notes

None of these cards are highlighted- you should do that yourself so you can familiarize yourself with them. The 2nc overview is also more of a guide- you have to fill large parts of that out yourself based on what you want from the cards.

framework

1nc

Resolved is legislative Parcher 1 - Jeff Parcher, former debate coach at Georgetown, Feb 2001 http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200102/0790.html

Pardon me if I turn to a source besides Bill. American Heritage Dictionary: Resolve: 1. To make a firm decision about. 2. To decide or express by formal vote. 3. To separate something into constiutent parts See Syns at *analyze* (emphasis in orginal) 4. Find a solution to. See Syns at *Solve* (emphasis in original) 5. To dispel: resolve a doubt. - n 1. Firmness of purpose; resolution. 2. A determination or

decision. (2) The very nature of the word "resolution" makes it a question. American Heritage: A course of action determined or decided on. A formal statement of a decision, as by a legislature. (3) The resolution is obviously a question. Any other conclusion is utterly inconceivable. Why? Context. The debate community empowers a topic committee to write a topic for ALTERNATE side debating. The committee is not a random group of people coming together to "reserve" themselves about some issue. There is context - they are empowered by a community to do something. In their deliberations, the topic community attempts to craft a resolution which can be ANSWERED in either direction. They focus on issues like ground and fairness because they know the resolution will serve as the basis for debate which will be resolved by determining the policy desirablility of that resolution. That's not only what they do, but it's what we REQUIRE them to do. We don't just send the topic committee somewhere to adopt their own group resolution. It's not the end point of a resolution adopted by a body - it's the preliminary wording of a resolution sent to others to be answered or decided upon. (4) Further context: the word resolved is used to emphasize the fact that it's policy debate. Resolved comes from the adoption of resolutions by legislative bodies. A resolution is either adopted or it is not. It's a question before a legislative body. Should this statement be adopted or not. (5) The very terms 'affirmative' and 'negative' support my view. One affirms a resolution. Affirmative and negative are the equivalents of 'yes' or 'no' - which, of course, are answers to a question.

USFG should means the debate is only about government policy Ericson 3 (Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et al., The Debater’s Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)

The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains certain key elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---“The United States” in “The United States should adopt a policy of free trade.” Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the sentence. 2. The verb should—the first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put a program or policy into action though governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred.

The entire debate is about whether something ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the

affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you propose.

Voting issuePreparation and clash—changing the topic post facto manipulates balance of prep, which structurally favors the aff because they are able to choose the initial framework for debate and permute non-competitive counter-methodologies—strategic fairness on a limited topic is key to engaging a well-prepared opponent—they force us to give up every other pursuit for win debatesHarris 13 (Scott, April 5 “This ballot by Scott Harris” http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php?topic=4762.0, nkj)

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.

Debate’s a game—fairness and rules come firstVilla 96—Dana Villa Political Theory @ UC Santa Barbara Arendt and Heidegger: the Fate of the Political p. 37

If political action is to be valued for its own sake, then the content of political action must be politics “in the sense that political action is talk about politics.” The circularity of this formulation, given by George Kateb, is

unavoidable. It helps if we use an analogy that Kateb proposes, the analogy between such a purely political politics and a game. “A game,”

writes Kateb, “is not ‘about’ anything outside itself, it is its own sufficient world…the content of any game is itself.” What matters in a game is the play itself, and the quality of this play is utterly dependent upon the willingness and ability of the players to enter the “world” of the game . The Arendtian conception of politics is

one in which the spirit animating the “play” (the sharing of words and deeds)comes before all else—before personal concerns, groups, interests, and even moral claims. If allowed to dominate the “game,” these elements detracts from the play and from the performance of action. A good game happens only when the players submit themselves to its spirit and do not allow subjective or external motives to dictate the play. A good game, like genuine politics, is played for its own sake.

A limited topic is key to decision-making and advocacy skillsSteinberg and Freeley 8 *Austin J. Freeley is a Boston based attorney who focuses on criminal, personal injury and civil rights law, AND David L. Steinberg , Lecturer of Communication Studies @ U Miami, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making pp45-

Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a difference of opinion or a conflict of interest before there can be a debate. If everyone is in agreement on a tact or value or policy, there is no need for debate: the matter can be settled by unanimous consent. Thus, for example, it would be pointless to attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals four," because there is simply no controversy about this statement. (Controversy is an essential prerequisite of debate. Where there is no clash of ideas, proposals, interests, or expressed positions on issues, there is no debate. In addition, debate cannot produce effective decisions without clear identification of a question or questions to be answered. For example, general argument may occur about the broad topic of illegal immigration. How many illegal immigrants are in the United States? What is the impact of illegal immigration and immigrants on our economy? What is their impact on our communities? Do they commit crimes? Do they take jobs from American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they require social services? Is it a problem that some do not speak English? Is it the responsibility of employers to discourage illegal immigration by not hiring undocumented workers? Should they have the opportunity- to gain citizenship? Docs illegal immigration pose a security threat to our country? Do illegal immigrants do work that American workers are unwilling to do? Are their rights as workers and as human beings at risk due to their status? Are they abused by employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? I low are their families impacted by their status? What is the moral and philosophical obligation of a nation state to maintain its borders? Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification can!, or enforce existing laws against employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens? Surely you can think of many more concerns to be addressed by

a conversation about the topic area of illegal immigration. Participation in this "debate" is likely to be emotional and intense. However, it is not likely to be productive or useful without focus on a particular question and identification of a line demarcating sides in the controversy. To be discussed and resolved effectively, controversies must be stated clearly. Vague understanding results in unfocused deliberation and poor decisions, frustration, and emotional distress, as evidenced by the failure of the United States Congress to make progress on the immigration debate during the summer of 2007.

Someone disturbed by the problem of the growing underclass of poorly educated, socially disenfranchised youths might observe, "Public schools are doing a terrible job! They are overcrowded, and many teachers are poorly

qualified in their subject areas. Even the best teachers can do little more than struggle to maintain order in their classrooms." That same

concerned citizen, facing a complex range of issues, might arrive at an unhelpful decision, such as "We ought to do something about

this" or. worse. "It's too complicated a problem to deal with." Groups of concerned citizens worried about the state of public education could join together to express their frustrations, anger, disillusionment, and emotions regarding the schools, but without a focus for their discussions, they could easily agree about the sorry state of education without finding points of clarity or potential solutions. A gripe session would follow. But if a precise question is posed—such as "What can be done to improve public education?"—then a more profitable area of discussion is opened up simply by placing a focus on the search for a concrete solution step. One or more judgments can be phrased in the form of debate propositions, motions for parliamentary debate, or bills for legislative assemblies. The statements "Resolved: That the federal government should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities" and "Resolved: That the state of Florida should adopt a school voucher program" more clearly identify specific ways of dealing with educational problems in a manageable form, suitable for debate. They provide specific policies to be investigated and aid discussants in identifying points of difference.

To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing limits on the decision to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly defined . If we merely talk about "homelessness" or "abortion" or "crime'* or "global warming" we are likely to have an interesting discussion but not to establish profitable basis for argument. For example, the statement "Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword" is debatable, yet fails to provide much basis for clear argumentation. If we take this statement to mean that the written word is more effective than physical force for some purposes, we can identify a problem area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose.

Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad, too loosely worded to promote well-organized argument. What sort of writing are we concerned with—poems, novels, government documents, website development, advertising, or what? What does "effectiveness" mean in this context? What kind of physical force is being compared—fists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might be. "Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Liurania of our support in a certain crisis?" The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as "Resolved: That the United States should enter into a mutual defense treatv with Laurania." Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet

maneuvers would be a better solution. This is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy by advocates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the controversy; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that debate is best facilitated by the guidance provided by focus on a particular point of difference , which will be outlined in the following discussion.

Government policy discussions are keyEsberg and Sagan 12 *Jane Esberg is special assistant to the director at New York University's Center on. International Cooperation. She was the winner of 2009 Firestone Medal, AND Scott Sagan is a professor of political science and director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation “NEGOTIATING NONPROLIFERATION: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Nuclear Weapons Policy,” 2/17 The Nonproliferation Review, 19:1, 95-108

These government or quasi-government think tank simulations often provide very similar lessons for high-level players as are learned by students in educational simulations. Government participants learn about the importance of understanding foreign perspectives, the need to practice internal coordination, and the necessity to compromise and coordinate with other governments in negotiations and crises. During the Cold War, political scientist Robert Mandel noted how crisis exercises and war games forced government officials to overcome ‘‘bureaucratic myopia,’’ moving beyond their normal organizational roles and thinking more creatively about how others might react in a crisis or conflict.6

The skills of imagination and the subsequent ability to predict foreign interests and reactions remain critical for real-world foreign policy makers. For example, simulations of the Iranian nuclear crisis*held in 2009 and 2010 at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center and at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, and involving former US senior officials and regional experts*highlighted the dangers of misunderstanding foreign governments’ preferences and misinterpreting their subsequent behavior. In both

simulations, the primary criticism of the US negotiating team lay in a failure to predict accurately how other states, both allies and adversaries, would behave in response to US policy initiatives .7

By university age, students often have a pre-defined view of international affairs, and the literature on simulations in education has long emphasized how such exercises force students to challenge their assumptions about how other governments behave and how their own government works.8 Since simulations became more common as a teaching tool in the late 1950s, educational literature has expounded on their benefits, from encouraging engagement by breaking from the typical lecture format, to improving communication skills, to promoting teamwork.9 More broadly, simulations can deepen understanding by asking students to link fact and theory, providing a context for facts while bringing theory into the realm of practice.10 These exercises are particularly valuable in teaching international affairs for many of the same

reasons they are useful for policy makers: they force participants to ‘‘grapple with the issues arising from a world in flux.’’11 Simulations have been used successfully to teach students about such disparate topics as European politics, the Kashmir crisis, and

US response to the mass killings in Darfur.12 Role-playing exercises certainly encourage students to learn political and technical facts* but they learn them in a more active style. Rather than sitting in a classroom and merely receiving knowledge, students actively research ‘‘their’’ government’s positions and actively argue, brief, and negotiate with others.13 Facts can change quickly; simulations teach students how to contextualize and act on information.14

Substantive constraints on the debate are key to pluralism and agonistic democracy Dryzek 6—Professor of Social and Political Theory, The Australian National University (John, Reconciling Pluralism and Consensus as Political Ideals, American Journal of Political Science,Vol. 50, No. 3, July 2006, Pp. 634–649)

Mouffe is a radical pluralist: “By pluralism I mean the end of a substantive idea of the good life” (1996, 246). But neither Mouffe nor Young

want to abolish communication in the name of pluralism and difference; much of their work advocates sustained attention to communication. Mouffe also cautions against uncritical celebration of difference, for some differences imply “subordination and should therefore be challenged by a radical democratic politics” (1996, 247). Mouffe

raises the question of the terms in which engagement across difference might proceed. Participants should ideally accept that the positions of others are legitimate, though not as a result of being persuaded in argument. Instead, it is a matter of being open to conversion due to adoption of a particular kind of democratic attitude that converts antagonism into agonism, fighting into critical engagement, enemies into adversaries who are treated with respect. Respect here is not just (liberal) toleration, but positive validation of the position of others. For Young, a communicative democracy would be composed of people showing “equal respect,” under “procedural rules of fair discussion and decisionmaking” (1996, 126). Schlosberg speaks of “agonistic respect” as “a critical pluralist ethos” (1999, 70).

Mouffe and Young both want pluralism to be regulated by a particular kind of attitude, be it respectful, agonistic, or even in Young’s (2000, 16–

51) case reasonable. Thus neither proposes unregulated pluralism as an alternative to (deliberative) consensus. This regulation cannot be just procedural, for that would imply “anything goes” in terms of the substance of positions. Recall that Mouffe rejects differences that imply subordination. Agonistic ideals demand judgments about what is worthy of respect and what is not. Connolly (1991, 211) worries about dogmatic assertions and denials of identity that fuel existential resentments that would have to be changed to make agonism possible. Young seeks “transformation of private, self-regarding desires into public appeals to justice” (2000, 51). Thus for Mouffe, Connolly, and Young alike,

regulative principles for democratic communication are not just attitudinal or procedural; they also refer

to the substance of the kinds of claims that are worthy of respect. These authors would not want to legislate substance and are suspicious of the content of any alleged consensus. But in retreating from “anything goes” relativism, they need principles to regulate the substance of what rightfully belongs in democratic debate.

Effective deliberation is key to decisionmaking—that’s key to an informed citizenry that can reclaim the political and solve existential problems Lundberg 10 (Christian O. Lundberg 10 Professor of Communications @ University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Tradition of Debate in North Carolina” in Navigating Opportunity: Policy Debate in the 21st Century By Allan D. Louden, p311)

The second major problem with the critique that identifies a naivety in articulating debate and democracy is that it presumes that the primary pedagogical outcome of debate is speech capacities. But the democratic capacities built by debate are not limited to speech—as indicated

earlier, debate builds capacity for critical thinking, analysis of public claims, informed decision making, and better public judgment. If the picture of modem political life that underwrites this critique of debate is a pessimistic view of increasingly labyrinthine and bureaucratic administrative politics, rapid scientific and technological change outpacing the capacities of the citizenry to comprehend them, and ever-expanding insular special-interest- and money-driven politics, it is a puzzling solution, at best, to argue that these conditions warrant giving up on debate. If democracy is open to rearticulation, it is open to rearticulation precisely because as the challenges of modern political life proliferate, the citizenry's capacities can change, which is one of the primary reasons that theorists of democracy such as Ocwey in The Public awl Its Problems

place such a high premium on education (Dewey 1988,63, 154). Debate provides an indispensible form of education in the modem articulation of democracy because it builds precisely the skills that allow the citizenry to research and be informed about policy decisions that impact them , to son rhroueh and evaluate the evidence for and relative merits of arguments for and against a policy in an increasingly information-rich environment, and to prioritize their time and political energies toward policies that matter the most to them.

The merits of debate as a tool for building democratic capacity-building take on a special significance in the context of information literacy. John Larkin (2005, HO) argues that one of the primary failings of modern colleges and universities is that they have not changed curriculum to match with the challenges of a new information environment. This is a problem for the course of academic study in our current context, but perhaps more important, argues Larkin, for the future of a citizenry that will need to make evaluative choices against an increasingly complex and multimediatcd information environment (ibid-). Larkin's study tested the benefits of debate participation on information-literacy skills and concluded that in-class debate participants reported significantly higher self-efficacy ratings of their ability to navigate academic search databases and to effectively search and use other Web resources:

To analyze the self-report ratings of the instructional and control group students, we first conducted a multivariate analysis of variance on all of the ratings, looking jointly at the effect of instmction/no instruction and debate topic . . . that it did not matter which topic students had been assigned . . . students in the Instnictional debate) group were significantly more confident in their ability to access information and less likely to feel that they needed help to do so----These findings clearly indicate greater self-efficacy for online searching among students who participated in (debate).... These results constitute strong support for the effectiveness of the project on students' self-efficacy for online

searching in the academic databases. There was an unintended effect, however: After doing ... the project, instructional group students also felt more confident than the other students in their ability to get good information from Yahoo and Google. It may be that the library research experience increased self-efficacy for any searching, not just in academic databases. (Larkin 2005, 144)

Larkin's study substantiates Thomas Worthcn and Gaylcn Pack's (1992, 3) claim that debate in the college classroom plays a critical role in fostering the kind of problem-solving skills demanded by the increasingly rich media and information environment of modernity. Though their essay was written in 1992 on the cusp of the eventual explosion of the Internet as a medium, Worthcn and Pack's framing of the issue was prescient: the primary question facing today's student has changed from how to best research a topic to the crucial question of learning how to best evaluate which arguments to cite and rely upon from an easily accessible and veritable cornucopia of materials.

There are, without a doubt, a number of important criticisms of employing debate as a model for democratic deliberation. But cumulatively, the evidence presented here warrants strong support for expanding debate practice in the classroom as a technology for enhancing democratic deliberative capacities. The unique combination of critical thinking skills, research and information processing skills, oral communication skills, and capacities for listening and thoughtful, open engagement with hotly contested issues argues for debate as a crucial component of a rich and vital democratic life. In-class debate practice both aids students in achieving the best goals of college and university education, and serves as an unmatched practice for creating thoughtful, engaged, open-minded and self-critical students who are open to the possibilities of meaningful political engagement and new articulations of democratic life.

Expanding this practice is crucial, if only because the more we produce citizens that can actively and effectively engage the political process, the more likely we are to produce revisions of democratic life that are necessary if democracy is not only to survive, but to thrive. Democracy faces a myriad of challenges, including: domestic and international issues of class, gender, and racial justice; wholesale environmental destruction and the potential for rapid climate change; emerging threats to international stability in the form of terrorism, intervention and new possibilities for great power conflict; and increasing challenges of rapid globalization including an increasingly volatile global economic structure. More than any specific policy or proposal, an informed and active citizenry that deliberates with greater skill and sensitivity provides one of the best hopes for responsive and effective democratic governance, and by extension, one of the last best hopes for dealing with the existential challenges to democracy in an increasingly complex world.

There’s topical versions that can use most of the 1ac...changes by debate

Policymaking is essential to create permanent, codified change at every level of societyThemba-Nixon 2K (Makani, Executive Director of The Praxis Project, a nonprofit organization helping communities use media and policy advocacy to advance health equity and justice. “Changing the Rules: What Public Policy Means for Organizing” Colorlines 3.2)

"This is all about policy," a woman complained to me in a recent conversation. "I'm an organizer." The flourish and passion with which she

made the distinction said everything. Policy is for wonks, sell-out politicians, and ivory-tower eggheads. Organizing is what real, grassroots people do. Common as it may be, this distinction doesn't bear out in the real world. Policy is more than law. It is any written agreement (formal or informal) that specifies how an institution, governing body, or community will address shared problems or attain shared goals. It spells out the terms and the consequences of these agreements and is the codification of the body's values-as represented by those present in the policymaking process. Given who's usually present, most policies reflect the political agenda of powerful elites. Yet, policy can be a force for change-especially when we bring our base and community organizing into the process. In essence, policies are the codification of power relationships and resource allocation. Policies are the rules of the world we live in. Changing the world means changing the rules. So, if organizing is about changing the rules and building power, how can organizing be separated from policies? Can we really speak truth to power, fight the right, stop corporate abuses, or win racial justice without contesting the rules and the rulers, the policies and the policymakers? The answer is no-and double no for people of color. Today, racism subtly dominates nearly every aspect of policymaking. From ballot propositions to city funding priorities, policy is increasingly about the control, de-funding, and disfranchisement of communities of color. What Do We Stand For? Take the public conversation about welfare reform, for example. Most of us know it isn't really about putting people to work. The right's message was framed around racial stereotypes of lazy, cheating "welfare queens" whose poverty was "cultural." But the new welfare policy was about moving billions of dollars in individual cash payments and direct services from welfare recipients to other, more powerful, social actors. Many of us were too busy to tune into the welfare policy drama in Washington, only to find it washed up right on our doorsteps. Our members are suffering from workfare policies, new regulations, and cutoffs. Families who were barely getting by under the old rules are being pushed over

the edge by the new policies. Policy doesn't get more relevant than this. And so we got involved in policy-as defense. Yet we have to do more than block their punches. We have to start the fight with initiatives of our own. Those who do are finding offense a bit more fun than defense alone. Living wage ordinances, youth development initiatives, even gun control and alcohol and tobacco policies are finding their way onto the public agenda, thanks to focused community organizing that leverages power for community-driven initiatives. - Over 600 local policies have been passed to regulate the tobacco industry. Local coalitions have taken the lead by writing ordinances that address local problems and organizing broad support for them. - Nearly 100 gun control and violence prevention policies have been enacted since 1991. - Milwaukee, Boston, and Oakland are among the cities that have passed living wage ordinances: local laws that guarantee higher than minimum wages for workers, usually set as the minimum needed to keep a family of four above poverty. These are just a few of the examples that demonstrate how organizing for local policy advocacy has made inroads in areas where positive national policy had been stalled by conservatives. Increasingly, the local policy arena is where the action is and

where activists are finding success. Of course, corporate interests-which are usually the target of these policies-are gearing up in defense. Tactics include front groups, economic pressure, and the tried and true: cold, hard cash. Despite these barriers, grassroots organizing can be very effective at the smaller scale of local politics. At the local level, we have greater access to elected officials and officials have a greater reliance on their constituents for reelection. For example, getting 400 people to show up at city hall in just about any city in the U.S. is quite impressive. On the other hand, 400 people at the state house or the Congress would have a less significant impact. Add to that the fact that all 400 people at city hall are usually constituents, and the impact is even greater. Recent trends in government underscore the importance of local policy. Congress has enacted a series of measures devolving significant power to state and local government. Welfare, health care, and the regulation of food and drinking water safety are among the areas where states and localities now have greater rule. Devolution has some negative consequences to be sure. History has taught us that, for social services and civil rights in particular, the lack of clear federal standards and mechanisms for accountability lead to uneven enforcement and even discriminatory implementation of policies. Still, there are real opportunities for advancing progressive initiatives in this more localized environment. Greater local control can mean greater community power to shape and implement important social policies that were heretofore out of reach. To do so will require careful attention to the mechanics of local policymaking and a clear blueprint of what we stand for. Getting It in Writing Much of

the work of framing what we stand for takes place in the shaping of demands. By getting into the policy arena in a proactive manner, we can take our demands to the next level. Our demands can become law, with real consequences if the agreement is broken. After all the organizing, press work, and effort, a group should leave a decisionmaker

with more than a handshake and his or her word. Of course, this work requires a certain amount of interaction with "the suits," as well as struggles with the bureaucracy, the technical language, and the all-too-common

resistance by decisionmakers. Still, if it's worth demanding, it's worth having in writing-whether as law, regulation, or internal policy. From ballot initiatives on rent control to laws requiring worker protections, organizers are leveraging their power into written policies that are making a real difference in their communities. Of course, policy work is just one tool in our organizing arsenal, but it is a tool we simply can't afford to ignore. Making policy work an integral part of organizing will require a certain amount of retrofitting. We will need to develop the capacity to translate our information, data, and experience into stories that are designed to affect the public conversation. Perhaps most important, we will need to move beyond fighting problems and on to framing solutions that bring us closer to our vision of how things should be. And then we must be committed to making it so.

2nc feminismFramework is totally feminist- we don’t preclude you from remaining rooted in your identity but common ground is crucial to a communicative ethic that allows us to forge a politics of solidarity in differenceLister 97 (Ruth. Hypatia. Vol 12, No. 4. Citizenship in Feminism: Identity, Action, and Locale. “Dialectics of Citizenship”. JSTOR)

The third plank is a commitment to dialogue. This commitment has been expressed under a number of rubrics; most notably, "dialogic," "deliberative," or "communicative" democracy. Underlying them is Habermas's notion of a "communicative ethic," which emphasizes the crucial role of free and open public communication and deliberation between citizens as the basis of democratic political legitimation. This has been used critically by a number of feminist political theorists who envisage such public dialogue as the framework for the articulation of difference in which diverse voices, particularly those normally excluded from public discourse, have an equal right to be heard . Unlike Habermas himself, for those feminists the point of such dialogue is not to arrive at agreement on "the" general interest, but instead to promote the development of views and the exercise of judgement, having taken account of different viewpoints. This commitment to dialogue is premised on the belief that it enables new positions to emerge as other viewpoints are acknowledged. The importance of dialogue in which "each group becomes better able to consider other groups'" standpoints without relinquishing the uniqueness of its own standpoint

or suppressing other groups' partial perspectives is underlined also by Patricia Hill Collins as typical of Afrocentric feminist thought (1991, 236). Nira Yuval-Davis (1997), drawing on the work of a group of Italian feminists, calls this a process of "rooting" and

"shifting," in which participants remain rooted in their own identities and values but at the same time are willing to shift views in dialogue with those of other identities and values. This, Yuval-Davis suggests,

represents a "transversal" dialogue or politics, which depends on participants avoiding uncritical solidarity and the homogenization of "the other ." How to turn such theoretical ideas into practical realities is, of course, another question. As Yuval-Davis warns, in some situations, conflicting interests are not reconcilable in this way and, by and large, political systems do not provide the time and space for such dialogue. Moreover, there is a tendency to underestimate the difficulties some groups, in

particular the poor and economically marginalized, would have in entering the dialogue in the first place. Nevertheless, we can point to examples to show that such a transversal politics is possible. To take just two from conflict areas: during the period of transition to the new South Africa, a Women's National Coalition was formed, which represented an "extraordinary convergence of women across geographical, racial, class, religious and political lines" and "a forum through which women who harbored deep animosities could also identify common concerns " (Kemp et. al., 1995, 150-51). Through a process of dialogue and negotiation and despite fissures and disagreements, the coalition drafted a Women's Charter for Effective Equality, which gave women in their diversity a voice in the writing of the new constitution. The opportunity to have a voice at such a historic time, combined with a focus on a clear, specific goal , is believed to have provided the impetus to work through the differences that existed. A second example can be found in Northern Ireland. In a photo essay, titled "Different

Together," Cynthia Cockbum describes how a form of transversal politics is being pursued by Belfast women's centers: Individual women hold on to their political identities-some long for a united Ireland, others feel deeply

threatened by the idea. But they have identified a commonality in being women, being community based and being angry at injustice and inequality, that allows them to affirm and even welcome this and other kinds of difference. (1996a, 46) Two Belfast women who gave evidence to the Northern Ireland Opsahl Commission explained that, in

their experience, cooperation was easier "when the deliberations and activities are directed towards the issues which matter" in women's lives, by which they meant the struggle to improve the quality of life in the disadvantaged communities in which they lived.5 Cockbum (1996b), drawing also on women's projects in Bosnia and

Israel, found a number of factors which facilitated working across communal divisions, including a clear practical focus and a sensitivity in defining agendas. Each case revealed a commitment to working with the "other" and an affirmation of "difference." This was combined with an acknowledgment of differences within each group and of the fluidity of ethnic identities, as well as a willingness to look outward ; for instance, in Belfast, to women in local Indian and Chinese communities. None of this was easy; but these examples suggest that with commitment, it is possibl e to forge a politics of solidarity in difference .

2nc pluralismFramework is a prerequisite to creating new possibilities of inclusivenessMcCann 13 (Hannah. Australian National University Gender Institute Inaugural PhD Scholar. April 2. http://binarythis.com/2013/04/02/cultural-citizenship-identity-politics-and-spaces-of-belonging/)

A few weeks ago I came across this article on “cultural citizenship” as discussed by a recent panel at Harvard University. What fascinated me

was the focus on conceptualising citizenship as not simply related to national identity or civic activity, but to the artistic creation of spaces of belonging with others. More specifically, this article considers how shared creative activities can engender inclusion that isn’t simply about enveloping the other in a predefined space, but is in fact about creating a new space with the other. As panellist Colin Jacobson is quoted as saying, “In order to play with someone else, you have to have a shared common ground on which to stand”. Notably

it seems that cultural citizenship is also explicitly connected with ideas about minority expression, and as this

article also discusses, the importance of being able to perform significant traditional forms of music in new contexts. However, the broader theme of creativity as key to emergent spaces of belonging that does not take identity, simple ”pluralism”, or assimilation as centralising concepts par excellence for notions of belonging, I think has relevance to potentially imagining new possibilities of gender and sexuality beyond binaries like man/woman and gay/straight outside of the problematics of identity politics.

at: distancingDEBATE roleplay specifically activates agencyHanghoj 8 (http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/

phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf Thorkild Hanghøj, Copenhagen, 2008 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)

Thus, debate games require teachers to balance the centripetal/centrifugal forces of gaming and teaching, to be able to reconfigure their discursive authority, and to orchestrate the multiple voices of a dialogical game space in relation to particular goals. These Bakhtinian perspectives provide a valuable analytical framework for describing the discursive interplay between different practices and knowledge aspects when enacting (debate) game scenarios. In addition to this, Bakhtin’s dialogical philosophy also offers an explanation of why debate games (and other game types) may be valuable within an educational context. One of the central

features of multi-player games is that players are expected to experience a simultaneously real and imagined scenario both in relation to an insider’s (participant) perspective and to an outsider’s (co-participant) perspective. According to Bakhtin, the outsider’s perspective reflects a fundamental aspect of human understanding : In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding – in time, in space, in culture. For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space, and because they are others (Bakhtin, 1986: 7). As the quote suggests, every person is influenced by others in an inescapably intertwined way, and consequently no voice can be said to be isolated. Thus, it is in the interaction with other voices that individuals are able to reach understanding and f ind their own voice. Bakhtin also refers to the ontological process of finding a voice as “ideological becoming”, which represents “the

process of selectively assimilating the words of others” (Bakhtin, 1981: 341). Thus, by teaching and playing debate scenarios, it is possible to support students in their process of becoming not only themselves, but also in becoming articulate and responsive citizens in a democratic society.

at: critical pedagogy

They will always win that the principles of their advocacy are good in the abstract – we can only debate the merits of their 1AC if they defend specific consequences of political implementationMichael Ignatieff, Carr professor of human rights at Harvard, 2004 Lesser Evils p. 20-1

As for moral perfectionism, this would be the doctrine that a liberal state should never have truck with dubious moral means and should spare

its officials the hazard of having to decide between lesser and greater evils. A moral perfectionist position also holds that states can spare their officials this hazard simply by adhering to the universal moral standards set out in human rights conventions and the laws of war. There are two problems with a perfectionist stance, leaving

aside the question of whether it is realistic. The first is that articulating nonrevocable, nonderogable moral standards is relatively easy. The problem is deciding how to apply them in specific cases . What is the line between interrogation and torture, between targeted killing and unlawful assassination, between preemption and aggression? Even when legal and

moral distinctions between these are clear in the abstract, abstractions are less than helpful when political leaders have to choose between them in practice. Furthermore, the problem with perfectionist standards is that they contradict each other. The same person who shudders, rightly, at the prospect of torturing a suspect might be prepared to kill the same suspect in a preemptive attack on a terrorist base. Equally, the perfectionist commitment to the right to life might preclude such attacks altogether and restrict our response to judicial pursuit of offenders through process of law. Judicial responses to the problem of terror have their place, but they are no substitute for military operations when terrorists possess bases, training camps, and heavy weapons. To stick to a perfectionist commitment to the right to life when under terrorist attack might achieve moral consistency at the price of leaving us defenseless in the face of evildoers. Security, moreover, is a human right, and thus respect for one right might lead us to betray another.

at: rules/predictability bad

No link to rules or predictability bad—our argument isn't rules-based in the sense they identify, it’s a set of contestable guidelines for evaluating competitions. Rejecting the topic because rules are oppressive doesn’t solve and only a standard like the resolution is limited enough to enable preparation and testing but has enough internal complexity to solve their impactArmstrong 2K – Paul B. Armstrong, Professor of English and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Winter 2000, “The Politics of Play: The Social Implications of Iser's Aesthetic Theory,” New Literary History, Vol. 31, No. 1, p. 211-223

Such a play-space also opposes the notion that the only alternative to the coerciveness of consensus must be to advocate the sublime powers of rule-breaking.8 Iser shares Lyotard’s concern that to privilege harmony and agreement in a world of heterogeneous language games is to limit their play and to inhibit semantic innovation and the creation of new games. Lyotard’s

endorsement of the “sublime”—the pursuit of the “unpresentable” by rebelling against restrictions, defying norms, and

smashing the limits of existing paradigms—is undermined by contradictions, however, which Iser’s explication of play recognizes

and addresses. The paradox of the unpresentable, as Lyotard acknowledges, is that it can only be manifested through a game of representation. The sublime is, consequently, in Iser’s sense, an instance of doubling. If violating norms creates new games, this crossing of boundaries depends on and carries in its wake the conventions and structures it oversteps. The sublime may be uncompromising, asocial, and unwilling to be bound by limits, but its pursuit of what is not contained in any order or system makes it dependent on the forms it opposes. The radical presumption of the

sublime is not only terroristic in refusing to recognize the claims of other games whose rules it declines to limit itself by. It is also naive and self-destructive in its impossible imagining that it can do without the others it opposes. As a structure of doubling, the sublime pursuit of the unpresentable requires a play-space that includes other, less

radical games with which it can interact. Such conditions of exchange would be provided by the nonconsensual reciprocity of Iserian play. Iser’s notion of play offers a way of conceptualizing power which acknowledges the necessity and force of disciplinary constraints without seeing them as unequivocally coercive and determining. The contradictory

combination of restriction and openness in how play deploys power is evident in Iser’s analysis of “regulatory” and

“aleatory” rules. Even the regulatory rules, which set down the conditions participants submit to in order to play a game, “permit a certain range of combinations while also establishing a code of possible play. . . . Since these rules limit the text game without producing it , they are regulatory but not prescriptive. They do no more than set the aleatory in motion,

and the aleatory rule differs from the regulatory in that it has no code of its own” (FI 273). Submitting to the discipline of regulatory restrictions is both constraining and enabling because it makes possible certain kinds of interaction that the rules cannot completely predict or prescribe in advance. Hence the existence of aleatory rules that are not codified as part of the game itself but are the variable customs, procedures, and practices for playing it. Expert facility with aleatory rules marks the difference, for example, between someone who just knows the rules of a game and another who really knows how to play it. Aleatory rules are more flexible and openended and more susceptible to

variation than regulatory rules, but they too are characterized by a contradictory combination of constraint and possibility, limitation and unpredictability,

Identity politics bad

1. They force the commodification of autobiography in exchange for the ballot- this subverts their performance by requiring outsiders become exemplary participants in the very culture they criticizeCoughlin 95 (Anne M. Coughlin, Associate Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School August, 1995, “Regulating the Self: Autobiographical Performances in Outsider Scholarship,” Virginia Law Review, 81 Va. L. Rev. 1229, Lexis)

Although Williams is quick to detect insensitivity and bigotry in remarks made by strangers, colleagues, and friends, her taste for irony fails her when it comes to reflection on her relationship with her readers and the material benefits that her autobiographical performances have earned for her.196 Perhaps Williams should be more inclined to thank, rather than reprimand, her editors for behaving as readers of autobiography invariably do. When we examine this literary faux pas-the incongruity between Williams's condemnation of her editors and the professional benefits their publication secured her-we detect yet another contradiction between the outsiders' use of autobiography and their desire to

transform culture radically. Lejeune's characterization of autobiography as a "contract" reminds us that autobiography is a lucrative commodity. In our culture, members of the reading public avidly consume personal stories,197 which surely explains why

first- rate law journals and academic presses have been eager to market outsider narratives. No matter how unruly the self that it records, an autobiographical performance transforms that self into a form of "property in a moneyed economy"198 and into a valuable intellectual asset in an academy that requires its members

to publish.199 Accordingly, we must be skeptical of the assertion that the outsiders' splendid publication record is itself sufficient evidence of the success of their endeavor.20 Certainly, publication of a best seller may transform its author's life, with the resulting commercial success and academic renown.201 As one critic of autobiography puts it, "failures do

not get pub- lished."202 While writing a successful autobiography may be momentous for the individual author, this success has a limited impact on culture. Indeed, the transformation of outsider authors into "success stories" subverts outsiders' radical intentions by constituting them as exemplary participants within contemporary culture, willing to market even themselves to literary and academic consumers.203

What good does this transformation do for outsiders who are less fortunate and less articulate than middle-

class law professors?204 Although they style themselves cultural critics, the storytellers generally do not reflect on the meaning of their own commercial success, nor ponder its entanglement with the cultural values they claim to resist. Rather, for the most part, they seem content simply to take advantage of the peculiarly American license, identified by Professor Sacvan Bercovitch, "to have your dissent and make it too."205

2. Their narrative is centered on the Western idealized notion of the self- this recreates the cultural hegemony they criticize by prioritizing the subjectivity of the performer over collective solutions for racismCoughlin 95 (Anne M. Coughlin, Associate Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School August, 1995, “Regulating the Self: Autobiographical Performances in Outsider Scholarship,” Virginia Law Review, 81 Va. L. Rev. 1229, Lexis)

IV. The Autobiographical Self The outsider narratives do not reflect on another feature of auto-biographical discourse that is perhaps the most significant obstacle to their goal to bring to law an understanding of the human self that will supersede the liberal individual. Contrary to the outsiders' claim that their personalized discourse infuses law with their distinctive experiences and political perspectives, numerous historians and critics of autobiography have insisted that those who participate in autobiographical discourse speak not in a different voice, but in a common voice that reflects their membership in a culture devoted to liberal values.206 As Sacvan Bercovitch puts it, American cultural ideals, including specifically the mythic connection between the "heroic individual . . . [and] the values of free enterprise," are "epitomized in autobiography."207 In his seminal essay on the subject, Professor Georges Gusdorf makes an observation that seems like a prescient warning to outsiders who would appropriate autobiography as their voice. He remarks that the practice of writing about one's own self reflects a belief in the autonomous individual, which is "peculiar to Western man, a concern that has been of good use in his systematic conquest of the universe and that he has communicated to men of other cultures; but those men will thereby have been annexed by a sort of intellectual colonizing to a mentality that was not their own."208 Similarly, Albert Stone, a critic of American autobiography, argues that auto-biographical performances celebrate the Western ideal of individualism, "which places the self at the center of its world."209 Stone begins to elucidate the prescriptive character of autobiographical discourse as he notes with wonder "the tenacious social ideal whose persistence is all the more significant when found repeated in personal histories of Afro-Americans, immigrants, penitentiary prisoners, and others whose claims to full individuality have often been denied by our society."'2 Precisely because it appeals to readers' fascination with the self-sufficiency, resiliency and uniqueness of the totemic individual privileged by liberal political theory, there is a risk that autobiographical discourse is a fallible, even co-opted, instrument for the social reforms envisioned by the outsiders. By affirming the myths of individual success in our culture, autobiography reproduces the political, economic, social and psychological structures that attend such success.21' In this light, the outsider autobiographies unwittingly deflect attention from collective social responsibility and thwart the development of collective solutions for the eradication of racist and sexist harms. Although we may suspect in some cases that the author's own sense of self was shaped by a community whose values oppose those of liberal individualism, her decision to register her experience in autobiographical discourse will have a significant effect on the self she reproduces.212 Her story will solicit the public's attention to the life of one individual, and it will privilege her individual desires and rights above the needs and obligations of a collectivity. Moreover, literary theorists have remarked the tendency of autobiographical discourse to override radical authorial intention. Even where the autobiographer self-consciously determines to resist liberal ideology and represents her life story as the occasion to announce an alternative political theory, "[t]he relentless individualism of the genre subordinates" her political critique.213 Inevitably, at least within American culture, the personal narrative engrosses the readers' imagination. Fascinated by the travails and triumphs of the developing autobiographical self, readers tend to construe the text's political and social observations only as another aspect of the author's personality. Paradoxically, although autobiography is the product of a culture that cultivates human individuality, the genre seems to make available only a limited number of autobiographical protagonists.214 Many theorists have noticed that when an author assumes the task of defining her own, unique subjectivity, she invariably reproduces herself as a character with whom culture already is well-acquainted.215 While a variety of forces coerce the autobiographer to conform to culturally sanctioned human models,216 the pressures

exerted by the literary market surely play a significant role. The autobiographer who desires a material benefit from her performance must adopt a persona that is intelligible, if not enticing, to her audience.217 As I will illustrate in the sections that follow, the outsider narratives capitalize on, rather than subvert, autobiographical protagonists that serve the values of liberalism.

3. Appeals to personal experience replace analysis of group oppression with personal testimony. As a result, politics becomes a policing operation—those not in an identity group are denied intellectual access and those within the group who don’t conform to the aff’s terms are excluded. Over time, this strategy LIMITS politics to ONLY the personal. This devastates structural change, and turns the case—it demands that political performance assimilate to very limited norms of experienceScott 92 (Joan Harold F. Linder Professor at the School of Social Science in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Identity” October Summer p. 16-19)

The logic of individualism has structured the approach to multiculturalism in many ways. The call for tolerance of difference is framed in terms of respect for individual characteristics and attitudes; group differences are conceived categorically and not relationally, as distinct entities rather than interconnected structures or systems created through repeated processes of the enunciation of difference. Administrators have hired psychological consulting firms to hold diversity workshops which teach that conflict resolution is a negotation between dissatisfied individuals. Disciplinary codes that punish "hate-speech" justify prohibitions in terms of the protection of individuals from abuse by other individuals, not in terms of the protection of members of historically mistreated groups from discrimination, nor in terms of the ways language is used to construct and reproduce asymmetries of power. The language of protection, moreover, is conceptualized in terms of victimization; the way to make a claim or to justify one's protest against perceived mistreatment these days is to take on the mantle of the victim. (The so-called Men's Movement is the latest comer to this scene.) Everyone--whether an insulted minority or the perpetrator of the insult who feels he is being unjustly accused- now claims to be an equal victim before the law. Here we have not only an extreme form of individualizing, but a conception of individuals without agency. There is nothing wrong, on the face of it, with teaching individuals about how to behave decently in relation to others and about how to empathize with each other's pain. The problem is that difficult analyses of how history and social standing, privilege, and subordination are involved in personal behavior entirely drop out. Chandra Mohanty puts it this way: There has been an erosion of the politics of collectivity through the reformulation of race and difference in individualistic terms. The 1960s and '70s slogan "the personal is political" has been recrafted in the 1980s as "the political is personal." In other words, all politics is collapsed into the personal, and questions of individual behaviors, attitudes, and life-styles stand in for political analysis of the social. Individual political struggles are seen as the only relevant and legitimate form of political struggle.5 Paradoxically, individuals then generalize their perceptions and claim to speak for a whole group, but the groups are also conceived as unitary and autonomous. This individualizing, personalizing conception has also been behind some of the recent identity politics of minorities; indeed it gave rise to the intolerant, doctrinaire behavior that was dubbed, initially by its

internal critics, "political correctness." It is particularly in the notion of "experience" that one sees this operating. In much current usage of "experience," references to structure and history are implied but not made explicit; instead, personal testimony of oppression replaces analysis, and this testimony comes to stand for the experience of the whole group. The fact of belonging to an identity group is taken as authority enough for one's speech; the direct experience of a group or culture-that is, membership in it-becomes the only test of true knowledge. The exclusionary implications of this are twofold: all those not of the group are denied even intellectual access to it, and those within the group whose experiences or interpretations do not conform to the established terms of identity must either suppress their views or drop out. An appeal to "experience" of this kind forecloses discussion and criticism and turns politics into a policing operation: the borders of identity are patrolled for signs of nonconformity; the test of membership in a group becomes less one's willingness to endorse certain principles and engage in specific political actions, less one's positioning in specific relationships of power, than one's ability to use the prescribed languages that are taken as signs that one is inherently "of" the group. That all of this isn't recognized as a highly political process that produces identities is troubling indeed, especially because it so closely mimics the politics of the powerful, naturalizing and deeming as discernably objective facts the prerequisites for inclusion in any group. Indeed, I would argue more generally that separatism, with its strong insistence on an exclusive relationship between group identity and access to specialized knowledge (the argument that only women can teach women's literature or only African-Americans can teach African-American history, for example), is a simultaneous refusal and imitation of the powerful in the present ideological context. At least in universities, the relationship between identity-group membership and access to specialized knowledge has been framed as an objection to the control by the disciplines of the terms that establish what counts as (important, mainstream, useful, collective) knowledge and what does not. This has had an enormously important critical impact, exposing the exclusions that have structured claims to universal or comprehensive knowledge. When one asks not only where the women or African-Americans are in the history curriculum (for example), but why they have been left out and what are the effects of their exclusion, one exposes the process by which difference is enunciated. But one of the complicated and contradictory effects of the implementation of programs in women's studies, African-American studies, Chicano studies, and now gay and lesbian studies is to totalize the identity that is the object of study, reiterating its binary opposition as minority (or subaltern) in relation to whatever is taken as majority or dominant.

4. Incorporating personal narratives into debate forces us to do violence against ourselves- vote neg to accommodate the interruption of knowability and reject the unconscious as recuperableButler 1 (Judith is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, 1 “Giving an Account of Oneself,” Diacritics 31.4 22-40, Project Muse)

But here, and for the time being, my concern is with a suspect coherence that sometimes attaches to narrative and, specifically, with the way in which narrative coherence may foreclose upon an ethical resource, namely, an acceptance of the limits of knowability in oneself and others. It may even be that to hold a person accountable for his or her life in narrative form is to require a falsification of that life in the name of a certain conception of ethics. Indeed, if we require that someone be able to tell in story form the reasons why his or her life has taken the path it has, that is, to be a coherent autobiographer, it may be that we prefer the seamlessness of the story to something we might tentatively call the truth of the person, a truth which, to a certain degree, and for reasons we have already suggested, is indicated more radically as an interruption. It may be that stories have to be interrupted, and that for interruption to take place, a story has to be underway. This brings me closer to the account of the transference I would like to offer, a transference that might be understood as a repeated ethical practice.

Indeed, if, in the name of ethics, we require that another do a certain violence to herself, and do it in front of us, offering a narrative account or, indeed, a confession, then, conversely, it may be that by permitting, sustaining, accommodating the interruption, a certain practice of nonviolence precisely follows. If violence is the act by which a subject seeks to reinstall its mastery and unity, then nonviolence may well follow from living the persistent challenge to mastery that our obligations to others require. Although some would say that to be a split subject, or a subject whose access to itself is opaque and not self-grounding, is precisely not to have the grounds for agency and the conditions for accountability, it may be

that this way in which we are, from the start, interrupted by alterity and not fully recoverable to ourselves, indicates the way in which we are, from the start, ethically implicated in the lives of others. The point here is not to celebrate a certain notion of incoherence, but only to consider that our incoherence is ineradicable but nontotalizing,

and that it establishes the way in which we are implicated, beholden, derived, constituted by what is beyond us and before us. If we say that the self must be narrated, that only the narrated self can be intelligible, survivable, then we say that we cannot survive with an unconscious. We say, in effect, that the unconscious threatens us with an insupportable unintelligibility, and for that reason we must oppose it. The "I" who makes such an utterance will surely, in one form or another, be besieged precisely by what it disavows. This stand, and it is a stand, it must

be a stand, an upright, wakeful, knowing stand, believes that it survives without the unconscious or, if it accepts an unconscious, accepts it as something which is thoroughly recuperable by the knowing "I," as a possession perhaps, believing that the unconscious can be fully and exhaustively translated into what is conscious. It is easy to see this as a defended stance, for it remains to be known in what this particular defense consists. It is, after all, the

stand that many make against psychoanalysis itself. In the language which articulates the opposition to a non-narrativizable beginning resides the fear that the absence of narrative will spell a certain threat , a threat to life, and will pose

the risk, if not the certainty, of a certain kind of death, the death of a subject who cannot, who can never, fully recuperate the conditions of its own emergence. But this death , if it is a death, is only the death of a certain kind of subject, one that was never possible to begin with, the death of a fantasy, and so a loss of what one never had. One goes to analysis, I presume, to have someone receive one's words, and this produces a quandary, since the one who might receive the words is unknown in large part, and so the one who receives becomes, in a certain way, an allegory for reception itself, for the phantasmatic relation to receiving that is articulated to, or at least in the face of, an Other. But if this is an allegory, it is not reducible to a structure of reception that would apply equally well to everyone, although it would give us the general structures within which a particular life

might be understood. We, as subjects who narrate ourselves in the first person, encounter in common something of a predicament. Since I cannot tell the story in a straight line, and I lose my thread, and I start again, and I forget something crucial, and it is to hard to think about how to weave it in, and I start thinking, thinking, there must be some conceptual thread that

will provide a narrative here, some lost link, some possibility for chronology, and the "I" becomes increasingly conceptual, increasingly awake, focused, determined, it is at this point that the thread must fall apart. The "I" who narrates finds that it cannot direct its narration, finds that it cannot give an account of its inability to narrate, why its narration breaks down, and so it comes to experience itself, or, rather, reexperience itself, as radically, if not irretrievably, unknowing about who it is. And then the "I" is no longer imparting a narrative to a receiving analyst or Other. The "I" is breaking down in certain very specific ways in front

of the Other or, to anticipate Levinas, in the face of the Other (originally I wrote, "the in face of the Other," indicating that my syntax was

already breaking down) or, indeed, by virtue of the Other's face. The "I" finds that, in the face of an Other, it is breaking down. It does not know itself, and perhaps it never will. But is that the task, to know itself, to achieve an adequate narrative account of a life? And should it be? Is the task to cover over the breakage, the rupture, which is constitutive of the "I" through a narrative means that quite forcefully binds the elements together in a narration that is enacted as if it were perfectly possible, as if the break could be mended and defensive mastery restored?

5. Their 1ac author concludes neg- the US is obviously not perfect but we’re definitely not colonialistFerraro 02 (The Ruth C. Lawson Professor of International Politics Mount Holyoke College AB, Dartmouth College; MIA, Columbia University; PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) “The Myth of Engagement: America as an Isolationist World Power” April 2002 https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/afp/myth.htm)

The United States could have chosen to exercise world power along formal imperial lines-it could have acquired colonies, and there were many opportunities for it to do so. 3 The United States did annex the Philippines, and has a very ambiguous relationship to Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and other American territories. For most of its history, however, the land and peoples that it acquired, with the exception of the indigenous nations of North America, were ultimately assimilated as fully equal participants in the American government. The deliberate choice to forgo the colonial option is a distinctive attribute of American foreign policy, and some American leaders, such as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, injected the idea of self-determination into the discourse of world politics in powerful and revolutionary ways. But the choice also made it very difficult for the United States to maintain a visible and effective presence abroad. Ultimately, the United States is obliged to maintain military bases abroad in order to exercise its power on a global scale, and there are significant problems with that approach. 4