FW

Newman 10 (Saul, Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths, U of London, Theory & Event Volume 13, Issue 2)
There are two aspects that I would like to address here. Firstly, the notion of demand: making certain demands on the state – say for
higher wages, equal rights for excluded groups, to not go to war, or an
end to draconian policing – is one of the basic
strategies of social movements and radical groups. Making such demands does not necessarily mean working
within the state or reaffirming its legitimacy. On the contrary, demands are made from a position outside the
political order, and they often exceed the question of the implementation of this or that specific
measure. They implicitly call into question the legitimacy and even the sovereignty of the state by highlighting fundamental
inconsistencies between, for instance, a formal constitutional order which guarantees certain rights and equalities, and state
practices which in reality violate and deny them.
Procedural Fairness
 *2NC Fairness Overview
Fairness matters – absent constraints debaters have to sacrifice other parts of their
lives to engage
Harris 13 — Scott Harris, Associate Specialist and Debate Coach at the University of Kansas, holds a Ph.D. in Communication
from Northwestern University, 2013 (“This Ballot,” Ballot from the Final Round of the 2013 National Debate Tournament,
Posted on the Global Debate blog, April 6th, Available Online at http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/scott-harris-
writes-long-ballot-for-ndt.html, Accessed 08-31-2013)

I understand that there has been some criticism of Northwestern’s strategy in this debate round. This criticism is premised on
the idea that they ran framework instead of engaging Emporia’s argument about home and the Wiz. I think this criticism is
unfair. Northwestern’s framework argument did engage Emporia’s argument. Emporia said that you should vote for the team
that performatively and methodologically made debate a home. Northwestern’s argument directly clashed with that
contention. My problem in this debate was with aspects of the execution of the argument rather than with the strategy itself. It
has always made me angry in debates when people have treated topicality as if it were a less important argument than other
arguments in debate. Topicality is a real argument. It is a researched strategy. It is an argument that
challenges many affirmatives. The fact that other arguments could be run in a debate or are run in a
debate does not make topicality somehow a less important argument. In reality, for many of you that
go on to law school you will spend much of your life running topicality arguments because you will find
that words in the law matter. The rest of us will experience the ways that word choices matter in
contracts, in leases, in writing laws and in many aspects of our lives. Kansas ran an affirmative a few years ago
about how the location of a comma in a law led a couple of districts to misinterpret the law into allowing individuals to be
incarcerated in jail for two days without having any formal charges filed against them. For those individuals the location of the
comma in the law had major consequences. Debates about words are not insignificant. Debates about what
kinds of arguments we should or should not be making in debates are not insignificant either. The limits
debate is an argument that has real pragmatic consequences. I found myself earlier this year judging Harvard’s
eco-pedagogy aff and thought to myself—I could stay up tonight and put a strategy together on eco-pedagogy, but then I
thought to myself—why should I have to? Yes, I could put together a strategy against any random argument somebody makes
employing an energy metaphor but the reality is there are only so many nights to stay up all night researching. I would like to
actually spend time playing catch with my children occasionally or maybe even read a book or go to a movie or spend some
time with my wife. A world where there are an infinite number of affirmatives is a world where the demand
to have a specific strategy and not run framework is a world that says this community doesn’t care
whether its participants have a life or do well in school or spend time with their families. I know there is a
new call abounding for interpreting this NDT as a mandate for broader more diverse topics. The reality is that will create more
work to prepare for the teams that choose to debate the topic but will have little to no effect on the teams that refuse to
debate the topic. Broader topics that do not require positive government action or are bidirectional will not make teams that
won’t debate the topic choose to debate the topic. I think that is a con job. I am not opposed to broader topics necessarily. I
tend to like the way high school topics are written more than the way college topics are written. I just think people who
take the meaning of the outcome of this NDT as proof that we need to make it so people get to talk about
anything they want to talk about without having to debate against topicality or framework arguments
are interested in constructing a world that might make debate an unending nightmare and not a very
good home in which to live. Limits, to me, are a real impact because I feel their impact in my everyday
existence.
 Impact: Creativity
Absolute affirmative flexibility leaves the negative without meaningful ground to
advance well-developed counter-arguments. Establishing boundaries is important
because they spur imagination and innovation, improving the quality of argument
Thomas and Brown 11 — Douglas Thomas, Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the
University of Southern California, founding member of the Critical and Cultural Studies division of the National Communication
Association, holds a Ph. D. in Communication from the University of Minnesota, and John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar and
Adviser to the Provost at the University of Southern California, independent cochairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge,
former Chief Scientist and Director of the Palo Alto Research Center at Xerox, holds a Ph.D. in Computer and Communication
Sciences from the University of Michigan, 2011 (“A Tale of Two Cultures,” A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the
Imagination for a World of Constant Change, Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, ISBN 1456458884, p.
35)

Learning Environments

We believe, however, that learning should be viewed in terms of an environment—combined with the rich
resources provided by the digital information network—where the context in which learning happens, the
boundaries that define it, and the students, teachers, and information within it all coexist and shape
each other in a mutually reinforcing way. Here, boundaries serve not only as constraints but also,
oftentimes, as catalysts for innovation. Encountering boundaries spurs the imagination to become more
active in figuring out novel situations within the constraints of the situation or context. Environments
with well-defined and carefully constructed boundaries are not usually thought of as standardized, nor are they
tested and measured. Rather, they can be described as a set of pressures that nudge and guide change. They
are substrates for evolution, and they move at varying rates of speed.

limits are vital to creativity and innovation

Intrator 10
(David Intrator (President of The Creative Organization) October 21, 2010 “Thinking Inside the Box,”
http://www.trainingmag.com/article/thinking-inside-box)

One of the most pernicious myths about creativity, one that seriously inhibits creative thinking and innovation, is the belief
that one needs to “think outside the box.” As someone who has worked for decades as a professional creative, nothing could
be further from the truth. This a is view shared by the vast majority of creatives, expressed famously by the modernist designer
Charles Eames when he wrote, “Design depends largely upon constraints.” The myth of thinking outside the box stems from a
fundamental misconception of what creativity is, and what it’s not. In the popular imagination, creativity is something weird
and wacky. The creative process is magical, or divinely inspired. But, in fact, creativity is not about divine inspiration or magic.
It’s about problem-solving, and by definition a problem is a constraint, a limit, a box. One of the best illustrations of this
is the work of photographers. They create by excluding the great mass what’s before them, choosing a
small frame in which to work. Within that tiny frame, literally a box, they uncover relationships and
establish priorities. What makes creative problem-solving uniquely challenging is that you, as the creator, are the one
defining the problem. You’re the one choosing the frame. And you alone determine what’s an effective solution.
This can be quite demanding, both intellectually and emotionally. Intellectually, you are required to establish limits, set
priorities, and cull patterns and relationships from a great deal of material, much of it fragmentary. More often than not, this
is the material you generated during brainstorming sessions. At the end of these sessions, you’re usually left with a big mess of
ideas, half-ideas, vague notions, and the like. Now, chances are you’ve had a great time making your mess. You might have
gone off-site, enjoyed a “brainstorming camp,” played a number of warm-up games. You feel artistic and empowered. But to be
truly creative, you have to clean up your mess, organizing those fragments into something real, something useful, something
that actually works. That’s the hard part. It takes a lot of energy, time, and willpower to make sense of the mess you’ve just
generated. It also can be emotionally difficult. You’ll need to throw out many ideas you originally thought were great, ideas
you’ve become attached to, because they simply don’t fit into the rules you’re creating as you build your box.
 Impact - Death of Debate
An unlimited topic would cause many to leave the activity, running the risk of the death of policy
debate.
Rowland 84
(Robert C., Debate Coach – Baylor University, “Topic Selection in Debate”, American Forensics in Perspective, Ed. Parson, p. 53-54)

The first major problem identified by the work group as relating to topic selection is the decline in participation in the National Debate
Tournament (NDT) policy debate. As Boman notes: There is a growing dissatisfaction with academic debate that utilizes a policy proposition.
Programs which are oriented toward debating the national policy debate proposition, so-called “NDT” programs, are diminishing in scope and
size.4 This decline in policy debate is tied, many in the work group believe, to excessively broad topics. The most obvious
characteristic of some recent policy debate topics is extreme breath. A resolution calling for regulation of land use literally and figuratively
covers a lot of ground. Naitonal debate topics have not always been so broad. Before the late 1960s the topic often specified a particular policy
change.5 The move from narrow to broad topics has had, according to some, the effect of limiting the number of
students who participate in policy debate. First, the breadth of the topics has all but destroyed novice
debate. Paul Gaske argues that because the stock issues of policy debate are clearly defined, it is superior to value debate as a means of
introducing students to the debate process.6 Despite this advantage of policy debate, Gaske belives that NDT debate is not the best vehicle for
teaching beginners. The problem is that broad policy topics
terrify novice debaters, especially those who lack high school debate
experience. They are unable to cope with the breadth of the topic and experience “negophobia,”7 the fear of
debating negative. As a consequence, the educational advantages associated with teaching novices through policy debate are lost: “Yet
all of these benefits fly out the window as rookies in their formative stage quickly experience humiliation at being caugh without evidence or
substantive awareness of the issues that confront them at a tournament.”8 The ultimate result is that fewer novices participate in NDT, thus
lessening the educational value of the activity and limiting the number of debaters or eventually participate in more advanced divisions of
policy debate. In addition to noting the effect on novices, participants argued that broad
topics also discourage experienced
debaters from continued participation in policy debate. Here, the claim is that it takes so much times and effort to
be competitive on a broad topic that students who are concerned with doing more than just debate are forced out of
the activity.9 Gaske notes, that “broad topics discourage participation because of insufficient time to do requisite research.”10 The final
effect may be that entire programs either cease functioning or shift to value debate as a way to avoid unreasonable
research burdens. Boman supports this point: “It is this expanding necessity of evidence, and thereby research, which has created a
competitive imbalance between institutions that participate in academic debate.”11 In this view, it is the competitive imbalance
resulting from the use of broad topics that has led some small schools to cancel their programs.
EPS SKEP
 Impact - Dialogue
Ditching the resolution makes research impossible and destroys meaningful dialogue –
no portable skills
Hanghoj 8
(http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pd
f Thorkild Since this PhD project began in 2004, the present author has been affiliated with DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Education and
Advanced Media Materials), which is located at the Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Southern Denmark.
Research visits have taken place at the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), the Institute of Education at the
University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the School of Education, University of Aarhus, where I
currently work as an assistant Professor)

Debate games are often based on pre-designed scenarios that include descriptions of issues to be debated,
educational goals, game goals, roles, rules, time frames etc. In this way, debate games differ from textbooks and
everyday classroom instruction as debate scenarios allow teachers and students to actively imagine, interact
and communicate within a domain-specific game space. However, instead of mystifying debate games as a “magic
circle” (Huizinga, 1950), I will try to overcome the epistemological dichotomy between “gaming” and “teaching” that tends to
dominate discussions of educational games. In short, educational gaming is a form of teaching. As mentioned,
education and games represent two different semiotic domains that both embody the three faces of knowledge: assertions,
modes of representation and social forms of organisation (Gee, 2003; Barth, 2002; cf. chapter 2). In order to understand the
interplay between these different domains and their interrelated knowledge forms, I will draw attention to a central
assumption in Bakhtin’s dialogical philosophy. According to Bakhtin, all forms of communication and culture are subject
to centripetal and centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981). A centripetal force is the drive to impose one version of
the truth, while a centrifugal force involves a range of possible truths and interpretations. This means that
any form of expression involves a duality of centripetal and centrifugal forces: “Every concrete utterance of a speaking subject
serves as a point where centrifugal as well as centripetal forces are brought to bear” (Bakhtin, 1981: 272). If we take teaching as
an example, it is always affected by centripetal and centrifugal forces in the on-going negotiation of “truths” between teachers
and students. In the words of Bakhtin: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born
between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction” (Bakhtin, 1984a: 110). Similarly, the
dialogical space of debate games also embodies centrifugal and centripetal forces. Thus, the election
scenario of The Power Game involves centripetal elements that are mainly determined by the rules and
outcomes of the game, i.e. the election is based on a limited time frame and a fixed voting procedure. Similarly, the open-
ended goals, roles and resources represent centrifugal elements and create virtually endless possibilities for
researching, preparing, presenting, debating and evaluating a variety of key political issues. Consequently, the actual process
of enacting a game scenario involves a complex negotiation between these centrifugal/centripetal forces that are inextricably
linked with the teachers and students’ game activities. In this way, the enactment of The Power Game is a form of teaching that
combines different pedagogical practices (i.e. group work, web quests, student presentations) and learning resources (i.e.
websites, handouts, spoken language) within the interpretive frame of the election scenario. Obviously, tensions may arise if
there is too much divergence between educational goals and game goals. This means that game facilitation requires a
balance between focusing too narrowly on the rules or “facts” of a game (centripetal orientation) and a focusing
too broadly on the contingent possibilities and interpretations of the game scenario (centrifugal orientation ). For
Bakhtin, the duality of centripetal/centrifugal forces often manifests itself as a dynamic between “monological”
and “dialogical” forms of discourse. Bakhtin illustrates this point with the monological discourse of the
Socrates/Plato dialogues in which the teacher never learns anything new from the students , despite Socrates’
ideological claims to the contrary (Bakhtin, 1984a). Thus, discourse becomes monologised when “someone who
knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error”, where “a thought is either
affirmed or repudiated” by the authority of the teacher (Bakhtin, 1984a: 81). In contrast to this, dialogical pedagogy
fosters inclusive learning environments that are able to expand upon students’ existing knowledge and collaborative
construction of “truths” (Dysthe, 1996). At this point, I should clarify that Bakhtin’s term “dialogic” is both a descriptive
term (all utterances are per definition dialogic as they address other utterances as parts of a chain of communication)
and a normative term as dialogue is an ideal to be worked for against the forces of “monologism” (Lillis, 2003:
197-8). In this project, I am mainly interested in describing the dialogical space of debate games. At the same time, I agree with
Wegerif that “one of the goals of education, perhaps the most important goal, should be dialogue as an end in
itself” (Wegerif, 2006: 61).

Dialogue comes first – it magnifies the benefits of any discussion

Morson 4
(http://www.flt.uae.ac.ma/elhirech/baktine/0521831059.pdf#page=331, Northwestern Professor, Prof. Morson's work ranges
over a variety of areas: literary theory (especially narrative); the history of ideas, both Russian and European; a variety of
literary genres (especially satire, utopia, and the novel); and his favorite writers -- Chekhov, Gogol, and, above all, Dostoevsky
and Tolstoy. He is especially interested in the relation of literature to philosophy)

A belief in truly dialogic ideological becoming would lead to schools that were quite different. In such schools,
the mind would be populated with a complexity of voices and perspectives it had not known, and the student would learn to
think with those voices, to test ideas and experiences against them, and to shape convictions that are innerly persuasive in
response. This very process would be central. Students would sense that whatever word they believed to be innerly
persuasive was only tentatively so: the process of dialogue continues.We must keep the conversation going, and formal
education only initiates the process. The innerly persuasive discourse would not be final, but would be, like experience itself,
ever incomplete and growing. As Bakhtin observes of the innerly persuasive word: Its creativity and productiveness consist
precisely in the fact that such a word awakens new and independent words, that it organizes masses of our words from within,
and does not remain in an isolated and static condition. It is not so much interpreted by us as it is further, that is, freely,
developed, applied to new material, new conditions; it enters into interanimating relationships with new contexts. . . . The
semantic structure of an innerly persuasive discourse is not finite, it is open; in each of the new contexts that dialogize it, this
discourse is able to reveal ever newer ways to mean. (DI, 345–6) We not only learn, we also learn to learn, and we
learn to learn best when we engage in a dialogue with others and ourselves. We appropriate the world of difference,
and ourselves develop new potentials. Those potentials allow us to appropriate yet more voices. Becoming becomes
endless becoming. We talk, we listen, and we achieve an open-ended wisdom. Difference becomes an opportunity (see
Freedman and Ball, this volume). Our world manifests the spirit that Bakhtin attributed to Dostoevsky: “nothing conclusive has
yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open
and free, everything is in the future and will always be in the future.”3 Such a world becomes our world within, its dialogue lives
within us, and we develop the potentials of our ever-learning selves. Letmedraw some inconclusive conclusions,
which may provoke dialogue. Section I of this volume, “Ideologies in Dialogue: Theoretical Considerations” and Bakhtin’s
thought in general suggest that we learn best when we are actually learning to learn. We engage in dialogue with
ourselves and others, and the most important thing is the value of the open-ended process itself. Section II,
“Voiced, Double Voiced, and Multivoiced Discourses in Our Schools” suggests that a belief in truly dialogic ideological becoming
would lead to schools that were quite different. In such schools, the mind would be populated with a complexity of voices and
perspectives it had not known, and the student would learn to think with those voices, to test ideas and experiences against
them, and to shape convictions that are innerly persuasive in response. Teachers would not be trying to get students to hold
the right opinions but to sense the world from perspectives they would not have encountered or dismissed out of hand.
Students would develop the habit of getting inside the perspectives of other groups and other people.
Literature in particular is especially good at fostering such dialogic habits. Section III, “Heteroglossia in a Changing World” may
invite us to learn that dialogue involves really listening to others, hearing them not as our perspective would categorize what
they say, but as they themselves would categorize what they say, and only then to bring our own perspective to bear. We talk,
we listen, and we achieve an open-ended wisdom. The chapters in this volume seem to suggest that we view learning as a
perpetual process. That was perhaps Bakhtin’s favorite idea: that to appreciate life, or dialogue, we must see value not
only in achieving this or that result, but also in recognizing that honest and open striving in a world of
uncertainty and difference is itself the most important thing. What we must do is keep the conversation
going.
 ORG DES
Organizations control every aspect of our lives – the aff’s strategy can’t work because
it cedes control to organizations currently in power
Scott and Davis 2007 – prof at Stanford AND prof at Davis (W. Richard and Gerald F., “Organizations and Organizing:
Rational, Natural, and Open System Perspectives,” pg. 1-11)

Even though organizations are now ubiquitous, their development has been sufficiently gradual and
uncontroversial so they have emerged during the past few centuries almost unnoticed. The spread of
public bureaucracies into every arena and the displacement of the family business by the corporation
"constitutes a revolution" in social structure, but one little remarked until recently. Never much agitated, never even
much resisted, a revolution for which no flags were raised, it transformed our lives during those very decades in which,
unmindful of what was happening. Americans and Europeans debated instead such issues as socialism, populism, free silver,
clericalism, chartism, and colonialism. It now stands as a monument to discrepancy between what
men[people] think they are designing and the world they are in fact building. (Lindblom. 1977: 95)
Organizations in the form that we know them emerged during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries in Europe and America,
during the period of political and economic, expansion occasioned by the Enlightenment period. Not only did organizations
rapidly increase in number and range of applications, but they also underwent a transformation of structure as formerly
"communal" forms based on the bonds of kinship and personal ties gave way to "associative" forms based on contractual
arrangements among individuals having no ties other than a willingness to pursue shared interests or ends (Starr, 1982: 148).
Source of Social Ills? The increasing prevalence of organizations in every arena of social life is one indicator
of their importance. Another, rather different index of their significance is the increasing frequency with which
organizations are singled out as the source of many of the ills besetting contemporary society. Thus, writing in
1956, C. Wright Mills pointed with alarm to the emergence of a "power elite" whose members occupied
the top positions in three overlapping organizational hierarchies: the state bureaucracy, the military, and
the larger corporations. At about the same time, Ralf Dahrendorf (1959 trans.) in Germany was engaged in revising and
updating Marxist theory by insisting that the basis of the class structure was no longer the ownership of the means of
production, but the occupancy of positions that allowed the wielding of organizational authority. Such views, which remain
controversial, focus on the effects of organizations on societal stratification systems, taking account of the changing bases of
power and prestige occasioned by the growth in number and size of organizations. A related criticism concerns the
seemingly inexorable growth in the power of public-sector organizations. The great German sociologists Max
Weber (1968 trans.) and Rolbert Michels (1949 trans.) were among the first to insist that a central political issue
confronting all modern societies was the enormous influence exercised by the (nonelected) public
officials—the bureaucracy—over the ostensible political leaders. An administrative staff presumably designed to
assist leaders in their governance functions too often becomes an independent branch with its own distinctive interests
(Skocpol, 1985). Other criticisms point to the negative consequences of the growth of organizations in virtually every area of
social existence. Borrowing from and enlarging on a theme pervading the thought of Weber, these critics decry the
rationalization of modern life—in Weber's phrase, the "disenchantment of the world" (194(i trans.: 51). Organizations are
viewed as the primary vehicle by which, systematically, the areas of our lives arc rationalized—planned,
articulated, scientized, made more efficient and orderly, and managed by "experts." (See, for example. Mannheim. 1950 trans.;
Ellul, 1964 trans.: Goodman. 1968; Galbraith. 1967; Ritzer. 1993; Schlosscr, 2001).
 TVA
T version of the AFF is MORE subversive – the law is flawed in its limitations to include
everything, BUT outright rejection is net-worse --- using their theory to inform praxis
creates better laws which leads to more effective social change
Munro 1 Vanessa E., Lecturer, Department of Law, University of Reading, “Legal Feminism and Foucault – A Critique of the
Expulsion of Law,” JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY 28(4): pp. 546–67

Campaigns for legal reform have represented the most effective strategics of feminist politics to date.
Smart is undoubtedly correct in her assertion that, as legal power becomes increasingly dispersed, we cannot rely
exclusively upon these campaigns in order to secure the elimination of gender bias. However, her
assumption that legal reform has no fruitful role to play in the contemporary project of challenging both juridical
and disciplinary power is misguided. Smart’s claim that ‘in accepting law’s terms in order to challenge the law,
feminism always concedes too much’60 fails to accord sufficient priority to her own descriptive
recognition of the increasingly diverse, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary nature of legal power. What’s
more it denies a middle ground between the expulsion of legal reform and the insertion of legal
imperialism through its failure to recognize the context-specific nature of the relationship between legal
power and the forms of power that transverse and populate other linguistic and institutional fields. The
re-evaluated Foucautian approach to legal theory gives strong support to the claim, central to feminist analysis to date, that
the law is not a discrete area of social activity but, rather, has implications well beyond the remit of what
are normally considered ‘legal’ concerns. The dispersal of legal power throughout the modern power
nexus is central to the emerging reinterpretation of the Foucaultian perception of modem power. Law
exerts an influence in a variety of contexts, such as the family and the private sphere, despite the alleged
profession of juridical discourse to the contrary. This contention has been central to feminist theorizing for some time and is
afforded greater theoretical grounding by the advent of the reinterpretation of the Foucaultian thesis. Regardless of the
specifics of their interpretation of Foucault, all the above theorists accept his fundamental premise that
modernity is characterized by an increasingly insidious operation of power upon the individual. Taking on
board the merits of the counter-claim established by Ewald and Tadros, what’s more, a consensus emerges that this insidious
operation extends to legal power. While the approach exemplified by Carol Smart has advocated an, at best, agnostic feminist
stance on the ability of legal reform to deconstruct law’s insidious operation, it remains the case that the most appropriate
means of challenge and resistance are themselves subversive and infiltrating. After all, as Foucault himself has
argued, effective resistance is eternally immanent in and dependent upon power and as such can only be
achieved through a strategic and eclectic approach to destabilization and reform. In real terms, this ought
to demand continued concern with legal reform alongside a critical awareness of the role of law itself as
a constructing and constituting discourse and structure. Where legal power, like other forms of power, is
diffuse, complex, and interdisciplinary, allowing for the possibility of attaining some level of reform
through mechanisms of legal challenge not only makes logical sense, it also becomes a practical
necessity integral to the prospect of achieving subversive change. While Smart’s misguided assumption of the
sceptical interpretation of Foucault’s position in regard to law denies her this realization, future Foucaultian legal feminists are
equipped to develop a stronger prescriptive thesis for reform through the further development of the emerging counter-claim
premised by Ewald and Tadros. Not only will this provide the remit for a stronger prescriptive agenda for feminist reform more
generally, it will also provide a far more optimistic and empowered vision for the future of Foucaultian legal feminism.
Line by line
 *AT: We Meet

Education debates requires policy precision – viewing education policy through

analysis of government action is key
Lingenfelter, 16 – Paul E., Senior Scholar @ the University of Illinois National Institute for Learning Outcomes
Assessment and professor of Public Affairs @ University of Colorado-Denver School of Public Affairs. Former CEO and president
of the State Higher Education Executive Officers and VP of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. “PROOF,”
POLICY, AND PRACTICE: Understanding the Role of Evidence in Improving Education. Stylus Publishing, pages 4 –br

By policy, I mean actions taken collectively by social groups, governments, or organizations to achieve a
purpose. Policy can be laws, regulations, procedures, the allocation of financial resources, or the
granting of discretional authority or authority limited by rules to individuals (e.g., executives, police officers, or
professionals) with particular responsibilities. Policy is an expression of power: the power of an individual in a
monarchy, dictatorship, or sole proprietorship; or the shared, collective power in democratic governments,
organizations, or corporations. Policy seeks to achieve an end or ends by taking actions that affect
communities of people. Policy is not self-executing, however. It can fail for many reasons, including poor
design and active or passive resistance by the people it seeks to influence or govern. By practice, I mean
actions taken by individuals to achieve a purpose. In this context I am focusing on professionals in
education and other complex professions. Although such professionals typically work in an environment
of organizational and governmental policies that may shape, support, or constrain their practice, they
function somewhat autonomously as individuals delivering professional services.
*AT: ROB
 Activism Cards
Debate as activism gets co-opted by those on the right---the Tea Party rejects existing
institutions because they think they are hegemonic, just like the aff
Talisse 2005 – philosophy professor at Vanderbilt (Robert, Philosophy & Social Criticism, 31.4, “Deliberativist responses to
activist challenges”) *note: gendered language in this article refers to arguments made by two specific individuals in an article
by Iris Young

My call for a more detailed articulation of the second activist challenge may be met with the radical claim that I have begged the question. It may be said
that my analysis of the activist’s challenge and my request for a more rigorous argument presume what the activist denies, namely, that
arguments and reasons operate independently of ideology. Here the activist might begin to think that he made a mistake in agreeing to
engage in a discussion with a deliberativist – his position throughout the debate being that one should decline to engage in argument with one’s opponents! He

may say that of course activism seems lacking to a deliberativist, for the deliberativist measures the
strength of a view according to her own standards. But the activist rejects those standards, claiming that they
are appropriate only for seminar rooms and faculty meetings, not for real-world politics. Consequently the activist may say that by agreeing to enter into a
discussion with the deliberativist, he had unwittingly abandoned a crucial element of his position. He may conclude that the
consistent activist
avoids arguing altogether, and communicates only with his comrades. Here the discussion ends. However,
the deliberativist has a further consideration to raise as his discursive partner departs for the next rally or street demonstration. The foregoing
debate had presumed that there is but one kind of activist and but one set of policy objectives that activists may
endorse. Yet Young’s activist is opposed not only by deliberative democrats, but also by persons who also call themselves
‘activists’ and who are committed to a set of policy objectives quite different from those endorsed by this one activist.
Once these opponents are introduced into the mix, the stance of Young’s activist becomes more evidently
problematic, even by his own standards.
To explain: although Young’s discussion associates the activist always with politically progressive causes, such as the abolition of the World
Trade Organization (109), the expansion of healthcare and welfare programs (113), and certain forms of environmentalism (117), not all
activists are progressive in this sense. Activists
on the extreme and racist Right claim also to be fighting for
justice, fairness, and liberation. They contend that existing processes and institutions are ideologically
hegemonic and distorting. Accordingly, they reject the deliberative ideal on the same grounds as Young’s
activist. They advocate a program of political action that operates outside of prevailing structures,
disrupting their operations and challenging their legitimacy. They claim that such action aims to enlighten, inform,
provoke, and excite persons they see as complacent, naïve, excluded, and ignorant. Of course, these activists vehemently oppose the policies
endorsed by Young’s activist; they argue that justice requires activism that promotes objectives such as national purity, the disenfranchisement
of Jews, racial segregation, and white supremacy. More importantly, they see Young’s activist’s vocabulary of ‘inclusion’,
‘structural inequality’, ‘institutionalized power’, as fully in line with what they claim is a hegemonic
ideology that currently dominates and systematically distorts our political discourses.21

The point here is not to imply that Young’s activist is no better than the racist activist. The point rather is that Young’s activist’s
arguments are, in fact, adopted by activists of different stripes and put in the service of a wide range of policy
objectives, each claiming to be just, liberatory, and properly inclusive.22 In light of this, there is a question the activist
must confront. How should he deal with those who share his views about the proper means for bringing about a more just society, but promote
a set of ends that he opposes?

It seems that Young’s activist has no way to deal with opposing activist programs except to fight them or, if fighting is strategically unsound or
otherwise problematic, to accept a Hobbesian truce. This might not seem an unacceptable response in the case of racists; however, the
question can be raised in the case of any less extreme but nonetheless opposed activist program, including different styles of politically
progressive activism. Hence
the deliberativist raises her earlier suspicions that, in practice, activism entails a
politics based upon interestbased power struggles amongst adversarial factions.
 AT: exclusion
The process of intellectual exchange outweighs the aff and doesn’t link to their
offense
Amanda Anderson 6, prof of English at Johns Hopkins The Way We Argue Now, 25-8

substantive normative guidance is an issue of debate. Habermas has sought to justify

25¶ Whether such a procedural approach actually helps to yield any

communicative ethics through appeal to the principles of respect and reciprocity that he claims are inherent in linguistic practices geared
toward reaching understanding. Attempting to redress the overwhelmingly negative forms of critique characteristic of

both the Frankfurt School and poststructuralist traditions, he argues that the logocentrism of Western thought and the

powerful instrumentality of reason are not absolute but rather constitute “a systematic foreshortening and

distortion of a potential always already operative in the communicative practice of everyday life.” The
potential he refers to is the potential for mutual understanding “inscribed into communication in ordinary
language.” 7 Habermas acknowledges the dominance and reach of instrumental reason—his project is largely
devoted to a systematic analysis of the historical conditions and social effects of that dominance—yet at the same time he
wishes to retrieve an emancipatory model of communicative¶ ¶ 26¶ reason derived from a linguistic
understanding of intersubjective relations. As Benhabib argues, this form of communicative action, embodied in the highly controversial and pervasively
misunderstood concept of the “ideal speech situation,” entails strong ethical assumptions, namely the principles of universal moral respect and egalitarian reciprocity (SS, 29).¶ Habermas has

famously argued that he does not believe any metaphysical grounding of such norms is possible; he insists instead
that we view the normative constraints of the ideal speech community as “universal pragmatic
presuppositions” of competent moral actors who have reached the postconventional stage of moral reasoning. Habermas’s theory combines a “weak transcendental argument”
concerning the four types of validity claims operative in speech acts with an empirical reconstruction of psychosocial development derived from Lawrence Kohlberg. Benhabib, though

she, too, appeals to socialization processes, distinguishes her position from Habermas’s “weak transcendental argument” by promoting a “historically self-conscious

universalism” that locates the ethical principles of respect and reciprocity as “constituents of the moral
point of view from within the normative hermeneutic horizon of modernity” (SS, 30). Benhabib’s work thus constitutes, like Habermas’s, a
strong defense of specific potentialities of modernity. She differs from him in two key respects, besides the emphasis already outlined. First, she
believes that Habermas’s emphasis on consensus seriously distorts his account of communicative ethics. Like others

who have argued against the conflation of understanding and consensus, Benhabib champions instead a
discourse model of ethics that is geared toward keeping the conversation going:¶ When we shift the
burden of the moral test in communicative ethics from consensus to the idea of an ongoing moral
conversation, we begin to ask not what all would or could agree to as a result of practical discourses to be
morally permissible or impermissible , but what would be allowed and perhaps even necessary from the standpoint
of continuing and sustaining the practice of the moral conversation among us. The emphasis now is less on
rational agreement, but more on sustaining those normative practices and moral relationships within which
reasoned agreement as a way of life can flourish and continue. (SS, 38)8¶ ¶ 27¶ The second significant difference between Habermas and Benhabib
is that Benhabib rejects Habermas’s rigid opposition between justice and the good life, an opposition that effectively relegates identity-based politics to a lower plane of moral practice, and

that for Benhabib undercuts our ability to apprehend the radical particularity of the other. While she believes in the importance of self-reflexive interrogations of conventional
identities and roles, she strongly opposes any ethics or politics that privileges the unencumbered or detached self over the concrete,

embodied, situated self. She argues in particular against those liberal models that imagine that conversations of moral justification should take place between individuals who have
bracketed their strongest cultural or social identifications and attachments. Instead she promotes what she calls an “interactive

universalism”:¶ Interactive universalism acknowledges the plurality of modes of being human, and
differences among humans, without endorsing all these pluralities and differences as morally and politically valid. While
agreeing that normative disputes can be settled rationally, and that fairness, reciprocity and some
procedure of universalizability are constituents, that is, necessary conditions of the moral standpoint, interactive
universalism regards difference as a starting point for reflection and action. In this sense, “universality” is a
regulative ideal that does not deny our embodied and embedded identity , but aims at developing moral
attitudes and encouraging political transformations that can yield a point of view acceptable to all.
Universality is not the ideal consensus of fictitiously defined selves, but the concrete process in politics and morals of the struggle of
concrete, embodied selves, striving for autonomy. (SS, 153) ¶ This passage encapsulates the core of Benhabib’s position, which attempts to mediate

between universalism and particularism as traditionally understood. On the one hand, universalism’s informing
principles of rational argumentation, fairness, and reciprocity adjudicate between different positions in
the ethicopolitical realm, enabling crucial distinctions between those notions of the good life that promote
interactive universalism and those that threaten its key principles. It insists, in other words, that there is a specifiable moral standpoint
from which—to take a few prominent examples—Serbian aggression, neo-Nazism, and gay bashing can be definitively condemned. On the other hand, universalism

“regards difference as a starting point.” It understands identity as “embodied and embedded” and promotes
encounters with otherness so as to nurture the development of a moral attitude that will “yield a point of view
acceptable to all.”¶ Of course it must simultaneously be recognized that the “all” here cannot
coherently include those who have, according to universalism’s own principles, forfeited their place as equal participants
in the ethicopolitical¶ ¶ 28¶ community. Ironically, then, Benhabib’s redefinition of universalism insists on inevitable
exclusion, but not in the sense that many poststructuralist and postmodernist cultural critics do, as the hardwired effect
of universalism’s false claims to inclusiveness, and as victimizing those disempowered by race, class,
gender, or sexuality. Against naive conceptions of inclusiveness and plurality, which ultimately prove self-
undermining in their toleration of communities, individuals, and practices that exclude others arbitrarily, interactive
universalism claims that certain exclusions are not only justified, but indeed required by the principles
of recognition and respect that underpin democratic institutions and practices.

The uncompromising ideology of the affirmative creates greater exclusion than it

solves
Knight, Professor of Education at LaTrobe University, 2k
(The Urban Review, Vol. 32, No. 3, Democratic Education and Critical Pedagogy,
link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1023%2FA%3A1005177227794.pdf)

It is difficult for critical pedagogy to encourage the oppressed to traditional academic success, because
that would be the equivalent of seducing the oppressed into accepting ideological premises that
contribute to and sustain oppression. That they exempt themselves from such seduction has already been noted.
Critical pedagogy, by hiding behind hegemony, embraces an unacceptable excuse for failure to learn. It
finds curriculum to be alienating and useless, but no viable alternative is proposed. The importance of
meaningful relationships between students and teachers is recognized, but what is proposed is vague and is expressed in secret
code. Critical pedagogy has its own brand of exclusiveness. It is an exclusiveness that is the consequence
of a nonnegotiable ideology: The major consequence of this kind of uncompromising determinism is
that it leaves insufficient space for the role of reflexivity in the process of practical change. (Carr, 1995, p.
113) The frenzied focus of critical pedagogy on eradication of sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia
instead of working together to negotiate an inclusive community may contribute to the very problem
that it ostensibly opposes: There are prevailing asymmetries of power, not just between teacher and
student, but among students themselves, and it is in [sic] the playing out of these asymmetries which can
lead quickly to the expression of the very “isms” which the teacher seeks to educate away. “Teaching
the conflicts” . . . may produce more conflict. (Harley, 1997, p. 91) When it comes to language—which is curious
because in the growing volumes of critical pedagogical literature there is recognition of how language is used to include and
exclude—nobody excludes better than critical pedagogues.
*AT: Policing
 *AT: You Have Ground
Focus on ideals devolves into limitless advocacy- emphasis on political effects avoids
the theoretical idealism
Donald S. Lutz, Professor of Polisci at Houston, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 39-
40
Aristotle notes in the Politics that political theory simultaneously proceeds at three levels—discourse about the ideal, about the best possible in
the real world, and about existing political systems.4 Put another way, comprehensive political theory must ask several
different kinds of questions that are linked, yet distinguishable. In order to understand the interlocking set of questions that political
theory can ask, imagine a continuum stretching from left to right. At the end, to the right, is an ideal form of government, a perfectly wrought
construct produced by the imagination. At the other end is the perfect dystopia, the most perfectly wretched system that the human imagination
can produce. Stretching between these two extremes is an infinite set of possibilities, merging into one another, that
describe the logical possibilities created by the characteristics defining the end points. For example, a political system defined primarily by
equality would have a perfectly inegalitarian system described at the other end, and the possible states of being between them would vary prima-
rily in the extent to which they embodied equality. An ideal defined primarily by liberty would create a different set of possibilities between the
extremes. Of course, visions of the ideal often are inevitably more complex than these single-value examples indicate, but it is also true that in
order to imagine an ideal state of affairs a kind of simplification is almost always required since normal states of affairs invariably present
themselves to human consciousness as complicated, opaque, and to a significant extent indeterminate. t A non-ironic reading of Plato's Republic
leads one to conclude that the creation of these visions of the ideal characterizes political philosophy. This is not the case. Any
person can
generate a vision of the ideal. One job of political philosophy is to ask the question "Is this ideal worth
pursuing?" Before the question can be pursued, however, the ideal state of affairs must be clarified,
especially with respect to conceptual precision and the logical relationship between the propositions that describe the ideal. This pre-theoretical
analysis raises the vision of the ideal from the mundane to a level where true philosophical analysis, and the careful comparison with existing
systems can proceed fruitfully. The process of pre-theoretical analysis, probably because it works on clarifying ideas that most capture the human
imagination, too often looks to some like the entire enterprise of political philosophy.5 However, the value of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's concept of
the General Will, for example, lies not in its formal logical implications, nor in its compelling hold on the imagination, but on the power and
clarity it lends to an analysis and comparison of actual political systems. Among other things it allows him to show that anyone who wishes to
pursue a state of affairs closer to that summed up in the concept of the General Will must successfully develop a civil religion.
To the extent
politicians believe theorists who tell them that pre-theoretical clarification of language describing an
ideal is the essence and sum total of political philosophy, to that extent they will properly conclude that
political philosophers have little to tell them, since politics is the realm of the possible not the realm of
logical clarity. However, once the ideal is clarified, the political philosopher will begin to articulate and
assess the reasons why we might want to pursue such an ideal. At this point, analysis leaves the realm of
pure logic and enters the realm of the logic of human longing, aspiration, and anxiety. The analysis is now limited by the
interior parameters of the human heart (more properly the human psyche) to which the theorist must appeal. Unlike the
clarification stage where anything that is logical is possible, there are now definite limits on where logic can take
us. Appeals to self-destruction, less happiness rather than more, psychic isolation, enslavement, loss of identity, a preference for the lives of
mollusks over that of humans, to name just a few possibilities, are doomed to failure. The theorist cannot appeal to such values if she or he is to
attract an audience of politicians. Much political theory involves the careful, competitive analysis of what a given ideal state of affairs entails, and
as Plato shows in his dialogues the discussion between the philosopher and the politician will quickly terminate if he or she cannot convincingly
demonstrate the connection between the political ideal being developed and natural human passions. In this way, the politician can be
educated by the possibilities that the political theorist can articulate, just as the political theorist can be
educated by the relative success the normative analysis has in "setting the hook" of interest among nonpolitical theorists. This
realm of discourse, dominated by the logic of humanly worthwhile goals, requires that the theorist
carefully observe the responses of others in order not to be seduced by what is merely logical as
opposed to what is humanly rational. Moral discourse conditioned by the ideal, if it is to be successful, requires the political
theorist to be fearless in pursuing normative logic, but it also requires the theorist to have enough humility to remember that, if a non-theorist
cannot be led toward an ideal, the fault may well lie in the theory, not in the moral vision of the non-theorist.

Offense- flow
 Case
The state being problematic demands strategic engagement, NOT abdication—they
give power to the far-right
Liu 13 (Eric Liu is the founder of Citizen University and author of several books, including "The Gardens of Democracy" and
"The Accidental Asian." He served as a White House policy adviser for President Bill Clinton. “What Russell Brand got wrong
about voting” – CNN – Nov 5th – http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/05/opinion/liu-not-voting-for-suckers/index.html?hpt=hp_t4)
That certainly was the message of a recent interview and essay by the comedian Russell Brand. Both went viral, especially among young people, and it's easy to see why. He's an irreverent,
facile commentator. And his
message, meant for a British audience but applicable here too, is that politics is now fundamentally rigged, making voting a
folly and revolution a necessity. But what Brand really ends up proving, in entertaining fashion, is that being half-right can be a very dangerous thing. It's hard to
dispute that politics in America has become a rigged game. Why else is Congress is in a mad rush to cut food stamps while shielding corporate subsidies? How else would
more than half the $400 billion in annual federal tax breaks flow to the richest 5% of Americans? We live in an age when advantage and disadvantage are increasingly undeserved, when
economic inequality and unequal political voice reinforce each other in a vicious cycle. This is what the scholars Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson described in their book "Winner-Take-All Politics"

-- a methodical, bipartisan array of national policies to disinvest in the middle class and the poor and to reward the privileged for already being privileged. And this is what gave us both
the tea party and Occupy Wall Street, movements united by little except their deep-seated anti-elite anger. It's understandable, then, why
millions of younger, poorer, darker-skinned Americans -- for that's who disproportionately fills the ranks of the non-voters -- would
check out of politics and voting altogether. But the stark contrast between what the tea party and Occupy each did after their first bursts of
anger underscores precisely why checking out makes a bad situation worse. The tea party organized at the precinct level, fielded
candidates, won elections and became if not a majority then a king-making (or at least government-shutting) minority in legislatures across the land,
including the U.S. House of Representatives. The Occupy movement didn't. That helps explain why American politics still tilts more rightward on

economic issues than its people do , and why a president re-elected by a wide margin a year ago is still playing defense. Critics such as Brand may be
astute in their diagnosis, but they're deluded in their prescription. There is no such thing as not voting. In a democracy, not voting is voting --

for all that you detest and oppose . While abstaining from the ballot can be dressed up as an act of passive resistance, it is in fact an
active delivery of power and voice to those who'd like to take advantage of you. Far from weakening an unjust system, not
voting only amplifies the system's pain-inflicting power. So perhaps the most compelling appeal to today's nonvoters isn't that "it's our patriotic duty" (though it is) or
that "others gave their lives for this right" (though they did). It's this: not voting is for suckers. Some frustrated nonvoters claim there's no meaningful choice anyway
between the two parties. This is colossally naive. Imagine for a moment where the country would be today if all the people who formed the tea party had decided that politics

was just too sordid or that their individual votes couldn't possibly make a difference. Politics may indeed be sordid, but it changes only to the extent we aggregate votes. To be sure, today's
political debate is too narrow, disallowing ideas such as a guaranteed minimum income or single-payer health care. But it also, at least for now, disallows a dismantling of
Social
Security or repeal of civil rights laws. The question is this: Which set of disallowed ideas would you hate to see become law? And what's more likely to usher in
what you fear -- voting or not voting?

Abstraction turn – the vast majority of the debate community, including everyone in
this room is aware of the myth—orientation towards a goal without concrete policy
ensures failure
Bryant 12 (Levi, Critique of the Academic Left, http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/underpants-gnomes-a-
critique-of-the-academic-left/)

I must be in a mood today– half irritated, half amused –because I find myself ranting. Of course, that’s not entirely unusual. So this afternoon I
came across a post by a friend quoting something discussing the environmental movement that pushed all the right button. As the
post
read, For mainstream environmentalism– conservationism, green consumerism, and resource
management –humans are conceptually separated out of nature and mythically placed in privileged positions of
authority and control over ecological communities and their nonhuman constituents. What emerges is the fiction of a
marketplace of ‘raw materials’ and ‘resources’ through which human-centered wants, constructed as needs,
might be satisfied. The mainstream narratives are replete with such metaphors [carbon trading!]. Natural complexity,, mutuality, and
diversity are rendered virtually meaningless given discursive parameters that reduce nature to discrete units of exchange measuring extractive
 I can’t say that I see many
capacities. Jeff Shantz, “Green Syndicalism” While finding elements this description perplexing–
environmentalists treating nature and culture as distinct or suggesting that we’re sovereigns of nature –I
do agree that we conceive much of our relationship to the natural world in economic terms (not a surprise that capitalism is today a universal).
This, however, is not what bothers me about this passage. What I wonder is just what we’re supposed to do even if all
of this is true? What, given existing conditions, are we to do if all of this is right? At least green consumerism,
conservation, resource management, and things like carbon trading are engaging in activities that are
making real differences. From this passage– and maybe the entire text would disabuse me of this conclusion –it sounds like we
are to reject all of these interventions because they remain tied to a capitalist model of production that
the author (and myself) find abhorrent. The idea seems to be that if we endorse these things we are tainting our hands
and would therefore do well to reject them altogether. The problem as I see it is that this is the worst sort of
abstraction (in the Marxist sense) and wishful thinking. Within a Marxo-Hegelian context, a thought is abstract when it
ignores all of the mediations in which a thing is embedded. For example, I understand a robust tree abstractly when I
attribute its robustness, say, to its genetics alone, ignoring the complex relations to its soil, the air, sunshine, rainfall, etc., that also allowed it to
grow robustly in this way. Thisis the sort of critique we’re always leveling against the neoliberals. They are abstract
thinkers. In their doxa that individuals are entirely responsible for themselves and that they completely make
themselves by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, neoliberals ignore all the mediations belonging to the social and
material context in which human beings develop that play a role in determining the vectors of their life. They ignore, for example, that
George W. Bush grew up in a family that was highly connected to the world of business and government and that this gave him opportunities
that someone living in a remote region of Alaska in a very different material infrastructure and set of family relations does not have. To think
concretely is to engage in a cartography of these mediations, a mapping of these networks, from
circumstance to circumstance (what I call an “onto-cartography”). It is to map assemblages, networks, or ecologies in the constitution of
entities. Unfortunately, the academic left falls prey to its own form of abstraction. It’s good at carrying
out critiques that denounce various social formations, yet very poor at proposing any sort of realistic
constructions of alternatives. This because it thinks abstractly in its own way, ignoring how networks,
assemblages, structures, or regimes of attraction would have to be remade to create a workable
alternative. Here I’m reminded by the “underpants gnomes” depicted in South Park: The underpants gnomes have a plan for
achieving profit that goes like this: Phase 1: Collect Underpants Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Profit! They even have a
catchy song to go with their work: Well this is sadly how it often is with the academic left. Our plan seems to be as follows:
Phase 1: Ultra-Radical Critique Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Revolution and complete social transformation! Our
problem is that we seem perpetually stuck at phase 1 without ever explaining what is to be done at phase
2. Often the critiques articulated at phase 1 are right, but there are nonetheless all sorts of problems with those
critiques nonetheless. In order to reach phase 3, we have to produce new collectives. In order for new
collectives to be produced, people need to be able to hear and understand the critiques developed at
phase 1. Yet this is where everything begins to fall apart. Even though these critiques are often right,
we express them in ways that only an academic with a PhD in critical theory and post-structural theory can
understand. How exactly is Adorno to produce an effect in the world if only PhD’s in the humanities can understand him? Who are
these things for? We seem to always ignore these things and then look down our noses with disdain at
the Naomi Kleins and David Graebers of the world. To make matters worse, we publish our work in expensive academic
journals that only universities can afford, with presses that don’t have a wide distribution, and give our talks at expensive hotels
at academic conferences attended only by other academics. Again, who are these things for? Is it an accident
that so many activists look away from these things with contempt, thinking their more about an
academic industry and tenure, than producing change in the world? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is
there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound! Seriously dudes and dudettes, what are you doing? But finally, and
worst of all, us Marxists and anarchists all too often act like assholes. We denounce others, we condemn
them, we berate them for not engaging with the questions we want to engage with, and we vilify them
when they don’t embrace every bit of the doxa that we endorse. We are every bit as off-putting and
unpleasant as the fundamentalist minister or the priest of the inquisition (have people yet understood that
Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus was a critique of the French communist party system and the Stalinist party system, and the horrific
passions that arise out of parties and identifications in general?). This type of “revolutionary” is
the greatest friend of the
reactionary and capitalist because they do more to drive people into the embrace of reigning ideology
than to undermine reigning ideology. These are the people that keep Rush Limbaugh in business. Well
done! But this isn’t where our most serious shortcomings lie. Our most serious shortcomings are to be found at phase 2.
We almost never make concrete proposals for how things ought to be restructured, for what new
material infrastructures and semiotic fields need to be produced, and when we do, our critique-
intoxicated cynics and skeptics immediately jump in with an analysis of all the ways in which these
things contain dirty secrets, ugly motives, and are doomed to fail. How, I wonder, are we to do anything at
all when we have no concrete proposals? We live on a planet of 6 billion people. These 6 billion
people are dependent on a certain network of production and distribution to meet the needs of their
consumption. That network of production and distribution does involve the extraction of resources, the
production of food, the maintenance of paths of transit and communication, the disposal of waste, the
building of shelters, the distribution of medicines, etc., etc., etc. What are your proposals? How will you
meet these problems? How will you navigate the existing mediations or semiotic and material features of infrastructure? Marx and
Lenin had proposals. Do you? Have you even explored the cartography of the problem? Today we are so intellectually bankrupt on
these points that we even have theorists speaking of events and acts and talking about a return to the
old socialist party systems, ignoring the horror they generated, their failures, and not even proposing
ways of avoiding the repetition of these horrors in a new system of organization. Who among our critical
theorists is thinking seriously about how to build a distribution and production system that is responsive
to the needs of global consumption, avoiding the problems of planned economy, ie., who is doing this in a way
that gets notice in our circles? Who is addressing the problems of micro-fascism that arise with party systems
(there’s a reason that it was the Negri & Hardt contingent, not the Badiou contingent that has been the heart of the occupy movement). At
least the ecologists are thinking about these things in these terms because, well, they think ecologically. Sadly we need something more, a
melding of the ecologists, the Marxists, and the anarchists. We’re not getting it yet though, as far as I can tell. Indeed, folks seem attracted to
yet another critical paradigm, Laruelle. I
would love, just for a moment, to hear a radical environmentalist talk
about his ideal high school that would be academically sound. How would he provide for the energy
needs of that school? How would he meet building codes in an environmentally sound way? How would
she provide food for the students? What would be her plan for waste disposal? And most importantly,
how would she navigate the school board, the state legislature, the federal government, and all the
families of these students? What is your plan? What is your alternative? I think there are alternatives. I saw one
that approached an alternative in Rotterdam. If you want to make a truly revolutionary contribution, this is where
you should start. Why should anyone even bother listening to you if you aren’t proposing real plans?
But we haven’t even gotten to that point. Instead we’re like underpants gnomes, saying “revolution is
the answer!” without addressing any of the infrastructural questions of just how revolution is to be
produced, what alternatives it would offer, and how we would concretely go about building those
alternatives. Masturbation. “Underpants gnome” deserves to be a category in critical theory; a sort of
synonym for self-congratulatory masturbation. We need less critique not because critique isn’t important or
necessary– it is –but because we know the critiques, we know the problems. We’re intoxicated with critique
because it’s easy and safe. We best every opponent with critique. We occupy a position of moral
superiority with critique. But do we really do anything with critique? What we need today, more than
ever, is composition or carpentry. Everyone knows something is wrong. Everyone knows this system is
destructive and stacked against them. Even the Tea Party knows something is wrong with the economic system, despite having
 None of us, however, are proposing alternatives. Instead we prefer to shout and
the wrong economic theory.
denounce. Good luck with that.