers, such as¶ those by Mechanic (1962) and Strauss (1963), also deal with individual¶ political behaviour. In German-
language research Bosetzky¶ (1972; 1992) observed in his own working environment¶ that formal hierarchy cannot completely
determine actions. He¶ follows Burns in using the term micro-politics for individual actions¶ which
undermine formal rules. In contrast to other authors,¶ especially in economics, Bosetzky stresses that micro-politics¶ can
be seen as an elementary process which assures adjustment¶ to the environment, the achievement of aims, and the integration¶ of
actors (Bosetzky 1992: 37).

s¶ Political science and especially policy studies focus on political¶ processes, among other things, in order to understand specific¶
policies or institutional pathways of decision-making (Blum and¶ Schubert 2011). The majority of empirical studies concentrate on ¶
macro- as well as meso-phenomena. A micro-analytical perspective¶ does not challenge this focus but tries to answer macro- and¶
meso-questions using discoveries on the micro-level. The prefix¶ “micro” implies a focus on the smallest unit of action between¶
specific actors. Hence, the objects of research are primarily actors¶ and their behavior, but not from a psychological perspective¶
which tries to explain behavior with individual skills or personality¶ traits. Micro-analyses instead examine daily
routines, selfevident¶ behavior patterns, and informal processes (Schöne 2010:¶ 15). As Patzelt
emphasizes, micro-analysis explores the construction,¶ reproduction, modification, and
transformation of political¶ policies, processes and structures in concrete situations (Patzelt¶ 2000).
Micro-analyses facilitate understanding the inner workings¶ of politics and the decision-making
process which leads to¶ specific policies (Nullmeier et al. 2003).¶ In relation to this perspective arises the idea of
micro-politics¶ as a specific research concept2¶ For the discussion of micro-political studies in political¶
science, it is necessary to direct the focus onto political organizations.¶ Political, in this case, means the
alignment to generally¶ binding decisions. In fact, the vast majority of political decisions¶ are made in political organizations such as
parties, parliaments,¶ or ministerial bureaucracies. As a consequence, it is impossible¶ . The research interest is on organizations¶
which are confronted with different actors and their interests,¶ strategies, and power struggles. The underlying definition¶ of
organization is based upon March and Simon (1958, 1976).¶ They see organizations as systems of coordinated acts between¶
individuals and groups which have different preferences, information,¶ interests, and knowledge. Organizations
from this
perspective¶ transform conflict into cooperation. This perspective¶ stresses the role of actors
and analyzes structure through the interactions¶ within an organization (Miebach 2007: 11f).
Micropolitical¶ concepts share the basic premise of this actor- and¶ process-centered
perspective. Organizing is an interactive social¶ process in which actors shape organizations.
Hence, organizations¶ are “socially constructed artifacts” (Letiche 2007: 188). to understand politics
without examining the organizational context¶ in which decisions are made (Bogumil and Schmid 2001:¶
21f; Miebach 2007: 11). With this in mind, it is remarkable that¶ political science has neglected the concrete focus on organizations¶
for so long. As early as 1950 Merriam had written that it is¶ confusing to draw a “sharp and exclusive line between political¶ and
other forms of organizations” (Merriam 1950: 9). With micro-politics¶as a heuristic framework it is possible to
highlight the¶ similarities in the way of thinking about micro-processes and the¶ fruitful transfer
of analytical instruments.¶ Because micro-politics did not evolve out of a systematic research¶ tradition, the development
of a common understanding¶ has so far been difficult (Nullmeier et al. 2003: 14). The origins¶ of micro-politics can be found in
economic organization theory.¶ The term micro-politics was first mentioned by Burns in his 1961¶ article on “Mechanism of
Institutional Change,” which emphasizes¶ the role of actors and their interactions. For Burns the
main¶ feature of micro-
politics is the use of individual power resources¶ to create and change formal structure. Other
early papers, such as¶ those by Mechanic (1962) and Strauss (1963), also deal with individual¶ political behaviour. In German-
language research Bosetzky¶ (1972; 1992) observed in his own working environment¶ that formal hierarchy cannot completely
determine actions. He¶ follows Burns in using the term micro-politicsfor individual actions¶ which
undermine formal rules. In contrast to other authors,¶ especially in economics, Bosetzky stresses that micro-politics¶ can
be seen as an elementary process which assures adjustment¶ to the environment, the achievement of aims, and the integration¶ of
actors (Bosetzky 1992: 37).

Bottom up v. Top down

El Kilombo Intergalactico 7 (Collective in durham NC that interviewed Subcomandante
Insurgente Marcos, Beyond Resistance: Everything p. 9-10)

But how might this alternative take shape? In order to begin to address this question, the
Zapatistas implore us to relieve ourselves of the positions of “observers” who insist on their own
neutrality and distance; this position may be adequate for the microscope-wielding academic of the “precision-guided” T.V.
audience of the latest bombings over Baghdad, but they are completely insufficient for those who are seeking change. The
Zapatistas insist we throw away our microscopes and our televisions, and instead they demand that we
equip our “ships” with an “inverted periscope.”According to what the Zapatistas have stated, one can never
ascertain a belief in or vision of the future by looking at a situation from the position of “neutrality” provided for
you by the existing relations of power. These methods will only allow you to see what already is,
what the balance of the relations of forces are in your field of inquiry. In other words, such methods allow
you to see that field only from the perspective of those who rule at any given moment. In contrast, if one learns
to harness the power of the periscope not by honing in on what is happening “above” in the
halls of the self-important, but by placing it deep below the earth, below even the very bottom of
society, one finds that there are struggles and memories of struggles that allow us to identify
not “what is” but more importantly “what will be.” By harnessing the transformative capacity of social movement, as well
as the memories of past struggles that drive it, the Zapatistas are able to identify the future and act on it today. It is a paradoxical
temporal insight that was perhaps best summarized by “El Clandestino” himself, Manu Chao, when he proclaimed that, “the future
happened a long time ago!” Given this insight afforded by
adopting the methodology of the inverted periscope,
we are able to shatter the mirror of power, to show that power does not belong to those who
rule. Instead, we see that there are two completely different and opposed forms of power in any society:
that which emerges from above and is exercised over people (Power with a capital “P”), and that
which is born below and is able to act with and through people (power with a lower case “p”).
One is set on maintaining that which is (Power), while the other is premised on transformation
(power). These are not only not the same thing; they are (literally) worlds apart. According to
the Zapatistas, once we have broken the mirror of Power by identifying an alternative source of
social organization, we can then see it for what it is—a purely negative capacity to isolate us and
make us believe that we are powerless. But once we have broken that mirror spell, we can also see that power does
not come from above, from those “in Power,” and therefore that it is possible to exercise power without taking it—that is, without
simply changing places with those who rule. In this regard, it is important to quote in its entirety of the famous Zapatista motto that
has been circulated in abbreviated form among movements throughout the world: “What we seek, what we need and want is for all
those people without a party or an organization to make agreements about what they don’t want and what they do want and
organize themselves in order to achieve it (preferably through civil and peaceful means), not to take power, but to exercise it.” Only
now can we understand the full significance of this statement’s challenge.

Bottom up approaches are good

Kulynych 97 ( Assistant Professor of Political Science at Winthrop University, in 1997 [Jessica,
“Performing Politics,” Winter, Vol. 30, No. 2, Page 336)
A performative concept of participation as resistance explodes the distinction between public and private,
between the political and the apolitical. As Foucault explains, what was formerly considered apolitical, or
social rather than political, is revealed as the foundation of technologies of state control. Contests over
identity and everyday social life are not merely additions to the realm of the political, but actually
create the very character of those things traditionally considered political. The state itself is
“superstructural in relation to a whole series of power networks that invest the body, sexuality, the
family, kinship, knowledge, technology and so forth. Thus it is contestations at the micro-level, over
the intricacies of everyday life, that provide the raw material for global domination, and the key to
disrupting global strategies of domination. Therefore, the location of political participation
extends way beyond the formal apparatus of government, or the formal organization of the
workplace, to the intimacy of daily actions and iterations.
 Radical Thought Good
Radical thought and movement necessary for any form of social reform,
empirics prove.
Kutner 15 (Robert Kutner, Co-Founder/Editor of “The American Prospect”, professor at
Brandeis University, The Dance of Liberals and Radicals, http://prospect.org/article/dance-
liberals-and-radicals, March 17 2015)

History shows that liberals need radicals. We need radicals because drastic change against entrenched
evil and concentrated power requires personal bravery to the point of obsession. It requires a radical
sensibility to look beyond today's limits and imagine what seems sheer impossibility within the
current social order. And sometimes it's necessary to break the law to redeem the Constitution.
No great social change in America has occurred without radicals, beginning with the struggle to end slavery.
Causes that now seem mainstream began with radical, impolite and sometimes civil disobedient protest. Martin Luther King,
Jr. was the best sort of radical. His tactics broke what was then the law—flawed, biased, oppressive law. But he was
above all affirmative and idealistic. He kept in his mind the kind of society America needed to be, and could be. He appealed to the
best in America, bore personal witness and shamed his racist oppressors.
MLK braved violence and eventually his
own assassination, yet his radicalism was always constructive. Birth control began as a radical
movement for which some women went to jail and, astonishingly, contraception is still
considered radical in some circles today. The demonstrations against the Vietnam War were at
first the work of radical protesters. Only later did they become more mannered and mainstream. Some women today
may take for granted rights that never would have been achieved without the radicalism of early feminism and then second-wave
feminism. Same with LGBT rights, same with disability rights.
Sometimes, outrageous tactics are needed to barge
into the chamber of civil debate. Even supposedly mainstream principles such as pure food and drugs, or safe working
conditions, began with radical protest. The fact that these principles are being relentlessly undermined by corporate elites suggests
the need for continued vigilance and radical protest once again. The labor movement has a long history of necessarily
confrontational organizing. And radicals, famously, make the best organizers. Unions were largely illegal until the 1930s, so you
could not organize one without breaking the law. (Today, it is corporations that break the law to resist unions).

By adopting a form of radical thought, the aff solves for for real change.
Fitzgerald 14 (Andy Fitzgerald, Blogger at the New Public Sphere,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/20/we-need-radicals-for-social-change, January)

America has a propensity for dismissing people and ideas with labels. Terms like "socialist" and
"communist" are frequently hurled at those who dare to promote substantial programs that
address poverty, or suggest that government provide what many other "developed nations" deem fundamental
services – like universal healthcare. Anyone who openly identifies with such positions is assumed to
have nothing legitimate to contribute to public debate, irrespective of the plausibility, merit,
and true ideology informing their arguments. It's a similar scenario with "radical" – a word often
used to evoke associations with extremism, instability and an absolutist approach to politics. But
the popular usage belies the important role many radicals have played in promoting democracy
and justice throughout history, not to mention the continued role radical ideas and activism
have to play in unfinished projects. A recent op-ed in the Chicago Tribune illustrates the common abuse of the term in
the media. The columnist, Dennis Byrne, rightly criticizes a tendency in America to privilege individual liberty over community
solidarity, but he then attempts a "balanced" perspective by presenting examples of "radicalism" on both sides of the aisle. On
abortion, Byrne writes: "Radical individuals on the right and the left demand the supremacy of a woman's body. … For [those who
are pro-choice], a woman's rights are nearly absolute." Squaring the false equivalence circle he adds: "Similar absolutist views are
held on the right by those who interpret the Constitution's Second Amendment to mean that government regulation of firearms
should be extraordinarily limited, if not nonexistent." But the mischaracterization of radicals extends beyond mainstream media and
politics. While discussing feminist activism with several friends, one retorted, "there are radicals in every group". I challenged the
presumption that radicals were inherently a liability to social movements, given the positive history of radicalism in America.
Indeed, it was "radicals" who were responsible for sowing the seeds of two of America's most
important social movements: worker rights and racial justice. The labor movement, in its
nascent days, was a radical movement. A confrontational approach to management was necessary to win many of the
concessions now sorely taken for granted: the minimum wage, the eight-hour day, even the very possibility of forming a union.
Prior to the American civil war, "radical abolitionists" occupied the fringe with the seemingly
absurd and absolutist demand that people should not be property. Perhaps its most infamous member,
John Brown, attempted to lead an armed slave uprising in the south. His failed raid on an armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia and
subsequent execution for treason are portrayed historically as the act of a madman – an idealistic extremist with delusions of
grandeur, despite the fact that it inspired greater opposition to slavery – a portrait sociologist James Loewen properly skewers in his
book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.

We must radically change the educational sphere, our performance is an act of

liberation, visibility, and empowerment, creating a public space for dissent and
challenges
Mohanty 3 (Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as a
Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton
College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without
Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 205-207)
In the intellectual, political and historical context I have sketched thus far, decolonization as a method of teaching and learning is crucial in envisioning democratic education. My own political project involves

Pedagogy in
trying to connect educational discourse to questions of social justice and the creation of citizens who are able to conceive of a democracy which is not the same as "the free market."

this context needs to be revolutionary to combat business as usual in educational institutions.

After all, the politics of commodification allows the cooptation of most dissenting voices in this age of

multiculturalism. Cultures of dissent are hard to create. Revolutionary pedagogy needs to lead to a consciousness of

injustice, self-reflection on the routines and habits of education in the creation of an

"educated citizen," and action to transform one's social space in a collective setting. In other words, the
practice of decolonization as defined above. I turn now to a narrative in the tradition of Toni Cade Bambara, a story that "keeps me alive - a story which saves our lives." The story is about a performance by a
student at Hamilton College. Yance Ford, an African American studio art major and feminist activist, based her performance, called "This Invisible World," on her three-plus years as a student at the college." She
built an iron cage that enclosed her snugly, suspended it ten feet off the ground in the lobby of the social sciences building, She shaved her head and - barefoot and without a watch, wearing a sheet that she had
cut up-spent five hours in the cage in total silence. The performance required unimaginable physical and psychic endurance, and it dramatically transformed a physical space that is usually a corridor between
offices and classrooms. It had an enormous impact on everyone walking through - no mundane response was possible. Nor was business as usual possible. It disrupted educational routines - many faculty
(including me) sent their classes to the performance and later attempted discussions that proved profoundly unsettling. For the first time in my experience at Hamilton, students, faculty, and staff were faced with
a performance that could not be "consumed~ or assimilated as part of the "normal" educational process. We were faced with the knowledge that it was impossible to "know" what led to such a performance, and
that the knowledge we had, of black women's history of objectification, of slavery, invisibility, and soon, was a radically inadequate measure of the intent or courage and risk it took for Vance to perform "This
Invisible World. ~ In talking at length with Vance, other students, and colleagues, and thinking through the effects of this performance on the campus, I have realized that this is potentially a very effective story.
Here is how Vance, writing in October 1993, described her project: What is it? I guess or rather I know that it is about survival. About trauma, about loss, about suffering and pain, and about being lost within all of
those things. About trying to find the way back to yourself The way back to your sanity, a way to get away from those things which have driven you beyond a point of recognition. Past the point where you no
longer recognize or even want to recognize yourself or your past or the possibility that your present may also be your future. That is what my project is about. I call it refuge but I really think I mean rescue or even
better, survival, escape, saved. My work to me is about all the things that push you to the edge. Its about not belonging, not liking yourself, not loving yourself, not feeling loved or safe or accepted or tolerated or
respected or valued or useful or important or comfortable or safe or part of a larger community. It's about how all these things cause us TO hate ourselves into corners and boxes and addictions and traps and
hurtful relationships and cages. It's about how people can see you and look right through you. Most of the time nor knowing you are there. It is about fighting the battle of your life, for your life. And this place that
I call refuge is the only place where I am sacred. It is the source of my strength, my fortitude, my resilience, my ability to be for myself what no one else will ever be for me. This is most directly Vance's response
and meditation on her three years at a liberal arts college-on her education. In extensive conversations with her, two aspects of this project became clearer to me: her consciousness of being colonized at the

the performance as an act of liberation, of active

college, expressed through the act of being caged like “animals in a science experiment, ~ and

decolonization of the self, of visibility and empowerment. Vance found a way to tell another
story, to speak through a silence that screamed for engagement. However, in doing so, she also created a
public space for the collective narratives of marginalized peoples, especially other women of color. Educational
practices became the object of public critique as the hegemonic narrative of a liberal arts
education, and its markers of success came under collective scrutiny. This was then a
profoundly unsettling and radically decolonizing educational act. This story illustrates the
difference between thinking about social justice and radical transformation in our frames of
analysis and understanding in relation to race, gender, class, and sexuality versus a
multiculturalist consumption and assimilation into a supposedly “democratic" frame of
education as usual. It suggests the need to organize to create collective spaces for dissent and
challenges to consolidation of white heterosexual masculinity in academy.

Opening up public space for epistemological standpoints is fundamental to the

exposure of power relations – we must make the politics of everyday
experience important
Mohanty 3 (Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as a
Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton
College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without
Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 215-216)

One mode of
If my argument in this essay is convincing, it suggests why we need to take on questions of race and gender as they are being managed and commodified in the liberal U.S. academy.

doing this is actively creating public cultures of dissent where these issues can be debated in
terms of our pedagogics and institutional practices.20 Creating such cultures in the liberal
academy is a challenge in itself, because liberalism allows and even welcomes "plural”~ or
even "alternative" perspectives. However, a public culture of dissent entails creating spaces
for epistemological standpoints that are grounded in the interests of people and that
recognize the materiality of conflict, of privilege, and of domination. Thus creating such
cultures is fundamentally about making the axes of power transparent in the context of
academic, disciplinary, and institutional structures as well as in the interpersonal relationships
(rather than individual relations) in the academy. It is about taking the politics of everyday life seriously as

teachers, students, administrators, and members of hegemonic academic cultures. Culture itself is thus
redefined to incorporate individual and collective memories, dreams, and history that are contested and transformed through the political

Oppression is not a binary force – only by examining our relationship to others

can we participate in liberatory political projects
Henze 2k (Brent, Professor of English, “Who Says Who Says?” Reclaiming Identity: Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the
Predicament of Postmodernism, Ed. Paula Moya & Michael Hames-Garcia)

our way of thinking about oppression must be

One outcome of these approaches to participating in the politics of the oppressed is that

modified. Rather than treat oppression as a binary force either oppressive or unoppressive to
ourselves (and, if unoppressive, also unrelated to ourselves), we must see it as complex and relational, linking us to others
and at the same time making us responsible for how we participate in the matrices of power
that sustain oppression. The result of seeing oppression in this way is to enable more effective
participation in these systems; by broadening our ways of knowing about the systems within
which we operate, we at least potentially increase our ability to shape these systems in the
long term. It enables us to participate in liberatory political projects more effectively, working
in concert with rather than against or in place of those whose experiences of oppression both
necessitate and ground this work.