Subjugated Knowledges Master File

In School Suspension UTNIF 2K17
Subjugated Knowleges
Subjugated Knowledges Master File
1
Index
Subjugated Knowledges Master File ................................................................................................................................................ 1

Index ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Top ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8
Good 1NC/2NC Cards .................................................................................................................................................................. 9
The Squo ................................................................................................................................................................................... 16
Links .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 17
L: Education Reform ............................................................................................................................................................. 18
L: Western Epistemology ..................................................................................................................................................... 19
L: Policy analysis ................................................................................................................................................................... 21
L: Technocratic discourse ..................................................................................................................................................... 22
L: State/Security ................................................................................................................................................................... 23
L: Science Education ............................................................................................................................................................. 25
L: Objective Reporting .......................................................................................................................................................... 26
L: Vaccines ............................................................................................................................................................................ 28
L: Agamben .......................................................................................................................................................................... 39
L: High Theory ...................................................................................................................................................................... 46
L: View from Nowhere ......................................................................................................................................................... 47
Impacts ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 49
I: Self-Hate ............................................................................................................................................................................ 50
I: Toxicity/Disposability ........................................................................................................................................................ 52
I: Imperial subjecthood/Civilizing Mission ............................................................................................................................ 55
I: White Supremacy .............................................................................................................................................................. 56
Alternatives ............................................................................................................................................................................... 58
A: Refusal ............................................................................................................................................................................. 59
A: Critical whiteness studies ................................................................................................................................................. 61
A: Third World Feminism ..................................................................................................................................................... 63
A: Storytelling/Narration ...................................................................................................................................................... 65
A: Disidentification ............................................................................................................................................................... 69
A: Counter-history ................................................................................................................................................................ 70
2nc Extensions/Answers ........................................................................................................................................................... 73
Ext: Discourse/Ideology First ................................................................................................................................................ 74
Ext: Debate/Scholarship Key ................................................................................................................................................ 77
Ext: Performance/Subjugated Knowledges Good ................................................................................................................ 83
Ext: Experts Bad ................................................................................................................................................................... 88
A2: Perm............................................................................................................................................................................... 89
A2: Science/Empirics ............................................................................................................................................................ 93
A2: Dogmatism/Monologue ................................................................................................................................................. 95
A2: Simulation/Roleplaying .................................................................................................................................................. 97
2
A2: Terrorism advantage ...................................................................................................................................................... 98

A2: Democracy Good ......................................................................................................................................................... 101
A2: Econometrics ............................................................................................................................................................... 102
A2: Realism......................................................................................................................................................................... 103
A2: Legalism good/institutional knowledge ....................................................................................................................... 105
A2: speaking for others ...................................................................................................................................................... 106
A2: State inevitable ............................................................................................................................................................ 107
A2: debate not key ............................................................................................................................................................. 108
A2: rejection does nothing ................................................................................................................................................. 109
A2: Pain Narratives Bad ...................................................................................................................................................... 110
A2: Academic Commodification ......................................................................................................................................... 111
Black Studies Specific ................................................................................................................................................................... 113
U: Anti-blackness .................................................................................................................................................................... 114
Links ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 116
L: Education ........................................................................................................................................................................ 117
L: USFG ............................................................................................................................................................................... 119
L: Reform ............................................................................................................................................................................ 120
L: Queer Theory (SP2) ........................................................................................................................................................ 121
L: Biopolitical discourse (SP3) ............................................................................................................................................. 123
L: View from Nowhere ....................................................................................................................................................... 124
Impacts ................................................................................................................................................................................... 126
I: Self-Hatred/Phenomenological Return ........................................................................................................................... 127
I: Self Actualization ............................................................................................................................................................. 129
Alternatives ............................................................................................................................................................................. 130
A: Black Studies .................................................................................................................................................................. 131
A: Black feminism ............................................................................................................................................................... 132
A: Queer of Color Critique .................................................................................................................................................. 136
A: Womanist Herstory ........................................................................................................................................................ 137
A: Sankofa .......................................................................................................................................................................... 139
2nc Extensions ........................................................................................................................................................................ 144
Ext: Mentoring ................................................................................................................................................................... 145
A2: We talked about racism ............................................................................................................................................... 146
A2: Black inclusion good..................................................................................................................................................... 147
AFF Answers ............................................................................................................................................................................ 148
Narrativization bad............................................................................................................................................................. 149
A2: Sankofa ........................................................................................................................................................................ 150
AAPI Specific ................................................................................................................................................................................ 151
Links ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 152
L: General/USFG ................................................................................................................................................................. 153
L: White Supremacy/State Model Minority..................................................................................................................... 156
L: Heg ................................................................................................................................................................................. 161
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L: Humanism ...................................................................................................................................................................... 163

L: Western Epistemology ................................................................................................................................................... 164
L: Capitalism ....................................................................................................................................................................... 166
L: STEM (SP1)...................................................................................................................................................................... 168
L: Sex Ed (SP2) .................................................................................................................................................................... 174
L: China Threat Discourse ................................................................................................................................................... 176
L: Terror Talk ...................................................................................................................................................................... 178
Impacts Model Minority....................................................................................................................................................... 180
I: Racial Disparity ................................................................................................................................................................ 181
I: White Supremacy ............................................................................................................................................................ 184
I: Kills Dissent ..................................................................................................................................................................... 188
I: School-to-Prison Pipeline ................................................................................................................................................ 191
I: Violence........................................................................................................................................................................... 195
Impacts - Orientalism .............................................................................................................................................................. 197
I: Gendered Violence .......................................................................................................................................................... 198
I: Colonial Domination/Yellow Peril ................................................................................................................................... 199
Impacts Islamophobia .......................................................................................................................................................... 201
I: Militarized Education ...................................................................................................................................................... 202
I: Genocide ......................................................................................................................................................................... 204
Alternatives ............................................................................................................................................................................. 205
A: Asian Rage ...................................................................................................................................................................... 206
A: Conscientization............................................................................................................................................................. 209
A: Toxicity ........................................................................................................................................................................... 213
Poetry/Narratives ............................................................................................................................................................... 215
2nc Extensions - Performance Solves ................................................................................................................................. 218
2NC Answers/Extensions ........................................................................................................................................................ 222
A2: Perm (Plan) .................................................................................................................................................................. 223
A2: Perm (SP3) ................................................................................................................................................................... 224
A2: Cap ............................................................................................................................................................................... 225
A2: Other positions ............................................................................................................................................................ 226
A2: But we need prisons .................................................................................................................................................... 227
Ext: Whiteness Model Minority ....................................................................................................................................... 230
Ext: Solvency - Islamophobia .............................................................................................................................................. 232
Ext: Alternative Reject Model Minority ........................................................................................................................... 234
Ext: Alternative Generic .................................................................................................................................................. 235
AFF Answers ............................................................................................................................................................................ 237
S: Cultural Norms ............................................................................................................................................................... 238
S: Islamophobia .................................................................................................................................................................. 239
Latinx Studies Specific .................................................................................................................................................................. 241
Notes ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 242
Poetry...................................................................................................................................................................................... 243
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Links ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 250

L: Sex Ed ............................................................................................................................................................................. 251
L: Economy ......................................................................................................................................................................... 253
L: War impact ..................................................................................................................................................................... 254
L: STEM............................................................................................................................................................................... 255
L: Monolingualism .............................................................................................................................................................. 257
Soft left aff link ................................................................................................................................................................... 262
Impacts ................................................................................................................................................................................... 264
I: Exclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................... 265
I: Exploitation ..................................................................................................................................................................... 268
I: Dehumanization .............................................................................................................................................................. 271
Alternatives ............................................................................................................................................................................. 272
A: Nepantala....................................................................................................................................................................... 273
A: Chicana feminist pedagogy ............................................................................................................................................ 278
A: Feminist Border Thinking ............................................................................................................................................... 284
A: Communal Struggle........................................................................................................................................................ 287
A: Epistemic Disobedience ................................................................................................................................................. 288
A: Decolonization ............................................................................................................................................................... 289
A: Decolonize America .................................................................................................................................................... 295
2nc Extensions/Answers ......................................................................................................................................................... 297
Ext: Biodiversity .................................................................................................................................................................. 298
Ext: Performance good....................................................................................................................................................... 307
Ext: Hybridity ...................................................................................................................................................................... 308
A2: White Backlash ............................................................................................................................................................ 312
Para/Disability Studies ................................................................................................................................................................. 313
Links ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 314
L: Education ........................................................................................................................................................................ 315
L: Cartesian Dualism ........................................................................................................................................................... 317
L: Critical Race Theory ........................................................................................................................................................ 319
L: Agamben ........................................................................................................................................................................ 321
L: Sex Ed (SP2) .................................................................................................................................................................... 322
L: Health discourse ............................................................................................................................................................. 324
L: Hegemony and Economy ................................................................................................................................................ 325
L: competitiveness/productivity/efficiency ........................................................................................................................ 327
L: economic efficiency ........................................................................................................................................................ 328
L: Capitalism/Jobs............................................................................................................................................................... 329
L: Animal Rights .................................................................................................................................................................. 330
L: Post-structuralism .......................................................................................................................................................... 332
L: Feminism ........................................................................................................................................................................ 333
Impacts ................................................................................................................................................................................... 334
I: Violence........................................................................................................................................................................... 335
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I: Self-Hate .......................................................................................................................................................................... 337

I: Eugenics .......................................................................................................................................................................... 338
Alternatives ............................................................................................................................................................................. 339
A: Performance/Disability Art ............................................................................................................................................ 340
A: Deconstruction .............................................................................................................................................................. 342
A: Toxicity ........................................................................................................................................................................... 343
A: Reject ............................................................................................................................................................................. 349
Ext: Performance Good ...................................................................................................................................................... 353
A2: Perm............................................................................................................................................................................. 355
A2: Special Ed Solves .......................................................................................................................................................... 356
AFF Answers ............................................................................................................................................................................ 358
Perm ................................................................................................................................................................................... 359
Alt Fails ............................................................................................................................................................................... 360
Impacts ................................................................................................................................................................................... 363
I: Disposability .................................................................................................................................................................... 364
I: Value ............................................................................................................................................................................... 366
Speed K! .................................................................................................................................................................................. 367
Queer/Gender Studies ................................................................................................................................................................. 370
Links ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 371
L: Reform-Generic .............................................................................................................................................................. 372
L: Legalism .......................................................................................................................................................................... 376
L: Queer Friendly ................................................................................................................................................................ 378
L: LGBT inclusion ................................................................................................................................................................ 379
L: Capitalism ....................................................................................................................................................................... 381
L: Utility .............................................................................................................................................................................. 383
Impacts ................................................................................................................................................................................... 385
I: Pinkwashing .................................................................................................................................................................... 386
I: Resource trade-off .......................................................................................................................................................... 388
I: Imperialism...................................................................................................................................................................... 389
I: Biopolitics ........................................................................................................................................................................ 392
I: WoT ................................................................................................................................................................................. 393
A2: Rules/FW ...................................................................................................................................................................... 395
A2: Perm............................................................................................................................................................................. 398
A2: Race Analogies ............................................................................................................................................................. 399
A2: Gay Rights Good........................................................................................................................................................... 400
A2: Identity politics bad ..................................................................................................................................................... 401
Ext: Impact Calc .................................................................................................................................................................. 402
Ext: Alt Solvency ................................................................................................................................................................. 404
Alternatives ............................................................................................................................................................................. 406
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A: Queer Negativity ............................................................................................................................................................ 407

A: Refusal ........................................................................................................................................................................... 409
A: Radical Passivity ............................................................................................................................................................. 411
A: Toxicity ........................................................................................................................................................................... 412
Aff Answers ............................................................................................................................................................................. 420
A2: Queer ........................................................................................................................................................................... 421
Perm (SP3) .......................................................................................................................................................................... 424
AFF Answers................................................................................................................................................................................. 425
A2: State Bad........................................................................................................................................................................... 426
A2: Serial policy failure ........................................................................................................................................................... 430
A2: Reform Fails ...................................................................................................................................................................... 432
A2: Identity Politics ................................................................................................................................................................. 436
Economic Rationality Good ..................................................................................................................................................... 444
Alt Fails .................................................................................................................................................................................... 446
A2: Epistemology ............................................................................................................................................................... 447
A2: White anti-racism ........................................................................................................................................................ 448
Intersectionality Bad .......................................................................................................................................................... 450
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Top
8
Good 1NC/2NC Cards

The Affirmative presents education reform as a practice of professional rigor
expertise and objectivity are used to mutate suffering into data that can be redressed
through policy. This is a dangerous scholarship that facilitates and normalizes
institutionalized violence, distances us from our ethical obligations to the here and
now and trains us in complicity with genocidal calculation
Stone-Mediatore 07 [Shari, Assoc. Prof. Philosophy @ Ohio Wesleyan University, Challenging
Academic Norms: An Epistemology for Feminist and Multicultural
Classrooms,http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nwsa_journal/v019/19.2stone-mediatore.html]
Even if objectivity is a myth, the valorization of traits associated with objectivity

can have realand dangeroushistorical
effects. In particular, an unqualified valorization of distance and detachment promotes the kind of moral
numbness that facilitates institutionalized violence. Certainly, a theorist should have some degree of distance from her
subject matter insofar as her knowledge claims should not be immediate personal reactions but well considered and publicly accountable
reflections. However, when we confuse absolute emotional and geographic distance from one's subject matter with "objectivity," we forget
that such distance is itself a social location, namely, one of isolation from social problems. As a result, when we sanctify
sheltered social standpoints as "professional distance," we privilege the voices of those who can remove
themselves from social ills while we undervalue the voices of those who experience social suffering
more directly.4 Likewise, when we valorize detachment, we overlook the qualities of the world that are
known through physical and emotional closeness. Dedicated forest defender Joan Norman indicated the importance of
knowledge gained through closeness to phenomena when she attributed her appreciation for forests to her walks in the woods with her
grandson. "You cannot [End Page 57] just read about wild places," she says, "you have to go there" (O'Shea 2005, 42). Social
critics Arundhati Roy and Paul Farmer practice a similar creed when they travel, respectively, to Adivasi communities in India and to rural Latin
America to walk among and offer support to people subjected to economic violence. Only "compassion and solidarity," says Farmer, allow a
writer to break the conditioned silence of subjugated people and to hear expressions of pain and struggle that await sympathetic ears (2003,
27).5 Ultimately, when we confuse distance and detachment with rigor, we promote, under the guise of
professional responsibility, an irresponsible inattention to living beings and a concomitant ethics of
callousness and indifference. Nazi administrators exemplified such contradictions of objectivity when
they assumed an "objective attitude" toward the death camps, attending to technicalities of mass
execution as coolly as if they were managing a bank (Arendt 1992, 69). Although ordinary academics and bureaucrats are
less directly involved in murder, our disciplined aloofness can similarly bury violence in technical abstractions
while our conscience defers to "professionalism." For instance, purportedly objective French reporters
and United Nations members refrained from taking a stand on French colonialism in Algeria, only to
model apathy in the face of colonial violence, while today's "experts, from anthropologists to international health
specialists choose to collude" with economic violence by ignoring it in the name of "neutrality" (Fanon 1963, 778;
Farmer 2003, 10, 17). "Objective" discourses facilitate this charade, as when planners of India's big dams shield themselves from
ethical questions raised by the displacement of hundreds of thousands of individuals by reducing these people to the category "Project
Affected People," or simply "PAP," a term which conveniently "mutate[s]
muscle and blood into cold statistics" (Roy 1999,
32). For Nazi bureaucrats, French colonial reporters, and contemporary analysts alike, objectivity provides a
convenient alibi for turning our back to pain and suppressing compassionate impulses that would otherwise be troubled by
violence.
The 1ACs policy analysis is grounded in an objective instrumental view of rationality

that is white supremacist, heteronormative, and cisnormative their technocratic
approach to problem solving replicates relations of domination in the status quo
Shaw 04 (Kathleen Shaw, Using Feminist Critical Policy Analysis in the Realm of Higher Education: The Case of Welfare Reform as
Gendered Educational Policy, Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 75, Issue 1,)
Feminist critical policy analysis has been most clearly articulated in the work of Catherine Marshall, whose two edited volumes both lay out the
theoretical and methodological underpinnings of this approach to policy research and also provide examples of the ways in which it can be
9
used to examine both secondary and postsecondary education (Marshall, 1997a, 1997b). Feminist critical policy analysis melds critical theory
and feminism in a way that is designed to challenge the traditional, mainstream approaches to policy analysis that have dominated policy
research for the last fifty years (Marshall, 1997a). The methods and theoretical
frameworks that dominate current
policy analysis have been developed and implemented by those in power who, particularly in the world
of policy formation and analysis, are overwhelmingly white, male, and well educated. Thus, traditional
policy research has, according to Marshall, reflected the assumptions, worldview, and values of this group. As
is the case with much mainstream research in the social sciences, traditional policy analysis can be characterized by the following elements.
Among the most important are a belief in a single concept of truth (truth with a capital "T");
the assumption that objectivity on
the part of the researcher is both achievable and desirable; the assumption that all research subjects share
the same relationship to their social environment, thereby rendering such particularities as gender,
race, social class, and sexuality unimportant; and the practice of evaluating women on the basis of male
norms (Bensimon & Marshall, 1997, p. 7-8). Since this positivist paradigm is so widely accepted in the policy world, it allows policy
analysts to assume a dispassionate, objective stance and at the same time encourages the broader policy community to
perceive the research enterprise in this way. Thus, traditional policy analysis will-fully ignores the inherently political
nature of all research, and policy research in particular. As Marshall states, "Traditional policy analysis is grounded in a
narrow, falsely objective, overly instrumental view of rationality that masks its latent biases and allows
policy elites and technocrats to present analyses and plans as neutral and objective when they are
actually tied to prevailing relations of power" (1997a, p. 3).
Simulated roleplaying as state policymakers colludes with an imperialist agenda that

distances debaters from status quo power relations
Reid-Brinkley 08 (Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley, University of Pittsburgh Department of Communications, THE HARSH REALITIES OF
ACTING BLACK: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND STYLE
2008)
Mitchell observes that the

stance of the policymaker in debate comes with a sense of detachment associated
with the spectator posture.115 In other words, its participants are able to engage in debates where they are
able to distance themselves from the events that are the subjects of debates. Debaters can throw
around terms like torture, terrorism, genocide and nuclear war without blinking. Debate simulations
can only serve to distance the debaters from real world participation in the political contexts they
debate about. As William Shanahan remarks: the topic established a relationship through interpellation that inhered irrespective of
what the particular political affinities of the debaters were. The relationship was both political and ethical, and needed to be debated as such.
When we blithely call for United States Federal Government policymaking, we are not immune to the
colonialist legacy that establishes our place on this continent. We cannot wish away the horrific atrocities perpetrated
everyday in our name simply by refusing to acknowledge these implications (emphasis in original).116 118 The objective stance of
the policymaker is an impersonal or imperialist persona. The policymaker relies upon acceptable
forms of evidence, engaging in logical discussion, producing rational thoughts. As Shanahan, and the Louisville debaters note, such a
stance is integrally linked to the normative, historical and contemporary practices of power that
produce and maintain varying networks of oppression. In other words, the discursive practices of policy-
oriented debate are developed within, through and from systems of power and privilege. Thus, these
practices are critically implicated in the maintenance of hegemony. So, rather than seeing themselves as government
or state actors, Jones and Green choose to perform themselves in dBiebate, violating the more objective stance of the policymaker and
require their opponents to do the same.
The alternative is to refuse the promise project of empire in order to produce

alternative solidarities and resistances
Agathangelou, et al 08 [Anna M., Associate Professor, York University, Postcolonial theory,
Feminist Political Economy, STS and Decolonial justice movements, M. Daniel Bassichis, and Tamara L.
Spira, Assistant Professor of Queer Studies in Fairhaven College and the American Cultural Studies
Department at Western Washington University. Intimate Investments: Homonormativity, Global
Lockdown, and the Seductions of Empire. Winter 2008. Pg. 137-139]
10
Global lockdown thus functions as one of the looming underbellies and conditions of possibility of the (un)freedoms and (non)futures being
promised by neo-liberal empire. Consigning the collective traumas of slavery and colonization to a remote and
irrelevant past while drawing on their logics to instantiate its rule, global lockdown shows itself to be
neither cruel and unusual nor exceptional, but rather as foundational. Importantly, these (un)freedoms and
(non)futures carry very different promises and pleasures depending on our relationship to the human
surplus motor-ing the global political economy. Global lockdown, then, is not simply the newest outside, but quite literally
the material redefining off what life can even mean in the wake of so much necessary death. We have thus far argued that across
diffuse spaces and moments the homonormative turn, the neoliberalization of the economy, the war
on terror, and global lockdown we see different dimensions of a promise project, which is also a project
forever seeking to (re)consolidate empire. On the one hand, there are those for whom subjectivity,
capital, and satiating pleasures and rights are being forever promised. This occurs, we argue, at the
expense of compliance with, or perhaps distraction from, the larger structural underpinnings of social relations
and processes. On the other hand, there are the (non)subjects for whom the same promise has not
been issued, the abject(s) whose lives and deaths are completely nonspectacular within the dominant
imaginations. Adding to this contradiction is the dimension that even the promises themselves are tenuous: indeed, as elite queers
privilege homonormativity over more radical political and economic praxes, neoconservative forces continue to criminalize queerness. While
first and foremost queers outside this elite or national racial strata are produced as exterminable sodomites, the category of the abject and
killable always threatens even elite queers in first world spaces. This is part of the politico-economic and affective logics that have fueled a
frenzied search for an end to pain: continue imperial soldiering in exchange for a mirage of security, or spend your energies fighting other
queers for a prized space as most radical. With such a paucity of choices, our
energies are directed away from building
solidarities and exhausted by fixing on individualized solutions and fueling the (re)production of
neoliberal, neoconservative, homonormative, and ultimately heteronormative worlds. If the neoliberal
turn has been part of a larger strategy of counterinsurgency mobilized in the wake of revolutionary
decolonization movements threatening capitalism, (hetero)sexism, and white supremacy, it is
important to pause on some of the impacts of that (counter)mobilization. In this paper we have worked to
foreground the affective logics that function on the level of feeling and desire in the service of a
neoliberal project of a world remade. To begin to articulate the ways in which our most intimate
sensibilities our fears, desires, mourning, and yearning are being mobilized by a regime of global lockdown is to
make urgent the production of solidarities not premised upon exploitation, profit, or death. For those
engaged in movements dismantling the prison industrial complex and any form of imperial violence, it is precisely
these affective economies to which we must be attentive. If we do not work to articulate the ways in
which we become libidinally and erotically invested in the status quo of mass lockdown in effect, the various
promises that the prison issueswe run the risk of reproducing the racialized and sexualized economies of
benevolence and exploitation that fortify so much of conservative, liberal, and even radical praxis. However, as we
have sought to argue, the price of such dismissals is nothing less than participation in imperial violence that,
ultimately, impacts us all. Amidst the many affective callings and seductive offerings we are issued, we
must continue the work of imagining alternative ways to feel, be, and love in this moment of intensified
empire-building. To become completely drawn into challenging homonormativization without attention to the larger structural
underpinnings of social relations and processes may ultimately prove unproductive as it misses the larger imperial logics that may be
embodied differentially in other sites. Moreover, it becomes impossible to discern the relationship between our own struggles and the set of
promises and nonpromises offered to other others. Foreclosing
potential and increasingly crucial solidarities, we are
drawn into our own corners and ultimately diverted from the possibilities of massive, cross-bordered
mobilizations, movements and revolutionary projects. In the place of this vision, we offer first and
foremost a disruption of complicity, a refusal of empires promise project. The series of wars in which
empire asks us to participate are utterly genocidal, rather than constituting processes that enable our
security and healing. As members of different and overlapping communities and struggles, the authors have each grappled personally
with this process. As activists and intellectuals who are engaged in struggles around war, migration and traficking, labor and homelessness,
mass imprisonment, and state violence against queer and transgender communities, we are confronted with the seductive yet ultimately
murderous promises that are described in this essay. Moreover, as members of the academy at different levels
(undergraduate student, graduate student, and faculty member), we have witnessed how the strategies of promise and
11
nonpromise projects have worked to fragment, divide, and conquer people of color, working-class
people, queers, transgender people, postcolonial subjects, and others within powerful academic zones
of knowledge production. Recognizing that we can never be outside empires seductive offerings, we
engage these questions out of rage, hope, and the desire to form life-sustaining solidarities and
intimacies. We strive with others toward a politics that enables intimacies as both means and ends, as a
strategy of movement-building in which relationships are formed not to instantiate empires incessant
production of internal and external enemies, but to disrupt it. This is a politics that would challenge
histories that dichotomize and fragment our worlds, and instead offer praxes of erotic resistance in
which we might be able to glimpse a breathing space for reconstituting connections and relations based
in collectivity and healing. With this analysis in mind, all attempts to separate and make discrete struggles for social justice and
transformation those working for prison abolition, sexual and gender freedom, decolonization, and the end to war, for example prove
unsuccessful. They are always already imbricated in one another. When
one struggles to resist coercive sexual or gender regimes
heternormativization as well as homonormativization one is already engaging in a politics deeply implicated
in the wars on terror, poverty, and drugs, and in the (neo)slaveries of the prison industrial complex. This is true not only
because of the devastating impacts these wars have had on queer communities and sexually aberrant (non)subjects locked away, and because
of the ways in which a racializing sodomoti cation is drawn on to produce the criminal and the terrorist. Indeed, the
violence and
death that we authorize and face operate through and within our libidinal, erotic, and affective
investments, investments that we must engage directly and rigorously if we are to disrupt the seductive
workings of power in their most intimate dimensions. If, then, all queer politics are already organizing around and
implicated in the buildup of global lockdown and imperialist war, the question is not if a praxis of decolonization and abolitionism is pertinent
to queer struggles, but how and why it is. If
it is true that our deepest desires, feelings, and arousals are tapped
into for imperial production, it also becomes crucial to ask how we might organize, mobilize, and form
alternative intimacies and desires. These alternatives, which continue to be nurtured in radical and
revolutionary movements and collectivities, are forged as a disruption to individualized, consumptive,
and privatized erotics in the name of broader collective projects of freedom and transformation that
cultivate the pleasures of substantial connection and the production of more egalitarian relations.
These are the intimacies that form the core of decolonizing imaginaries, those that understand sexual
freedom only through collective self-determination. It is only when we engage the traumas as well as
the yearnings of our pasts and our futures that we might be able to seize the possibilities increasingly
foreclosed by empires seductive promises.
To continue to silence black and colonized voices on this topic is to sustain the
narrative of an official history which is rooted in a White and anti-black
epistemology. Our criticism is a break with the sanctioned ignorance that produces
domination.
Medina 11 [Jose, Prof. Philosophy @ Vanderbilt, Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology of Resistance:
Counter-Memory, Epistemic Friction, and Guerilla Pluralism, Foucault Studies no. 12, p. 29-32]
The second crucial idea that derives from the Foucaultian approach is that there
is no such thing as epistemic innocence, for
we always operate from a space of knowability and unknowability simultaneously, from a
knowledge/ignorance frame-work. And this problematizes the notion of culpable ignorance. On the one hand, as Code remarks,
there is no such thing as an innocent position from which we could level charges of culpability.65 Therefore, as Code insists, in dealing with
the epistemic aspects of particular forms of oppression, we should be very careful not to indulge in the nave charge of epistemic culpability
they should have known better for very often subjects could not have known otherwise and, therefore, the charge of culpability is vacuous.
On the other hand, however, interstices within dis-cursive practices as well as alternative practices are often available; and they present
opportunities for epistemic resistance, for challenging knowledge/ignorance structures. Genealogical investigations can be used to point out
how these subjugated knowledges could have been used, how people could have known otherwise by drawing on them, how they could have
become able to undo epistemic exclusions and stigmatizations. Hence the insurrectionary power of subjugated knowledges, which
genealogical investigations try to mobilize. As Sullivan puts it, echoing Foucault: The
creation of ignorance/knowledge
through relations of force often is unbalanced and unequal, as is the case in colonized lands. But as a dynamic,
relational process, it involves the active participation of all sides and includes the possibility of resistance to and transformation of the forms
12
of ignorance/knowledge produced.66 A Foucaultian guerrilla

pluralism enables us to see how different possibilities of
resistance appear for differently constituted and situated subjects as they develop different forms of
agency with respect to power/knowledge, or rather, power/know-ledge-ignorance. Let me briefly sketch, by way of a
conclusion, how this insurrectionary genealogical pluralism can be put to use against ideologies of racial
oppression and the forms of white ignorance that they produce. In my application of the Foucaultian approach to
white ignorance, we can appreciate the two points high-lighted by Codes Foucaultian standpoint theory in the context of the epistemology of
race: the co-constitutive relations between racial knowledge and racial ignorance, and the unavailability of innocent racialized standpoints.
What a Foucaultian racial epistemology of power/knowledge-ignorance underscores is the constant epistemic struggles that take place in
racialized social fields, calling attention to possibilities of resistance and contestation. In what follows I will compare and contrast Foucaults
guerrilla pluralism applied to racial knowledge/ignorance with one of the most influential accounts in race theory: namely, Charles Millss
racial epistemology of ignorance. In his now classic The Racial Contract Charles Mills (1997)67 put white ignorance in the agenda of critical race
theory. Following a long tradition in African-American philosophy, Mills argued there that privileged white
subjects have become unable to understand the world that they themselves have created; and he
called attention to the cognitive dysfunctions and pathologies inscribed in the white world, not merely
as side-effects, but as constitutive features of the white epistemic economy, which revolves around
epistemic exclusions and a carefully cultivated racial blindness. As Mills suggests, white ignorance is a form of self-ignorance, but this
racial self-ignorance also produces blindness with respect to racial others and their experiences. As Code aptly puts it, the white
epistemic gaze produces an ongoing ignorance of its own positionality vis--vis people variously Othered.68 In his
recent work Mills has developed a critical epistemology of ignorance whichI want to suggestoverlaps with Foucaultian insurrectionary
genealogies in interesting ways. In White Ignorance (2007) Mills
emphasizes the role that official histories and hegemonic
forms of collective memory play in sustaining white ignorance, and also the crucial role that counter-memory needs to play to
resist and subvert the epistemic oppression that condemns the lives of marginalized people to silence or oblivion. As Mills puts it, a crucial
element in white ignorance is the management of memory, which involves socially orchestrated, exclusionary processes of both
remembering and for-getting: if we need to understand collective memory, we also need to understand collective amnesia.69 Mills
emphasizes that there is an intimate relationship be-tween white identity, white memory, and white amnesia, especially about nonwhite
victims.70 But fortunately we have both official and counter-memory, with con-flicting judgments about what is important in the past and
what is unimportant, what happened and does matter, what happened and does not matter, and what did not happen at all.71 Mills argues
that the postbellum
national white reconciliation was made possible and was subsequently maintained
thanks to the repudiation of an
alternative black memory.72 There have been all kinds of mechanisms in white epistemic practices that have
contributed to maintain this repudiation in place: blocking black subjectivities from giving testimony,
keeping black testimonywhen givenout of circulation,73 exercising an epistemic assumption against
its credibility, etc. In multiple venues of epistemic interaction in the white world, from the streets of
white suburbs to the lecture halls of the academy, black voices have been traditionally minimized and
heavily constrained in their ability to speak about their own experiences,74 when they have been
allowed to speak at all (think, for example, of how witnesses of lynching were terrorized into silence until not too long ago). Black
counter-testimony against white mythology has always existed but would originally have been handicapped by the lack of material and
cultural capital investment available for its production.75 The
black counter-memories that Mills describes as getting
systematically disqualified and whited out certainly count as subjugated knowledges in a Foucaultian sense. And
Foucaultian genealogical investigations that tap into those sub-jugated knowledges could produce the kind of subversion and insurrection that
Mills calls for: White
ignorance has been able to flourish all of these years because a white epistemology of
ignorance has safeguarded it against the dangers of an illuminating blackness or redness, protecting
those who for racial reasons have needed not to know. Only by starting to break these rules and meta-
rules can we begin the long process that will lead to the eventual overcoming of this white darkness
and the achievement of an enlightenment that is genuinely multiracial.76
13
The Affirmatives propositional knowledge production is the hallmark of Western

Imperialism that imposes regulatory and epistemic violence on illegible bodies our
alternative is a form of fugitive communication that excavates the agency of the
disqualified subaltern and disrupts the view from nowhere of the 1AC
Conquergood 02 [Dwight, Prof. Communication & Performance Studies @ Northwestern,
Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research, TDR 46. 2 Summer, pp. 145-]
But de Certeaus aphorism, what the map cuts up, the story cuts across, also points to transgressive travel between two different domains of
knowledge: one official, objective, and abstractthe map; the other one practical, embodied, and popularthe story. This promiscuous
traffic between different ways of knowing carries the most radical promise of performance studies research. Performance studies
struggles to open the space between analysis and action, and to pull the pin on the binary opposition
between theory and practice. This embrace of different ways of knowing is radical because it cuts to the
root of how knowledge is organized in the academy. The dominant way of knowing in the academy is
that of empirical observation and critical analysis from a distanced perspective: knowing that, and
knowing about. This is a view from above the object of inquiry: knowledge that is anchored in paradigm and secured in print. This
propositional knowledge is shadowed by another way of knowing that is grounded in active, intimate,
hands-on participation and personal connection: knowing how, and knowing who. This is a view from
ground level, in the thick of things. This is knowledge that is anchored in practice and circulated within a
performance community, but is ephemeral. Donna Haraway locates this homely and vulnerable view from a
body in contrast to the abstract and authoritative view from above, universal knowledge that
pretends to transcend location (1991:196). Since the enlightenment project of modernity, the first way of knowing has
been preeminent. Marching under the banner of science and reason, it has disqualified and repressed other
ways of knowing that are rooted in embodied experience, orality, and local contingencies. Between objective
knowledge that is consolidated in texts, and local know-how that circulates on the ground within a community of memory and practice, there
is no contest. It
is the choice between science and old wives tales (note how the disqualified knowledge
is gendered as feminine). Michel Foucault coined the term subjugated knowledges to include all the
local, regional, vernacular, native knowledges at the bottom of the hierarchy the low Other of science
(1980:8184). These are the nonserious ways of knowing that dominant culture neglects, excludes,
represses, or simply fails to recognize. Subjugated knowledges have been erased because they are
illegible; they exist, by and large, as active bodies of meaning, outside of books, eluding the forces of
inscription that would make them legible, and thereby legitimate (see de Certeau 1998; Scott 1998). What gets
squeezed out by this epistemic violence is the whole realm of complex, finely nuanced meaning that is
embodied, tacit, intoned, gestured, improvised, coexperienced, covertand all the more deeply meaningful because of its refusal to be
spelled out. Dominant epistemologies that link knowing with seeing are not attuned to meanings that are masked,
camouflaged, indirect, embedded, or hidden in context. The visual/verbal bias of Western regimes of knowledge blinds researchers to
meanings that are expressed forcefully through intonation, silence, body tension, arched eyebrows, blank
stares, and other protective arts of disguise and secrecywhat de Certeau called the elocutionary
experience of a fugitive communication (2000:133; see Conquergood 2000). Subordinate people do not have the
privilege of explicitness, the luxury of transparency, the presumptive norm of clear and direct communication,
free and open debate on a level playing field that the privileged classes take for granted. In his critique of
the limitations of literacy, Kenneth Burke argued that print-based scholarship has built-in blind spots and a conditioned deafness: The [written]
record is usually but a fragment of the expression (as the written word omits all telltale record of gesture and tonality; and not only may our
literacy keep us from missing the omissions, it may blunt us to the appreciation of tone and gesture, so that even when we witness the full
expression, we note only those aspects of it that can be written down). ( [1950] 1969:185) In even stronger terms, Raymond Williams
challenged the class-based arrogance of scriptocentrism, pointing to the error and delusion of highly educated people who are so
driven in on their reading that they fail to notice that there are other forms of skilled, intelligent, creative activity such as theatre and
active politics. This error resembles that of the narrow reformer who supposes that farm labourers and village craftsmen were once
uneducated, merely because they could not read. He argued that the contempt for performance and practical activity, which is always
latent in the highly literate, is a mark of the observers limits, not those of the activities themselves ([1958] 1983:309). Williams critiqued
scholars for limiting their sources to written materials; I agree with Burke that scholarship is so skewed toward texts that even when
researchers do attend to extralinguistic human action and embodied events they construe them as texts to be read. According to de Certeau,
this scriptocentrism is a hallmark of Western imperialism. Posted above the gates of modernity, this sign:
14
Here only what is written is understood. Such is the internal law of that which has constituted itself
as Western [and white] (1984:161). Only middle-class academics could blithely assume that all the world is a text because
reading and writing are central to their everyday lives and occupational security. For many people throughout the world,
however, particularly subaltern groups, texts are often inaccessible, or threatening, charged with the
regulatory powers of the state. More often than not, subordinate people experience texts and the
bureaucracy of literacy as instruments of control and displacement, e.g., green cards, passports, arrest
warrants, deportation orderswhat de Certeau calls intextuation: Every power, including the power of law, is
written first of all on the backs of its subjects (1984:140). Among the most oppressed people in the United States today are
the undocumented immigrants, the so-called illegal aliens, known in the vernacular as the people sin
papeles, the people without papers, indocumentado/as. They are illegal because they are not legible, they
trouble the writing machine of the law (de Certeau 1984:141). The hegemony of textualism needs to be
exposed and undermined. Transcription is not a transparent or politically innocent model for
conceptualizing or engaging the world. The root metaphor of the text underpins the supremacy of Western knowledge systems
by erasing the vast realm of human knowledge and meaningful action that is unlettered, a history of the tacit
and the habitual ( Jackson 2000:29). In their multivolume historical ethnography of colonialism/ evangelism in South Africa, John and
Jean Comaroff pay careful attention to the way Tswana people argued with their white interlocutors both verbally
and nonverbally (1997:47; see also 1991). They excavate spaces of agency and struggle from everyday
performance practicesclothing, gardening, healing, trading, worshipping, architecture, and
homemakingto reveal an impressive repertoire of conscious, creative, critical, contrapuntal responses
to the imperialist project that exceeded the verbal. The Comaroffs intervene in an academically fashionable textual
fundamentalism and fetish of the (verbal) archive where texta sad proxy for lifebecomes all (1992:26). In this day and age, they ask,
do we still have to remind ourselves that many of the players on any historical stage cannot speak at all? Or, under greater or lesser duress,
opt not to do so (1997:48; see also Scott 1990)?
15
The Squo
The educational system in the status quo discriminates its poor students mentally and
economically. This creates the perception of uselessness to these discriminated
students, leading to lack of determination from students.
Kozol 17 [Jonathan, Savage Inequalities, 7/5/17]
Nonetheless, says the report, "the perception that the poorest districts are beyond help still remains.
..." Perhaps the worst result of such beliefs, says the report, is the message that resources would be
"wasted on poor children." This message "trickles down to districts, schools, and classrooms." Children
hear and understand this themethey are poor investmentsand behave accordingly. If society's
resources would be wasted on their destinies, perhaps their own determination would be wasted too.
"Expectations are a powerful force . . . ," the CSS observes. Despite the evidence, the CSS report leans
over back-wards not to fuel the flames of racial indignation. "In the present climate," the report says,
"suggestions of racism must be made with caution. However, it is inescapable that these inequities are
being perpetrated on [school] districts which are virtually all black and Hispanic. .. ." While the report
says, very carefully, that there is no "evidence" of "deliberate individual discrimination," it nonetheless
concludes that "those who allocate resources make decisions over and over again which penalize the
poorest districts." Analysis of city policy, the study says, "speaks to systemic bias which constitutes a
conspiracy of effect.... Whether consciously or not, the system writes off its poorest students."
16
Links
17
L: Education Reform
The Affirmative presents education reform as a practice of professional rigor
expertise and objectivity are used to mutate suffering into data that can be redressed
through policy. This is a dangerous scholarship that facilitates and normalizes
institutionalized violence, distances us from our ethical obligations to the here and
now and trains us in complicity with genocidal calculation
Even if objectivity is a myth, the valorization of traits associated with objectivity

can have realand dangeroushistorical
effects. In particular, an unqualified valorization of distance and detachment promotes the kind of moral
numbness that facilitates institutionalized violence. Certainly, a theorist should have some degree of distance from her
subject matter insofar as her knowledge claims should not be immediate personal reactions but well considered and publicly accountable
reflections. However, when we confuse absolute emotional and geographic distance from one's subject matter with "objectivity," we forget
that such distance is itself a social location, namely, one of isolation from social problems. As a result, when we sanctify
sheltered social standpoints as "professional distance," we privilege the voices of those who can remove
themselves from social ills while we undervalue the voices of those who experience social suffering
more directly.4 Likewise, when we valorize detachment, we overlook the qualities of the world that are
known through physical and emotional closeness. Dedicated forest defender Joan Norman indicated the importance of
knowledge gained through closeness to phenomena when she attributed her appreciation for forests to her walks in the woods with her
grandson. "You cannot [End Page 57] just read about wild places," she says, "you have to go there" (O'Shea 2005, 42). Social
critics Arundhati Roy and Paul Farmer practice a similar creed when they travel, respectively, to Adivasi communities in India and to rural Latin
America to walk among and offer support to people subjected to economic violence. Only "compassion and solidarity," says Farmer, allow a
writer to break the conditioned silence of subjugated people and to hear expressions of pain and struggle that await sympathetic ears (2003,
27).5 Ultimately, when we confuse distance and detachment with rigor, we promote, under the guise of
professional responsibility, an irresponsible inattention to living beings and a concomitant ethics of
callousness and indifference. Nazi administrators exemplified such contradictions of objectivity when
they assumed an "objective attitude" toward the death camps, attending to technicalities of mass
execution as coolly as if they were managing a bank (Arendt 1992, 69). Although ordinary academics and bureaucrats are
less directly involved in murder, our disciplined aloofness can similarly bury violence in technical abstractions
while our conscience defers to "professionalism." For instance, purportedly objective French reporters
and United Nations members refrained from taking a stand on French colonialism in Algeria, only to
model apathy in the face of colonial violence, while today's "experts, from anthropologists to international health
specialists choose to collude" with economic violence by ignoring it in the name of "neutrality" (Fanon 1963, 778;
Farmer 2003, 10, 17). "Objective" discourses facilitate this charade, as when planners of India's big dams shield themselves from
ethical questions raised by the displacement of hundreds of thousands of individuals by reducing these people to the category "Project
Affected People," or simply "PAP," a term which conveniently "mutate[s]
muscle and blood into cold statistics" (Roy 1999,
32). For Nazi bureaucrats, French colonial reporters, and contemporary analysts alike, objectivity provides a
convenient alibi for turning our back to pain and suppressing compassionate impulses that would otherwise be troubled by
violence.
18
L: Western Epistemology
Western thought cant achieve universality and excludes acknowledgement of the
subaltern
Grosfoguel, Ramn, University of California, Berkeley, Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and
Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality 2011
TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, School of
Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts, UC Merced http://escholarship.org/uc/item/21k6t3fq
The first point to discuss is the contribution of racial/ethnic and feminist subaltern perspectives
to epistemological questions. The hegemonic Eurocentric paradigms that have informed
western philosophy and sciences in the modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system
(Grosfoguel 2005; 2006b) for the last 500 hundred years assume a universalistic, neutral, objective point of
view. Chicana and black feminist scholars (Moraga and Anzalda 1983; Collins 1990) as well as Third World scholars inside and
outside the United States (Dussel 1977) reminded us that we always speak from a particular location in the power structures.
Nobody escapes the class, sexual, gender, spiritual, linguistic, geographical, and racial
hierarchies of the modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system. As feminist scholar Donna
Haraway (1988) states, our knowledges are always situated. Black feminist scholars called this perspective afro-centric
epistemology (Collins 1990) (which is not equivalent to the afrocentrist perspective) while Latin American Philosopher of
Liberation Enrique Dussel called it geopolitics of knowledge (Dussel 1977) and, following Fanon (1967) and Anzalda (1987), I will
use the term bodypolitics of knowledge. This is not only a question about social values in knowledge production or the fact that
our knowledge is always partial. The
main point here is the locus of enunciation, that is, the geo-political
and body-political location of the subject that speaks. In Western philosophy and sciences the
subject that speaks is always hidden, concealed, erased from the analysis. The ego-politics of
knowledge of Western philosophy has always privilege the myth of a non-situated Ego.
Ethnic/racial/gender/sexual epistemic location and the subject that speaks are always
decoupled. By delinking ethnic/racial/gender/sexual epistemic location from the subject that speaks, Western philosophy and
sciences are able to produce a myth about a Truthful universal knowledge that covers up, that is, conceals who is speaking as well
as the geo-political and body-political epistemic location in the structures of colonial power/knowledge from which the subject
speaks. It
is important here to distinguish the epistemic location from the social location. The
fact that one is socially located in the oppressed side of power relations does not automatically
mean that he/she is epistemically thinking from a subaltern epistemic location. Precisely, the success
of the modern/colonial worldsystem consists in making subjects that are socially located in the oppressed side of the colonial
difference, to think epistemically like the ones on the dominant positions. Subaltern epistemic perspectives are knowledge coming
from below that produces a critical perspective of hegemonic knowledge in the power relations involved. I am not claiming an
epistemic populism where knowledge produced from below is automatically an epistemic subaltern knowledge. What I am claiming
is that all knowledges
are epistemically located in the dominant or the subaltern side of the power
relations and that this is related to the geo- and body-politics of knowledge. The disembodied
and unlocated neutrality and objectivity of the ego-politics of knowledge is a Western myth. Ren
Descartes, the founder of Modern Western Philosophy, inaugurates a new moment in the history of Western thought. He replaces
God, as the foundation of knowledge in the Theo-politics of knowledge of the European Middle Ages, with (Western) Man as the
foundation of knowledge in European Modern times. All the attributes of God are now extrapolated to (Western) Man. Universal
Truth beyond time and space privileges access to the laws of the Universe, and the capacity to produce scientific knowledge and
theory is now placed in the mind of Western Man. The Cartesian Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) is the foundation of
modern Western sciences. By producing a dualism between mind and body and between mind and nature, Descartes was able to
claim non-situated, universal, Godeyed view knowledge. This is what the Colombian philosopher Santiago CastroGmez called the
point zero perspective of Eurocentric philosophies (Castro-Gmez 2003). The point zero is the point of view that hides and
conceals itself as being beyond a particular point of view, that is, the point of view that represents itself as being without a point of
view. It is this god-eye view that always hides its local and particular perspective under an abstract universalism. Western
philosophy privileges ego politics of knowledge over the geopolitics of knowledge and the
body-politics of knowledge. Historically, this has allowed Western man (the gendered term is
intentionally used here) to represent his knowledge as the only one capable of achieving a
universal consciousness, and to dismiss non-Western knowledge as particularistic and, thus,
unable to achieve universality. This epistemic strategy has been crucial for Western global designs. By hiding the
location of the subject of enunciation, European/Euro-American colonial expansion and domination was
able to construct a hierarchy of superior and inferior knowledge and, thus, of superior and
inferior people around the world. We went from the sixteenth century characterization of people without writing to
19
the eighteenth and nineteenth-century characterization of people without history, to the twentieth-century characterization of
people without development and more recently, to the early twenty-first-century of people without democracy. We went from
the sixteenth-century rights of people (Seplveda versus de las Casas debate in the University of Salamanca in the mid-sixteenth
century), to the eighteenthcentury rights of man (Enlightenment philosophers), and to the late twentiethcentury human rights.
All of these are part of global designs articulated to the simultaneous production and reproduction of an international division of
labor of core/periphery that overlaps with the global racial/ethnic hierarchy of Europeans/non-Europeans. However, as Enrique
Dussel (1994) has reminded us, the Cartesian Cogito ergo sum was preceded by 150 years (since the beginnings of the European
colonial expansion in 1492) of the European ego conquistus (I conquer, therefore I am). The social, economic, political and
historical conditions of possibility for a subject to assume the arrogance of becoming God-like and put himself as the foundation of
all Truthful knowledge was the Imperial Being, that is, the subjectivity of those who are at the center of the world because they
have already conquered it. What are the decolonial implications of this epistemological critique to our knowledge production and
to our concept of world-system?
20
L: Policy analysis
The 1ACs policy analysis is grounded in an objective instrumental view of rationality
that is white supremacist, heteronormative, and cisnormative their technocratic
approach to problem solving replicates relations of domination in the status quo
Shaw 04 [Kathleen, Assoc. Prof. Urban Edu. @ Temple, Using Feminist Critical Policy Analysis in the
Realm of Higher Education: The Case of Welfare Reform as Gendered Educational Policy, Journal of
Higher Education, Vol. 75, Issue 1]
Feminist critical policy analysis has been most clearly articulated in the work of Catherine Marshall, whose two edited volumes both lay out the
theoretical and methodological underpinnings of this approach to policy research and also provide examples of the ways in which it can be
used to examine both secondary and postsecondary education (Marshall, 1997a, 1997b). Feminist critical policy analysis melds critical theory
and feminism in a way that is designed to challenge the traditional, mainstream approaches to policy analysis that have dominated policy
research for the last fifty years (Marshall, 1997a). The methods and theoretical frameworks that dominate current
policy analysis have been developed and implemented by those in power who, particularly in the world of policy
formation and analysis, are overwhelmingly white, male, and well educated. Thus, traditional policy research
has, according to Marshall, reflected the assumptions, worldview, and values of this group. As is the case with much
mainstream research in the social sciences, traditional policy analysis can be characterized by the following elements.
Among the most important are a belief in a single concept of truth (truth with a capital "T"); the assumption that
objectivity on the part of the researcher is both achievable and desirable; the assumption that all
research subjects share the same relationship to their social environment, thereby rendering such
particularities as gender, race, social class, and sexuality unimportant; and the practice of evaluating women on the
basis of male norms (Bensimon & Marshall, 1997, p. 7-8). Since this positivist paradigm is so widely accepted in the policy world, it
allows policy analysts to assume a dispassionate, objective stance and at the same time encourages the
broader policy community to perceive the research enterprise in this way. Thus, traditional policy analysis will-
fully ignores the inherently political nature of all research, and policy research in particular. As Marshall
states, "Traditional policy analysis is grounded in a narrow, falsely objective, overly instrumental view of
rationality that masks its latent biases and allows policy elites and technocrats to present analyses and
plans as neutral and objective when they are actually tied to prevailing relations of power" (1997a, p. 3).
21
L: Technocratic discourse
Technocratic discourse erases human implications of violent policy and dismisses on
the ground dissent
Similarly,
due to the cultural contingency of what counts as the "center," authors from culturally
dominant groups tend to seem neutral while writers whose identities deviate from the culturally
constituted norm are considered biased.10 Like my colleagues, some of my students have unwittingly attested
to this skewed character of "neutrality." When asked to compare two well-respected but quite different
histories of U.S.-Latin American relationsone a standard college textbook that focuses on the
concerns of U.S. policymakers and the other Galeano's extensively documented indictment of U.S.
imperialismseveral students responded that "Galeano is biased because he is Latin American." The same
students did not attribute any bias to the other book's two authors, despite their North American education and identities. [End Page 60] No
Personal Experience Objectivity is also stacked against women and marginalized groups insofar as it demands
an abstraction from personal experience and restriction to generalized and public-sphere analysis. Texts
with such a focus may appear perspective-free, but they tend to reflect the perspective of people who
have greater access to public institutions and who relate to the world through abstract analysis. At the
same time, they overlook the perspective of those whose knowledge is based on direct experience,
who endure the harms of public policies in their private lives, and who, when they protest such harms,
are denied access to the public arena and can express their resistance only through "unofficial"
channels, such as community speak-outs, hunger strikes, or even suicide.11 When we mystify abstract
discourses as objective, we not only privilege the detached standpoints of scholars and technocrats but
also insulate their standpoints from critical feedback. For when abstract accounts of the social world are
treated as reality, people who are positioned to test abstract theory against everyday experience, such as
nurses, mothers, social workers, and research assistants, must fit the world they experience into received categories,
with the result that "[e]verything going on in the everyday settings . . . that does not fit the prescribed
frameworks of reporting is left unsaid" (Smith 1990, 100). Moreover, when the institutions that determine the "prescribed
frameworks of reporting" regularly neglect the human costs of social policies, on the one hand, and the social causes of human ailments, on
the other, social
suffering and its systemic causes tend to be the "unsaid."12 The mystification of abstract,
depersonalized analysis likewise allows scholars who use detached technical discourses to appear
dignified and "self-confident" while writers who turn to more engaged and creative, nontechnical language to
recover "unsaid" human aspects of the social world tend to have their work dismissed as
"unprofessional" or even "an injury to human dignity" (Cohen 2003, 65; Marx 1997, 280, emphasis in original). For
instance, World Bank economists David Dollar and Aart Kraay convey authority, in part, by virtue of their
distance from the social processes they study and their reduction of the latter to abstract public indices. Granted, statements
such as, "[t]he aggregate annual per capita growth rate of the globalizing group accelerated steadily from one percent in the 1960s to five
percent in the 1990s" can offer relevant information about countries that have joined the global economy (Dollar and Kraay 2002, 121);
however, whenwe mistake such technocratic statements for objective truth, we obscure the diverse and
contested human implications of the global economy for specific communities, while we allow people
who try to express those human meanings to be summarily dismissedas Roy was, when the Supreme Court
charged her with "pollut[ing] the [End Page 61] stream of justice," upon her attempt to express some of the human costs of India's "economic
growth" (Roy 2001b, 97).
22
L: State/Security
The 1AC s attempt to securitize against their impacts recreates the carceral logic that
governs our prisons, placing the population in a perpetual state of terror
Rodrguez 5 (Dylan) is Professor of the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside. He received his
Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2001), and earned
two B.A. degrees and a Concentration degree from Cornell University (1995). Prof. Rodrguez is the
author of two books: Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime
(University of Minnesota Press, 2006) and Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the
Filipino Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). Prof. Rodrguez was nationally recognized by
Diverse as an Emerging Scholar of 2006, and has been a Ford Foundation Predoctoral and Postdoctoral
Fellow
In the early 1960s, a meeting of social scientists and prison wardens was convened by the then director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
James V. Bennett. The main speaker for the convention was Dr
Edward Schein, a social scientist. He presented his
theories on brainwashing and the application of such techniques to modify behaviour within the
prison population. Amongst the many techniques suggested by Dr Schein were the following: physically
remove the prisoner to an area sufficiently isolated in order to break or seriously weaken close
emotional ties; segregate all natural leaders; prohibit group activities that do not fit brainwashing
objectives; systematic withholding of mail; create a feeling amongst the isolated group of
prisoners that they have been abandoned by and totally isolated from the community; undermine
all emotional supports; preclude access to literature which does not aid in the brainwashing
process. Director Bennett urged the conveners to experiment with Dr Scheins theories within their respective institutions. Beyond
the stereotypic conceptualisation of the US prison as an insular, alienated institution residing at the
edge of civil society, it is the set of relations entangled in the practice of imprisonment that
foregrounds the prison as a mode of social organisation. This particular embodiment of state power resonates through
the unique enactment of punitive carcerality. Importantly, it is this articulation between punishment and incarceration discrete terms often
conflated in popular, academic, and state discourses that constructs and naturalises the practice of imprisonment. Imprisoned activist D.A.
Sheldon ruptures this articulation, speaking to the embodied relations that condition and reproduce a structure of dehumanisation: The first
and main objective of prison administrators is to maintain emotional, mental and physical suppression by systematically dehuman- ising
prisoners. The intimidation factor plays a large role in the attempt to break the will and independent thinking of the incarcerated, by making
that person susceptible to suggestions that she or he is less than human unless they conform to the prisoncrats idea of an inmate. This
involves the use of disciplinary sanctions, whereby every action taken by us, no matter how simple or
ridiculous, is regulated under some institutional rule or policy. Once violated, severe punishment is usually handed
out without a bit of remorse. This is done so we will become pliant and submit to every whimsical command of guards, staff and administrators
no matter how perverted or criminal-directed. This is common practice at Iowa State Penitentiary, where over half the prison population is in
some form of lock-up status. This puts the fear of God into the hearts of those prisoners out in the general population, who have become
scared to challenge the brutal conditions here at what I call the warehouse, because they dont want to get trapped into long-term isolation.
(emphasis added) Punitive carcerality thus enacts as social allegory, communicating ideas, commitments,
borders, and limits through a stunning ritual of dehumanisation people (non-prisoners) are to
learn from, take pleasure in, become obsessed with the spectacle of state authority in its moments of
inscription. Prisoners, trapped in a dialectic of survival and spirit-breaking, are interpellated if not destroyed by the relations materialised
on them as inmates. The brilliance of Sheldons critique is its deconstructive depiction of state punishment as drab routine, invented through
and situated in a coercive, multi-dimensional set of relationships between the designated human stand-ins for the state (hence the
producers of state power) and those deemed non-people. Inmate, as a philosophical construction of embodied state power (guards,
wardens, parole officials) stands for a form of non-existence for Sheldon, the breaking of the prisoners spirit entails the death of the human
(the repression or absence of will and independent thinking) and the production of a life-in-terror (living under the fear of God). the
23
regime of state terror which, in a perverse moral turn, forms the baseline for the security of civil society.
Security the structure of feeling that fabricates safety amidst imminent danger necessitates pre-
emptive and aggressive state violence in order to fortify civilisation at the boundary of lawlessness
and racialised savagery. The permanent missions of peace-keeping, law-and-order, and policing
constantly remind us that this frontier persists as it mutates in the movement of dangerous and
unruly bodies, which require containment, repression, discipline, punishment, and extermination.
American prisons constitute an outside in US political life. In fact, our society displays waves of concentric outside
circles with increasing distances from bourgeois self-policing. The state routinely polices the unassimilable in the literal hell of lockdown,
deprivation tanks, control units, and holes for political prisoners.
24
L: Science Education
Science education operates according to a colorblind ideology that makes it
inaccessible to otherized people
Aguilar-Valdez et al 13 [Jean R. Aguilar-Valdez Carlos A. LpezLeiva Deborah Roberts-Harris
Diane Torres-Velsquez Gilberto Lobo Carol Westby, Cultural Studies of Science Education, Ciencia
en Nepantla: the journey of Nepantler@s in science learning and teaching, 2013, 824]
Recent science education research has pointed out that teachers

from dominant backgrounds may have difficulty in
understanding or being aware of what diverse learners bring to the classroom; a fact that makes them feel
unprepared to meet the needs of students from non-dominant cultures (NRC 2007). This situation relates to the
fact that teacher preparation programs often do not target teacher beliefs on multicultural issues (Bryan and Atwater 2002). These
circumstances create the conditions where science education becomes an assimilative system that may
either marginalize culturally and linguistically diverse students away from the science field or may
abruptly force them to transition from their otherized views of science to the dominant, Westernized
ways of doing, talking, and knowing science (NRC 2007). These hegemonic structures influence language
discrimination of non-dominant languages (Barwell 2003) and place deficit perspectives on students
cultural, ethnic, class, and native identities that bestows upon them a racialized experience of learning
science (Martin 2007).
25
L: Objective Reporting
The AFFs apparent objective reporting requires rhetorically concealing the ideological
investments that extend and justify imperialism and progress narraives
A particularly deceptive mark of "objectivity" is the seeming absence of rhetoric. As narrative theorists
have argued, any coherent account of the world employs rhetorical work, including the work of dividing
phenomena into discrete "units of content," qualifying such units through metaphor and relating the
units together within a narrative frame. If a text appears to be rhetoric-free, this is only because certain
rhetorical techniques conceal the author's hand while the narrative units, metaphors, and other
discursive devices employed are so customary and so consonant with dominant worldviews that they
appear to be mere reporting.14 Micklethwait and Wooldridge, for instance, promise in their preface to "disappear" from the book
so that "the subject, the arguments" can speak "by themselves" (2000, viii); however, the arguments do not really form "by
themselves" but merely appear to do so, in part, because the authors use rhetorical constructs common in
the dominant culture. For instance, the authors refer to the current transnational economic order as "globalization," a
seemingly uncontroversial term that accords with the evening news and with other scholars (including Bhagwati and Dollar and
Kraay); however, the term conflates the general ideal of a global exchange of ideas and resources with current
corporate-dominated trade and lending institutions that promote export-oriented, capital-intensive
industry and restrict the ability of local communities to regulate corporations.15 Their slippery use of
"globalization" allows the authors to sanctify prevailing economic institutions as "globalization" and to dismiss
critics of these institutions (most of whom are against the undemocratic nature of current institutions, not global relations per se16 )
as "antiglobalists." Micklethwait and Wooldridge also refer to "waves of globalization," another term that hardly raises
eyebrows but that, in fact, is a metaphor. This metaphor presents current neoliberal institutions,
including the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and neoliberal trade
agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as if these were an effect of anonymous
processes that flow naturally into place. It thereby obscures the social and political interests that have
promoted these institutions as well as the often violent suppression of popular unrest needed to
maintain them.17 Nonetheless, unlike Marx's vivid metaphor of "vampire capitalism" and Galeano's controversial
image of Latin America's "open veins," the authors' term "waves of globalization" hardly disturbs their text's neutral
appearance, for the comparison of historical processes to "waves" has become standard in our culture. It derives from the
deeply ingrained Enlightenment paradigm [End Page 63] of "progress," which presents history as if it
consisted of discrete nations riding flows of time that advance naturally, like waves in an ocean, toward their
destination in Western liberal institutions. The authors' "wave" metaphor and implicit "progress" paradigm play
into ruling ideologies not only by naturalizing socio-historical processes but also by projecting a
supposedly universal historical aim in terms of which to measure a nation's maturity level. This projected
"end of history" dovetails with racism to provide a convenient ideological tool for imperialists, from
British colonialists to current promoters of foreign-led "development," for it allows them to rationalize
intervention in communities deemed "backward."18 This paradigm forms the backdrop, for instance, of Micklethwait's and
Wooldridge's claim that statistics on African poverty and violence constitute evidence of "the backwardness of some countries" (2000, 256). In
presenting the figures as evidence of African
nations' "backwardness," the authors (not unlike the French psychiatrists cited by Fanon)
presuppose that "backwardness" is an internal property of discrete nationalities whose group character can
be reduced to statistical indices and located on a universal historical stream. The same paradigm
enables the authors to call economically marginalized people "nonstarters," a metaphor that suggests
unproductive people who have failed to catch the waves of history (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2000, 256).
Continuing likewise, the authors claim that the entire African continent is resistant to historical advancement. "It is difficult to see," they say,
"how [the poverty and violence in Africa] is likely to change, given the continent's neglect of education and penchant for incompetent
26
governments" (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2000, 256).19 Anyone familiar with African history knows that African
science and
culture had, in fact, "started" quite well on their own prior to European interventions while
contemporary African poverty is not innate to the continent's "penchant" for incompetency but is structured, rather, by
transnational processes, including the same colonial and neocolonial processes which have subtended Europe's
"progress."20 Micklethwait and Wooldridge can allege to "disappear" from their text, even as they make outrageous claims
about African "backwardness," only because their claims accord with a discourse of progress so ingrained in
our culture that their racist rhetoric passes unnoticed.
27
L: Vaccines
America uses western medicine in a systematic oppression of people of color
Erin Blakemore 16, 8-25-2016, "The Little-Known History of the Forced Sterilization of Native American
Women," JSTOR Daily, https://daily.jstor.org/the-little-known-history-of-the-forced-sterilization-of-
native-american-women/
Two fifteen-year-old Native American women went into the hospital for tonsillectomies and came out with tubal ligations. Another Native
American woman requested a womb transplant, only to reveal that she had been told that was an option after her uterus had been removed
against her will. Cheyenne women had their Fallopian tubes severed, sometimes after being told that they could be untied again. For
many, Americas history of brutal experimentation on people of color is perhaps best summed up by
the Tuskegee Experiment, in which doctors let African-American men suffer from syphilis over a period
of 40 years. But another medical outrage is less well-known. Jane Lawrence documents the forced
sterilization of thousands of Native American women by the Indian Health Service in the 1960s and
1970sprocedures thought to have been performed on one out of every four Native American women
at the time, against their knowledge or consent. Both the IHS and its dark history of forced sterilization
were the result of longstanding, often ham-fisted attempts to address American Indians health care needs, writes Lawrence. Medical services
were part of U.S. agreements with sovereign tribes from as early as 1832, when a treaty with the Ho-Chunk, then often called the Winnebago,
included the services of a physician in exchange for land in what is now Wisconsin. With the arrival of the Progressive Era, health interventions
became even more of a priority and the Department of the Interior and later the newly-formed Indian Health Service devoted resources to
education and medical care for American Indians on reservations. The
results of forced sterilization performed by the
Indian Health Service in the 60s and 70s are still felt within tribes today. Though the IHS did deliver
better health care, it operated under historical assumptions that native people and people of color
were morally, mentally, and socially defective long after it was founded in 1955. Some of [the IHS doctors] did
not believe that American Indian and other minority women had the intelligence to use other methods of birth control effectively and that
there were already too many minority individuals causing problems in the nation, writes Lawrence. Assisted by government assumptions that
high Native American birth rates should be stemmed, and bolstered by lax law enforcement and inaccurate descriptions of medical procedures
provided to women who thought they were being treated for things like appendicitis, a rash of forced sterilizations began in the 1960s. Even
after legislation designed to protect women from forced sterilization was passed in 1974, the abusive sterilizations continued. Between 1970
and 1976 alone,
between 25 and 50 percent of Native American women were sterilized. The results are still
felt within tribes today. Lawrence documents everything from divorce to depression, but writes that perhaps the most dramatic effect
to Native Americans at large was tribes loss of political power due to their dwindling numbers. Combined with the forced assimilation of
Native American children of earlier generations in compulsory boarding schools and modern-day failures of social services to place Native
American children in foster care with Native parents in accordance to modern child welfare laws, the forced sterilization of Native American
women is another page in the long book of abuse wrought upon Native peoples by the United States. The
experiences of Native
women who were sterilized against their will are much like those of other women of color, like the
African-American women who were sterilized under North Carolina laws until the early 1970s. But that
doesnt mean its any less outrageousor that Native women are necessarily safer now. Sterilization
abuse has not been reported recently on the scale that occurred during the 1970s, writes Lawrence,
but the possibility still exists for it to occur. It will take oversight and care by both community members and members of the
public to preserve the health and welfare of Native communities in the future, but nothing can ever make up for the outrages perpetrated on
them in the name of health.
US vaccinations are built on local experimentation the aff logic of vaccinations

good justifies the suffering of prisoners and people of color today that violence is
shifted to the third world and races deemed not as important as Aamericans
Stobbe 11 (Mike, writer for Associated Press, Ugly Past of U.S. Human Experiments Uncovered,
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41811750/ns/health-health_care/t/ugly-past-us-human-experiments-
uncovered/#.WV07GNPysdU, 2/27/11)//MNW
A federally funded study begun in 1942 injected experimental flu vaccine in male patients at a state
insane asylum in Ypsilanti, Mich., then exposed them to flu several months later. It was co-authored by
Dr. Jonas Salk, who a decade later would become famous as inventor of the polio vaccine. Some of the men
28
weren't able to describe their symptoms, raising serious questions about how well they understood what was being done to them. One
newspaper account mentioned the test subjects were "senile and debilitated." Then it quickly moved on to the promising results. In
federally funded studies in the 1940s, noted researcher Dr. W. Paul Havens Jr. exposed men to hepatitis
in a series of experiments, including one using patients from mental institutions in Middletown and Norwich,
Conn. Havens, a World Health Organization expert on viral diseases, was one of the first scientists to differentiate types of hepatitis and their
causes. A search of various news archives found no mention of the mental patients study, which made eight healthy men ill but broke no new
ground in understanding the disease. Researchers
in the mid-1940s studied the transmission of a deadly stomach
bug by having young men swallow unfiltered stool suspension. The study was conducted at the New York State
Vocational Institution, a reformatory prison in West Coxsackie. The point was to see how well the disease spread that way as compared to
spraying the germs and having test subjects breathe it. Swallowing it was a more effective way to spread the disease, the researchers
concluded. The study doesn't explain if the men were rewarded for this awful task. A University of Minnesota study in the late 1940s injected
11 public service employee volunteers with malaria, then starved them for five days. Some were also subjected to hard labor, and those men
lost an average of 14 pounds. They were treated for malarial fevers with quinine sulfate. One of the authors was Ancel Keys, a noted dietary
scientist who developed K-rations for the military and the Mediterranean diet for the public. But a search of various news archives found no
mention of the study. For
a study in 1957, when the Asian flu pandemic was spreading, federal researchers
sprayed the virus in the noses of 23 inmates at Patuxent prison in Jessup, Md., to compare their
reactions to those of 32 virus-exposed inmates who had been given a new vaccine. Government
researchers in the 1950s tried to infect about two dozen volunteering prison inmates with gonorrhea
using two different methods in an experiment at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. The bacteria was
pumped directly into the urinary tract through the penis, according to their paper. The men quickly developed
the disease, but the researchers noted this method wasn't comparable to how men normally got infected by having sex with an infected
partner. The men were later treated with antibiotics. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, but there
was no mention of it in various news archives. Though people in the studies were usually described as volunteers, historians and ethicists have
questioned how well these people understood what was to be done to them and why, or whether they were coerced. Victims for science
Prisoners have long been victimized for the sake of science. In 1915, the U.S. government's Dr. Joseph Goldberger today remembered as a
public health hero recruited Mississippi inmates to go on special rations to prove his theory that the painful illness pellagra was caused by a
dietary deficiency. (The men were offered pardons for their participation.) But studies using prisoners were uncommon in the first few
decades of the 20th century, and usually performed by researchers considered eccentric even by the standards of the day. One was Dr. L.L.
Stanley, resident physician at San Quentin prison in California, who around 1920 attempted to treat older, "devitalized men" by implanting in
them testicles from livestock and from recently executed convicts. Newspapers wrote about Stanley's experiments, but the lack of outrage is
striking. "Enter San Quentin penitentiary in the role of the Fountain of Youth an institution where the years are made to roll back for men of
failing mentality and vitality and where the spring is restored to the step, wit to the brain, vigor to the muscles and ambition to the spirit. All
this has been done, is being done ... by a surgeon with a scalpel," began one rosy report published in November 1919 in The Washington Post.
Around the time of World War II, prisoners were enlisted to help the war effort by taking part in studies that could help the troops. For
example, a series of malaria studies at Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois and two other prisons was designed to test antimalarial drugs that
could help soldiers fighting in the Pacific. It was at about this time that prosecution of Nazi doctors in 1947 led to the "Nuremberg Code," a set
of international rules to protect human test subjects. Many U.S. doctors essentially ignored them, arguing that they applied to Nazi atrocities
not to American medicine. The late 1940s and 1950s saw huge growth in the U.S. pharmaceutical and health care industries, accompanied
by a boom in prisoner experiments funded by both the government and corporations. By the 1960s, at least half the states allowed prisoners
to be used as medical guinea pigs. But two studies in the 1960s proved to be turning points in the public's attitude toward the way test
subjects were treated. The first came to light in 1963. Researchers injected cancer cells into 19 old and debilitated patients at a Jewish Chronic
Disease Hospital in the New York borough of Brooklyn to see if their bodies would reject them. The hospital director said the patients were not
told they were being injected with cancer cells because there was no need the cells were deemed harmless. But the experiment upset a
lawyer named William Hyman who sat on the hospital's board of directors. The state investigated, and the hospital ultimately said any such
experiments would require the patient's written consent. At
nearby Staten Island, from 1963 to 1966, a controversial
medical study was conducted at the Willowbrook State School for children with mental retardation. The
children were intentionally given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured with
gamma globulin. Those two studies along with the Tuskegee experiment revealed in 1972 proved to be a "holy trinity" that sparked
extensive and critical media coverage and public disgust, said Susan Reverby, the Wellesley College historian who first discovered records of
the syphilis study in Guatemala. 'My back is on fire!' By the early 1970s, even experiments involving prisoners were considered scandalous. In
widely covered congressional hearings in 1973, pharmaceutical industry officials acknowledged they were using prisoners for testing because
they were cheaper than chimpanzees. Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia made extensive use of inmates for medical experiments. Some of the
victims are still around to talk about it. Edward "Yusef" Anthony, featured in a book about the studies, says he agreed to have a layer of skin
peeled off his back, which was coated with searing chemicals to test a drug. He did that for money to buy cigarettes in prison. "I said 'Oh my
God, my back is on fire! Take this ... off me!'" Anthony said in an interview with The Associated Press, as he recalled the beginning of weeks of
intense itching and agonizing pain. The government responded with reforms. Among them: The U.S. Bureau of Prisons in the mid-1970s
effectively excluded all research by drug companies and other outside agencies within federal prisons. As
the supply of prisoners
and mental patients dried up, researchers looked to other countries. It made sense. Clinical trials could
be done more cheaply and with fewer rules. And it was easy to find patients who were taking no medication, a factor that can
29
complicate tests of other drugs. Additional sets of ethical guidelines have been enacted, and few believe that another Guatemala study could
happen today. "It's not that we're out infecting anybody with things," Caplan said. Still, in the last 15 years, two international studies sparked
outrage. One was likened to Tuskegee. U.S.-funded doctors failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-
infected pregnant women in a study in Uganda even though it would have protected their newborns.
U.S. health officials argued the study would answer questions about AZT's use in the developing world.
The other study, by Pfizer Inc., gave an antibiotic named Trovan to children with meningitis in Nigeria,
although there were doubts about its effectiveness for that disease. Critics blamed the experiment for
the deaths of 11 children and the disabling of scores of others. Pfizer settled a lawsuit with Nigerian
officials for $75 million but admitted no wrongdoing. Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services' inspector general reported that between 40 and 65 percent of clinical studies of
federally regulated medical products were done in other countries in 2008, and that proportion
probably has grown. The report also noted that U.S. regulators inspected fewer than 1 percent of
foreign clinical trial sites. Monitoring research is complicated, and rules that are too rigid could slow new drug development. But it's
often hard to get information on international trials, sometimes because of missing records and a paucity of audits, said Dr. Kevin Schulman, a
Duke University professor of medicine who has written on the ethics of international studies.
Vaccinations and Western Medicine reinforce imperialism over developing countries,

or those whom they deem uncivilized, and as another way for the countries to
assert their dominance over them. Reject the affirmative because they perpetuate
this imperialism over the poor, and whomever the USFG deems uncivilized, and are
more likely to vaccinate those they seem to be worthy.
Miller, 2015 (The Shifts of Colonialism and Imperialism in India due to Smallpox,
Washington State University, Heidi Miller is a doctor in Washington at Edmonds
Veterinary Hospital)
The key factor for the expansion and the shifts of imperial control through India before the 1900s was
due to smallpox, which affected military and political judgments and decisions. The goal of containing
smallpox in India prompted British health officials to advocate for greater imperial control in India in
the 1860s. Smallpox disqualified beliefs of equality between India and other countries which in turn made India a target for imperialism by
the greater powers. Smallpox also caused wars for colonial power. One such war was the Quarantine Wars.
Finally when the smallpox vaccine was developed, this gave power to the countries that developed the
vaccine, not those who used it. The affects that smallpox had on colonialism and imperialism began in
the 1700s. In the 17th Century in general smallpox displayed that the Imperial powers could use the
disease as a way to assert themselves over non-imperial countries, like India. British health officials stated that
smallpox had been around since the beginning of the Christian era in the 7th Century. They gave the reason for the epidemic
was because of the difference between the civilized and uncivilized.[1] From their point of view the
reason why India was suffering from the epidemic of smallpox was because they were
uncivilized. Britain used the thoughts about why the epidemic was caused as a justification to try and further their control and power in
India. In 1767, the people of India and those traveling through received or heard of a smallpox vaccine. India performed inoculations on people
who traveled through India or those traveling across India. The driving reason for this was because other countries feared traveling through
and being infected with the disease. Inoculation in India was performed by a person being pierced in their arm with a metal instrument that
had smallpox matter on it from the previous years inoculation. This technique had backing from Dr. J.Z. Holwell who had confirmed success,
but this inoculation only reached a small portion of the population, so it did not have a large enough impact.[2] The success was heard about,
but it did not reach enough people, so many still died off smallpox. This was only the beginning of the power that smallpox displayed in India.
In 1803 to 1807 smallpox played a role in the inequality between India and powerful countries around the world. A doctor named Xavier de
Balmis from Spain, had found/created a vaccine that was proven to have worked. His vaccine did not receive backing, support, or much
recognition until he had treated King Carlos IV daughters, and then multiple others in Spain. He delivered the vaccine to Spanish colonies in
North America and South America by way of ship. But this proven vaccine that was delivered to multiple other locations that were away from
Spain never reached India, this was because the passage to India from Spain was too far so deemed unfit.[3] Because of this many people who
could have had their lives spared died because the passage to India could not be made while the passage to North and South America could be
made. A reason for the passage not occurring was also the fact that India was controlled more by Britain than by Spain. In the years of 1853
and 1857 Britain displayed their colonial rule over India, India also faced more issues concerning the availability of the smallpox vaccine, along
with the Quarantine Wars. In 1853, Great Britain was the first to receive that smallpox vaccine and the second
30
to receive the vaccine were colonial governments and those with similar power. India and other none
colonial countries had to wait because they were deemed to be less important.[4] Great Britain and
similarly empowered countries occupied the believe that they were more civilized and colonial than
other countries like India, so that gave them the right to have first access to a vaccine that they were
not in demanding need of. This is an example of how Britain affected imperialism and colonialism in
India before the 1900s. The year of 1857 brought about more struggles for India concerning the smallpox vaccine. A man wrote to the London
Times about the smallpox vaccine. The letter to the editor of the London Times from the Superintendent of Vaccine of the Agra and Meerat
Department, explained the differences of where the vaccine was created who was to be given to the vaccine and to which populations
infected with smallpox had broken out in 1864.[5] An article was put out by the British Parliament that there were those who thought that
the vaccine was given only to the civilized areas of India.[6] Which was coincide with where the vaccine was distributed in India and how only
a select few of the towns or cities received the needed vaccine.
The London Times article author, R. Pringle, wrote about
how in the sacred cities, the important cities in India, that there were no recorded deaths by the
smallpox disease because everyone populating those cities had received the vaccinations, but in the
less known or less popular cities or towns in India, there were cases of smallpox which either led to
death or those infected having to travel to receive the cure.[7] This is a great display of how Britain only
gave to those they thought were their equals or under their power, this was because they were
showing why it was a good thing to be under their power, while their motivation was to spread their
territory and power. As Robert Pringle traveled India and other places in the world he realized that the smallpox vaccine and the
control efforts over the smallpox disease were selectively chosen to help certain areas of India based on the governments plans and
activities.[8] This meant that if the government was planning on aligning with Britain, housing British citizens, or planning to be a trade area
then they would receive the vaccine. In 1857 the Quarantine Wars also took place. With this war there were laws put into place to force
people to be in quarantine if they had smallpox so that they would not contaminate anyone else. This could be done by choice or by force.[9]
The reason behind the forced or voluntary quarantine was to protect everyone else around those who were infected or thought to have the
disease. The reason given to the people who were put into quarantine was that people were detained for the good of themselves.[10] In
the years spanning from 1871 to 1884 India faced even more colonial and imperial control exerted over them in the form of inequality, the
thoughts about why smallpox was occurring, and even more trouble with the smallpox vaccine. Imperial control in the form of inequality was
unitized against India in 1871. In a different letter to the London Times the writer of the article wrote about how if one chose to compare the
deaths by smallpox in Punjab, India, population of 18,000,000, and the number of deaths by smallpox in England, population of 21,000,000,
the higher number of deaths occurs in Punjab. In Punjab there was 20,000 deaths a year compared to Englands 5,000 deaths a year caused by
the smallpox disease.[11] This showcases how imperial powers such as Britain had access to the better medical supplies so in turn had fewer
deaths. It was the common thought of those who resided in Punjab, the ones who had been disfigured or altered in some way by smallpox,
that Europeans had an immunity to the smallpox disease and the side effects caused by the disease occur because their immunity.[12]
Evidence that supported these thoughts was given in a statement given by the British Parliament,
stating that the reason that India and all of its countries are effected by smallpox was because they are
uncivilized especially when compared to the civilized European countries.[13]This supported the
beliefs of those in Punjab because the way that the British Parliament explained it made it sound that
because European countries were civilized they had immunity to smallpox, and since India was
uncivilized they had no immunity and were to have their appearance changed. Six years later in 1877
even more imperial control was exerted over India by Britain their British health officials. The British
health officials believed that the reason for the outbreak and spread of fevers and Smallpox was
because of Indias defective drainage of water and contamination, along with their water supply being
impure. Because of those issues in India it gave Britain even more evidence to support their common
believe about India being uncivilized.[14] The health officials were suggesting that if India would take care of their towns and
cities in their country by fixing the drains and water supplies then they could possibly become more civilized which could lessen the effects
of Smallpox. The 1880s brought back the continued colonial control over the smallpox vaccine. The vaccine was sent out to certain parts of
India and the world other than the imperial countries and their colonies, even though the places the vaccine were sent were not imperial
countries, they were places chosen because they were wanted to be conquered, the Imperial countries wanted to colonize
them for themselves, so they thought to bribe the with the vaccine. These new chosen/desired regions
received the vaccine through missionaries, bureaucrats, and military personal sent to them to help
them colonize.[15] They were sent with missionaries, bureaucrats, and military personal because they
held power and authority so they could force along with bribing the region to listen to them and be
colonized. By the 1800s smallpox was also the first disease to be able to be prevented, by the means of vaccination. This gave evidence to
the ability to stop and contain the spread of smallpox, but imperial countries used the vaccine to bargain and get their way instead of just
distributing the vaccine. In 1881 India was once again confronted by the imperial control of Britain. When India did receive the vaccine, which
was needed, it was given first and mainly distributed to the parts of India that were ruled or under the control of Great Britain. This meant
Cashmere, a city in India, did not receive the vaccine and the whole city was said to be completely demolished by the smallpox epidemic by Dr.
Neve.[16] Britain and the people who lived in Britain had thoughts on why smallpox began to spread its way into Britain. A British education
physician L.H.J. Maclean made a statement that said the reason for smallpox being present in Britain was because of the new relationship that
31
Britain had with India. They thought India was the reason to have been spread, the thought was that India was not cultured enough so
therefore brought and spread disease.[17] Yet again, the thoughts of inequality between the two countries. The final year of this span, 1884,
brought to light the widespread beliefs of why smallpox occurred. In India it was widely thought that the reason for the smallpox epidemic was
because there was a goddess who delivered the disease, and this goddess could not be turned away or hindered in any way, which in turn
meant there was no way to avoid smallpox. India was not the only country that thought that smallpox was brought on by something or
someone, Britain had similar beliefs, and Christians thought that it was sent from God as punishment for sins.[18] These thoughts differed
from the common thought of civilized versus uncivilized that had been circulated. The final years before the 1900s, 1894 and on, carried
with it more issues with vaccine availability, inequality, and thoughts as to the origins of the smallpox disease. In the years of 1894-1895 the
number of vaccine once again distributed was shown to the public. The information showed that in 1890 the number of vaccines given out in
India was 55,394 but the number of deaths was 989,169, which is almost 18 times more deaths than vaccines. Although between 1894 and
1895 there were 6,869,271 successful vaccines delivered to the population. There was a Compulsory Vaccination Law that the government put
into place. But the officials still put up barriers for those who needed the vaccine, they had to pass through a set of qualifications set by the
government.[19] The qualifications were in place so that the government could still discriminate against certain people and deny them the
vaccine. Changes occurred in the 1890s, but not enough to stop the inequality that India faced. Such as, the number of deaths in India was
very high, which was because there was no law or there were loop holes around the law requiring vaccination. Or the fact that there was no
vaccination available to the people, this caused thousands of deaths that could have been prevented.[20] Smallpox
was the 19th
Centurys model for a contagious drug. This was because it clearly defined and showed which countries
were infected with smallpox and which countries were not, along with showing the populations inside
the countries that were affected.[21] And by showing clearly those lines it gave imperial powers the
advantage of which countries would be weak so that they could assert their colonial power over them.
The thoughts as to where the smallpox disease originated also surfaced during this time, in the 19th Century it was the common thought was
that the smallpox disease spreading around the world was brought on and originated from the Orient or the Far East which included
India.[22] Even the origins of the disease were placed on India which proved to some that India was not
fit to be qualified as civilized so they did not deserve the same things that the civilized countries did.
If the British government or any other government of power would have delivered the smallpox vaccine
to the whole of India instead of just their colonies or the upper areas of India then thousands of lives
would have been saved. Because of the smallpox epidemic, Britain and other imperial countries, like
Spain, used this as an excuse to further their power and rule by colonizing more areas and setting India
as uncivilized and therefore not good enough.
Focus on single issue solutions and vaccinations is used to make more productive
workers and consumer markets re-inforces cultural racism
Waitzkin and Jasso-Aguilar 15 (Howard, and Rebecca, Imperialisms Health Component,
Monthly Review Volume 67, Issue 03 (July-August) 2015
https://monthlyreview.org/2015/07/01/imperialisms-health-component/)//MNW
Medicine and public health have played important roles in imperialism. With the emergence of the United States as
an imperial power in the early twentieth century, interlinkages between imperialism, public health, and health
institutions were forged through several key mediating institutions. Philanthropic organizations sought to use public
health initiatives to address several challenges faced by expanding capitalist enterprises: labor productivity, safety for investors and managers,
and the costs of care. From modest origins, international financial institutions and trade agreements eventually morphed into a massive
structure of trade rules that have exerted profound effects on public health and health services worldwide. International health organizations
have collaborated with corporate interests to protect commerce and trade. In this article we clarify the connections among these mediating
institutions and imperialism. Imperialism and Health Although it is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon, imperialism in simple
terms refers to an expansion of economic activitiesespecially investment, sales, extraction of raw materials, and use of
labor to produce commodities and servicesbeyond national boundaries, as well as the social, political, and economic effects of this
expansion. Empire yields many advantages for economically dominant nations. For centuries, imperialism included military conquest and the
maintenance of colonies under direct political control. The decline of colonialism in the twentieth century, however, led to the emergence of
political and economic neocolonialism, by which poor countries provided similar advantages to richer countries as they had done under the
earlier, more formal versions of colonialism. One fundamental characteristic of capitalist imperialism involves the
extraction of raw materials and human capital, which move from the global South to economically dominant countries in the North.
In the global South, underdevelopment of health follows inevitably from this depletion of natural and human resources.1 Under
imperialist relationships, such extraction of wealth limits poorer countries abilities to construct
effective health systems. These countries also face a net loss of health workers who migrate to
economically dominant nations after expensive training at home. A cheap labor force also becomes an
advantage for multinational corporations. The efficiency of labor became an important goal of public health programs
sponsored abroad by philanthropies closely tied to expanding industries in the United States. The Rockefeller Foundations
32
activities in public health, for instance, sought improved health conditions, especially control of
infectious diseases, as a way to enhance the productivity of labor.2 Population-control programs
initiated by the United States and other dominant countries also fostered more reliable participation by
women in the labor force. Through public health initiatives, a healthier, more predictable, and more
productive labor force could enhance the fortunes of corporations seeking to expand in the global
South. Another thrust of imperialism has involved the creation of new markets for products, including
medical products, manufactured in dominant nations and sold throughout the rest of the world. This process, enhancing the accumulation of
capital by multinational corporations, has appeared nowhere more clearly than in pharmaceutical and medical equipment industries.3 The
monopolistic character of these industries, as well as the stultifying impact that imported technology has exerted on local research and
development, has led to advocacy for nationalized drug and equipment formularies in the global South, with varying success. Such advocacy
also has provided a framework for resistance to trade rules that protect patents and therefore enhance the financial interests of
pharmaceutical and equipment corporations that operate in such countries. Imperialism has reinforced international class relations, and
medicine has contributed to this phenomenon. As in the United States, medical professionals in the global South most often come from
higher-income families; even when they do not, they frequently view medicine as a route of upward mobility. As a result, medical
professionals tend to ally themselves with the capitalist classthe national bourgeoisiewithin these countries. They also frequently
support cooperative links between the local capitalist class and business interests in economically dominant countries.4 The class position of
health professionals has led them to resist social change that would threaten the current class structure, either nationally or internationally.5
Even after the decline of formal colonialism, imperialism frequently has involved military conquest in addition to economic domination.
Despite its benign profile, medicine has contributed to the military efforts of European countries and the United States. For instance, health
workers have assumed armed or paramilitary roles in Indochina, North Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Health institutions also have taken part as
bases for counterinsurgency and intelligence operations in Latin America and Asia.6 The connections among imperialism, public health, and
health services have operated particularly through several institutions that have mediated these connections: philanthropic foundations,
international financial institutions, organizations that enforce trade agreements, and international health organizations. Philanthropic
Foundations Notions about charitable contributions by wealthy people to the needy date back at least to the Greek practice of philanthropy,
but modern practices involving foundations with their own legal status began in the early twentieth century. Andrew Carnegie, who
accumulated his fortune mainly through the steel industry, took a leadership role in the creation of philanthropic foundations. His
philanthropic ventures began with the establishment of Carnegie libraries in small U.S. towns and cities. In writings such as The Gospel of
Wealth, published in 1901, Carnegie presented his opinions about the social responsibilities of wealth.7 In this book, speeches, and other
efforts to influence his fellow barons of capitalism,
Carnegie argued that contributing to the needs of society was
consistent with good business practices. According to Carnegie, philanthropy provided several
advantages for capitalists, including the achievement of favorable popular opinion about capitalist
enterprises and individual entrepreneurs. More importantly in Carnegies view, by contributing
intelligently to address social needs rather than squandering ones wealth, the business person also
could assure personal entry into the heavenly realmthus, the gospel of wealth. Among the books many
notable features, Carnegie distinguished between imperialism and the more virtuous Americanism: Imperialism implies naval and military
force behind. Moral force, education, civilization are not the backbone of Imperialism. These are the moral forces which make for the higher
civilization, for Americanism.8 Through the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and other interconnected foundations, Carnegie
acted to achieve the fruits he preferred in the disposal of his earthly wealth and in his own heavenly future. An important early extension of
philanthropic foundations to health involved John D. Rockefeller and the Rockefeller Foundation. With a fortune based in oil, Rockefeller
emulated Carnegies philanthropic activities, despite their conflicts in the realm of monopolistic business practices. Rockefeller and
associates moved to support public health activities and health services that would benefit the
economic interests of Rockefeller-controlled corporations throughout the world. To foster this goal, the
Rockefeller Foundation initiated international campaigns against infectious diseases such as hookworm, malaria, and yellow fever. Between
1913, the year of its founding, and 1920, the Foundation supported the development of research institutes and disease-eradication programs
on every continent except Antarctica. For capitalist enterprises expanding internationally, infectious diseases proved troublesome for several
reasons, which became clear from the writings of Rockefeller and the managers of the Rockefeller Foundation.9 First, these infections reduced
workers energy and therefore their productivity; based on this perspective, hookworm became known as the lazy mans disease. Second,
endemic infections in areas of the world designated for such efforts as mining, oil extraction, agriculture, and the opening of new markets for
the sale of commodities made those areas unattractive for investors and for managerial personnel. Third, when corporations assumed
responsibility for the care of workers, these costs escalated when infectious diseases could not be prevented or easily treated. Addressing
these three problems, the Rockefeller Foundations massive campaigns took on certain characteristics that persist to this day, not only for
Rockefeller but also for other foundations, international public health organizations, and nongovernmental organizations. The Rockefeller
Foundation emphasized vertical programs, initiated by the donor and focusing on specific diseases such as hookworm or malaria. An
alternative approach could encourage horizontal programs, to provide a broader spectrum of preventive and curative services through a
well-organized public health infrastructure of clinics and hospitals. Rather than such broad public health initiatives targeting disadvantaged
populations, the Rockefeller Foundations vertical orientation favored a so-called magic bullet approach targeting new vaccines and
medications that could prevent and treat infectious diseases. A vertical orientation has continued in recent, large-scale efforts by the
Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation, and other philanthropies to address public health problems like AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and
most recently Ebola. The foundations often frame their participation as attempts to improve economic development by investing in health, a
term first promoted by the World Bank.10 These initiatives usually encourage the participation of multinational pharmaceutical companies
33
(which hold the patents for key medications and vaccines used in infectious-disease campaigns) and private insurance companies or managed
care organizations (which assume responsibility and receive payment for delivering services in public-private partnerships). Currently the
Gates Foundation has emerged as the largest philanthropy worldwide focusing on public health. Its efforts continue to target specific
infectious diseases, especially AIDS in Africa. Together with the World Health Organization (WHO), whose limited budget the Gates Foundation
helps fund, and various nongovernmental organizations also supported by Gates and Rockefeller, philanthropies have invested heavily in the
control of infectious diseases through vaccines and other pharmaceutical products. In general, these strategies have left the insufficient public
health infrastructures in many countries of the global South relatively untouched, while lavish spending has occurred to support programs on
AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. As a result, access to medical and public health facilities remains inadequate for people who often face
desperate circumstances. The contradictions of vertical programs, which persist as the legacy of the Rockefeller orientation in philanthropic
support, lead to bizarre and tragic situations that become well known to public health workers in the global South. In countries devastated by
AIDS, for instance, patients sick with other serious disorders like cancer feign or even intentionally get infected by HIV so they can receive
medical care in well-funded AIDS programs. And when severe epidemics like Ebola strike, the vertically oriented investment policies of
foundations leave countries in Africa without an urgently needed infrastructure of primary-care clinics and hospitals to care for critically ill
patients. International Financial Institutions and Trade Agreements The framework for modern international financial institutions and trade
agreements began after the Second World War with the Bretton Woods accords. These accords grew from meetings in Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, involving representatives of countries victorious in the war. The agreements initially focused on the economic reconstruction of
Europe. Between 1944 and 1947, the Bretton Woods negotiations led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Bank, as well as the establishment of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).11 After Europes recovery, these institutions and
agreements gradually expanded their focus to the rest of the world. For instance, the World Bank adopted as its vision statement, Our
dreama world without poverty.12 However, because the IMF and World Bank provided most of their assistance through loans rather than
grantsand, in the case of the IMF, mainly established conditionalities that would open the door to private lendingthe debt burden of the
poorer countries increased rapidly. By 1980, many countries in the global South, including the poorest in the world, were spending on average
about half their economic productivity, as measured by gross domestic product, on payment of their debts to international financial
institutionseven though these institutions goals usually emphasized the reduction of poverty. During the early 1980s, the international
financial institutions embraced a set of economic policies known as the Washington Consensus. These policies, mainly advocated by the
United States and the United Kingdom, involved deregulation and privatization of public services, which added to the debt crisis by reducing
even further the public health efforts and health services that poorer countries could afford. Initially GATT aimed to reduce trade barriers
among its twenty-three member countries by eliminating or cutting tariffs and other fees on exports and imports. The fairly simple principles
of GATT included most favored nation treatment (according to which the same trade rules applied to all participating nations) and national
treatment (which required no discrimination in taxes and regulations between domestic and foreign goods).13 GATT also established ongoing
rounds of negotiations concerning trade agreements. From their modest origins in GATT, international trade agreements eventually changed
into a massive structure of rules that would exert profound effects on public health and health services worldwide. As the pace of
international economic transactions intensified, facilitated by technological advances in communications and transportation, the World Trade
Organization (WTO) in 1994 replaced the loose collection of agreements subsumed under GATT. The burgeoning array of international trade
agreements encompassed under WTOseen also in the current round of regional agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the
Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreementexpanded the purview of trade rules far beyond tariff barriers. Instead, the new trade agreements
interpreted a variety of public health measures such as environmental protection, occupational safety and health regulations, quality
assurance for foods and drugs, intellectual-property restrictions pertaining to patented medications and equipment, and even public-sector
health services themselves as potential barriers to trade. This perspective in trade agreements transformed the sovereignty of governments to
regulate public health and to provide health services. Together with regional trade agreements initiated by the United States, WTO has sought
to remove both tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. The removal of non-tariff barriers to trade has affected the ability of national, state, and
local governments to protect public health and medical services. While tariff barriers to trade involve financial methods of protecting national
industries from competition by foreign corporations, including import taxes, non-tariff barriers refer to non-financial laws and regulations
affecting trade, particularly those that governments use to assure accountability and quality. In over 900 pages of rules, the WTO set criteria
for permissible or impermissible non-tariff barriers, such as domestic policies governing environmental protection, food safety, and health
services. While aiming to achieve free trade across borders, the rules in trade agreements limit governments regulatory authority over trade
while enhancing the authority of international financial institutions and trade organizations.14 WTO rules (under general exceptions of GATT,
Article XX) permit national and subnational measures necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health, but other provisions make
this exception difficult to sustain in practice.15 For example, a country could be required to prove that its laws and regulations comprise the
alternatives least restrictive to trade, and that they are not in fact disguised barriers to trade.16 These rules also restrict public subsidies,
particularly those designated for domestic health programs and institutions, as potentially trade distortive. Requiring that such subsidies
apply equally to domestic or foreign companies that provide services under public contracts preempts public policies that direct subsidies to
domestic companies and to public programs. With relevance to public health, a key WTO provision requires harmonization, which seeks to
reduce variation in nations regulatory standards for goods and services.17 Proponents argue that harmonization can motivate some countries
in the global South to initiate labor and environmental standards where none previously existed.18 However, harmonization also can lead to
erosion of existing standards, since it requires uniform global standards at the level least restrictive to trade.19 WTO encourages national
governments to harmonize standards on issues as diverse as truck safety, pesticides, worker safety, community right-to-know laws about toxic
hazards, consumer rights regarding essential services, banking and accounting standards, informational labeling of products, and
pharmaceutical testing standards. WTO and regional agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) supersede
member countries internal laws and regulations, including those governing health. Under these agreements, governments at all levels faced a
loss of sovereignty in policy making pertinent to public health and health services. Traditionally, government agencies at the federal, state,
county, and municipal levels maintain responsibility for protecting public health by assuring safe water supplies, controlling environmental
threats, and monitoring industries for occupational health conditions. Trade agreements can reduce or eliminate such governmental activities,
because the agreements treat these activities as potential barriers to trade. For disputes, an appointed tribunal, rather than a local or national
government, determines whether a challenged policy conforms to the rules of WTO or a regional trade agreement. The tribunal includes
experts in trade but not necessarily in the subject matter of the cases, such as health or safety, or in the laws of the contesting countries.20
34
Documents and hearings remain closed to the public, press, and state and local elected officials. Because trade agreements treat federal
governments as the only pertinent level of participation, only representatives of contesting countries can participate in the hearings, in
addition to experts whose participation the tribunal requests. If a tribunal finds that a domestic law or regulation does not conform to the
rules of WTO or a regional trade agreement, the tribunal orders that the disputed transaction proceed despite the wishes of government
officials or public health experts. If a country fails to comply, WTO or the commission with authority over a regional agreement like NAFTA can
impose financial penalties and can authorize the winning country to apply trade sanctions against the losing country in whatever sector
the winner chooses until the other country complies. In challenges decided by WTO or NAFTA tribunals, for instance, corporations and even
individual investors have caused governments to suffer financial consequences and trade sanctions because of their efforts to pursue
traditional public health functions. As they grapple with imposed sanctions, losing countries usually succumb to pressures for eliminating or
changing the laws or regulations in question and not enacting similar laws in the future. Table 1 gives examples of decisions under trade
agreements that have affected public health and health services. The table shows the immense scope of trade agreements health-related
impacts. Trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, still under negotiation as the
Obama Administrations two major trade initiatives, contain provisions that similarly remove or constrain governments ability to protect
public health. International Health Organizations The
first approach to international public health organization arose
in Europe during the Middle Ages. To block people from leaving or entering geographical areas affected
by epidemics of infectious diseases, some governments established local, national, and international
cordons sanitairesguarded boundaries. Governments also imposed maritime quarantines that prevented ships from entering ports
after visiting regions where epidemics were occurring. Sanitary authorities arose mostly on an ad hoc basis and remained active mainly when
epidemics were present or anticipated.21 With the rise of export economies and the expansion of international trade during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, conventional maritime public health went into decline. Instead, concernsabout infectious
diseases as detrimental to trade in the expanding reach of capitalist enterprise became a motivation for
international cooperation in public health. An incentive for redesigning international public health emerged from a need to
protect ports, investments, and land holdings such as plantations from infectious diseases. The first formal international health
organization arose in the Americas. Founded in 1902 in Washington, D.C., explicitly as a mechanism to protect trade and
investments from the burden of disease, the International Sanitary Bureau focused on the prevention and control of epidemics.22
Mosquito-eradication campaigns and the implementation of a vaccine against yellow fever occupied
public health professionals in this organization throughout the early twentieth century. During that
period, plans proceeded for the construction of the Panama Canal, the development of agricultural enterprises in the
banana republics of Central and northern South America, and the extraction of mineral resources as raw materials for industrial production
from such areas as southern Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. Work in the tropics demanded public health initiatives against
mosquito-borne diseases like yellow fever and malaria, parasitic illnesses like hookworm, and the more common viral and bacterial illnesses
like endemic diarrhea. As
the first modern international health organization, the International Sanitary Bureau
devoted much of its early activities to infectious disease surveillance, prevention, and treatment, largely
to protect trade and economic activities throughout the Americas. Later, during the 1950s, the International Sanitary
Bureau became the Regional Office for the Americas of the WHO and in 1958 changed its name to the Pan American Health Organization
(PAHO). Subsequently, PAHOs public health mission broadened.23 However, PAHO has retained a focus on the protection of trade until the
present day, and in general it supports the provisions of international trade agreements. WHO emerged in 1948, as one of the
component sub-organizations of the United Nations. Prevention and control of infectious disease epidemics remained a
key objective throughout its history, but WHO did not frame its purpose in controlling infectious diseases as a way to protect trade and
international economic transactionsas PAHO had done during its early history. Instead, during the 1970s, WHO prioritized the improved
distribution of health services, especially primary health care. This orientation culminated in the famous WHO declaration on primary health
care, issued at an international conference at Alma-Ata, USSR, in 1978.24 As the principle of universal entitlement to primary care services
became one of WHOs priorities, the organization advocated programs for improving access to care, especially in the poorest countries. This
horizontal vision of public health policy gained substantial support worldwide, at least for a brief time. However, during the 1980s, WHO
entered a chronic financial crisis produced largely because of the fragile financing provided for by its parent organization, the United Nations.
Because of ideological opposition to several programs operated by component organizations of the United Nations, especially those of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Reagan administration withheld large portions of annual dues
to the United Nations. As a result, the United Nations began to experience increasing budgetary shortfalls, which it needed to pass on to its
component organizations, including WHO. Into this financial vacuum entered the World Bank, which began to provide a large part of WHOs
budget. (Because WHO does not release its budget publicly, the precise degree of its dependency on the World Bank remains difficult to
determine.) As WHOs financial base shifted more toward the World Bank and away from the United Nations, its policies also transformed to
an orientation that more closely resembled those of international financial institutions and trade agreements. The financial crisis that
originated in the non-payment of dues by the United States eventually led within WHO to a policy perspective regarding international trade
that proved similar to PAHOs earlier orientation. During the 1990s, the pendulum swung back from the horizontal orientation toward the
preference for vertical interventions. This renewed stance emphasized macroeconomic policies that involved national and international
economic relationships (rather than the microeconomic policies pertinent to markets for specific goods and services), as well as the roles of
public health and health services in these broad economic relationships. The orientation emerged largely from the efforts of the World Bank
and affiliated international financial institutions, as well as key private foundations. Again attention turned to vaccines and medications as
technological solutions to the health problems of the global South. This orientation further facilitated the financial operations of multinational
corporations in these countries. The Report of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health: Investing in Health for Economic Development
35
(hereafter, Report), published by WHO in 2001, defined the relationships between health and the economy in the context of imperialism.23
This Report led to a series of WHO projects on economic issues in health policy, health services, and public health. Many of the Reports
conceptual and methodological approaches mirrored the World Banks orientation to health and economic development. Partly for that
reason, the Report gave a revealing picture of the dominant ideology that shaped imperial health policies. Most of the commissioners
responsible for the Report had extensive experience with the World Bank, IMF, or other international financial institutions. The commissioners
showed little background in collaborating with other types of social organizations. Notably absent among the commissioners were
representatives of political parties, unions, professional organizations in medicine and public health, organizations of indigenous or
ethnic/racial minorities, activists in occupational and environmental health, or members of the worldwide movement targeting economic
globalization. The Report emphasized its central theme at the beginning: Improving the health and longevity of the poor is, in one sense, an
end in itself, a fundamental goal of economic development. But it is also a means to achieving the other development goals relating to poverty
reduction.26 Therefore the goal of improving health conditions of the poor became a key element of economic development strategies. From
this viewpoint, reducing the burden of the endemic infections that plagued the poorest countriesAIDS, tuberculosis, and malariawould
increase workforce productivity and facilitate investment. A policy emphasis on investing in health (the Reports subtitle) echoed the
influential and controversial World Development Report, Investing in Health, published in 1993 by the World Bank.27 The terminology of the
title conveyed a double meaninginvesting in health to improve health and productivity; and investing capital as a route to private profit in
the health sector. These two meanings of investment, complementary but distinct, pervaded the macroeconomic Report. As Jeffrey Sachs, the
Commissions chair (an economist previously known for shock therapy in the implementation of neoliberal policies of public-sector cutbacks
in Bolivia and Poland), stated in an address about the Reports public health implications at the American Public Health Associations annual
meeting in 2001, What investor would invest his capital in a malarial country?28 In asserting that disease was a major determinant of
poverty, the Report argued that investments to improve health comprised a key strategy toward economic development, distancing itself from
prior interpretations of poverty as a cause of disease. Instead, the Report emphasized various data on the channels of influence from disease
to economic development.29 The Report deemphasized social determinants of disease, such as class hierarchies, inequalities of income and
wealth, and racial discrimination. Although the Report referred to health as an end in itself, the focus on economic productivity diminished
the importance of health itself as a fundamental human right. More
recently, WHO has vacillated between two markedly
different visions of global health. On the one hand, it has continued to pursue the vertically oriented
emphasis on vaccines and medications rather than the horizontally oriented advocacy of
comprehensive public health systems and access to services. With this orientation, WHO has
collaborated with WTO (with headquarters close to WHOs in Geneva), in trade agreements that limit
governments ability to protect public health and medical services.30 On the other hand, WHO has responded
intermittently to a worldwide constituency calling for greater attention to the social determinants of health. The latter orientation led to an
influential report on social determinants and some suggestions about policy changes that would improve social conditions leading to ill health
and early death.31 In research and policy analysis, economic inequality consistently has emerged as the most important social determinant
crying out for dramatic changes in policy. Meanwhile, existing policies continue to worsen inequality in the United States and many other
countries. The
Ebola epidemic epitomizes the failures of WHOs leadership and the vertically oriented
policies of the past. From its underfunded circumstances and dependency on the World Bank and Gates
Foundation, WHO mounted a delayed and hopelessly inadequate response to the epidemic. As usual, a race for
the magic bullet emerged, with predictable financial bonanzas for the pharmaceutical industry. But because no effective vaccine or treatment
of Ebola yet exists, an infrastructure of clinics and hospitals must provide supportive services like hydration and blood products, as well as
educational efforts and simple supplies such as adequate gloves and materials to block transmission of the virus. Such an infrastructure,
nonexistent in West Africa largely due to failure of past public health policies, would prove feasible if the powers that be would recognize the
practical benefits of a horizontal approach to the development of public health infrastructure. But that approach contradicts a long tradition of
top-down vertical policies that have nurtured the political and economic foundations of empire. Conclusion: Recycling Public Health
Interventions and an Emerging Challenge Throughout most of the twentieth century, the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored vertical
campaigns against endemic infections: hookworm, yellow fever, tuberculosis, and malaria, among others. Rockefeller campaigns interpreted
these infections as impediments to labor productivity, investment, and economic development. Rockefeller-funded programs also recognized
that endemic infections blocked efforts to extract raw materials and to transport products and workers throughout the world. Such campaigns
did not foster a broader, horizontal infrastructure that could provide integrated public health and primary care services. Instead, these
interventions aimed to improve the economic circumstances of enterprises in the imperial countries by improving the health of the
imperialized. WHOs
Report on Macroeconomics and Health updated this earlier Rockefellerism. Like its
unacknowledged predecessor in macroeconomic thought, the Report called for investment to reduce
poverty in poor countrieswhile enhancing the economic prospects of the rich in both rich and poor
countries alike. This approach also revived a vertical attack on specific diseases, rather than
encouraging the development of integrated health care systems. Health as a fundamental human value,
worthy of investment for its own sake, slipped from consciousness, as did the vision of redistributing
wealth as a worthy goal in macroeconomic policy.
36
Developmental discourse creates a dichotomy of America and underdeveloped,

diseased country, justifying western imperialism
Beard 9 (Jennifer, Law and Development Research Programme, IILAH, The Political Economy of
Desire: International Law, Development and the Nation State,
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1367439, 3/23/09)//MNW
Public international law and socio-economic development both rest on the belief that individuals, and
more belatedly, peoples, are meant to live in circumstances that grant them certain rights and
freedoms fundamental to their humanity. To this end, international law seeks to provide peace and security, mechanisms of
good governance and the protection of human rights and freedoms. Likewise, the United Nations General Assembly has
defined development as the ... multi-dimensional undertaking to achieve a higher quality of life for all
people in the contexts of peace, the economy, environmental protection, social justice and
democracy.1 The nation state, another modern concept, has established itself as an instrumental conduit of both international law and
development. Yet, while international law, development and the nation state may be understood as instrumental to the process of improving
human life, the concept of development is also used to describe the end state of that process. In this sense, the concept of development
provides modernity with a space of transcendence in these godless times as well as a certain objectivity to international law and the nation
state. The
concept of development sets out the objectives of international law and the nation state by
signifying the kind of world development practitioners are working to achieve. In consequence,
whatever development means will determine the ends of international law and the nation state and
thus define the roles of law and the state at the national or international level, as well as the regulation of other
subjects (usually defined by law) such as organisations, corporations or individuals. The concept of development can be understood as
transcendental in so far as its meaning extends beyond the limits of ordinary experience. The transcendental element within the meaning of
development concerns both a material yearning for a higher quality of life by means of technical and economic progress as well as a
nonmaterial and arguably numinous yearning for the fulfilment of an historical end. The
transcendental element of
development is infinitely distant from the reality of the so-called developed world, yet essential to it. It
is essential because the transcendental element of development is the central idea around which an
entire discourse of development takes place a discourse that identifies and gives meaning to the
developed world as such. In this respect, one might say that development is represented only in its absence but functions as the
origin of an entire discourse and its effects.2 One might argue that development as transcendence is the beginning and the end of a
development discourse but it is never present, or conceivable except as an infinite series of continuous interpretations of, and effects on,
human becoming that ultimately elude definition. Development as process, therefore, is neither natural nor self-fulfilling except perhaps as an
industry of professionals: the lawyers, economists, politicians, bankers, activists, missionaries and the bureaucrats of international economic
institutions, who act as conveyors of its discourse. With these thoughts in mind, this book is written not in an attempt to find the meaning of
development but to find out how the discourse of development came to be, to find out why development is necessary as a concept and what
logic is implicit in the act of dividing the world into one part said to be complete and authoritative and another said to be incomplete and
flawed. In doing so, the book does not examine development as a particular set of economic and social practices but rather as a metaphysical
concept that produces these practices within a particularly Christian dynamic dating back to early and medieval times. I suggest that
development is not only a metaphysical concept but also a proper name. Development names the peoples of the West
and thereby separates them from ... most of the world.3 To assign the concept of development to historythat is, to
abandon or renounce the concept and what it representswould strip the West of its current identity qua development and cause a break in
a long chain of binary differences to which it is linked: i.e. Christian / pagan, modern / primitive, civilised / barbaric, First World / Third World,
North / South and western / oriental. These binary
differences are each invested with the meanings of all the others
in the chain. As a consequence, this book is as much concerned with the notion of western identity as
it is with the concept of development itself. The abandonment of concepts or identity is always taking place, and although
abandonment can be a mutual operation in the sense that a new identity must always emerge from any confrontation with an other identity
(the Other), the abandonment of an identity is nonetheless an extremely threatening and emotionally and/or physically violent process of
change. Think, for example, of the transformation taking place within nation states as their national identity takes up the multicultural
immigration of people, who challenge and eventually change that identity as well as the identity of its nationals. These changes are extremely
complex and strike at the heart of ethical debates about what is right and wrong in human society. Since this book suggests that the definition
of development (everything that gives it distinctness, delineation, meaning) ought to be opened to the point that it can no longer be
identifiedto the extent that the West ought no longer call itself developedmany readers will find this book confronting. It is important to
keep in mind that the confrontation comes from comprehending the arguments being made about development; it does not come from the
style in which the arguments are being put although readers not familiar with critical philosophies will find some of the terminology new,
unfamiliar or out of context. Those readers, who are able to acknowledge and consider what is being said, however, may rest assured in the
knowledge that confrontation is an invitation to transformation and, in that sense, development remains comprehensible. In this book, I argue
37
that western identity is a relation of binaries that are ... thought and lived as if they expressed the true order of things.4 If, indeed,
western identity has its own discursive expression of power, knowledge and meaning that is constituted
around these binaries, then one must pursue this space as its own discourse in order to understand
how the discourse of development erupted onto modernitys centre stage.5 Development discourse exists, arguably,
as a frame that makes possible a resilient continuation of a western identity that trips along as a ... a god who is dead [but] continues to
resonate.6 The developed nations merely stand in for an infinitely distant reality that will always exceed ... mens imprisonment to the
earth.7 My
point, put simply, is that western identity reverberates, is symbolised by, and made manifest
in, the more powerful element of particular binaries Christianity, Civilisation, the West to which the
binary of development has been recently admitted. As each binary is threatened or faces deconstruction, so too, is western
identity threatened with the symbolic disintegration and fear-inducing meaninglessness that I discussed earlier in relation to the abandonment
of identity. This book is a study of these crises. The argument that I make in this book is that the developed world that calls itself the West has
positioned itself into a space of transcendence on the global level since the discovery of the New World in the 15th century. Yet, the
developed world, like any idol, is an inadequate representation of the transcendent itself. Once named, the developed world merely reduces
the concept of development to predicative discourse in such a way that the idea remains always infinitely active and unattainable; at once
imaginable and yet unfathomable. The discourses of development that emerge from developments predication are, at worst, a false
eschatology, and at best, they offer humanity an instance of the inadequacy of representation. Here lies the paradox. The
idea of
development as ... a bereaved apprehension does not threaten the identity of the developed world
it creates the identity.8 The incommensurability of developments transcendence plays an essential function by introducing the very
element of loss. This sense of loss, that is, the inability to properly know and represent what development is, is transferred from the concept
of development itself into its weaker opposition: underdevelopment. Underdevelopment thus fills the lack, appearing at developments very
origin. In other words, we
cannot represent development without the binary of underdevelopmentboth
concepts emerge from the other. The people with faith in the discourses of development are thus
allowed both to represent and dream of a potential state of fulfilment, which is being kept from them
by the incompetence of, and lack (of prudence, technology, industry, law, etc...) in the peoples of the
underdeveloped world. Whatever the binary nature of development discourse chooses to locate in its weaker side of
underdevelopment is thus possessed of the causes of poverty, exploitation and unequal redistribution
of resources. The developed world, on the other hand, possesses elements of global fulfilment, which is
due to all people when the lack of the underdeveloped world is fulfilled. In short, humanity is left with
faith in development, and, ipso facto, faith in the developed world. I have used the term faith here deliberately to
evoke the sense of a people seeking to erase the torture of crisis brought on by the loss of, and alienation from, mere being with a ... certain
community of meaning.9 Development discourse assigns the unfathomable a name, and puts an end to angst-inducing uncertainty.10 This
then is what is gained by placing the quality of life of all people into a developmental framework that exceeds and resists language: the
capacity of the developed world to imagine itself and its place in human history through its continued encounter with an underdeveloped
world from which it has, figuratively speaking, emerged. It should be clear to the reader that I am not merely arguing here that development is
used as a convenient name for a particular socio-economic status. Rather, I am concerned with how development makes sense of
the lives of ... most of the world,11 and thus erases other explanations that are perhaps not based on
current conceptions of progress, temporality, geography, space, religion, gender or race, etc. Needless to say,
development discourse represents a very real and effective form of imperial power that is concerned
with the maintenance of a particular (western) version of subjectivity through its appropriation of history by means
of a continuous and ... hazardous play of dominations that have hardened the discourse of development into ... an unalterable form in the
long baking process of history.12 I am not suggesting that the reality of the present as it is would cease to be if development were not to exist
as a concept. And yet, if the concept of development were to be taken from our lexicon, our conception and use of terms such as the North,
the First World, the industrialised nations or the West might be fundamentally different. All of these terms are closely associated with
particular social and economic divisions in and of the world. Importantly, it is the developed world that claims for itself that space, which exists
only as transcendence but functions as Meaning. In other words, countries claim to be developed even if the concept is beyond
definition (that is transcendent) because it is a concept that is relied upon by international society in order to regulate and legitimise
(that is, give meaning to) social actions.
38
L: Agamben
The 1ACs method of refusal assumes an individualized neoliberal subjectivity. The
refusal of potentiality does not free them from neoliberal discourses of citizenship
and productivity, rather their articulation of agency as individual empowerment lends
moral authority to neoliberalism and precludes interdependent agency and collective
action.
Rowe 9 [Aimee Carrillo Rowe Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Iowa Subject to Power
Feminism Without Victims Women's Studies in Communication Volume 32, Number 1. Spring 2009]
Power operates, according to critical theorist Giorgio Agamben, through the process of sovereignty wherein
the state's capacity to wield power, to create rules, is ironically only made possible through its exclusion
from the site of power wherein the rule applies,^^ This process operates as the sovereign exception simultaneously
empowers the state, or the subject of power, to create the rule and be excluded from its reach. In relation to the subject of feminism,
who likewise may be inaugurated through this process of sovereign exceptionalism, we must attend to the
consequences of power and empowerment, inclusion and exclusion, from those power dynamics, if we are to avoid reproducing the logics and
practices of ruling that feminism seeks to dismantle. More recently, Aiwha Ong
argues that this process of exceptionalism
becomes a potentially divisive force within neoliberal discourses of citizenship,^' This is to suggest that the
subject is never comprehended or evaluated on her own terms, but rather her value is adjudicated by
nation-state and transnational discourses and policies, legal practices, and market forces. Aimee Carrillo
Rowe 25 These insights call us to question the risks at stake in individualized articulations of the subject,
founded upon the subject's sovereign status, for the processes of ruling and adjudicating upon which
they rely and through which they gain power. Thus, to consider the relationship between sovereignty and power is one task
that remains undertheorized within our efforts to theorize power within any articulation of feminism. If power feminism is to seek to
rearticulate and redeploy power, it must attend to power's multiple and often overlooked sources of authority. The image on Ong's book cover
captures this quality of power: a well-dressed East Asian woman with a shopping bag in her hand walks past an East Asian street vending
woman, balancing baskets of food, hoisted at the end of a long pole, upon her shoulders. Neoliberalism adjudicates the value of each of these
"third world women," the image suggests, quite differently. Neoliberal citizens are mobile individuals who possess human capital or expertise
are highly valued and can exercise citizenship; nation-state citizens, who are judged not to have such tradable competence or potential, in
turn, become devalued. If
our feminism is sutured through notions of individual empowerment that seeks a
mode of power "not dependent" on others and yet which is ironically quite extensively dependent
upon themit is underwritten and hence lends moral authority to neoliberalism as a mode of inclusion
and exclusion that is founded in exceptionalism.
The 1AC is rooted in a universalizing description of bare life that occludes the
specifically racial and gendered histories and instances of sovereign violence.
Thobani 12 [Sunera, Associate Professor in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, Canada,
borderlands e-journal, volume 11, number 1, Empire, Bare Life and the Constitution of Whiteness: Sovereignty in the age of terror, p. 6-7,
http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol11no1_2012/thobani_empire.pdf]
Yet Agambens analysis remains deeply problematic, not least in his universalizing of the status of bare
life in the claim that the state of exception has become the norm. More often than not, bare life has
historically been captured by the logic of sovereign power that is explicitly racial, as has been the
constitution of bios (political life) in its incarnation as the rights-bearing citizen, who, historically, has been
the white Euro-American subject. Thus Agambens claim cannot explain why it is that not all bodies
but very particular kinds of bodiesare captured by sovereign power in the form of bare life.4 In the War on
Terror, it is Muslim bodies (i.e. those who look like Muslims), that is, Black and Brown bodies, that are the target of sovereign violence, regardless of their actual
juridical status. In
universalizing the status of bare life, Agambens analytic frame obscures the actuality that it is
primarily Muslims who are today trapped in what he calls the zone of indistinction. In other words, even as
Agambens formulation reveals the relation between bare life and sovereign power in the abstract, it
conceals the actuality that the bare life that is the innermost secret of Western sovereignty has been
39
racialized since the violence of its originary constitution, even as it is in the contemporary historical
juncture. Moreover, along with the racialization of this bare life, the constitution of the Westas the
province of sovereign powerlikewise remains an articulation of racial-as-white colonial/imperial
power. Once race enters the analytic frame, it becomes evident that the state of exception has been
no such thing in the colony, the inextricable Otherside of the West and governed by particular forms of deadly and
genocidal violence. Indeed, in the colony that was co-constitutive of the West, the state of exception was
normalized, rendered banal in the ordinary workings of power. Achille Mbembe notes, like Foucault, that to kill or to allow to
live constitute the limits of sovereigntyto exercise sovereignty is to exercise control over mortality and to define life as the deployment and manifestation of
power (2003, pp. 11-12), but then also asks who is the subject of this right to kill? This is a question posed neither by
Foucault nor Agamben, yet it remains critical to understanding the raciality of the global project that is
Western sovereignty. Critical race and post-colonial scholars have long argued that the native,
colonized as savage, was not only stripped of every right in the structure of poweralien to their societies and
imposed by the violence of Euro-American powersbut was also constituted as the very antithesis of the civilized-as-
political human life (bios) that was the Western man, and subsequently, the Western woman. In her study of the global idea of
race, Denise Ferreira da Silva has argued that the knowledge arsenal, which now governs the global (juridic, economic,
and moral) configuration, institutes racial subjection as it presupposes and postulates that the
elimination of its others is necessary for the realization of the subjects exclusive ethical attribute, namely, self-
determination (2007, p. xiii). Rejecting the sociological conception of race that centres on the exclusion of people of colour from universality, da Silva
instead defines raciality as a strategy of power that creates homo modernus, i.e., the modern subject-as-sovereign. She notes this power is constituted through
the related constructs of historicity and globalityconfigured as the nation and the racialand thus populates the global space with a variety of modern subjects
(2007, p. 12). In other words, the
constitution of man as sovereign subject and his disenfranchised others as less
than human reveals the centrality of race to the modern form of sovereignty. The very category of the
West is an articulation of the sovereign right to kill, a right entrenched in the racial logic of its
sovereignty with its rights bearing Euro-American citizen-subject. The constitution of native life as
racially distinct and less-than-human is thus a Western tradition foundational to its forms of
sovereignty.
You have an ethical obligation to reject Agambens critique of sovereignty --- its
universalist description of the world reproduces colonial violence.
Schueller 9 [Malini Johar, Professor of English at the University of Florida, interventions Vol. 11(2), Decolonizing Global Theories Today: Hardt and Negri,
Agamben, Butler, p. 235-237]
The opening of the barriers at Bornholmer Strasse on 9 November 1989 was not simply a moment that inaugurated the reunification of Germany or the end of the
Cold War. Marked by the crowds of East Berliners as they poured onto Bosebrucke Bridge into West Germany, this was also an event in the Zizekian sense that
came to symbolize, in political and intellectual circles, a reunification of the 'West'. Of course, this 'West' was imaginary, highly ideological, and in reality politically
contested through bloodshed. Former Eastern European countries were (and still are) seen as outside the pale of 'western' civilization even as they adopted
capitalist reforms (see Pocock 1997); migrants from the former third world increasingly questioned the coherence of the West; Turkey's liminal status exposed the
religious and ethnic fault lines of Europe; and, more recently, even the idea of a unified West seemed threatened by France's decisive political break from the US in
the preamble to the preemptive invasion of Iraq. Yet since the 1990s, continuing after 9/11 and the unilateral invasion oflraq in 2003, the
idea of one
world and past former divisions seems reproduced in a major intellectual impetus in Europe and the
US: to produce paradigms of what I call global theory, based on the assumption that the contemporary
moment calls for a resurgence of some form of universal theorizing. And while the particular form of this
theorizing might vary from the search for a new humanism, to a critique of modern sovereignty, the
assumptions and scope of these theories are universalist. Such a shift has been characterized as a movement away from the
quagmire of micropolitics of radical theory of the 1960s to an embrace of the idea of emancipatory knowledge, the development, as Negri puts it, of a "new post-
deconstructive ontology," and a bold step beyond the negation of postmodernism (Negri 1999: 12; see also Passavant 2004: 4). This emphasis on a new
ontology, the object of which is to energize us with new global possibilities for resistance, can be seen among others in the work of Hardt and Negri
(Empire and Multitude), Giorgio Agamben (Homo Sacer, State of Exception, The Coming Community), and Alain Badiou (Ethics), and the new work of
Judith Butler (Precarious Life). But if these new ontologies go beyond the circumscribed limits of postmodernism to offer us revolutionary or liberatory
manifestoes and theories appropriate to the current moment, they are also theories that confront us with a postcolonial unease
precisely because they are, like the tradition of colonial knowledge production, universalizing, albeit in different
ways. Whereas the decolonization movements of the mid-twentieth century and the new social movements of the 1960s led to a
40
Lyotardian postmodern suspicionof grand narratives, the contemporary intellectual moment seems to relish
grand narratives. In a section entitled 'Back to the Eighteenth Century' in Multitude, Hardt and Negri write: What was indeed utopian and completely
illusory in the eighteenth century was to repropose the ancient form of democracy designed for the city-state as a model for the modern nation-state ... The
challenge then was to reinvent the concept of democracy and create new institutions adequate to modern society and the national space. It is useful to go back to
the eighteenth century, finally, to appreciate what a radical innovation they accomplished. If they did it, then we can too! (Hardt and Negri 2004: 307) But if the
contemporary intellectual moment is an exciting one, calling for a new theoretical project- dare one say a new Enlightenment- those
of us who are
wary of eighteenth-century Europe's racial projects and colonial missions have reason to be extremely
wary of these current projects in which a West-centered humanism parades as universalism. At stake in
critiquing universalist theories today is the fact that the contemporary moment of hyper-imperialism
and intense conflict between the global North and global South - as evidenced by US military
occupations, the battles over scarce resources, the patenting of indigenous knowleges, and the
continual building of walls (at the Israel-Palestine border, the US-Mexico border) that separate the West and its allies from the rest - requires
an analysis sensitive to particular striations. I suggest, therefore, that what I have called global theories can operate as
colonizing forces which it is our ethical task to resist, to decolonize. Implicit in this formulation is the idea that colonial
difference continues to be central in knowledge construction, particularly in theory. Colonial difference
is operative not only in globalization theories which contest the very idea of imperialism, but also in (universalist) theories that address
the imperial moment, as well as in what have been touted as radically new global movements. I will begin by briefly analysing the West-centred basis
of the idea of inevitability in Hardt and Negri's concept of empire, then move on to critiquing two universalizing concepts: Agamben's bare life and Judith Butler's
vulnerability. I focus on these four major theorists because they have undoubtedly been the most influential in the humanities and because their works offer a
range of theorizing from questions of globalization to those of sovereignty, and a feminist-based humanism. Turning from theory to practice, I will point out the
problems of Eurocentrism in even so ostensibly radical and global an organization as the World Social Forum. My purpose is not to offer a new third worldist or
global South theorization for the contemporary moment, but rather to demonstrate the need for vigilance against the global theoretical projects being generated
today.
More evidence --- the rhetorical force of their impact claim is rooted in a shared
presupposition that violence is acceptable as long as it directed at subordinated
others.
Morgensen 11 [Scott Lauria, Associate Professor in Gender Studies and the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies at Queens University, Settler
Colonial Studies, 1:1, The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now, p. 72-73]
In conclusion, I hope my analysis illuminates a key implication of Agambens work: that if today there is no longer any one
clear figure of the sacred man, it is perhaps because we are all virtually homines sacri.45 Agambens statement acknowledges here a
longstanding premise of the state of exception, that anyone incorporated into Western law may be assigned to this state: as the defiant son is eliminated by the
father in exception to their bond, so the law excises people to constitute a People that returns to conformance with its rule. Yet his
statement clearly
foregrounds a more recent temporality in which proliferating permutations of the state of exception seem
to blur its target, and suggest using Butlers paraphrase that today we are all potentially exposed to this
condition.46 I submit that how Agambens statement reads to you depends largely on whom you think he
means by we. Some of us will always appear to be part of the People Agamben perceives within the
body of Western law, as if our consanguinity is not in question until confronted by what we do with it. Some of us, however, only
appear within the body of Western law once recognition of consanguinity arrives as a violence to destroy
collective and resistant difference. Thus, today, we are all exposed to bare life not because we appear
similarly to Western law, but only to the extent that we are all caught distinctly in the hierarchies that
structure its persistently colonial formation. While I expect this point is not lost on my readers, it bears repeating. Ongoing
reaction to the U.S. Patriot Act or the war on terror by many white Europeans and white settlers
suggests that their potential exposure to bare life comes as an unwelcome surprise. Produced by the securitisation
of liberal modernity, white liberal subjects might think that the Act or the war abrogate freedoms promised by
a law that should protect them the very law that they invite racialised and colonised peoples to
affirm, as if extending its rule leads to liberation rather than subjection. Yet if we situate the Patriot Act
or the war on terror in context of settler colonialism, as does Indigenous feminist theorist Andrea Smith, we can ask what
shifts if we understand the Bush regime not as the erosion of U.S. democracy but as its fulfillment? If
we understand American democracy as premised on the genocide of indigenous peoples?47 Such a
perspective informs alliances by Palestinians and Indigenous Americans who critique the war on terror for having linked white supremacy, Orientalism, and racial
nationalism to reinforce the United States and Israel as settler colonial states. In such a light, Agambens assertion might suggest that we are all exposed to bare
41
life to the extent that the colonial exception and its universalisation within Western law now mark all peoples for elimination just as Indigenous peoples always
were and still are marked. Yet, conversely, if Agamben names an exception that settlers assigned to others now being potentially assigned to them, then for all of
us to be exposed to bare life is to potentially position us all as settlers. I write provocatively here to suggest that a normative relationality between Indigenous
and settler structures all logics of inclusion and exclusion in settler law and, therefore, in its universalisation as Western law. Scholars must interrogate how this
power-laden distinction imbues not only settler societies, but also their conditioning of liberal modernity along global scales. We
must theorise
settler colonialism as historical grounds for the globalisation of biopower, and as an activity producing
biopower in the present that requires denaturalising critique.
Their essentialist understanding of the sovereign occludes the fact that numerous
cultural and historical factors have gone into education policy. --- that means the aff
cant solve broader violence and the critique accesses the root cause of the aff.
Halit Tagma 09, Professor of Political Science, Arizona State , Homo Sacer vs. Homo Soccer Mom: Reading Agamben and Foucault in the War on Terror,
Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 2009), pp. 407-435
Sovereign decisions are always already informed by historical and cultural understandings as to who
counts as a member of the "good species." The "good species," "the inside," and the body politic have
been constructed by colonial discourse. As Roxanne Doty has pointed out, colonial discourse has had a vital role in the construction of
Western nations. She further points out that race, religion, and other marks of difference have played an important role
in national classification.94 The treatment of faraway people as inferior and exotic has played an important role in nation building in its classic sense.
Therefore, who counts as a citizen, a "legitimate" member of a "legitimate" nation, is the product and effect
of centuries of interaction of the West with its others. Understood in this sense, sovereign decisions (whether made at
the top or bottom level) are informed and shaped by a cultural and colonial history. This is neglected in
Agamben's grand analysis of Western politics. Therefore, sovereign power needs the classification, hierarchization, and othering
provided by a regime of truth in order to conduct its violent power. Only certain types of people could be rendered as bare life
and thrown into a zone of indistinction. Understood this way, it is easier to comprehend the "smooth" production of homines sacri out of
Middle Eastern subjects. In the early stages of the war in Afghanistan, as Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray point out, tens of thousands of people were collected by
the Northern Alliance.95 Among the collected were ordinary foreign aid workers, refugees, and probable fighters of the Taliban regime. They were sold from $50
to $5,000 per head to Coalition Forces.96 Even though there was no real investigation based on tangible and concrete evidence, some these captives were flown to
Guantnamo. As Fox points out, if the prisoners were wearing a Casio brand watch, this meant an higher prize in the eyes of the interrogators, as it signaled that
the prisoner was a probable AI Qaeda bombmaker.97 The small difference between wearing a Casio watch in some parts of the world, as opposed to others, is at
the ground level what makes it possible for a body to be become a homo sacer. They can then be flown off to an unknown place to face an unknown future that
get read and interpreted by petty sovereigns. Such differences inform the decisions that render bodies as homo sacer, which are thrown into a zone of
indistinction. In
the modern age, no doubt, Agamben would argue that even the body of a soccer mom - an
obedient national flag-waving subject - has entered into political and strategic calculations. However, the
soccer mom is not exposed to the violence of homo sacer. Regimes of truth and disciplines produce
hierarchically ordered subject positions, and this is an aspect of biopower. The theoretical priority that Agamben gives to
sovereign power is reversed when it is shown that biopower makes it possible for the petty agents of the state to conduct sovereign violence. Sovereign power is
informed and shaped by biopower.
Agambens purported stance against imperialism is the reason his theory must be
subject to critique --- the universalizing concept of homo sacer levels difference
between distinct manifestations of oppression and repeats the universalizing gesture
of coloniality.
Schueller 9 [Malini Johar, Professor of English at the University of Florida, interventions Vol. 11(2), Decolonizing Global Theories Today: Hardt and Negri,
Agamben, Butler, p. 241-243]
Unlike Hardt and Negri's universalist rhetoric of empire, which accepts the premises of globalization theory, Agamben and Butler turn to the universal not as a
philosophical ally of globalization, but rather as a means of theorizing in what they see as a clearly imperial moment. But precisely
because they are
offered as universalist analyses that critique imperialism, the status of the universal in these works
demands attention. I begin with Agamben because his concept of bare life as well as the related state of exception have been so widely used by
philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, and legal and cultural studies scholars that Agamben has become arguably one of the most influential of
contemporary theorists. Slavoj Zizek (2002: 100), for instance, sees Agamben as demonstrating the fact that in today's "'post-politics", the very democratic public
space is a mask concealing the fact that, ultimately, we are all Homo sacer.' Human rights theorists seek to explain terms of incarceration through the idea of
people being reduced to bare life, an aspect that Judith Butler uses to understand the Bush administration's use of indefinite detention at Guantanamo (see
Jenkins 2004; Butler 2004: 67). The attractiveness of Agamben's conceptualization of bare life lies in its potential to
42
explain the everyday workings of power in contemporary liberal democracies, as well as in conditions of
complete domination such as Guantanamo, and to demonstrate the links between the two. And yet the
foundations of bare life rest upon a problematic Orientalism that has been unquestioningly accepted
by the numerous scholars using Agamben. Let us examine Agamben's theorization of bare life, which he develops most extensively in
Homo Sacer, an attempt to understand the nature of sovereignty in the West. Agamben derives his concept of bare life from the ancient Greek separation of life
into zoe and bios. Zoe expresses the 'simple fact of living common to all living beings (animals, men, or gods)' and bios, "the form or way of living proper to an
individual or a group' (Agamben 1998: 1). In the classical world, zoe or sheer living was excluded from the polis and relegated to the sphere of oikos or home (2). In
contrast to Foucault, who distinguishes between biopolitical and sovereign power, Agamben argues that what has always constituted sovereignty in the West is
the biopolitical production of bare life, of subjects who can be abandoned by the state, whose exclusion defines sovereign power. Agamben derives the concept of
bare life from a figure from archaic Roman law: homo sacer or sacred man, who can be killed but not sacrificed, a figure produced from the sovereign power to
decide what constitutes bare life, life between zoe and bios. What constitutes modernity is that the exception, bare life or the life of homo sacer, becomes the rule
and starts to dwell in the political (9). And this bare life, as is seen in the idea of habeus corpus, becomes the basis for both control and the idea of rights. Modern
democracy therefore does not simply exclude bare life or the body of the homo sacer, but 'shatters it and disseminates it into every individual body' (124). Bare life
thus becomes the hidden foundation for the political order. The most extreme example of this new biopolitical sovereignty is the Jew under Nazism who, as bare
life, can be killed but not sacrificed (114). In camp, 'the most absolute biopolitical space', power and bare life confront each other without mediation and
biopolitics becomes politics (171). Agamben argues that the camp is the nomos or the hidden model of the modern, dictating not only visible cases such as
refugees but extending through society as a whole, making us all virtually homines sacri (175). Elaborating further on the idea of bare life in State of Exception,
Agamben suggests how Bush's policy of indefinite detention produces the idea of bare life in its maximum state of indeterminacy, which reaches its end point in
Guantanamo (Agamben 2005: 3-4). Agamben's articulation of the idea of bare life is powerful because it takes us from
the tactics of power to their workings in specific situations and moves us, as he says, from the Foucauldian prison of penal law to the
camp of absolute exception, from punishment to indefinite detention. And Agamben's work is particularly attractive in its use of the ideas of bare
life and sovereign exception to analyse contemporary manifestations of exceptions such as refugees or foreigners in Europe. However, what is most
interesting in Agamben's theorizations is the sheer absence of colonialism to considerations of western

sovereignty. In the spirit of Agamben's critique of Foucault, then, we can say that we need to move not
only from prison to camp but also from prison and camp to colony. Such a move would not only
illuminate the role of the exception of colonial difference to the construction of modern biopolitical
power, but also help understand the construction of the western biopolitical subject. As postcolonial
scholars have been pointing out for some time now, the very construction of the subject in the West
cannot be separated from the construction of the Other in the colonies. Indeed, as Gauri Viswanathan persuasively
argued in Masks of Conquest, the very instruments of culture used to create obedient and exemplary British subjects in public schools were first tried out in the
colonies. Numerous studies of gender and domesticity have also established the intimate connections between metropolitan and colonial identities (e.g. Levine
2004; Stoler 2002). Can we, therefore, think of bare life as formulated through the writ of habeus corpus in late seventeenth-century Europe without thinking of
how the body in the West was itself being constructed through complex systems of identification and disidentification from the bodies of the natives in North
America? More importantly, can we think about the sovereign right to determine bare life between zoe and bios without thinking about the systems of
racial/human classification propounded by scientists such as Linnaeus, Buffon, and Blumenbach and which helped consolidate colonialism? Indeed, one only has to
remember the constant construction of natives as children in need of rescue to realize the centrality of colonial exclusion to the construction of the western polis.
My point is obviously not to fault Agamben for simply not having colonization as his subject matter, but
rather for constructing, like Foucault, a West apart from the rest. Furthermore, if camp is an extreme
manifestation of the production of bare life, a place where bare life confronts power without
mediation, how does that explain whose bare life comes to be marked for a place such as the camp? Why
was it particularly the Jew who was marked as bare life in Nazi camps and why are Middle Easterners being marked as bare life today? We might all be
'virutally' homines sacri, but only some of us are marked to be in the permanent state of exception, a
localization without order such as the camp (Agamben 1998: 175). The racial fracture at the core of modernity
and colonialism, in other words, needs to be addressed if theory put at the service of addressing
contemporary totalitarianism does not itself become imperial and universalizing.
Its not a link of omission --- Agambens theory continues and naturalizes coloniality.
Only the alt solves.
Colonial Studies, 1:1, The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now, p. 68-72]
Scholars must examine the past and present biopolitics of settler colonialism to challenge presentist
horizons in theories of biopower and colonialism. I argued that liberal governance under Western law is
presaged and instituted by the biopolitics of settler colonialism. Here, Indigenous peoples are recognised with a provisional
humanity for amalgamation by settler nations, where their elimination nevertheless follows whether they defy or conform to a promised consanguinity with
settlers who replace. Sherene Razack and Sunera Thobani have modelled the acknowledgment of settler colonialism as a condition of the colonial biopolitics
scholars increasingly diagnose in contemporary states and global regimes. Yet my argument extends theirs by requesting even broader enunciation of settler
colonialism as an activity directly manifesting as the biopolitics of the present. My account suggests that the growth of liberal modernity by universalising Western
43
law and its exception was facilitated by settler states that circulate and sustain them today. Here I echo Anna Tsings account of the conditions of theories and
practices of globalisation the global situation when I argue that they also arise in relation to the intimate and systemic procedures of settler colonialism.37 In
particular, scholars
must challenge ahistoricity in accounts of the coloniality of biopower, as these
temporalise colonialisms in various pasts only to link them to supposedly unprecedented power
relations in the present. Certainly distinctions within present power relations must be specified. But to posit their temporality as
advanced beyond colonialism is to naturalise how settler colonialism acts continuously within them. The
persistence and naturalisation of settler colonialism defines the present as colonial, while occluding settler
colonialisms action in and as the power we wish to critique. Even to mark this would transform most
work on coloniality and biopower. Yet while I did intend my words to call for such analysis, my argument more deeply marks the specific
biopolitics of settler colonialism as generalised tactics of late modern power relations, which proliferate by naturalising their settler colonial conditions.
Agambens work is ripe for such analysis given that, by the appearance of State of Exception, the superpower status of
the United States becomes his central case. Yet given that his prior scholarship concertedly traced a European horizon, citing the United
States as exemplary of Western sovereignty occludes its formation outside Europe through settler colonial
processes that remain opaque to his critique. For instance, when Agamben traces the history of the
camp to Spanish Cuba in 1896 and to the twentieth century British conquest of the Boers, he omits
knowledge in Native studies that nineteenth-century U.S. expansion used internment camps to relocate
Indigenous peoples and to model their militarised containment on reservations.38 Some scholars date this process to
the 1837 Treaty of New Echota passed by Congress in disregard of Cherokee protest which through military force contained Cherokee people for removal on
the Trail of Tears.39 Another noted example is the 1862 Dakota War, in which Dakota peoples denounced the breaking of treaties by Congress and the State of
Minnesota by fighting back against land theft. The war concluded with the largest mass hanging in U.S. history, of 38 Dakota men at the Lower Sioux Agency; the
three-year internment of 1700 Dakota people at Fort Snelling on Pike Island, Minnesota, where over 300 died of starvation and disease; and the forced relocation
of survivors hundreds of miles to militarised reservations.40 Pike Island sits at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, a central site of the
traditional spiritual homeland of the Dakota people. Today it remains a Minnesota state park, where the now-forested internment site is overlooked by the
massive stone fort, its gun turrets still pointing down at passing bicyclists and day hikers, while historical re-enactors of U.S. soldiers employed by the fort educate
visiting children by teaching them how to march in formation while pretending to hold bayonets.41 Dakota activist, historian and critical theorist Waziyatawin has
helped lead annual Dakota Commemorative Marches the 150 miles from Lower Sioux Agency to Pike Island during the cold autumn season when these events
transpired. Dakota activists continue to mobilise to Take Down the Fort and return the lands and internment site to the Dakota people.42 Given that the 1862
events followed Minnesota Governor Ramsey declaring that the Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the
state, the genocidal biopolitics that defined Dakota people for one and a half centuries would seem relevant to a history of the camp within Western modernity.43
I do not mark Agambens neglect of histories such as this as an erasure correctable by citation. Rather, I am
identifying here a naturalisation and continuation of settler colonialism within Agambens theoretical
apparatus and the horizons of critical theory. Certainly, Agambens account of the camp elides the encampment of Indigenous peoples as
distinctive nations resisting incorporation by a settler nation. Yet, at once, Agamben obliquely invokes, without discussing, two more cases of settler colonialism:
Spanish removal of Cuban revolutionaries seeking self-rule on lands erased of Indigenous national difference; and British containment of Boer settler colonists so
as to pursue their own white settler conquest of African peoples and lands. We see here that white supremacist settler colonialism
was already
fully present, yet fully occluded in the history of the camp provided by Agamben, whose citational trail
leads to twentieth century Europe and National Socialism.44 But what if we took Agamben seriously, so that whether marked or
unmarked, his citations prove the case: that the camp does arise within white supremacist settler colonisation, only later to be transported to the Nazi regime?
Does our understanding of the camp shift if its definition and containment of racialised populations by the modern biopolitical state was a lesson learned in settler
colonial situations and subsequently applied to Europe? Does the camps spatialisation of the exception come to exemplify Western law only on its return-arrival
to Europe; or, might it have borne that capacity on Indigenous American and African lands? Does its European arrival then constitute a reckoning with what the
West could become by following lessons already learned under settler colonialism? And once the camp finally returns again to Cuba this time, under the United
States as supreme arbiter of global law and its exceptions is settler colonialism irrelevant to its form? Does settler colonialism represent only a historical footnote
to U.S. rule at Guantanamo Bay, as representative of an unprecedented scope of power in the contemporary world? Or does the ongoing life of settler colonialism
in fact condition and produce all that is new and transformative about that power? Scholars can trace how the U.S. establishment of a zone of indistinction for
enemy combatants on settled Indigenous lands learns from the
conquest of Indigenous peoples and its naturalisation, which
remain the states foundational and sustained activity. Regardless of the answers to my questions, the evidence that they
have been unimaginable in theory of biopower even if a theorist cites settler situations indicates that settler colonialism
remains naturalised within theory and requires a new genealogy to be transformed. Scholars must not
interpret modern state biopolitics or its extrapolations in global governance as recent rather than
deeply historical phenomena. Nor should we let the preeminent role of any settler state in those
processes appear to be the action of the West, without specifying how settler colonialism acts as the
Wests leading edge by establishing grounds for the globalisation and universalisation of its governance.
The biopolitics of settler colonialism sustain in the persistence of settler states, and we must interpret their activities as precisely enacting settler colonialism.
These notably include the proliferation of Western modernity and liberal governance using methods first learned and still defended by settlement. National
resistance to incorporation in the body of Western law continues to result in being placed in the camp. The power of Western law demands incorporation and
justifies excision by containing the differences it encounters in a globalizing world: a process highlighted already by Indigenous peoples who confront the West and
its law as settler colonial.
44
Relations of coloniality are the condition of possibility for biopolitical violence.

Colonial Studies, 1:1, The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now, p. 55]
Yet significant
tensions appear in the work of Foucault and Agamben and, hence, also in Agambens revision of Foucault
in that neither scholar directly theorises colonialism as a context for biopower. Scholars of colonialism
respond by arguing that colonialism is intrinsic to processes of biopower in the past and present.
Reading Foucaults account of the modern biopolitical state in relation to colonial situations, Ann Laura
Stoler definitively demonstrated that its racial, sexual and national power arise at colonial sites or
relationally among colonies and metropoles, not as projections from a European source.8 Following Stoler,
modern biopower is the product and process of a colonial world. Achille Mbembe extended such reinterpretations of
Foucault in conversation with Agamben by reading the colony as exception, which defines Western law amid the globalisation of European capital and empire.9
Sherene Razack
and Sunera Thobani engage all such theories to explain that in contemporary modes of biopower, the
colonial returns or never left; and, notably, both centre settler colonialism as a condition of the power
they examine.10 Mark Rifkin signally engages Agambens theses with settler colonialism by arguing that the geopolitics of conquest place Indigenous
peoples in a state of exception that simultaneously troubles the territorial and national integrity of settlers as representatives of Western law.11 Together,
these scholars respond to colonialisms elision in theories of biopower by demonstrating that it
conditions biopower and critical theory an intervention deepened by Rifkins and my work centreing settler colonialism for study.
45
L: High Theory
High theory always posits low theory as lesser within a discursive hierarchy
Halberstam 11 (Jack Halberstam, English Prof & Director of The Center for Feminist Research at USC,
The Queer Art of Failure. Page 15-16.)
Building on Rancires notion of intellectual emancipation, I want to propose low theory, or theoretical
knowledge that works at many levels at once, as precisely one of these modes of transmission that
revels in the detours, twists, and turns through knowing and confusion, and that seeks not to explain
but to involve. So what is low theory, where does it take us, and why should we invest in something
that seems to confirm rather than upset the binary formation that situates it as the other to a high
theory? Low theory is a model of thinking that I extract from Stuart Halls famous notion that theory is
not an end unto itself but a detour en route to something else (1991: 43). Again, we might consider
the utility of getting lost over finding our way, and so we should conjure a Benjaminian stroll or a situationist deriv, an
ambulatory journey through the unplanned, the unexpected, the improvised, and the surprising. I take the term low theory from Halls
comment on Gramscis effectiveness as a thinker. In response to Althussers suggestion that Gramscis texts were insufficiently theorized,
Hall notes that Gramscis abstract principles were quite explicitly designed to operate at the lower levels of historical concreteness (413).
Hall goes on to argue that Gramsci was not aiming higher and missing his political target; instead, like Hall himself, he was aiming low in
order to hit a broader target.
Here we can think about low theory as a mode of accessibility, but we might
also think about it as a kind of theoretical model that flies below the radar, that is assembled from
eccentric texts and examples and that refuses to confirm the hierarchies of knowing that maintain the
high in high theory.3 As long as there is an entity called high theory, even in casual use or as shorthand
for a particular tradition of critical thinking, there is an implied field of low theory; indeed Hall circles
the issue in his essay Gramscis Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Hall points out that
Gramsci was not a general theorist, but a political intellectual and a socialist activist on the Italian
political scene (1996: 411). This is important to Hall because some theory is goal- oriented in a
practical and activist way; it is designed to inform political practice rather than to formulate abstract
thoughts for the sake of some neutral philosophical project. Gramsci was involved in political parties his
whole life and served at various levels of politics over time; ultimately he was imprisoned for his politics
and died shortly after his release from a fascist jail.
46
L: View from Nowhere

The Affirmatives propositional knowledge production is the hallmark of Western
Imperialism that imposes regulatory and epistemic violence on illegible bodies our
alternative is a form of fugitive communication that excavates the agency of the
disqualified subaltern and disrupts the view from nowhere of the 1AC
Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research, TDR 46. 2 Summer, pp. 145-]
But de Certeaus aphorism, what the map cuts up, the story cuts across, also points to transgressive travel between two different domains of
knowledge: one official, objective, and abstractthe map; the other one practical, embodied, and popularthe story. This promiscuous
traffic between different ways of knowing carries the most radical promise of performance studies research. Performance studies
struggles to open the space between analysis and action, and to pull the pin on the binary opposition
between theory and practice. This embrace of different ways of knowing is radical because it cuts to the
root of how knowledge is organized in the academy. The dominant way of knowing in the academy is
that of empirical observation and critical analysis from a distanced perspective: knowing that, and
knowing about. This is a view from above the object of inquiry: knowledge that is anchored in paradigm and secured in print. This
propositional knowledge is shadowed by another way of knowing that is grounded in active, intimate,
hands-on participation and personal connection: knowing how, and knowing who. This is a view from
ground level, in the thick of things. This is knowledge that is anchored in practice and circulated within a
performance community, but is ephemeral. Donna Haraway locates this homely and vulnerable view from a
body in contrast to the abstract and authoritative view from above, universal knowledge that
pretends to transcend location (1991:196). Since the enlightenment project of modernity, the first way of knowing has
been preeminent. Marching under the banner of science and reason, it has disqualified and repressed other
ways of knowing that are rooted in embodied experience, orality, and local contingencies. Between objective
knowledge that is consolidated in texts, and local know-how that circulates on the ground within a community of memory and practice, there
is no contest. It
is the choice between science and old wives tales (note how the disqualified knowledge
is gendered as feminine). Michel Foucault coined the term subjugated knowledges to include all the
local, regional, vernacular, native knowledges at the bottom of the hierarchy the low Other of science
(1980:8184). These are the nonserious ways of knowing that dominant culture neglects, excludes,
represses, or simply fails to recognize. Subjugated knowledges have been erased because they are
illegible; they exist, by and large, as active bodies of meaning, outside of books, eluding the forces of
inscription that would make them legible, and thereby legitimate (see de Certeau 1998; Scott 1998). What gets
embodied, tacit, intoned, gestured, improvised, coexperienced, covertand all the more deeply meaningful because of its refusal to be
spelled out. Dominant epistemologies that link knowing with seeing are not attuned to meanings that are masked,
camouflaged, indirect, embedded, or hidden in context. The visual/verbal bias of Western regimes of knowledge blinds researchers to
meanings that are expressed forcefully through intonation, silence, body tension, arched eyebrows, blank
stares, and other protective arts of disguise and secrecywhat de Certeau called the elocutionary
experience of a fugitive communication (2000:133; see Conquergood 2000). Subordinate people do not have the
privilege of explicitness, the luxury of transparency, the presumptive norm of clear and direct communication,
free and open debate on a level playing field that the privileged classes take for granted. In his critique of
the limitations of literacy, Kenneth Burke argued that print-based scholarship has built-in blind spots and a conditioned deafness: The [written]
record is usually but a fragment of the expression (as the written word omits all telltale record of gesture and tonality; and not only may our
literacy keep us from missing the omissions, it may blunt us to the appreciation of tone and gesture, so that even when we witness the full
expression, we note only those aspects of it that can be written down). ( [1950] 1969:185) In even stronger terms, Raymond Williams
challenged the class-based arrogance of scriptocentrism, pointing to the error and delusion of highly educated people who are so
driven in on their reading that they fail to notice that there are other forms of skilled, intelligent, creative activity such as theatre and
active politics. This error resembles that of the narrow reformer who supposes that farm labourers and village craftsmen were once
uneducated, merely because they could not read. He argued that the contempt for performance and practical activity, which is always
latent in the highly literate, is a mark of the observers limits, not those of the activities themselves ([1958] 1983:309). Williams critiqued
scholars for limiting their sources to written materials; I agree with Burke that scholarship is so skewed toward texts that even when
47
researchers do attend to extralinguistic human action and embodied events they construe them as texts to be read. According to de Certeau,
this scriptocentrism is a hallmark of Western imperialism. Posted above the gates of modernity, this sign:
Here only what is written is understood. Such is the internal law of that which has constituted itself
as Western [and white] (1984:161). Only middle-class academics could blithely assume that all the world is a text because
reading and writing are central to their everyday lives and occupational security. For many people throughout the world,
however, particularly subaltern groups, texts are often inaccessible, or threatening, charged with the
regulatory powers of the state. More often than not, subordinate people experience texts and the
bureaucracy of literacy as instruments of control and displacement, e.g., green cards, passports, arrest
warrants, deportation orderswhat de Certeau calls intextuation: Every power, including the power of law, is
written first of all on the backs of its subjects (1984:140). Among the most oppressed people in the United States today are
the undocumented immigrants, the so-called illegal aliens, known in the vernacular as the people sin
papeles, the people without papers, indocumentado/as. They are illegal because they are not legible, they
trouble the writing machine of the law (de Certeau 1984:141). The hegemony of textualism needs to be
exposed and undermined. Transcription is not a transparent or politically innocent model for
conceptualizing or engaging the world. The root metaphor of the text underpins the supremacy of Western knowledge systems
by erasing the vast realm of human knowledge and meaningful action that is unlettered, a history of the tacit
and the habitual ( Jackson 2000:29). In their multivolume historical ethnography of colonialism/ evangelism in South Africa, John and
Jean Comaroff pay careful attention to the way Tswana people argued with their white interlocutors both verbally
and nonverbally (1997:47; see also 1991). They excavate spaces of agency and struggle from everyday
performance practicesclothing, gardening, healing, trading, worshipping, architecture, and
homemakingto reveal an impressive repertoire of conscious, creative, critical, contrapuntal responses
to the imperialist project that exceeded the verbal. The Comaroffs intervene in an academically fashionable textual
fundamentalism and fetish of the (verbal) archive where texta sad proxy for lifebecomes all (1992:26). In this day and age, they ask,
do we still have to remind ourselves that many of the players on any historical stage cannot speak at all? Or, under greater or lesser duress,
opt not to do so (1997:48; see also Scott 1990)?
48
Impacts
49
I: Self-Hate
Oppression causes self hatred and psychological violence
Osajima 88 [Keith teaches in the School of Education at the University of Redlands, specializing in
race and the experiences of Asian American students in higher education. Wrote in the essay
Internalized Oppression and the Culture of Silence] [Grossberg 7/2/17]
One of the most devastating effects of oppression is that it dehumanizes the oppressed people; that
under the objective conditions of oppression people lose their ability to see themselves as individual
human beings. Frantz Fanon, a psychologist who wrote extensively on the effects of colonialism on the
colonized people of Algeria, elaborates on the dehumanizing effect of oppression when he says:
Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other
person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the
question constantly: In reality, who am I? And how do the oppressed people generally answer this
question? According to Albert Memmi, Tunisian author of The Colonizer and the Colonized, the
oppressed internalize an identity that mirrors or echoes the images put forth by the dominant group.
People come to accept the myths and stereotypes about their group as part of who they naturally are.
This is the phenomenon of internalized oppression. Memmi writes: Constantly confronted with this
image of himself, set forth and imposed in all institutions and in every human contact, how could the
colonized help reacting to his portrait? It cannot leave him indifferent and remain a veneer which, like
an insult, blows with the wind. He ends up recognizing it as one would a detested nickname which has
become a familiar description. The accusation disturbs him and worries him even more because he
admires and fears his powerful accuser. Is he not partially right? they mutter. Are we not a little guilty
after all? Lazy because we have so many idlers? Timid because we let ourselves be oppressed? Willfully
created and spread by the colonizer, this mythical and degrading portrait ends up by being accepted
and lived with to a certain extent by the colonized. The impact of internalized oppression on the
attitudes, feelings, and actions of the oppressed is profound. First, it hinders ones ability to think and
reflect. People have difficulty objectifying and perceiving the structural conditions that shape and
reshape their lives. Second, oppressed people come to believe that the source of their problems lies,
not in the relations within society, but in themselves, in their own inadequacies and inabilities. At the
same time that they feel themselves to be inferior, they see those in the dominant group to be
superior. Third, the feelings of inferiority, of uncertainty about ones identity, lead oppressed people to
believe that the solution to their problem is to become like or be accepted by those in the dominant
group. As Freire says, At a certain point in their existential experience the oppressed feel an irresistible
attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering
aspiration. In their alienation, the oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressor, to imitate
him, to follow him. On the flip side of this desire to be like the oppressor is a degree of selfhatred, a
belief that who they are is not good enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, strong enough.
Self hate !
Decena 14 (Ashley M Decena., "Identity, colonial mentality, and decolonizing the mind : exploring
narratives and examining mental health implications for Filipino Americans" (2014). Theses,
Dissertations, and Projects. Paper 769)
According to Revilla (1997), Filipino American identity is the product of our historical and cultural backgrounds
and the process of negotiating and constructing a life in the United States (p.96). A model of how Filipino
American identity forms was created by Nadal (2004) and was used as a resource to compare the different
processes of how Filipino American identities develop. Exploring identity illuminated if and how colonial
mentality and decolonization may or may not have been a part of participants process of conceptualizing
50
identity. Mental health implications were then drawn, which ultimately adds to the knowledge and awareness to
the field of social work when working with the Filipino American population. This research inquiry drew upon
postcolonial theory to frame this work. Postcolonial theory is a set of ideas that seeks to intervene to
force its alternative knowledges into the power structure of the west as well as the non-west. It seeks
to change the way people think, the way they behave, to produce a more just and equitable relation
between different peoples of the world (Young, 2003, p.7). This theory is useful because it
acknowledges that a dominant narrative thrivesand this research seeks to insert historically
marginalized voices into the mainstream to create a more equitable world that has been inundated
with exploitation, poverty, and colonialism. There is a lack of Filipino American voices in many arenas, two
examples being in academic literature and in the field of mental health (David & Okazaki, 2006a; David & Nadal,
2013; David, 2013; Nadal, 2009). This study included voices whose roots stem from a postcolonial country in an
attempt to have their voices and points of views heard. As mentioned above, David and Okazaki (2006a) defined
colonial mentality essentially as the ethnic and cultural inferiority which takes form in valuing the
attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of the dominant/colonizing culture over ones indigenous culture. It is
a form of internalized racial oppression, where a person internally incorporates this idea that they are
less than another person or entity (David & Okazaki, 2006a). Internalized oppression has been studied in
other oppressed populations who as a result, have suffered negative psychological and mental health
consequences (David, 2013, p.62). Studies have been done inquiring whether colonial mentality is present in
Filipino American populations (David & Okazaki, 2006b; David, 2008; David, 2010). The results have shown that
colonial mentality is exhibited by Filipino Americans (David & Okazaki, 2006a; David, 2008; David, 2010; Lott 1980;
Rezilla, 1997; Root, 1997). Further, research has demonstrated that colonial mentality affects mental health in
a negative way (David & Okazaki, 2006a; David & Okazaki, 2006b; David, 2008). Decolonization of the mind was explored.
To be clearer, the fight for national sovereignty and decolonization in a physical sense in the Philippines happened over fifty
years ago, but it is this decolonization of the mind that this research examined. In other words, classical colonialism has
ended and many second generation Filipino Americans did not directly experience this colonialism, but may
experience a term called internal colonialism. Internal colonialism is characterized by a society with
racial inequalities and the cultural imposition of the dominant group on the minority groups, and
cultural disintegration of the oppressed groups indigenous culture (David, 2013, p.57). How are we
manifesting these colonial beliefs and values in everyday interactions and challenging these ways of
thinking?
51
I: Toxicity/Disposability
Toxicity occurs at the intersection of race, sexuality, and ability to mark bodies as
disposable pollutants that threaten US Empire
Chen 12 (Mel, Associate Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Vice Chair for Research at UC
Berkeley, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect, Duke University Press p. 173-
182)//MNW
Leads Labors The image of the vulnerable white child is relentlessly promoted over and against an enduring
and blatant background (that is, unacknowledged) condition of labor and of racism: the ongoing exposure of
immigrants and people of color to risk that sets them up for conditions of bodily work and residence
that dramatize the body burdens that projects of white nationalism can hardly refuse to perceive. Blithely 174 overlookedor
steadfastly ignoredare the toxic conditions of labor and of manufacture, such as inattention to
harmful transnational labor and industrial practices that poison, in many cases, badly protected or
unprotected workers.33 Other persistent conditions include the invisibility within the United States of the working, destitute, or agrarian poor in favor
of idealized consumers who are white and middle or upper middle class; electronic wastes as extravagant and unattended exports of the United States to countries
willing to take the cash to mine it; the dumping of toxic wastes and high-polluting industries into poorer neighborhoods within municipalities; and common
practices in the United States of exporting products of greater toxicity than is permitted within its own borders.34 Here, the
cynical calculus of risk,
race, and international trade continually reproduces a specific configuration of toxic expulsion to
othered lands or peoples. As Cheri Lucas Jennings and Bruce H. Jennings report, the international economic director of the World Bank
suggested that third-world countries might be better off trading for the toxic waste of first-world
countries, since poverty or imminent starvation were a greater threat to life expectancy than the toxicity
of the waste they would receive.35 Within the United States, these authors point to the greater access to less
persistent toxins (such as pesticides) by those with economic privilege, leading to a bifurcated distribution of
greater and lesser toxic infusion along lines of both class and race. The contemporary fears in the
United States about lead contamination and mental degradation are complexly interwoven with race,
class, and cognitive ability, both as they externally manifest (that is, the racialization of imports from China) and as they dovetail with internal
registers of classism and regional stereotyping. Take, for example, one toy, Hillbilly Teeth, made in China and distributed by the company Funtastic (of Houston,
Texas), which was recalled due to concerns about lead in 2008 (figure 16). The recall notice of this product issued by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
singled out the gray paint on the teeth as the source of lead.36 Though it was coded as threatening or harmful due to its potentially tainted plastic (which would by
design be placed in the childs mouth), one could equally find alarm in its perpetration of classed, ableist, and ruralized violence in its identity as a toy. The
packages cardboard backing depicts a smiling, presumably nonhillbilly white male child wearing the denture insert, and the 175 discolored, out of proportion,
and otherwise imperfect teeth are designated yucky, gross, and scary. An inset fake frame, labeled My Names Bubba, has a cartoon speech bubble (Yaint
I purdy?) that uses a distorted caricature of rural or Southern accents. The prefatory and framing Lets Get Goofy! resembles the youthful refrain Lets Get
Retarded! and signifies a willful and temporary loss of rationality and cognitive measure. The extant class coding of the bad teeth further builds on the myth of
rural and working-class degradation by hinting at the acute dental issues that often accompany addiction to methamphetamines (aka meth mouth).
Methamphetamines are the most recognized drug problem in hillbilly country, that is, the rural South and Midwest. The juxtaposition of Hillbilly and Teeth
reminds us that both the urban gentrified center and the pastoral myths of the United States have their own white undersides.37 Against such a consolidated
scenario, the leaden gray-tinted tooth paint seems even more intent on the protection of a limited few, the urban kids who 16. Funtastics Lets Get Goofy
Hillbilly Teeth, made in China, recalled in 2008. Source unknown. 176 have the voluntary luxury, every year on Halloween, of assuming the mask of fallen class and
intellectual ability, only to snap it off later. A different toy, however, sat at the center of the lead panic in 2007: the expensive toy series Thomas the Tank Engine,
seen earlier. Thomas and his friends are immensely popular objects and are accompanied by a range of lucrative tie-ins, including a television show, games,
activity books, candy, and other merchandise bearing Thomass characteristic blue body and round gray and black face. These are not only meant for children.
The series is marketed to middle-class parents who insist on high-status quality products, which in this case are tuned toward boys and quite explicitly direct
their proper masculine development. An article from the New York Times in 2007 explicitly associated the toys high prices with their presumed quality and safety.
The article bears one visual image, a photograph of the James Engine from the Thomas series, and a description of one member of the vulnerable population
(identified as children), a white four-year- old boy whose mother points to the expectation of quality for these toys and whose class membership appears to be
middle to upper middle class: The affected Thomas toys were manufactured in China. . . . These are not cheap, plastic McDonalds toys, said Marian Goldstein of
Maplewood, N.J., who spent more than $1,000 on her sons Thomas collection, for toys that can cost $10 to $70 apiece. But these are what is supposed to be a
high-quality childrens toy.38 Presumably, the cheap, working-class McDonalds toys are the toxic ground on which the nontoxic quality toys are to be built and
compared. Goldstein may have a point about the trains symbolic privilege, at least. Trains occupy an iconic place in the mythology and economic actuality of the
creation of the American West. Symbolically and materially, trains are intrinsically connected to commerce and the circulation of economic goods as well as, in the
United States, to a hidden history of Chinese labor. Both the extension of railroad systems to the American West and the development of the Sacramento River
Delta in California heavily depended on imported Chinese labor that was rendered invisible in certain interested histories of labor.39 Narratives about lead toxicity
in toys from China largely obscure the conditions of Chinese labor in the production of these toy trains.40 Nevertheless, these narratives deploy the fact of labor
obliquely, in an explication of the pathway of toxicity (lead must be painted on). How to explain this incipient visibility? 177 An accusatory narrative in which
Chinese are the criminal painters of the toy Thomas trains sets things up differently from the story of the Chinese laborers who extended the railroads to the
American West: while the latter were made invisible in the interest of the white ownership of land, property, and history, for the toy painters the conditions of
labor needed to be made just visible enough to facilitate the territorial, state, and racial assignation of blame, but not enough to generally extend the ring of
sympathetic concern around the workers themselves.41 Indeed, I found very few instances among concerned parents or journalists in the United States in which
lead was also understood to be a source of toxicity for the immigrant or transnational laboring subjects who take part in the manufacture of the product. So, the
52
story of lead, a story of toxicity, security, and nationality, is also necessarily about labor: when it is
registered, and when it is hidden, and who pays what kind of attention to whose labor. The regular
erasure, or continued invisibility, in the lead narratives of the textile sweatshops, device assemblers, and toy
painters, who are largely young women who have migrated into the Chinese cities from rural satellites,
renders quite ironic the care work that is so poignantly provided by the toysand transitively by the
women who make them. The transitive criminalization of Chinese toy assemblers is all the more ironic
when we consider the routinization of childcare inside the United States by African Americans and
immigrants from Central and South America, the Philippines, South Asia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere,
for middle-class parents of all ethnicities.42 In some respects, the economy itself and changing kinship structures have increasingly meant
that parents hire help while they work away from home, a creep of the care crisis into higher echelons of society, as feminist labor scholar Evelyn Nakano Glenn
notes.43 From the 1980s, middle-class mothers increasingly joined the labor force as neoliberalism took hold in the racialized sphere of the care of children: as
they increasingly left the house and their children, mothers had to accomplish more intimate care in less time, suggesting that care work be taken up by others in
their place.44 The
racial mapping of the desirable subjects in the United States thus occurs in the context of
the erasure of its disposable ones; I refer here to Grace Changs notion of (immigrant female) disposable domestics.45 Just as lead particles
travel, so too does Thomas the train. It is a mobile vehicle, not only symbolically but also materially, one that has 178 journeyed from England to the United States
to China and back again. And indeed, a trip I took to China in 2010 revealed many knockoffs of Thomas, who is just as popular there as he is in the United States.
These packaged toys, puzzle books, and candies were immediately recognizable but had slightly incorrect English spellings of his name, such as Tromas, or
Tomas (figure 17), as if to match the impossibility of perfect translation. These illegal copies show that, like the lead he allegedly carries with him on his back,
Thomas is not containable within a given trajectory of movement and desire. The global spread of this commodity complicates the one-way vector of
contamination from China to the United States, indicating a multidirectional flow. And yet, little is still known within the United States about how these toys may
or may not harm Chinese children or the Chinese workers who produce them. I referred earlier to a mode of transmissionfrom contaminated toy to childas
one of transitivity. For the late-capitalist, high-consumption, and highly networked sectors of the world, transitivity has arguably become a default mode not only
of representation but of world-relating. The asymmetry of this world-relation is no barrier to the toxic effectivity of simmering racial panics. The sphere of the
world that is well rehearsed in the flow of transnational commodities, services, and communications has become the perfect host for such transitivity, or at least
the collapsing of transitive relations into conceptualizations of immediate contact. Patricia Clough, in her theorization of the complex, even nonhuman, agencies
and affects participating in television and computer-consuming information societies, aptly writes that even as the transnational or the global become visible,
proposing themselves as far-flung extensions of social structure, they are ungrounded by that upon which they depend: the speed of the exchange of information,
capital, bodies, and abstract knowledge and the vulnerability of exposure to media event-ness. 46 An advertisement on the airport trolleys in Shanghai Pudong
Airport (figure 18) in June 2010 demonstrates this relentlessly productive metonymic and economic transitivity. The text reads, Your Eyes in the Factory! Book and
Manage your Quality Control on www .AsiaInspection.com, in stark white letters on a red background; below the website name is an icon of inspection, the
magnifying glass. In an inset picture, a male workerpossibly an inspector, possibly an assemblerhandles a product. The transitivity here is not between the
Chinese workers and the toys they have assembled, but rather 17. Super Tomas Series toy train set, outdoor market, Guilin, China, 2010. At lower right, the first
three Chinese characters are to-ma- sz, a phonetic spelling of Thomas. Photograph by the author. 180 of participants in production monitoring. It exists between
the eyes of international corporate managers, the advertisements English-reading addressees, and another set of eyes that is ambiguously either that of local
Chinese inspectors or that of remote cameras that focus on Chinese workers. The ad further represents the interest in surveillance, glossed here as more benign
quality control, that arose after the toxicity of Chinese products illuminated Chinese production as a troubled site.47 Blackened Lead Some years ago, as I
indicated earlier, before the domestic narrative largely disappeared in favor of the Chinese one, the greater public was invited to consider the vulnerability of black
children to lead intoxication. What happened to this association? Did it simply disappear, as I first hinted? Or did it meaningfully recede? I turn here to take a closer
look at the medicalization of lead. Lead toxicity is medically characterized as at least partly neural; that is, it involves the nerve system, most notably comprising
the brain and nerve pathways throughout the body. Medical accounts of lead toxicity, including those in- 18. Airport trolley ad for AsiaInspection. Photograph by
the author, June 26, 2010. 181 voked in the toy lead panic of 2007, invoke its ability to lower the intelligence quotient (iq) of a child. The iq measure bears a
distinctly eugenicist history and remains the subject of controversy regarding whether it has adequately shed its originary racial and socioeconomic biases.48
Indeed, to what extent might we imagine that lead-induced iq loss not only threatens the promise of success in an information economy, but also involves subtle
racial movement away from whiteness, where the greatest horror is not death but disablement, that is, mental alteration and the loss of rational control? Julian B.
Carters study of neurasthenia, or nervous exhaustion, and its characterization in the 1880s by the neurologist George Beard as a specific property of genteel,
sensitive, intelligent, well-bred whiteness (rather than, it was assumed, as a property of the working or peasant classes) gives us a more specific backdrop against
which to consider neurotoxicity and its connection to the new leads poster boy, the white middle-class child. Carter argues that the very vulnerability expressed by
neurasthenia as a property cultivated primarily in privileged whites, both men and women, is what legitimated their claim to power in modernity, even as
industrialization was blamed as a cause of the condition.49 Within the United States, blackness
has its own specific history with
regard to rhetorics of contamination, not least the one drop of blood policies against racial mixing
and miscegenation. Later policies of racial segregation in the Jim Crow South were also linked to white fears of contamination. Referring to the debates
in Plessy v. Ferguson, Saidiya Hartman writes of white concerns about the integrity of bodily boundaries and
racial self-certainty. She notes, As Plessy evinced, sitting next to a black person on a train, sleeping in a
hotel bed formerly used by a black patron, or dining with a black party seated at a nearby table not only
diminished white enjoyment but also incited fears of engulfment and contamination.50 Lead contamination in
the United States continues to be scrutinized for its racial bias, albeit unevenly. One recent contested conjunction of African American populations and lead was a
study led by the Kennedy Krieger Institute. This study, conducted between 1993 and 1995, tracked lead levels in the children of Baltimore public housing occupants
(primarily African Americans) who were exposed to various degrees of lead toxicity in residential paint, without adequate warning of the dangers of that lead. A
storm of debate erupted around 182 this study, in which healthy families were recruited to live in lead-contaminated houses. (This experiment harked back to the
notorious Tuskegee Institute study, conducted between 1932 and 1972, which monitored poor black men who had syphilis but neither treated nor informed them
in any way about the disease.)51 I have claimed that the year 2007 represented a year of transition, as a new and imaginatively more dominant, exogenous
Chinese lead was entering the public domain. In this very same year, National Public Radio symptomatically both remembered and forgot received knowledge
about domestic lead toxicity. First, a National Public Radio (npr) show called Living on Earth updated its coverage of a longitudinal study on the urban poor and
lead toxicity. That same year, another npr show noted the higher levels of lead toxicity among African American children and pronounced these statistics
puzzling, leaving it at that.52 Puzzling: this illogic or failure of deduction occurred despite all kinds of widely available evidence
53
pointing to increased urban regional pollution, lower access to information, and lower financial capacity
to remediate or conceal lead paint. This easy disregard explains how black children in representations of toxic lead
largely disappear and are replaced by white children: the national security project of the United
States is less interested in profiling African American children as victims of lead poisoning, especially
when the new lead is now situated as an externally derived attack.
54
I: Imperial subjecthood/Civilizing Mission

The Affirmative is emblematic of a dangerous form of racial education even as their
inclusive politics compels students to assimilate into imperial subjecthood it
reinforces the primitive status of racialized and gendered others
Brown 16 (Elizabeth Carolyn Brown, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Washington, Chair of Supervisory Committee: Associate
Professor Alys Eve Weinbaum English, Pedagogies of U.S. Imperialism: Racial Education from Reconstruction to the Progressive Era,)
By focusing on pedagogies of reading and writing developed at educational sites not usually examined
together, the dissertation departs from much of the scholarship on education and assimilation to argue
that racial education attempted to transform students deemed racially primitive into U.S. imperial
subjects. It demonstrates how on one hand such pedagogies compelled students to adopt, perform, and
desire the embodiment of dominant civilizational norms required for citizenship. On the other hand, it
details how racial education simultaneously sought to hold students perpetually at a distance from
civilizational embodiment by producing images of intellectual inferiority that were anchored in
representations of their racial, gendered, and sexual non-normativity. Indeed, racial educations images of students
intellectual limits, which were codified in policies, curricula, and founding documents and represented in school newspapers, photography,
and fiction, made an imperial national order appear rational while also producing racial knowledge as rationality. Investigating the often
ad hoc pedagogies of reading and writing developed at a variety of educational sites, the
dissertation expands scholarship on
literature and empire beyond literary canon formation and in so doing creates new frameworks for
approaching how written, visual, and performance texts created by teachers and students intervened in
racial educations attempt to produce imperial subjects. It uses this approach to attend to the ways in which these
often overlooked texts represent the limits of racial education while also referencing epistemologies of
knowing, being, and feeling with the capacity to rupture imperial rationality.
55
I: White Supremacy
The impact is white supremacy. White supremacy has exported colorblindness
globally, while ignoring the contradictions between rhetoric and practice.
Winant 06 (Winant, Howard - Howard Winant is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
where he is also affiliated with the Black Studies, Chicana/o Studies, and Asian American Studies departments. He founded
and directed the University of California Center for New Racial Studies. Winant's research and writing focuses on racial theory
and social theory, and the comparative historical sociology, political sociology, and cultural sociology of race, both in the US
and globally. (2006). Race and racism: Towards a global future. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29(5), 986 - 1003. UC Santa Barbara:
Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4p9698d9)
In university classrooms in the US today many of our students (especially but not only white
students) tell us that they "don't notice
race," and that they "treat everyone as an individual." Their rejection of racism is no doubt genuine in
its adoption of "colorblindness" or nonracialism; but it also tends to ratify the existing inequalities and
injustices that descend from the "bad old days" of segregation. These positions reflect the dominant racial
ideology in the US -- neo-conservatism -- a view that seems more concerned with "reverse
discrimination" than with unchanged black and Latino poverty rates, infant mortality, or heightening,
not declining, racial stratification (Oliver and Shapiro 1995). Thus domestic neo-conservatism both undermines an
older, more familiar racial mindset and reinvokes it. In respect to Iraq and the "war on terror," US foreign policy
operates in parallel fashion, once again reflecting the contradictions of neo-conservatism. "Welcome to Injun country," Robert Kaplan (2005)
quotes US officers telling him in Iraq. Leading US foreign policy intellectuals have spilled a great deal of ink on the theme of "getting used to the American empire."
An effort is made to distinguish the US approach to "projecting power" from that of the British or French a century ago. Unlike our predecessors, we bring
democracy and freedom. But is the US (and its allies the British) not committed to its "great game" in the Middle East every bit as much as were the British a
century ago (Meyer and Brysac 1999)? In short -- to lapse into Bourdieu-ese for just a moment --neo-conservatism today combines a habitus of
domination over the racialized other with a doxa of incorporation and respect for those who are no longer
formally recognized as other at all.9 And from the standpoint of those others -- who are in practice still 16 racially identified -- there is a
combination of responses as well: as we have already noted, not only a new resilience, but also a continuing vulnerability. It is the height of perversity that the
civil rights legacy has been harnessed to the cause of global domination and "pre-emptive' war, but the fact
remains that some of its key tropes have been preserved by the neocons who once represented its "moderate" wing.10 TOWARD THE RACIAL FUTURE These
contradictions are indications of the uncertainties of the current moment in racial politics. The necessarily brief review presented here suggests that a new racial
hegemony has by no means been secured. There are fundamental instabilities in the ideologies of colorblindness, racial "differentialism," and "nonracialism."
Racial biologism is prospering; is it still a "backdoor to eugenics" (Duster 2003 [1990])? Race/gender/class "intersectionality" denotes the instability in practice --
both at "micro-social" and at "macro-social" levels -- not only of race and racism, but also of other axes of oppression. The
link between racism and
empire was wrongly considered terminated; instead it has been reinvented, principally through US neoconservatism. In fact
none of the "posts-" -- post-civil rights, post-apartheid, post-coloniality -- is sufficiently "post"; none
denotes a full break with the conditions their very names contain; all necessitate uneasy and
continuous adjustments, both on the level of policy and politics, and on that of personal experience and
identity, to the ongoing operation of racial conflicts. 17 So what is the meaning of these racial contradictions for the future? What do
they suggest about the development of a new racial justice agenda, both globally and locally? Although the intellectual endeavor required to rethink global racial
conditions is rather daunting, the political and personal commitments we "movement scholars" have undertaken do not permit us to desist from trying to make
sense of the current world racial situation and of our role within it. Neither do they allow us to "stop thinking about tomorrow," as the popular song would have it.
Simply reasserting the continuing significance of race, while not mistaken, nevertheless has serious limits. Such an approach is insufficiently pragmatist, as well as
deficient in its democratic commitments. As we learn from racial formation theory and critical race theory, race is a flexible concept that is constantly being
reshaped in practical political activity. That the civil rights movement and the racial nationalisms of the 1960s were absorbed and rearticulated in a new racial
hegemony was not only a contradictory outcome, one that combined some real achievements with some painful defeats; it was also a valuable lesson about racial
politics. Question: what happened to the civil rights movement ideal of a colorblind society? Answer: it morphed under the pressure of neoconservative politics
into an abstract concept of equality, becoming available to the respectable racial right. Ironic, isn't it -- downright annoying in fact -- that the
rearticulation of "colorblind" racial ideology served to shore up the inequality and structural racism of
US society. This was after all the same phenomenon that movement advocacy of nonracialism had originally aimed at overturning! Similar pitfalls awaited
"nationalist" concepts of racial emancipation. Originally developed under conditions of colonial (or quasi-colonial) rule as the effort to restore democracy and "self-
determination," nationalist movements have proved susceptible to autocracy and caudillismo of various types: plagued by corruption, religious authoritarianism,
and sexism, dependent upon charismatic leaders, they are often incapable of fulfilling in practice the democratic and emancipatory ideals that originally inspired
them (Gilroy 2000). Such is post-civil rights, postcolonial, post-apartheid racial hegemony. But is that the end of the story? Is this the end of the trajectory of racial
politics? After the emancipatory insights of a movement have been absorbed and reinterpreted, after its radicalism has been so to speak bleached away, then
what happens? What happens to a dream deferred? By way of answer -- for space here is limited -- it is worth noting how unstable and problematic the ideas of
colorblindness, nonracialism, differentialism, and postcolonialism are proving to be. Of course there is a significant movement critique of these supposedly post-
racial positions, one that insists on the fulfillment of the still-incomplete agenda of the earlier post-WWII decades; demonstrates the continuity and depth of US
racial injustice (Bonilla- Silva 2003; Brown et al 2003); and notes the links between globalization and racism (Macedo and Gounari, eds. 2005). But this critique, for
56
all its merits, has not yet developed a theoretical account capable of resolving the various 19 contradictions of 21st-century racial dynamics -- nonracialism,
intersectionality, etc. -- that are the central subjects here. Meanwhile, back at the plantation, 21st-century racial hegemony has not been secured. Once again
ironically, its major challenges originate, not from the critiques just mentioned, and not from the anti-racist left or from civil rights advocates or racial nationalists
based in the global South or global East. Rather they have emerged from the ongoing instabilities and conflicts of racial rule itself. Taking the US (the world's only
"superpower") as a central case: the post-civil rights US racial regime must frequently negate its own insistence on
colorblindness. This regime apparently cannot dispense with its practice of "racial profiling": not only
for reasons of "national security" but also in carceral, policing, and welfare state practices. It has made
substantial investments in the racial genomics, which is now a big scientific enterprise as well as a developing system for social control. Driven by
paranoia about immigration, the US is reviving nativist practices on the Mexican border and in the
Pacific. Not only because it has failed to fulfill the promise of racial equality and justice, but also
because it defaults, so to speak, to racial rule as a key component of hegemonic rule, the contemporary
US regime must violate its own racial norms, themselves the products of post-WWII civil rights and anti-imperial political struggles. ***
What does the foregoing analysis suggest about 21st-century movement politics oriented toward fomenting racial justice and expanding democracy? 20
Instead of insisting on the fulfillment of 20th-century demands, movement activists and theorists have
to pose new questions about the actually existing and deeply conflicted dynamics of racial politics and
racial identity; in short, we have to think about racial formation processes as they are unfolding today and
in the future. Here I briefly (and artificially) distinguish the experiential dimensions of racial politics (micro-level raciality, the personal or small-scale aspects
of racial formation) from the social structural dimensions of racial politics (macro-level raciality, the institutional, governmental, and world-systemic aspects of
racial formation).11 At the micro-social, experiential level, we all experience race in a contradictory fashion. We must recognize once again, a century after Du Bois
introduced it (1989 [1903]), the importance of "double consciousness." His exploration of that contradiction in Souls ("An American, a Negro: two warring souls in
one dark body") points more than ever to the situated and flexible character of raciality as a practical matter. It applies to everybody, not just blacks, albeit in
varying ways. This duality or even multiplicity is what shapes our racial identities really, not some ideal of a nonracialist world or of an undifferentiated, racially-
defined group solidarity. Life is more complicated than that. We know both that in
the US -- and across the whole planet -- race
continues to matter, that it shapes identities and "life-chances"; and that racially based identity can be
problematic, uncertain, or overridden by other forms of solidarity. Racial identity can be called into
question by mixed-race status, by strong ties that cut across racial lines, or by multiple identities (for
example, racial and class-based identities can conflict).
57
Alternatives
58
A: Refusal
The alternative is to refuse the promise project of empire in order to produce
alternative solidarities and resistances
Agathangelou, et al 08 [Anna M., Associate Professor, York University, Postcolonial theory,
Feminist Political Economy, STS and Decolonial justice movements, M. Daniel Bassichis, and Tamara L.
Spira, Assistant Professor of Queer Studies in Fairhaven College and the American Cultural Studies
Department at Western Washington University. Intimate Investments: Homonormativity, Global
Lockdown, and the Seductions of Empire. Winter 2008. Pg. 137-139]
Global lockdown thus functions as one of the looming underbellies and conditions of possibility of the (un)freedoms and (non)futures being
promised by neo-liberal empire. Consigning the collective traumas of slavery and colonization to a remote and
irrelevant past while drawing on their logics to instantiate its rule, global lockdown shows itself to be
neither cruel and unusual nor exceptional, but rather as foundational. Importantly, these (un)freedoms and
(non)futures carry very different promises and pleasures depending on our relationship to the human
surplus motor-ing the global political economy. Global lockdown, then, is not simply the newest outside, but quite literally
the material redefining off what life can even mean in the wake of so much necessary death. We have thus far argued that across
diffuse spaces and moments the homonormative turn, the neoliberalization of the economy, the war
on terror, and global lockdown we see different dimensions of a promise project, which is also a project
forever seeking to (re)consolidate empire. On the one hand, there are those for whom subjectivity,
capital, and satiating pleasures and rights are being forever promised. This occurs, we argue, at the
expense of compliance with, or perhaps distraction from, the larger structural underpinnings of social relations
and processes. On the other hand, there are the (non)subjects for whom the same promise has not
been issued, the abject(s) whose lives and deaths are completely nonspectacular within the dominant
imaginations. Adding to this contradiction is the dimension that even the promises themselves are tenuous: indeed, as elite queers
privilege homonormativity over more radical political and economic praxes, neoconservative forces continue to criminalize queerness. While
first and foremost queers outside this elite or national racial strata are produced as exterminable sodomites, the category of the abject and
killable always threatens even elite queers in first world spaces. This is part of the politico-economic and affective logics that have fueled a
frenzied search for an end to pain: continue imperial soldiering in exchange for a mirage of security, or spend your energies fighting other
queers for a prized space as most radical. With such a paucity of choices, our
energies are directed away from building
solidarities and exhausted by fixing on individualized solutions and fueling the (re)production of
neoliberal, neoconservative, homonormative, and ultimately heteronormative worlds. If the neoliberal
turn has been part of a larger strategy of counterinsurgency mobilized in the wake of revolutionary
decolonization movements threatening capitalism, (hetero)sexism, and white supremacy, it is
important to pause on some of the impacts of that (counter)mobilization. In this paper we have worked to
foreground the affective logics that function on the level of feeling and desire in the service of a
neoliberal project of a world remade. To begin to articulate the ways in which our most intimate
sensibilities our fears, desires, mourning, and yearning are being mobilized by a regime of global lockdown is to
make urgent the production of solidarities not premised upon exploitation, profit, or death. For those
engaged in movements dismantling the prison industrial complex and any form of imperial violence, it is precisely
these affective economies to which we must be attentive. If we do not work to articulate the ways in
which we become libidinally and erotically invested in the status quo of mass lockdown in effect, the various
promises that the prison issueswe run the risk of reproducing the racialized and sexualized economies of
benevolence and exploitation that fortify so much of conservative, liberal, and even radical praxis. However, as we
have sought to argue, the price of such dismissals is nothing less than participation in imperial violence that,
ultimately, impacts us all. Amidst the many affective callings and seductive offerings we are issued, we
must continue the work of imagining alternative ways to feel, be, and love in this moment of intensified
empire-building. To become completely drawn into challenging homonormativization without attention to the larger structural
underpinnings of social relations and processes may ultimately prove unproductive as it misses the larger imperial logics that may be
embodied differentially in other sites. Moreover, it becomes impossible to discern the relationship between our own struggles and the set of
59
promises and nonpromises offered to other others. Foreclosing

potential and increasingly crucial solidarities, we are
drawn into our own corners and ultimately diverted from the possibilities of massive, cross-bordered
mobilizations, movements and revolutionary projects. In the place of this vision, we offer first and
foremost a disruption of complicity, a refusal of empires promise project. The series of wars in which
empire asks us to participate are utterly genocidal, rather than constituting processes that enable our
security and healing. As members of different and overlapping communities and struggles, the authors have each grappled personally
with this process. As activists and intellectuals who are engaged in struggles around war, migration and traficking, labor and homelessness,
mass imprisonment, and state violence against queer and transgender communities, we are confronted with the seductive yet ultimately
murderous promises that are described in this essay. Moreover, as
members of the academy at different levels
(undergraduate student, graduate student, and faculty member), wehave witnessed how the strategies of promise and
nonpromise projects have worked to fragment, divide, and conquer people of color, working-class
people, queers, transgender people, postcolonial subjects, and others within powerful academic zones
of knowledge production. Recognizing that we can never be outside empires seductive offerings, we
engage these questions out of rage, hope, and the desire to form life-sustaining solidarities and
intimacies. We strive with others toward a politics that enables intimacies as both means and ends, as a
strategy of movement-building in which relationships are formed not to instantiate empires incessant
production of internal and external enemies, but to disrupt it. This is a politics that would challenge
histories that dichotomize and fragment our worlds, and instead offer praxes of erotic resistance in
which we might be able to glimpse a breathing space for reconstituting connections and relations based
in collectivity and healing. With this analysis in mind, all attempts to separate and make discrete struggles for social justice and
transformation those working for prison abolition, sexual and gender freedom, decolonization, and the end to war, for example prove
unsuccessful. They are always already imbricated in one another. When
one struggles to resist coercive sexual or gender regimes
heternormativization as well as homonormativization one is
already engaging in a politics deeply implicated
in the wars on terror, poverty, and drugs, and in the (neo)slaveries of the prison industrial complex. This is true not only
because of the devastating impacts these wars have had on queer communities and sexually aberrant (non)subjects locked away, and because
of the ways in which a racializing sodomoti cation is drawn on to produce the criminal and the terrorist. Indeed, the
violence and
death that we authorize and face operate through and within our libidinal, erotic, and affective
investments, investments that we must engage directly and rigorously if we are to disrupt the seductive
workings of power in their most intimate dimensions. If, then, all queer politics are already organizing around and
implicated in the buildup of global lockdown and imperialist war, the question is not if a praxis of decolonization and abolitionism is pertinent
to queer struggles, but how and why it is. If
it is true that our deepest desires, feelings, and arousals are tapped
into for imperial production, it also becomes crucial to ask how we might organize, mobilize, and form
alternative intimacies and desires. These alternatives, which continue to be nurtured in radical and
revolutionary movements and collectivities, are forged as a disruption to individualized, consumptive,
and privatized erotics in the name of broader collective projects of freedom and transformation that
cultivate the pleasures of substantial connection and the production of more egalitarian relations.
These are the intimacies that form the core of decolonizing imaginaries, those that understand sexual
freedom only through collective self-determination. It is only when we engage the traumas as well as
the yearnings of our pasts and our futures that we might be able to seize the possibilities increasingly
foreclosed by empires seductive promises.
60
A: Critical whiteness studies

A critical pedagogy of whiteness allows the construction of a progressive anti-racist
white identity
Kincheloe 99 The Struggle to Define and Reinvent Whiteness: A Pedagogical Analysis, Joe L.
Kincheloe Source: College Literature 26 (Fall 1999): 162-]
How do we deal with the anger of Eisenman and the millions of white males he represents? Indeed, we understand the simple-minded irony of
his argument that someone needs to defend white males - the most powerful group by far in contemporary society. But the importance of
Eisenman's argument does not rest on its rational basis; its social importance revolves around its emotionality, its perception of Whites under
siege, its white anger.Eisenman is in crisis about his whiteness in a world, a hyperreality, where meaning is
lost and depersonalization is the order of the day. Obviously, his whiteness is important to him as an
identity and he is upset by its instability, its ilification by "others" who have uncovered whiteness's
complicity in their own oppression. Identity politics take on new importance in a world as fragmented as ours, often emerging as
a remedy for alienation and anonymity. Caught in the crisis of whiteness, Eisenman and countless white young people
in various Western societies attempt to deal with the perception that they don't have an ethnicity or at
least don't have one they feel is validated. Whiteness finds itself in an identity vacuum and needs help
in the effort to construct a progressive, anti-racist white identity as an lternative to the white ethnic
pride shaped by the right-wing and embraced by Whites such as Eisenman. A cardinal aspect of the entire conversation
about whiteness involves the fact that liberal and pluralist forms of multiculturalism and identity politics have not
produced a compelling vision of a reconstructed white identity. A critical white identity that renounces
its whiteness or is guilty about it or seeks merely to court favor among non-Whites is ineffective in the
struggle for justice, democracy, and self-efficacy. Here is a key moment in the larger effort to change
impotent forms of multiculturalism: the necessity of creating a positive, proud, attractive, anti-racist
white identity that is empowered to travel in and out of various racial/ethnic circles with confidence
and empathy. Operating from such a position, Whites would not resent those Latino/a, Asian, and
African immigrants who enter their new countries with a clear sense of their ethnic identities.
Progressive Whites of the critical multicultural variety would value and learn from such immigrants,
using such knowledge in a continuous effort to understand the social and cultural forces that shape the
way they see themselves and the world. Such Whites would understand in these contexts of racial
difference the social role of marginality - the localizing power marginality has been able to muster since the late 1960s to help
oppressed peoples gain moral and political currency as compensation for their lowly position. This currency is exactly what Whites haven't
possessed over the last couple of decades, and it has made them quite uncomfortable. Whites such as Pat Buchanan, Dan Quayle, and letter-
writer Eisenman have felt that something was missing in their struggle with the white identity crisis, but they couldn't name it. The moral and
political currency provided by marginality provides insight into their struggle. The
white identity crisis is real and cannot
simply be dismissed as the angst of the privileged. While it is in part such an angst, it is also a
manifestation of the complexity of identity as class and gender intersect with race/ethnicity, an
expression of the emptiness of the postmodern condition, and an exhibition of the failure of modernist
humanism to respond to the globalism engulfing it. In the attempt to claim the currency of marginality
Whites referenced their immigrant grandparents' stories of struggle, assumed the status of European
ethnic minorities, and revived ethnic practices long abandoned by second-generation descendants of
immigrants. Such efforts could not solve the identity crisis, for the immigrant experience of marginalization with its linguistic and custom-
related alienation was too far removed from the lived world of most contemporary Whites. Indeed, eating mousaka on holidays does not a
marginalized Greek immigrant make. Students
emerging from such identity struggles or families caught in them
often find it easier to discern manifestations of African, indigenous, or Latino/a racialized meanings in
literature, popular culture, and everyday life than white racialized meanings. How could they know what a white
racialized meaning (an implicit or explicit reference to how being white affects one's or a group's life) entails when they were unaware of what
it means to be white or even Polish, Italian, or Greek? Even
when whiteness and white ethnicity are racialized, their
specific meaning is still occluded. There are presently few options for progressive, anti-racist young
Whites who don't position themselves as "wannabe" Blacks or "wiggers" (a designation for white niggers). Too often they sense that
there exists no good reason to be white (Yudice 1995; Gallagher 1994; Tanaka 1996; Winant 1994; Keating 1995). Henry Giroux
(1995) points out that popular culture often provides little hope for a critical whiteness, as evidenced in the violence of white youth films such
as Laws of Gravity (1992), Kalifornia (1993), and Natural Born Killers (1994). And it doesn't take much racial insight to identify the white
nihilism within a movie such as Falling Down (1993). In this film Michael Douglas is an average white guy victimized by women and minorities
who blame him for all that is wrong and want compensation from him. He is tortured by Chicano gang members who want a toll for passing
61
through their turf, by lying and scheming homeless people, by Blacks ready to cry "racism" at every juncture, and bosses who don't care about
competence and qualifications (Clover 1993). When white audiences applaud and cheer Douglas's character D-Fens as he "opens fire" and
leaves a trail of corpses behind him, they are embracing an aesthetic of white nihilism.
Such hopelessness assumes there is no
alternative for postmodern white people save taking people with them when they inevitably go down
(fall down). A critical pedagogy of whiteness rejects such an alternative as it conceives new ways of
being white (Kincheloe et al 1998).
62
A: Third World Feminism

Alt Third World Transnational Feminist Standpoint
However, while feminist standpoint theorists present a compelling case for knowledge that begins from the standpoint of marginalized lives,
they leave largely unexamined the story-like, "unprofessional" format in which this knowledge often appears. Transnational
feminist
writers help to explain the need for unorthodox writing in responding to the struggles of marginalized
groups. Critics such as Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Mohanty investigate the specific transnational
institutions that govern our lives, including economic institutions such as the World Bank and World
Trade Organization as well as gender and ethnic hierarchies, which economic institutions often exploit
and reinforce. They point out that the contradictions between the claims of ruling institutions and their
actual historical effects are most acute for third world women, for these women tend to remain the
most oppressed within "free" and "democratic" societies. At the same time, their multi-pronged
resistance to sexism, authoritarianism, and exploitation can indicate the complex character of
contemporary power relations and the kind of work necessary to transform them. Thus, transnational
feminist thinkers emphasize the particular importance of theorizing the social world from the
standpoint of third world women and, most importantly, connecting these women's lived experiences
of struggle to far-reaching relations of domination.22 [End Page 65] Alexander and Mohanty recognize, furthermore, that
engaging third world women's experiences as a resource for critical insight and transformative politics is not a straightforward process.
"[T]he point is not just 'to record' one's history of struggle" says Mohanty, but "the way we read,
receive, and disseminate such imaginative records is immensely significant," that is, we need to address
experiences of struggle in a way that does not simply treat them as evidence of oppression or
"difference" but instead respects the complexity of the experiences, locates the experiences within
transnational relations of domination in which all of us are situated, and identifies elements of
resistance, even within the most marginalized communities (1991a, 34).23 Such nuanced analysis demands
empirical rigor as well as creative and engaged inquiry for, as Mohanty emphasizes and as the above texts on
globalization illustrate, standard academic approaches to narrating others' lives tend merely to reduce those
lives to preconceived theories and objectifying categories.24 Thus, thinking that genuinely pursues the
standpoint from others' lives cannot be expected to conform to "what counts as scholarly or academic
('real?') historiography" but will likely mix historical analysis with empathetic and creative narration in
order to address experiences outside the public spotlight and irreducible to received theories (Mohanty
1991a, 36). Emotionally sensitive and innovative narration is also crucial to the process of thinking from
the standpoint of marginalized lives because, as some standpoint theorists have acknowledged, resistant experiences
are rarely self-evident but tend to be "inchoate" and "a struggle to articulate" (Smith 1987, 58; Harding 1991, 282). This occurs, in part,
because a person's experiences of frustration with or resistance to social norms can be overshadowed by her ideologically formed
consciousness. Compounding this problem, the categories by which we interpret experiencecategories of
identity as well as
categories such as "advanced" and "backward" or "home" and "work"are formed from the standpoint
of the dominant culture, so that experiences incongruent with white, upper middle-class, male-
centered culture often cannot be articulated in straightforward prose.25 Gloria Anzalda, for instance,
could turn her frustration with society's dichotomy between "American" and "Mexican" into critical
insight only through soul searching and experimental writing, by which she sifted through painful
memories and wove autobiography with history and poetry, so as to trace her "mixed breed" status to
the history of U.S. exploitation of Mexican resources and to revise her seemingly schizophrenic identity
in terms of new metaphors that embrace cultural intermingling and cross-border alliances (1990b). Other
times, sentiments of resistance to ruling institutions defy easy articulation because people in marginalized positions are unable to act on their
resistant impulses so that the latter emerge only in contradictory and incomplete gestures. Roy, for instance, recounts the story of a displaced
63
indigenous man who protests [End Page 66] that his baby would be better off dead than living in the resettlement site, even while he rocks the
baby gently in his arms (1999, 54).
64
A: Storytelling/Narration
Storytelling [short]
Emotionally sensitive and innovative narration is also crucial to the process of thinking from the
standpoint of marginalized lives because, as some standpoint theorists have acknowledged, resistant experiences are
rarely self-evident but tend to be "inchoate" and "a struggle to articulate" (Smith 1987, 58; Harding 1991, 282). This occurs, in part,
identity as well as
baby gently in his arms (1999, 54). Given the elusive, difficult to articulate character of many experiences of
oppression and resistance, it is not surprising that (like Anzalda) some of the most powerful critics of the global
economic order, including Roy, Galeano, Fanon,26 and Farmer27 forgo academic conventions to experiment with
styles more responsive to the existential richness and ethical pull of marginalized people's experiences.
Elsewhere, I have described such writing as "storytelling": writing that, whatever its particular content or style, begins
from fully engaged reckoning with the complexities and contradictions of specific people's experiences
and then uses this engagement with experience as a springboard for fresh perspectives on our shared
world. Such nonfiction storytelling is accountable to rules of evidence and accuracy and thus often cites
public records and reports; however, in "storytelling," emotionally close, attentive engagement with
specific experiences overrides adherence to preconceived categories and disciplinary norms, rather
than the other way around.28
Storytelling [long]
Emotionally sensitive and innovative narration is also crucial to the process of thinking from the
standpoint of marginalized lives because, as some standpoint theorists have acknowledged, resistant experiences are
rarely self-evident but tend to be "inchoate" and "a struggle to articulate" (Smith 1987, 58; Harding 1991, 282). This occurs, in part,
identity as well as
65
baby gently in his arms (1999, 54). Given the elusive, difficult to articulate character of many experiences of
oppression and resistance, it is not surprising that (like Anzalda) some of the most powerful critics of the global
economic order, including Roy, Galeano, Fanon,26 and Farmer27 forgo academic conventions to experiment with
styles more responsive to the existential richness and ethical pull of marginalized people's experiences.
Elsewhere, I have described such writing as "storytelling": writing that, whatever its particular content or style, begins
from fully engaged reckoning with the complexities and contradictions of specific people's experiences
and then uses this engagement with experience as a springboard for fresh perspectives on our shared
world. Such nonfiction storytelling is accountable to rules of evidence and accuracy and thus often cites
public records and reports; however, in "storytelling," emotionally close, attentive engagement with
specific experiences overrides adherence to preconceived categories and disciplinary norms, rather
than the other way around.28 The above critics demonstrate the power of engaged and creative analysis to provide
critical insight absent from conventional scholarship. For instance, in Open Veins of Latin America, one of the books
rejected for our globalization workshop, Galeano writes as a nonspecialist who seeks "a talk with people" about their region's widespread
poverty (1997, 2656). Concerned to help his community understand their condition, he precisely documents the exploitation of Latin
American resources by U.S. and European interests; however, he also makes clear that he writes from a standpoint of empathy with those who
have been exploited by ruling institutions. For instance, he presents the Bolivian economy from the viewpoint of the miner he accompanied
"from tropical heat to polar cold and back again to the heat, alwaysfor hoursin the same poisoned air," who has lost his sense of taste and
smell and who, if not crushed in a mining accident or shot with one of the army's bullets that greet striking workers, will likely begin to vomit
blood and die of silicosis within a decade on the job (Galeano 1997, 1501). Such people's stories turn economic statistics into "murder by
poverty" (Galeano 1997, 5). To help demystify social inequality, Galeano also invokes metaphors that throw a new light on the latter's
historical significance. In place of the ruling metaphor of history as a Darwinian competition, in which winners and losers are inevitable and
historical success is self-justifying, he elaborates upon Marx's metaphor of "vampire capitalism," describing Latin America as a region of "open
veins" whose wealth is devoured by corrupt foreign interests. He supports this image of usurpation with well-documented analysis of the way
that neoliberal trade and lending policies orient Latin American economies to the interests of foreign capital and thereby institutionalize
inequality among and within nations, but he [End Page 67] makes no attempt to be neutral about the resulting "human blood offered on the
altar of productivity" (Galeano 1997, 281). Invoking another metaphor from ancient Indian rituals, in which sacrificial victims were called
"doors," he revisions those who have died in struggle, not as mere losers whose fate is their destiny, but as "fertile sacrifices" who mark the
way to new possibilities within a history that is not predestined but "confronts the conscience of man with a burning challenge" (Galeano
1997, 8, 261). Thus, whereas Micklethwait and Wooldridge presuppose a concept of progress in which history sides with the successful and
poverty arises from "the backwardness of some countries," Galeano, by directing his inquiry to the aim of helping his community regain
control over the conditions of their lives, shows Latin American "backwardness" to be a function of U.S. and European "development" of an
unjust and changeable system. In "The Greater Common Good," another text rejected for the globalization workshop, Roy "tell[s]
politics like a story" so as to recover details and meanings whitewashed by official reports on India's
large dams (2001a, 36). Although her specific target is India's dam industry, her defiant integration of passion and poetry into social
analysis also challenges the market-oriented discourses of value, which command authority in many contexts. Such authoritative discourses
include, for instance, the assertions of Dollar and Kraay that "the best available evidence" shows that "the current wave of globalization . . .
has actually promoted economic equality and reduced poverty" (2002, 120). The authors support their claim with reference to similar
generalizations by like-minded economists, as well as "hard data," such as the fact that, upon having integrated into the world market, India's
"per capita income growth now tops four percent" (2002, 125, 127). Roy
challenges the authority of such seemingly
objective reports, not by replacing "serious inquiry" with personal stories, but by displacing the
opposition between the two. She interweaves empirically grounded analysis and estimates of the total
number of people displaced (no official figures are available) with tales of displaced individuals, poetic
reflections on her findings, and wry humor that exposes the laughable side of "serious" institutions. For
instance, tracing the history of displaced families, some of whom India's Supreme Court will offer a minimal cash compensation, she finds that
many fishing and farming communities had, for generations, sustained themselves off the land and rivers independently of the money
economy and with "as much use for money as a Supreme Court judge has for a bag of fertilizer" (Roy 1999, 20). Many such families have now
joined the market economy, but this is only because, having been forced off their traditional lands, they have taken refuge in slums and joined
the pools of cheap manual labor. Dollar and Kraay may register a rise in "per capita income" and the Indian government may manage "Project
Affected People" with "resettlement," but no economic charts can make palpable [End Page 68] what it means, Roy suggests, for farmers who
have cultivated the same land for generations to watch their homes dismantled and their standing crops bulldozed, for forest-dwellers who
once found all they needed in the forest to be unable to afford a piece of fruit, or for people once self-sufficient and free to have to choose
66
between starving to death or sitting on city streets "offering themselves as wage laborers like goods for sale" (1999, 53). When
Roy asks
the wife of the displaced man whether she agrees with her husband that their baby would be better off
dead than living in the resettlement camp, and when she reports that the woman "didn't reply" but
"just stared," she provokes us to consider "costs" of the dams, which cannot be articulated, let alone
quantified (1999, 54). Roy also indicates the limits of "expert" knowledge by pursuing stories of the dams
across disciplinary and discursive boundaries. For instance, investigating the many facets of life in Madhya Pradesh that will
be affected by its slated submergence, Roy highlights links between people, places, and rivers that the experts neglect: ancient ferry, fishing,
and farming communities who are sustained by the river, forests that nourish a diverse wildlife and moderate river siltation, and tens of
thousands of indigenous people who find all they need to survive in the forest. When
planners are bent on rigid categories
and mastery, they overlook the role that a river plays in such interconnected life-systems as well as our
limited ability to master such interconnections. "Have engineers made the connection between forests,
rivers, and rain?" asks Roy of the technocrats who presume to replace 50,000 hectares of submerged
old-growth forest with a wildlife sanctuary and tribal museum. "Unlikely. It isn't part of their brief" (1999,
64). When her subtle recounting of select details evokes the existential significance of displacement and when her sarcasm reveals the
foolishness of "serious knowledge," Roy reminds us that, nomatter how "objective" government and industry reports
may appear, people cannot be reduced to fungible figures, and progress cannot be reduced to market
calculations. In sensitizing us to value that confounds monetary measurement and identity that exceeds
people's roles in the market, Roy not only undermines the authority of "objective" reports but also
disrupts our own complacency with policies that destroy intricate communities. She provokes us (Indian
and North American readers alike) to consider the living realities effaced by our categories and the ties that,
however unmasterable, bind us to the rest of the living world. Testimony also should be mentioned here, for this
genre, by which ordinary people use their everyday struggles as a fulcrum for historical analysis, was
revived by the Cuban revolution specifically in order to redefine "real" historiography. In Let Me Speak!:
Testimony of Domitilia, a Woman of the Bolivian Mines, Domitila Barrios de Chungara demonstrates the power of testimony, not only
to foreground people overlooked [End Page 69] in orthodox history, but also to recast history itself as a realm
of concrete and open-ended struggles. In a section entitled, "How a Miner's Wife Spends Her Day," Barrios recounts her daily
routine of waking at 4:00 a.m. to make biscuits to sell, cooking and caring for her children in a one-room, no-plumbing company shack, and
worrying about eviction should her husband die of silicosis or a mining accident. She segues from "I" to "we," as she recognizes the same
burdens shared by her neighbors, and when she traces the women's common hardships to their husbands' meager wages, her story raises
probing questions about the system in which they live: "[E]ven if [the miner's wife is] only at home, she's part of the whole system of
exploitation that her compaero lives in," says Barrios, "isn't that true?" (1978, 36). Her accusation is irreducible to a mere indictment of either
women's oppression or Bolivian "backwardness," for, by anchoring her critique in her specific community's struggles, she also reveals that the
women must work with their husbands, peasants, and sometimes even soldiers to fight the system that exploits all of them and that such
popular struggles have been violently repressed, even under the U.S.-supported "democracy." Through testimony, Barrios also highlights the
agency of seemingly obscure communities. Recounting her activism with the local Housewives Committee, she foregrounds impoverished
women who volunteer to assist other women with daily problems, who press demands such as better working conditions for the miners and
better nutrition for the children, and who do so with the minimal resources available to them, namely a radio transmitter, hunger strikes, and
dynamite whose use would kill them along with their antagonists. One of their hunger strikes catalyzed a successful nationwide strike, but the
crucial role of the women was quickly forgotten by men while most of the women's activities have been too diffuse and their results too
indeterminate to count as historical events. Nevertheless, if "housewives committees" rarely make history books, Barrios's testimony suggests
that such anonymous and collective activism of ordinary people can address the most obscured forms of domination and can, in the process,
nurture more cooperative forms of social relations that offer seeds for substantive social change. Significantly, Barrios demands of her readers
the same situated engagement as she herself practices. While Galeano leaves no neutral ground from which to approach a contested history
and Roy challenges us to face the costs of our own comforts, Barrios often ends statements with questions, prompting us to consider for
ourselves whether her claims ring true. She also stresses that "we all have our roles to play in history" and that everyone is needed, including
peasants, housewives, "even the young people and the intellectuals who want to be with us" (Barrios 1978, 44). Her appeal to us to join her in
struggle is compelling, in part, because it comes from a common person who has herself made a difference [End Page 70] in history and, in
part, because in actualizing the connection between writer and activist, theorist and participant, she denies us the excuse of "professionalism"
for avoiding political engagement. Ultimately, by
connecting her everyday life to public history, Barrios recasts the
structure of history itself; historical identities, here, are not innate but built through shared struggle,
actors are not political leaders but people whose labor supports the economy, and history is not about
top-level diplomacy but about whether all people have safe working conditions and milk for their
children. Among the wide-ranging implications of this paradigm shift, it presents those who remain destitute in the
age of globalization not as mere victims or "nonstarters" but as historical activists whose projects
challenge our own thinking and whose communities each of us can choose to join.
67
Story telling solves colonial thought best, for the colonized and the colonizers
Aman Sium-Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada , and Eric
Ritskes- Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada, Decolonization:
Indigeneity, Education & Society, Speaking truth to power: Indigenous, 13
http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/19626/16256
Of course who
does the storytelling, remains an important question in decolonization work. While
Indigenous peoples have been the subjects of objectivity, it has been White settlers who have
been in the position of power to wield it with impunity. How can we contest and break down these settler
positions to further a decolonization agenda that includes solidarity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples? In her
exploration of the psychiatrization of Indigenous children in the child welfare system, LeFrancois speaks from the tenuous position
of a settler scholar. First, describing her article as a storytelling approach to research (p.87) that seeks to disrupt and
implicate, she continues to explain the fragility of telling from the position of an outsider: There are no short phrases or words to
signify whether I should be given access, whether I fit the definition, whether I am really a privileged intruder or not, whether I am a
pretender or not; I cannot be authenticated easily (p.88). In many ways, LeFrancois speaks to the sometimes contested nature of
storytelling, both who speaks and from what perspective they enter the story. Although its not an easy task, this article pushes
us to think about how Indigenous peoples, settlers, and arrivants can ethically produce
knowledges about the others. In truth, Kaomea (2003) demands of settlers and Indigenous alike, We need to tell more
uncomfortable stories (p. 23). But if storytelling is inherently personal, then how do we do it without appropriating the voices of
those we speak of/to? Howard (2006), in his exploration of White bodies in antiracist classrooms, speaks to what LeFrancois is
trying to accomplish when he states, Detached,
rational discussions of an unembodied whiteness cannot
serve antiracist ends (p. 59). Settler narratives must speak stories of embodying colonial
violences and complicity in the ongoing settler violence(s) against Indigenous peoples.
Particularly evident in knowledge production as personal is the fact that storytelling is agentic
and participatory. Storytellers have never been silent in the face of colonial violence that
subverted and neutralized various other forms of resistance; the storytellers and griots have
never been idle, working through participatory mediums to maintain and sustain Indigenous
ways of being and living. Here, the role of the storyteller is central to the exercise of agency and
renewal. In Indigenous traditions around the world, storytellers are sacred knowledge keepers,
they are the elders and medicine people, and they shape communities through the spoken and
written word. Stories are not only agentic and individual but they are communal sharings that
bind communities together spiritually and relationally. As Leanne Simpson (2013) tells us: Spiritual and
social practices such as storytelling, the oral tradition, ceremonies, feasting, and gift-giving are
designed to bond people together toward a common understanding. Stories become mediums
for Indigenous peoples to both analogize colonial violence and resist it in real ways. A kind of
embodied reciprocity exists between a people and their stories. African novelist Ben Okri says that people are as healthy and
confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make their nations sick. And sick nations make for sick
storytellers (Okri in Parkinson, 2009, p. 31). Contrary to liberal notions of stories as depoliticized acts of sharing, we
must
recognize stories as acts of creative rebellion. Decolonizing the very act of storytelling means
breaking from liberal notions of stories as a kind of multicultural show and tell. It means
closing the false gap that often exists between speaking and acting. Lastly, it means calling upon
Indigenous concepts like Ankh Mdw - Kemetic beliefs in the Living Word - and others that recognize
words as alive inside us, what Somerville (2010) describes as the home fire burning within each person. Its fitting to paraphrase a
question asked by Watts (this issue): What does it mean to think of words as living acts? Or as creative acts? Finally, in answering
these questions in the affirmative, how will this be reflected in our scholarship? If stories are archives of collective pain, suffeIseke
explores the institution of eldership in the process of storytelling. In her own words, Indigenous Elders
are the
educators, storytellers, historians, language keepers, and healers of our communities (p. 36).
Through the trans-generational memory transmitted by their stories, Elders ensure the survival
and continuance of Indigenous epistemic traditions. For many communities under siege by the
triangular threats of (settler) colonialism, patriarchy and capitalist-modernity, storytelling
becomes a site and tool for survival. Trask (1999) reminds us that surviving as an Indigenous person in any colonial
situation is a strange mix of refusal, creation, and assertion (p. 89) and that is what these articles and stories are, part of that same
strange mix.
68
A: Disidentification
Alt - disidentification
JOHNSON 2K6 [Patrick E., professor of African American studies and performance studies at
Northwestern University, Quare Studies or (almost) everything I know about Queer Studies I learned
from my grandmother in Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology]
Elaborating more extensively on the notion of performance as a site of agency for lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgendered [LGBT] people of color, Latino performance theorist Jos Munoz proposes a theory of
disidentification whereby queers of color work within and against dominant ideology
to effect change: Disidentification is a mode of dealing with dominant ideology, one that neither
opts to assimilate within such a structure nor strictly opposes it; rather, disidentification is a strategy that
works on and against dominant ideology. Instead of buckling under the pressures of dominant ideology( identification, assimilation)
working on and against
or attempting to break free of its inescapable sphere(counteridentification, utopianism), this
is a strategy that tries to transform a cultural logic from within always laboring to enact
permanent structural change while at the same time valuing the importance of local and
everyday struggles of resistance. Munozs concept of disidentification[This] reflects the process
through which people of color have always managed to survive in a white supremacist
society: by working on and against oppressive institutional structures. The performance strategies of African Americans who
labored and struggled under human bondage exemplify this disidentificatory practice. For instance, vernacular tradtions that
emerged among enslaved Africans including folktales, spirituals, and the bluesprovided
the foundation for
social and political empowerment. These discursively mediated forms, spoken and
filtered through black bodies, enabled survival. The point here is that the inheritance of
hegemonic discourses does not preclude one from disidentifying, from putting those discourses
in the service of resistance. Although they had no institutional power, enslaved blacks refused to
become helpless victims and instead enacted their agency by cultivating discursive
weapons based on an identity as oppressed people. The result was the creation of folktales about the
bottom becoming the top teir (i.e., the slave rising out of slavery )or spirituals that called folks to Gather at the river (i.e., to plan
an escape).
69
A: Counter-history
Interpreting the disavowed dark histories of official knowledge is a critical skill for
resisting epistemological and socio-political subjugation
Official histories are produced by monopolizing knowledge-producing practices with respect to a shared past.
Official histories create and maintain the unity and continuity of a political body by imposing an interpretation on a shared past and, at the
same time, by
silencing alternative interpretations of historical experiences. Counter-histories try to undo
these silences and to undermine the unity and continuity that official histories produce. Foucault illustrates this
with what he calls the discourse of race war that emerged in early modernity as a discourse of resistance for the liberation of a race against
the oppression of another, e.g. of the Saxons under the yoke of the Normans. Foucault argues that in Europeand especially in Englandthis
discourse of race war functioned as a counter-history8 until the end of the 19th Century, at which point it was turned into a racist discourse
(aimed not at the liberation of an oppressed race, but at the supremacy of an allegedly superior race that views all others as an existential
threat). In lecture IV of Society Must Be Defended Foucault sets out to analyze the counterhistorical function of the race-war discourse in
early modernity.9 Part of what the race-war discourse did was to retrieve the untold history of a people which could be used as a weapon
against the official history that legitimized their oppression. This counter-history tapped into the subversive power of a silenced historical
experience and reactivated the past to create distinctive knowledge/power effects: new meanings and normative attitudes were mobilized, so
that what was officially presented as past glorious victories that legitimized monarchs and feudal lords as the rightful owners of the land to
whom taxes were owed, now appeared as unfair defeats at the hands of abusive conquerors who became oppressors and had to be
overthrown. In his analysis of race-war discourse, Foucault identifies two different roles that counter-history plays. In the first place, by
establishing itself in opposition to an official history, a counter-history reflects and produces disunity. A
counter-history blocks the unifying function of the official history by bringing to the fore the
oppositions and divisions in the political body. This is what Foucault calls the principle of heterogeneity, which guides
counter-history and has the following effect: The history of some is not the history of others. It will be discovered, or at least asserted, that the
history of the Saxons after their defeat at Battle of Hastings is not the same as the history of the Normans who were the victors in the same
battle. It will be learned that one mans victory is another mans defeat. *<+ What looks like right, law, or obligation from the point of view of
power looks like the abuse of power, violence, and exaction when it is seen from the viewpoint of the new discourse.10 The disunity effects of
a counter-history have the potential to destabilize a normative order by introducing a counter-
perspective that resists and invalidates the normative expectations of the imposed dominant ideology.
As Foucault puts it, this counter-history breaks up the unity of the sovereign law that imposes obligations.11
Through counter-history, the legitimacy of the obligations imposed on a subjugated people is undone,
and the law comes to be seen as a Janus-faced reality: the triumph of some means the submission of
others.12 In the second place, by undoing established historical continuities, a counter-history reflects and produces discontinuous
moments in a peoples past, gaps that are passed over in silence, interstices in the socio-historical fabric of a community that have received no
attention. This is what we can call, by symmetry with the previous point, the principle of discontinuity. Foucault describes it in the following
way: This counter-history *<+ also breaks the continuity of glory *<+. It reveals that the lightthe famous dazzling effect of poweris not
something that petrifies, solidifies, and immobilizes the entire social body, and thus keeps it in order; it is in fact a divisive light that illuminates
one side of the social body but leaves the other side in shadow or casts it into darkness.13 A
counter-history is the dark history
of those peoples who have been kept in the shadows, a history that speaks from within the shadows,
the discourse of those who have no glory, or of those who have lost it and who now find themselves,
perhaps for a timebut probably for a long timein darkness and silence.14 A counter-his-tory is not the history of victories,
but the history of defeats. As Foucault remarks, it is linked to those epic, religious, or mythical forms which *<+ formulate the mis-fortune of
ancestors, exiles, and servitude; it is much closer to the mythico-religious discourse of the Jews than to the politico-legendary history of the
Romans.15 While an official history keeps entire groups of peoples and their lives and experiences in darkness and silence, a counter-
history teaches us precisely how to listen to those silent and dark moments. But how do we learn to listen to
silence? In an earlier essay, What is an Author?,16 Foucault offers helpful remarks about how to fight against the omissions and
active oblivion produced by discursive practices, that is, how to listen to lost voices that have been silenced
or coopted in such a way that certain meanings were lost or never heard. Foucault is particularly interested in
those forms of silencing produced by a discursive practice which, far from being accidental, are in fact foundational and constitutive. Those
are constitutive silences, for the discursive practice proceeds in the way it does and acquires its distinctive
normative structure by virtue of the exclusions that it produces, by virtue of those silenced voices and
occluded meanings that let the official voices and meanings dominate the discursive space. Omissions
70
and silences are foundational, a constitutive part of the origin or the initiation of a discursive
practice. For that reason, the fight against those exclusions requires a return to the origin: If we return, it is
because of a basic and constructive omission that is not the result of accident or incomprehension. *<+ This nonaccidental omission must be
regulated by precise operations that can be situated, analysed, and reduced in a return to the act of initiation.17 Foucault distinguishes this
critical return to the origin from mere rediscoveries and mere reactivations: a rediscovery promotes the perception of forgotten or
obscured figures;18 and a reactivation involves the insertion of discourse into totally new domains of generalization, practices, and
transformation.19 By contrast, an attempt to transform a discursive practice deeply from the inside by resisting its silences and omissions
requires a return to the origin. This
critical return involves revisiting the texts that have come to be considered
foundational, the primary points of reference of the practice, and developing a new way of reading
them, so as to train our eyes and ears to new meanings and voices: we pay particular attention to
those things registered in the interstices of the text, its gaps and absences. We return to those empty
spaces that have been masked by omission or concealed in a false and misleading plenitude.20 Foucault
emphasizes that the modifications introduced by this critical return to the origin are not merely a historical
supplement that would come to fix itself upon the primary discursivity and re-double it in the form of an ornament which, after
all, is not essential. Rather, it is an effective and necessary means of transforming discursive practice.21 If rediscoveries and reactivations of
the past are crucial for extending discursive practices, areturn to the origin that unveils omissions and silences is what
is required for a deep trans-formation of our meaning-making capacities within those practices. The
ability to identify omissions, to listen to silences, to play with discursive gaps and textual interstices is a
crucial part of our critical agency for resisting power/knowledge frame-works. Lacking that ability is a
strong indication of ones inability to resist epistemic and socio-political subjugation, of the limitations on ones
agency and positionality within discursive practices. And the ability to inhabit discursive practices critically that we
develop by becoming sensitive to exclusionsby listening to silencesenables us not to be trapped
into discursive practices, that is, it gives us also the ability to develop counter-discourses. Indeed, being able
to negotiate historical narra-tives and to resist imposed interpretations of ones past means being able to develop counter-histories. Becoming
sensitive to discursive exclusions and training
ourselves to listen to silences is what makes possible the insurrection
of subjugated knowledge: it enables us to tap into the critical potential of demeaned and obstructed forms of po-wer/knowledge by
paying attention to the lives, experiences and discursive practices of those peoples who have lived their life in darkness and silence.
To continue to silence black and colonized voices on this topic is to sustain the
narrative of an official history which is rooted in a White and anti-black
epistemology. Our criticism is a break with the sanctioned ignorance that produces
domination.
The second crucial idea that derives from the Foucaultian approach is that there
is no such thing as epistemic innocence, for
we always operate from a space of knowability and unknowability simultaneously, from a
knowledge/ignorance frame-work. And this problematizes the notion of culpable ignorance. On the one hand, as Code remarks,
there is no such thing as an innocent position from which we could level charges of culpability.65 Therefore, as Code insists, in dealing with
the epistemic aspects of particular forms of oppression, we should be very careful not to indulge in the nave charge of epistemic culpability
they should have known better for very often subjects could not have known otherwise and, therefore, the charge of culpability is vacuous.
On the other hand, however, interstices within dis-cursive practices as well as alternative practices are often available; and they present
opportunities for epistemic resistance, for challenging knowledge/ignorance structures. Genealogical investigations can be used to point out
how these subjugated knowledges could have been used, how people could have known otherwise by drawing on them, how they could have
become able to undo epistemic exclusions and stigmatizations. Hence the insurrectionary power of subjugated knowledges, which
genealogical investigations try to mobilize. As Sullivan puts it, echoing Foucault: The
creation of ignorance/knowledge
through relations of force often is unbalanced and unequal, as is the case in colonized lands. But as a dynamic,
relational process, it involves the active participation of all sides and includes the possibility of resistance to and transformation of the forms
of ignorance/knowledge produced.66 A Foucaultian guerrilla
pluralism enables us to see how different possibilities of
resistance appear for differently constituted and situated subjects as they develop different forms of
agency with respect to power/knowledge, or rather, power/know-ledge-ignorance. Let me briefly sketch, by way of a
conclusion, how this insurrectionary genealogical pluralism can be put to use against ideologies of racial
71
oppression and the forms of white ignorance that they produce. In my application of the Foucaultian approach to
white ignorance, we can appreciate the two points high-lighted by Codes Foucaultian standpoint theory in the context of the epistemology of
race: the co-constitutive relations between racial knowledge and racial ignorance, and the unavailability of innocent racialized standpoints.
What a Foucaultian racial epistemology of power/knowledge-ignorance underscores is the constant epistemic struggles that take place in
racialized social fields, calling attention to possibilities of resistance and contestation. In what follows I will compare and contrast Foucaults
guerrilla pluralism applied to racial knowledge/ignorance with one of the most influential accounts in race theory: namely, Charles Millss
racial epistemology of ignorance. In his now classic The Racial Contract Charles Mills (1997)67 put white ignorance in the agenda of critical race
theory. Following a long tradition in African-American philosophy, Mills argued there that privileged white
subjects have become unable to understand the world that they themselves have created; and he
called attention to the cognitive dysfunctions and pathologies inscribed in the white world, not merely
as side-effects, but as constitutive features of the white epistemic economy, which revolves around
epistemic exclusions and a carefully cultivated racial blindness. As Mills suggests, white ignorance is a form of self-ignorance, but this
racial self-ignorance also produces blindness with respect to racial others and their experiences. As Code aptly puts it, the white
epistemic gaze produces an ongoing ignorance of its own positionality vis--vis people variously Othered.68 In his
recent work Mills has developed a critical epistemology of ignorance whichI want to suggestoverlaps with Foucaultian insurrectionary
genealogies in interesting ways. In White Ignorance (2007) Mills
emphasizes the role that official histories and hegemonic
forms of collective memory play in sustaining white ignorance, and also the crucial role that counter-memory needs to play to
resist and subvert the epistemic oppression that condemns the lives of marginalized people to silence or oblivion. As Mills puts it, a crucial
element in white ignorance is the management of memory, which involves socially orchestrated, exclusionary processes of both
remembering and for-getting: if we need to understand collective memory, we also need to understand collective amnesia.69 Mills
emphasizes that there is an intimate relationship be-tween white identity, white memory, and white amnesia, especially about nonwhite
victims.70 But fortunately we have both official and counter-memory, with con-flicting judgments about what is important in the past and
what is unimportant, what happened and does matter, what happened and does not matter, and what did not happen at all.71 Mills argues
that the postbellum
national white reconciliation was made possible and was subsequently maintained
thanks to the repudiation of an
alternative black memory.72 There have been all kinds of mechanisms in white epistemic practices that have
contributed to maintain this repudiation in place: blocking black subjectivities from giving testimony,
keeping black testimonywhen givenout of circulation,73 exercising an epistemic assumption against
its credibility, etc. In multiple venues of epistemic interaction in the white world, from the streets of
white suburbs to the lecture halls of the academy, black voices have been traditionally minimized and
heavily constrained in their ability to speak about their own experiences,74 when they have been
allowed to speak at all (think, for example, of how witnesses of lynching were terrorized into silence until not too long ago). Black
counter-testimony against white mythology has always existed but would originally have been handicapped by the lack of material and
cultural capital investment available for its production.75 The
black counter-memories that Mills describes as getting
systematically disqualified and whited out certainly count as subjugated knowledges in a Foucaultian sense. And
Foucaultian genealogical investigations that tap into those sub-jugated knowledges could produce the kind of subversion and insurrection that
Mills calls for: White
ignorance has been able to flourish all of these years because a white epistemology of
ignorance has safeguarded it against the dangers of an illuminating blackness or redness, protecting
those who for racial reasons have needed not to know. Only by starting to break these rules and meta-
rules can we begin the long process that will lead to the eventual overcoming of this white darkness
and the achievement of an enlightenment that is genuinely multiracial.76
72
2nc Extensions/Answers
73
Ext: Discourse/Ideology First

Ideology Matters: Colonization is not effected only through policy the affirmatives
knowledge production justifies continued physical-miltiary colonization around the
globe
ATTERH FLETCHER MAY 2013 KINGSLEY (PERCEPTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY EFFECTS OF
COLONIALISM AMONG EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS IN GHANA, H.N.D., ACCRA POLYTECHNIC,
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST)
Post colonial theory examines the discourse produced by colonial powers as well as by those who were
colonized. This form of postcolonial critique analyzes the social histories, political discrimination, and
cultural hegemony that is imposed and normalized by colonial machinery (Rukundwa, 2009). Ashcroft, Griffiths &
Tiffin (2006) contend that postcolonial studies examine colonial discursive practices and other cultural strategies that encompasses the time
period from the beginning of colonization through the present day neo-colonial international relationships. Rather
than viewing
postcolonialism as an historic period of formal decolonization, theorists are more attentive to issues
such as identity, representation, assimilation and migration following the process of decolonization
(Nichols, 2010). As Childs & Williams contend, postcolonialism encapsulates the cultural impact of the imperial
process from the moment of colonization to the present day. This is because there is a continuity of
preoccupations throughout the historical process initiated by European imperial aggression (Childs &
Williams, 1997, p. 3). Postcolonial theory serves as a useful framework for analyzing colonial discourse
in Ghana and how it is being challenged, reproduced or transformed. Post colonial critique analyzes
both historical and contemporary events from the perspective of the subaltern, requiring complete
subversion of dominant ideology (Gramsci, 1992; Spivak, 1988). This alternative perspective seeks to uncover
damaging effects on identity and representation of the colonized, as well as the mechanisms of
perpetuation. Edward Said (1979) proposed that colonialism is not only the result of physical domination
but also ideological domination through the control of the representation of non-Western people.
According to Bhabha (1994), postcolonial critique bears witness to the unequal and universal forces of cultural
representation of global powers that seek to dominate political and economic control (p. 171).
Domination of the production of knowledge removes the targeted groups representational authority,
distorts their images and forms of knowledge, and justifies continued physical-military colonization (Said,
1979). The imperial production of discourse in Ghana resulted in ultimate control by influencing Ghanaian self-perception through the lens of
racist and imperial ideology. As
formal education functions for the reproduction of social discourse, post
colonial theory provides a framework for identifying ideological domination in the colonial and post
colonial educational system of Ghana. Spivak (1988) contends that Western academic discourse was
produced to support Western economic interests. The sole purpose of the Western Christian missionary educational effort
among Africans was the promotion of British commercial interests and conversion to 94 Christianity as a means of having them accept British
cultural influence and political power (Mungazi, 1991, p. 3). Colonial educational discourse promoted racist ideology as
a means of legitimizing imperial presence: The colonial states and the secular and religious missionaries
in their educational systems and conversion programs widely propagated the view of Africa as a land
without history, culture, or civilization. Africa in this colonialist construct was religiously heathenish,
spiritually evil, scientifically backward, socially underdeveloped, physically ungainly, or, more bluntly,
ugly. Africa was described as located in a geographically barren and forbidding environment with harsh climate, heat, poor soil, diseases,
raging rivers, cataracts, and jungles (not forests or wilderness) full of dangerous wildlife and peopled by wild and untamed inhabitants. In
short, this colonizers Africa was a wild, untamed, dangerous and unexploited landscape that was full of obstacles. (Iweriebor, 2005, p. 25- 26).
The educational indoctrination of inferiority of African people, culture and resources created a sense of economic, social and political
dependency. You can see this clearly in the colonial mode of education, which for many of us in Africa makes us look to Europe as the basis of
everything, as the very center of the universe (Thiong'o, Borders and Bridges, 2006, p. 390). Thiongo (2006) contends that colonial
domination was achieved by controlling the minds of the people. Though Ghana gained independence from Britain in 1957, the educational
structures of contemporary Ghana are derived from those put in place by the former colonial power (Crowder, 1978). Contemporary
educational systems in Ghana continue to disseminate European perspectives and world-view as their foundation. By maintaining the colonial
structures of administration and minimally altering the curriculum, independent African states such as Ghana essentially preserved a colonial
orientation towards education (Altbach, 2006). [E]ducation[is] considered in most African [countries] as one of the major means of
continuous Western cultural domination, imperialism, and colonialism (Flolu, 2000, p. 25). Philosophical and
discursive
concepts that support imperialist assumptions and agenda which reproduce the effect of colonialism
74
are learned by each new generation and passed along to the next. Until the people of Ghana intentionally and
deliberately identify and redefine the educational systems put in place by the colonizer, those educational systems will
continue to reproduce the conditions of neocolonialism (Freire, 1970). The dismantling of dominant
knowledge production creates a discursive space for marginalized and targeted people groups to be
given a representative voice: Postcolonial perspectives emerge from the colonial testimony of Third
World countries and the discourses of minorities within the geopolitical divisions of East and West,
North and South. They intervene in those ideological discourses of modernity that attempt to give a hegemonic normality to the
uneven development and the differential, often disadvantaged, histories of nations, race, communities, peoples. (Bhabha, 1994, p. 171) Rather
than perpetuating the Western representation, Africans can participate in a selfdetermined representation based on their rich history, culture,
and language. First I will examine evidence of ideological domination in curriculum content, including hegemonic discourse regarding
Christianity, Western culture, Western epistemes, and imperial human resource development
There may no longer be colonists, but the epistemology of colonization remains in the
form of cultural imperialism
Decena 14 (Ashley M Decena., "Identity, colonial mentality, and decolonizing the mind : exploring
narratives and examining mental health implications for Filipino Americans" (2014). Theses,
Dissertations, and Projects. Paper 769)
Postcolonial theory grounds this study in recognition of colonialisms lingering impact . Postcolonial theory
attempts to shift the dominant ways in which people perceive the world (Young, 2003). Young (2003)
stated, postcolonialism claims the right of all people on this earth to the same material and cultural well-being
(p.2). Young (2003) asserted that postcolonialism names a politics and a philosophy of activism that challenges
the pervasive inequality in the world. In a different way , it resumes anti-colonial struggles of the past.
Historically, European powers, deemed the west, subjected many regions, the non-west, to colonial and
imperial rule. European powers felt it was their duty to colonize and felt justified in doing so: Colonial
and imperial rule was legitimized by anthropological theories which portrayed the peoples of the
colonized world as inferior, childlike, or feminine, incapable of looking after themselves and requiring
the paternal rule of the west for their own best interests (today they are deemed to require development).
The basis of such anthropological theories was the concept of race. In simple terms, the west-non-west relation
was thought of in terms of whites versus the non-white races (Young, 2003, p.2). Young (2003) mentioned that
white culture was and still is the basis for the dominant culture, which can encompass government, law,
economics, science, language, music, art, and literature. Postcolonialism and its theoretical foundations
stem from the works of scholars including Frantz Fanon, Paolo Freire, and Albert Memmi. Memmi (1982) stated
that, racism illustrates, summarizes, and symbolizes the colonial relation (p.32). Postcolonial theory also
acknowledges that national sovereignty has been achieved in many countries and many have attained
postcolonial status (Young, 2003). However, it recognizes that the major world powers have not changed
since this decolonization had taken place and a form of domination often still continues, and continues
to feed off of racism. One example of this idea today is neocolonialism, where colonialism takes on the
form of cultural imperialism, capitalism, and globalization (Young, 2003). In a literal sense, colonists are
no longer physically present but their values, attitudes, and beliefs that have been imposed and
ingrained on the indigenous population continue to hold power, and so, hegemonic powers still intrude
in some form from a distance, and the indigenous population is still oppressed. David (2013) asserted
that a similar oppression exists within the United States, but is outside a formal colonial context
(p.47). He explained that racial inequality and cultural imposition by the dominant group on
nondominant groups is similar to formal colonial processes (David, 2013). Fanon (1963) said, Independence has
certainly brought the colonized peoples moral reparation and recognized their dignity. But they have not yet had time to
elaborate a society or build and ascertain values (p.40).This idea can be applied to the Philippines. After Filipinos defeated the
Spanish after three hundred years of colonization, the Americans came in and continued this colonization for almost fifty more
years. When the Americans left in 1946, globalization, neocolonialism, and cultural imperialism still influence the Philippines
today (David & Nadal, 2013). Strobel (1997) referred to Freire in her study, who said that liberation starts with the naming of
the social and political structures that dominate and silence (p.69). Thus, postcolonial theory serves as a backdrop to this
study to name and recognize the effects of colonialism in order to break its dominating and silencing consequences.
75
Postcolonial theory has also been acknowledged in the writings of Strobel (1997), Rimonte (1997), and David & Okazaki
(2006a), as a way to recognize the inequality in the world, acknowledge colonialisms consequences, and work to change its
enduring effects. Strobel (1997) pointed out many Filipino and Filipino American scholars have added to the understanding of
postcoloniality. The ideas mentioned above frame colonial mentality and the process of decolonizing the mind.
76
Ext: Debate/Scholarship Key

Our scholarship is key white supremacy is maintained through the control and
erasure of the body of color from educational spaces in order to render the classroom
a pollutant free zone. We must return the question of the raced body to scholarship
in theory and practice
Reid-Brinkley 08 [Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley, "THE HARSH REALITIES OF ACTING BLACK: HOW
AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL
PERFORMANCE AND STYLE" pp. 14-5]
Particularly, I
am interested in the speaking body of the other, that body that pollutes, or darkens the
purity of the holistic social body. Post-structural education theorist John Warren describes schooling in terms of the institutional
maintenance of purity.55 Schools represent at their best, a pollutant and contaminant free environment, as
critical to the educational and social maturation of student minds. Warren notes that "the body is perceptually
rendered absent in an effort to center perceptual attention on the mind."56 In other words, in the school environment the
presence of the body is a social pollutant of the educational space. The body must be invisible in order
to focus on the mind. The educational system attempts "to erase the impact of the body."57 Warren suggests that bodies of
color, in particular, exceed attempts to render them absent.58 For cultural theorists Homi Bhabha and Franz Fanon, the
colored, or more specifically, the black body signifies a difference from white bodies that makes the colored body significantly more visible in
majority white societies.59 The black body represents dirt or a stain, or to use symbolic anthropologist Mary Douglas' language, a pollutant,
on and in the social body, one that must be controlled and contained. Color is written on the skin, encrusted on the flesh of the body at the
surface level.60 The Deleuzian metaphor of a body without organs is particularly useful here. For it is the flesh that signifies, not the internal
processes of the body. And, yet the flesh signifies on internal processes of the biological body. The colored body signifies a biological
difference, an inherent difference, from non-colored or white bodies. In other words, despite the fact that significant gains have been made in
reducing the social belief in 15 the biological difference between the races, American public and social discourse tends toward that belief,
while political correctness reduces the ways in which such beliefs can be expressed. Such an ambivalent stance results in the shading of the
consistencies between all human bodies, resulting in a body without organs, where the surface level of the skin comes to (re)present biological
The fact that bodies of color remain present despite the fact that they are supposed to be
difference.
absent "is exactly what maintains white privilege.61 Educational structures may or may not be directly
racially discriminatory, "rather, they take the form of cultural values, methods of learning, styles of
interaction, and other educational rituals that continually reinforce the culture of power.62 In essence,
Warren suggests that bodies of color represent a bodily contaminant that can only result in a systemically
cycling psychosis as these bodies can never fully be rendered absent. Thus, if the body can never be
rendered fully absent then it is exceedingly relevant to the racial signification process in educational
spaces and public discourse about those spaces. The speaking subject is a talking body. The body becomes critical in
understanding and evaluating what the speaking subject says and what is said about the speaking subject. Thus, a rhetorical
consideration of the representation and performance of black people in a majority white environment, must
engage the body as rhetorical. Rhetoric and argumentation scholar Melanie McNaughton's essay, "Hard Cases: Prison Tattooing as
Visual Argumentation," suggests that Given daily contact with the bodies of others, understanding the ways that bodies argue visually is
important to understanding the operations of rhetoric in our lives.63 For McNaughton who is interested in visual argumentation through
prison tattooing, the
body as an integral site of rhetorical voice problematizes our current emphasis in the
field of rhetoric toward ignoring the body in favor of a focus on verbal discourse. If the body speaks, whom does
it speak to and what might it be saying? McNaughton's study leads us toward theorizing the body as argumentative, and yet her study does
not really look to the body as argument, as much as it looks to the style or the styling of the body as argument. Tattoos are an overlay on the
surface of the body, and while certainly difficult and painful to cover or remove, they simply cover the body and are not of the body. While
tattooing may represent and signify violence to the average onlooker, according to McNaughton, that violence is indicative of a cultural
affiliation and not an inherent state of that marked body. In other words, the tattoo wearer could signify other than a violent subjectivity were
the tattoo not there. Thus, tattooing might still clearly fit under the more traditional rubric of style or performance.
Debate must be a space for academic engagement

Reid-Brinkley 12 [The Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley Interview. 2/13/12 Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley on
Scholars in Debate and More. http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/dr-shanara-reid-brinkley-
on-scholars-in.html.]
77
Dr. Reid-Brinkley: Yeah, thats how I feel about it, like duh! Know what I mean? Then we have a much better argument to make
to our administrations about the significance of our programs, we can start connecting debate
tournament final rounds to whats going on in public policy research institutions. What we produce could
literally provide an entrance for our arguments to actually affect public policy because of the intellectual
power our community holds. Why are we not making use of the things that would get our programs
support? It doesnt make sense to me. Thats why debate is collapsing to this very small small small
society. Once that collapse between the NDT and CEDA happened, have you watched the community shrink over time? It just has gotten
smaller. And it will continue to get smaller, because we will continue to disconnect ourselves from the
academy. But why are we not in conversations on a consistent basis with our authors? Duh!? This is why whats
happening in black debate. Is more fascinating than what is happening anywhere else. Im really interested in Spurlock
interviewing Spanos about debate. Im interested in the fact that Damiyr & Miguel, members of the
Towson squad, me and some other black debate people got invited by Dylan Rodriguez to appear at the
American Studies Conference to talk about whats happening in debate and activism and scholarship
around blackness in issues like prison, etc. Im interested in that, because these scholars are like woah,
yall are talking about this stuff here? and they are like watching video links of the students debating, and like theyre on our
Resistance homepage. I have created a Facebook Resistance page thats private that all of the movement and its coalition members are on. So,
I get requests, I put you on if you are a coalition member, Wilderson is on there, Dylan Rodriguez is on there, Sexton is on there, you know what
And, we justthats what debate should look like. Academics should be participating, they
I mean?
shouldnt control it, but you should be able to come talk to us in our theories about the topic. How about
that? You dont need to write evidence for you about the Arab Spring for me to describe to you why my work on African American culture and
hip hop are relevant to thinking about whats going on in the Arab Spring. I simply am teaching you to chain my theory through
another example. Thats how you write an academic paper. You take somebody elses theory, and you
dont just map it exactly on to what it is that you are working on. You have to figure out what the
relationship is between the two. Thats the kind of stuff we could produce as a community, every year,
on topics. We just are not taking advantage of that. And, in that process, because of how we have defined
debate, it is exclusionary. We do have these ideal debaters who look like white males, white straight men
with money and class, and those white men who dont fit that, are few and far between. They often get up
there, but they still is sort of like a little weird, because you dont perform white masculinity middle to upper class in an appropriate manner, so
they are cool with you, but youre still freaky. We
make those kinds of judgments because we are just so insulated.
Our thinking is so small. Smaller than it what we should and could be. And, thats my debate future. Thats
my vision of what it could look like, my dream that lets me walk around at tournaments and be okay with the fact that supposedly Im despised
by the elites, higher-ups in the community, and people that used to be my friends, and that would speak to me on a regular basis and that I
would run up to and hug, avoid my eyes in the hallway. Or that Im not qualified to write about debate, but neither is Spanos because he was an
outsider, but Im not qualified to write about it because Im an insider. But, Casey Harrigan, and Jarrod Atchison, and Pannetta arethere is no
question of their qualifications. Im sorry, I thought I got a PhD from the number one program in rhetoric in the country. Im sorry, I thought that
was the case. I thought I was a national award winning scholar, for my writing, published writing. I thought that was the case, and that would
make me somehow qualified to talk about debate a little bit but, clearly not. But, once your black. Once you say your black, then your biased.
Normative knowledge making practices crowd out alternative knowledge production

our performance offers multiple perspectives
The process of signifyin engaged in by the Louisville debaters is not simply designed to critique the use of
traditional evidence; their goal is to challenge the relationship between social power and knowledge.
In other words, those with social power within the debate community are able to produce and
determine legitimate knowledge. These legitimating practices usually function to maintain the
dominance of normative knowledge-making practices, while crowding out or directly excluding
alternative knowledge-making practices. The Louisville framework looks to the people who are oppressed by current
constructions of power. Jones and Green offer an alternative framework for drawing claims in debate speeches, they
78
refer to it as a three-tier process: A way in which you can validate our claims, is through the three-tier
process. And we talk about personal experience, organic intellectuals, and academic intellectuals . Let me
give you an analogy. If you place an elephant in the room and send in three blind folded people into the room, and each of them
are touching a different part of the elephant. And they come back outside and you ask each different person they gone have a
different idea about what they was talking about. But, if you let those people converse and bring those three different people
together then you can achieve a greater truth. Jones argues that without the three tier process debate claims
are based on singular perspectives that privilege those with institutional and economic power. The
Louisville debaters do not reject traditional evidence per se, instead they seek to augment or supplement
what counts as evidence with other forms of knowledge produced outside of academia. As Green notes in
the double-octo-finals at CEDA Nationals, Knowledge surrounds me in the streets, through my peers, through
personal experiences, and everyday wars that I fight with my mind. The thee-tier process: personal experience,
organic intellectuals, and traditional evidence, provides a method of argumentation that taps into diverse forms of knowledge-
making practices. With the Louisville method, personal experience and organic intellectuals are placed on par
with traditional forms of evidence. While the Louisville debaters see the benefit of academic research, they are also
critically aware of the normative practices that exclude racial and ethnic minorities from policy-oriented discussions because of
their lack of training and expertise. Such exclusions prevent radical solutions to racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia from
being more permanently addressed. According to Green: bell hooks talks about how when we rely solely on one
perspective to make our claims, radical liberatory theory becomes rootless. Thats the reason why we use a
three-tiered process. Thats why we use alternative forms of discourse such as hip hop. Thats also how we use
traditional evidence and our personal narratives so you dont get just one perspective claiming to be the right
way. Because it becomes a more meaningful and educational view as far as how we achieve our
education.The use of hip hop and personal experience function as a check against the homogenizing
function of academic and expert discourse. Note the reference to bell hooks, Green argues that without alternative
perspectives, radical libratory theory becomes rootless. The term rootless seems to refer to a lack of grounded-ness in
the material circumstances that academics or experts study. In other words, academics and experts by
definition represent an intellectual population with a level of objective distance from that which they
study. For the Louisville debaters, this distance is problematic as it prevents the development of a
social politic that is rooted in the community of those most greatly affected by the status of
oppression.
Bringing the debate back to race in education is critical to educational opportunities

Contemporary racism is reproduced and maintained through discursive constructions that are
circulated through ideologies. Ideologies help to make stereotypical representations
intelligible to an audience. As long as racism remains a social phenomenon in our society,
racial ideologies will likely remain a critical tool by which racial difference is signified. All
racial ideologies do not function the same way; they are often complicated by intersections
of class, gender, sexuality and context. And, as ideologies often function to dominate, they
also create circumstances for resistance. This project seeks to engage both dominance and
resistance; how racial ideologies reproduce social dominance, and how those affected by that
dominance attempt to resist it. The rhetoric surrounding race and education offers one space
from which to analyze the social reproduction of racial dominance. Looking to specific
contexts through which we analyze the significance of racial ideologies allows us as scholars
to map out the forces of power active through racial difference. Specifically, a rhetorical focus
can map the public discursive maneuvers that (re)produce and resist these social ideologies.
The rhetoric surrounding race, culture, and performance within educational discourse is of
critical importance to the future course of educational opportunity in American society. We
need to understand the strategies of signification that are most persuasive and powerful to the
general public audience. What representations of racial others are most intelligible to the
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public and how might racial others respond to that intelligibility? As our previous discussion of
the acting white thesis and the rise of cultural explanations of racial difference indicate,
contemporary ideological representations of race have changed and in some ways remained
the same. We must interrogate the use of ideological representations of race, gender, class,
and sexuality as rhetorical strategy in public deliberations. And, it is important to read the
social actors involved and watching as embodied.
The academy is an important place for this struggle to take place we need to
express linkages of solidarity between debate and political struggles
Giroux 11 (Henry A. Giroux, Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster
University, 21 November 2011, Occupy Colleges Now: Students as the New Public Intellectuals,
http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-colleges-now-students-new-public-intellectuals/1321891418)
Finding our way to a more humane future demands a new politics, a new set of values, and a renewed
sense of the fragile nature of democracy. In part, this means educating a new generation of intellectuals who
not only defend higher education as a democratic public sphere, but also frame their own agency as
intellectuals willing to connect their research, teaching, knowledge, and service with broader democratic concerns over equality,
justice, and an alternative vision of what the university might be and what society could become. Under the present circumstances, it is time to remind ourselves that academe may be one of the
few public spheres available that can provide the educational conditions for students, faculty, administrators, and
community members to embrace pedagogy as a space of dialogue and unmitigated questioning, imagine different
futures, become border-crossers, and embrace a language of critique and possibility that makes visible
the urgency of a politics necessary to address important social issues and contribute to the quality of
public life and the common good. As people move or are pushed by authorities out of their makeshift tent
cities in Zuccotti Park and other public spaces in cities across the United States, the harsh registers and interests of the punishing state become
more visible. The corporate state cannot fight any longer with ideas because their visions, ideologies
and survival of the fittest ethic are bankrupt, fast losing any semblance of legitimacy. Students all over
the country are changing the language of politics while reclaiming pedagogy as central to any viable
notion of agency, resistance and collective struggle. In short, they have become the new public intellectuals,
using their bodies, social media, new digital technologies, and any other viable educational tool to raise new questions, point to new
possibilities, and register their criticisms of the various antidemocratic elements of casino capitalism
and the emerging punishing state. Increasingly, the Occupy Wall Street protesters are occupying colleges and universities, setting up tents, and using the power of ideas to engage other
students, faculty, and anyone else who will listen to them. The call is going out from the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard University, Florida State University, Duke University, Rhode Island College, and over 120 other
the time has come to connect knowledge not just to power, but to the very meaning of what it
universities that
means to be an engaged intellectual responsive to the possibilities of individual and collective

resistance and change. This poses a new challenge not only for the brave students mobilizing these
protests on college campuses, but also to faculty who often relegate themselves to the secure and
comfortable claim that scholarship should be disinterested, objective and removed from politics.
There is a great deal these students and young people can learn from this turn away from the so-called
professionalism of disinterested knowledge and the disinterested intellectual by reading the works of Noam Chomsky, Edward Said,
Jacques Derrida, Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy, Elaine Scarry, Pierre Bourdieu and others who offer a treasure trove of theoretical and political insights about what it means to assume the role of a public intellectual as both a
In response to the political indifference and moral coma that embraced many
matter of social responsibility and political urgency.
universities and scholars since the 1980s, the late Said argued for intellectuals to move beyond the narrow interests of professionalism and specialization as well as the cheap seductions of celebrity
culture being offered to a new breed of publicity and anti-public intellectuals. Said wanted to defend the necessity indeed, keep open the
possibility of the intellectual who does not consolidate power, but questions it, connects his or her
work to the alleviation of human suffering, enters the public sphere in order to deflate the claims of
triumphalism and recalls from exile those dangerous memories that are often repressed or ignored. Of course, such
a position is at odds with those intellectuals who have retreated into arcane discourses that offer the
cloistered protection of the professional recluse. Making few connections with audiences outside of the
academy or to the myriad issues that bear down on everyday lives, many academics became
80
increasingly irrelevant, while humanistic inquiry suffers the aftershocks of flagging public support. The Occupy
Wall Street protesters have refused this notion of the deracinated, if not increasingly irrelevant, notion of academics and
students as disinterested intellectuals. They are not alone. Refusing the rewards of apolitical
professionalism or obscure specialization so rampant on university campuses, Roy has pointed out that intellectuals need to ask themselves some very
"uncomfortable questions about our values and traditions, our vision for the future, our responsibilities
as citizens, the legitimacy of our 'democratic institutions,' the role of the state, the police, the army, the
judiciary, and the intellectual community."[1] Similarly, Scarry points to the difficulty of seeing an injury and injustice, the sense of futility of one's own small efforts, and the special
difficulty of lifting complex ideas into the public sphere.[2] Derrida has raised important questions about the relationship between critique and the very nature of the university and the humanities, as when he writes: The
university without condition does not, in fact, exist, as we know only too well. Nevertheless, in principle and in conformity with its declared vocation, its professed essence, it should remain an
ultimate place of critical resistance and more than critical to all the power of dogmatic and unjust
appropriation.[3] Chomsky and the late Zinn have spoken about and demonstrated for over 40 years what it means to think rigorously and act courageously in the face of human suffering and manufactured
hardships. All of these theorists are concerned with what it means for intellectuals both within and outside of higher education to embrace the university as a productive site of dialogue and contestation, to imagine it as a site
But
that offers students the promise of a democracy to come, to help them understand that there is no genuine democracy without genuine opposing critical power and the social movements that can make it happen.
there is more at stake here than arguing for a more engaged public role for academics and students, for
demanding the urgent need to reconnect humanistic inquiry to important social issues, or for insisting on the necessity for academics to reclaim a notion
of ethical advocacy and connective relationships. There is also the challenge of connecting the university with visions that have some
hold on the present, defending education as more than an investment opportunity or job credential, students as
more than customers, and faculty as more than technicians or a subaltern army of casualized labor. At a
time when higher education is increasingly being dominated by a reductive corporate logic and
technocratic rationality unable to differentiate training from a critical education, we need a chorus of
new voices to emphasize that the humanities, in particular, and the university, in general, should play a central role in keeping
critical thought alive while fighting back all attempts to foreclose and pre-empt the further unraveling
of human possibilities, prodding human society to go on questioning itself and prevent that questioning
from ever stalling or being declared finished. Corporations and the warfare state should not dictate the needs of public and higher education, or, for that matter, any other
democratic public sphere. As the Occupy student protesters have pointed out over the last few months, one of the
great dangers facing the 21st century is not the risk of illusory hopes, but those undemocratic forces
that promote and protect state terrorism, massive inequality, render some populations utterly
disposable, imagine the future only in terms of immediate financial gains, and promote forms of self-
serving historical reinvention in which power is measured by the degree to which it evades any sense
of actual truth and moral responsibility. Students, like their youthful counterparts in the 1960s, are once again arguing that
higher education, even in its imperfect state, still holds the promise, if not the reality, of being able to offer them the
complex knowledge and interdisciplinary related skills that enable existing and future generations to
break the continuity of common sense, come to terms with their own power as critical agents, be
critical of the authority that speaks to them, translate private considerations into public issues, and
assume the responsibility of not only being governed but learning how to govern. Inhabiting the role of
public intellectuals, students can take on the difficult but urgent task of reclaiming the ideal and the
practice of what it means to reclaim higher education in general and the humanities, more specifically, as a site of possibility that
embraces the idea of democracy not merely as a mode of governance but, most importantlyas journalist Bill Moyers points out as a
means of dignifying people so they can become fully free to claim their moral and political agency. Students
are starting to recognize that it is crucial to struggle for the university as a democratic public sphere and the need to use that sphere to educate a generation of new students, faculty and others about the history of race, racism,
They are increasingly willing to argue in theoretically insightful and

politics, identity, power, the state and the struggle for justice.
profound ways about what it means to defend the university as a site that opens up and sustains public
connections through which people's fragmented, uncertain, incomplete narratives of agency are valued,
preserved, and made available for exchange while being related analytically to wider contexts of politics and power. They are moving to reclaim, once again, the humanities as
a sphere that is crucial for grounding ethics, justice and morality across existing disciplinary terrains,
while raising both a sense of urgency and a set of relevant questions about what kind of education
would be suited to the 21st-century university and its global arrangements as part of a larger project of
addressing the most urgent issues that face the social and political world. The punishing state can use
violence with impunity to eject young people from parks and other public sites, but it is far more
81
difficult to eject them from sites that are designed for their intellectual growth and well-being, make a
claim to educate them, and register society's investment and commitment to their future. The police
violence that has taken place at the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Davis does more than border on pure thuggery; it also reveals a display of force that is as unnecessary as
it is brutal, and it is impossible to justify. These young people are being beaten on their campuses for simply displaying the courage to protest a system that has robbed them of both a quality education and a viable future. But
there is more. It is also crucial not to allow casino capitalism to transform higher education into another
extension of the corporate and warfare state. If higher education loses its civic purpose and becomes
simply an adjunct of corporate and military power, there will be practically no spaces left for dissent,
dialogue, civic courage, and a spirit of thoughtfulness and critical engagement. This is all the more reason to occupy colleges and
use them as a launching pad to both educate and to expand the very meaning of the public sphere.
Knowledge is about more than the truth; it is also a weapon of change. The language of a radical
politics needs more than hope and outrage; it needs institutional spaces to produce ideas, values, and social relations
capable of fighting off those ideological and material forces of casino capitalism that are intent in
sabotaging any viable notion of human interaction, community, solidarity, friendship, and justice. Space
is not the ultimate prize here.[4] Politics and ideology are the essence of what this movement should
be about. But space becomes invaluable when it its democratic functions and uses are restored. In an age when
the media have become a means of mass distraction and entertainment, the university offers a site of informed engagement, a place where
theory and action inform each other, and a space that refuses to divorce intellectual activities from
matters of politics, social responsibility and social justice. As students and faculty increasingly use the space of the university
as a megaphone for a new kind of critical education and politics, it will hopefully reclaim the democratic
function of higher education and demonstrate what it means for students, faculty, and others to
assume the role of public intellectuals dedicated to creating a formative culture that can provide
citizens and others with the knowledge and skills necessary for a radical democracy. Rather than reducing
learning to a measurable quantity in the service of a narrow instrumental rationality, learning can take
on a new role, becoming central to developing and expanding the capacity for critical modes of agency,
new forms of solidarity, and an education in the service of the public good, an expanded imagination,
democratic values, and social change. The student intellectual as a public figure merges rigor with civic courage, meaning with the struggle for eliminating injustice wherever it occurs
and hope with a realistic notion of social change.
82
Ext: Performance/Subjugated Knowledges Good

Our performative pedagogy makes whiteness visible and undermines white
supremacy
Warren and Fassett, 2004 [John T, Asst. Prof. Communication @ Bowling Green, Deanna L., Asst.
Prof. Communication @ San Jos State University, Theatre Topics 14.2 (2004) pg. 411-430]
To do this work, we look outward from these spectacular instances of violence and examine the minute and
mundane processes that make these acts possible. In our courses, we examine how instances of racism, homophobia,
and other forms of oppression are generated through everyday communicative/performative actsthat
is, both aesthetic and reiterative. Thus, we seek to understand difference (specifically race) as a performative construct that is
always already aesthetic (that is, constructed for an audience or public) and reiterative (that is, repeated and ongoing). By focusing on
race as one form of oppression, we examine whiteness as a systematic production of poweras a normative
social process based upon a history of domination, recreating itself through naturalized everyday actsmuch like
heteronormativity or misogyny. Though in this writing we address whiteness, in particular, as a system of power
and privilege, such an exploration helps mark the unmarked (Phelan)making visible the workings of a number
of oppressive social relationships. To render whiteness visible requires careful analysis and constant
critique of our taken-for-granted norms. But, as our students question, to what end do we do what we do? We both base our
courses, at least in part, in and cultural studies means that we infuse all course content with issues of power, refusing to
allow matters of race and difference to be [End Page 411] marginalized.
Performance Good Challenges Dominant modes of knowing/distancing and

objectification of objects of knowledge in the academy (Challenges View from
Nowhere)
Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research, TDR 46. 2 Summer, pp.145-46]
But de Certeau's aphorism, "what the map cuts up, the story cuts across," also points to transgressive
travel between two different domains of knowledge: one official, objective, and abstract-"the map";
the other one practical, embodied, and popular-"the story." This promiscuous traffic between different
ways of knowing carries the most radical promise of performance studies research. Performance studies
struggles to open the space between analysis and action, and to pull the pin on the binary opposition between theory
and practice. This embrace of different ways of knowing is radical because it cuts to the root of how
knowledge is organized in the academy. The dominant way of knowing in the academy is that of empirical observation
and critical analysis from a distanced perspective: "knowing that," and "knowing about." This is a view from above the
object of inquiry: knowledge that is anchored in paradigm and secured in print. This propositional knowledge is shadowed by
another way of knowing that is grounded in active, intimate, hands-on participation and personal
connection: "knowing how," and "knowing who." This is a view from ground level, in the thick of things. This is
knowledge that is anchored in practice and circulated within a performance community, but is ephemeral. Donna
Haraway locates this homely and vulnerable "view from a body" in contrast to the abstract and authoritative "view from
above," universal knowledge that pretends to transcend location (1991:196).
Subjugated Knowledges Good Performance is a fugitive communication that

challenges epistemic violence that excludes alternative ways of knowing
Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research, TDR 46. 2 Summer, pp.146]
Since the enlightenment project of modernity, the first way of knowing has been preeminent. Marching under the banner
of science and reason, it has dis-qualified and repressed other ways of knowing that are rooted in
83
embodied experience, orality, and local contingencies. Between objective knowledge that is consolidated in texts, and
local know-how that circulates on the ground within a community of memory and practice, there is no contest. It is the choice between
science and "old wives' tales" (note how the disqualified knowledge is gendered as feminine). Michel Foucault coined
the term "subjugated knowledges" to include all the local, regional, vernacular, naive knowledges at the bottom
of the hierarchy- the low Other of science (I980:81-84). These are the nonserious ways of knowing that dominant
culture neglects, excludes, represses, or simply fails to recognize. Subjugated knowledges have been erased
because they are illegible; they exist, by and large, as active bodies of meaning, outside of books, eluding the
forces of inscription that would make them legible, and thereby legitimate (see de Certeau 1998; Scott 1998). What gets
embodied, tacit, intoned, gestured, improvised, coexperienced, covert-and all the more deeply meaningful
because of its refusal to be spelled out. Dominant epistemologies that link knowing with seeing are not attuned
to meanings that are masked, camouflaged, indirect, embedded, or hidden in context. The visual/verbal bias of
Western regimes of knowledge blinds researchers to meanings that are expressed forcefully through
intonation, silence, body tension, arched eyebrows, blank stares, and other protective arts of disguise
and secrecy-what de Certeau called "the elocutionary experience of a fugitive communication" (2000:133; see
Conquergood 2000). Subordinate people do not have the privilege of explicitness, the luxury of transparency, the
presumptive norm of clear and direct communication, free and open debate on a level playing field that the privileged classes
take for granted.
Performance Good Textcentrism Bad Resists White Supremacy/Will to Know the

Other, To reduce other to object
Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research, TDR 46. 2 Summer, p.150-1]
Geertz's now classic depiction of the turn toward texts in ethnography and cultural studies needs to be juxtaposed with Zora Neal Hurston's
much earlier and more complex rendering of a researcher reading the texts of subordinate others: The theory behind our tactics: "The
white man is always trying to know into somebody else's business. All right, I'll set something outside the door of my mind for him to play with
and handle. He can read my writing but he sho' can't read my mind. I'll put this play toy in his hand, and he will seize it and go away. Then I'll
say my say and sing my song." ([I935] I990:3) Hurston foregrounds the terrain of struggle, the field of power relations
on which texts are written, exchanged, and read. Whereas Geertz does not problematize the ethnographer's will-to-know or
access to the texts of others, Hurston is sensitive to the reluctance of the subordinate classes "to reveal that
which the soul lives by" (2) because they understand from experience the ocular politics that links the
powers to see, to search, and to seize. Aware of the white man's drive to objectify, control, and grasp as
a way of knowing, subordinate people cunningly set a text, a decoy, outside the door to lure him away
from "homeplace" where subjugated but empowering truths and survival secrets are sheltered (hooks
1990). In Hurston's brilliant example, vulnerable people actually redeploy the written text as a tactic of evasion and
camouflage, performatively turning and tripping the textual fetish against the white person's will-to-
know. "So driven in on his reading," as Williams would say, he is blinded by the texts he compulsively seizes: "knowing so little about us, he
doesn't know what he is missing" (Hurston [1935] 1990:2). Once provided with something that he can "handle," "seize," in a word, apprehend,
he will go away and then space can be cleared for performed truths that remain beyond his reach: "then I'll say my say and sing my song." By
mimicking the reifying textualism of dominant knowledge regimes, subordinate people can deflect its
invasive power. This mimicry of textualism is a complex example of "mimetic excess" in which the
susceptibility of dominant images forms, and technologies of power to subversive doublings holds the
potential for undermining the power of that which is mimed (Taussig I993:254-55). Note that in Hurston's
account, subordinate people read and write, as well as perform. With her beautiful example of how a text can
perform subversive work, she disrupts any simplistic dichotomy that would align texts with domination
and performance with liberation. In Hurston's example, the white man researcher is a fool not because he values
literacy, but because he valorized it to the exclusion of other media, other modes of knowing. I want to be very
clear about this point: textocentrism-not texts-is the problem.
84
Personal experience checks against the homogenizing function of academic/expert

discousre
Reid-Brinkley 08 (Assistant Professor PhD and Debate Coach at University of Pittsburgh "THE HARSH
REALITIES OF ACTING BLACK: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE
REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND STYLE" Chapter 3 pg 67-69
Jones argues that without the three tier process debate claims are based on singular perspectives that privilege those with
institutional and economic power. The Louisville debaters do not reject traditional evidence per se, instead they seek to augment or
supplement what counts as evidence with other forms of knowledge produced outside of academia. As Green notes in the double-
octo-finals at CEDA Nationals, Knowledge surrounds me in the streets, through my peers, through personal experiences, and
60
everyday wars that I fight with my mind. The thee-tier process: personal
experience, organic intellectuals,
and traditional evidence, provides a method of argumentation that taps into diverse
forms of knowledge-making practices. With the Louisville method, personal experience and
organic intellectuals are placed on par with traditional forms of evidence. While the Louisville
debaters (we)see the benefit of academic research, (we)they are also critically aware of the
normative practices that exclude racial and ethnic minorities from policy-oriented
discussions because of their lack of training and expertise. Such exclusions prevent
radical solutions to racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia from being more
permanently addressed. According to Green: bell hooks talks about how when we rely solely on one perspective to
make our claims, radical liberatory theory becomes rootless. Thats the reason why we use a three-tiered process. Thats why we
use alternative forms of discourse such as hip hop. Thats also how we use traditional evidence and our personal narratives so you
dont get just one 82 perspective claiming to be the right way. Because it becomes a more meaningful and educational view as far
61
The use of hip hop and personal experience function as a check
as how we achieve our education.
against the homogenizing function of academic and expert discourse. Note the reference to
bell hooks, Green argues that without alternative perspectives, radical libratory theory
becomes rootless. The term rootless seems to refer to a lack of grounded-ness in the
material circumstances that academics or experts study. In other words, academics and
experts by definition represent an intellectual population with a level of objective
distance from that which they study. For the Louisville debaters, this distance is problematic as it
prevents the development of a social politic that is rooted in the community of those
most greatly affected by the status of oppression.
Our politic is the only way to demand a subversive encounter

Warren and Fassett, 2004 (The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved Theatre Topics
14.2 (2004) 411-430John T. Warren is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Studies at
Bowling Green State University, where he teaches courses in performance, culture, identity, and power.
Deanna L. Fassett is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at San Jos
State University, where she teaches courses in instructional communication and critical, feminist, and
performative pedagogies)/Spiers
Performative pedagogy, as a method and theory of the body, can ask questions in a way that
points to the structure and machinery of whiteness. It can put flesh to the concept of
whiteness. It can point to whiteness's perceived absence. It can name the norm. Performative
pedagogy, in this way, can serve as a pedagogy of the oppressorit can ask those in
positions of power (via sex, race, class, or sexuality) to question their own embodied
experiences by demanding that they encounter the other through the mode of performance.
For if whiteness functions in dominant discourse as the unmarked center of cultural power,
then a performative pedagogy can and must ask how we can create a ground for subversion.
Performative pedagogy, as a method of enfleshment that brings theory to the body, can
question the normal, stable, inevitable actualization of race, nurturing subversive possibility.
85
It is particularly within discursive spaces such as debate that whiteness operates to

ensure the continuation the fascination with the bodies of the Other granting it
mastery over those particular bodies while allowing whiteness to operate as the
universal turning case. We must start at the level of the body
Winnubst 06 [Shannon, Associate Prof. of Race, Queer, and Feminist theory @ Ohio State University;
Queering freedom pp. 45-47]
the white male propertied Christian (straight) body circulate as this unmarked, unseen, and thus
How does
powerful body? How does it inhabit this mode of rationality and emerge as an unlimited body? First of all, I want to emphasize that
this demarcation of social differences occurs at the level of the body. Despite high modernitys disavowal of
embodiment, the body continues to be the site of racial, sexual, and even class, religious, and nationalist differentiation. Embodiment itself is not deemed
a philosophical category in high modernity, despite Lockes empiricist epistemology.24 The singular function and significance of embodiment is its role as the
negative counterpart, and thus appropriate limit, to rationality. To discuss embodiment in and of itself, without deriving it through this binary logic, is not only
impossible but unthinkable, as is evident in the ongoing post-Hegelian attempts to do so in European philosophy. Embodiment is a fundamental and constitutive
renders
blind spot, a disavowal that enacts the logic of the limit by assuming rationalitys ability to delimit the intelligible from the sensible. It subsequently
much of modernitys epistemological and political projects possible: transcendental truth, objectivity,
universal freedom, individualism, and the language of rights are all conditioned by a disavowal of the
body. But this disavowal of embodiment also fundamentally structures phallicized whitenessthe nexus of categories,
structures, and values at work in the subjectivity of white male propertied (straight) Christianity. The disavowal of embodiment grants
phallicized whiteness the power to perpetrate racial and sexual violence in western cultures. One owns ones
body, and this mode of relating to it as private property allows one to dispense with it, to disavow its meaningful existence in ones life or the
world. How do embodiment and its disavowal lie at the heart of philosophical high modernity and its concept of
freedom, the subjectivity of phallicized whiteness, and the political power of each of these? And how are these enactments of the logic of the limit?
The differences that we find carved into female and non-white bodies in the post-bellum era of the U.S. effectively distinguish discrete kinds of bodies. Female, black, brown, non-Christian,
yellow, poor bodies are delimited on the basis of their bodily appearances. They are trapped in and by their bodies: they do not exercise proper authority of ownership over them. Someone
or some other force owns these bodies. This entrapment by their bodily characteristics imposes brutal limitations upon their freedom and their individuality: they are not free to do as they
please and, perhaps more damningly, they are read as kinds of bodies, not as individuals. The logic of the limit functions in at least two ways here: it carves discrete differences into specific
bodies, delimiting them as different from others (e.g., raced bodies are discrete and different from sexed bodies); and it simultaneously delimits the freedom and individuality accorded to
those different bodies. To the contrary, the white male Christian propertied (straight) body appears wholly unaffected. He is neither reduced to his bodily characteristics, nor limited in his
freedom or individuality. He owns his body, properly controlling its power in the social world. The white male Christian propertied (straight) body speaks, acts, and desires not on behalf of his
sex, race, class, or religion (or sexuality), but exclusively on behalf of himselfthe autonomous individual. He is not bound to or limited by the kind of body he inhabits, if he properly inhabits
or is affected by materiality at all. How does this work? How does phallicized whiteness inhabit the body in such a way as to ensure that it transcends the body and becomes a subject, while
whitenesss deployment of cultural and

non-white bodies are fully reducible to the body and thus objects or abjected others? How does phallicized
discursive practices ensure a continued fascination with the body of others, while simultaneously
marking out the space of the disembodied or transcendent as the space of power? How are embodiment and disembodiment
functioning in these philosophical and socio-political deployments of phallicized whiteness? In his provocative book White, Richard Dyer argues that
whiteness in the modern world gains its hegemonic power through its disembodiment. Following the pattern of privileged
subject positions (masculinity, the middle class, heterosexuality, Protestant Christianity in the contemporary U.S.), whiteness functions largely through its invisibility, through its disavowal of
race itself: one is not white in the U.S., one is just a person. Whiteness poses as the universal and naturalized order of things. Whiteness is not a color or a race; it is just human. It just is, as
the history of western metaphysics easily shows. In mutually grounding gestures, it renders itself both invisible and ubiquitous. These dynamics then sediment one another: the more
transparent and invisible whiteness becomes, the more normalized and omnipresent it becomes, and so on. But at the core of this disavowal of race, whiteness operates
as the universal, unmarked signifier through its disavowal of embodiment itself. Echoing Lacans phallus,
whiteness functions through its remaining veiled. And a primary site of this veiling is its ontological denial of embodiment itself. She
continues: We have already encountered the ways that whiteness gains its hegemonic power through its disavowal of race, its own
invisibility, and ultimately its own disembodiment. It is this invisibility that renders whiteness ubiquitous, the universal signifierthe same
position that the phallus holds in Lacans account of the symbolic. Echoing Lacans phallus, whiteness functions through its remaining veiled.
And a primary site of this veiling is its ontological denial of embodiment itself. The body becomes, just as it is in Lacans accounts of ego-
formation in a phallic symbolic, an optical illusion. It is the body that recognizes itself as an optical illusion that can subsequently control the
visual field, the field of optics.36 (And we wonder why modern philosophers were so enamored with the emergent field of optics.) Other
bodies are too realtoo fleshy to recognize that the field of appearances, which is the field of social power, is a game of optics.
Other bodies eyes have not inhabited the proper space of the symbolic that renders this recognition of optical illusions possible. As Dyer
draws this game of optics out in the specific register of representation, the ideal of white male heterosexuality emerges in the figure of Christ,
who inhabits precisely the space of the symbolic that allows the recognition of optical illusions: the principle of incarnation is to be in the body
but not of it. This tension between the flesh and the spirit, an exemplary Lacanian splitting, is what distinguishes whiteness, maleness, and
heterosexuality from their oppositional counterparts in the phallicized binary symbolic. (And that only oppositional counterparts are
considered itself indicates the power of the phallus in this symbolic field.) With several ironic twists of apparent embodiment and
transcendence, the white male heterosexual body disavows its own corporealityits own particularity
86
and specificity so that it can function as the universal signifier and appear as the controlled,
contained body. It recognizes its body as nothing more than an optical illusion and, accordingly, transcends it into a realm
of masteryof all bodies. In this process of disembodiment, whiteness functions perfectly as the phallus.
For whiteness, the appearance of bodiesboth how they appear and that they are not realensures the continued mastery of the symbolic
The white straight male body appears as the normal bodywithout marking, without distinction,
field.
perfectly contained, and, subsequently, in power. The logic of space and embodiment that insists upon reading bodies as
bound by skin not only puts the visual markings of race and sex fully into play, but also perpetuates the logic of containment in
which whiteness itself, as that which is perfectly contained exactly because it is not a body, thrives. Controlling its optical illusion as
the body that is perfectly contained, whiteness is never where it appears: it is somewhere else, veiled
beyond capture.
87
Ext: Experts Bad

Boo elites!
CHOMSKY 95 { NOAM Excerpted from Class Warfare, 1995, pp. 19-23, 27-
31https://chomsky.info/warfare02/ }
BARSAMIAN: .Youre very patient with people, particularly people who ask the most inane kinds of
questions. Is this something youve cultivated?
CHOMSKY: First of all, Im usually fuming inside, so what you see on the outside isnt necessarily whats
inside. But as far as questions, the only thing I ever get irritated about is elite intellectuals, the stuff
they do I do find irritating. I shouldnt. I should expect it. But I do find it irritating. But on the other
hand, what youre describing as inane questions usually strike me as perfectly honest questions. People
have no reason to believe anything other than what theyre saying. If you think about where the
questioner is coming from, what the person has been exposed to, thats a very rational and intelligent
question. It may sound inane from some other point of view, but its not at all inane from within the
framework in which its being raised. Its usually quite reasonable. So theres nothing to be irritated
about.
You may be sorry about the conditions in which the questions arise. The thing to do is to try to help
them get out of their intellectual confinement, which is not just accidental, as I mentioned. There are
huge efforts that do go into making people, to borrow Adam Smiths phrase, as stupid and ignorant as
it is possible for a human being to be. A lot of the educational system is designed for that, if you think
about it, its designed for obedience and passivity. From childhood, a lot of it is designed to prevent
people from being independent and creative. If youre independent-minded in school, youre probably
going to get into trouble very early on. Thats not the trait thats being preferred or cultivated. When
people live through all this stuff, plus corporate propaganda, plus television, plus the press and the
whole mass, the deluge of ideological distortion that goes on, they ask questions that from another
point of view are completely reasonable.
88
A2: Perm
The perms incorporation of subjugated knowledge results in the instrumetalization
of experience for the purpose of affirming pre-given frameworks while delegitimizing
and depoloticizing the challenge posed by alternative ways of knowing
"Objective" scholarship does not always exclude personal stories entirely, for the latter often help to concretize and support analytic claims;
however, the devaluation of experience allows scholars to invoke personal stories in merely instrumental
ways to serve preconceived arguments, while ignoring the complexity and challenges that personal
experience can present when approached as a source of fresh insight. For instance, Columbia University
professor, Jagdish Bhagwati, states that the social merits of "globalization" are easy to see, "once one starts thinking about the
matter deeply and empirically." His supposedly deep empirical investigations, however, refer only abstractly to
"Japanese housewives" who came to "the West" with their husbands and who subsequently learned "how women could lead a better life,"
and to"[w]omen in poor countries" who work for transnational corporations and find that "work away
from home can be liberating" (2002, 5). He does not cite any of the actual women for whom he is
supposedly speaking and, as a result, can elide such women's ample (even if "unofficial") expressions of
discontent with transnational corporations.13 Micklethwait and Wooldridge cite specific individuals, but only superficially to
show their acknowledgment of poverty-related suffering, not to explore dimensions and mechanisms of poverty that they have not yet
theorized. For instance, the authors offer a brief story of a young unemployed Brazilian couple whose odd jobs barely allow them to feed their
child. This story and the accompanying statistics on poverty seem to provide balance to the authors' pro-globalization argument; however, the
authors quickly reduce the Gobetti couple to an example of "nonstarters: woefully underequipped people living miserable lives" and then
suggest that such misery arises from their country's "backwardness" (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2000, 255). They proceed to claim that
"[o]nly the most idiotic critic would try to lay all these failings [i.e., poverty, unemployment] directly at the feet of globalization," and they
illustrate their point by citing an unemployed Brazilian magician who attributes his ill fate to a Las Vegas performer who appeared on
television and gave away his secrets (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2000, 258). This unemployed magician may be an easy-to-refute "idiotic
critic," but as the only critic the authors cite here, his brief story (and that of the Gobetti's) merely substitute for genuine engagement with
opposing views. Certainly,
personal experience does not always favor the underdog and even a sensitive
integration of personal experience within an analysis of current trade institutions cannot settle
definitively the question of those institutions' merits. Nevertheless, attentive engagement with
historical experience opens up discussion to the rich and complex aspects of social phenomena,
including aspects that contradict dominant worldviews, [End Page 62] while the practice of avoiding close
engagement with experience ensures that ruling conceptual frameworks remain unchallenged.
White racial melancholia internalizes people of color, necessitating their exclusion in

order to memorialize them American liberals exclude and imprison minorities,
contradicting the tenents of freedom central to American society. Claims at inclusivity
prop up an illusory, white national ideal that incorporates the specter of racialized
bodies, but never truly accepts them, because actually including minorities would
require grappling with a history antithetical to the white national ideal
Chang 2k (Anne, Professor of English and African American Literature at Princeton University,The
Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief (Race and American Culture).
eBook p37-44)//MNW
Thus the melancholic ego is formed and fortified by a spectral drama, whereby the subject sustains itself
through the ghostly emptiness of a lost other. Several aspects of this psychical drama are relevant to
this study's interest in American racial dynamics. First, it is this peculiar and uneasy dynamic of retaining a
denigrated but sustaining loss that resonates most acutely against the mechanisms of the racial
imaginary as they have been fashioned in this country. While psychoanalytic readings of melancholia have been mostly
89
theorized in relation to gender formation,24 melancholia also presents a particularly apt paradigm for elucidating the activity and components
of racialization. Racialization in America may be said to operate through the institutional process of
producing a dominant, standard, white national ideal, which is sustained by the exclusion-yet
retention of racialized others. The national topography of centrality and marginality legitimizes itself by retroactively positing the
racial other as always Other and lost to the heart of the nation. Legal exclusion naturalizes the more complicated "loss"
of the unassimilable racial other. Second, Freud's notion of this uncomfortable swallowing and its implications for how loss is
processed and then secured as exclusion lend provocative insights into the nature of the racial other seen as "the foreigner within" America. In
a sense, the racial other is in fact quite "assimilated" into-or, more accurately, most uneasily digested by-
American nationality. The history of American national idealism has always been caught in this
melancholic bind between incorporation and rejection. If one of the ideals that sustained the American
nation since its beginning has been its unique proposition that "all men are created equal," then one of
America's ongoing national mortifications must be its history of acting otherwise. While all nations have their
repressed histories and traumatic atrocities, American melancholia is particularly acute because America is founded
on the very ideals of freedom and liberty whose betrayals have been repeatedly covered over. Even as
the economic, material, and philosophical advances of the nation are built on a series of legalized
exclusions (of African Americans, Jewish Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and so on) and the labor provided by those
excluded, it is also a history busily disavowing those repudiations. In his essay "The Two Declarations of American
Independence," Michael Rogin suggests that this paradox erupts on the very surface of the Declaration of Independence: The
Declaration of Independence, demanding freedom from enslavement to England for a new nation built
on slavery, is the core product of that mesalliance in political theory. . . . [The Declaration] bequeathed a Janus-faced
legacy to the new nation-the logic on the one hand that the equality to which white men were naturally born could be extended to women
and slaves. and the foundation on the other of white freedom on black servitude.'' Melancholia thus describes both an American ideological
dilemma and its constitutional practices. Rogin further posits in Blackface. White Noise that "racial exclusions, be it chattel slavery, the
expropriation of Indian and Mexicans, or the repressive use and exclusion of Chinese and Mexican American labor, were the conditions of
American freedom rather than exceptions to it.""E It
is at those moments when America is most shamefaced and
traumatized by its betrayal of its own democratic ideology (the genocide of Native Americans, slavery,
segregation, immigration discrimination) that it most virulently-and melancholically-espouses human
value and brotherhood. In his Notes on the State o/ Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, for example, meditates on his
discomfort about the apparent discrepancy between the Declaration of Independence and the colonial
practice of slavery only to console himself by reassuring himself and his readers that the inhumanity of
blacks exempted them from considerations such as human rights, freedom, and equality. Blacks were seen as lost to
moral and human concerns. Through this consolation of philosophy (which exemplifies his melancholic
relationship to blackness), Jefferson disentangles the new republic from the ideological burdens of
slavery and at the same time reconciles slavery to the ideology of the new nation. Precisely because the
American history of exclusion, imperialism, and colonization runs so antithetical to the equally and particularly American narrative of liberty
and individualism, cultural
memory in America poses a continuously vexing problem: How does the nation
"go on" while remembering those transgressions: How does it sustain the remnants of denigration
and disgust created in the name of progress and the formation of an American identity; Dominant white
identity in America operates melancholically-as an elaborate identificatory system based on psychical and social consumptionand-denial. This
diligent system of melancholic retention appears in different guises. Both racist and white liberal discourses participate in this dynamic, albeit
out of different motivations. The racists need to develop elaborate ideologies in order to accommodate their
actions with official American ideals,'; while white liberals need to keep burying the racial others in order
to memorialize them. Those who do not see the racial problem or those who call themselves
nonideological are the most melancholic of all because in today's political climate, as Toni Morrison
exclaims in flaying in the Dark, it, requires hard work not to see."'s Both violent vilification and the
indifference to vilification express, rather than invalidate, the melancholic dynamic. Indeed, melancholia
offers a powerful critical tool precisely because it theoretically accounts for the guilt and the denial of guilt, the blending
of shame and omnipotence in the racist imaginary. Like melancholia, racism is hardly ever a clear rejection
of the other. While racism is mostly thought of as a kind of violent rejection, racist institutions in fact
often do not want to fully expel the racial other; instead, they wish to maintain that other within
90
existing structures. With phenomena such as segregation and colonialism, the racial question is an issue of place (the
literalization of Freudian melancholic suspension) rather than of full relinquishment. Segregation and colonialism are
internally fraught institutions not because they have eliminated the other but because they need the
very thing they hate or fear. (This is why trauma, so often associated with discussions of racial denigration, in focusing on a
structure of crisis on the part of the victim, misses the violators' own dynamic process at stake in such denigration. Melancholia gets more
potently at the notion of constitutive loss that expresses itself in both violent and muted ways, producing confirmation as well as crisis,
knowledge as well as aporia.) American values tend to acquire their sharpest outline through, not in spite of, the nexus of investment and
anxiety provoked by slavery and other institutions of discrimination. As Eric Lott and Michael Rogin have so well demonstrated in their works
on blackface minstrelsy, the
dominant culture's relation to the raced other displays an entangled network of
repulsion and sympathy, fear and desire, repudiation and identification. As Paul Gilroy observes in The Black
Atlantic, "the consciousness of European settlers and those of the Africans they enslaved, the "Indians"
they slaughtered, and the Asians they indentured were not, even in the situations of most extreme
brutality, sealed off hermetically from one another."29 It is this imbricated but denied relationship that
forms the basis of white racial melancholia.
Vote neg in spite of the affirmative harms noncooperation with the aff is critical to
create new forms of knowing.
Willson 13 (S. Brain, JD, Humanities PhD New College San Francisco, 13, American University,
Developing Nonviolent Bioregional Revolutionary Strategies,
http://www.brianwillson.com/developing-nonviolent-bioregional-revolutionary-strategies/)
II. The United States of America is irredeemable and unreformable, a Pretend Society. The USA as a nation
state, as a recent culture, is irredeemable, unreformable, an anti-democratic, vertical, over-sized imperial
unmanageable monster, sustained by the obedience and cooperation, even if reluctant, of the vast majority of its non-autonomous
population. Virtually all of us are complicit in this imperial plunder even as many of us are increasingly repulsed by it and
speak out against it. Lofty rhetoric has conditioned us to believe in our national exceptionalism, despite it being
dramatically at odds with the empirically revealed pattern of our plundering cultural behavior totally dependent upon outsourcing the pain
and suffering elsewhere. We cling to living a life based on the social myth of US America being committed to
justice for all, even as we increasingly know this has always served as a cover for the social secret that the US is committed to prosperity
for a minority thru expansion at ANY cost. Our Eurocentric origins have been built on an extraordinary and forceful
but rationalized dispossession of hundreds of Indigenous nations (a genocide) assuring acquisition of free land,
murdering millions with total impunity. This still unaddressed crime against humanity assured that our eyes
themselves are the wool. Our addiction to the comfort and convenience brought to us by centuries of forceful theft of land, labor,
and resources is very difficult to break, as with any addiction. However, our survival, and healing, requires a commitment to
recovery of our humanity, ceasing our obedience to the national state. This is the (r)evolution begging us. Original wool is in our eyes:
Eurocentric values were established with the invasion by Columbus: Cruelty never before seen, nor heard of, nor read of Bartolome de las
Casas describing the behavior of the Spaniards inflicted on the Indigenous of the West Indies in the 1500s. In fact the Indigenous had no
vocabulary words to describe the behavior inflicted on them (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, 1552). Eurocentric
racism (hatred driven by fear) and arrogant religious ethnocentrism (self-righteous superiority) have never
been honestly addressed or overcome. Thus, our foundational values and behaviors, if
not radically transformed from arrogance to caring, will prove fatal to our modern species. Wool has remained
uncleansed from our eyes: I personally discovered the continued vigorous U.S. application of the Columbus Enterprise in Viet Nam,
discovering that Viet Nam was no aberration after learning of more than 500 previous US military interventions beginning in the late 1790s.
Our business is killing, and business is good was a slogan painted on the front of a 9th Infantry Division helicopter in Viet Nams Mekong Delta
in 1969. We, not the Indigenous, were and remain the savages. The US has been built on three genocides: violent and arrogant dispossession
of hundreds of Indigenous nations in North America (Genocide #1), and in Africa (Genocide #2), stealing land and labor, respectively, with total
impunity, murdering and maiming millions, amounting to genocide. It
is morally unsustainable, now ecologically,
politically, economically, and socially unsustainable as well. Further, in the 20th Century, the Republic of the US intervened
several hundred times in well over a hundred nations stealing resources and labor, while imposing US-friendly markets, killing millions,
impoverishing perhaps billions (Genocide #3). Since 1798, the US military forces have militarily intervened over 560 times in dozens of nations,
nearly 400 of which have occurred since World War II. And since WWII, the US has bombed 28 countries, while covertly
intervening thousands of times in the majority of nations on the earth. It is not helpful to continue believing in the social myth that the USA is
a society committed to justice for all , in fact a convenient mask (since our origins) of our social secret being a society committed to prosperity
for a few through expansion at ANY cost. (See William Appleman Williams). Always possessing oligarchic tendencies, it is now an outright
corrupt corporatocracy owned lock stock and barrel by big money made obscenely rich from war making with our consent, even if reluctant.
The Cold War and its nuclear and conventional arms race with the exaggerated red menace, was an insidious cover for a war preserving the
91
Haves from the Have-Nots, in effect, ironically preserving a western, consumptive way of life that itself is killing us. Pretty amazing!
Our
way of life has produced so much carbon in the water, soil, and atmosphere, that it may in the end be
equivalent to having caused nuclear winter. The war OF wholesale terror on retail terror has replaced the red menace as the
rhetorical justification for the continued imperial plunder of the earth and the riches it brings to the military-industrial-intelligence-
congressional-executive-information complex. Our cooperation with and addiction to the American Way
Of Life
provides the political energy that guarantees continuation of U.S. polices of imperial plunder. III. The
American Way Of Life (AWOL), and the Western Way of Life in general, is the most dangerous force that exists on
the earth. Our insatiable consumption patterns on a finite earth, enabled by but a one-century blip in burning energy
efficient liquid fossil fuels, have made virtually all of us addicted to our way of life as we have been conditioned to be in denial about the
egregious consequences outsourced outside our view or feeling fields. Of course, this trend began 2 centuries earlier with the advent of the
industrial revolution. With 4.6% of the worlds population, we consume anywhere from 25% to nearly half the worlds
resources. This kind of theft can only occur by force or its threat, justifying it with noble sounding rhetoric, over and over and over. Our
insatiable individual and collective human demands for energy inputs originating from outside our bioregions, furnish the political-economic
profit motives for the energy extractors, which in turn own the political process obsessed with preserving national
(in)security, e.g.,
maintaining a very class-based life of affluence and comfort for a minority of the worlds people. This, in turn, requires
a huge military
to assure control of resources for our use, protecting corporate plunder, and to eliminate perceived threats from
competing political agendas. The U.S. War departments policy of full spectrum dominance is intended to control the worlds seas, airspaces,
land bases, outer spaces, our inner mental spaces, and cyberspaces. Resources everywhere are constantly needed to supply our delusional
modern life demands on a finite planet as the system seeks to dumb us down ever more. Thus, we are terribly complicit in the current severe
dilemmas coming to a head due to (1) climate instability largely caused by mindless human activities; (2) from our dependence upon national
currencies; and (3) dependence upon rapidly depleting finite resources. We have become addicts in a classical sense. Recovery requires a deep
psychological, spiritual, and physical commitment to break our addiction to materialism, as we embark on a radical healing journey,
individually and collectively, where less and local becomes a mantra, as does sharing and caring, I call it the Neolithic or Indigenous model.
Sharing and caring replace individualism and competition. Therefore, A Radical Prescription Understanding these
facts requires a
radical paradigmatic shift in our thinking and behavior, equivalent to an evolutionary shift in our epistemology where
our knowledge/thinking framework shifts: arrogant separateness from and domination over nature (ending a post-Ice
Age 10,000 year cycle of thought structure among moderns) morphs to integration with nature, i.e., an eco-consciousness felt deeply in the
viscera, more powerful than a cognitive idea. Thus, we re-discover ancient, archetypal Indigenous thought patterns. It requires creative
disobedience to and strategic noncooperation with the prevailing political economy, while re-constructing locally reliant
communities patterned on instructive models of historic Indigenous and Neolithic villages.
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A2: Science/Empirics
Science/Empirics is not neutral the affirmatives assumptions of objectivity masks
epistemological investments
Despite compelling arguments that objectivity is untenable and undesirable, this standard continues to police the boundaries of knowledge in
many professional contexts.6 Norms of objectivity are particularly strong in the natural science-modeled
disciplines, but recent attempts to prohibit classroom discussion of "controversial material" (e.g., as in proposed "Academic Freedom"
bills) indicate that popular conflations of responsible inquiry with the eradication of perspective and passion can apply to all fields. The
persistent cultural force of objectivity may be due, in part, to the interests served by this standard and, in part more [End Page 58] innocently,
to the absence of a generally accepted alternative criterion for measuring intellectual rigor and accountability. Ultimately,
however,
objectivity can remain our basic standard, despite its epistemological and ethical dubiousness, only
because philosophical critiques of the concept of objectivity have had little influence on everyday
knowledge practices. Thus, while critiques of objectivity are not new, progressive educators who seek
to disrupt the hegemony of dominant knowledges still must apply such critiques to the discursive and
methodological practices that continue to command authority in the name of objectivity. I contribute to this
project below, by showing how our unqualified valorization of such practices tends to insulate dominant views
from criticism while devaluing knowledge from marginalized standpoints. Abundant Empirical Data Granted,
accurate empirical analysis of the measurable dimensions of our world is a crucial component of credible knowledge. Thus, even critics of
objectivity, including Fanon, Farmer, Arendt, Roy, and Galeano support their claims, insofar as possible, with carefully documented historical
data. However, when we treat empirical data not merely as one element of knowledge but as the hallmark of objectivity, we favor the
perspective of those groups who more often have their concerns documented in data and their worldviews institutionalized in the frameworks
that structure data. Significantly, for
instance, the U.S. government has ample data on economic growth rates
but no central data on police violence, the human costs of war, the relation between health and poverty, or the destructive
effects of industry waste products, with the latter having left their marks mainly in unofficial testimonies.7 When
we consider a text replete with statistics to be objective and dismiss personal testimony, we not only
silence perspectives unpopular with official record-keeping institutions but suppress questions about
why some phenomena have been registered in data while others have not. The Bush administration's
failure to record civilian casualties in the Iraq War8 attests to the urgency of looking beyond "hard
data" to the politics that underlie data availability. The confusion of ample data with objectivity also tends
to privilege the perspective of dominant groups insofar as the latter have greater influence over the
conceptual frameworks in which data are interpreted. For instance, French medical, psychiatric, and legal professionals in
colonial Algeria viewed data on Algerian violent crime in terms of a worldview that abstracted social phenomena from history and naturalized
social communities, thereby allowing them to regard the data as evidence "that the Algerian was a born criminal" (Fanon 1963, 296). When
the same data were viewed by Algerians in the context of their resistance to colonialism, it could be seen as a symptom of colonial social
relations. Nevertheless, [End Page 59] the interpretation of the French professionals (and not the Algerians) informed the seemingly objective
medical societies and legal institutions. Furthermore, even before data are framed historically, they are structured
by the categories and procedures by which "the raw material of the world" is "processed as data," and
such research processes tend to be formulated by scholars and bureaucrats with a view to
implementing policies and regulating people (Smith 1987, 1614; 1990, 535, 8592, 11630). This dependence of hard data
on ruling ways of dividing up and governing people is evident, for instance, when newscasters report on the number of "illegal
aliens" crossing the border, working "American" jobs, and attending "American" schools, for these supposed "facts" are
produced by agencies concerned to regulate the activities of Mexican immigrants and whose category "illegal
alien" reflects the dominant culture's assumptions about the sanctity of national borders and the
dependence of rights on national citizenship.
Neutrality
93
"Neutrality," another central mark of "objectivity," is also deceptive. For instance, the text my
colleagues selected as the centerpiece for our university's globalization workshop, A Future Perfect: The
Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (2000),
seemed to them "balanced" and "neutral." Such standards, however, measure "extremes" and
"imbalances" against a taken-for-granted "center," which is constituted through the media as well as
elite-dominated professional discourses.9 On account of their agreement with such a culturally
constituted "center," Micklethwait and Wooldridge's laudatory account of transnational economic
institutions can seem "balanced"despite their failure to engage a single of the many serious critics of
these institutions.
94
A2: Dogmatism/Monologue
Our performance is the opposite of a monlogue storytelling situates knowledge in
the body and invites reponse from other others which is necessary to ward
dogmatism if we want to make the classroom a space for the marginalized we must
challenge academic norms
"Rigor," when viewed in light of this epistemic role of storytelling, calls for full-person attention to the
nuances of specific phenomenaan effort that is thwarted when a writer erects emotional barriers between herself and those she
studies. Certainly, careful inquiry demands moments of stepping back from one's immediate experience and considering one's subject matter
from a broader standpoint; however, complete
detachment from one's subject matter does not constitute rigor
but, on the contrary, insensitivity to living realities. Likewise, "accountability," when viewed as a function of storytelling,
does not demand universal and definitive conclusions but rather tentative and admittedly partial stories, which are [End Page 71] open to
others' responses. Finally, when we confront the contribution of storytelling to human thinking, we see that intellectual aims are inseparable
from ethical ones, for ethical values such as recognition of others as living persons, responsibility for the social effects of our actions, and
participation in democratic communities are essential to a rich and rigorous understanding of our world as a world we share with others and a
world in whose web of relationships historical phenomena have meaning. In effect, whereas
"objectivity" endorses an ethics
of indifference in the name of neutrality, an affirmation "storytelling" asserts that responsible
knowledge practices demand ethical orientations, in particular sensitivity toward others and mindful
participation in our communities. To teach in a way that affirms the value of storytelling and its ethical
aims is risky. It risks acknowledging that not only the texts but also we educators ourselves are situated
in the world we study and motivated by ethical concerns. Nonetheless, we can distinguish an
acknowledged social location and a general ethical orientation from dogmatism, if we recognize that
perspective and ethical concern do not end debate but, on the contrary, open up new questions. For
instance: If we study the world with the aim of orienting ourselves in our communities responsibly, then what light can the text throw on our
own historical location and relationships? If we are related to the material we study, then how do our own lives look differently if we weave
them into the text's narrative? And if we always read from particular social and cultural positions, then what aspects of our world are obscured
and what aspects elucidated by the author's (and our own) standpoints? Upon reading Roy's essay, for instance, my Critical Thinking class
explored how the marketed-oriented values that govern India's dam industry might influence our own lives, how we (not unlike middle-class
Indians) might employ objectifying categories that distance us from our neighbors, and how the standpoint of India's Adivasi communities,
seemingly so distant from us, can throw new light on our own lifestyle and values. We also thematized Roy's unorthodox writing style asking,
for instance, whether the empirical claims that Roy presents are any more trustworthy than those she criticizes and whether her sarcasm and
emotionally laden metaphors promote more critical or more ideological thinking. Such questions are vexing, but they impressed on students
their responsibility as readers to evaluate the effects that each text has on us. We also can distinguish ethically oriented engagement with
marginal-standpoint texts from mere "politicized teaching" by comparing such texts to more conventional ones in order to force into the open
questions about the politics of knowledge. For instance, students in my Global Ethics course initially responded to Galeano's Open Veins with
indignance toward the unabashed anger that colors his writing. The text might serve as a supplement to regular history, students suggested,
but it is not history [End Page 72] proper. When, however, we compared specific sections in Galeano's book to sections covering similar topics
in a standard textbook, some students began to recognize how both texts were shaped by socially constituted perspectives and rhetorical
devices, so that the question of what constitutes "real" history, what role interests and emotion play in historical analysis, and which text, if
any, was central and which was "merely supplemental" became topics of lively debate. An
engaged reading of marginal-
standpoint narratives also differs from dogmatic teaching insofar as it exposes the limitations of our
own theories and standpoints. Such exposure denies us the pretense of objectivity but also
demonstrates to students the intellectual value of self-awareness and humility. For instance, when my Feminist
Philosophy students read Barrios's testimony, we discuss how her distrust of feminism challenges us to examine how our own feminist
projects might be viewed by differently situated women. We also discuss how her stories move us personally, provoking us to view our own
routines and comforts as part of a world in which others struggle to feed their children. When
I share with students how
Barrios' passionate dedication to her community leads me to question my own inability to act more
fully on my moral passions, I forgo "expert" status, but I encourage students to risk self-examination
and to face the tough questions about their own social locations that thinking from others lives
ultimately demands. Such unsettling questions about our own social identities and about the politics of
95
different discursive strategies have no place in the "objective" classroom. Nevertheless, such self-
reflective and explicitly political questions are integral to serious engagement with creatively written,
passion-driven marginal-standpoint texts. Thus, securing a place in our classrooms for marginalized
views demands no less than a rethinking of basic academic norms. Against those who valorize rhetoric-
and emotion-free "objectivity," we must affirm that knowledge of our world is always already in
narrative form, that our lives are already bound up with the web of life that we study, and that
intellectual rigor, therefore, is achieved not by detached experts but by a community of storytellers
who continually rethink our categories and reconsider our projects as we exchange stories with one
another and let ourselves be moved by each other's struggles.
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A2: Simulation/Roleplaying
Simulated roleplaying as state policymakers colludes with an imperialist agenda that
distances debaters from status quo power relations.
Reid-Brinkley 08 [Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley, University of Pittsburgh Department of
Communications, THE HARSH REALITIES OF ACTING BLACK: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY
DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND STYLE]
Mitchell observes that the stance of the policymaker in debate comes with a sense of detachment
associated with the spectator posture.115 In other words, its participants are able to engage in
debates where they are able to distance themselves from the events that are the subjects of debates.
Debaters can throw around terms like torture, terrorism, genocide and nuclear war without blinking.
Debate simulations can only serve to distance the debaters from real world participation in the political
contexts they debate about. As William Shanahan remarks: the topic established a relationship
through interpellation that inhered irrespective of what the particular political affinities of the debaters
were. The relationship was both political and ethical, and needed to be debated as such. When we
blithely call for United States Federal Government policymaking, we are not immune to the colonialist
legacy that establishes our place on this continent. We cannot wish away the horrific atrocities
perpetrated everyday in our name simply by refusing to acknowledge these implications (emphasis in
original).116 118 The objective stance of the policymaker is an impersonal or imperialist persona. The
policymaker relies upon acceptable forms of evidence, engaging in logical discussion, producing
rational thoughts. As Shanahan, and the Louisville debaters note, such a stance is integrally linked to
the normative, historical and contemporary practices of power that produce and maintain varying
networks of oppression. In other words, the discursive practices of policy-oriented debate are
developed within, through and from systems of power and privilege. Thus, these practices are critically
implicated in the maintenance of hegemony. So, rather than seeing themselves as government or state
actors, Jones and Green choose to perform themselves in debate, violating the more objective stance
of the policymaker and require their opponents to do the same.
Neoliberal thinkers control the framing of policy discussions you should be highly
skeptical of their defenses of their research paradigm
Ross Prof of Education U British Columbia 2010 E. Wayne Resisting the Common-nonsense of
Neoliberalism: A Report from British Columbia Workplace #17 http://firgoa.usc.es/drupal/files/ross.pdf
Public debates in the corporate media about education (and other social goods) are framed in ways
that serve the interests of elites. For example, in BC free market neoliberals in think tanks such as the
Fraser Institute and in the dominant media outlets (particularly Canwest Global Communications, Inc.)
have been successful in framing discussions on education in terms of accountability, efficiency, and
market competition. 1 A frame is the central narrative, the organizer, for making sense of particular
issues or problems (e.g., problem definition, origin, responsible parties) and solutions (e.g., policy).
The frame is presented as common sense, thus the assumptions underlying the frame are typically
unquestioned or at least under-analyzed.
97
A2: Terrorism advantage

American empire creates a self-fulfilling prophecy for terrorism
Giroux, 11/1/2015, holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies
Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. "Terror in Paris points to larger war on Muslim youth," Mehr
News Agency, http://en.mehrnews.com/news/112452/Terror-in-Paris-points-to-larger-war-on-Muslim-youth, (Haq 7/2/2017)
I welcome the letter by Iran's Leader Ayatollah Khamenei addressing young people in the West on the topic of terrorism. His call for peace and
his insistence that terrorism is a common matter of worry and concern for both the West and the Middle East is a humanitarian and just call to
all youth to address the deep rooted seeds of destruction spawned by ideological fundamentalism, economic inequality, the fog of militarism,
politicians, pundits,
and the scourge of war. I would like humbly to add to his letter with my own observations. While Western
and the mainstream media acknowledged that the Paris attackers largely targeted
places where young people gatheredthe concert hall, the caf, and the sports stadiumwhat they missed was that
this act of violence was part of a strategic war on youth. In this instance, youth became both a target and
targeted by other youth. This is a war waged on youth and by youth. By targeting places popular
for young people, ISIL sent them a message suggesting that they will have no future
unless they can accept the ideological fundamentalism that drives terrorist threats and
demands. This is an attack not simply on the bodies of youth but also on their imagination, and an attempt to
kill any sense of a better and more democratic future. In this script, war becomes the only option for young
people to takea binary forged in a complex friend/enemy duality that erases the
conditions that produce ISIL or the conditions that make possible the recruitment of
young people to such a deadly ideology. When the conditions that oppress youth are ignored in the face of the
ongoing practices of terrorismthe attacks waged on Muslim youth in France and other countries, the blatant racism that degrades a religion
as if all terrorists are Muslims or forgets that all religions produce their own share of terroriststhere is little hope to address the conditions
that both impoverish and oppress young people, let alone developing the insight and vision to address such conditions before they erupt into a
nihilistic form of rage. At the same time, when war and militarism waged by the West ravage the Middle East, support dictatorships such as
Saudi Arabia, and further contribute to the dehumanizing plight of Palestinians who live under a state of abject occupation, the grounds for
terrorism become global, making no one safe. The seeds of terrorism do not lie in simply ideological fundamentalism, they also reside in
conditions of oppression, war, racism, poverty, the abandonment of entire generations of Muslim youth, the dictatorships that stifle young
people in the Middle East, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians by drone attacks and air strikes in various Muslim countries around the
world, however difficult it might be to address such acts of violence. For too many people, youth are now the subject and object of war, hard
targets transformed either into suicide bombers or the collateral damage that comes from the ubiquitous war machines. There are few safe
spaces for them any more unless they are hidden in the gated enclaves of the rich. Maybe it is time to examine the state of youth globally,
especially those marginalized by class, race, religion, ethnicity, and gender in order to address those conditions that produce the violence of
state terrorism, ideological fundamentalism, militarism, massive inequality, and the ever expanding global war machines that thrive on
violence and exclusion. Surely there is more to the future than allowing young people to be killed by either drones, or while sitting innocently
it is time to
in a caf, or for that matter for their spirit to be crushed or misdirected by impoverishment of the body and mind. Maybe
ask important questions regarding why some youth are joining and supporting terrorist
actions and why some youth sit back and allow themselves to be oppressed without
any sense of collective resistance. Or, why some youth are resisting terrorism in all of its forms as an indecent assault on
individuals, groups, and the planet itself. But most importantly, maybe it is time to ask ourselves what it means when a society ignores young
people and then hastily goes to war because they engage in terrorist acts or are the victims of such acts. Western powers cannot allow the fog
of violence to cover over the bankruptcy of a militaristic response to egregious acts of violence. Such militaristic responses function largely to
The rush to violencethe
govern the effects of acts of terrorism by ISIL and others while ignoring its underlying causes.
bomb now, think later ethoskills more innocent people, is strategically useful largely
as a recruiting tool for terrorists, and further emboldens those who thrive on a culture
of fear and dream of presiding over a lock-down society. The latter is particularly evident as a number of
right wing extremists in the US call for closing down mosques, putting refugees in detention centers, and creating data bases for immigrants
a practice eerily reminiscent to what the Nazis did to Jews under the Third Reich. Not only do such actions serve to spread insidious acts of
. Eliminating ISIL means eradicating
racism and xenophobia, they also enhance the recruiting practices of terrorist groups
the conditions that created them and that suggests producing a political settlement in
Syria and stabilizing the Middle East. But more importantly, there will be no sense of
global safety unless the conditions that produce young people as both the subject and
object of violence are addressed and eliminated. Safety is not guaranteed by war,
98
militarism, and vengeance. In fact, this response to violence becomes the generative
principle for more violence to come, thereby guaranteeing that no one will be safe until
it becomes clear that these young people who have been initiated into a culture of
violence are the product of a world we have created. Young people cannot inherit a
future marked by fear, militarism, suicide bombers, and a world in which democracy
has been emptied of any substantive meaning. If the conditions of impoverishment,
humiliation, violence, and despair continue, there will be more violence and acts of
terrorism, pushing more countries into the dark abyss of militarism and the toxic
clutches of an authoritarian society.
US domestic and foreign and domestic policy is rooted with Islamophobia. The
affirmatives endorsement of it calls for the acceptance of the state. Not only does the
aff perpetuate the cycle they call for the acceptance of it through the ballots
endorsement
DESVARIEUX, 9-11-2013, "Twelve Years Post 9/11, Islamophobia Still Runs High ," Truthout, http://www.truth-
out.org/video/item/18759-twelve-years-post-9-11-islamophobia-still-runs-high, , (Haq 7/2/2017)
JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore. In the 12 years since 9/11,
Muslim Americans have been subjugated to extensive government surveillance and profiling. They've also
experienced numerous hate crimes throughout the U.S. And this escalated in 2010 after an announcement that an Islamic community center
would be built blocks away from Ground Zero. And just last month, North Carolina joined six other U.S. states in banning the use of sharia law
in its judicial system. Some critics view this as an indication of a heightened Islamphobia in media and political culture. Joining us to discuss this
issue is Deepa Kumar. She's an associate professor of media studies and Middle Eastern studies at Rutgers University and the author of the
book Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire. Thanks for joining us, Deepa. DEEPA KUMAR, PROF. MEDIA STUDIES AND MIDDLE EAST
STUDIES: Thank you for having me. DESVARIEUX: So, Deepa, let's just first define Islamophobia. KUMAR: Islamophobia is basically the term, the
name given to anti-Muslim racism. It is a form of prejudice. And it involves making generalizations about an entire group based on the actions
there was
of a few through this mythical understanding of what Islam is supposed to be. DESVARIEUX: Okay. And we should mention that
a poll that was conducted by the Arab American Institute that found that American attitudes towards
Arab and Muslims, specifically for Republicans and Romney voters in this last presidential election, were rated to be strongly
negative. Does this mean that Islamophobia is only a problem of right-wingers or conservative voters? KUMAR: Absolutely not. I think it is true
that larger numbers of conservative voters are racist. They are racist not just in terms of their attitude towards Arabs and South Asians, but
Islamophobia is far
also to a whole host of other groups. So it's true that this idea sort of concentrated within those ranks. But in fact
more systemic than that. That is to say, the idea of a Muslim enemy, the idea of a terrorist enemy is
one that actually goes back a couple of decades but was brought to light after 9/11 by the political elite,
by our political leaders. So in fact it is built into the system of U.S. foreign policy in this country. And to simply look at
the far right and to ignore the fact that it has larger implications in terms of justifying U.S. foreign policy would be really to have only an
incomplete picture of what is at work in this form of racism. DESVARIEUX: Okay. Let's talk about the mass media and how they depict Islam
since 9/11. Can you describe for us how the mass media has depicted Islam? KUMAR: Well, basically, the trauma of 9/11, the fact that, you
know, 3,000 Americans died meant that it enabled the U.S. media to actually draw on stereotypes that have been, you know, propped up by
Hollywood, by the news media, and so on for a few decades before that. And that was the idea that these are crazy, irrational people. They are
all apparently driven by Islam to violence. And so we should lock them up, we should be suspicious of them, we should detain them at airports,
and so on and so forth. And so that's what you saw in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. And this show called 24, which your viewers may
know, is--it's about a lot of things [incompr.] that it's about justifying the building of a national security state and justifying practices like
torture and so on and so forth. DESVARIEUX: Okay. And also the story of the day, of course, is Syria, and everyone's attention is drawn to Syria.
Can you describe for us just how does Islamophobia play a role in any of the arguments for intervention in Syria, really? KUMAR: Okay. It
doesn't play a direct role in that. It is--the
idea of humanitarianism has a long history in the United States. The
idea that there are victims all over the world, that the U.S. government has then got to make war in order
to, you know, somehow defend them, this goes back all the way to the Spanish-American war of 1898, which was
supposed to be about rescuing Cubans. And similarly, you see these sorts of justifications given. You
know, Vietnamese need to be defended. In Iraq, it was babies, apparently, who were being bayoneted
in Kuwait, and therefore the U.S. needed to intervene and defeat Iraq in 1991. So this idea of humanitarianism has a long history within
the foreign policy establishment. But what makes it particularly potent in this case is that after 9/11 what you
see is the Bush administration projecting this idea of clash of civilizations, which is basically the notion
that we in the West are democratic, we are rational, we are civilized, we are, you know, all things
wonderful, and they in the East are barbaric, they're misogynistic, and so on and so forth, and therefore
99
we have an obligation, what used to be called the white man's burden, to go off and rescue them. And
so you see some of that language, which is the idea that Arabs cannot bring democracy by themselves,
they cannot make change, and so we need to intervene. So it's a combination both of the victim narrative, which has a
long history, combined with this language of clash of civilizations. DESVARIEUX: Okay. And how does this fit into domestic policy? How do they
work Islamophobia into domestic policy? KUMAR: Right. I mean, the comparison I make in the book and that I'm actually working on in the
next book is that the U.S. government, and U.S. imperialism in particular, always needs an enemy. That is, when there is no humanitarian
cause, an enemy is an extremely useful way to justify wars abroad, as well as the policing of dissent at home. So, for instance, during the Cold
War we had been menacing enemy of the Soviet Union, against whom both a hot and a Cold War had to be waged. And, of course, this
justified, then, McCarthyism, because there's always a reflection of the external enemy inside, and these people have to be rounded up,
blacklisted, and so on and so forth. So that's the logic back then, and, of course, it was entirely about a politics of fear. Today we have the
same sort of thing. After 9/11, the war on terror comes into being precisely about fighting endless wars. Remember, back in 9/11 the Bush
administration was going to start with Afghanistan, go to Iraq, and then Iran, Syria, and so on and so forth. It didn't work out that way. But the
idea was to drum up this fear of this menacing terrorist enemy, which justified wars all over the world in order to gain the U.S.'s interest in
[incompr.] particularly in the oil-rich region in the Middle East. You asked me about domestic politics. Always there was a reflection of the
domestic in terms of the international threat. And so what you've seen is innocent Muslims--and often actually not even Muslims, people from
the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, some of them Sikhs, some some of them Hindus, some of them Christians, and so on, being
racially profiled because that is the logic that comes out of this. I have a whole chapter in the book about how the legal system has been
reworked so as to justify things like indefinite detention, things like torture, things like deportation. And, frankly, the infiltration of agents into
our schools, into my school, into colleges, and so forth. So, you know, it's truly horrific the extent to which Muslim Americans and people who
look Muslim have been demonized since 9/11. DESVARIEUX: How do you sort of categorize or interpret these votes by different states to ban
sharia law? What's your take on that? KUMAR: Yes. This is actually the work of a far right wing Islamophobic network. These people have been
active for the last two decades, and they get, you know, funding to the tune of $45-$50 billion over the last seven, eight years. These people
hold the view that there are no moderate Muslims, all Muslims are somehow connected to Islamist organizations--Hamas or the Muslim
brotherhood and so on. And even though they pretend to be moderate, right--this is the language some of these people use--in fact they are
involved in a conspiracy to take over the United States and to replace the Constitution with sharia law. Of course, this is nonsense, this is
complete conspiracy theory. But these are the people. They are lawyers, they are academics, they are people in the military, they are people in
the security establishment. They are responsible for this campaign where, you know, about half a dozen to a dozen states across the U.S. have
adopted these laws. It's a process of fearmongering, and it enables the right wing to actually grow in their ranks and promote this kind of hate.
DESVARIEUX: What's the name of that specific group? You said billions of dollars this sort of contingency has. KUMAR: Yes. There was a very
thorough report called Fear Incorporated which actually charted the sources of money that these groups actually get. And I summarize some
of their research in my book. But essentially it is a coalition of about four groups. There is the--there's a section of the neoconservatives,
people like Frank Gaffney, who sort of provide the talking points to the rest of this network. There are right-wing Zionist forces, people for
whom any criticism of Israel is automatically anti-Semitic. There are Christians, conservatives, evangelicals, people like Franklin Graham and
John Hagee and people like that. And then, interestingly, there is this group called--you know, they are--Former Muslims United they call
themselves. They are people from Muslim majority countries. And their role within this network is to say, I was born in Lebanon, I grew up in
Egypt, and let me tell you how horrible these Muslims are. And so they add credibility to the kind of caricatures and, frankly, the hateful
rhetoric about Muslims. And they have connections to the Tea Party. And so these are the people. You started earlier with the, quote-
unquote, Ground Zero Mosque controversy. These are the people who are responsible for it, people like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.
And I'm happy to say that I was on the other side. I was part of the coalition to stop their hateful message from coming out. And we actually
organized a demonstration that was way, you know, larger then their protests. And eventually the [incompr.] 51 did come up, because we
were able to push them out of our city, New York, and to say that we will not, you know, tolerate their racism. DESVARIEUX: Wow. Well, thank
you so much for joining us, Deepa. KUMAR: Thank you. It was my pleasure. DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News
Network.
100
A2: Democracy Good

Democracy is a joke - We do not live in a democratic country, all it is a lie
CHOMSKY 95 {Noam, Excerpted from Class Warfare, 1995, pp. 19-23, 27-
31https://chomsky.info/warfare02/ }
BARSAMIAN: At the Mellon lecture that you gave in Chicago you focused primarily on the ideas of
John Dewey and Bertrand Russell [regarding education]
CHOMSKY: These were highly libertarian ideas. Dewey himself comes straight from the American
mainstream. People who read what he actually said would now consider him some far-out anti-
American lunatic or something. He was expressing mainstream thinking before the ideological system
had so grotesquely distorted the tradition. By now, its unrecognizable. For example, not only did he
agree with the whole Enlightenment tradition that, as he put it, the goal of production is to produce
free people, free men, he said, but thats many years ago. Thats the goal of production, not to
produce commodities. He was a major theorist of democracy. There were many different, conflicting
strands of democratic theory, but the one Im talking about held that democracy requires dissolution of
private power. He said as long as there is private control over the economic system, talk about
democracy is a joke. Repeating basically Adam Smith, Dewey said, Politics is the shadow that big
business casts over society. He said attenuating the shadow doesnt do much. Reforms are still going to
leave it tyrannical. Basically, a classical liberal view. His main point was that you cant even talk about
democracy until you have democratic control of industry, commerce, banking, everything. That means
control by the people who work in the institutions, and the communities. These are standard libertarian
socialist and anarchist ideas which go straight back to the Enlightenment, an outgrowth of the views of
the kind that we were talking about before from classical liberalism. Dewey represented these in the
modern period, as did Bertrand Russell, from another tradition, but again with roots in the
Enlightenment. These were two of the major, if not the two major thinkers, of the twentieth century,
whose ideas are about as well known as the real Adam Smith. Which is a sign of how efficient the
educational system has been, and the propaganda system, in simply destroying even our awareness of
our own immediate intellectual background.
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A2: Econometrics
Economics is too deeply socialized to be understood through the scientific method --
their attempt to study "the economy" as a stable object is intellectually bankrupt. It is
this belief that the economy possesses a knowable truth that lead to the recent
catastrophic meltdown
Kiersey '11 Nicholas J. Kiersey is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ohio UniversityChillicothe "
Everyday Neoliberalism and the Subjectivity of Crisis: Post-Political Control in an Era of Financial
Turmoil" Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies , Issue 4 (2011)
One of the earliest Constructivist critiques of the current financial crisis came from a rather unlikely source. In his book The New Paradigm
(2008), the world-famous financial speculator George Soros prefaced his analysis of the causes and
dynamics of the crisis with a lengthy philosophical exposition of the importance of social norms and
conventions in determining financial outcomes. Acknowledging the highly innovative and intrinsically risky nature of many
of the financial products that failed during the crisis, Soros's basic argument was that principle fault for the crisis
should, in fact, be lain squarely at the feet of modern economic theory and its misguided belief in
itself as a 'science'. As economic exchange falls in the realm of social activity, he suggested, it is an
object of inquiry that is necessarily resistant to study through scientific method. While the methods of natural
science may be appropriate for studying the stuff of the natural world, such as nuclear physics, they can produce seriously misleading results
when applied to realm of human affairs. Citing the influence on his thinking of Karl Popper, Soros (2008, p. viii) put
forward the
argument that the study of social life is confounded by the dilemma of what he calls "interference
reflexivity". Basically, this dilemma suggests that, because they are also participants in the ongoing
processes that they are trying to study, students of human affairs can never completely remove from
their analyses preconceived understandings of how the world works. For Soros, the global financial
system 'bet the farm,' so to speak, on a set of nonreflexively developed assumptions about the
nature of economic life. As such, for him, the crisis reflects the ultimately necessary "moment of
truth" that confronts such assumptions when "reality can no longer sustain ... exaggerated
expectations" (Soros, 2008, p. 66). Indeed, he notes, even at the moment when such expectations might be challenged in this way,
'corrected' behavior is not necessarily the result. As with the figurative lemmings over a cliff, beliefs can drive the
market far past the moment of truth and into calamity. Thus Soros cites the infamous quip of former
Citibank CEO Chuck Prince: "As long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance" (cited in ibid.,
p. 84). Albeit inadvertently, Prince was actually suggesting something quite correct about the socially embedded nature of economic life; while
actors expect markets to tend towards equilibrium, history suggests that equilibrium is in fact an ever "moving target" (ibid., p. 72). In
this
sense markets are always to some extent wrong. The problem comes, however, when the brute force
of this basic fact is supplanted by what he terms a 'superbubble' in expectations. For where actual
asset bubbles, such as in the case of property, can be driven by a 'local' misconception, such as the
refrain that "the value of collateral is not affected by the willingness to lend" (ibid., p. 83), a super-
bubble is driven by a much more foundational expectation that is, the norm of market
fundamentalism where regulators and traders make the assumption that markets tend to
automatically correct their excesses (ibid., p. 91). In the introduction to a recent special issue of the journal New Political
Economy , Soros's book is cited as an example of an early and somewhat premature approach to the crisis, and one that is too focused on the
surface relationships of financial market discourses. More specifically, the authors state, works such as Soros's are unilogical, ignoring key
discursive contestations at the level of the everyday politics of contemporary finance. Thus, for example, we find no discussion of "the process
through which credit expansion, the commodification of future welfare needs and the purposeful creation of bubble dynamics are all
somewhat predictable outcomes of an increasingly financialized model of capitalism" (Brassett et al., 2010, p. 3). Nevertheless, in the essays
that follow, many of the core theoretical conceits that Soros relies on are set to work to bring these 'missing,' micro-level nuances into relief.
102
A2: Realism
Realist theory relies on a naturalization of the human body along gendered lines in order
to legitimize the mythology of the nation-state; political violence is the precondition of
sovereignty. This naturalization of the body invisibilizes other violences and erases
marginal discourses of resistance in favor of sovereignty.
Wilcox 2015 (Lauren B., University Lecturer in Gender Studies and the Deputy Director of the
Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge, Bodies of Violence: Theorizing
Embodied Subjects in International Relations, Introduction, 17-18)/Spiers
In realism, violence is natural and inevitable, and violence also marks the boundary between
nature and human communities. Violence is sometimes necessary to maintain the political
community from external and internal threats. Realism draws a sharp distinction between domestic and
international politics, and maintains that states must be able to use or threaten violence in order to maintain the states status and
survival in the world. The iconic figure in the realist tradition is Hobbes, who is read as telling a relatively simple story of the
Realist theories of IR extend
establishment of the political community that excludes violence from the domestic realm.
Hobbess state of nature from individual natural men to relations between states. Violence in
the form of interstate war is sometimes necessary because states provide protection for
citizens not only from other states, but from anarchy and civil war, which could threaten
individuals lives in the absence of state authority. The objects that are to be defended by the
state are, first and foremost, the living breathing bodies of humans as organisms. Sovereign power,
in the artificial man of the Leviathan, is constituted precisely to protect the natural man (Hobbes 1996
[1651], 9). It is their safety and bodily integrity that is to be protected. In order to foster life, to
prevent the life that is nasty, brutish and short, the state must be convened. In this logic, the survival
of the states citizens is dependent upon the survival of the state itself. As Dan Deudney insists, Security from political violence is
the first freedom, the minimum vital task of all primary political associations, and achieving [ 18 ] security requires restraint of the
application of violent power upon individual bodies (2007, 14). Tothe extent that Hobbess work can be said to
contribute to theories of embodiment, it is in considering human community on the organic
terms of the body politic. This is not an entirely original insight in itselfafter all, it makes use of the ancient and medieval
philosophy of the great chain of being that orders God and the sovereign king above human subjects. In setting up the
figure of the sovereign state as a body politic, Hobbes naturalizes the boundaries of the political
community in the boundaries of the human body. The metaphor of the state as body allows for security threats
being represented as bodily illnesses, contagions, or cancers, existential threats that threaten the life of the state (Sontag 1990
[1978], 7287; Waldby 1996; Campbell 2000 [1992], 59). The body that is protected by the state as well as the
body that is a representation of the state is not only a natural body, but also one that is self-
contained and self-governed, internally organized, and bound by concrete borders. Security
thus means establishing and protecting this self-governed body as an organism.1 Furthermore, the
representation of the state as a body stresses the unity of the body politic. As an individual, the sovereign is not required
to recognize any form of difference among his subjectsthe body politic has one body and
speaks with a single voice (Gatens 1996, 23). Sovereign power, invested in the artificial body of the state, is constituted
on the basis of a metaphor of the body as indivisible, a singular totality that Rousseau characterizes as the general will. As in
Hobbes, the sovereign state is constituted in analogy to a human body. As nature gives each man absolute power over all his
members, the social compact gives the body politic absolute power over all its members also; and it is this power which, under the
In naturalizing the
direction of the general will, bears, as I have said, the name of Sovereignty (Rousseau 1997 [1762], 61).
state as a human body, Hobbes and other social contract theorists further naturalize the human
body itself as a singular, indivisible entity whose freedom from violent death is paramount .
Hobbess story of the foundations of the state calls our attention to the naturalization of political violence in a way that
expressly relies upon analogy to a particular conception of the human body. As this body is
considered natural, so too is the constitution of the state as body writ large. Just as
threats to the human bodys integrity are seen as contamination, so too are border incursions
and infiltrations that breach the states control over its territory and people. Whereas in realism,
sovereign power is constituted in order to protect life, in liberalism, sovereign power is also recognized to be a threat to human life.
103
IR theory perpetuates colonialism appropriating the knowledge resources and bodies

of those which it must capture and disavow, creating necropolitical death worlds
Agathangelou AND Ling 04 [Anna M. Agathangelou, co director of Global Change Institute,
Associate professor @ York University. L. H. M. Ling, PhD in Political Science @Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Professor of International Affairs, Milano School of International Affairs. The House of
IR: From Family Power Politics to the Poisies of Worldism International Studies Review, Vol 6, No 4,
Dec 2004. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3699724?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents JChou]
Specifically, IR comes to resemble a colonial household. Its singular, oppositional perspective (I versus
You) stakes out an establishment of civilization in a space that is already crowded with local
traditions of thinking, doing, and being but proclaimed, in willful arrogance, as a state of nature
plagued by fearful anarchy and its murderous power politics. The House seeks to stave off such
disorder by imposing order. But the House does so by appropriating the knowledge, resources, and
labor of racialized, sexualized Others for its own benet and pleasure while announcing itself the sole
producer the father of our world. Others qualify as innocent children, wards, or servants at best, or
unteachable barbarians at worst. In either case, Others must wait faithfully for their admittance, if
ever, into the House of IR. Directing Others with declarative statements, the House assumes that it
knows both the problem (power) and its solution (more power). Such suffocation of Self and Other
leaves a multigenerational legacy similar to the actual colonial households: that is, erasures and
violences that ip the households original intent. Order turns into disorder, repulsion into desire, purity
into hybridity. In the House of IR, especially, another practice rules: to treat power as empire,
regardless of public devastations or secret indulgences.
104
A2: Legalism good/institutional knowledge

Teaching students to control the levers of power, even to undermine them,
entrenches hierarchal forms of discipline
The Queer Art of Failure. Page 14-15.)/Spiers
The Ignorant Schoolmaster advocates in an antidisciplinary way for emancipatory forms of knowledge
that do not depend upon an overtrained pied piper leading obedient children out of the darkness and
into the light. Jacotot summarizes his pedagogy thus: I must teach you that I have nothing to teach
you (15). In this way he allows others to teach themselves and to learn without learning and
internalizing a system of superior and inferior knowledges, superior and inferior intelligences. Like
Paulo Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which argues against a banking system of teaching and for
a dialogic mode of learning that enacts a practice of freedom, Jacotot and then Rancire see education
and social transformation as mutually dependent. When we are taught that we cannot know things
unless we are taught by great minds, we submit to a whole suite of unfree practices that take on the
form of a colonial relation (Freire 2000). There are several responses possible to colonial knowledge
formations: a violent response, on the order of Frantz Fanons claim that violent impositions of colonial
rule must be met with violent resistance; a homeopathic [holistic, viewing systems as interconnected]
response, within which the knower learns the dominant system better than its advocates and
undermines it from within; or a negative response, in which the subject refuses the knowledge offered
and refuses to be a knowing subject in the form mandated by Enlightenment philosophies of self and
other. This book is in sympathy with the violent and negative forms of anticolonial knowing and builds
on Motens low theory and Harneys opposition to the university as a site of incarcerated knowledge. In
the project on subjugated knowledge, I propose a third thesis: Suspect memorialization. While it seems
commonsensical to produce new vaults of memory about homophobia or racism, many contemporary
texts, literary and theoretical, actually argue against memorialization. Toni Morrisons Beloved (1987),
Saidiya Hartmans memoir, Lose Your Mother (2008), and Avery Gordons meditation on forgetting and
haunting in Ghostly Matters (1996), all advocate for certain forms of erasure over memory precisely
because memorialization has a tendency to tidy up disorderly histories (of slavery, the Holocaust, wars,
etc.). Memory is itself a disciplinary mechanism that Foucault calls a ritual of power; it selects for
what is important (the histories of triumph), it reads a continuous narrative into one full of ruptures
and contradictions, and it sets precedents for other memorializations. In this book forgetting
becomes a way of resisting the heroic and grand logics of recall and unleashes new forms of memory
that relate more to spectrality than to hard evidence, to lost genealogies than to inheritance, to erasure
than to inscription.
105
A2: speaking for others

there is no other method for revolution
Halberstam, 13 (Judith Halberstam, also known as Jack Halberstam, is the Professor of English and
Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. The Undercommons:
Fugitive Planning & Black Study: Stefano Harney and Fred Moten)/Spiers
The mission then for the denizens of the undercommons is to recognize that when you seek to
make things better, you are not just doing it for the Other, you must also be doing it for yourself.
While men may think they are being "sensitive" by turning to feminism, while white people may
think they are being right on by opposing racism, no one will really be able to embrace the
mission of tearing "this shit down" until they realize that the structures they oppose are not only
bad for some of us, they are bad for all of us. Gender hierarchies are bad for men as well as
women and they are really bad for the rest of us. Racial hierarchies are not rational and
ordered, they are chaotic and nonsensical and must be opposed by precisely all those who
benefit in any way from them. Or, as Moten puts it: "The coalition emerges out of your
recognition that it's fucked up for you, in the same way that we've already recognized that it's
fucked up for us. I don't need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you,
too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?" The coalition unites us in
the recognition that we must change things or die. All of us. We must all change the things that
are fucked up and change cannot come in the form that we think of as "revolutionary" not as a
masculinist surge or an armed confrontation. Revolution will come in a form we cannot yet
imagine. Moten and Harney propose that we prepare now for what will come by entering into
study. Study, a mode of thinking with others separate from the thinking that the institution requires
of you, prepares us to be embedded in what Harney calls "the with and for" and allows you to
spend less time antagonized and antagonizing.
106
A2: State inevitable

Even if the state is here to stay we must distance ourselves from it- the only way to
change our logic is to endorse the ALT
Halberstam, 13 (Judith Halberstam, also known as Jack Halberstam, is the Professor of English and
If you want to know what the undercommons wants, what Moten and Harney want, what black people,
indigenous peoples, queers and poor people want, what we (the "we" who cohabit in the space of the
undercommons) want, it is this - we cannot be satisfied with the recognition and acknowledgement
generated by the very system that denies a) that anything was ever broken and b) that we deserved
to be the broken part; so we refuse to ask for recognition and instead we want to take apart,
dismantle, tear down the structure that, right now, limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond
it and to access the places that we know lie outside its walls. We cannot say what new structures will
replace the ones we live with yet, because once we have torn shit down, we will inevitably see more
and see differently and feel a new sense of wanting and being and becoming. What we want after
"the break" will be different from what we think we want before the break and both are necessarily
different from the desire that issues from being in the break.
107
A2: debate not key

Debate is key; we must be loud and have a captive audience
The Freedom School 2016 (April 2016, fugitive learning organization at UCLA,
Welcome to the Freedom School,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lhkV9bFJFo)/Spiers
It was very important that it had to be public. We had to make some practical decisions
and some theoretical ones in terms of the kind of disruption we wanted to make spatially and
politically. So some of the practical concerns were, we knew we needed to be loud. Part of
taking up space isnt just physical space but sound, I think Professor Terese Johnson
calls it sonic reclamation, so we knew we needed a place where we could be public
and be loud but do it in such a way that causes a disruption but not in a way where
they could easily come and say Hey youre disrupting classes and then shut us
down.
108
A2: rejection does nothing

Dont mistake refusal for inaction- its a key political strategy
Halberstam 13 (Judith Halberstam, also known as Jack Halberstam, is the Professor of English and
The path to the wild beyond is paved with refusal. In The Undercommons if we begin anywhere,
we begin with the right to refuse what has been refused to you. Citing Gayatri Spivak, Moten and Harney call
this refusal the "first right" and it is a game-changing kind of refusal in that it signals the refusal
of the choices as offered. We can understand this refusal in terms that Chandan Reddy lays out in Freedom With Violence
(2011) - for Reddy, gay marriage is the option that cannot be opposed in the ballot box. While we can circulate multiple critiques
of gay marriage in terms of its institutionalization of intimacy, when you arrive at the ballot box, pen in hand, you only get to check
"yes" or "no" and the no, in this case, could be more damning than the yes. And so, you must refuse the choice as offered. Moten
it would mean to refuse what they term "the call to order." And what would
and Harney also study what
it mean, furthermore, to refuse to call others to order, to refuse interpellation and the
reinstantiation of the law. When we refuse, Moten and Harney suggest, we create dissonance and more
importantly, we allow dissonance to continue - when we enter a classroom and we refuse to call it to order, we are
allowing study to continue, dissonant study perhaps, disorgan- ized study, but study that
precedes our call and will continue after we have left the room. Or, when we listen to music, we
must refuse the idea that music happens only when the musician enters and picks up an
instrument; music is also the anticipation of the performance and the noises of appreciation it
generates and the speaking that happens through and around it, making it and loving it, being in
it while listening. And so, when we refuse the call to order - the teacher pick- ing up the book, the conductor
raising his baton, the speaker asking for silence, the torturer tightening the noose - we refuse order as the distinction between noise
and music, chatter and knowledge, pain and truth.
109
A2: Pain Narratives Bad

Trauma is political we must attend to it
Carter 15 [Angela M., 6th year PhD Candidate in Feminist Studies @ the University of Minnesota.
Ronald E. McNair scholar, BA in English and Womens Studies, MA in Feminist Studies. Teaching with
Trauma: Disability Pedagogy, Feminism, and the Trigger Warnings Debate The Society for Disability
Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol 35, No 2, 2015. http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4652/3935
JChou]
Furthermore, trauma must also be understood as unequivocally political. As with all disabilities, living with trauma
means negotiating life in a world established by and for bodyminds that do not experience the affect of
trauma. The sociopolitical inequalities surrounding race, class, gender, and citizenship undoubtedly shape the unequal
access to healthcare and other resources needed to live with and/or through trauma. In fact, the ability to be
recognized as a person living with trauma is in many ways a political privilege.13 Furthermore, while traumatic experiences can certainly be
accidental, the vast majority of potentially traumatizing
experiences are rooted in systems of power and
oppression. The forces of racism/white supremacy, colonization, and global capitalism continuously instigate enumerable violences
worldwide. As legal scholar Dean Spade argues, it is often the administrative systems themselves that traumatize and disable us the most by
"distributing life chances and promoting certain ways of life at the expense of others, all while operating under legal regimes that declare
universal equality" (103). Indeed, it is not by accident that the organizing that originated trigger warnings arose alongside a feminism
proclaiming, "the personal is political" (Smith). By depathologizing trauma, and approaching it through Kafer's political/relational model,
trauma stands along with other disabilities "as a potential site for a collective reimagining" (9). In this debate on trigger warnings in the
classroom, situating
trauma within this framework of disability allows educators and students to collectively
reimagine what education can look like.
110
A2: Academic Commodification

Policy education and university practices at large are based on outdated and useless
knowledge productiononly our alternative can open up possibilities for new forms
of education and dismantle violent standards debate and academia reproduce.
Halberstam 2011 [Jack, Professor of English and Director of Center for Feminist Research at USC.
The Queer Art of Failure, Pg. 2-5]//MM
This is not a bad time to experiment with disciplinary transformation on behalf of the project of
generating new forms of knowing, since the fields that were assembled over one hundred years ago to
respond to new market economies and the demand for narrow expertise, as Foucault described them, are now
losing relevance and failing to respond either to real- world knowledge projects or student interests. As
the big disciplines begin to crumble like banks that have invested in bad securities we might ask more broadly, Do we really want to shore up
the ragged boundaries of our shared interests and intellectual commitments, or might
we rather take this opportunity to
rethink the project of learning and thinking altogether? Just as the standardized tests that the U.S. favors as a
guide to intellectual advancement in high schools tend to identify people who are good at standardized exams (as
opposed to, say, intellectual visionaries), so in universities grades, exams, and knowledge of canons
identify scholars with an aptitude for maintaining and conforming to the dictates of the discipline. This
book, a stroll out of the confines of conventional knowledge and into the unregulated territories of failure, loss, and unbecoming, must make a
long detour around disciplines and ordinary ways of thinking. Let me explain how universities (and by implication high schools) squash rather
than promote quirky and original thought. Disciplinarity, as defined by Foucault (1995), is a technique of modern power: it depends
upon and deploys normalization, routines, convention, tradition, and regularity, and it produces experts
and administrative forms of governance. The university structure that houses the disciplines and jealously guards their
boundaries now stands at a crossroads, not of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, past and future, national and transnational; the
crossroads at which the rapidly disintegrating bandwagon of disciplines, subfields, and interdisciplines
has arrived offer a choice between the university as corporation and investment opportunity and the
university as a new kind of public sphere with a different investment in knowledge, in ideas, and in
thought and politics. A radical take on disciplinarity and the university that presumes both the breakdown of the disciplines and the
closing of gaps between fields conventionally presumed to be separated can be found in a manifesto published by Fred Moten and Stefano
Harney in 2004 in Social Text titled The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses. Their essay is a searing critique directed at the
intellectual and the critical intellectual, the professional scholar and the critical academic professionals. For Moten and Harney, the
critical academic is not the answer to encroaching professionalization but an extension of it, using the
very same tools and legitimating strategies to become an ally of professional education. Moten and
Harney prefer to pitch their tent with the subversive intellectuals, a maroon community of outcast
thinkers who refuse, resist, and renege on the demands of rigor, excellence, and productivity.
They tell us to steal from the university, to steal the enlightenment for others (112), and to act
against what Foucault called the Conquest, the unspoken war that founded, and with the force of law
refounds, society (113). And what does the undercommons of the university want to be? It wants to constitute an unprofessional
force of fugitive knowers, with a set of intellectual practices not bound by examination systems and test scores. The goal for this
unprofessionalization is not to abolish; in fact Moten and Harney set the fugitive intellectual against the elimination or abolition of this, the
founding or refounding of that: Not so much the abolition of prisons but the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have
slavery, that could have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but abolition as the founding of a new society
(113). Not the elimination of anything but the founding of a new society. And why not? Why
not think in terms of a different
kind of society than the one that first created and then abolished slavery? The social worlds we inhabit,
after all, as so many thinkers have reminded us, are not inevitable; they were not always bound to turn
out this way, and whats more, in the process of producing this reality, many other realities, fields of
knowledge, and ways of being have been discarded and, to cite Foucault again, disqualified. A few
visionary books, produced alongside disciplinary knowledge, show us the paths not taken. For example, in a book that itself began as a detour,
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1999), James C. Scott details the ways the modern
state has run roughshod over local, customary, and undisciplined forms of knowledge in order to rationalize and simplify social, agricultural,
and political practices that have profit as their primary motivation. In the process, says Scott, certain ways of seeing the world are established
as normal or natural, as obvious and necessary, even though they are often entirely counterintuitive and socially engineered. Seeing Like a
111
State began as a study of why the state has always seemed to be the enemy of people who move around, but quickly became a study of
the demand by the state for legibility through the imposition of methods of standardization and uniformity (1). While Dean Spade (2008) and
other queer scholars use Scotts book to think about how we came to insist upon the documentation of gender identity on all governmental
documentation, I want to use his monumental study to pick up some of the discarded local knowledges that are trampled underfoot in the
rush to bureaucratize and rationalize an economic order that privileges profit over all kinds of other motivations for being and doing. In
place of the Germanic ordered forest that Scott uses as a potent metaphor for the start of the modern
imposition of bureaucratic order upon populations, we might go with the thicket of subjugated
knowledge that sprouts like weeds among the disciplinary forms of knowledge, threatening always to overwhelm the cultivation
and pruning of the intellect with mad plant life. For Scott, to see like a state means to accept the order of things and to internalize them; it
means that we begin to deploy and think with the logic of the superiority of orderliness and that we
erase and indeed sacrifice other, more local practices of knowledge, practices moreover that may be
less efficient, may yield less marketable results, but may also, in the long term, be more sustaining. What
is at stake in arguing for the trees and against the forest? Scott identifies legibility as the favored technique of high
modernism for sorting, organizing, and profiting from land and people and for abstracting systems of
knowledge from local knowledge practices. He talks about the garden and gardeners as representative of a new spirit of
intervention and order favored within high modernism, and he points to the minimalism and simplicity of Le Corbusiers urban design as part
of a new commitment to symmetry and division and planning that complements authoritarian preferences for hierarchies and despises the
complex and messy forms of organic profusion and improvised creativity. Legibility, writes Scott, is a condition of manipulation (1999:
183). He favors instead, borrowing from European anarchist thought, more practical forms of knowledge that he calls metis and that
emphasize mutuality, collectivity, plasticity, diversity, and adaptability. Illegibility
may in fact be one way of escaping the
political manipulation to which all university fields and disciplines are subject.
112
Black Studies Specific
113
U: Anti-blackness
Antiblackness structures the world the legacy of slavery continues with the laws
consumption of the black body gains within the system only obscure this structural
violence
Tibbs Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University College of Law & Woods Assistant Professor of
Criminology, Sonoma State University 2008 Donald F. & Tryon P. Seattle Journal for Social Justice 7
Seattle J. Soc. Just. 235 lexis
The power that centuries of slavery bequeath us is most clearly understood in terms of
antiblackness. The Western world structures itself according to an Aristotelian, binary logic of
opposition. This binary system of meaning works contextually by always placing any two terms as far from each other as
possible; that which supposedly differentiates them constitutes the organizing principle for the schema. n109 In other words,
since the Western system works by placing positivity and establishing its self-identity on the
value of the white, it structures its primary opposition--negativity--on the level of the black. To
speak of racial opposition, then, is to reference an antiblack world in which two principles of value
predominate: (1) it is best to be white, and (2) it is worst to be black. Or, to put it in multiracial terms, it is
best to be white, but when that fails, at least avoid being black at all costs. From the vantage of whiteness, this
structure of logic is absolute. It is Manichaean (Gnostic) in the sense that it presents the world as comprised
of "objective" material good and evil: there are people who are materially good and others who
are evil, not by virtue of their behaviors, but because of who or what they are. n110 This divide
does not produce a hierarchy of humanity; instead, it produces a finite schism between the realm of humanity
(whites/Europe) and nonhumanity (blacks/Africa). In a Manichaean world, the black can only achieve equality
among blacks--a particular and degraded contextuality--while the white finds his or her reference in the
universality of humanity. The Martinican anticolonialist Frantz Fanon wrote about how the modern world was
formed first through sadistic aggression towards blacks (slavery and colonialism), a process which we have
elaborated on in the sections above. For Fanon, this sadistic aggression is structural because without it "white
would not be white." But the official sanction against this violence in bourgeois democratic
culture turns this structural violence into [*257] impermissible knowledge--the knowledge of the
necessity of black death for white life. As we reviewed in the section above, slave law is deeply grounded
in the fraudulent ethics of violence and denial. This dual terror--violence and denial--also reveals the
double movement that is at the heart of legal discourse in the antiblack world. In the post-
Emancipation era, this ethic is reworked in a way that sutures the status of blacks as
nonpersons to a rapidly changing legal landscape. We suggest that the appearance of an increasingly
liberal terrain with regards to racial violence and the law in fact obfuscates the ongoing reality of
antiblackness. Formal emancipation of blacks from the social status of chattel was not a reality that whites could comprehend.
Consequently, whites reserved a special place in their imaginations for the formerly enslaved subjects. n111 In this way, the
dream of slavery lives on at the level of desire and identification, the cultural dimension in which
we have said it was most operative all along. Our analysis of slavery emphasized the symbolic economy precisely
because it is this ethos that permits identifying slavery's afterlife in the symbols and signs that
organize our society in the twenty-first century. In other words, the culture of white supremacy, deeply
embedded in the seminal concepts of Western society, means that whiteness remains dependent upon the
accumulation of black bodies in new and more complex ways. Two cultural codes took over
from slavery: criminality and indebtedness. Both of these figures mark the zone of nonhumanity,
demonstrating how, in the post-Emancipation era, the law retrenched antiblackness by simultaneously
acknowledging and nullifying black people's new juridical status as free and equal citizens.
Schooling is antiblack
Dumas 17 [Michael J., assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education and African American
Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley, feb 11]
When the Detroit teachers union and several parents groups recently filed a lawsuit against the Detroit
Public Schools, their complaint highlighted dangerous and unhealthy learning conditions for children:
114
infestations of rats and roaches, freezing classrooms, exposed electrical wiring, and falling debris. That
floors been like that for at least four years, parent Christopher Robinson complained, referring to the
growing mold in one school. Our children deserve better, said Shoniqua Kemp, parent of two children in
Detroit schools, and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Theyre going to get better, one way or
another.Nearly 83% of Detroit residents are Black, and a slightly higher percentage of children in Detroit
schools are Black. Although the problems in Detroit schools are also related to a host of issues that
might be seen as having nothing to do with racestate disinvestment in public education, the bungled
and ill-advised state takeover of the district, the effects of a number of economic factorsit is important
to name that these horrors are being experienced disproportionately by Black children. And we must
understand that, largely, the broader public is just fine with that. In fact, our nation has been just fine with
not providing educational opportunities for Black people since the very beginning. During the years of
chattel slavery, it was illegal in many places to teach a Black person to read or write, and countless Black
people were killed, or had their fingers chopped off as punishment for learning anyway. When Black
people began to build schools, white people often burned them to the ground. And for the past 100
years, federal and state legislators, local officials, and predominantly white citizens groups have used
various strategies to ensure that Black children are deprived of equitable education funding, and do not
gain access to the more highly resourced public schools their children attend. Beyond the systemic,
intentional, and conniving efforts to deprive Black people of education, Black children, parents, and
teachers have long been subject to anti-Black violence and harassment in schools. Of course, we can all
recall the images from the 1950s-1970s of terrorizing white hordes in both Southern and Northern cities
threatening, cursing, and spitting on Black children as they attempted to enter segregated white schools.
But this kind of anti-Black sentiment takes more subtle forms now: research demonstrates that Black
students are more likely to be punished than other students for the same infractions, and punished more
harshly; Black students are less likely to be considered for gifted and talented programs; curricula used
to teach Black children are unlikely to adequately or appropriately reflect Black history and cultural
contributions. Even so, the overt forms of anti-Black violence in schools are with us still. Just last fall, a
white sheriffs deputy in a South Carolina high school threw a Black girl from her desk onto the floor and
dragged her across the room in front of her classmates, after she refused to put her cell phone away.
Taken togetherthe inequitable distribution of educational resources and the continued mistreatment of
Black children in schoolsserve as painful evidence that schooling is a site of Black suffering . It is not that
schooling is only a site of Black suffering. However, I argue that it is the suffering of Black childrenmuch like the rodents and
decay in Detroit schoolsthat we are least likely to acknowledge, and worse, the most likely to defend,
either as what Black children deserve, or more kindly, as an unfortunate, innocent consequence of racial
and class inequality in the US. Black suffering in schools is one manifestation of the anti-Blackness of
our society, in which Black people are viewed with disgust and disdain, as non-humans worthy of
violence and death. In schools, this anti-Blackness reveals itself first, in the deep-seated, but most often
unconscious belief that Black children are uneducablethat is, either biologically or culturally unable to
be educated. This might seem an outrageous claim, but it makes more sense when you consider that
research reveals that, in an anti-Black world, Black children are more likely to be associated with
primatesmonkeysthan are other groups of children, and thus Black children are viewed as more
violent, more uncontrollable, and least able to grasp complex ideas .Uneducable. A problem. A waste of time and unworthy of
resources. Only as Black children and young people, and Black families and communities begin to talk amongst themselves about their collective suffering in schools, and
come to understand it as connected to a long tradition of anti-Black violence, do they come to realize, as Shoniqua Kemp in Detroit, that something has to change, one way or
another. Lawsuits are one way, but history suggests we are going to need more than that. Students are also leading walkouts to protest various forms of Black suffering in
schools. And before too long, we may all need to lay our bodies in front of school buildings, at school board meetings, and in fancy ballrooms at professional meetings of
education researchers and policy makers. Just as Black Lives Matter protestors have closed bridges, and disrupted holiday shopping, we may need to shut shit down for
Black children in schools.In their 1970 song, O-o-h Child, the Five Stairsteps sing of a time when things are gonna get easier, when we get it together and we get it all
done. This future, they insist repeatedly, at the end of the song, is right now. Thus, Black futurity, our imagination of a time when the world is much brighter is about what
we do right now, in the midst of persistent Black suffering, to insist on our humanity, and to demand that others understand that we will do whatever it takes to be treated as
human beings. In his own take on O-o-h Child, Tupac Shakur reminds Black people: We aint meant to survive/cause its a setup/And even though youre fed up/Huh, ya got
to keep your head up. Indeed, Black suffering in schools is a setup, and we are not, and were never meant to survive. However, it is in our movement for Black lives that we
refuse this future and create another. Right now.
115
Links
116
L: Education
The Education system rests entirely in the hands of the enslavers and enforces a
dominant epistemology of black inferiority that undermines black students ability to
recognize their position as an oppressed group
Givens 16 (Jarvis Ray Givens, Culture, Curriculum, and Consciousness: Resurrecting the Educational
Praxis of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, 1875-1950)
In The Miseducation Woodson drew attention to a fact that often hides in plain site. He explained that education was a political
project undergirded by ideology. This assessment was informed by his experiences as a teacher and as a Black academic. While a
student at Harvard University, White professors blatantly challenged Woodson on Black contributions to American history.36 This juxtaposed
with the knowledge he had acquired as a young man who had read various texts by Black scholars in the 19th century on the history of the
race was revealing. It
helped Woodson to recognize the dominant societys investment in the distortion of
Black history and culture. White supremacy was reliant upon the sustained misrecognition of Black
humanity. Woodsons understanding of the political implications of education can be found in an early quote from The Miseducation
where he conceptualized racial violence as a product of the anti-Black ideology that informed school curricula. He wrote, To handicap a
student by teaching him that his Black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is
hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one's aspirations and dooms him to vagabondage and
crime. It is strange, then, that the friends of truth and the promoters of freedom have not risen up
against the present propaganda in the schools and crushed it. This crusade is much more important
than the anti- lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the
schoolroom.37 Woodson suggested that the ideology taught in schools was one grounded in anti-Black
sentiments that deteriorated the self-perception of Black students, justified racial violence, and
sustained their abject experience. Williams Watkins (2001) offers a conceptual understanding of schools and ideology that reflect
Woodsons thinking. He wrote, Socially and politically, those who hold power attempt to forge a society ideologically accepting of their
economic and cultural agenda, which is often inimical to the vast majority who remain propertyless. Public education becomes a useful
ideological tool in creating social consensus. 38 The relationship between schools and ideology, as illustrated in Woodsons quote and
supported by Watkins, becomes especially clear when one looks at the history of compulsory education in America, even beyond the Black
experience. Woodson was concerned with the miseducation of Black people, not that they were
uneducated. Put another way, his critique was less about access to education in general and more
about exposure to hegemonic curricula. Woodson indicted a system of education that functioned to
stabilize White supremacy, one that necessitated the miseducation of Black people and the
maintenance of their subjugation. While access to schooling was still a major issue for African American people during the 1930s,
his concern was the epistemological underpinnings of the education provided to those that made it
past those barriers and obtained higher educationthe talented tenth in particular.54 These men and women,
who were perceived to be the leaders of the race by virtue of their educational training, were
miseducated by Woodsons standards. American education presented a deficit-oriented perspective of
Black culture that was presented as a factual narrative. To accomplish this the thought of the inferiority of
the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.55 While
the U.S. formal education system inspired White students by telling them that their race was responsible for all notable progress of
human kind, Woodson assessed that it diminished the aspirations of Black students and failed to inspire or train
them on how to rise above their current state of oppression. He professed, The oppressorteaches the
Negro that he has no worth-while past, that his race has done nothing significant since the beginning of
time, and that there is no evidence that he will ever achieve anything great.56 As demonstrated in this quote,
Woodson grounded his critique of miseducation by exposing the racialized gaps in the official knowledge of schools, which in turn positioned
Black people as outside of history.57 These
curricula relied on a narrative of a global Black deficiency that was
consistent through time and space, even before their enslavement. Further contextualizing the stronghold that White
supremacy had on Black education, Woodson offered the following: Starting out after the Civil War, the opponents of freedom and social
justice decided to work out a program which would enslave the Negroes' mind inasmuch as the freedom of body had to be conceded. It was
well understood that if by the teaching of history the White man could be further assured of his
117
superiority and the Negro could be made to feel that he had always been a failure and that the
subjection of his will to some other race is necessary the freedman, then, would still be a slave.58
Referencing curriculum content directly, Woodson posited that it was constructed in propagandist fashion that represented a history of
triumph and honor for Whites while painting a Black past of backwardness and cultural deficiency. Beyond this narrative of Black failure and
lack of achievement, the implicit message that African American people were incapable of thinking for themselves justified the necessary
paternalism of White sympathizers. Put another way, miseducation sought
to ensure Black submission to White
control because, as history revealed, their past demonstrated the races inability to be self-determined
or contribute to the development of human society. Woodson argued that as long as the control of Black education was in
the hands of those that oppressed them it would continue to facilitate miseducation. He wrote, Negroes have no control over their education
and have little voice in their other affairs pertaining thereto. In a few cases Negroes have been chosen as members of public boards of
education, and some have been appointed members of private boards, but these Negroes are always such a small minority that they do not
figure in the final working out of the educational program. The education of the Negroes, then, the most important
thing in the uplift of the Negroes, is almost entirely in the hands of those who have enslaved them and
now segregate them. 59 In Woodsons view, liberation could not be achieved through an education constructed and controlled by the
very class of people that were privileged by Black oppression. He offered that only from within their group could a
liberatory education for Black people be achieved, unlike the one of miseducation that was imposed
upon them. To be clear, Woodson did not advocate that any form of Black controlled education would be liberatory. Based on his
assessment, many African American teachers were miseducated and sustained White supremacy themselves. Addressing this point, Woodson
wrote Taught from books of the same bias, trained by Caucasians of the same prejudices or by Negroes of enslaved minds, one generation of
Negro teachers after another have served for no higher purpose than to do what they are told to do. In other words, a
Negro teacher
instructing Negro children is in many respects a White teacher thus engaged, for the program in each
case is about the same60 Imitation and mimicking are terms consistently used throughout Woodsons text. Writing to this point, he
explained that the education given to Black students was an imitation of the dominant educational model that taught them to revere the
history and achievements of the White race and that White is what they should aim to be. When a Negro has finished his education in our
schools, then, he has been equipped to begin the life of an Americanized or Europeanized White man, but before he steps from the threshold
of his alma mater he is told by his teachers that he must go back to his own people from whom he has been estranged by a vision of ideals
which in his disillusionment he will realize that he cannot attain.61 In this way, Black students
are taught to negate their
own cultural and racialized identitiesdespite the fact that they would never be interpreted as
White by the larger society. Woodsons attentiveness to the way in which miseducation distorts the realities of Black subjects
forestalls the work of Frantz Fanon (1952) in Black Skin, White Masks.62 Through psychoanalyses and historical notations, Fanon similarly
explores how coloniazation forces the oppressed to adopt the culture of their oppressors and strive to imitate them; like Woodson, Fanon also
demonstrates how this is particularly wide spread amongst educated Blacks. Woodson argued that, The education of any people should begin
with the people themselves, but Negroes thus trained have been dreaming about the ancients of Europe and about those who have tried to
imitate them.63 In this way,
miseducation cripples Black students by sedating them through a Eurocentric
epistemology that facilitates aspirations to be White, and fails to help them recognize their true
subjectivity as an oppressed group whos history has been distorted. As a result of being educated by a system
decontextualized of Black culture and experiences, Woodson taught that African American students became estranged from the masses of
their race. Woodson
asserts that White institutions are not prepared to equip Black people with the
knowledge and skills necessary to develop their race because they have not studied the Black condition.
118
L: USFG
Neither the law nor the state can undermine anti-blackness
Dillon 13 [Stephen, assistant professor of Queer Studies @ Hampshire College, Fugitive Life: Race,
Gender, and the Rise of the Neoliberal-Carceral State,
https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/153053/Dillon_umn_0130E_13833.pdf?se]
Within a theory of power as possession, slaverys relationship to the present is more than the haunting
of a ghost. Slavery, for Boggs, is not lurking behind contemporary formations of power. Instead, the complex
network of biopolitical regulation and management outlined by Boggs is given life by an anti-blackness
as old as liberal freedom. Contemporary biopolitics are possessed by discourses and technologies
produced under slavery that were carried into the future (our present) by race, gender, sexuality, and
anti-blackness. As Omiseeke Tinsley writes, The brown-skinned, fluidbodied experiences now called blackness and queerness surfaced in
intercontinental, maritime contacts hundreds of years ago: in the seventeenth century, in the Atlantic Ocean.40 Extending Ruth Wilson Gilmores definition of
racism as state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploration of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death, we
can understand
race and death as a possessive spirit that works as one, born out of the genocide of conquest and
slavery.41 Being placed at the bottom of the ladder by an expansive network of racialized management
and control is Boggss way of describing the uneven distribution of value and disposability produced by
slaverys ongoing role in the present. Although death is sometimes a natural biological phenomenon, it is more often
manufactured and distributed by regimes of power far removed from ones last breath or final
heartbeat. Race is one such technology; it is a mechanism for distributing life and death, and for black
people, race and white supremacy are motivated by a past of subjection, subjugation, torture, terror,
and disposability that has not ended. Race possesses life in both the biological and biopolitical sense, ending or extending biological life for
individuals and populations. While race sometimes haunts, it more often limits life chances by inhabiting and controlling individuals, institutions, and populations.
In short, we are possessed by race, and death and life are the outcome. The relationship between race and
possession is also evident in the writing of prisoners and activists in the 1970s who connected the
contemporary prison to chattel slavery. Within this body of work, the contemporary prison is animated by logics, technologies, and
discourses constructed under nineteenth-century U.S. slavery. For countless prisoners and activists, race (and anti-blackness)
were instruments that transcended space and time so that the past could invade and contort the
present in its image. For instance, in his best-selling collection of prison writing Soledad Brother published in 1970, George Jackson described the ways
that the prisons connection to slavery reverses, compresses, and undoes the progress of time: My recall is
nearly perfect, time has faded nothing. I recall the very first kidnap. Ive lived through the passage, died on the passage, lain in the unmarked shallow graves of the
millions who fertilized the Amerikan soil with their corpses; cotton and corn growing out of my chest, unto the third and fourth generation, the tenth, the
hundredth. Here, Jackson describes the relationship between memory, time, and possession. His captive
body is metaphorically infested with the cotton and corn grown under the prison of the plantation.
Time did not wash away the horrors of slavery, but rather, modified and intensified them. Jackson
both lives the past and continues to live its afterlife. He feels possessed by the forms of death produced
under slavery, and throughout his writing connects this to his living death in prison. This possession is
not temporally constrained; neither the law nor the state can exorcise black bodies of this death
sentence. Instead, Jackson argued that the U.S. must be destroyed and that anything less would be meaningless to the great majority of the slaves.44
Although an extensive review of Jacksons discussion of slavery is beyond the scope of this project, his ideas and declaration that I am a
slave to, and of, property were not unique among the black liberation movement.4
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L: Reform
Liberal attempts at reform are based under immunity from structural, atemporal
forms of violence. This conception of history only modifies and amplifies the violence
of the past unto the future.
Dillon 13(Stephen Dillon, Its here, its that time: Race, queer futurity, and the temporality of
violence in Born in Flames) In one of the first lines of the film, a state newscaster covering the celebration of the revolutions tenth
anniversary says that the news program will look at the progress of the last ten years, and will look forward to the future. 4 Progress is
central to the discourses produced by the revolutionary state and is the liberal conception of time that
the Womens Army attempts to undo. Progress is named as a time that is cyclical and forcefully
forgetful (Sderbck 2012, 303). Indeed, progress, patience, and reform are the temporalities used by the state
to justify and erase the violence that continues under the names of justice, equality, and democracy.
The state describes the future as a space of safety and security in order to maintain the violence of the
present, and to temper the rage of those who refuse to wait for the futures warm embrace to arrive.
According to the state media, the Womens Army is not interested in the progress of all of us because their actions and demands contradict
the teleology of state development and reform.5 The state declares change will come, to be patient, to trust in the
progress of time. Critically, this narrative is not just produced by the state, but also by the white
feminist editors of the Socialist Youth Review. When asked about the actions of the Womens Army, and more specifically
about the continuation of sexual violence in the revolution, they respond...Here, white feminism aligns itself with the state
through its adherence to liberal Western notions of time and history. This is a notion of history where
the passage of time washes away the violence of then and now so that the future is free from the
horrors of the past. In this way, the past is constructed as a space of radical alterity, an aberration to
the progress of the future. Sexual violence will be left behind by the progress of the revolution. Time
will temper terror. Yet, the very ability of the editors to believe in the progress of time is tied to the
immunity of whiteness from structural forms of racial violence, regulation, and social death. For instance,
when Adelaide Norris, the black lesbian leader of the Womens Army, goes to the editors of the Socialist Youth Review to ask for their support,
their conversation highlights the divergent temporalities of black feminism and white feminism. When Norris tells the editors, Youre
oppressed too and its pathetic that you cant even see it! they respond, There are problems, we know. But things are so much better than
they were before. Things are not going to happen overnight. Its important that the party remains strong so progress can be made. 7 Norriss
response sutures gender and race to a different theorization of timeFor
the editors, the future of the revolution will be
free from state and non-state forms of racialized and gendered violence because the reforms sutured
to times progression will undo the horrors of the present. But for Norris, gendered racism built into the
banality of everyday life undoes the imagined progress of time, so that times passage is merely the
modification and intensification of older modes of subjection and subjugation. For those bearing the
brunt of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, the past, present, and future are not distinct
temporal spaces. In other words, Born in Flames documents the amplification, modification, and
protraction of the past in the present, where the past is not an isolated aberration of what is here, but,
rather, is an anticipation of the present and future. The past is an image of the future because the
future will be a repetition of the past. In this way, the film critiques normative notions of time and a
liberal conception of history
120
L: Queer Theory (SP2)

Queer theorization not situated within the internal geography of the domestic sphere
pathologizes Black mothering and invests in the reproduction of heteropatriarchal
capitalism
Gumbs 10 [Alexis P; Queer Mother and Afrofuturist Trouble-Maker; We Can Learn to Mother
Ourselves The Queer Survival of Black Feminism 1968-1996]
Focusing on The Anti-Social Family, a key text in the analysis of the political function of
the family form on/in contradiction with the contemporary left we will get a sense of the
teleological trajectory within queer theory that would allow us to arrive, through the
space made by Fear of a Queer Planet to a polemic like Edelmans No Future and at the
common sense understanding within the dominant (read white- centered) mode within queer
theory that any talk of mothering, or intergenerationality must automatically be a non-queer act of consent to the normative
narrative of reproductive futurity.52 Michle Barrett and Mary McIntoshs The Anti-social Family (1982)
critiques the familialism of both the right wing and the left, arguing that because feminist socialists,
and socialists at large have not come to a consensus about the function of the family, especially in regards to the unpaid labor of
women, the left in both the United States and Britain have succumbed to trying to fit their demands into a family values rhetorical
frame. (14)53 Early in the preface, the authors admit that their argument is about the implications of
the function of the family for a white audience. While they suggest that the analysis they develop could
probably be extrapolated to the diverse ethnic populations in Britain, they shy away from actually applying their analysis to the
experiences of ethnic minorities because as white feminists it is not their place to do so. Interestingly, the other absence that the
authors apologize for is the absence of any discussion of sexual preference. Their critique is of the function of
the heterosexual white family in relation to heterosexual white citizens. Queer theory will
later take up their wholesale critique of the function of the family to develop a critical
stance that also decenters the specifics of gay or lesbian identity, but will also be
influenced by the tentative grounding of this theory in a whiteness that self-effacingly
claims possible universality without staking a claim, inheriting (and I use that word intentionally) a
not so queer relationship to racial difference. While the authors try to avoid race and the possibility of their
own racism in their analysis, it is clear that the political value of the unit of the family is already about race. Opening the first chapter
by citing the sensational proclamations of the European Parliament, which decries that the falling birthrate, which is now
approaching or even falling below the rate required for the (European) population to renew itself cannot be separated from the fact
that this cry to revive the family and to reproduce, comes at a moment during which the racialized people of the British colonial
world have been steadily immigrating to the UK, and a time during which the former colonies continue to have high birthrates. The
call for the revival of the family is already a racialized call, fueled by anxiety about the fate of the white British population in addition
to the concerns about gender roles that the authors center. The authors go on to distinguish their argument
about the reproductive function of the family from aberrations where populations are
reproduced by recruitment, most notably in the case of the transatlantic slave trade.54
The reproduction of a family is a privilege, the authors points out, and not all groups have equal access to it. But nonetheless,
despite these exceptions, their argument continues, the reproduction of the family serves to reproduce class divisions and the
society that requires them. There is no further examination of the potentially different function of reproduction in these liminal
groups. The feminism of this argument hinges on the tyranny of motherhood. Motherhood, is the hyper-exploited labor of women,
compelled not only by the assumed naturality of the gendered division of labor, but also because of a anti-social political form,
exemplified by Thatcherism and Reaganism , within which the rhetoric of individualism and the emphasis of family networks
justifies the state defunding of social services, and undercuts any thought that food, housing, education and other basic needs
might be community concerns, and not merely individual choices. The labor that the state refuses and projects onto the family
necessarily falls onto women because of this gendered division of labor.55 This leads the authors to argue for the funding of social
services, to protest the decrease of welfare, positions that that Black feminists, especially self-identified Black socialist feminists
would agree with across the board. However, the concept of the tyranny of motherhood, when
motherhood is deracialized, does not address the complexity of the labor or potential of
mothering for racialized mothers. As Hortense Spillers clarifies in her essay Mamas Baby Papas Maybe,
motherhood (the tyrannical force imposed on white mothers) and mothering are not the same thing.
Motherhood denotes a certain privileged relationship of authority (though limited) through
which a mother relates to her own child. In the situation of American Slavery however, Spillers points out that
motherhood is not imposed on enslaved women. Instead mothering, the labor of nurturing they are compelled to perform is directed
towards children they cannot own, both in the cases of their biological offspring, or kin they would choose by affinity or in the case
of the masters children who they mother as well.56 In the situation of slavery, the situation which is exceptional to the argument
of the Anti-Social family, the labor of the mother does not only function within a nuclear
normative family, it also functions to reproduce slave status, while severing biological
and social bonds. This different function of the labor of mothering through which
121
slavery was reproduced and through which racial difference and the exploited labor of
racialized mothers both in the homes, kitchens, hotel laundry rooms of the privileged
and in the social narrative that reproduces race, leads to a different analytical function
for the term mother. During the early 1980s, at the same time that Barrett and McIntosh wrote and published The Anti-
Social Family, Black feminist theorists including June Jordan and Audre Lorde drew on the split between motherhood as a subject
position and the flexible labor of mothering to arrive at queer definitions of mothering that were not linked to the reproduction of a
heteropatriarchal family unit. Lorde as a lesbian mother raising her children in an interracial lesbian partnership, and Jordan as a
divorced bisexual Black mother to a biracial child challenged the link between the work of mothering and the reproduction of
patriarchal family, the idea of race purity or the social values of a capitatlist society. In fact Lordes queer proposition
that We can learn to mother ourselves, wrenches the labor of mothering away from the
reproductive narrative within which Barrett and McIntosh use it to the extent that
mothering itself, the labor of mothering directed differently can be the most dangerous
disruptive force the reproductive narrative has ever seen.57 A queer of color critique that
centers the work of these feminists, who actually center the work of mothering and the internal
geography of the domestic sphere (the living room, the kitchen table) provides us with a
form of mothering that is a deviant energy for counternarrative and poetic interruptions
that not only threaten the reproduction of the narrative of heteropatriarchal capitalism,
but also offer something else in its place.
122
L: Biopolitical discourse (SP3)

Their biopolitical discourse biopolitical analysis of the 1AC is Eurocentric and
disavows the racialized positionalities that grant coherence to their analysis black
studies transforms the human into a heuristic model that challenges biopoltiics better
than Eurocentric philosophy
Weheliye 2016 [Alexander, professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University where
he teaches black literature and culture, critical theory, social technologies, and popular culture. He is
the author of multiple books, Critical Ethnic Studies: Racializing Biopolitics and Bare Life,(p478-480)(Haq
7/3/2017)
Bare life and biopolitics discourse in particular is plagued by a strong anti-identity politics strain in the
Anglo-American academy in its positioning of bare life and biopolitics as uncontaminated by and prior
to reductive or essentialist political identities such as race and gender. Supposing that analyses of race and
racism are inherently essentialist whereas those concerning bare life and biopolitics are not because
they do not suitably resemble real-world identities ----allows bare life and biopolitics to appear
unelected by identarian locality and thus as proper objects of knowledge. is occurs because the ideas of white
European theorists are not regarded as affectable by a critical consciousness that would to open them up toward historical reality, toward
society, toward human needs and interests, to point up those concrete instances drawn from everyday reality that lie outside or just be-yond
the interpretive area.3 Traveling theories, particularly those supposedly transparent and universal soldiers in Mans philosophical
army, should be ex-posed to and reconstructed not only according to the factors Edward Said mentions but also in
concordance with a critical consciousness that probes the conceptual constraints of these theories,
especially as it pertains to the analytics of race, and exhumes their historico-geographical aectability.4 Since bare life
and biopolitics discourse largely occludes race as a critical category of analysis (and not race as such), as do many
other current articulations of critical theory, it cannot provide the methodological instruments for diagnosing the
tight bonds between humanity and racializing assemblages in the modern era. the volatile rapport between
race and the human is defined above all by two constellations: first, there exists no portion of the modern human that is not subject to
racialization, which determines the hierarchical ordering of the Homo sapiens species into humans, not-quite-humans, and nonhumans;
second, as a result humanity has held a very different status for the traditions of the racially oppressed. Man will be abolished like a face
drawn in sand at the edge of the sea only if we disarticulate the modern human (Man) from its twin: racializing assemblages.5 My principal
question, phrased plainly, is this: What different modalities of the human come to light if we do not take the
liberal humanist figure of Man as the master subject but focus on how humanity has been imagined and
lived by those subjects excluded from this domain? Some scholars associated with black and ethnic
studies have begun to undertake the project of thinking humanity from perspectives beyond the liberal
humanist subject, Man. 6 there humanity emerges as an object of knowledge, which orders the means of conceptualizing how the
human materializes in the worlds of those subjects habitually not thought to define or belong to this field. the greatest contribution
to critical thinking by black studies and critical ethnic studies more generally is the transformation of
the human into a heuristic model and not an ontological fait accompli, which seems particularly
important in our current historical moment. Through the human as a secular entity of scientific and humanistic inquiry has
functioned as a central topos of modernity since the Renaissance, questions of humanity have gained importance in the academy and beyond
in the wake of recent technological developments, especially the advent of biotechnology and the proliferation of informational media. These
discussions, which in critical discourses in the humanities and social sciences have relied heavily on the concepts of the cyborg and the
posthuman, largely do not take into account race as a constitutive category in thinking about the parameters of humanity. Reading thinkers
such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, or Louis Althusser today, one cannot help but notice the manifestolike character of their writings,
historicizing the Western conception of Man (Foucault) providing a more scientific, nonhumanist version of Marxism (Althusser), or attempting
to think at the limits of humanism while being aware that this just reinscribes the centrality of Man (Derrida). Going back further, the axial
project of linguistic, anthropological, and literary structuralism that emerged in the aftermath of World War II was to displace a holistic notion
of the human through various structural features that constitute, frame, and interpellate Man. We can also locate these tendencies in the
German philosophical traditions that inspired a number of poststructuralist projects, or, for that matter, in the works of Sigmund Freud, Karl
Marx, and Ferdinand de Saussure. These thinkers, however, are hardly regarded as posthumanist philosophers; instead they are classified as
antihumanist.
123
L: View from Nowhere

The AFF is a veiw from nowhere that cannot theorize the black body or hope to
solve for the harms of white supremacy and instead leads to the phenomenological
return of the black body.
Yancy 05 [Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19.4 (2005) 215-241]
I write out of a personal existential context. This context is a profound source of knowledge
connected to my "raced" body. Hence, I write from a place of lived embodied experience, a site of
exposure. In philosophy, the only thing that we are taught to "expose" is a weak argument, a fallacy,
or someone's "inferior" reasoning power. The embodied self is bracketed and deemed irrelevant to
theory, superfluous and cumbersome in one's search for truth. It is best, or so we are told, to reason from nowhere.
Hence, the white philosopher/author presumes to speak for all of "us" without the slightest mention
of his or her "raced" identity. Self-consciously writing as a white male philosopher, Crispin Sartwell observes: Left to my own
devices, I disappear as an author. That is the "whiteness" of my authorship. This whiteness of
authorship is, for us, a form of authority; to speak (apparently) from nowhere, for everyone, is
empowering, though one wields power here only by becoming lost to oneself. But such an authorship and
authority is also pleasurable: it yields the pleasure of self-forgetting or [End Page 215] apparent transcendence of the mundane and the
particular, and the pleasure of power expressed in the "comprehension" of a range of materials. (1998, 6) To theorize the Black
body one must "turn to the [Black] body as the radix for interpreting racial experience" (Johnson [1993,
600]).1 It is important to note that this particular strategy also functions as a lens through which to theorize and critique whiteness; for the
Black body's "racial" experience is fundamentally linked to the oppressive modalities of the "raced"
white body. However, there is no denying that my own "racial" experiences or the social performances of whiteness can become objects
of critical reflection. In this paper, my objective is to describe and theorize situations where the Black body's
subjectivity, its lived reality, is reduced to instantiations of the white imaginary, resulting in what I
refer to as "the phenomenological return of the Black body."2 These instantiations are embedded within and evolve
out of the complex social and historical interstices of whites' efforts at self-construction through complex acts of erasure vis--vis Black people.
These acts of self-construction, however, are myths/ideological constructions predicated upon maintaining white power. As James Snead has
noted, "Mythification is the replacement of history with a surrogate ideology of [white] elevation or [Black] demotion along a scale of human
value" (Snead 1994, 4).
124
125
Impacts
126
I: Self-Hatred/Phenomenological Return
The process of phenomenological return in which the black body is returned to itself
through the white gaze leads to a process of self-hatred taking away black peoples
ability to construct their own image
In the face of my white teacher's racism, I could have decided to lose myself in laughter, but, like Frantz Fanon, I was aware "that there were
legends, stories, histories, and above all historicity" (1967, 112). My dark embodied existence, my lived historical being,
becomes a chain of signifiers: inferior, Nigger, evil, dirty, sullen, immoral, lascivious. As Fanon writes, "In the unconscious,
black equals ugliness, sin, darkness, immorality" (192). When phenomenologically [End Page 221] returned to myself,
I appear no longer to possess my body, but a "surrogate" body whose meaning does not exist anterior to the
performance of white spectatorship. Under the white gaze, "the Black has no ontological resistance in the eyes
of the white man" (110). Again, this involves the asymmetry of representational power. The Black body appears to have no
resistance vis--vis the somatic regulatory epistemic regime of whiteness. The Black body becomes ontologically
pliable, just a thing to be scripted in the inverse image of whiteness. Cutting away at the Black body, the Black person becomes
resigned to no longer aspire to his/her own emergence or upheaval (116). Blacks undergo processes of ontological stagnation and
epistemological violence while standing before the one "true" gaze. In very powerful discourse describing how he was "unmercifully imprisoned,"
how the white gaze forced upon him an unfamiliar weight, Fanon asks, "What else could it be for me but an amputation, an excision, a
hemorrhage that spattered my whole body with black blood?" (112). The burden of the white gaze disrupts my first-person
knowledge, causing "difficulties in the development of [my] bodily schema" (110). The white gaze constructs the Black body into
"an object in the midst of other objects" (109). The nonthreatening "I" of my normal, everyday body schema
becomes the threatening "him" of the Negro kind/type. Under pressure, the corporeal schema collapses. It gives way to a racial
epidermal schema.6 "Below the corporeal schema," writes Fanon, "I had sketched a historico-racial schema. The elements that I used had been
provided for me not by 'residual sensations and perceptions of a primarily tactile, vestibular, kinesthetic, and visual character,' but by the other,
the white man [woman]" (111). In other words, Fanon began to "see" himself through the lens of a historico-racial schema. Note that there was
nothing intrinsic to his physiology that forced his corporeal schema to collapse; it was the "Black body" as always already named and
made sense of within the context of a larger semiotics of privileged white bodies that provided him with the tools for self-hatred.
His "darkness," a naturally occurring phenomenon,7 became historicized, residing within the purview of the white gaze , a
phenomenal space created and sustained by socioepistemic and semiotic communal constitutionality. On this score, the Black body is placed
within the space of constitutionality vis--vis the racist white same, the One. Against the backdrop of the sketched historico-racial (racist)
scheme, Fanon's "darkness" returns to him, signifying a new genus, a new category of man: A Negro! (116). He inhabits a space of anonymity
(he is every Negro), and yet he feels a strange personal responsibility for his body. He writes: I was responsible at the same time for my body,
for my race, for my ancestors. I subjected myself to an objective examination, I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics; and I was
battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetishism, racial defects, slave-ships, and above all else, above all: "sho' good
eaten'."
127
128
I: Self Actualization
The dominant white imaginary constructs itself in opposition to blackness defining
what is black as what is not white. This denies the black body a free space in which
self actualization is possible
This was indeed a time when I felt ontologically locked into my body. My body was indelibly marked with this stain
of darkness. After all, he was the white mind, the mathematical mind, calculating my future by factoring in my
Blackness. He did not "see" me, though. Like Ellison's invisible man, I occupied that paradoxical status of "visible invisibility." Within this
dyadic space, my Black body phenomenologically returned to me as inferior. To describe the phenomenological return of the Black body is to
disclose how it is returned as an appearance to consciousness, my consciousness. The (negatively) "raced" manner in which my body
underwent a phenomenological return, however, presupposes a thick social reality that has always already been structured by the ideology
and history of whiteness. More specifically, when my body is returned to me, the white body has already been constituted over centuries as
the norm, both in European and Anglo-American culture, and at several discursive levels from science to philosophy to religion. In the case of
my math teacher, his whiteness was invisible to him as my Blackness was hyper-visible to both of us. Of course, his
invisibility to his own normative here is a function of my hyper-visibility. It is important to keep in mind that white
Americans, more generally, define themselves around the "gravitational pull," as it were, of the Black.5 The not of white America is
the Black of white America. This not is essential, as is the invisibility of the negative relation through which whites are
constituted. All of embodied beings have their own "here." My white math teacher's racist social performances (for example, his "advice" to
me), within the context of a [End Page 219] white racist historical imaginary and asymmetric power relations, suspends and effectively
disqualifies my embodied here. What was the message communicated? Expressing my desire to be, to take advantage of the
opportunities for which Black bodies had died in order to secure, my ambition "was flung back in my face like a
slap" (Fanon 1967, 114). Fanon writes: The white world, the only honorable one, barred me from all participation. A man
was expected to behave like a man. I was expected to behave like a black manor at least like a nigger. I shouted a
greeting to the world and the world slashed away my joy. I was told to stay within bounds, to go back where I
belonged. (11415).
129
Alternatives
130
A: Black Studies
Black studies should be used to develop nuanced analyses of forms of violence and
modes of resistance
Weheliye 14 [Alexander, Prof. Introduction: black studies and black life, The Black Scholar, June 22
2014, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Introduction%3a+black+studies+and+black+life.-a0381947360]
Overall, black studies should strive to continuously work on transforming ideas, interactions, strategies,
archives, and dreams to realize just how comprehensively coloniality of Man suffuses the disciplinary
and conceptual formations of knowledge we labor under, and how far we have to journey in
decolonizing these structures. However, creating these repositories of knowledge should not entailas
it has so oftento reinvent the proverbial wheel in each generation to ensure the continued
institutional and conceptual life of the black studies project, but rather occasion the critical re-visiting
and elaboration of the ideas generated and institutional structures fostered by previous intellectuals
without circumscribing what that may mean. Moving forward, black studies should interrogate and
offer critical elaborations of the deep connections between different forms of oppression and
obliteration without anchoring these links in either complete sameness or difference. We need to
devise truly global ways for conceptualizing how different forms of violence affect specific communities
and their modes of resistance against them, all the while not losing sight of the deep historical and
conceptual relays between racial slavery, Native American genocide, Asian indentured servitude,
structures of gendered and sexual violence, and various forms of colonialism, just to name a few.
Rather than flattening differences or presuming that these are so specific as to be radically
incommensurate, high-lighting their constitutive relationality from the vantage point of black studies
will facilitate imagining different ways of inhabiting this worldand perhaps the next onesin a more
just manner.
131
A: Black feminism
Black feminist theorizing breaks down the necropolitical functions of capitalism
For Shakur, the

regulations of a burgeoning neoliberal-carceral state possessed life in ways that rendered
the free world an extension of the prison. An assemblage of race, gender, capital, policing, and penal technologies produced a
symbiosis between the deindustrialized landscape of the late 20th century urban United States and the gendered racisms of an emerging
prison-industrial complex. Diffuse structural networks of racism and sexism mimicked the steel bars of a cage. This is the complicity
between freedom and captivity, the entanglements between the living and the living dead, and the
hemorrhaging of a buried past into the imagined progress of the present. For Shakur, prison looked like
and felt like nineteenth century chattel slavery: We sit in the bull pen. We are all black. All restless. And we
are all freezing.1 In the essay, affect continually forces the past to open directly onto the present.2 The
sensations and feelings of frozen skin speaks in a way that words cannot. In prison, shivering black flesh
weighted with chains looked like slavery to Shakur. As a fugitive who now has political asylum in Cuba,
she understands herself as a twenty-first century runaway slave, a maroon woman.3 Although Shakurs
essay does not name neoliberalism explicitly, we can read it as a black feminist theorization of neoliberalism at the
very moment of its emergence. Indeed, it is a narration of the drastic racialized and gendered
restructurings of social and economic life in the 1970s United States from the perspective of someone
detained for resisting those changes. Written by a captured member of the underground black liberation movement, the text
names the discourses and (state) violence neoliberalism requires yet erases. Neoliberalism is most
certainly an economic doctrine that prioritizes the mobility and expansion of capital at all costs, but its
mechanisms exceed the liberation of the market from the repression of the state. As Shakur indicates, one of
the conditions of possibility for the emergence of the neoliberal state is the kinship shared between the free
world and the prisonan affinity structured and produced by an antiblackness inaugurated under
chattel-slavery. More over, as Shakur argues throughout the essay, the technologies of immobilization utilized by the
neoliberal state specifically target black women, a process connected to the emergence of the black
feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By reading black feminist texts from the 1970s as implicit theories of
neoliberalism, we can come to understand the formation and implementation of neoliberalism in a new light. Shakur not only
connects an emergent neoliberalism to a rapidly expanding prison regime, she also links the
contemporary prison to chattel slaveryan institutional, affective, and discursive connection apprehended by Angela Daviss
phrase, From the prison of slavery to the slavery of prison.28 The connections made by Shakur between the prison and
neoliberalism, and between slavery and the prison, have been thoroughly explored by many scholars.29 Indeed, during the past two decades, a growing
body of scholarship has affirmed and extended Shakurs analysis of blackness, slavery, and the prison by
exploring what Saidiya Hartman calls the afterlife of slavery.30 By centering racial terror in a
genealogy of the prison, scholars have come to understand the barracoons, coffles, slave holds, and
plantations of the Middle Passage as spatial, discursive, ontological, and economic analogues of
modern punishment that have haunted their way into the present.4 If the carceral becomes a functional surrogate for
slaverys production of social and living death, then Shakurs text also hints at another connection that has garnered less attentionslaverys haunting possession
of neoliberalism. While the prisons connection to slavery and the market has been well explored, the
1
Ibid, 79.
2
See Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham: Duke University Press,
2002).
3
Christian Parenti, "Assata Shakur Speaks from Exile: Post-Modern Maroon in the Ultimate Palenque," interview
from October 24, 2000, http://www.assatashakur.org/maroon.htm (accessed October 2nd, 2010).
4
Dennis Childs, "'You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet': Beloved, the American Chain Gang, and the Middle Passage
Remix," American Quarterly Vol. 61:2 (June, 2009): 273-275.
132
contemporary markets relationship to chattel slavery has largely been overlooked. If slaverys antiblack
technologies inhabit and structure the prison, how do they live on in the operations of the market? What is the relationship between an anti-blackness
inaugurated under the Atlantic slave trade and the methods of population management used under neoliberalism? How does the absence, death, and loss left
behind by slavery connect to the formation of the contemporary neoliberal-carceral state? What
is the connection between the
necropolitics of chattel-slavery and the biopolitics of neoliberalism? To answer these questions, I read
two texts written by captive black women in the 1970s United States: Assata Shakurs "Women in
Prison: How We Are and Angela Davis's "Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of
Slaves." Both texts were composed at the very moment of the neoliberal-carceral states emergence
and index the ways that black feminism developed under and critiqued this formation. Throughout the
chapter, I examine how Shakur and Davis theorize the relationship between the carceral, the market,
the population, and the body. While Daviss essay explores black womens experiences of terror and
resistance under chattel slavery in order to contest the discourse of the black matriarch, Shakurs essay
describes black womens experiences of gender, sexuality, race, violence, and incarceration in the early
1970s. I also include a discussion of Sherley Anne Williamss 1986 novel Dessa Rose. Although the novel was
written in the mid-1980s, in the author's note, Williams cites Davis's essayand the rise of the prison in the 1970sas providing the
inspiration for the novel. Williams uses fiction to recover the histories of enslaved black women Davis could not discover in the written record.
Williams turns Davis's brief description of a uprising on a slave coffle led by a pregnant black woman into a novel that theorizes the racialized,
gendered, affective, and economic politics of chattel slavery and its regimes of incarceration, torture, and terror. All
three texts
emerge from the late twentieth-century prison (and an emergent neoliberal state) in order to theorize
chattel slavery as a history of our social, political, and economic present. Yet the texts do not undo
normative conceptions of time by deploying the conventions of fact; rather, they use fiction, memory,
and imagination to connect the forgotten, the lost, and the dead to the now. These texts insist that the
absence of memory shapes the contours of the present. While many projects on the legacy of slavery utilize
demographic data to measure slaverys extension into our present in concrete terms, I attempt to engage the past through its
forgetting. I leave behind the world of facts, proof, and Truth in order to connect the powers of the
market across time and space through non-normative epistemologies that rely on affect, memory, and
imagination. As a matter of fact, it was the reason and rationality of mathematics, demographics, and
insurance that produced millions of corpses in the service of making millions of commodities. To be clear,
this chapter has three goals. First, it connects the powers of market under slavery to powers of the market
under neoliberalism by exploring how black feminists made sense of the afterlife of slavery under an
emergent neoliberal state. Second, it uses black feminist engagements with loss, to assert that death
and loss undo to the progress of time so that the past lives on, and possesses the present. By engaging
death, loss, and forgetting, the texts I analyze connect penal and economic technologies in the 1970s United
States to the carceral nature of the market under chattel slavery. Finally, by constructing a critical
genealogy of the market through the writings of black feminists working within and under the
neoliberal-carceral state, I argue that under neoliberalism, the market supplements and mimics the
prison.
Black feminist thought challenges dominant epistemologies that produce anti-

blackness
In the closing section of Shakurs essay What of Our Past? What of Our History? What of Our Future? she seamlessly connects the past,
present, and future in an attempt to develop the psychological force needed to build a strong black womens movement.63 Black
feminism is a movement that emerged amid the crises of global capitalism, white supremacy,
heteropatriarchy, and state power that spanned the 1960s and 1970s. Neoliberalism is the state and
corporate response to these crises.64 Black feminism also emerged out of the failures of white feminism
to center (or even think about) race and white supremacy and the inability of the black nationalist and
133
black liberation movements to theorize and analyze gender, sexuality, and heteropatriarchy. In this
way, the white feminist and black nationalist movements were complicit with the forms of power they
imagined they opposed. When white feminism failed to critique the white supremacy of the state, and
black nationalists were unable to critique heteropatriarchy, both formations solidified racialized and
gendered discourses that contradicted (and undid) their aspirations for freedom and liberation. Following
Grace Hong, we can place Shakur and Daviss essays within the epistemological formation women of color feminism" that arose in the 1970s
and 1980s to mark the contradictions of late twentieth century U.S. capitalism. Women
of color feminism emerged and
expanded alongside the neoliberal-carceral state, and in the case of Shakur and Daviss work, from
within the prison. By analyzing race, gender, class, sexuality, and the state as interlocking and
colluding mechanisms of power, women of color feminism can name the ways multiply-determined
difference is simultaneously central to and yet incessantly disavowed in the production and
reproduction of capital. Most critically, it understands race, gender, and sexuality not as static
categories of identification, but as processes that produce value and disposability for individuals,
populations, and forms of knowledge.65 For Hong, women of color feminism names that which cannot be apprehended under
normative ideals or hegemonic epistemologies. As a way of knowing, women of color feminism names the repressed, the erased, and the
expunged at the very moment of their formation and articulation. For more than 40 years, black
feminists have argued that
slavery is central to the economic, political, and social present in contrast to dominant epistemologies,
which relegate slavery to a quarantined and dormant past. In so doing, black feminism is one
epistemological formation that is able to challenge the ways that the normal and banal are mobilized to
obscure violence, terror, and death. By showing how slaverys afterlife shapes the present, black
feminists have made visible forms of violence that are hidden by their routineness and normality. Black
feminist scholars have worked tirelessly to make visible what often goes unseen and unsaid, to reckon with the endings that are not over and
to make connections between past and present that are unthought. Black feminism engages the shadows and what is living there, naming
what has never entered the archives that constitute evidence and fact.66 As we will see, the work of Davis, Shakur, and Williams analyzes
what is unthought, unknown, or illegible with in dominant forms of analysis.
If chattel slavery's foundational relationship to
the contemporary distribution of life and death is often under theorized, overlooked, or erased within
normative epistemologies (and within progressive, radical, feminist, and queer formations), its
connection to capitalism is an epistemological impossibility. According to Walter Johnson, under the historical terms
that frame western political economy, understanding slavery as capitalism is unthinkable because there are no adequate epistemological
instruments available to make sense of such a connection.67 In
both Smithian and Marxist economics, slavery is an un-
theorized foundation to the history of capitalism, "an un-thought (even when present) past to the
inevitable emergence of the present."68 Slavery is understood to have a temporal relation to capitalism
instead of a spatial one. That is, slavery is theorized as pre-capitalist, as opposed to animating, colluding
with, or being indistinguishable from capitalism.69 The problem of slaverys status as the unthinkable history of capitalism is
not isolated to the shortcomings of economic theoryit stems from western liberal epistemologies. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot argues, the
Haitian Revolution was unthinkable in Europe and the United States because it challenged the ontological ordering of the planet under racism
and colonialism. According to Trouillot, in 1791 there was not one public debate on record in England, France, or the United States on the right
of slaves to achieve self-determination, let alone the right to do so through armed resistance.70 Simply,
slavery did not present an
ethical dilemma for the white world; its moral crises were unthought.71 In a similar way, the slave occupies
the position of the unthought within dominant epistemologies. While the structural position of the
worker has animated much of the left for the last two hundred years, the positionality and demands of
the slave elude hegemonic and resistant forms of thought. For example, Boggs writes that black people remain
invisible in the white radical imagination because white Marxists regard black militants as unfinished
products who will arrive at the understanding that racism arises from capitalism and that the working
class in the irreconcilable foe of capitalism. By doing so, the needs, demands, insights, and theories of
the black freedom struggle are made invisible and are thus unthought. Yet, the slave is not just rendered invisible
when unthought, the slave is often unthinkable even when she is present. For instance, in Commonwealth, their third book on biopolitics,
empire, and capitalism, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri write: As a first approximation, then, think of this form of class struggle as a kind of
maroonage. Like the slaves who collectively escaped the chains of slavery to construct self-governing communities and quilombos, biopolitical
labor-power subtracting from its relation to capital must discover and construct new social relationships, new forms of life that allow it to
actualize its productive powers. But unlike the maroons, this exodus does not necessarily mean going elsewhere. We can pursue lines of flight
while staying right here, by transforming the relations of production and mode of social organization under which we live.72 For Hardt
134
and Negri, the forms of class struggle required under the biopolitics of contemporary capitalism are like
the tactics mobilized by slaves, even though in the end, the essence of maroonage (escape) is not
required; the multitude can change the conditions of power by staying right where they are. By constructing equivalence across time and
positionality, Hardt and Negri erase the specificity of chattel slaverythe literal steel chains used to torture
and immobilize slaves are compared to the metaphorical chains used by capital to manage the labor of
the multitude. In this way, Hardt and Negri reproduce the fungibility of the slave (the slave will be
whatever it is most useful for the slave to be). This is what Frank Wilderson calls the ruse of analogy
where grammars of suffering that are irreconcilable are made equivalent. Simply, the alienation and
exploitation of the multitude (or the worker) is not comparable to the slaves expulsion from
humanity.73 Thus, the very attempt to empathetically identify with the slave results in the slave's
obliteration. As Hartman writes, "Only if I can see myself in that position can I understand the crisis of that position."74 In order to
empathize with the slave, Hardt and Negri insert the multitude into the position of the slave, thus
eradicating the slave. The slave becomes a worker, and is thus no longer a slave.75 For Johnson and Trouillot,
slaverys connection to capitalism and freedom is unthinkable due to the epistemological boundaries of
liberal Western thought. However, as evidenced by Hardt and Negri, even if the slave is not forgotten,
even when she enters the realm of the thinkable, even when the slave is present, she is often erased.
One can stare directly at the slave and not see her. When the slave is made equivalent with what she is
not, she is disappeared. As such, the slave and slaverys structural relation to the national order and
capital is unthinkable and frequently unthought.76 Subsequently, race and white supremacy are constructed as appendages
to the state and capital, as opposed to foundations. If slaverys relationship to capitalism and the present more
broadly is unthinkable and unthought, then black feminism is uniquely situated to engage such
epistemological impossibilities. According to Hong, women of color feminism necessarily engages the
erasures inherent in regimes of knowledge. As an analytic, it confronts what is unthinkable and
unknowable.
135
A: Queer of Color Critique

Queer of Color Critique challenges both racist and heteronormative epistemologies
Gumbs 10 [Alexis P; Queer Mother and Afrofuturist Trouble-Maker; We Can Learn to Mother
Ourselves The Queer Survival of Black Feminism 1968-1996]
If we reground our queer intervention in a queer of color critique, which was in a large part
developed by the Black feminists under discussion in this dissertation (Audre Lorde, June
Jordan, Barbara Smith, Alexis DeVeaux), who were explicitly invested in mothering and the
domestic as sites of intellectual and political production of an alternative social value for
life itself, we will be able to actually intervene in the narrative that is reproducing our
oppression. There is a reason that the centrist state effectively makes same-sex
parenting illegal, and that the religious right tries to ban queer teachers from schools.
The pedagogical work of mothering is exactly the site where a narrative will either be
reproduced or interrupted. The work of Black mothering, the teaching of a set of social
values that challenge a social logic which believes that we, the children of Black
mothers, the queer, the deviant, should not exist, is queer work. Therefore, as a queer
theorist I theorize that work. I am both pointing out the complicity of a race-neutral (i.e.
white) queer construction AND critique of the reproductive narrative in the REPRODUCTION
of the project of differential life value through the criminalization and targeting of racialized
mothers, as well as arguing the importance of an genealogy of queer theory, which as argued
by Roderick Ferguson among others, starts with Barbara Smiths Towards A Black Feminist
Literary Criticism and the Combahee River Collective Statement. Building on the work of
Ferguson, Munoz, Evelyn Hammonds and others, assert that a queer of color critique
illuminates and queers the reproductive narrative through which queer theory has
constructed its own genealogy.48
136
A: Womanist Herstory
Re-narrating our past from a Womanist perspective allows us to uncover the untold
stories of African Womyn who were not docile but revolutionary and in the forefront
of revolution, their story along with the story of every other significant black womyn
is always Her-story is survival pedagogy for resistance and is necessary for the
creation of future strategies
Dove 98 (Nah, African Womanism: An Afrocentric Theory, Journal of Black Studies)
Although it is important to define the oppressions that affect the lives of African women, men, and children, for the purpose of
it is also necessary to understand that African people have a
developing liberationist theories and strategies,
history/herstory rich in resistance to European forms of oppression. Acts of resistance must be
placed within liberationist theory because they have laid the foundation for future strategies
concerning the institutional development for self-determination. There has always been a
belief within the cultural memory of another way of existing and being and the retention of
values that have sustained and maintained the lives of African people throughout the protracted
holocaust (Hil- liard, 1995; Nobles, 1985). Thus, the struggle for survival-the resistance of
African people to the inhumanity involved in the capturing, enslavement, and colonization
process-has not only facilitated the humanization and democratization of Western society but
has provided the backbone of social change. The struggle for control over spirituality,
psychology, minds, beliefs, values, integrity, dignity, herstory, history, knowledge, rights, lands,
and resources, has been long and bloody, and countless of numbers have been lost on the way
(Ani, 1994; ben-Jochannan, 1972; Chinweizu, 1975; Fryer, 1984, 1988; Rodney, 1972;
Williams, 1987). From antiquity, as spiritual, military, and political leaders, womens roles have been critical in the effort to
take control of lands, resources, and energies from alien occupation. Not surprisingly, few scholars have brought this to light.
Early evidence of the role of women in defense of Africa comes out of the Cushite story of the
Candaces, who were women rulers. Following the Greek conquest of Kemet, the Romans had
taken over control by 30 B.C.E. Their attempt to dominate Cush (Ethiopia) failed as a result of
the Candaces (possibly Amanirenas) military and political skills. In fact, neither the Greeks nor
the Romans succeeded in conquering Cush (Finch, 1990). This warriorship rose continuously
from pre- enslavement to postenslavement for centuries, up until today, on the continent, in the
Caribbean, and in North and South America. Forms of resistance varied from individual
heroism to mass uprisings. Hilliard (1995) speaks of the need to rediscover and become
inspired by the countless acts of bravery that should be resurrected from our cultural memory.
The accumulation of these acts can be traced herstorically within the Black Nationalist and
Pan-Africanist movements, which can be viewed as having evolved from early violent European
encounters with African people. In particular, Maroon women and men have been attributed the greatest respect for
their accomplishments in bravery and their success in gaining self-determination for their peoples during the enslavement period.
Their origins in Jamaica have been traced to West Africa, in particular, Ghana (Hart, 1985). Maroons set up their societies in the
Caribbean and South America. In Brazil, they built the first African republic, Palmares, in 1600, after escaping captivity from the
Portuguese and the Dutch (Do Nascimento, 1992). Their
story is rich in successful wars waged against
Europeans. From Jamaica in the early 1700s, rose Nanny, the great Maroon military leader and
tactician (Hart, 1985, p. 44). From Africa came queen Nzinga (1581-1663) of Angola, Dona
Beatrice (1682-1706) from the Kongo, and Yaa Asantewa (1840/60-1920) from Ghana
(Sweetman, 1984). From the United States rose Harriet Tubman (James, 1985, p. 23). There
are countless stories of the bravery of African women, and most have never been told. The
reconstruction of herstory is important for understanding and defining African cultural
identity outside the European paradigms constructed by White men and women. The
bravery of these women has fed into the genesis of the Pan-Africanist and Black Nationalist movements, whether recognized or
not. In the contemporary situation, African women writers such as Ifi Amadiume (1987), Filomina Chioma Steady (1987), Niara
highlight the critical roles that
Sudarkasa (1987), Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (1987), Hazel Carby (1982), and others
women across Africa from Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya, for instance, have played
137
in the struggles for independence from European domination. However, as a result of Western
patriarchy, men have been viewed and promoted as the major figureheads, whereas women
have been given less recognition or credit. The works of Paula Giddings (1988) and Stella Dadzie (1990) provide
herstories of prominent women who have been ignored in the annals of the African story.
Our 1NC is a form of resistance that creates new futures, especially for black women
Dove 98 (Nah, African Womanism: An Afrocentric Theory, Journal of Black Studies)
This article evolves from my study (see Dove, 1993, 19%) of the life herstories of African mothers who send their children to culturally
affirming schools. I focus on conceptualizing and defin-ing the racialization of the world through European domination/White stheupremacy.
In doing this work, I find it impossible to ignore the specificity of the oppression of African women living
in male-centered Western society. My original study included 21 herstories. A significant number of
these mothers had experienced negative relationships with men who played critical roles in their lives.
In what seemed to be a paradox, these women neither hated nor separated themselves from men. To the contrary, those who had sons, for
instance, recognized their responsibilities to their sons. They feared for their sons survival and for the safety of African men living under White
supremacy. They wanted their sons to be fearless and to respect women. To
be true to their feelings required that I not
only use their words to tell their stories but develop a culturally based theory that could be sensitive to
their experiences as African women. Theories pertaining to the particularized nature of African
womens experiences have largely been inadequate. Those related to the feminist tradition, both White
and Black, have critiqued the social conditions of women within Europeanized societies and sought
solutions within European paradigms. In a departure from this pattern, Hudson-Weemss (1993)
Africana womanist theory critically examines the limitations of feminist theory and helps to explain,
comprehensively, the ideas and activism of some African women who have contributed to womanist
theory from differing ideological perspectives. In this way, she begins the construction of an Afroccntric
paradigm that can embrace the activism of all African women, recognized or ignored, who have
struggled to liberate African people on a global scale. My theoretical perspective accepts Hudson-
Weemss (1993) invaluable analysis. My contribution is to further emphasize the concept of culture as a
tool of analysis for understanding the nature of African womens experiences. I specifically address
culture as a weapon of resistance and as a basis for defining a new world order. I emphasize the validity
of the experiences of mothers, who look to their re-Africanization as the solution to challenging alien
social structures and inappropriate values and behaviors among African women and men. In light of
this, I use the term African4 to define African people and their diaspora because there is a belief that
we, despite our different experiences, are linked to our African cultural memory and spirituality and
may at any time become conscious of its significance to our Africanness and future. Furthermore, my
intention is to add credence to the Afrocentric perspective (Asante, 1980) by highlighting African
womanist theory as a central component to the construction of African worldview.
138
A: Sankofa
Sankofa is a critical framework for correcting Eurocentric educational practices.
Temple 2009 [Christel N. The Emergence of Sankofa Practice in the United States : A Modern History,
Adinkra,Journal of Black studies]
The rich cultural heritage of using pictorial images to convey the wisdom of Akan life, has remarkably influenced the culture of the United States as a region of the
African Diaspora, and Sankofa, which in conventional translation means go back and fetch it, return to your past, and it is not
taboo to go back and retrieve what you have forgotten or lost, has emerged as a Diasporan practice. Sankofas meaning is also described as
learn from or build on the past. Pick up the gems of the past. [It is a] constant reminder that the past is not all shameful and
that the future may profitably be built on aspects of the past. Indeed, there must be movement with the times but as the
forward march proceeds, the gems must be picked up from behind and carried forward on the march. (Quarcoo,
1972, p. 17) A conceptualization of Sankofa practice is based on an observation that a viewpoint and orientation promoting any one of several meanings and
applications of Sankofa have evolved among U.S. populations of African descent who have ancestors who experienced enslavement. The current generation in its
cultural and behavioral practices is attentive to Sankofa because its

wisdom offers a solution to reconstituting the fragmented
cultural past. In a liberation framework of chronicling behavior, the Diasporan practices created
around Sankofa are responses to the Maafa, and the Diaspora should be credited for innovative uses of Sankofa in the global
communities that we now claim as African geographical spa ce. Sankofa practice is influenced by several orientations toward African consciousness: (a)
as the legacy of natural cultural behaviors documented in its early usage by enslaved Africans who came to the Americas and in later usage,
possibly, through epic memory; (b) as resistance with respect to rejecting Eurocentric language and world views and
insisting on the relevance of using African conceptual possibilities to define and characterize African life in the contemporary era; and (c) as the symbolic gestures
of Diasporan Africans interested in general forms of returning to the source, or psychological steps toward Africanness. Beyond
its usage by
Africans, there is also the aspect of Sankofa appearing in non-African space due to cultural borrowing
in an age of popular forms of diversity and multiculturalism. In the U.S. and other Diasporan communities, Sankofa has an
informal legacy as related to ideologies of return or back to Africa, however, modern waves of African migration and travel, particularly of Akan/ Ghanaian
representatives as well as Diasporan Africans who have traveled to Ghana and accumulated liberating traditional African cultural references, have placed cultural
informants in the Diasporan midst. These cultural informants have been able to provide more accurate descriptions of the conceptual roots and uses of Sankofa in
a Diasporan Sankofa practice
the United States. It is empowering to acknowledge and bear witness to the fact that the popular emergence of
did not evolve from a single organizational push for Diasporan communities to unite in the name of this concept. Instead,
behaving as intuitive African selves, Diasporan communities simultaneously favor this concept in
practical applications, responding to an internal desire for cultural definition and reacting to cultural casualties
sustained in the experience of being involuntarily immersed in Western culture.
Endorsing a method of uncovering subjugated black knowledge is key to creating a

spiritual relationship to the world which recognizes subjugated knowledges,
particularly from the continent of Africa. Only this can counteract the trends of
dehumanization, individualism and structura violence that threaten all peoples
worldwide with destruction.
Holland 12 [Jo- Professor of Philosophy & Director of Liberal Studies & Philosophy at Saint Thomas
University, Miami, Florida - HUMANITY S AFRICAN ROOTS - Remembering the Ancestors Wisdom -
JOE HOLLAND -Volume 1 -Afrocentrism in the Emerging Global Civilization - July 2012]
Further, there is growing scholarly evidence that human civilization also began in Africa. African cultures emerged
and grew with great beauty and technological achievement in: Egypt; Ethiopia; Nubia. Later other ancient African civilizations emerged in: Ghana;
Zimbabwe and Moytomotapa. Some of these civilizations spread their influence to other human
Mali and Songay;
regions, perhaps even to the Americas. 13 Africans moved across great distances in sailing ships and
by camel caravans as merchants, sailors, explorers East and West, North and South. Thus, as is
increasingly being recognized, every past and present human civilization was directly or indirectly
nourished by the ancient African source. As noted, we believe that the newly emerging planetary
civilization of the Postmodern Global Electronic Era needs to drink deep ly once again from this
common African source. Indeed, we believe that the very viability of the human race, in this time of
139
great worldhistorical crisis, depends on returning for spiritual nourishment to our ancient African
cultural roots, as well as to our roots in Gods beloved Earth. We believe that this spiritual return to
Africa is especially important for young people. The crisis of late modern civilization threatens to
destroy so many youth, both physically and spiritually, and espe cially many poor youth. As a result,
many young people today feel trapped between rage and despair. This is especially true in North
America, but the same negative pattern is spreading across the world. 14 Many young now suffer rage and despair
because they see late modern civilization as: Marginalizing the poor; Poisoning Earth; Not providing adequate work; Promoting consumerist
materialism; Undermining human community; Suppressing spiritual meaning. To suppress the spiritualpsychic pain generated by this reality, some beloved
young people tragically: Become addicted to tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and sex; Attack the weak, elderly, and women; Kill their own brothers and sisters;
Take their own lives. Even in Africa itself, as late modern civilization breaks down and with it the legacy of modern colonialism, we have seen increasing rage
and despair, especially in the form of ethnic violence, and also the tragic ravages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. But rage and despair are not from the lifegiving
spirituality of ancient African roots. They do not represent the manly or woman ly wisdom of ancient spiritual mothers and fathers. Once
again, how
important, therefore, that we all reconnect with Africas an cient roots and drink of Africas ancient
wisdom. Recovery of Ancient African Wisdom Gratefully, there is hope. For some time now, there has been
emerging a Renaissance of ancient African wisdom: In Africa; In the African Diaspora; In
academic scholarship. Academically, this Renaissance is being created by: Historians who have
researched the most ancient truths of Africa; Scholars who have exposed the modern lies about
the African heritage; Philosophers who are recovering the ethical teachings and cosmology of
ancient Africa; Novelists who are probing the soul of the African heritage; Artists who awaken our thirst for African beauty and imagination;
Communitybuilders who are recreating African style institutions; Ritualists who are designing healing rites of passage for youth.
Reclamation of African knowlegdes is key to reclaim black humanity

Amos N Wilson- Prof at City University of New York- 1993- The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness-
p.36-38
The individual who has amnesia suffers distortion of and blindness to reality. The individual who cuts himself off from his history is
self-alienated. There's a whole part of himself that's completely shut off from his use. It's as if there were two parts. One part is
unknown, yet because it is unknown doesn't mean that it is not effective. We have to devote energy to
unknowing. We have to direct perception to unknowing. We have to say: "Let me turn my face so I cannot see; let me not
think about it." So the struggle to not know itself becomes a creator of behavior and personality structure. So the idea that not
knowing one's history somehow permits one to escape it is a lie. In fact, it brings one under the
domination of the more pernicious effects of that history and opens the personality up
for self-alienation, self-destruction. A person who is suffering from amnesia lives a life based
on negation, not on affirmation, not on growth and develop-ment, but lives life in such a way as to deny life and reality
and to deny parts of his own personality and himself. Life then becomes a negation and is used to
maintain a negation instead of life as it should be lived as affirmation, as growth, enhancement
and development. And people who live their lives as a negation live the lives that we see
ourselves living today going deeper and deeper into hell and going deeper into self-destruction as a
people. History is real; it brings real, tangible results. When we wish to negate it and not
integrate it, when we wish to negate it and not affirm it, then it negates us in the end. The
negation wins out. The Afrikan person who lives in social amnesia brought on by the projection of mythological Eurocentric
history, lives a life that is unintegrated and misunderstood. Why is our behavior so puzzling to us? We sometimes ask ourselves,
"Why did I do that? I don't know what makes me do this." Here's behavior flowing out from our own mind and personality and we
don't know its sources. It means that we become a puzzlement to ourselves, the ones we think that we should understand best.
Often, other people can understand us better than we can understand ourselves. Frequently they have a greater knowl-edge of the
history that made us into who we are than we do. If we don't know our history,
or if we've made our history
unconscious and therefore placed it out of awareness, that unconscious history becomes a source of
unconscious motivation, then why we behave the way we do becomes a puzzle. We're confused by our own behavior.
If we want to know why we behave the way we do then we must know our history: the unconscious must be made conscious .
Consequently, when the European makes us unconscious of our own history, we not only
become unconscious of our history as knowledge, we become unconscious of the sources of our behavior
as persons and as a people; and our own behavior becomes a mystery "Why do Black-folks act like that?" We
get discouraged. We give up. "We ain't gonna straighten them (i.e., Black people) out man!" Because we can't figure it out.
When history is misperceived and we look to a White Jesus and we pray to that White Jesus, then walk out and see the poverty,
140
smell the stench, see the drugs, people holding babies up to shield themselves from bullets and all this kind of stuff ...it's not
difficult for us to step over a thin line that says, "Boy, we must have done something really terrible in the past for us to be suffering
the way we do; as much as we pray to Jesus, for us to be suffering the way we do." "God must have cursed us," we surmise. Then
we're ready for the old Ham mythology. We set ourselves up and we introject inferiority into ourselves. We take it into our breast
and pass it onto our children and we are done in. This is what happens when we don't know our history and don't know the history
of other people. There are some "negroes" who seek to escape their history and identity by telling themselves, "I don't see color."
A lot of people fail to understand that
Well, do you think. that means the world doesn't see you as "colored"?
because they may choose not to see something in a certain way, that other people still
may choose to do so. That assertion (I don't see color) doesn't change the way other
people look at them. In fact, this perceptual misdirection sets them up to be manipulated. Almost every day we hear
"negroes" say that they have been manipulated and are being manipulated in some sort of way. In fact, they often say it to justify
their being manipulated and not confronting their reality; because they don't want to deal with the realistic situation that they live in.
They want to deny the European's terroristic rule on Earth, deny his evil, deny his domination over
them and deny his destruction of the Earth and life itself. So they choose not to see color, so they can't see
White for what. it is. They use it to justify not knowing their own history and not knowing themselves because they don't
see "color" thereby maintaining the amnesia. When we get into social amnesia into forgetting our
history we also forget or misinterpret the history and motives of others as well as our
own motives. The way to know other people is to know one's self. The way to learn of
our own creation, how we came to be what we are, is getting to know ourselves. It is
through getting to know the self intimately that we get to know the forces that shaped us
as a self. Therefore, knowing the self becomes a knowledge of the world. A deep study of
Black History is the most profound way to learn about the psychology of Europeans and to
understand the psychology that flows from their history. If we don't know ourselves, not only are we a puzzle to
ourselves; other people are also a puzzle to us as well. We assume the wrong identity and identify ourselves with our enemies. If
we don't know who we are then we are whomever somebody else tells us we are.
Afrocentric history breaks down the narrative of American Exceptionalism

Loewen 92 [James Loewen- a sociologist and professor of African American studies at University of
Illinois- Urbana-1992- Lies my Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus]
Another way to cause history to stick is to present it so that it touches students' lives. To show students how racism affects African Americans,
a teacher in Iowa discriminated by eye color among members of her all-white class of third-graders for two days. The film A Class Divided
shows how vividly these students remembered the lesson fifteen years later.10 In contrast, material from US. history textbooks is rarely
retained for fifteen weeks after the end of the school year. By stressing the distant past, textbooks discourage students from seeking to learn
history from their families or community, which again dis connects school from the other parts ofstudents' lives. Children, like most adults,
do not readily retain isolated, incoherent, and meaningless data. Since textbooks provide almost no causal skeleton, students forget most of
the mass of detail they learn in their history courses. Not
all students forget it equally, however. Caste minority
children-Native Americans, African Americans, and Hispanics do worse in all subjects, compared to
white or Asian American children, but the gap is largest in social studies. That is because the way
American history is taught particularly alienates students of color and children from impoverished
families. Feel-good history for affluent white males inevitably amounts to feel-bad history for
everyone else. A student of mine, who was practice-teaching in Swanton, Vermont, a town with a considerable Indian population,
noticed an Abenaki fifth-grader obviously timing out when he brought up the subject of Thanksgiving. Talking with the child brought forth the
following reaction: My father told me the real truth about that day and not to listen to any white man scum like you!" Yet Thanksgiving
seems reasonably benign compared to, say, Columbus Day Throughout the school year, in a thousand
little ways, American history offends many students. Unlike the Abenaki youngster, most have-not students do not
consciously take offense and do not rebel but are nonetheless subtly put off. It hurts children's self-image to swallow what their history
books teach about the exceptional fairness of America. Black students consider American history, as
usually taught, white and assimilative, so they resist learning it. This explains why research shows a bigger
performance differential between poor and rich students, or black and white students, in history than in other school subjects.12 Girls also
dislike social studies and history even more than boys, probably because women and women's concerns and perceptions still go
underrepresented in history classes.Afrocentric history arose partly in response to this problem. Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr., denounces Afrocentrism as psychotherapy for blacksa onesided misguided attempt to make
African Americans feel good about themselves.14 Unfortunately, the Eurocentric history in our textbooks amounts
to psychotherapy for whites. Since historians like Schlesinger have not addressed Eurocentrism, they
141
do not come into the discussion with clean hands. To be sure, the answer to Eurocentric textbooks is not
one-sided Afrocentric history, the kind that has Africans inventing everything good and whites inventing slavery and oppression.
Surely we do not really want a generation of African Americans raised on antiwhite Afrocentric history, but just as surely, we cannot
afford another generation of white Americans raised on complacent celebratory Eurocentric history.
Even if they don't learn much history from their textbooks, students are affected by the book's slant.
Martha Toppin found unanimous agreement with this proposition among ninety high school
students: If Africa had had a history worth learning about, we would have had it last year in Western
Civilization. The message that Eurocentric history sends to nonEuropean Americans is; your
ancestors have not done much of importance. It is easy for European Americans and non-European
Americans to take a step further and conclude that non-European Americans are not important
today.
Injecting critical African history allows for a forms of critical Pan African identity that
undermines Wesern value systems
Sefa Dei 2012 [George J. Sefa Dei - Sociology and Equity Studies, University of Toronto - Reclaiming
Our Africanness in the Disaporized Context: The Challenge of Asserting a Critical African Personality,
The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.4, no.10, January 2012]
As noted elsewhere (see Dei, 2010c), in

rethinking these early ideas of Pan-Africanism, we must enthuse a
critical need for the development of a particular Pan-Africanist-Afrocentric framework that
resonates with contemporary possibilities, time and challenges. That is, a Pan-Africanist ideology
based on African indigenous value systems, concepts and principles such as community, collective responsibility, traditions
of mutual interdependence, and responsible governance -- and not adaptations of Western value systems. This Pan-
Africanism must seek to dialogue through Diasporan African social thought as informed by Pan-Africanist
frameworks. The framework must undertake broader project of decolonization a mental and politico- material approach-- with the spiritual
at the base (rather than politics and economics). This Pan- African framework cannot shy away from highlighting Western [colonial]
responsibility and complicities. It
must be bold to assert that the search for African unity is only a means to an
end, i.e., the emergence of Black/African power. It must seek to reaffirm Africas continuing contributions to global
humanity and world civilization (Du Bois 1947, 1969). It must uphold African cultural rebirth and revival that reflects integrity and pride in
self, culture, history, and a commitment to the collective well-being of all African peoples. It
must also highlight the necessity
of developing a strong sense of African identity rooted in African history. It must seek to actualize the vision of
United States of Africa elimination of boundaries/borders, a common passport/currency. It must not be afraid to work with the idea that
race matters in the intersections of identities, that is, a need for a consolidation of the African race, as beyond irreducible difference
(Negritude). This thought borrows from Sartreian and Fanonian influences (Sartre, 1967; Fanon, 1967). It is
essentially a Pan-Africanist philosophy of fecundity, rooted in local/grassroots political organizing and activism that
seeks to develop an African/Black consciousness [Steve Biko, 1979] and understands the politics of national culture and
liberation (Cabral, 1970) matched with political sophistication and intricacies (James, 1989). This critical Pan-
Africanism I am embracing, calls for an understanding that the Pan-African personality, with deeply
embedded historical roots in the past/present, is well augured within Africa. The Pan-African personality has a
contributory force, which can work well to organize the social and political conditions of the Diasporized-African. The Pan-African personality
ought to be transgressive, for it speaks against the understanding of some contemporary moment as individualized and ahistorical. The
Afrocentric imperative infused in a new Pan-Africanist framework is to claim the power of a
historical memory. It sees African history as a totality of our lived experiences. The development of our collective consciousness is
imperative for our continued survival, and we owe our survival and continued existence to the African creativity and ingenuity to resist and
African Indigenous knowledge systems that work with
adapt against all odds. Part of our survival can be rooted in the
an African spiritual epistemology as a spiritual way of knowing, centering the inner self/environment, and
making connections with the outer group/environment. This spiritual epistemology is an affirmation of the power of a
spiritual dialogue that calls on us to reclaim our spirituality along the path to a spiritual recovery from the spirit injury, depersonalization of
selves and the negation of part of ones humanity (e.g., history/culture). 48 The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.4, no.10, January 2012
Critical Pan-African ideology links education, culture and the African identity. It sees the struggle to de-Europeanize our [colonized] minds
(Asante, 2009) in order to deal with both the knowledge and cultural crisis (Karenga, 1986, 1988, 2007). It challenges the
142
Eurocentric mimicry of African bodies. It also sees the possibilities of anti-colonial education as a
primary subversive of the intellectual aggression on African scholarship. It brings a trans-historical perspective
to contemporary African education. It heralds the need for a critical contemporary education that challenges on-
going neo-colonial brainwashing (Chinweizu, 2006) that continues to denigrate what Africa has to offer the world.
Furthermore, it sees the way forward for radical African scholarship as embracing revolution and
decolonization, while stressing the ontological lineage between Africa and the African Diaspora as a
way to break out of our boundaries and confinement.
143
2nc Extensions
144
Ext: Mentoring
Attention to anti-blackness can enable mentoring spaces that respond to the needs of
black students
Serdan, Torie and Daneshzadeh Arash 16
Mentoring rhetoric has reached a fever pitch since the Obama administration launched its My Brothers
Keeper (MBK) initiative. Increased funding for on-the-ground programs supporting and implementing
versions of the initiative has meant that the mentoring and youth development market finds it
particularly appealing to pander to communities of color. This work, which appears progressive on one
end, highlights data that illustrates the Black male experience as particularly daunting in comparison to
their White counterparts, is somewhat insubstantial when it comes to altering mentoring praxis so that
it can be better utilized to confront this experience. And this isnt just true of the mentoring happening
in the MBK space this applies to mentoring for Black youth in most spaces. There is a call to action, a
request for mentors to engage in providing support systems for these young people, but that call to
action is couched in friendly discourse about respectability. The call often focuses on helping young
people make right decisions, helping them dress well, helping to cultivate the resilience we think
theyll need to survive in this America. This mentoring ignores systemic inequality, but it also
encourages mentors to engage in a process to un-other Black youth and it all smacks of a certain anti-
Blackness. In 2014, Michael Jeffries, a professor of American studies at Wellesley, discusses Americas
reckoning with its anti-Blackness in an opinion editorial about happenings in Ferguson. His definition of
anti-Blackness encapsulates the complexity of the term: it is not merely about hating or penalizing
Black people. It is about the debasement of Black humanity, utter indifference to Black suffering, and
the denial of Black peoples right to exist. Utilizing this definition allows us to see the anti-Blackness of
mentoring at work. Most folks involved in mentoring wouldnt identify themselves or the structures
they operate in as anti-Black, and yet, the very ways in which mentoring is approached exemplifies the
sentiment. Mentoring based on hierarchical notions, goals of respectability, and aspirations of
assimilation become an avenue for erasing the Blackness of our young people and align with the
aforementioned aspects of indifference to Black suffering, and the denial of Black peoples right to
exist.
145
A2: We talked about racism

Discussions about racism are pointless. We must identify the violence in the 1AC as
anti-blackness
Jeffries 14 [Michael, associate professor of American studies at Wellesley College and author of Paint
the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America. Ferguson must force us
to face anti-blackness, Boston Globe, Nov. 28, 2014,
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/11/28/ferguson-must-force-face-anti-
blackness/pKVMpGxwUYpMDyHRWPln2M/story.html]
Black lives matter has replaced Hands up, dont shoot! as the mantra of those protesting for justice in Ferguson and
throughout the country. The simplicity of the phrase is a national shame. Among protesters implicit it
demands are freedom, respect, and digny for black Americans, but those ideas seem light
years away in a country where black people are killed and those responsible give interviews on national television
with a clear conscience. Institutionalized racism and white supremacy are toxic for all people of color. But the
black in black lives matter calls our attention to a related, but distinct, force that produces more deaths
like Trayvon Martins and Michael Browns: Anti-blackness. Racism is a combination of prejudice,
discrimination, violence, and institutions that reproduce racial inequality and injustice,
regardless of intent. Our schools, neighborhoods, and criminal-punishment system actively privilege whites at the expense
of people of color, even when the rules governing these systems are racially neutral. Anti-blackness entails all this and
more. It is not simply about hating or penalizing black people. It is about the debasement of black
humanity, utter indifference to black suffering, and the denial of black peoples right to exist. Focusing on anti-
blackness rather than just racism is sure to make some people uncomfortable. A recent study
finds that the word black is more closely linked to stereotypes and negative emotions among white people than the phrase
African-American. This
not only demonstrates that thinking and talking in racial, rather than ethnic,
terms has political implications, it shows that the mere idea of blackness generates disdain. If
talking about racism is polarizing, talking about anti-blackness is completely taboo.
146
A2: Black inclusion good

AFF cant solve without first solving for anti-black racism - Operatationalized privilege
produces racial disaparities for black students even in the similar conditions as white
counterparts
Gabriel 10 [Trip, Staff writer, New York times, Phillips Academy, Middlebury College, Proficiency of
Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected, Nov 9,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html]
An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented a social divide
extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another. But a new
report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.Only 12 percent of black fourth-
grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of
black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.Poverty alone
does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who
do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.The data was distilled
from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which are given to
students in fourth and eighth grades, most recently in 2009. The report, A Call for Change, is to be released Tuesday by the Council of the
Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools.Although the outlines of the problem and many specifics have been previously
reported, the group hopes that including so much of what it calls jaw-dropping data in one place will spark a new sense of national
urgency.What this
clearly shows is that black males who are not eligible for free and reduced-price lunch
are doing no better than white males who are poor, said Michael Casserly, executive director of the council.The report
shows that black boys on average fall behind from their earliest years. Black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate and black children are
twice as likely as whites to live in a home where no parent has a job. In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of
white boys, and their SAT critical reasoning scores are on average 104 points lower.The
analysis of results on the national
tests found that math scores in 2009 for black boys were not much different than those for black girls in
Grades 4 and 8, but black boys lagged behind Hispanics of both sexes, and they fell behind white boys
by at least 30 points, a gap sometimes interpreted as three academic grades.The search for
explanations has recently looked at causes besides poverty, and this report may further spur those
efforts.Theres accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before
the first day of kindergarten, said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. They have to do
with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have
conversations that people are unwilling to have.Those include conversations about early childhood parenting practices,
Dr. Ferguson said. The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to
them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think
and develop a sense of autonomy.The report urges convening a White House conference, encouraging Congress to appropriate
more money for schools and establishing networks of black mentors. What it does not discuss are policy responses identified with a robust
school reform movement that emphasizes closing failing schools, offering charter schools as alternatives and raising the quality of teachers.
The report did not go down this road because theres not a lot of research to indicate that many of those strategies produce better results,
Mr. Casserly said.Other have a different response. The key to narrowing the achievement gap, said Dr. Ferguson, is really good teaching.One
large urban school district that has made progress is Baltimores, where the dropout rate for African-American boys declined to 4.9 percent
during the last academic year, down from 11.9 percent four years earlier. Graduation rates for black boys were also up: 57 percent in 2009-10,
compared with 51 percent three years earlier.Andres A. Alonso, the chief executive of the Baltimore City Public Schools, said the improvement
had little to do with changes at the margins, like lengthening the school day or adding mentors. Rather, Mr. Alonso cited aggressively closing
failing schools, knocking on the doors of dropouts homes to lure them back and creating real-time alerts almost like an electrical charge
when a student misses several days of school.Hispanic kids and African-American kids this year had a lower dropout rate than white kids,
Mr. Alonso said. An article on Tuesday about a report on the achievement gap in schools between black male students and white male
students in reading and math referred incorrectly in some editions to data from Baltimores urban school district. The information for the
districts progress in dropout rates and graduation rates for African-American boys in the last academic year was compared with data from
three years ago, not four years ago. The article also referred imprecisely to the significance of the number of black men in college. While
black men made up just 5 percent of college students in 2008, that figure did not represent one of the
areas in which blacks showed a lack of achievement, given that black men make up only about 6.5
percent of the general population. An article on Nov. 9 about a report on the achievement gap in schools between black male
students and white male students in reading and math referred incorrectly to the gap in SAT scores. African-American boys scored, on
average, 104 points lower in critical reasoning, not overall on all three components of the test. The gap is 120 points in mathematics and 99
points in writing.
147
AFF Answers
148
Narrativization bad
Narrativtizing black death renders it mere citation and replicates the logic of anti-
blackness
McKittrick, Katherine 7/3/17
Where black is naturally unbelievable and is therefore naturally empty and violated; where black is naturally less-than-human and starving to
death and violated; where black is naturally deselected, unsurviving, swallowed up; where black is same and always and dead and dying;
where black is complex and difficult and too much to bear and violated. The
tolls of death and violence, housed in the
archive, affirm black death. The tolls cast black as impossibly human and provide the conditions
through which black history is currently told and studied. The death toll becomes the source. The tolls
inevitably uncover, too and data that honor and repeat and cherish anti-black violence and black death. If the source of blackness is death and
violence, the citation of blacknessthe scholarly stories we tellcalls for the repetition of death and violence. The
practice of taking
away life is followed by the sourcing and citation of racial-sexual death and racial-sexual violence and
blackness is (always already and only) cast inside the mathematics of unlivingness (data/scientifically
proven/certified violation/asterisk) where black comes to be (a bit).1 Indeed, if blackness originates and
emerges in violence and death, black futures are foreclosed by the dead and dying asterisks. And if the
dead and dying are the archival and asterisked cosmogonies of blackness, within our present system of
knowledgea system, to paraphrase Frantz Fanon, where the subhuman is invited to become human on terms
that require anti-black sentimentscraps and bits of black life and death and narrative are guaranteed
to move toward, to progress into, unliving-ness and anti-blackness-6 With this in mind we would do well
to notice that scholarly and activist questions can, at times, be so lightly tied to bits and pieces of
narration that dwell on anti-black violence and black racial deathseeking out and reprising terrible
utterances" to reclaim and recuperate black loss and somehow make it all the less terriblethat our
answerable analytical fu-tures are also condemned to death? Put differently, historically present anti-black vio-lence is
repaired by reproducing knowledge about the black subjects that renders them less than human. It is a descriptive analytics of violence. The
cyclical and death-dealing numeration of the condemned remains.
149
A2: Sankofa
The kritiks focus on greatness is a form of monumenalization that recenters and locks
in Western phobic charactierizations of Africa and epistemological elitism
Jeyifo 2000 [BiodunJeyifo, Professor of African and African American Studies and of Comparative
Literature at Harvard- Greatness and Cruelty: "Wonders of the African World" and the Reconfiguration
of Senghorian Negritude]
GATES IS OF COURSE VERY DISTANT from this classical Senghorian negritude which arrived at what is African only by an
inversion of what is deemed Western, hence as I indicate in the title of this commentary, it is a reconfiguration of negritude, not an
exact reprise, that we get in Wonders of the African World. Like classical Senghorian negritude, Gates'
series is obsessively locked into an engagement of Western negative and phobic
definitions of Africa. But unlike Senghorian negritude, Gates changes the terms of that
engagement from inversion to identification: Africa's past is now to be validated on the
grounds of achievements which the West had not only claimed for itself, but which it
had proposed as the pinnacle of civilization and culture, the pinnacle of what indeed it is to be human.
In this Gatesian reconfiguration of negritude, the African past receives its greatest validation from precisely the signs that the
West had already established as the indices of civilization and culture: great
architectural constructions, preferably made of stone or granite, not mud; writing and literacy and the
specialist forms of learning attached to them, not oral, unwritten arts and the vernacular knowledges or wisdommonic and more
cities whose rediscovered or excavated ruins throw up
tolerant of difference and diversity; and lost
impressive artifacts and material culture that demonstrate that our ancestors were
mighty kings and heroes, not humble peasants and anonymous toilers. Even the focus in Gates'
series on violence and cruelty as inevitable adjuncts to the culture and civilization of the African past is part and parcel of this
reconfiguration of negritude: in the "old" negritude, the African was conceived as different from Western man and the rest of
humanity in his radical pastoral innocence; in Gates' neonegritude, the African and his civilization is steeped, as is Western man, in
unspeakable cruelty since civilization, it is argued, always entails barbarism. WONDERS
OF THE AFRICAN
WORLD is not totally sold on this bill of goods of High Culture and Civilization; Gates now
and then in the series pays homage to things like the Dogon religion and the impressive mud architecture of the Sankore mosque
in Timbuktu. But in the light of this reconfigured Senghorian Negritude, Gates' identification
of "greatness" in the African past in this series follows very closely Western hierarchies
of civilizations, religions, cultures and human inventiveness. For this reason, despite
Gates' constant genuine expression in the series of solidarity with the African masses
past and present who were/are severely ill-used by their rulers, the fundamental thrust of Wonders of the African World
is at best moderate-liberal, in as much as the series grows out of the explosive
economic injustices and social contradictions which define the "racial" politics of our
age. I hope some African or African-American kid who watches this series is enabled to exorcise internalized
feelings of racial inferiority by seeing the ruins of the "lost cities" of Africa and all the other "wonders" reanimated
powerfully by Gates in the series. But it seems to me that Gates departs in this series substantially
from some of his earlier academic work in which he had sharply critiqued the Western
liberal but profoundly racist notion that the African-American's full humanity was
dependent only on the achievement of writing and literacy.And Gates yields too much
ground in Wonders of the African World to a concept of "greatness" in human history
and culturewhich has for far too long dismissively ignored or downgraded many of the
world's rich heritage in non-elite creative thought and action.
150
AAPI Specific
151
Links
152
L: General/USFG
GOVT exclusion of the Asian is historically proven. the conjuction of false
valoraization, racial and gender subjugation is a UQ form of oppression. It justifies the
LA Lynchings and the Killing of Vincent chang. Using the USFG just furthers Asian
oppression.
Tran & Chang 2013 (Minh C. & Mitchell J., Ph.D Director of Curriculum and Academic Enrichment at
UCLA, Professor of Education (and of Asian American Studies) Ph.D., Education, University of California,
Los Angeles, 1996 Ed.M., Education, Harvard University, 1990 B.A., Psychology, University of California,
Santa Barbara, 1987, July, To Be Mice or Men: Gender Identity and the Development of Masculinity
Through Participation in Asian American Interest Fraternities From The Misrepresented Minority: New
Insights on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and Their Implications for Higher Education chapter 3,
https://styluspub.presswarehouse.com/resrcs/chapters/1579224695_excerpt.pdf)
According to the late historian Ronald Takaki (1989), thefirst significant wave of Asian immigrants were brought to
the U.S. as cheap labor to fill the void after African Americans were freed from slavery. Since their arrival, at
various times in history, exclusionary immigration policies and anti-miscegenation laws have prohibited
Asian men from gaining citizenship, marrying, or even bringing their wives to the United States an
injustice to which even Black slaves had not been subjected (Cheng, 1999). According to Takaki (1989), a sense of
masculinity was stripped from these men because they could no longer reproduce or form nuclear
families. Scholars have also argued that the media further emasculated Asian American men on a
broader normative scale through recurrent portrayals of them as being cheap, misogynistic,
effeminate, or asexual (Shek, 2006; Mok, 1998). Films as early as the 1920s began promoting the stereotype
of the Yellow Peril, which portrayed Asian men as devious and sinister (Mok, 1998). Widely viewed
images, such as the bucked toothed Asian man from the movie Breakfast at Tiffanys, tend to characterize Asian men as
nerds, who are both physically and socially inferior to their White counterparts. According to Cheng (1999),
such portrayals of Asian men through American cinema, fashion, and advertising are essentially powerful and
sophisticated forms of modern-day racism. Over time, American film and television roles for Asian men have become more
varied, but Mok (1998) claims that, far too often, they are still portrayed onedimensionally in paradoxical ways as
being either sexless or sexually deviant creatures. The negative stereotypes of Asian American men yield harmful
effects. In one study, for example, Cheng (1996) found that, in spite of having higher qualifications than their college classmates, Asian
American men were the least likely to be chosen for leadership positions across all racial and gender groups. Asian American men also report a
significantly higher awareness of racism than their female counterparts, and some attribute this to a form of racism toward Asian Americans
that has historically targeted men (Kohatsu, 1992 in Shek, 2006). While stereotypes of
Asian women as exotic and
hypersexual, for example, are contemptible, Mok (1998) maintains that those images have not increased
social distance between Asian American women and other groups nor obstructed their opportunities
to rise to prominent or desirable positions in the public eye. In contrast, some studies have found that the pervasive
negative stereotypes of Asian American men contribute to a preference for White male partners even among some Asian American women
(Chua & Fujino, 1999; Mok, 1998). These pervasive and negative stereotypes, in part, shape the context within which members of Asian
American fraternities develop a collective sense of masculinity. Liu (2002) maintains that Asian American men may reluctantly
adopt aggressive behavior as a strategy to negotiate and endure racism in order to gain patriarchal
privilege, while Jones (2004) claims that marginalized men seek out alternative means to prove their manhood because they have been
denied political and social means for achieving masculinity. Indeed, drawing from the findings of his 1998 quantitative study, Chan
concluded that Asian American men tend to have an extremely conflicted sense of their masculinity
because they must simultaneously accept and reject the dominant White masculine norm in search of
alternative definitions of masculinity. To guide our study, we draw from theories of gender social
representation, which illuminate how power and privilege can affect the ways that Asian American men
choose to negotiate and construct their own sense of masculinity. In this framework, gender is
believed to be socially constructed through stereotypes or characteristics widely agreed upon by
153
society as typical of either men or women (Courtenay, 2000). Although men are often privileged in society,
according to Kumashiro (1999), the intersection between racial and gender identities can supersede
any one representation. These intersected racial and gender stereotypes can lead to new and unique
forms of oppression, as in the case for Asian American men. At the same time, Gerson and Peiss (1985) state that
gender is a set of socially constructed relationships and it can be produced and reproduced
through peoples actions (p. 327). Thus, gender is better understood as a verb than as a noun
(Courtenay, 2000, p. 1387) because, unlike biological sex differences, gender is not intrinsic within oneself,
but instead demonstrated or achieved through social interactions and relationships (Bohan, 1993), and
can function to create and uphold unequal power relations. The basic premise of social representation
theory implies that, despite emasculating racial stereotypes, Asian American men can actively shape
their own sense of masculinity. Chua and Fujino (1999) claim that Asian American men possess some agency in negotiating and
reproducing dominant masculine norms, which refers not only to the power men have over women, but also the way some men have power
over other men (p. 393). This agency, however, may be somewhat limited. In his study, Kumashiro (1999) found that feminine
stereotypes of Asian American men often forced them to reject their Asian racial identity in order to
conform to dominant male norms. Alternatively, Chua and Fujino (1999) suggest that some Asian American men in college have
been able to negotiate new and expanded notions of non-dominant masculinity, which is not viewed in opposition to femininity or racial
identity. They also found that
masculinity was considered a more important component of male self-concept
for White men than for Asian American men, as White men had much more negative perceptions of
reverse gender roles such as doing domestic work. Guided by this social representation framework,
we examined the unique challenges faced by heterosexual Asian American male undergraduates as
they develop their sense of masculinity.
Describing what the government should do ignores personal responsibility and

assumes a false neutralityonly the alt can break the cycle of demands
Herod 01 (James, A Stake, Not a Mistake: On Not Seeing the Enemy, October, 2001,
http://www.jamesherod.info/index.php?sec=paper&id=9&print=y&PHPSESSID=4387a9147ad42723ea1
01944dd538914)
Let's take another example. Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, otherwise very sensible writers, complain that "bombing a desperately
poor country under the yoke of a repressive regime is a wrongheaded response [to the "unspeakable acts of violence" committed on Sept.
11]."The U.S. bombing of Afghanistan should cease immediately," they say. They discuss three reasons: "1. The policy of bombing increases
the risk of further terrorism against the United States. 2. The bombing is intensifying a humanitarian nightmare in Afghanistan. 3. There are
better ways to seek justice." All three statements are true of course, but irrelevant, because seeking justice, avoiding humanitarian
nightmares, and reducing the risk of terrorism do not enter into the calculations of US policy makers. Quite the contrary, US policy makers
create injustice, humanitarian nightmares, and terrorism, throughout the world, in pursuit of the imperial objective of making profit, and this
has been thoroughly documented in thousands of scholarly studies. So for Mokhiber and Weissman to talk in this way, and phrase
the problem in this way, exposes their failure to really comprehend the enemy we face, which in turn
prevents them from looking for effective strategies to defeat that enemy, like so many other opponents of the
"war". Hence all the moralizing, the bulk of which is definitely directed at the rulers, not at the ruled. That
is, it is not an attempt to win over the ruled, but an attempt to win over the rulers. [4] It's what I call the "we should" crowd --
all those people who hope to have a voice in the formation of policy, people whose stances are basically that
of consultants to the ruling class. "We" should do this, "we" shouldn't do that, as if they had anything at
all to say about what our rulers do. This is the normal stance among the bootlicking intelligentsia of
course. But what is it doing among progressives and radicals? Even if their stance is seen to be not
exactly that of consultants, but that of citizens making demands upon their government, what makes
them think that the government ever listens? I think this attitude -- the "we should" attitude -- is rooted in
part at least in the fact that most progressives still believe in nations and governments. They believe that
this is "our" country, and that this is "our" government, or at least should be. So Kevin Danaher says that "we
should get control of the government." They identify themselves as Americans, or Germans, or Mexicans, or Swedes. So they are
constantly advising and making demands that 'their' government should do this and that. If they would
reject nationalism altogether, and states and governments, they could begin to see another way.
154
The American legal system is inaccessible to Asian Americans in its Western

conceptions of entirely autonomous, individual rights
Chang 93 (Robert S. Chang, Toward an Asian American Legal Scholarship: Critical Race eory, Post-
structuralism, and Narrative Space, 81 CALIF. L. REV. 1241 (1993).h p://digitalcommons.law.sea
leu.edu/faculty/411)
Most discussions of race and the law focus on African Americans to the exclusion of non-African
American racial minorities. To limit the discussion in this way is a mistake. Analogies may be drawn between the discrimination
experienced by different disempowered groups, but care must be taken to avoid confusing one form of discrimination with another. The
dominant group has used various methods of discrimination, legal and extralegal, against different
disempowered groups. The differences between these groups must be considered in a discourse on
race and the law if we are to use law as a means to help end racial oppression. Both traditional civil rights work
and critical race theory have failed to account sufficiently for these differences. Traditional civil rights work presents two problems for Asian
Americans. The first is a matter of coverage; the second, a matter of theory. By coverage, I mean that civil rights advocates
sometimes forget to consider Asian Americans when they are battling discrimination. For example,
when civil rights advocates have sued to correct underrepresentation of minorities on police forces,
Asian Americans have often not been included in the lawsuits.109 As a result, they have not been
included in any corrective measures following the lawsuit1.10 Coverage, although problematic, is not fatal. It can be
corrected if civil rights advocates consider the needs of Asian Americans. The theoretical difficulties present a greater problem. First,
traditional civil rights work, with its foundation in liberal political philosophy, is based upon
conceptions of individual rights.1 1 ' These rights are premised on the notion of an individuated
autonomous self. 1 2 However, this individuated autonomous self may not reflect the reality of all
Asian Americans and the cultures from which they come. Many Asian philosophies and cultures have
at their center the concept of no-self." 3 And at least one Asian language does not have a word for "I"
that corresponds to "I" in English." 4 Thus, for some Asian Americans, traditional civil rights work may
be at odds with their self-conception and worldview. Furthermore, traditional civil rights work has
often resulted in court opinions advocating color-blind constitutionalism, which provides only
incremental improvement while legitimizing white racial domination. I" Thus, civil rights work, while providing
some important benefits, will ultimately be unable to meet the needs of Asian Americans because of its coverage and theoretical problems."
Asian American Legal Scholarship has a vested interest in helping to flesh out the racial paradigm. Asian American Legal Scholarship is needed
22
to address the coverage problem in both traditional civil rights work and in critical race scholarship. Perceptions fostered by the model
minority myth contribute to the lack of coverage.
155
L: White Supremacy/State Model Minority

****The state produces the figure of the Model Minority as the condition of
possibility for the white supremacist carceral regime which destroys black and brown
life. The school is a key site for the production which must be challenged.
Rodrguez 05 [Dylan, Asian-American Studies in the Age of the Prison Industrial Complex: Departures
and Re-narrations]
Perhaps the pivotal enunciatively moment for the rise of the contemporary U.S. policing and imprisonment regimes was the cultural watershed
of Barry Goldwaters 1964 presidential campaign. This mobilization, while failing in its bid to win Goldwater the
executive office, was wildly successful in generating a re-coded racial discourse of policing and
criminality that targeted the Black and Brown urban poor and working classes for political
neutralization, if not strategic social liquidation. Articulated at the historical pinnacle of the reformist
civil rights movement and in the face of accelerating and substantively radical Black, Native American,
Puerto Rican, Chicano, Asian, and domestic Third Worldist liberation struggles, Goldwaters rhetoric
resonated with the anxieties of a white civil society whose hegemony appeared to be in a state of
epochal crisis. Law and order was thus simultaneously a cultural production and political agenda, offering a white national community
the promise of militarized rescue as well as a sweeping structure of collective sentimentality. Goldwaters 1964 acceptance of the Republican
presidential nomination contrived an intersection of racial and criminal discourse, pitched to a white electorate ostensibly reeling from
the civic disruptions of Black and Brown urban rebellions. Rendering
a vision of white civil society bound by a
rearticulated reactionary nationalist solidarity, Goldwater in fact reawakened the dream of a militarized
white supremacist state amidst a crumbling American apartheid. His political fantasy, which amounted to a vision of
post-civil rights White Reconstruction, was the harbinger of a quickly cementing common sense: Now, my fellow Americans, the tide has been
running against freedom. Our people have followed false prophets. We must, and we shall, return to proven waysnot because they are old,
but because they are true.... And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and
that is freedom... freedombalanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the license of the mob and of the jungle.9 [emphasis added]
Echoing the racial juxtapositions of Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness, Goldwater elaborated a white populist conception of liberty and
security defined through the militarized containment and repression of the lurking urban-mob-jungle threat. His declaration of veritable
domestic warfare in this nomination speech prefaced Richard Nixons watershed electoral victory in 1968 and established a crucial discursive
political schema for a reconfigured police prison hegemony. Foreshadowing what would soon become Nixons political mantra, Goldwater
elaborates, Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any
government, and a government that cannot fulfill that purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens. History
shows
usdemonstrates that nothingnothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public
officials to keep the streets from bullies and marauders.10 The exponential growth of the police
industry in the United States closely followed the dictates of the Goldwater-Nixon law and order bloc,
carried on the strength of a putative political mandate to reorganize, remilitarize, and refocus on the
restoration of a white national hegemony in crisis.11 An allegory of bodily confrontation between
innocent white vulnerabilitya construct that crystallized notions of white communal and bodily
security across geographies and classesand Black-Brown criminal physicality instantiated a binding
historical telos for the post-1960s White Reconstruction, a post-civil rights revival that required the
simultaneous and decisive disruption of U.S. based anti-racist and anti-imperialist liberation movements
and their counterpart urban insurrections. Law and orders discursive structure was, in an important
sense, a political articulation of white liberation, articulated through white civil societys awakening to
the possibility of its own discursive material disarticulation: the militant reformism of the Civil Rights
Movement had not only broken the legal structures of segregation and Jim Crow, but had additionally
foreshadowed a lapse and spasm within the white supremacist state and body politic. The emergence of this
definitive era of domestic and international liberation movements throughout the 1960s and 1970s encompassed political and juridical
assertions that directly antagonized the broadly conceived premises of the nations historical formation, while substantively challenging and
destabilizing the post-emancipation juridical and social structures of American white supremacy, including formalized segregation, wanton
racist police violence, lynching, and illegal land occupation. Such notions as Black liberation and Indian sovereignty, in particular,
represented unanswerable demands on the presumptive white body politic, precisely because both were phrased as domestic claims on the
United States of America, putatively blaspheming the sanctity of historically white localities. Additionally,
the racialized class
displacements of rapid de-industrialization in urban and rural centers of production offered fodder for
156
white civil societys closing of ranksthat is, white supremacist capitals production of Black and Brown
underground workers (including undocumented people and those in extralegal occupations) and non-
workers represented, to the Goldwater-Nixon bloc, the very picture of a riot waiting to happen. Articulated through and against the
progressive and radical counter-communities that threatened the transformation of the American social formation and abolition of white
supremacist socio-cultural structures, the White Reconstruction reasserted an essential stewardship of the state through the versatile
mechanism of racial criminalization. The emergent technology of crime production was spurred by Nixons rise to national power and the
subsequent, massive federal and local investment in militarized police forces.12 In this context, Goldwaters ominous forecast of tyrannys onset
shot through a civic consciousness that was absorbing the possibility of white freedoms rollback, and while white selfdefense formed the
template for an aggressively militarizing state, the law-and-order message remained intensely grandiose and global. Goldwater was, in an
important sense, foreshadowing U.S. white civil societys globalization, envisioning a reconstruction that reached across the domestic sphere
and constituted a hegemonic white Atlantic: I believe that we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to its extension tomorrow ... . I
can see and I suggest that all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic civilization,
the whole world of Europe unified and free, trading openly across its borders, communicating openly
across the world. This is a goal far, far more meaningful than a moon shot. ... I can also seeand all free men must
thrill tothe events of this Atlantic civilization joined by its great ocean highway to the United States. What a destiny, what a destiny can be
ours to stand as a great central pillar linking Europe, the Americans and the venerable and vital peoples and cultures of the Pacific. I can see a
day when all the Americas, North and South, will be linked in a mighty system, a system in which the errors and misunderstandings of the past
will be submerged one by one in a rising tide of prosperity and interdependence ... . But we pledgewe pledge that human sympathywhat
our neighbors to the South call that attitude of simpaticono less than enlightened self-interest will be our guide.13 Couched
in the
rhetoric of civic security and personal safety, this discourse offered white civil society political rescue
and a new structure of collective sentimentality, mobilized through a intersectional rearticulation of
classical American conceptions of both race and crime. The convocation of the Nixon administration in 1968
involved a wildly successful extrapolation and institutionalization of the seminal Goldwaterist rhetoric. A newly authenticated and electorally
validated White Reconstruction facilitated the transformation of the policing, criminal justice, and imprisonment apparatuses by integrating
the transparently racist codings of law and order into their collectiveand always overlappingmodus operandi. In subsequent years, this
process has even fabricated a novel schooling= penal nexus, wherein a veritable war on young people of color has emerged, according to
Giroux, as an attempt to contain, warehouse, control, and even eliminate all those groups and social formations that the market finds
expendable.14 (I will discuss this nexus in more detail below.) Law and orders production of a racially pathologized criminality has, in this way,
provided the juridical torque necessary for new military and carceral organizations, technologies, and territories. Militarized policing, criminal
justice, and mass-scale imprisonment have emerged since 1964 as socially productive technologies, forging an indelible linkage between the
site and scene of the prison, the structured impunity of newly expanded and empowered police forces, and the corresponding world of a
consolidated and coherentthough always endangerednormative white civil society. It
is within this context that Asian
Americans qua model minorities have become pivotal social and cultural figures-fabrications,
positioned at the intersection of multiple racial antagonisms and situated within a specific projection of
white political desire. The cultural production and statecraft of the Asian-American model minority,
reproduced and institutionally inscribed by the administrative culture of dominant schooling institutions
(and accentuated in higher education), is wedged in a peculiar symbiosis with this militarization and penal
pedagogical shift in the war on poor urban Black and Brown youth. The Asian-American model minority,
as a cultural fabrication situated within a particular historical conjuncture, is something even more
than (as Prashad correctly asserts) a weapon in the war against black America: it is both the condition of
possibility and embodied site of reproduction of this domestic war, a seminal move in the production of
a national(ist) multiculturalism that fortifies and extrapolates historical white supremacist social
formationsincluding and especially the burgeoning U.S. prison regime. As such, the Asian-Americanist
contestation of the model minority myth as inaccurate, deceptive, (anti-Asian) racist, and=or an erasure of the material subordination of
poor and disenfranchised Asian populations tends to elide critical confrontation with the militarized and hegemonic discursive and social
structure through which the myth itself has been articulated. The rendition of the Asian immigrant model minority both facilitates and
constitutes the expansion of state capacities in the trajectory of mass-based Black/Brown punishment, providing the schema for an
ascendantthough insistently multicultural White-Asian alliance that manifests conspicuously in such instances as the 1980s and 1990s
neoconservative movement to end affirmative action policies (in which Asian Americans were continuously solicited and foregrounded as
allies of a white supremacist pro-meritocracy argument)29 and the post-1992 rapprochement between the stubbornly brutal Los Angeles
Police Department and prominent Korean=Asian-American community leaders. The latter example provides an opportune moment of inquiry,
if only because current Asian Americanist formations (including Asian American Studies) have largely undertheorizedif not altogether
ignoredthe implications of such a political coalescence. Emblematic of this reactionary Korean AmericanLAPD coalition was a 2002 event
entitled The March Against Crime, which occurred in the shadow of a massive and nationally publicized investigation of LAPDs Ramparts
Division, a scandal that revealed widespread corruption, brutality, and false testimony by LAPD officers resulting in up to 3000 wrongful
convictions, an overwhelming number of which were Black, Chicana=o, Mexicana=o, and Latina=o.30 In the midst of these public revelations of
the Ramparts Division as the instantiation of a low-intensity, localized urban state terrorist campaign against Black=Brown communities in Los
Angeles, the Korean Youth & Community Center (KYCC) and the Los Angeles Police Department (Wilshire Division) widely circulated a flyer and
157
email which announced, in resonance with Goldwaters rhetorical precedent: 10 YEARS AFTER THE L.A. RIOTS Our City comes together to
CLEAN our Streets. The flyer=email additionally urged its readers to speak out AGAINST CRIME and GRAFFITI; and show our STRENGTH as a
Com- munity. Contextualized by the heightened antagonism provoked by the Ramparts scandal, as well as the LAPDs infamous record of
militarizedand often spectacularviolence against racially- profiled people and communities, this presumptive invoking of our Community
extrapolates the limits of the Goldwaterist racial paradigm. In fact, this Korean-American call for a police-powered street cleansing bespeaks
the political logic of a
The figure of the model minority is the condition of possibility for the anti-black and
brown militarization of the school
and Re-narrations]
The conjoined rhetoric of the Moynihan-Lewis intellectual bloc was famously couched as an alleged social science of embedded Black=Negro
(for Moynihan) and Mexican=Puerto Rican (for Lewis) cultural pathology, and suggested the essentialized site of family structure as the
source of a self-perpetuating defeatism. Moynihans introduction pronounced, The
fundamental problem... is that of family
structure. The evidencenot final, but powerfully persuasiveis that the Negro family in the urban
ghettos is crumbling. The future U.S. Senators notorious ruminations on the Black familys Tangle of Pathology (see Chapter IV of
The Negro Family) helped shape a white civic consciousness that sought explanation for the persistent antagonismand lurking crisisthat
poor urban Black communities embodied within the white racial imaginary of American civil society. In essence, the Negro community has
been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress
of the group as a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the Negro male and, in consequence, on a great many Negro women as well.15
Lewis similarly offered, The culture of poverty... is not only an adaptation to a set of objective conditions of the larger society. Once it comes
into existence it tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation because of its effect on the children.
By the time slum
children are age six or seven they have usually absorbed the basic values and attitudes of their
subculture and are not psychologically geared to take full advantage of changing conditions or increased
opportunities which may occur in their lifetime.16 Lewis extended ruminations on matrifocality as a central element of
various cultures of poverty echoed Moynihans contentions while supplementing them with a more definitive set of conclusions. It appeared,
for Lewis, that poor urban Puerto Ricans were an extrusive presence in white civil society, a
population that in his terms
approximated a culturalism conception of racial pathology and incipient sub humanity: [O]n the whole it
seems to me that [the culture of poverty] is a relatively thin culture. There is a great deal of pathos, suffering, and emptiness among those who
live in the culture of poverty. It does not provide much support or long-range satisfaction and its encouragement of mistrust tends to magnify
helplessness and isolation. Indeed, the poverty of culture is one of the crucial aspects of the culture of poverty.17 [emphasis added] Crucial to the
production of the academic and popular consensus around the culture of poverty was that it was embroidered onto the racial formation of the
post1960s White Reconstruction. Specifically, Moynihan and Lewis (and their ideological contemporaries in
academia, policy think tanks, and government) helped suture a white liberal common sense that
apprehended the persistence of Black=Brown poverty, disfranchisement, and structured vulnerability to premature
death18 as the inevitable (though tragic) production of self-defeating cultural values and a retarding matriarchal family structure. Lewis
schematization of a poverty of culture pervasive among the Black=Brown poor19 in this sense hinted at
something more ominous: to the extent that culture is commonly understood as the primary and constituent labor of human
beings across varying scales of community and social intercourse, Lewis implied that there were people in the United States that were simply
ill-equipped to either contribute or survive the rigors of the postwarand embryonic Cold Warnational telos. Enriching
and
broadening the scope of this reconstituted racial common sense was the conspicuous proposition of an
Asian immigrant model minority, an image that obtained wide circulation with the paradigmatic U.S.
News and World Report article of 1966. At a time when Americans are awash in worry over the plight of racial minoritiesOne
such minority, the nations 300,000 Chinese-Americans, is winning wealth and respect by dint of its own hard work. In any Chinatown from San
Francisco to New York, you discover youngsters at grips with their studies.... Still being taught in Chinatown is the old idea that people should
depend on their own effortsnot a welfare checkin order to reach Americas promised land. Visit
Chinatown U.S.A. and
you find an important racial minority pulling itself up from hardship and discrimination to become a
model of self-respect and achievement in todays America.20 Numerous Asian American Studies scholars and activists
have examined the genesis of the contemporary model minority racial imaginary as the (perhaps required) discursive complement to the
sustained post-civil rights era subordination of Black and Brown populations. Vijay Prashad has gone so far as to attest that to the extent that
Blacks constitute, in DuBois famous formulation, a
categorical problem for the racial formation of the United
States, Asians (for Prashad, South Asians in particular) embody a solution. Prashad writes, Many folks feel, it
seems, that to make positive statements about what they consider to be a race is just fine.... These are not only statements of admiration.
158
Apart from being condescending, such gestures remind me that I am to be the perpetual solution to what is seen as the crisis of black America.
I am to be a weapon in the war against black America.21 Robert S. Chang, staking a claim for a narrative space that moves beyond a black-
white racial paradigm, additionally argues that model minorityism has obscured the oppression of Asian Americans.
This history of discrimination and violence, as well as the contemporary problems of Asian Americans, are obscured by the portrayal of Asian
Americans as a model minority. Asian Americans are portrayed as hardworking, intelligent, and successful. This description represents a
sharp break from past stereotypes of Asians as sneaky, obsequious, or inscrutable.22 Further positing the dual harm sustained by the
model minority rendition, Chang continues, In
addition to hurting Asian Americans, the model minority myth works
a dual harm by hurting other racial minorities and poor whites who are blamed for not being successful
like Asian Americans. African-Americans and Latinos and poor whites are told, look at those Asians
anyone can make it in this country if they really try. This blame is justified by the meritocratic thesis
supposedly proven by the example of Asian Americans. This blame is then used to campaign against
government social services for these undeserving minorities and poor whites and against affirmative
action. To the extent that Asian Americans accept the model minority myth, we are complicitous in the
oppression of other racial minorities and poor whites.23 Notably, critics like Chang fail to elaborate how the production of
model minority discourse has informed and constituted an overlapping police-corrections agenda that funnels pre-legitimated state violence
(from preemptive police detention to street assassinations qua justifiable homicide) through the sieve of contemporary racial profiling
practices: that is, model minorities will (with relative exception) tend not to be the categorical racial targets of the militarized law and order
states most acute exercises of bodily violence and juridical punishment. To contest and revise Changs summation, far more is at stake than
differential access to government social services and (a now non-existent) affirmative action. While
there is truth to Prashads
and Changs assertions that the model minority imaginary amounts to a cynical, white supremacist
objectification of Asians as a political and cultural weapon against other racial minorities, (though I am
less inclined than Chang to contend that it is either similarly or significantly utilized against poor whites) what remains undertheorized in
Asian American critique is the historical linkage between model minorityism and the militarized cultural production of the law and order
state. Such a theoretical examination requires a particular focus on the political and cultural technology of criminalizationdefined here as the
social and political apparatuses through which (racial) categories of deviance and criminality are invented, refined, and formalized into the
states mobilizations of policing and jurisprudence. By way of example: the contemporary technology of criminalization has reached across the
emergence of the Asian American model minority figure in the genesis of a veritable war on young people of color, waged on the street and in
the increasingly militarized sites of urban public schools. Structurally and discursively linked to what scholar-activist Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls
the rise of domestic militarization,24 the
school is becoming a site of strategic penal management and social
neutralization, and projects the racist law and order imperative into an age-based preemptive strike:
One way or another, if youre young, poor, and of color, cops will find a way into your classroom.
Cultural theorist and critical pedagogue Henry Giroux, in an elaboration of Gilmores schematic, has
suggested that the rise to prominence of school based zero tolerance laws ought to be read as a
material and juridical metaphor for hollowing out the state and expanding the forces of domestic
militarization,26 further arguing that the popular cultural and ideological effect of these laws is to mobilize racialized codes and race-
based moral panics that portray black and brown urban youth as a new and frighteningly violent threat.27 Here, the technology of
criminalization becomes the point of transfer for an institutional transformation: schools
simultaneously become sites of carceral militarization (against poor, racially pathologized youth) and
disciplinary youth interpellation. According to Giroux, While schools share some proximity to prisons in that they are both about
disciplining the body... little has been written about how zero tolerance policies in schools resonate powerfully with prison practices that
signify a shift away from treating the body as a social investment (i.e., rehabilitation) to viewing it as a threat to security, demanding control,
surveillance, and punishment.... [S]uch practices have exceeded the boundaries of the prison-industrial complex, providing models and
perpetuating a shift in the very nature of educational leadership and pedagogy.28 The cultural
production and statecraft of the
Asian-American model minority, reproduced and institutionally inscribed by the administrative culture
of dominant schooling institutions (and accentuated in higher education), is wedged in a peculiar
symbiosis with this militarization and penal pedagogical shift in the war on poor urban Black and Brown
youth. The Asian-American model minority, as a cultural fabrication situated within a particular
historical conjuncture, is something even more than (as Prashad correctly asserts) a weapon in the war against
black America: it is both the condition of possibility and embodied site of reproduction of this
domestic war, a seminal move in the production of a national(ist) multiculturalism that fortifies and
extrapolates historical white supremacist social formationsincluding and especially the burgeoning
U.S. prison regime. As such, the Asian-Americanist contestation of the model minority myth as
inaccurate, deceptive, (anti-Asian) racist, and/or an erasure of the material subordination of poor and
disenfranchised Asian populations tends to elide critical confrontation with the militarized and
159
hegemonic discursive and social structure through which the myth itself has been articulated. Thus,
against both the patronizing liberal racist valorizations and Asian Americanist contestations of the Asian
model minoritys alleged scholastic, economic, and cultural achievement sits a durable (though
dynamic) contextual backdrop of state and state-sanctioned racial violence. The preliminary genealogy of post-
1970s technologies of criminalization that I am briefly outlining here suggests that the lever through which Asian-American decriminalization
obtains its social truthvis-a`-vis a self-fulfilling white social imaginary that claims to witness, and subsequently proclaims the creeping
ascendance of studious, law-abiding Asian minorities is the same cultural=political fulcrum that historically militarizes white civil society
against its more ominous Black=Brown racial antagonists and cultural pathogens. The rendition of the Asian immigrant model minority both
facilitates and constitutes the expansion of state capacities in the trajectory of mass-based Black=Brown punishment, providing the schema for
an ascendantthough insistently multicultural white-Asian alliance that manifests conspicuously in such instances
as the 1980s and 1990s neoconservative movement to end affirmative action policies (in which Asian
Americans were continuously solicited and foregrounded as allies of a white supremacist pro-
meritocracy argument)29 and the post-1992 rapprochement between the stubbornly brutal Los Angeles Police Department and
prominent Korean=Asian-American community leaders. The latter example provides an opportune moment of inquiry,
if only because current Asian Americanist formations (including Asian American Studies) have largely
undertheorizedif not altogether ignoredthe implications of such a political coalescence. Emblematic of
this reactionary Korean AmericanLAPD coalition was a 2002 event entitled The March Against Crime, which occurred in the shadow of a
massive and nationally publicized investigation of LAPDs Ramparts Division, a scandal that revealed widespread corruption, brutality, and false
testimony by LAPD officers resulting in up to 3000 wrongful convictions, an overwhelming number of which were Black, Chicana=o,
Mexicana=o, and Latina=o.30 In the midst of these public revelations of the Ramparts Division as the instantiation of a low-intensity, localized
urban state terrorist campaign against Black=Brown communities in Los Angeles, the Korean Youth & Community Center (KYCC) and the Los
Angeles Police Department (Wilshire Division) widely circulated a flyer and email which announced, in resonance with Goldwaters rhetorical
precedent: 10 YEARS AFTER THE L.A. RIOTS Our City comes together to CLEAN our Streets. The flyer=email additionally urged its readers to
speak out AGAINST CRIME and GRAFFITI; and show our STRENGTH as a Community. Contextualized by the heightened antagonism provoked
by the Ramparts scandal, as well as the LAPDs infamous record of militarizedand often spectacularviolence against racially profiled people
and communities, this presumptive invoking of our Community extrapolates the limits of the Gold wateriest racial paradigm. In fact, this
Korean-American call for a police-powered street cleansing bespeaks the political logic of a
multicultural civil alliance cut on the teeth of the states mobilization against its non-Korean=Asian,
racially pathologized Others. Chang, writing in the immediate aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles
insurrection, inscribes the context for this emergent white-Asian alliance in his mystification of a Korean
American positionality between racist whites and angry Blacks: This resentment, fueled by poor economic
conditions, can flare into anger and violence. Asian Americans, the model minority, serve as convenient scapegoats, as Korean Americans in
Los Angeles discovered during the 1992 riots. Many Korean Americans now view themselves as human shields in a complicated racial
hierarchy, caught between the racism of the white majority and the anger of the black minority.31
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L: Heg
Narratives of American Exceptionalism and hegemony are founded not only on
economics but on political ideology based in a fear of the Orient this reinforces the
superiority of Europeanism and Americanism and justifies imperialism
Bryant 2013 (Aidan Bryant, UX Researcher at Google, Iron Man: A Case Study in Orientalism and
Hegemony)
The concept of Orientalism was first proposed by Edward Said in his 1978 work Orientalism. Said argued that Orientalism
is a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient (p. 3). Western
powers create their own construct and image of Eastern nations (the Orient), usually employing willful
ignorance or intentional misinformation of actual Eastern traditions, phenotypes, and temperament.
No distinction of ethnicity or nationality is made, blurring Eastern nations into one homogeneous,
nebulous, and indefinableother. The purpose of this construct is to allow Europeans (and now
Americans) to emphasizethe strength and identity of their own cultures by setting it against a strange
and almost invariably-inferior other. Perhaps, most importantly, Said argues that this
construction is an inextricable part of European identity. He claims, the Orient is an integral part
of European materialcivilization and culture (p. 2), and that European culture gained in strength and
identity bysetting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self. (p.
3)Cultures that are often blanketed by Orientalism include most of the East Asian world,most notably
China, Japan, the Arabian Peninsula, Indochina, the Middle East, and India.However, the caricature of most
relevance and interest now, in the 21st century, is the Arab and/or Muslim. Derrida (as cited in Hall, 1997) argued that with polarized
dialectics comes an inherentdominance of one side or the other. For example, in the male/female dialectic, the male is thesocietally favored
side. In the case of orientalism, the West is the dominant and favorable figure inthe polarization of the
East/West dialectic. The concept of hegemony, credited to Antonio Gramsci, was a broader interpretation of Karl Marxs theories on
economic and social inequality (Lull, 2003). Marx argued that economicstatus was the greatest factor in predicting social differences.
However, in todays society there arefar more factors than money complicating the issue of social domination. Gramsci introduced
theconcept of hegemony, a construct in which one group exerts power over another by force,consent, or a combination of the two
(Croteau & Hoynes, 2002, p. 165).In media studies, hegemony is often used to describe how media companies
propagate certain images. For example, Fox News broadcasts feature conservative framing. This can be anexample of hegemony
because in Western society, the media present audiences with a veryselective and carefully tailored information. The audience consents to
this consumption but is stillsubject to the media decisions of Fox News. The audience may not realize that the media messagesare
presented in a certain way, and therefore still believe that they have freedom of choice in their consumption. While the audience does have
a choice to consume media, or to not consumemedia they have no choice as to the type of content to which they consent.The
hegemonic effects of the media today are vast, particularly upon culture. Lull arguesthat media companies today have the power to take
grounded institutions, such as religion, andconvert them into pop culture. Every religion can be considered a unique culture, so it is not so
far removed to say that the media can also convert, for example, a national culture into pop fodder.The media do not necessarily change
cultures and religions themselves; however, they do have the power to create a generalized (and not necessarily accurate)
understanding. That which is depictedin the media becomes our reality. As this essay later reviews, the media have commodified
theArab people. If this is the case, we need to critically examine how such commodified images of culture,
religion, and people could become our reality.Orientalism has roots in hegemony. The idea of a
powerful West creating a barbaric East is hegemonic, as the West is deliberately creating an inferior
other in order to promote and declaretheir own dominance and superiority. Once the dominant
media have taken hold of these imagesand begun to disseminate them, there is little that can be done
to prevent the spread and influenceof these images. If othering images of the East are the only ones
that exist in Western media, it isdifficult for audiences to gain a more balanced, truthful impression of
Eastern cultures.Orientalism was originally conceptualized around European attitudes toward Easternnations, it can easily be adapted
to the United States. When we examine Orientalism in acontemporary context, particularly in mass-mediated context, the United States is
a powerful, or even the central, player, simply because of its irreplaceable presence in the global media market.However, the hegemonic
presence of America in the Orientalism debates today has some uniquecharacteristics. American Exceptionalism (as proposed by Nayak
and Malone, 2009), a modernrethinking of Western hegemony and Orientalism. Nayak and Malone claim that, according to
thetheory of American Exceptionalism, the United States has a unique place in history,
differingfundamentally and qualitatively from all other countries; it also emphasizes a God-given
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destinyto guide the rest of the world according to the mainstream US political, social, and economic
worldview (p. 254). Exceptionalism extends beyond Orientalism and others every nation that is not
the United States, creating what is tantamount to the social classes of us and them. AsGramsci
predicted, the United States has based its hegemonic blanket on much more thaneconomics, including
political ideology, religion, and cultural norms. Most of these are nowdisseminated through the media.
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L: Humanism
Humanism justifies imperial intervention in the Eastern Other while appearing benign
and ignorant of its own violence
Anderson 2015 (Tim Anderson has a PhD from Macquarie University, and is a senior lecturer at
University of Sydney http://www.globalresearch.ca/western-intervention-and-the-colonial-
mindset/5425633, Western Intervention and the Colonial Mindset)
How do western anti-imperialists come to similar conclusions to those of the White House? First there is the anarchist or ultra-left
idea of opposing all state power. This leads to attacks on imperial power yet, at the same time, indifference or opposition to
independent states. Many western leftists even express enthusiasm at the idea of toppling an independent
state, despite knowing the alternatives, as in Libya, will be sectarianism, bitter division and the destruction of important
national institutions. Second, reliance on western media sources has led many to believe that the civilian
massacres in Syria were the work of the Syrian Government. Nothing could be further from the truth.
A careful reading of the evidence will show that almost all the civilian massacres in Syria (Houla, Daraya,
Aqrab, Aleppo University, East Ghouta) were carried out by sectarian Islamist groups, and sometimes falsely
blamed on the government, in attempts to attract greater humanitarian intervention. The third element
which distorts western anti-imperial ideas is the constrained and self-referential nature of discussions. The parameters are policed
by corporate gatekeepers, but also reinforced by broader western illusions of their own civilising influence .
A few western
journalists have reported in sufficient detail to help illustrate the Syrian conflict, but their perspectives
are almost always conditioned by the western liberal and humanitarian narratives. Indeed, the most
aggressive advocacy of humanitarian intervention in recent years has come from liberal media outlets like the UK Guardian and
corporate-NGOs such as Avaaz, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Those few journalists who maintain an
independent perspective, like Arab-American Sharmine Narwani, publish mostly outside the better-known corporate media
channels. Imperial culture
also conditions the humanitarian aid industry. Ideological pressure comes not
just from the development banks but also the NGO sector, which maintains a powerful sense of
mission, even a saviour complex about its relations with the rest of the world. While development
cooperation may have once included ideas of compensation for colonial rule, or assistance during a transition to independence,
today it has become a $100 billion a year industry, with decision making firmly in the hands of western financial agencies. Quite
apart from the dysfunction of many aid programs, this industry is deeply undemocratic, with powerful colonial overtones .
Yet
many western aid workers really believe they can save the poor peoples of the world. That cultural
impact is deep. Aid agencies not only seek to determine economic policy, they often intervene in
political and even constitutional processes. This is done in the name of good governance, anti-
corruption or democracy strengthening. Regardless of the problems of local bodies, it is rarely
admitted that foreign aid agencies are the least democratic players of all. For example, at the turn of this
century, as Timor Leste gained its independence, aid bodies used their financial muscle to prevent the development of public
institutions in agriculture and food security, and pushed that new country into creating competitive political parties, away from a
national unity government. Seeking an upper hand amongst the donor community, Australia then aggravated the subsequent
political division and crisis of 2006. With ongoing disputes over maritime boundaries and petroleum resources, Australian
academics and advisers were quick to seize on that moment of weakness to urge that Timor Lestes main party be reformed, that
its national army be sidelined or abolished and that the country adopt English as a national language. Although all these pressures
were resisted, it seemed in that moment that many Australian friends of Timor Leste imagined they had inherited the little country
from the previous colonial rulers. This can be the peculiar western sense of solidarity .
Imperial cultures have created a
great variety of nice-sounding pretexts for intervention in the former colonies and newly independent
countries. These pretexts include protecting the rights of women, ensuring good governance and
helping promote revolutions. The level of double-speak is substantial. Those interventions create
problems for all sides. Independent peoples have to learn new forms of resistance. Those of good will in
the imperial cultures might like to reflect on the need to decolonise the western mind. Such a process, I
suggest would require consideration of (a) the historically different views of the nation-state, (b) the important, particular functions
of post-colonial states, (c) the continued relevance and importance of the principle of self-determination, (d) the need to bypass a
systematically deceitful corporate media and (e) the challenge of confronting fond illusions over the supposed western civilising
influence. All
these seem to form part of a neo-colonial mindset, and may help explain the extraordinary
western blindness to the damage done by intervention.
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L: Western Epistemology
Orientalism is at the nexus of the Affirmatives epistemology rationalism, political
democracy, and individualism all gain their coherence through the opposition to the
Orient this logic continues to subordinate the Oriental Other through the discursive
construction of the other as object
Kamali, No date (sources late as 2000) (Masoud Kamali Department of Sociology University of
Uppsala)
Foucault emphasizes that power produces knowledge. They need each other for preserving and
guaranteeing continuity of a system that serves both power and knowledge. Therefore the triumph of
reason is the triumph of the alliance of power and knowledge. As Turner (1994:21) puts it, the
categories of criminal, insane and deviant are the manifestations of a scientific discourse by which
the normal and sane exercise power along a systematic dividing of sameness and difference. The
alliance of power and knowledge created whatever would be called the others. It could be the
insane, the criminal, the deviant or the orient. The modern reasonable man as the bearer of
knowledge and power needed the deviance of unreason for preserving and defining the normality of
reason. No matter if this man of reason was as Foucault believe a modern construction or, according
to Derrida a development of the old reasonable man with its roots in ancient Greece, unreason and
reason have been and are inseparable.5 Following this line of discussion, one can say that the Western
image of itself, the occident, was directly and necessarily connected to the discursive construction of
the other, the orient. The creation the paradigms of Orient and Occident is a manifestation of
Western dominance and colonial intentions and politics. Orientalism is a discourse constituted of a
network of categories, tables, and concepts by which the Orient is simultaneously defined and
controlled, To know is to subordinate (Turner, 1994:21) The role of colonialists and imperial politics
has been especially decisive in the constitution of Western image of Islam and the analysis of
oriental societies (Daniel, 1960; Southern 1962).6 Edward Said in his influential work, Orientalism,
insightfully presents the Western anti-Islamic and colonial policies formulated in the typology of
Orientalism and how it was used as a subordinating discourse on the part of westerners. Europe who
defined the Orient has itself been imprinted by what was called the Orient and therefore had a double-
sided relation to it. This was not only depended on the fact that the Orient is situated very close to
Europe, but also because it is there that Europe finds its best, richest and the oldest colonies, the
sources of its civilization and language, its rival in cultural sphere, and one of its most usual picture of
the others, as Said (1978) puts it. Europe began its sociopolitical project of creation of a European or
western identity since the eve of seventeenth century. Everything, rationalism, political democracy,
individualism, and in short, Europe was supposed to begin at Greeces border against the Orient a
constructed geographical line with great socio-cultural and political consequences for the whole world.
All properties that came to identify the West against the rest of the world, such as science, philosophy, democracy, were
presented to have their roots in the ancient Greece.7 The influences of non-western and in western tradition of the
philosophy of science, the Orient on Greek culture were intentionally ignored (Said, 1978; Bernal, 1991; King, 1999). As King
(1999:29) puts it: Histories of Western philosophy invariably begin with the Greeks and avoid the issue of African and Oriental
influences upon ancient Greek though. What is of particular interest is the absence of reference to the role played by Egyptian
and Oriental mystery tradition in the formulation of Greek philosophical ideas and approaches. The creation of a western
imagined world and the spreading of its joined universalistic ideas were highly Eurocentric attempts. The universal was nothing
more than the particular experiences of the western European understanding and socio-culturally embedded construction of
themselves and the others. Since, as Grace Jantzen (1995) arguments, the idea of a neutral, objective, and universal stance is
a fiction.8 She means that there have never existed neutral views or believes separated from a particular place, because: There
are no views from nowhere and there are no views from everywhere. There are only views from somewhere, and the
particular place will have an inescapable effect on what can be seen. If one assumes the contrary, then what is happening is
that one is falsely universalizing a particular perspective. Not only the universalistic value-free ideas about the world in
164
general and the Orient in particular is imagination and impossibility, but also the myth of value-free sociology, as Gouldner
(1973) puts it, remains just a myth for academic inner-circle discussions.9 Sociology, as many other sciences, has been used in
overall domain of sociopolitical and military power exercises in creating the colonial and post-colonial world order. As
mentioned earlier, the role of colonial and imperialistic politics has been especially decisive in the constitution of Western
images of Islam and the analysis of so called oriental societies. Oriental societies was generalized and categorized through
classical meta-theories, such as those of Marx and Weber, as societies with distinct properties that are completely different
from the West. The main driving force for understanding the Orient and establishing the tradition of
Orientalism came from controversies between Western countries religious rivalries and economic and
military conflicts with the powerful empires of the Orient, such as Ottoman and Persian empires.
Therefore, as Turner (1994:37) mentions, knowledge of the Orient cannot, therefore, be separated
from the history of European expansion into the Middle East and Asia. The mutual relationship and
influences between knowledge and power can be understood by the Western powers imperialistic
occupations during the Nineteenth and the beginning of Twentieth centuries. By 1878 Europe controlled
about 67 percent and by 1914, 84 percent of the landed surface of the world (Headrick, 1977:3).10 After World
War I the percentage rose even higher when England and France established mandates over some of the
succession states to the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East (Gordon, 1989:3).11 This made the West an
influential actor in the uneven development of other parts of the world and also an enemy. The enmity
of the West against other nations and peoples were not an imaginary construction, but a real
phenomenon that highly influenced both the intellectual and the indigenous groups of many non-
Western countries. Although Orientalism came during the Middle Ages to include even the non-Muslim
countries, such as China and India, it always has related to what was territorially called the Muslim
World and religiously Islam. The foundation of Orientalism was laid by John of Damascus (d. 748), a Christian scholar
who was a great friend of the Ummayad Caliph, Yazid (Sardar, 1999). His declarations, that Islam was a pagan cult, the Kaba in
Makkah an idol, and the prophet Muhammad an irreligious and licentious man, became the classical source of all Christian
writings on Islam (Sardar, 1999:18). The Christian Westerns attitudes towards Muslim countries have historically been very
negative and full of prejudices. Such a negative attitude made one of the very crucial bases in mobilizing simple European
peasants for crusades. The crusades had in its turn reinforced the dogmatic Orient/Occident categorization. The anti-Islamic
attitudes and understandings have consequently become a very part of western colonialism and self-perception.
165
L: Capitalism
Global capitalisms source is in knowledge. Discourses leave the West ahead of the
East.
ADITYA NIGAM, 2013, (Postcolonialism, Marxism and Non-Western Thought Centre For the Study
of Developing Societies)
To me it seems like a reaction of a European philosopher to the 'unfortunate'circumstance that, perhaps for the first time, the agenda of
thought is being decided independently of him. It is a bit like telling Dalits in India (and feminists in general) that they should fight against
capitalism and not against continuing caste or gender-based discrimination and exclusion. After all, these are just minor matters of 'cultural
identity, while the
fight against 'capitalism' is always a noble, w orld-histo rica l task, above all
considerations of'identity'. This, then, is really where postcolonial theory marks a decisive break, It takes for itself the right to
formulate its own agenda and decide its priorities in thought and scholarship. In the article cited above, Dabashi therefore, steers clear of the
main issue posed by Zabala's piece and one cannot really blame him for not having any particular interest in Zizek's persona or oeuvre , for, as
Walter Mignolo points out in a thoughtful contribution to the debate, the non- European thinker may have better things to do.5 A
contemporary non-European thinker or scholar might prefer to engage with her own times in more direct ways - that is to say, without the
necessary mediation of Western philosophy or thought; she might find, as many indeed do, the elaborate invocation of the (Western)
philosophical pantheon before even embarking on any journey of thought, irrelevant if not positively irritating. S/he may not find discourses
on communism and the truth of the proletariat' - as in the thought of a Slavoj Zizek or an Alain Badiou - at all relevant to her condition. For
one thing, these are discourses which, with each successive defeat in the real world, have retreated
more and more into abstract metaphysics, till there is no relation whatsoever, left between the actually
existing 'working class and say, the Zizekian proletariat. At another level, these discourses are still
lodged within a notion of time, that despite decades of critique, assigns the privilege of the present'
and 'contemporariness only to the W est - all others still remaining in the past. So when Zabala says
Zizek is the ideal philosopher of our times, it simply means, in this code the time of global capitalism '
as it manifests, and is understood, in the West. This is not to say, of course, that intellectuals in the East
are not interested in the struggle against capital and the questions posed by Marx's thought. They are,
but perhaps in a very different way. After all, in the current form, both the theory of capital as well as
of the struggle against it, is entirely based on the Western story, drawing on available bodies of
knowledge there. For one thing, many postcolonial scholars and thinkers would argue that more than
any reified notion of the logic of capital' the battle might actually lie in the domain of knowledge and
thought. It is here that 'capitalist relations' acquire a justification that makes it of a piece with the
question of colonial domination. Thus, for instance, Walter Mignolo (2011) argues Epistemic struggles take place in
the spheres of epistemic mediations and geopolitics of knowledge - for example, the cosmology upon which
corporations justify the expropriation of lands, and the cosmology upon which Indigenous projects of resistance and re-existence build their
arguments...Arguments are built, for example, in economic knowledge stating that economic growth is necessary for the well-being of
humanity but that at the same time developing underdeveloped lands that indigenous people do not develop...is detrimental to humanity."
(Mignolo 2011: 68)
Postcolonialism has shifted focus through exploiting the capitalist system from the
Industrial revolution. Euro-normality has been created as an aftereffect of this
postcolonialism.
ADITYA NIGAM, 2013, (Postcolonialism, Marxism and Non-Western Thought Centre For the Study
of Developing Societies)
This is a battle that has to be fought at the level of challenging this complex body of disciplinary
knowledges and nobody knows it better than the former colonial subjects that there is no immanent
logic of capital that pushes in the direction of capitalist development but the force of a formidable
'epistemic machine' backed by the naked power of the state. Zizek too is a product of that very same epistemic
machine, and is fully constituted by the understanding that Mignolo points towards. Thus, elsewhere, in response to Evo Morales' claim that
Everything began with the industrial revolution in 1750, which gave birth to the capitalist system...
Under capitalism, Mother Earth does not exist, instead there are raw materials, Zizek says, one is tempted to
add that, if there is one good thing about capitalism, it is that, precisely mother earth now longer exists. (Zizek 2010: 97). It is not
166
difficult to see that the logic behind this claim is precisely that this destruction of indigenous life-forms
by capitalism is progress - that until the whole earth has been transformed to a disenchanted saleable
commodity, we cannot claim to be truly modern. The whole point of many contemporary critiques of
capitalism is precisely that they reject, implicitly or explicitly, this narrative of progress. The difficulty is that
even when the theorist produced by this epistemic machine turns his or her gaze to the non-West, she can only see instances of retardation 6
The European trajectory remains the norm and so, every other story has to be narrated in terms of its
deviation from that norm This is what Sudipta Kaviraj refers to as the Euro-normality of the social sciences - the fact that Europe
constitutes the natural north of the compass of social and political theory (Kaviraj 2009: 189). The fact that ruling elites in these
postcolonial societies too partake of this vision and are therefore constantly engaged in the game of
'catching up', only exacerbates the situation. In fact, it gives a certain urgency to the need to break with
this Euro-normality, given that this 'catching up' is never benign and involves massive levels of
dislocation and violence - as one sees for example, in the restructuring of Indian cities or in the sharp conflicts around land
acquisition. This Euro-normality is not merely an affliction of the ruling elites of the postcolonial world but
structures, equally, the vision and thought of most Marxists. Thus most Indian Marxists too believe that it is necessary
for societies like Indias to catch up with the West, economically speaking. They too believe that the whole world must first become capitalist
in the western way, for any socialist project to succeed.7 Theory for us in the non-West has been a Western inheritance, all the more so for
Marxists whose understanding of Marxisms history still remains woefully tied to the story of its European/ Western episode. This despite the
fact that it was in the non-West that Marxism actually found its most enduring habitat. Even today this story remains to be written.
167
L: STEM (SP1)
The origins of STEM education and cyber-technology is military expansion today
shadow research campuses, run by corporations, are used to outsource university
STEM students to build nuclear weapons
Bui 16 (Long T, faculty member in the Department of Sociology and the Program in Science and
Technology Studies at Vassar College, A Better Life? Asian Americans and the Necropolitics of Higher
Education, Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader, Duke University Press, p161-174)//MNW
If the task of critical ethnic studies scholars is to think about the genocidal contexts and conditions that undergird our precarious lives, it is
imperative to consider the public university as more than an educational system and as a productive site for the war machine. Indeed the
first computer networks, which helped give birth to the Internet, were linked together at ucla, a proj-
ect funded by the U.S. Defense Department, giving he to the University of California as a powerhouse and node of
technological innovators, whose products of creative innovation feed directly into the warfare state.9 For six decades the University
of California held primary responsibility for managing the nations two major research centers under
the Department of Energy: Livermore and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Based in remote, clan- destine
locales, these laboratories employ an army of researchers conducting classi ed research and manufacturing, among other things, military
arsenals under the protective cloak and aegis of national security. uc faculty helped establish these laboratories, embedding them in the
universitys high-research culture.10 Fordecades the university played an illustrious role as the primary
institution of education running those top-secret sites, developing the first nuclear weapons and atomic
bombs under the Manhattan Project. While uc formally ended its ties to the laboratories in 2006, it
succeeded in the contractual rebid to lead the autonomous corporate entity created in the wake of
this split, called Lawrence Livermore National Security, a shrewd move that enables the hiring of uc
scientists in coveted government jobs.11 These shadow research campuses broker institutional links
between the corporate, military, and governmental networks and the university. While the University of
California is no longer in charge of the production or storage of nuclear weapons, it is still a central player in overseeing the
maintenance of U.S. nuclear technology. At the same time as a student movement has emerged to bring visibility to the plight
of undocumented students, Janet Napolitano, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security in charge of monitoring terrorist
activities and border patrol, assumed the presidency of the uc system in 2013an unusual choice, according to the Los Angeles Times, that
brings a national-level politician to a position usually held by an academic. For uc o cials Napolitano was a wise choice because her
background could enable her to uently administer the nuclear energy and weapons labs already run by the university.12 Before Napolitano
other uc presidents were entangled in U.S. imperial projects; for example, as superintendent of tribal education in the Philippines, David
Barrows was responsible for forcibly assimilating and reforming Americas largest colony at the turn of the twentieth century. e study of
necropower in higher education necessitates not just a demilitarizing plan of action but what Sarita See calls a decolonized eye open to
seeing and unwinding the imperial structures that bind us.13 The fight for life over the machinery of death continues to make waves. Inspired
by the principles of nonviolence, the Coalition to Demilitarize, composed of community leaders and students, since 2002 has been throwing
light on the crisis situation bubbling under the veneer of intellectual work and academic enterprise. e nuclear abolitionists nd it is their
responsibility to do whatever they can to prevent the uc Regents from facilitating nuclear militarism.14 is prompted a No More Nukes in
Our Name! hunger strike at uc Berkeley in 2007 during a meeting where the regents were discussing cutbacks in employee pensions and
when the United States was planning to upgrade its nuclear weaponry to possibly fight North Korea and terrorism around the world.15 The
current U.S. nuclear weapons program, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, hinges on ucs for-
pro t business partnership model with the Bechtel Corporation and other industrial development
companies to facilitate the proposed construction of hydrogen bomb and plutonium bomb pits (not
manufactured since 1949). It is no coincidence that the reinvigorated militarization of the country and
necropoliticalization of higher education occurred at a time when the number of foreign-born scientists
working in the United States had doubled and college students from militarizing countries like China,
Japan, India, and South Korea soared. (International students account for 40 percent of all doctoral degrees in science and
engineering granted in the country.)16 Almost 70 percent of Asian PhDs in the United States earn their degrees in
the life sciences, physical sciences, and engineering, an upward trend as the hard sciences receive
heavier promotion and funding to bolster the number of potential workers able to directly enhance
Americas global standing as the most powerful nation. In the so-called post-American Asian Century, when scienti c
know-how gives industrializing Asian nations a comparative advantage in their bidding for world power against the United States, skilled
Asian workers are valuable players in leveraging a new world order. In light of all this, it behooves scholars to move away from discussing the
168
Asian model minority myth as a false stereotype or xating on the bamboo ceiling faced by Asian professionals in their lucrative careers and
begin initiating tough conversations about the lethal costs of their labor productivity.
The model minority myth is a tool to create neoliberal subjects who contribute to the
academic-military-industrial complex
Bui 16 (Long T, faculty member in the Department of Sociology and the Program in Science and
Technology Studies at Vassar College, A Better Life? Asian Americans and the Necropolitics of Higher
Education, Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader, Duke University Press, p161-174)//MNW
The University of California is slowly moving away from its historic legacy as an all-white institution (though the faculty remains
overwhelmingly white and male); now Asian students are not simply model minorities but institutional model
majorities, paragons of academic excellence and the upstand- ing good life offered by higher learning.
The fact remains that many Asian American students are the children of war. When I asked students in my ethnic studies
class about their family background, many of them told of their parents overcoming war and con ict to come to the states. Yet while many
claimed ancestry in the former war zones of Taiwan, Cambodia, or the Philip- pines, they disassociated
their violent Asian past from their improved Ameri- can lives. One female student put it simply, My parents left the
civil war in China so I could come here to have a better life, and that means getting a good education. This premise of public education as o
ering a better life has been challenged by critical race legal scholars such as Cheryl Harris and Devon Car- bado, who suggest that the
desire to make college more accessible to all citizens deploys the language of progress, neutrality, and
merit to mask our public educational systems massive failure to boost social mobility and diversity in
general.28 In the aftermath of Proposition 209 there remains a new racial preference for certain minority groups
(e.g., Asian Americans) able to capitalize on the universitys demands for a diverse pool of talent
targeted not because of their race but because of their skills. In this manner Asian Americans, as a desirable or worthy
minority group, are rewarded with education.29 is new preference ironically favors upwardly mobile Asian global elites, a phenomenon that
ends up negatively impacting native-born Asian Americans who need the University of California as a less expensive alternative to private
schools. According to the scholar-activist Don Nakanishi, the University of California has been the major vehicle for social mobility for the
Asian-American community, which values an a ordable, high-quality public education.30 The complex relationship between Asians and Asian
Americans, which for decades has gone unnoticed due to the lumping of all Asians into one group, has now reached a turning point.
While
the number of U.S.-born Asian students in the uc system has reached critical mass and plateaued a er
decades of explosive growth, the number of foreign students from Asia has skyrocketed, particularly in the
2000s, due to increased allotment of spaces for them over in-state residents as a means of getting more outside sources of revenue. In 2009
the administrators at the San Diego campus reduced its number of in-state freshmen by ve hundred and lled those spots with out- of-state and
international students. As a result close to two hundred freshmen from China enrolled in the school, a twelvefold increase from just barely six-
teen individuals the year before, while the number of Asian American Cali- fornia freshmen fell by almost 30 percent.31 Asian American
students must now ght against rising tuition prices and systematic e orts to push them out from the very place they helped build into
prominence.32 That the university is a conduit for life-restricting forces and projects can be seen in a range
of issues, such as the institutions ongoing diminishment of organized labor union rights, the erosion of
indigenous tribal sovereignty and land rights, the restriction of student dissent and free speech protest
on campuses, and the administrations resistance to calls for divestment of university capital funds in
corporations operating in countries with a history of human rights abuses.33 The battle over life-and-death matters
can be discerned in the balancing act between state funding for prisons and schools. Californias governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
made this obvious when he publicly stated his interest in outsourcing the care and housing of inmates
in Californias overcrowded prisons to Mexico to pay for the states insolvent college system. He hoped to
restore the University of California to its former rightful place as the number-one public school system in the world lest it slip into obsoles-
cence and face its own demise.34 Such overtures to institutional martyrdom, sacri ce, and survival gesture to what Mbembe calls the state of
siege characteristic of our everyday realities in late capitalist society. Recognizing
the necropolitical logics inherent in
such neoliberal rationales serves to explain necropolitics at a broader level, which disavows certain
undesirable populations to save the most productive and privileged groups in society. As state
investment in public schools decreases every year, the ballooning funding deficit in Californias prison
system siphons precious monies and resources away from poorer schools, which in term further re-
duce the chances of marginalized youth and poor communities to get a basic education. (In 2010 state
funding for education was 7.5 percent of Californias total budget, with prisons receiving 11 percent, but ten years earlier universities
received close to 10 percent and only 3 percent went to the penitentiary system.)35 The interrelationship between state
169
prisons and public schools is a moral crisis not addressed by many educational advocates, who focus only on
the bureaucratic problems of schooling. at the steadily gaining numbers of Asian-identi ed students who make up more than 40 percent of the
total uc undergraduate population might also speak to the growing incarceration of black, brown and indigenous youth (as well as Paci c
Islanders and South- east Asians) who make up the supermajority of the states jails and prisons is a teachable moment that needs to be
alone, we become blind [unaware] to what Dylan Rodri guez describes as the genocidal
deconstructed. Left
logics buttressing the push toward a multicultural liberal society.36 Schwarzeneggers wish to terminate
Californias responsibilities to its prisoners for the sake of assist- ing the college-bound pits those already consigned to social death against
those with better life opportunities, enabling
certain educated subjects pre- judged as having the right to life,
liberty, and happiness to receive more state entitlements and protection than criminalized people of
color deemed undeserving in their rightlessness as nonwhite racialized subjects.37 Racialization of
Asians is concealed, even though their overrepresentation at the University of California makes them powerful cultural liaisons (or
potential disruptive spies) between the American university and Asian nations at a crucial time, when cash-strapped public universities with
dwindling state nancial support seek to magnify their outreach and partnerships in the East (e.g., ucla-National University of Singapore).
Coincident with the greater demand for more math and science education to bolster national security,
there is increasing stress at the University of California on stem fields (science, technology, engineering,
mathematics), where students of Asian descent can be found in disproportionate numbers.38 Asian minds
and bodies, perceived as easily assimilated into neoliberal and neocolonial ideas of educational
competitiveness, embody the type of modular (post) racial subjects able to fill the globalizing
necropolitical economies of a multi- tiered U.S. college system skewed to match the competitive talents
of gradu- ates from Asia. is is not to suggest a direct causal relationship between the corporatization, militarization, and globalization
of the university and the enlarging of the Asian presence in college, but there exists a connection between what the
research university represents as the best and brightest and what particular racial groups appear to
fit its high standards of excellence. The boundary between Asians reliance on the life force of
education and their inadvertent contribution to the military-academic industry is a testy relationship;
as the activist Helen Zia notes, Asian Americans are part of the problem [as] collaborators in our own oppressions.39 Asians are not simply
another minority easily lumped together with other nonwhite groups, since their de facto status as an institutional model majority essentially
deminori- tizes them in a state apparatus that wants to exploit them as racialized human capital but does not consider them racially marked in
some way.40 Within the blurred lines of academic life and death, one nds that higher education can be the pathway to our salvation or to our
destruction.
STEM education uses the model minority myth and controlled immigration policies to
attract better workers
Pan 15 (Jennifer, a contributor to Jacobin, Dissent, the Margins, and other publications, Beyond the
Model Minority Myth. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/chua-changelab-nakagawa-model-
minority/, 7/14/15)//MNW
Wus book is notable in that it foregrounds the specific ways in which Asian groups actively participated in the construction of the fateful
mythology, a piece of history heretofore largely ignored. However, Wu is also careful to note that
model minority status was,
for the most part an unintended consequence that sprung from many concurrent imperatives in
American life. In other words, discussing certain Asian groups material advantages today as a type of transhistorical privilege or
complicity with power rather than the result of a specific set of immigration and domestic policies that have aligned with shifting national
attitudes mystifies the mechanisms of capitalism rather than elucidating them. To better explain the position occupied by Asians in the
current hierarchy of power, more useful questions to ask might include: Which political structures have enabled certain Asian-American
communities to flourish economically, and in which instances has this occurred at the expense of other ethnic and racial groups? How does the
model minority narrative operate as part of the legacies of colonization, slavery, and immigration that have shaped the racial hierarchy in
the US? And how are race and class boundaries in the US currently enforced and upheld? The
contemporary iteration of the
model-minority stereotype was sealed into place following the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization
Act, which abolished strict national-origin quotas and instead prioritized family unification, education,
and professional skills. Sociologist Jennifer Lee whose new book The Asian American Achievement Paradox examines this
phenomenon in detail argued recently in Contexts that the Asian immigrants who enter the US are highly selected,
meaning that they are more highly educated than their ethnic counterparts who did not immigrate.
According to Lee, this hyperselectivity also means that those who are admitted to the US have the capital to
create ethnic institutions such as after-school academies and SAT prep courses that then become
170
available to working-class co-ethnics, boosting rates of education for the entire group. Other scholars, such as
Tamara Nopper, have focused their attention on how domestic policies, rather than immigration provisions, have
aided Asian-origin groups. In an article for Everyday Sociology, Nopper argues that numerous domestic
initiatives, such as the White House Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, have
provided financial support to Asian immigrant communities that have not been as readily available to
other communities of color. As a result of both the immigrant selection process and domestic policies,
Asian Americans currently hold the highest median income and education levels of any race today, with
climbing wealth levels projected by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis to overtake those of whites within two decades. However, to interpret
this data as evidence that race has caused Asian success, or that Asians have somehow accessed the
spoils of white supremacy, is to elide racism and class in a way that misunderstands how the particular
racialization of Asians in America augments capitalist restructuring that demands increasing numbers of
both knowledge workers and service workers while simultaneously attempting to press the wage floor
lower for all.
Stem focus creates hyper-selectivity which replicates the model minority myth
Lee 15 (Jennifer, sociology department at the University of California, Irvine, how hyper-selectivity
drives asian americans educational outcomes, https://contexts.org/articles/fifty-years-of-new-
immigration/#lee, 6/13/15)//MNW
The passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965 was a watershed moment for Asian
immigration. By replacing national origins with a system that privileged family reunification and high-
skilled applicants, the change ushered in a new stream of Asian immigrants with a markedly different
profile. A century ago, Asians in the U.S. were poorly educated, low-skilled, low-wage laborers described as undesirable immigrants full of
filth and disease. Confined to crowded ethnic enclaves, they were denied the right to citizenship and even intermarriage with citizens.
Today, Asian Americans are the most highly educated, least residentially segregated, and the group
most likely to intermarry in the country. Driving the transformation was the change in selectivity of
Asian immigration. Contemporary Asian immigrants who arrived after 1965 are, on average, highly
selected, meaning that they are more highly educated than their ethnic counterparts who did not
immigrate. Not only did the 1965 Act alter the selectivity of Asian immigrants, but it also fueled the rise in the Asian American population.
In 1970, Asians comprised only 0.7% of the U.S. population, but today they account for nearly 6%.
Asians are the fastest growing group in the country, and demographers project that, by 2050, Asians
will make up close to 10% of the population. Nationwide percentages pale in comparison to the percentage of Asian
Americans in the countrys most competitive magnet high schools and elite universities. Among the students offered
admissions to New York Citys famed Stuyvesant High School in the fall of 2014, more than 70% were
Asian, 20% White, and less than 10% Other. Asian Americans typically comprise about one-fifth of the entering
classes at Ivy League universities and, at the University of Californias flagship campus, Berkeley, they
make up more than 40%. Vexed by Asian Americans exceptional educational outcomes, some pundits have pointed to Asian culture:
because Asian Americans possess the right cultural traits and value education, they outperform their non-Asian peers, including native-born
Whites. However, it is worth remembering that Asian culture was not always hailed as exceptional; less than a century ago, Asians were
described as marginal members of the human race and unassimilable. Moreover, reducing educational outcomes to cultural traits and
values is nothing more than re-framing the culture of poverty thesis into a culture of success antithesis. Missing
from the cultural
values argument are two key elements: hyper-selectivity and starting points. If we examine the
three largest East Asian immigrant groups in the United StatesChinese, Vietnamese, and Koreans
we find that each is highly selected from its country of origin. More than half (56%) of Korean
immigrants have a Bachelors Degree or higher, compared to only 36% of adults in Korea. The degree of
selectivity is even greater among Vietnamese immigrants; more than one quarter (26%) have at least a Bachelors Degree, while the
comparable figure among adults in Vietnam is 5%. Chinese immigrants are the most highly selected: 51%
have graduated from
college, compared to only 4% of adults in China. U.S. Chinese immigrants are more than twelve times as
likely to have graduated from college than Chinese adults who did not emigrate. Furthermore, Chinese
and Korean immigrants are more highly educated than the general U.S. population, 28% of whom have
171
graduated from college. This dual positive immigrant selectivity is what Min Zhou and I refer to as
hyper-selectivity. The hyper-selectivity of Chinese and Korean immigrants in the U.S. means that their 1.5- and second-generation
children begin their quest to get ahead from more favorable starting points than the children of other immigrant groups, like Mexicans, as
well as native-born groups, including Whites. Hyper-selectivity
benefits all members of an immigrant group, because
these groups are more likely to generate ethnic capital, which manifests into ethnic institutions like
after-school academies and SAT prep courses that support academic achievement. The courses range in price
tags (some are freely available through ethnic churches), so they are often accessible to the children of working-class Chinese and Korean
immigrant parents. Hence, the
hyper-selectivity of an immigrant group can assuage a childs poor
socioeconomic status (SES) and reduce class differences within an ethnic group. In turn, this produces
stronger educational outcomes than would have been predicted based on parental SES alone. While some pundits argue that there
is something intrinsic about Asian cultural traits or values that explain their exceptional educational outcomes, this argument is as flawed and
reductive as the culture of poverty argument sociologists debunked decades ago. Instead, the
change in U.S. immigration law
half a century ago, coupled with the resulting change in selectivity of Asian immigration explain Asian
Americans educational outcomes.
Need for good workers cultivates Asian-American immigrants and the model minority
myth
Hsu 15 (Madeline, Associate Professor, Centre for Asian America Studies, The University of Texas at
Austin, US Immigration Laws and the Making of Model Minorities and Illegal Aliens,
https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-
criminologies/blog/2015/04/us-immigration, 4/7/2015)//MNW
In How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts , the historian Natalia Molina observes
that [i]mmigration laws are perhaps the most powerful and effective means of constructing and reordering the social order in the United
States. Construed broadly, immigration laws serve defensive agendas, in keeping out potential threats or
drains on national resources, as well as strategic agendas that enhance foreign relations and economic
competitiveness. The former sets of priorities are generally served by exclusionary measures that identify attributes and categories of
persons to be barred from entry, whereas the latter goals tend to select or screen for the admission of
advantageous individuals and groups. Because they are understood as serving national interests, immigration laws and
policies are perhaps the main area of US government authority in which systemic inequalities are
tolerated and even encouragedalthough considerable conflicts have always complicated what national priorities are most
important, how they can be protected, and the uneven impact of immigration laws and administrative practices on different populations.
Studying Asian American populations highlights the tremendous power of immigration laws to shape
certain sectors of American society. Asian Americans, categorized by race and national origins, were the
first to face enforced immigration restriction during early US nation-building. By excluding Asians as unfit for
citizenship, the United States worked out the ideological, legal, and institutional foundations and sets of strategies justifying and implementing
a broadening array of controls. These controls were to serve an increasingly well-defined set of priorities and national protections against
probable problems such as the diseased, illiterate, imbeciles, those likely to become public charges, and radicals. After
World War II,
Asians served as templates for the determination of attributes and recruiting mechanisms that made up
desirable immigrants, chiefly defined by family connections, capacities to contribute economically, and
strengthen foreign relations as refugee admissions. These are the main criteria for entry under the 1965
Immigration Act, which has significantly remade Asian Americans into a model minority population.
Given the choice of potential immigrants from around the world, the United States has given
preferential admission to those with higher-than-average levels of education; white-collar, professional,
and technical employment; and thus household incomes. As a predominantly foreign-born population
for most of its history, and currently standing at 70 percent foreign-born, the demography of Asian
Americans reveal most strikingly US economic priorities in deciding the qualifications for legal entry.
H1B visas and STEM craze increase Asian immigration

Wildes 12 (Michael, writer for The Washington Post, Asian arrival: How STEM demand led to a massive
shift in immigration, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/asian-arrival-how-
172
stem-demand-led-to-a-massive-shift-in-
immigration/2012/06/21/gJQAaShLtV_story.html?utm_term=.a00be62b5e61, 6/22/12)//MNW
The Pew Research Centers recent study concluding that the number of Asian immigrants moving to the
United States now exceeds the number of Latinos hardly seems surprising to me or many of my fellow immigration
attorneys. My law firm, Wildes & Weinberg P.C., which has focused exclusively on United States immigration matters for more than 50 years,
has seen a dramatic uptick in the number of our clients who are of Asian origin in the last several years, many of them of Indian, Bangladeshi,
and Chinese descent. And of those, many, if not the majority, are
highly skilled workers who meet the qualifications for
H-1B professional nonimmigrant visas. The H-1B visa is the visa that affords its holder the ability to have
dual intent; that is, the holder of the H-1B can intend to reside in the U.S. permanently by applying
for lawful permanent residence, despite the otherwise temporary nature of the visa. Nevertheless, it has
become increasingly difficult for employers to sponsor their employees for H-1B visas. This is largely due to increasingly exhaustive review of
such applications by the Department of Homeland Securitys U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). However, there are tools in the
immigration lawyers toolbox that allow us to extend the time frame for certain foreign students to find employer-sponsored employment so
as to qualify and apply for the H-1B and many Asian immigrants are taking advantage of these tools. The STEM Designated Degree
Program gives an added advantage to foreign students who come to this country to pursue bachelors
degrees or higher studies in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) as F-1 nonimmigrant
students. Provided they are otherwise maintaining valid status as F-1 student visa holders, full-time foreign students studying in the U.S.
are eligible for one year of post-completion work-related training (Optional Practical Training, or OPT) to obtain work authorization and gain
experience-based training in their field of endeavor with an American employer. Students who pursue a course of study in one of the STEM-
related fields are eligible for an additional 17-month period of OPT with a U.S. employer. Therefore, F-1 students who are currently pursuing a
bachelors, masters, or doctorate degree included in the STEM Designated Degree Program List, and who are currently approved for a post-
completion OPT period based on a designated STEM degree are given the added benefit of significantly more time in the U.S. in authorized on-
the-job training work. This added time helps foreign STEM students secure longer-term job offers and gain a better foothold in a career in the
United States. In May, the Department of Homeland Security significantly expanded the program to include 90 additional STEM fields of study
in disciplines spanning from archeology to zoology. According to the latest Census figures, more than 20 percent of
bachelors degree holders who earned their degrees in science and engineering fields are foreign
born, with more than half of those students coming from Asia. Of these fields, native-born students only lead their
foreign-born counterparts in psychology, social sciences, and multidisciplinary sciences. Consequently, foreign-born Asian students
are able to get jobs relevant to their science and engineering degrees. Department of Commerce
studies also show that Asians are twice as likely to hold jobs in STEM-related fields than any other
group, and that one in five workers in a STEM-related field is foreign-born, of which 63 percent comes
from Asia.
173
L: Sex Ed (SP2)
Aff cant solve cultural norms and the model minority stereotype converge to make
sexual education shameful for Asian Americans even if they receive sex ed in
school they wont practice it because their families will shame them. This
convergence of American and Asian cultures only creates confusion and psychological
violence our ev specifically discusses the failure of progressive sex ed programs
Ayuda 11 (Tiffany, B.A. in Print Journalism, French and International Affairs from Hofstra University,
An Asian American Perspective: How to Address the Stigma Surrounding Sex, Mochi Magazine Winter
2011, http://www.mochimag.com/article/talking-about-sex-safe-stigma-asian-american-
culture/)//MNW
One reason why Asian culture isnt as open about sex as others is that its never been normal to talk
about sex. It partly comes down to how you can almost bet that your parents disapprove of premarital sex. This belief is so widespread
that its essentially become taboo to talk about any aspect of sex, not to mention sexual health, in fear
that discussing it would encourage you to become sexually active. In fact, these opinions are agreed upon
by all Asian American ethnic groups, according to a study conducted by Advocates For Youth, an organization that promotes
effective reproductive and sexual health programs for adolescents in the U.S. My own parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents never spoke of
their romantic or sexual history and shamelessly preached against premarital sex because they were afraid that talking about sex would make
Asian
it seem like they are condoning iteven though they never actually explained this concern. Another part of this problem is that
Americans and Pacific Islanders lack access to sex and STD education services that fit their needs of
sharing two different cultural norms. While sex might be openly discussed in an outside environment,
like in school or through media, hard-line views at home may discourage Asian American and Pacific
Islander teens to take necessary measures for ensuring sexual health. They can be more reluctant to
discuss sexual concerns with a doctor and utilize other sex education services because it makes them
look like they are sexually active, which their families would not likely approve. If their sexual
identity is different from the heterosexual norm, being open with family members and getting the
support they need can be even more difficult. Due to this lack of access to safe sex education and
resources, while Asian Americans tend to have lower rates of HIV and STDs than other racial and ethnic
groups, they also have the lowest HIV testing rate. According to the Banyan Tree Project, a national social marketing
campaign to stop HIV/AIDS-related stigma in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, 69 percent of Asian Americans and 56 percent
of Pacific Islanders have never been tested for HIV. HIV infection among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is also growing at a rate higher
than any other racial or ethnic group14.3 percent increase for women and 8.1 percent for men between 2001 and 2004, according to a
Center for Disease Control report. Furthermore, 40 percent of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders almost or never
discuss safe sex or condoms with their sexual partner, according to the Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center. So why
arent Asian Americans getting tested? As with anything else related to sex, there is a lack of communication in the
community about why testing is important. Beside the cultural norms within the community, like
associating STIs with promiscuity and drug use, underlying problems also include cultural stereotypes
that enforce the stigma surrounding sex. Under the model minority model, Asian Americans and
Pacific Islanders are identified as intelligent, wealthy and successful, and the model has become a
universal social mask that hides issues like individual health and educational needs . And when Asian
American women feel pressured to conform to the stereotype of innocence and passiveness, they
might be further discouraged to speak out or visit a gynecologist.
Specifically, the aff doesnt engage in an embracing of Asian American culture which
means that they can never solve even if sex ed in schools work, cultural factors are
the main factor in shaping the sexual identities of Asian American women
AFY 7 (Advocates for Youth; Established in 1980 as the Center for Population Options, Advocates for
Youth champions efforts that help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their
174
reproductive and sexual health. Advocates believes it can best serve the field by boldly advocating for a
more positive and realistic approach to adolescent sexual health. Advocates focuses its work on young
people ages 14-25 in the U.S. and around the globe;
http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/documents/api.pdf)
Young Asian and Pacific Islander (API) women face unique challenges to good reproductive and sexual
health, including barriers to good communication about sex, low rates of condom use, and a lack of
culturally-specific sexual health programs and services. But cultural factors also provide them with unique assets
they can draw upon to protect their well-being. Youth-serving professionals and policy makers should be mindful of these assets in
order to better promote good outcomes for these young women. According to Census Bureau estimates for 2004, Asians and
Pacific Islanders make up five percent of the U.S. population, a 63 percent increase since 1990. These 14.8 million people are a
very diverse group, including persons of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, Laotian, Cambodian, Indian, and Native
Hawaiian origin, among others. Health indicators, income, and cultural norms can vary widely among these many countries and
cultures.3 Because of underreporting and lack of data, major undertakings such as the Youth Risk
Behavior Surveillance study do not provide information on API youth,4 while those with Hispanic-
sounding names are often misclassified as Latino by health-care providers.5 Because of certain indicators,
including a higher average income, good academic performance, and cultural stereotyping, Asian and Pacific Islanders are
often viewed by the larger culture as universally intelligent, successful, and compliant. This
misconception overlooks a bimodal distribution in API communities in addition to wealthy and
successful Asians, many APIs in America are recent immigrants or refugees who live below the
poverty level and have little access to health care programs and services.3 Thus, this misconception
can have two very damaging effects on young API women: the sexual health risk behaviors of the
well-behaved upper class are overlooked, while the health needs of those living in poverty go
unmet. Language and a lack of culturally competent health care services can also be barriers for both
groups. Sexual discussions are taboo among many Asian and Pacific Islander cultures. Many adults and
young people have difficulty with frank discussions about sexuality. Sexuality outside of marriage is often considered unacceptable
in most Asian cultures. Oftentimes, discussions of illness and health, especially sexual health, are regarded as inappropriate.
Because the term Asian-American incorporates so many different ethnicities, statistical data does not always provide an accurate
picture of the sexual health of young API women. For instance, while API teens have the lowest birth rate among all teens
Identifying with API culture is very
nationwide, Laotian teens, in particular, have the highest teen birth rate in California.
much a protective factor for young API women and it is the main factor shaping their sexual behavior.
9,10,11 Asian norms inhibit premarital romantic and sexual expression more strongly than do the norms prevalent among other
ethnic identity
groups.17 But aside from discouraging young women from engaging in sexual behaviors at a young age,
affirmation serves as a buffer for the negative effects of discrimination by peers on self-esteem.18 In
other words, those who feel good about their ethnic group are less hurt by discrimination an important protective factor in a
society that has not yet achieved racial harmony. Promote appreciation of and respect for API cultures, for both Asian and non-
Asian youth. Asian cultures are a strong protective factor for young women, but may also inhibit them from seeking reproductive
health care. Research shows that if an API adolescent maintains strong ties with her heritage, then, even as she becomes
acculturated, she does not become more sexually active or take more sexual risks.8 Ideally, then, the adolescent would acquire
HIV knowledge and learn to take care of her reproductive and sexual health, without falling prey to sexual risk behaviors. Research
young API women, low self-esteem is associated with perceived discrimination;
has also shown that for
high-self-esteem and emotional health are important in young peoples willingness and ability to use
condoms and other contraception.19 Self-efficacy is a measure of young womens confidence to take steps toward
outcomes they desire. Young API women show that they are capable of self-efficacy for refraining from sexual behaviors9,11,16;
an important step is to empower them to apply that confidence to condom use, reproductive health care, and other good sexual
health behaviors. Research shows
that young API women who report high self-efficacy scores are more
likely to use condoms; feel more comfortable asking a partner to use a condom; and feel more
comfortable refusing sex when their partner will not wear a condom.21
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L: China Threat Discourse

China threat rhetoric is rooted in orientalized notions of China as external other
they are social constructions used to sustain American empire and cultural
imperialism
Turner 13 (Oliver, Research Associate at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of
Manchester, Threatening China and US security: the international politics of identity,
https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-
scw:206471&datastreamId=POST-PEER-REVIEW-PUBLISHERS.PDF, 2/8/13)//MNW
The modern day China threat to the United States is not an unproblematic, neutrally verifiable phenomenon. It is an
imagined construction of American design and the product of societal representations which, to a
significant extent, have established the truth that a rising China endangers US security. This is an
increasingly acknowledged, but still relatively under-developed, concept within the literature.121 The purpose of this article has been to
expose how threats
from China towards the United States have always been contingent upon subjective
interpretation. The three case studies chosen represent those moments across the lifetime of Sino-US
relations at which China has been perceived as most threatening to American security. The threats
emerged in highly contrasting eras. The nature of each was very different and they emerged from varying sources (broadly
speaking, from immigration in the nineteenth century and from great power rivalry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries). Yet in this
way they most effectively demonstrate how China threats have repeatedly existed as socially constructed
phenomenon. Collectively they reveal the consistent centrality of understandings about the United
States in perceptions of external danger. They demonstrate that, regardless of Chinas ability to assert material
force or of the manner in which it has been seen to impose itself upon the United States, the reality of
danger can be manufactured and made real. China threats have always been threats to American
identity so that the individual sources of danger whether a nuclear capability or an influx of (relatively few) foreign
immigrants have never been the sole determining factors. As James Der Derian notes, danger can be ascribed to otherness
wherever it may be found.122 During the mid-to-late nineteenth century and throughout the early Cold War, perceptions of
China threats provoked crises of American identity. The twenty-first-century China threat is yet to be understood in this
way but it remains inexplicable in simple material terms. As ever, the physical realities of China are important but they are interpreted in such
a way to make them threatening, regardless of Beijings intentions. Most importantly, this article has shown how processes of
representation have been complicit at every stage of the formulation, enactment, and justification of
US China policy. Their primary purpose has been to dislocate Chinas identity from that of the United
States and introduce opportunities for action. Further, those policies themselves have reaffirmed the
discourses of separation and difference which make China foreign from the United States, protecting
American identity from the imagined threat. Ultimately, this analysis has sought to expose the
inadequacy of approaches to the study of US China policy which privilege and centralise material forces
to the extent that ideas are subordinated or even excluded. Joseph Nye argues that the China Threat Theory has the
potential to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Based upon a crude hypothetical assumption that there exists a 50 per cent chance of China
becoming aggressive and a 50 per cent chance of it not, Nye explains, to treat China as an enemy now effectively discounts 50 per cent of the
future.123 In
such way he emphasises the ideational constitution of material forces and the power of
discourse to create selected truths about the world so that certain courses of action are enabled while
others are precluded. Assessments such as those of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in March 2011 should therefore
not only be considered misguided, but also potentially dangerous. For while they appear to represent authoritative statements of fact they
actually rely upon subjective assumptions about China and the material capabilities he describes. In late 2010 President Obama informed
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that the American people [want] to continue to build a growing friendship and strong relationship between the
peoples of China and the United States.124 The hope, of course, is that a peaceful and cooperative future can be secured. Following the
announcement that the Asia Pacific is to constitute the primary focus of Washingtons early twenty-first-century foreign policy strategy,
American interpretations of China must be acknowledged as a central force within an increasingly pertinent relationship. The basis of
their relations will always be fundamentally constituted by ideas and history informs us that particular
American discourses of China have repeatedly served to construct vivid and sometimes regrettable realities about that country and
its people. Crucially, it tells us that they have always been inextricable from the potentialities of US China policy. As Sino-US relations
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become increasingly consequential the intention must be for American representations of the PRC
and indeed Chinese representations of the United States to become the focus of more concerted
scholarly attention. Only in this way can the contours of those relations be more satisfactorily
understood, so that the types of historical episodes explored in this analysis might somehow be avoided
in the future.
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L: Terror Talk
Threat of terrorist is central to American military policy, producing an infinite war
against an invisible enemy and producing blowback
Jagoda 10 (Patrick, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Instructor of New Media at uChicago, Terror
Networks and the Aesthetics of Interconnection, Winter 2010, Social Text 105, pp. 67-69
http://socialtext.dukejournals.org/content/28/4_105/65.full.pdf+html)//MNW
What is the difference between facing an enemy and interfacing with a hostile network collective?10 Even with the widespread military
support for the network-centric warfare model, the
traditional language of enemies has continued to shape
American policy making and military strategy. From a public relations standpoint, this is hardly surprising given that binary
enmity is easier to understand than network antagonisms. Instead of being replaced completely by the allegedly new paradigm, the old
discourse of enemies now coexists with a network perspective. Despite a gradual logistical shift to decentralized electronic warfare, the
U.S.
military still fits anti-American networks into the conceptual enemy frame inherited from cold war
politics. I turn to a key network-centric military documentthe U.S. Department of Defenses comprehensive 2003 strategic plan, the
Information Operations Roadmap that illustrates the consequences that follow from the ahistorical conflation of a traditional enemy
language with an emerging network discourse. Commissioned by the Pentagon in 2003 and declassified in 2006, this document outlines a
new era of information warfare. The word roadmap in its title already signals continuity
between an older imperial
cartography and the contemporary dominance of a new form of distributed control. This blueprint represents
electronic warfare as a primary rather than a supplemental aspect of military strategy, suggesting that
the military come to recognize the importance of dominating the information spectrum by
transforming [Information Operations] into a core military competency on a par with air, ground, maritime,
and special operations. Unlike the earlier interest in domestic defensive networks (e.g., the 1956 interstate highway system and the
1969 ARPANET web), the desire to control the complete information spectrum and wipe out all inimical networks is decidedly offensive and
international, if not planetary, in nature. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) suggests that the E-Space Analysis Center should produce
operationally actionable, targeting quality information on foreign electromagnetic capabilities and networks. In this recommendation,
networks are not merely the technological means by which targeting takes place but also the objects on which experts gather targeting
quality information.11 Despite its underlying fantasy of omnipotence, the language of the roadmap is
technical and banal. The rationally instrumental prose distracts the reader from the documents objectives. This system update
enables not bloodless war-making operations, but rather worldwide violence and domestic violations of
privacy that were similarly signaled by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencys advocacy for the (ultimately failed) Total
Information Awareness Program.12 A key goal of the roadmap illustrates the DoDs desire to provide a future
EW [electronic warfare] capability sufficient to provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic
spectrum, denying, degrading, disrupting, or destroying the full spectrum of globally emerging
communication systems, sensors, and weapons systems.13 The alliterative flourish in this passage imagines network
development as a means to the total and relentless destruction of the enemy. Despite the reports suggestion of warfare that pits machines
against machines, brutal violence and human casualties, however deliberately repressed, cannot be removed from the picture.14 Collateral
damage, even when redefined through culturally conscious humanist language, persists as an inevitable
accident of warfare that is built into its structure. In outlining an admittedly major change in U.S. military organization,
the roadmap confuses two incompatible languages of identifiable enemies and distributed networks. The discursive muddle in this document
(which is also characteristic of other post-9/11 advocacies for network- centric warfare) in turn opens up American defense to material
failures. In a key passage, the DoD even announces that it will fight the net as it would a weapons system.15 At a discursive level, the
analogy between the net and standard weapons systems, as well as the imperative to fight that net, elides the radical shift that has taken
place during the network era. This characterization is far from anomalous. As Galloway and Thacker explain, networks have been widely
characterized as inherently inimical weapons systems: The U.S. military classifies networks as weapons systems, mobilizing them as they
would a tank or a missile. Today, connectivity is a weapon.16 Linkage serves as a strategic concept that frames a distributed enemy and thus
legitimates an invasive, violent, and (as the war on terror has demonstrated) permanent American response. While it is metaphorically
possible to envision a strategy of targeting threatening networks, it is far from clear what it means to fight the net. If we are indeed in an age
in which all major systems and infrastructures are given a network form, what does it mean to treat the very ground on which we stand as a
battle space from which enemies might emerge? Certainly, the
slippage between networks of external enemies and
networks as the fundamental landscape of warfare is a telling symptom of the ambiguity inherent in the
current military paradigm. Instead of positing a larger network to which the DoD itself belongs, the department treats this
configuration as an externalized enemy. The inexactitude that accompanies a conflation of enemies and networks, whether
intentionally strategic or simply left unexamined, will have long-term consequences for American military policy and security interests. The
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announcement of proliferating future threats already contributes to the projection of a ubiquitous terrorist adversary and of a generalized
climate of fear. In constructing terrorist networksnot only the actual organizations that oppose Western
powers but also those culturally constructed enemies that supposedly threaten us at all times
America sets the terms of global warfare. The demonization of terrorist networks makes winning the
defined struggle impossible. This current way of thinking enables a perpetual struggle against an enemy
construct too formless and fluid to differentiate, let alone defeat. As Siva Vaidhyanathan notes, The rhetorical value
of alleging a network at the heart of a threat to security or identity is clear: Its impossible to tell when a war against a
network is over because it cant be seen. A network can be dispersed, distributed, encrypted, and ubiquitous.17 Within the
logic of the war on terrora mode of thinking that is both reproduced and opened up by network
aestheticsthe continual emergence of unknown terrorist networks reinforces a state of emergency
and validates a policy of preemption. In deploying the language of inimical terrorist networks,
governmental systems produce the very terror they purport to eliminate.
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Impacts Model Minority
180
I: Racial Disparity
The model minority myth reinforces that individual effort is more important than
structures, increasing discriminatory standardized testing, privatization, the
privileging of white communities, and justifying the removal of government social
services for other people of color plus it creates mounting pressure and
psychological violence on yellow people
Yu 7 (Tianlong, Assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Southern Illinois
University Edwardsville, Challenging the Politics of the Model Minority Stereotype: A Case for
Educational Equality, Equity & Excellence in Education, 39:4, 325-333)//MNW
The influence of this model minority stereotype is widespread in education. The success of Asian Ameri-
can students can serve as a valuable lesson for all Amer- icans, declared former U.S. Undersecretary of
Education Linus Wright (1988). Wright, who had been Secretary of Education William Bennetts choice to succeed him upon Bennetts
resignation, said that the educational achievements of Asian Americans demonstrate the importance of values, particularly those of close ties
between parents and children. Like-minded politicians and educators, who promote conservative social and educational reforms, often
express similar views. Let us first examine the effects of the model minority stereotype on Asian American students. Since
its
inception, the model minority rhetoric has been discred- ited for its monolithic treatment and mistaken
stereotyping of Asian students as uniformly successful academically. When the model minority narrative first
received attention, James Coleman (1966) conducted a comprehensive study of Equality of Educational Opportunity. The famous Coleman
Report found that Asian American students as a group were not succeeding academically, certainly not outwhiting the Whites (Success
Story, 1971, p. 24). The subsequent influential works of Charles Silberman (1970), Colin Greer (1976), and William Ryan (1976) all
showed similar findings about the school failures of minority students, including Asian American
students. The major lawsuit over English immersion, sink or swim instruction, which went all the way
to the Supreme Court in 19731974, with Lau v. Nichols, was brought on behalf of the Chinese
American students suing the San Francisco school system for not providing them equal educational
opportunities. The plaintiffs briefs are filled with statistics about the academic failures and difficulties faced by Asian American students.
More recently, both the 1990 and 2000 censuses show that academic success is not universal across Asian American
groups. For example, in 1998, the percentage of Southeast Asian adults with less than a high school diploma was 64%, which far exceeded
the national average for all Asian Americans (23%) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). Asian American subgroups, such as Hmongs,
Viet- namese, Cambodians, and Laotians, all rank far below the national average in education (Yin, 2001).
Although the enrollment number of Asian Americans in the nations prestigious universities is highly notable, the proportion of enrollment
by students from different Asian American ethnic subgroups ranges widely. For example, in 2000 Chinese Americans were nearly seven times
more likely to attend University of CaliforniaBerkeley than Filipino Americans, although Chinese and Filipino American populations in
California were of equal size (Teranishi, 2002, p. 144). Disregarding all of these facts, politicians like Wright generally accept a stereotypical
portrait of Asian Americans. In doing so, they simply turn their backs on so many Asian American students who are victims of the education
competition. These Asian American students are totally left out by the politicians who are used to
overgeneralizing issues driven by their political agenda. These students are the students who need
assistance; and yet, the assistance is purposefully denied under the rhetoric of the model minority
narative. The impact of the model minority label on the so-called Asian American high achievers is
also significant and, very often, negative. One such negative impact is that it causes and/or reinforces
peoples indifference and ignorance toward these students needs and problems. Since Asian
American students are generalized as super-bright, highly motivated overachievers who come from
well-to-do families, it is inconceivable that they could encounter any serious learning problems. Contrary to
this popular misconception, however, Asian American students are just like any other minority students who
may experience difficulties in school. They perform just as poorly as other minorities when schools do
not come to their aid (Toppo, 2002). Because of the model minority label, they may encounter more difficulties and problems than
expected. They are often subjected to unrealistically high expectations by their parents, their instructors,
and even their peers. The pressures could be so great that their academic performance and personal
well-being suffer as a result. Thus, the model minority label has created a mental trap for these Asian
181
students. They have no other choices but to internalize the oppression imposed on them by the soci-
ety. In addition, as Asher (2001) points out, internalized by many Asian American parents and their children, the model minority
concept turns out to be a hegemonic force that contributes to the damaging of young Asians aca-
demic and career choices, playing a detrimental role in the development of their identities. For example,
Asian American parents overwhelmingly lead their children to pursue safe careers in science-and business-related areas, the tangible
professional careers, curtailing their representation in the social sciences and humanities. This further marginalizes Asian Americans in society.
Ignoring these actual harmful effects on Asian Ameri- can students, conservative politicians and educators sell the model minority myth to
everyone. The core message of the model minority concept, namely, individual efforts matter more than
structural change, has become an integral part of their overall educational reform package. A closer
examination of the current educational reform movement will reveal this point more clearly. Two major trends characterize
current national educational reform: the privatization/commercialization of education and the standardization of
teaching and learning. Within the privatization/commercialization trend, education is increasingly viewed as
a business and students as consumers. Economic principles reign supreme: Efficiency and cost-benefit analysis
become the rules; consumer choice and free competition are the norms. Voucher plans and other choice programs are
hailed as the solution to help poor children and make declining schools work. Supplementary to the
market mechanisms and initiatives, other policies are proposed, which emphasize the standardization
of curricula and assessment, the restoration of Western tradition, and a return to traditional
morality. Driven by the impulse to control both knowledge and values, political establishments push
for higher academic standards, high-stakes testing, and virtue-centered character education. These reform
agendas have been under serious challenges by thoughtful critics since their origin (see Apple, 1996, 2000, 2001, for example).
Connected to the larger conservative restoration in American society, these educational reform
policies do not attempt to challenge the fundamental school structure and culture based on the
capitalist system, which is the root cause of all school problems we face today. One of the major
problems of the reform movement is its individualist orientation. Freeman (2005) points out that the No Child
Left Behind Act (2001) keeps school reform a largely idiosyncratic process separated from wider social
and environmental contexts. While suggesting that educational improvement be effectively pursued
independent of external material realities and emphasizing academic competition among schools and
individual students, policymakers seriously ignore the social conditions of schooling while disregarding
the close correlation between school outcomes and social problems such as racism and poverty.
Freeman (2005) argues, as colorblindness permeates educational policies, the salience of race in American education is rendered invisible.
Not only is race denigrated in educational policy, other critical issues such as ethnicity, social class, gender, religion, and language also are
trivialized. This leads to a fundamental problem of the current school reform, namely, the de-emphasis of social justice and educational
equality. Apple (1996) points out, Behind the educational justifications for a national curriculum and national testing is an ideological attack
that is very dangerous. Its effects will be truly damaging to those who already have the most to lose in this society (p. 24). As Apple does, we
must ask this question: Who are the benefactors in the reform movement and who are the overlooked? Studies of school choice programs,
past and present, reveal their unequal effects on different student groups (Fuller & Elmore, 1996; Scott, 2005; Wells, 2002). Vouchers are
promoted as a method of helping disadvantaged students; however, Mathis (2004) notes that vouchers programs can only be practically
available in the same resource-poor district, and the money given cannot possibly buy poor people a fraction of good education. Besides,
with the
flowing of funds from public schools to private schools, racial and cultural segregation is
exacerbated, which in turn will further marginalize disadvantaged people. The losers in the
accountability race are predetermined. Dilapidated urban schools and poor and minority children will surely lose the high-stakes
competition. As we see, test scores have been used not to determine what students are taught, but to punish failing students and schools
(Kohn, 2000; Sirotnik, 2004). We must ascertain that the biggest problem facing American education is the unjust
distribution of social resources in schools and the resulting unequal educational opportunities for children from different groups.
The historical pattern of unequal educational opportunity has been well-documented. Colin Greers (1976) comprehensive historical study
indicated the fundamental failure of schools in America that served poor and ethnic minority students. He therefore declared the
great
school legendthe time-honored faith that schooling effectively paved the way to future economic
mobility and social status, the faith that lies at the core of the model minority narrativelargely
mythical and absolutely illusory and disastrous for poor, minority kids. Jonathan Kozols (1992) qualitative
investigation showed the deplorable conditions of the inner-city schools that poor, black, and Latino children attended;
schools that had leaking roofs, overflowing toilets, overcrowded classrooms, outdated textbooks, and
unqualified teachers. Today, no one can declare that the situation has changed significantly. Kozol argued convincingly then, the
182
savage inequalities in the public school system were mainly caused by the shocking differences in educational spending between wealthy
suburban schools and poor inner-city schools. And today, we know our educational funding systems are [still] inequitable or inadequate.
Education spending has gone up, but not for all children (Mathis, 2004, p. 49). Stuck in poverty-
stricken schools, children of African Americans, Latinos, and many Asian American subgroups suffer low
academic achievement. Reports from the National Assessment of Educational Progress constantly reveal the significant achievement
gap between white and minority students in key subject matters (Perie, Grigg, & Dion, 2005; Perie, Grigg, & Donahue, 2005). In the midst
of such an educational reform movement that increasingly pushes poor and minority people to the
brink, the model minority concept continues to be promoted, to inspire the predictable losers, and to
de- ceive everyone. It must be noted that politicians may not always overtly embrace the model minority concept. For example, in his
remarks to Asian American community leaders in 2003, then Secretary of Educa- tion Rod Paige admitted that the model minority theory is a
myth. Nevertheless, Rod Paige and the Bush administration he served continue to promote the reform agenda that places emphasis on
accountability, standards, testing, and choicean agenda that is fundamentally in accordance with the spirit of the model minority
stereotype. Cast
within the conservative restoration in education, the model minority narrative now goes
hand in hand with the cultural value of meritocracy deeply embedded in American society and
emphasizes individual choice and efforts while devaluing the need for structural reform. Former Education
Secretary William Bennett (1994) claimed, There is no systematic correlation between spending on education and student achievement (p.
83). During his tenure as Secretary of Education, Rod Paige complained many times that test scores had not improved despite record levels of
spending on education over the last decade. A consistent message sent by both is that resources and money do not help schools, values do.
Bennett (1993) was an early pioneer campaigning for the modern character education movement. Rod Paige, carrying on that tradition, was
active in implementing the Bush administrations policies to expand character education and involve religion-based organizations to par-
ticipate in after-school programs. Strengthening family ties, instilling hard work in children, while encouraging
self-control and discipline, the power elites prescribe the paths of personal salvation and individual
success for struggling schools and poor children. Given the severe lack of educational resources and
opportunities, it might be extremely difficult for the majority of poor, racial minority children in urban
schools to achieve academic success. Actually, academic success is rarely expected of those poor
children and youth by the school authority (Kozol, 1992). Yet, politicians continually emphasize the isolated and publicized
success stories of particular individuals, like some Asian students. Their theory is: Since some children are willing to take
advantage of the opportunities offered to them and succeed, then there must be something
inherently wrong with those who are not succeeding. Because of fundamental deficiencies in them,
such as family breakdown and the lack of motivation, some people just cannot solve their problem. This
kind of ethnic, genetic, and racial hypotheses is increasingly advanced to explain away the school failure
of the poor during the current reform movement (see Herrnstein & Murray, 1994, for example).
However, missing from this rhetoric is any mention of educational inequalities prevailing in the school
system and the social and structural problems, such as racism and class division, that perpetuate the
inequalities. By blaming the victims, the power elites relieve themselves from the responsibility of doing
anything to provide an equal education for all. It is amazing how all of these have been purposefully mixed
together: the privatization of schools, vouchers, standards, get-tough accountability schemes, char-
acter building, moral boosting, and the model minority stereotype. However, it is not difficult to figure out that the
core of the agenda is the emphasis on meritocracy and ignorance of educational equality. The predictable effect of these reform
moves is the continuing marginalization of the disadvantaged. This reality must be honestly faced:
American schools are unequal, just like the larger American society; poor and minority children have
fewer opportunities to learn and to succeed. Inequality does matter. The case of some Asian Americans is only an exception.
Some minority children can always rise above the odds; however, most cannotdue to the lack of social and educational conditions and
opportunities they need and deserve.
183
I: White Supremacy
The Model Minority Myth is a tool of whiteness that makes Asian Americans
complicit in antiblack racism, fractures coalitions, and homogenizes asian identity
only engagement across communities of color and active reckoning with histories of
violence can solve
Kuo 15 (Rachel, asian american activist, 6 Reasons We Need to Dismantle the Model Minority Myth
of Those Hard-Working Asians, http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/04/dismantle-model-minority-
myth/, 4/2/15)//MNW
We are threatened, unlike most whites, by efforts to use our race against us. Frank Wu Asians are
good at math and science. Theyre successful economically and academically. They are hard working
and high achieving. While these tropes may seem outdated, theyre still well known and recognizable.
For example, the other day, just to see what Google searches were most popular, I searched: Why are and the first thing that came up was:
Why are Asians so smart? Who are these Asians that people keep talking about? While these sorts of comments might seem like
compliments or affirmations, they are actually overly simplistic generalizations that reveal the devious and exploitative nature of race and
racism in the United States. And they all fall under the
model minority myth a stereotype that generalizes Asian
Americans by depicting them as the perfect example of an if-they-can-do-it-so-can-you success story.
This myth is also a political strategy that highlights the success of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indian
immigrants with a specific professional and educational background. It is a historical and presently used
tool designed to protect institutionalized white supremacy and validate anti-black racism. For a long time,
Asian American activists have worked to debunk the model minority myth by discussing its negative consequences and impacts. By positioning
of some Asian American groups as a model of success in the United States, we also need to ask: A model for whom? Standing up against the
myth has been a long-time call to action that has recently been re-incited by non-indictment verdicts for the murders of Eric Garner and Mike
Brown, as well as the murders of many others in the Black community. This sentiment is currently amplified by social media movements like
#ModelMinorityMutiny and #StartTheConversation, which push for Asian Americans to stand in solidarity alongside other communities of
color and to debunk the model minority myth in everyday conversations about racism. Here are some ways to unpack why the model minority
myth is used as a tool of oppression, especially one that perpetuates anti-black racism. 1. The myth
fosters internalized racism
within certain Asian American communities against other communities of color. In order to begin undoing the
myth, we must also begin to tackle the ways weve internalized anti-blackness. Often, our communities use racist rhetoric
thats disguised as casual observation or advice: They just need to work harder, dont date them, or
dont go to their neighborhood. The myth can be a protective buffer against the stigma of being seen as outsiders. Being cast
as perpetual foreigners fueled a desire for some Asian immigrants to survive by seeking ways to fit in
and belong, to have access to the same resources and privileges as those with the most economic and
political power wealthy, white Americans. As a result, we sometimes subconsciously and consciously
act protective and proud of that model status. If were the model of success, then surely well be free from the
persecution of those who dont, wont, and cant adhere to the standard? Right? But it is through this very orchestrated messaging that
weve been conditioned to forget that America is stolen land. It is occupied land. It is a country built on
slave labor and the colonization of its indigenous people. Yet, America, to some Asian Americans, is viewed as a
promised land, and many of us came to the United States with a belief that there were opportunities to live free from oppression. Moving
forward, we need to re-examine who gives those promises, recognize the villainy behind why they were
offered, acknowledge whom we are truly taking them from, and heal from the way they have hurt our
diverse communities. We need stand up against the model minority myth and demand resistance against white supremacy and that
means letting go of the idea of the American Dream. 2. The model minority myth divides people of color and
specifically serves as a tool of anti-black racism. Racial myths and stereotypes are often used as a wedge to divide groups,
whether its creating unfair racial hierarchies or emphasizing elements of cultural and racial superiority and/or inferiority. In this specific case,
the model minority myth is successful because it constructs Black people as a problem minority. It
teaches some Asian Americans to compare where we are and what weve accomplished with where
Black Americans are and what theyve accomplished. It turns us into juxtapositions and situates us as racial binaries. Asian
Americans have different histories of oppression than other communities, and its unfair to compare existing struggles. This is rarely talked
about outside of activist communities, but some Asian immigrants were intentionally selected to be model
184
minorities, which well discuss more below. Rooted in the pull yourself up by the bootstraps ideology, the term
model minority was popularized during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement this stereotype is racist to
both Asian Americans and Black Americans. By creating a narrative that hard work equates success, it
negates past and present structural barriers that interrupt success for different marginalized groups.
The success of certain groups of Asian Americans was contrasted with the failure of African
Americans. The myth comes hand in hand with other statements like, If Asians can be successful by working hard, why cant Black
people? It serves as a functional stereotype that uplifted the narrative of meritocracy and the American Dream. In witnessing family friends
and relatives talk about their life experiences, themes of hard work and sacrifice are the most salient. My own parents believe that they have
worked hard to get to where they are. At some point since they immigrated here, they have learned to believe in the narrative that anyone
can find success if they just work hard enough. However, to accept any positive stereotype about the model minority myth is to also comply
with a racist system that favors and privileges whiteness and that is something that not only harms other people of color, it hurts members
in our own communities. 3. The myth also serves to create good immigrants and bad immigrants. The myth creates the idea
that some people deserve to be in the U.S. and some people dont. Some immigrants are lazy. Some snuck in to take
away jobs from hard-working Americans. Immigration policies purposefully included and excluded certain groups.
For example, the 1965 Immigration Act allowed Asians, specifically East Asians, of a certain educational and class
background into the United States. However, the model minority myth equates voluntary immigrant experiences
with the experiences of those who have descended from slavery and those who arrived involuntarily
and/or by force, such as a result of war or U.S. colonization and expansion projects abroad. My parents
immigrated to the U.S. seeking political freedom and better economic and educational opportunities. Yet, these freedoms and opportunities
are actually limited. They are offered as placations that obscure violent histories and institutions of slavery, colonialism, war, and genocide.
These opportunities selectively include and exclude different communities ability to participate. 4. The myth flattens and erases Asian
American identity. Asian American identities that dont abide by the model minority rulebook are deemed
invalid. Our validity and value is determined by our utility in preserving the racial hierarchy. Not only is it eugenic to ascribe
character traits, like quiet, polite, and obedient, to an entire racial group, the myth prevents coalition
building within our diverse Asian American communities. There are radically different histories, experiences, and
oppressions across the Asian American diaspora, yet often, we are lumped together as one ambiguous other. Whenever people think about
Asian identities, they think specifically of East Asian identities, such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Other groups in the Asian and Pacific
Islander diaspora are erased, and their lived realities and challenges are diminished. Assuming all Asians are the same, the
myth also creates a mono-dimensional Asian American without regard to intersections. It does not take
into account class, citizenship, language, gender, sexuality, ability, religion or other social identities. 5.
The model minority myth is used to deny racial justice. In invoking this myth, policymakers also fail to recognize existing
inequities and create access for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) subgroups and other racial groups. The myth makes the
economic and educational struggles of low-income AAPI families, Pacific Islanders, Southeast Asian
refugees, undocumented immigrants, and other groups invisible its unambiguity and inaccuracy
makes it a convenient narrative that prevents solutions to racial and socioeconomic inequity. For
example, only 12-13% of Hmong, Cambodian, and Laotian Americans have a college degree and less
than 10% of Samoan-Americans do. 2.3 million Asian Americans are uninsured. AAPI groups suffer from
physical and mental health disorders due to lack of culturally competent care. Theyre left out of
leadership roles at the top of organizations. Many AAPI groups also live in poverty, face labor
exploitation, and are disenfranchised from the education system. Focusing on those that are doing well makes the
issues of those who arent far less visible. We also need to begin to understand different histories and state policies in order to tackle the
construction of one model minority against a problem minority. Historically, the myth was created to diminish the Black communitys demands
for equal rights during the Civil Rights era. By
creating a racial hierarchy, the myth also started to prevent solidarity
movements between the two communities. 6. The model minority myth erases shared histories of oppression and of
solidarity. There is a long legacy of solidarity and shared oppression between Asian immigrants and
enslaved Black folks. Most versions of history disconnect the study of slavery from the study of Asian and Latinx immigration, leaving
out stories of transracial struggle. Asian immigrants, such as the Chinese, have historically and strategically been
thought of as both bridges and wedges between white folks and Black folks. For example, throughout
the 19th century, Chinese coolie laborers, lived in an intermediary position between slavery and free
labor. After the 1850s, labor became explicitly racialized when Britain brought Chinese laborers to the
Caribbean as a solution to suppress Black slave rebellion. The Chinese were given the social potential to form a middle
185
class family in order to create a racial hierarchy with White people at the top, Black people at the bottom, and Chinese people somewhere in
between. Black activists like Frederick Douglass link Black slavery and Chinese coolie labor together in
system that strategically separated and these two racial identities and then exploited these divisions.
Some examples of earlier solidarity movements that are erased from history books include: In the
1920s, the black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Workers issued a statement of solidarity with Filipino
workers that were used to break a strike. During the 1930s, in Seattle, coalitions across Japanese,
Chinese, and Filipino American communities emerged to fight against bills that would have made
interracial marriage illegal. In the Mississippi Delta, Chinese workers were recruited to work cotton
fields during the Reconstruction era. When contracts expired, some stayed to open grocery stories
these stores mostly sold to Black clientele and also offered an alternative to commissaries run by
former plantation owners. Civil Rights movements helped end racist immigration laws against South
Asians. In the late 1960s, Asian Americans were part of the Third World Liberation Strikes in Berkeley
that launched the Black Power movement and inspired the Yellow Power movement. Asian American
activists like Grace Lee Boggs and Yuri Kochiyama worked hard to build interracial solidarity and worked
closely with leaders like Malcolm X. As a way to destabilize the model minority myth and construct an alternate history, historian
Vivek Bald examined the relationship between Bengali migrants and the African American community in Harlem and showed how racial lines
between Asian-ness and Black-ness blurred. Bengali migrants experienced anti-black racism and witnessed black anti-racist organizing.
This history of cross-racial solidarity allows possibilities of a connected, holistic, radical movement towards racial justice. We can begin to resist
oppression by unlearning Euro-centric narratives of U.S. history. Although the myth has created incentives for silent complicity in a racial
system with winners and losers, this complicity costs us real solidarity and justice. How can we begin to act upon a commitment to social
justice and build solidarity with those that we have also oppressed in our own struggles? Drawing from the title of the critical transformative
justice anthology, by Jai Dulani, Ching-in Chen, and Leah Lahshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha: The
revolution starts at home. This
begins with reflecting on our own privilege, power, and identity. It means owning and admitting
complicity in a racist system that we may feel guilty or defensive about. It means having vulnerable
and sometimes difficult conversations with families, friends, and others that we love, respect, and trust.
In beginning to have conversations with others like my parents, I also have realized that not engaging in the conversation is an
underestimation of them. Assuming that they wont understand or wont care is an unfair and exclusionary characterization that they dont
have a place in racial justice movements. Asian American communities are not just bridges or wedges for other groups of color. Uniting under
the term people of color allows for building solidarity between movements that also allows for different racial histories. In
order to
resist white supremacy in a meaningful way, we need to build coalitions across communities of color in
order to share and redistribute power and combat racism rooted in anti-blackness and colonialism.
Power can come from communities coming together to demand justice. This solidarity can help us more equitably redistribute resources and
labor, take care of ourselves and each other, and center the needs of those most impacted by violence. By confronting the mutual enemy of
systemic racism, these coalitions can disrupt history and cycles of oppression. Partnerships that
are fluid, critical, holistic,
intersectional, and inclusive offer solutions that include and address multiple perspectives and issues.
We need to acknowledge past and present complicity and complacency in perpetuating anti-black
racism and moving past guilt and desire for forgiveness. We need to truly want change. We can begin doing
transformative, accountable work by knowing when to start speaking up without usurping another
voice. We can have diverse, horizontal leadership across communities where all forms of contributions
are valued. We can participate and show up the way others ask us to. We can begin to self-reflect on
different forms of privilege and power. For me, in standing up against the model minority myth, I am also refusing further
complicity in reinforcing anti-black racism.
White supremacy !
Rodrguez 05 [Dylan, Asian-American Studies in the Age of the Prison Industrial Complex: Departures and Re-narrations]
It is just as the U.S. prison has morphed into a multilayered structure of civic and social death that Asian
Americans have galvanized viable, even thriving renditions of multicultural American civic life. Such is the
historical condition of possibility for these multiple, civil society-based Asian Americanisms: while the very articulation and material gravity of
Asian Americanism sits on the precipice and precedent of the 1965 Immigration Actan alleged liberalization of a historically racist and
xenophobic set of policieswe must contextualize this change in federal immigration law as a measure that further facilitated the effective
expulsion of criminalized populations from U.S. civil society. In this context, the 1965
Act amounts to a selective
incorporation of an Asian immigrant population into the normative workings of an embryonic, post-
civil rights multicultural civil society. It also suggests a state-proctored cultural and political validation
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of contemporary Asian-American civil society over and against the durable immobilization,
confinement, and enhanced penal segregation of other racially pathologized populations. Finally, in the
wake of the Immigration Acts demographic effects, we must retheorize the vexing versatility of the
Asian-American model minority paradigm as something other than a stereotype run amuck: that is,
we must understand the cultural figure of the Asian-American model minority (both collective and
embodied) as a modality of white supremacy and racial ordering that exceeds the empirical validity
of the paradigm itself.
187
I: Kills Dissent
Model Minority myth is used to undermine Asian-American complaint
leu.edu/faculty/411
The portrayal of Asian Americans as successful permits the general public, government officials, and the
judiciary to ignore or marginalize the contemporary needs of Asian Americans. On the surface, the label
"model minority" seems like a compliment. However, once one moves beyond this complimentary
fagade, one can see the label for what it is-a tool of oppression which works a dual harm by (1) denying
the existence of present-day discrimination against Asian Americans and the present-day effects of past
discrimination, and (2) legitimizing the oppression of other racial minorities and poor whites. That Asian
Americans are a "model minority" is a myth. But the myth has gained a substantial following, both
inside and outside the Asian American community.7 9 The successful inculcation of the model minority
myth has created an audience unsympathetic to the problems of Asian Americans. Thus, when we try to
make our problems known, our complaints of discrimination or calls for remedial action are seen as
unwarranted and inappropriate. They can even spark resentment. For example, Professor Mitsuye Yamada tells a
story about the reactions of her Ethnic American Literature class to an anthology compiled by some outspoken Asian American writers: [One
student] blurted out that she was offended by its militant tone and that as a white person she was tired of always being blamed for the
oppression of all the minorities. I noticed several of her classmates' eyes nodding in tacit agreement. A discussion of the "militant" voices in
some of the other writings we had read in the course ensued. Surely, I pointed out, some of these other writings have been just as, if not
more, militant as the words in this introduction? Had they been offended by those also but failed to express their feelings about them? To my
surprise, they said they were not offended by any of the Black American, Chicano or Native American writings, but were hard-pressed to
explain why when I asked for an explanation. A little further discussion revealed that they "understood" the anger expressed by the Blacks and
Chicanos and they "empathized" with the frustrations and sorrow expressed by the Native American. But the Asian Americans?? [sic] Then
finally, one student said it for all of them: "It made me angry. Their anger made me angry, because I didn't even know the Asian Americans felt
oppressed. I didn't expect their anger."80 This story illustrates the danger of the model minority myth: it renders the oppression of Asian
Americans invisible.
This invisibility has harmful consequences, especially when those in positions of power
cannot see: To be out of sight is also to be without social services. Thinking Asian Americans have
succeeded, government officials have sometimes denied funding for social service programs designed
to help Asian Americans learn English and find employment. Failing to realize that there are poor Asian
families, college administrators have sometimes excluded Asian-American students from Educational
Opportunity Programs (EOP), which are intended for all students from low-income families.
The Western representation of the Asian being the model minority constructs a
rhetoric of silence regarding violence and crushes dissent
Kannan 2014 [Vani, doctoral student in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric at Syracuse University,
Model Minority or Potential Terrorist? Affective Economies, Rhetorics of Silence & the Murder of
Sunando Sen (7-13)(34-35)
On December 27, 2012, a Hindu Indian-American named Sunando Sen was pushed to his death from
the 40th Street/Lowery 7-train station in Queens, New York, by Erika Menendez, who said she killed
him in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks. This attack is part of a 12-year history of retaliatory violence; in
the week following 9/11 alone, there were 645 bias incidents and crimes specifically aimed at people
of South Asian and Middle Eastern descent,2 and by early As the statistics indicate, Sens murder is far from
an isolated event. Though this study focuses on only one out of thousands of similar attacks, it models a type of analysis that is exigent in
the post-9/11 U.S. In light of the continued vigilante violence, there is a need to understand the mechanisms by which
Sen was constructed as a target of fear, anger, and hatred. Furthermore, Sens attack must be considered in light
of the history of Indian-American deracialization, which is linked to the model minority tropean
intermediary racial location between black and white6 that conceals a long history of racialization of Asian ethnicities
and nationalities in the United States, most recently following 9/11. There is a need to examine representations of Indian-Americans to reveal
traces of their historical deracialization. In the post-9/11 context, how is the deracialized Indian-American discursively constructed, and what
188
ideologies are perpetuated in this silence about race?7 has been constructed in post-9/11 popular mediaspecifically, the implications of
popular media silence around the structural causes of racially-motivated violent crime, the racialized discourses embedded in this silence, and
the ideologies perpetuated by the circulation of these discourses. It also provides a method for denaturalizing the deracialized
representation of Sen set forth by popular media. To contextualize this analysis, we can begin by considering historical conceptions and
representations of Indian-Americans; this will allow us to identify and denaturalize traces of these histories in contemporary popular media.
Indian-Americans do not fit neatly on either side of the color line, and have historically inhabited a liminal, often deracialized position. Rather
than explore the historical differences in the racial formation of Muslim and Hindu diasporas in the U.S., I want to historicize the
deracialization of Indian-Americans and trace how this has been complicated in the wake of 9/11and, as Bill Ong Hing notes in Vigilante
Racism: The De-Americanization of Immigrant America, trace how institutional and interpersonal violence targeting Indian-Americans has
endured: the similarities between blatantly racist acts from one hundred years ago and today are troubling.8Institutional discrimination
against Indian-Americans in the continental United States can be traced to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, in which Asian-Americans were
integrated into the U.S. racial system as a non-indigenous, non-white, non-black group that was denied the right to citizenship and
property.9 From
the late 1800s into the early 1900s, over six thousand Indians who had moved to
California and the Pacific Northwest to work agricultural and timber laboring jobs faced discrimination from the Asiatic Exclusion
League, Samuel Gomperss American Federation of Labor, and the towns in which they lived.10 U.S. immigration officials responded to
pressure from these exclusionists by turning away more than 3,400 Indians who sought entry to the U.S. between 1908 and 1920.11 The
passage of the Alien Land Laws in 1913 cut short attempts by Indian immigrants to open small farms, and the Supreme Court Case
United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind ensured that Indian-Americans would not enjoy the privileges
afforded to whites.12 This casein which a high caste Hindu of full Indian blood sought naturalization
on the grounds that high-class Hindus belong to the Aryan race foreshadowed post-9/11 politics by racializing religion: The Court ruled
that the physical group characteristics of the Hindus render them readily distinguishable from the
various groups of persons in this country commonly recognized as [W]hite.14 Subsequent to this ruling,
all South Asians who had previously been granted citizenship lost it, and in 1924, the National Origins Act halted
immigration to the U.S. from India.15 Immigration policies kept Indian immigration rates low for the next forty years, largely because low-wage
agricultural workers from Mexico and the Caribbean rendered Indian manual labor unnecessary.16 Marked
by a racialized ethnicity,
Indian-Americans were thus othered without being neatly categorized as black or white, This none-
white, non-black designation was further complicated by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act,
which. recruited a pool of university-educated, English-language-fluent Indian immigrants to fill the
labor needs of the U.S. science and technology sector. As Vijay Prashad explains in The Karma of Brown Folk, this is
when the myth of the model minority took hold, largely as a tactic for distinguishing Indian-Americans
from Black Americans in the context of the Civil Rights movement: [t]he struggles of blacks [were] met
with the derisive remark that Asians dont complain; they work hard . . . [t]hat some people of color achieve
appreciable levels of success, for whatever reason, is used as evidence that racism poses no barrier to success (7-8). Used to support color-
blind, meritocratic ideologies, this group of soon-to-be-assimilated Indian-Americans was transformed into a deracialized model minority.
Immigration policyand with it, immigration waveshave shifted since 1965, but the myth of the model minority endures. In Unruly
Immigrants, Monisha das Gupta writes that the demographic and class differences arising from post-1965 immigration policy have led to the
emergence of distinct, often conflicting, needs and interests on the part of immigrants from South Asia (2006, p. 56). These varying
socioeconomic needs are obscured by the model minority trope, which has constructed the false sense that the Indian diaspora is an evenly
successful, self-reliant, and almost-white immigrant group.18 The historical construction of this trope sits in direct contrast to the history of
institutional and interpersonal violence targeting Indian-Americans, beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act and continuing today.19 ..By
framing Sens murder as the product of the perpetrators mental illness and situating it in a history of
subway-related deaths, this reportage denies the context of post-9/11 racism, and conceals the
production of emotion that made the attack possible. This is not meant to suggest that concealment is
intentional on the part of journalists, but rather that rhetorics of silence surrounding race are
embedded in dominant discourse and reproduced in popular media. The reportage does not
recognizelet alone challenge or critique the structural and discursive metonymic linking of brown
skin with terrorism. This effectively works to reinforce the metonymic link, maintaining
ArabMuslimSouthAsian bodies as objects at risk of attack.By reporting on Sens murder in the context
of mental health services and subway-related deaths, the media analyzed here perpetuate deracialized
representations of Indian-Americans, and in doing so, construct a rhetoric of silence around post-9/11
vigilante violence and maintain an affective economy of anger, fear, and hatred directed at the ArabMuslimSouthAsian body. These
silences are further reinforced through the individualization of Sens attack, and the fact that he is
characterized with model minority virtues of hard work and entrepreneurship.Here, we see race relegated to the margins,
and as Ahmed writes, what is relegated to the margins is often, as we know from deconstruction, right at the centre of thought itself.70
Considering this attack in light of Indian-American deracialization and the model minority stereotype,
it seems that post-9/11, this stereotype is doing harm in a new way: by constructing silences around the
racially-motivated nature of vigilante violence and with it, reinforcing violent affective economies. We
need to be critical of discourses surrounding post-9/11 vigilante violence to make sure they do not
189
unwittingly erase the histories and reinforce the affective economies that made the attacks possible.
Iyer makes a call to contextualize Sens murder within a history, past and present, of racism and xenophobia in our
country (2013). This work of historicizing post-9/11 racism is difficult, but also transformative; as Ahmed writes, I cannot learn this history
which means unlearning the forgetting of this history and remain the same.71 To unlearn the forgetting of this history, we must work
to denaturalize and re-contextualize narratives that do not take racial histories into account.
190
I: School-to-Prison Pipeline
The Model Minority Myth is not only a tool of the school-to-prison pipeline, but many
Chinese, Korean, and Indian Americans are complicit in the violence
Rodriguez 5 (Dylan, Professor of the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside, Asian-American
Studies in the Age of the Prison Industrial Complex: Departures and Re-narrations, The Review of
Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 27:241263, 2005)//MNW
To contest and revise Changs summation, far more is at stake than differential access to government social services and (a now non-
existent) affirmative action. While there is truth to Pra- shads and Changs assertions that the model minority imaginary amounts to a
cynical, white supremacist objectification of Asians as a political and cultural weapon against other racial minorities, (though I am less
inclined than Chang to contend that it is either similarly or significantly utilized against poor whites) what remains undertheorized in Asian
American critique is the
historical linkage between model minorityism and the militarized cultural
production of the law and order state. Such a theoretical examination requires a particular focus on
the political and cultural technology of criminalizationdefined here as the social and political apparatuses through
which (racial) categories of deviance and criminality are invented, refined, and formalized into the states mobilizations of policing and
jurisprudence. By way of example: the contemporary technology of criminalization has reached across the
emergence of the Asian American model minority figure in the genesis of a veritable war on young
people of color, waged on the street and in the increasingly militarized sites of urban public schools. Structurally and discursively linked
to what scholar-activist Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls the rise of domestic militarization,24 the school is becoming a site of stra-
tegic penal management and social neutralization, and projects the racist law and order imperative
into an age-based preemptive strike: One way or another, if youre young, poor, and of color, cops will
find a way into your classroom.25 Cultural theorist and critical pedagogue Henry Giroux, in an elaboration of Gilmores schematic,
has suggested that the rise to prominence of school- based zero tolerance laws ought to be read as a material
and juridical metaphor for hollowing out the state and expanding the forces of domestic
militarization,26 further arguing that the popular cultural and ideological effect of these laws is to mobilize racialized codes and race-
based moral panics that portray black and brown urban youth as a new and frighteningly violent threat.27 Here, the technology of
criminalization becomes the point of transfer for an institutional transformation: schools simultaneously become sites of carceral
militarization (against poor, racially pathologized youth) and disciplinary youth interpellation. According to Giroux, While
schools share
some proximity to prisons in that they are both about disciplining the body... little has been written
about how zero tolerance policies in schools resonate powerfully with prison practices that signify a
shift away from treating the body as a social investment (i.e., rehabilitation) to viewing it as a threat to
security, demanding control, surveillance, and punishment. . .. [S]uch practices have exceeded the boundaries of the prison-industrial
complex, providing models and perpetuating a shift in the very nature of educational leadership and pedagogy.28 The cultural
production and statecraft of the Asian-American model minority, reproduced and institutionally
inscribed by the administrative culture of dominant schooling institutions (and accentuated in higher education),
is wedged in a peculiar symbiosis with this militarization and penal pedagogical shift in the war on poor
urban Black and Brown youth. The Asian-American model minority, as a cultural fabrication situated within a
particular historical conjuncture, is something even more than (as Prashad correctly asserts) a weapon in the war against black America: it
is both the condition of possibility and embodied site of reproduction of this domestic war, a seminal
move in the production of a national(ist) multiculturalism that fortifies and extrapolates historical
white supremacist social formationsincluding and especially the burgeoning U.S. prison regime. As such,
the Asian-Americanist contestation of the model minority myth as inaccurate, deceptive, (anti-Asian) racist, and/or an erasure of the
material subordination of poor and disenfranchised Asian populations tends to elide critical confrontation with the militarized and
hegemonic discursive and social structure through which the myth itself has been articulated. Thus, against both the patronizing liberal racist
valorizations and Asian Americanist contestations of the Asian model minoritys alleged scholastic, economic, and cultural achievement sits a
durable (though dynamic) contextual backdrop of state and state-sanctioned racial violence. The preliminary genealogy of post-1970s
technologies of criminalization that I am briefly outlining here suggests that the
lever through which Asian-American
decriminalization obtains its social truthvis-a` -vis a self-fulfilling white social imaginary that claims to
witness, and subsequently proclaims the creeping ascendance of studious, law-abiding Asian
minorities is the same cultural/political fulcrum that historically militarizes white civil society against
its more ominous Black/Brown racial antagonists and cultural pathogens. The rendition of the Asian
191
immigrant model minority both facilitates and constitutes the expansion of state capacities in the
trajectory of mass-based Black/Brown punishment, providing the schema for an ascendantthough insistently
multicultural white-Asian alliance that manifests conspicuously in such instances as the 1980s and 1990s neoconservative movement to end
affirmative action policies (in which Asian Americans were continuously solicited and foregrounded as allies of a white supremacist pro-
meritocracy argument)29 and the post-1992 rapprochement between the stubbornly brutal Los Angeles Police Department and prominent
Korean/Asian-American community leaders. The latter example provides an opportune moment of inquiry, if only because current Asian
Americanist formations (including Asian American Studies) have largely undertheorizedif not altogether ignoredthe implications of such a
political coalescence. Emblematic of this reactionary Korean AmericanLAPD coalition was a 2002 event entitled The March Against Crime,
which occurred in the shadow of a massive and nationally publicized investigation of LAPDs Ramparts Division, a scandal that revealed
widespread corruption, brutality, and false testimony by LAPD officers resulting in up to 3000 wrongful convictions, an overwhelming number
of which were Black, Chicana/o, Mexicana/o, and Latina/o.30 In the midst of these public revelations of the Ramparts Division as the
instantiation of a low-intensity, localized urban state terrorist campaign against Black/Brown communities in Los Angeles, the Korean Youth
& Community Center (KYCC) and the Los Angeles Police Department (Wilshire Division) widely circulated a flyer and email which announced, in
resonance with Goldwaters rhetorical precedent: 10 YEARS AFTER THE L.A. RIOTS Our City comes together to CLEAN our Streets. The
flyer/email additionally urged its readers to speak out AGAINST CRIME and GRAFFITI; and show our STRENGTH as a Com- munity.
Contextualized by the heightened antagonism provoked by the Ramparts scandal, as well as the LAPDs infamous record of militarizedand
often spectacularviolence against racially- profiled people and communities, this presumptive invoking of our Community extrapolates the
limits of the Goldwaterist racial paradigm. In fact, this Korean-American call for a police-powered street cleansing bespeaks the political
logic of a multicultural civil alliance cut on the teeth of the states mobilization against its non-Korean=Asian, racially pathologized Others.
Chang, writing in the immediate aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles insurrection, inscribes the context
for this emergent white-Asian alliance in his mystification of a Korean American positionality
between racist whites and angry Blacks: This resentment, fueled by poor economic conditions, can
flare into anger and violence. Asian Americans, the model minority, serve as convenient scapegoats,
as Korean Americans in Los Angeles discovered during the 1992 riots. Many Korean Americans now
view themselves as human shields in a complicated racial hierarchy, caught between the racism of the white
majority and the anger of the black minority.31 Obscuring the material entitlement which Korean American small business owners represent
in relation to poor, disfranchised, non- propertied Black/Brown populations in Los Angelesmost importantly, property ownership and the
presumptive right to police protection that it elicitsChangs formulation ironically amplifies a fundamental tenet of model minority
discourse while reifying the white supremacist imaginary of urban disorder: In
this narration, we are to envision the
innocent, na i ve, hard working and law- abiding Asian immigrant entrepreneur as the misdirected and
unfortunate target of opportunistic Black/Brown aggression against white racism and the police
enforced sanctity of private property. Changs cynical conception of an angry Black mob engulfment
of Korean Americans (to wit, the lone Korean American fatality during the L.A. rebellion was the collateral victim of a bullet fired by a
Korean American shopkeeper, ostensibly intended for a faceless rioter)32 might, in this context, be interpreted as a call to
coalesce with the state regime most endowed with the juridical lati- tude and military capability to protect the urban property
interest. Thus, the subsequent show of partnership between Korean Ameri- can community leaders and the LAPD (even in the face of
supposed efforts to salve BlackKorean relations in Los Angeles) was neither na i ve nor undertheorized, but was instead the public mate-
rialization of an emergent, multiculturalist political logic. Stra- tegic and laboriously ritualized solidarities with the state, even and especially
in its most violent and militarized extremities, become the lever through which discretely articulated minority community interests stake
claims to political validity, and attempt piecemeal assimilation into the operative functioning of hegemonic social, political, and cultural
institutions. It is precisely this tacit valorization of the state, I would argue, that constitutes and troubles Asian Americanist political
formations and their concomitant social justice discourses. Feminist political philosopher Wendy Brown has convincingly argued that such
articulations of community and identity cast the law in particular and the state more generally as neutral arbiters of injury rather than as
themselves invested with the power to injure. She continues, Thus, the effort to outlaw social injury powerfully legitimizes law and the
state as appropriate protectors against injury and casts injured individuals as needing such protection by such protectors. Finally, in its
economy of perpetrator and victim, this project seeks not power or emancipation for the injured or the subordinated, but the revenge of
punishment, making the perpetrator hurt as the sufferer does.33 Following the trajectory of Browns critique,
it is worth remarking
that it has become a matter of routine for most Asian-American Stu- dies scholars and Asian-American
activists to disavow and critique the most bold-faced and cynical enticements toward neoconservative
whiteAsian political solidarity since the 1980s. Few, however, have addressed the central role of white supremacist state
violence most profoundly operationalized in the genesis of post-1970s law and order jurisprudence and the concomitant transformation of
the policing and prison apparatusesin sustaining a de facto white- Asian partnership grounded in the entitlements of presumptive civic
freedom. Such is the inevitable solidarity that emerges from the dialectic of (white-Asian) decriminalization and (Black-Brown)
criminalization.34 Notably, the
Asian American activist communitys confrontation with the punitive white
supremacist state has at times resorted to making normative reference of exceptionally poor and
policed Southeast Asian and Pacific Island immigrant populations (most often Laotians, Cambodians, Hmong,
Samoans, Vietnamese, and Pilipinos) and undocumented migrant workers as evidence of an Asian=American inclusion in the sweep of the
contemporary U.S. punitive carceral formation (such references, incidentally, obscure the constellation of socio-political antagonisms that
192
compel many within these communities to explicitly disidentify with the Asian American panethnic=coalition rubric). These examples, which
are undoubtedly crucial to addressing the localized specificity of technologies of criminalization targeting poor (Southeast) Asian and Pacific
Islander communities, nonetheless fail to displace the overwhelming production of whites and Asian Americans as generalized non-targets of
the law and order hegemonys juridical, cultural, and military weaponry. The implications of this condition on the various institutional
proliferations and discursive (re)formations of Asian American Studies are profound, if largely uninterrogated.
Asian-American immigration rights, and thus Asian American studies, are rooted in
America rectifying the increase of mass incarceration through the faade of a
multicultural society the model minority, and response to the model minority in
ethnic studies, are predicated on expanding prisons
Rodriguez 5 (Dylan, Professor of the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside, Asian-American
Studies in the Age of the Prison Industrial Complex: Departures and Re-narrations, The Review of
Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 27:241263, 2005)//MNW
Contemporaneous with the emergence of the U.S. prison industrial complex since the 1970s has been
the steadyif deeply conflicted institutionalization of Asian American Studies, as well as the rapid
growth of a veritable Asian American civil society (encompassing discretely self-identified Asian American nonprofit
organizations, social justice campaigns, faith communities, professional networks, and cultural centers). This historical
convergenceor more accurately, historical relationshipbetween the structural rearticulation of the
U.S. prison as a mode of social (dis)organization and mass- based human immobilization, on the one
hand, and the substantial expansion of multiply institutionalized civil Asian Americanisms, on the other,
composes a central (if generally disavowed) theoretical problem for Asian American Studies. I conclude with a sche-
matic reflection and incipient renarration of the difficulties and possibilities lodged therein. The epochal restructuring of
American global capitalhall- marked by the United States de-linking from the gold standard in 1971
entailed rapid movements toward deindustrialization in the domestic urban and rural spheres of the
U.S. along with the coercive translocation of manufacturing and productive apparatuses to sites in the
Third World and global South. Large-scale human displacement was the inevitable result of both movements, and has become the
definitive featureinscribed by the particular remappings of the World Bank/WTOs inception and deployment of structural adjustment
programsof globalizations alleged liber- alizations of capital, national borders, and governmental sovereignty. In this way,
the
historical genesis of the American law and order social formation was made possible by the radical
gutting if not wholesale evacuationof the industrial infrastructures of urban factory production and
rural agribusiness, which effectively divorced large numbers of Black and Brown workers from the
structural purview and forseeable domestic agendas of a quickly shapeshifting U.S. capital. These workers,
who were already tenu- ously located in the interstices between the global aspirations of corporate capital and the opportunism of a weak
and deeply racist U.S. labor movement, were almost instantaneously recategorized in popular and juridical discourse as economically
redundant and=or socially disposable populations. Those who were once slated for racialized hyper-exploitation
under advanced industrial capitalism were, in the imminent post-industrial law and order moment, ush-
ered toward economic obsolescence, mass incarceration, and civil death. Running in the wake of this
targeted human displacement and immobilization was the impressive demographic growth of Asian
immigrant communities facilitated by the passage of the 1965 Immi- gration Act. A large portion of this human
influx entailed the arrival of what Prashad has called the state-selected model minority population: the
educated, upwardly mobile, property owning, and petit bourgeoisie. The U.S. state chose to resolve the labor
needs of an emergent service-based, corporate managerial domestic economy by soliciting a privileged, class-selective immigration of
professionals and well-schooled proto-professionals from places that had long been the targets of an effective U.S. immigration blockade. The
state, in a master stroke, thus resolved the domestic crises of globalization, most importantly the displacement of obsolete Black= Brown
working populations (farm and factory workers), by actuat- ing a liberal racist cultural formation within the embryonic institutional
productions of a police and prison state: the
United States was, in this moment, broadly engaged in a statecraft
that proclaimed an abstracted commitment to the time-honored Americanist valor of universal
individual rights and freedoms, while erecting a policing and juridical structure that drastically eroded,
in policy and everyday practice, the socially reproductive capacities of the very populations that had
been profiled and pathologized by the Moynihan-Lewis intellectual bloc. In this way, the class-selective
193
influx of Asian immigrants (and their families) spurred by the 1965 Act, a migration that has formed the condition of
possibility for Asian Americanism as a multicultural civil project, has also been accompanied by a
massive juridical and economic re-definition of other poor and racially pathologized populations as
criminal and proto-criminal populations. As Manning Marable wrote in 1983. [T]he direction of Americas political
economy and social hierarchy is veering toward a kind of subtle apocalypse which promises to
obliterate the lowest stratum of the Black and Latino poor. . . . The genocidal logic of the situation could demand, in the
not too distant future, the rejection of the ghettos right to survival in the new capitalist order. Without gas chambers or pogroms, the dark
ghettos economic and social institutions might be destroyed, and many of its residents would simply cease to exist.35 Affirming Marables
speculation, the
prison population has expanded by over 1000% in the last twenty five years, with Blacks
constituting more than half the prison and jail population and Hispanics amounting to at least 15%
(this latter estimation is cast in doubt by the states notoriously dubious techniques of racial categorization and data collection). It is beyond
our scope here to delve into the contested sociological and criminological rationales for this empirical racial disparity in imprisonment. It
suffices to say, however, that regardless of the nominal intent or juridical justification for the astronomical overrepresentation of
Black=Brown populations under state captivity, the social effect of this racially designated structure of mass imprisonment has been
fundamental to the social and racial formation of the United States.36 This normalized condition of massive racial immobilization
underwrites the constitutive forces of globalization, and has crucially transformed targeted bodies, communities, and populations from
hyper-exploited (though still employable) workers into unem- ployable surplus or excess populationswhat former U.S. political prisoner
Linda Evans and Eve Goldberg have poignantly called the human raw material of the U.S. prison industrial complex.37 It
is just as the
U.S. prison has morphed into a multilayered structure of civic and social death that Asian Americans
have galvanized viable, even thriving renditions of multicultural American civic life. Such is the
historical condition of possibility for these multiple, civil society-based Asian Americanisms: while the very
articulation and material gravity of Asian Americanism sits on the precipice and precedent of the 1965 Immigration Actan
alleged liberalization of a historically racist and xenophobic set of policieswe must contextualize
this change in federal immigration law as a measure that further facilitated the effective expulsion of
criminalized populations from U.S. civil society. In this context, the 1965 Act amounts to a selective
incorporation of an Asian immigrant population into the normative workings of an embryonic, post-
civil rights multicultural civil society. It also suggests a state-proctored cultural and political validation
of contemporary Asian-American civil society over and against the durable immobilization,
confinement, and enhanced penal segregation of other racially pathologized populations. Finally, in the wake
of the Immi- gration Acts demographic effects, we must retheorize the vexing versatility of the Asian-American model minority paradigm as
something other than a stereotype run amuck: that is, we must understand the cultural figure of the Asian-American model minority (both
collective and embodied) as a modality of white supremacy and racial ordering that exceeds the empirical validity of the paradigm itself.
194
I: Violence
The narrative of the model minority is a myth based on skewed statistics that
renders violence against Asian Americans invisible and justifies the oppression of
other minorities
Kasinitz 11 (P, Masters at Harvard University, Model Minority,
https://depts.washington.edu/sibl/Publications/Model%20Minority%20Section%20(2011).pdf )//MNW
The term "model minority" was coined in 1966 by sociologist William Petersen in an article he wrote for
The New York Times Magazine entitled "Success story: Japanese American style." Petersen emphasized that family
structure and a cultural emphasis on hard work allowed Japanese Americans to overcome the
discrimination against their group and achieve a measure of success in the United States. Numerous
popular press articles subsequently appeared describing the "successes" of various Asian American
groups. Explanations for the seeming success of Asian Americans focused variously on Confucian values, work ethic, centrality of family, and
genetic superiority. One factor that was often overlooked in these accounts was US immigration law. The 1965 Immigration Act reversed years
of restrictive immigration policies that virtually banned all immigration from Asia, allowing for a greater number of immigrants to enter the
United States from non-Western countries, including countries in Asia and Latin America. Although this act lifted previous geographic
restrictions, it allowed only those with certain backgrounds to enter the United States. After
immediate family members of
those already in the United States, the second priority was recruiting professionals and scientists. As a
result, a large influx of highly-educated professionals (such as doctors and engineers) and scientists
from Asia left their home countries after 1965 and immigrated to the Unites States. It is this group of Asian
Americans, and their children, that make up a significant portion of the Asian American community today. A radical change in US immigration
policy can thus explain some of the individual success stories profiled in popular press articles describing Asian American success. Model
minority myth? Although
there are national that suggest that Asian Americans have achieved some measure
of success in US society, disaggregating the statistics reveals a different story. According to the 2006 Census data,
when combined into one group, Asian Americans earn a greater household income than Whites ($66,060 vs $53,910), Blacks ($32,876), and
Latinos ($38,853). Educational attainment from the 2000 Census shows a similar pattern: a greater percentage of Asian Americans attend
college than Whites (65 percent vs 54 percent). On the face of it, the Asian American community may appear to be
doing quite well. However, the term "model minority" is often accompanied by the word "myth"
because many scholars have argued that the assumptions that Asian Americans are doing well is
overgeneralized and inaccurate. First, the use of household income statistics obscures the fact that
many Asian American families have larger households with more adults who are employed than White families.
Second, although some Asian American ethnic groups may be doing relatively well, there are many
Asian American ethnic groups that not doing well compared to the rest of the US population. For
instance, according to the 2000 Census, Cambodians have a per-capita income of $10,215, and over 90
percent of their population does not have a bachelor's degree, significantly lower than the comparable statistics for the
US overall ($21,587 per capita income and 76 percent without a bachelor's degree). Third, Asian Americans make up a
disproportionately high percentage of those living in poverty; the 2005 Census data reveals that II
percent of Asian Americans live below the poverty line, compared to 8 percent of Whites. Asian Americans are
also uninsured at a higher rate than Whites (18 percent vs 11 percent). Focusing on the Asian Americans who
have "made it" renders invisible those in the community who continue to struggle. Relying on aggregate
household income and education statistics also obscures the fact that White Americans still hold a disproportionate
number of the top positions in US society. Even today, there is only one Asian American governor and two Asian American
senators (both from Hawaii). Similarly, the top-level positions in business are still overwhelmingly filled by Whites. Asian Americans have also
encountered a glass ceiling, making up less than 1.5 percent of the top executives in Fortune 1000 firms. Perhaps
most telling, Asian
Americans realize lower returns on their education than Whites, meaning that Asian Americans require
more years of education to achieve the same level of income as Whites. Asian Americans, like other minority
groups, have not yet achieved a level of success that is commensurate to the success of Whites, even when education differences are
controlled for across the two groups. Moreover, this is true even of Asian Americans born in the United States, suggesting that a lack of facility
with English does not fully explain the greater achievement of Whites. Taken
together, these observations reveal that the
model minority stereotype is problematic because it masks many of the struggles faced by Asian
195
Americans. Consequences/or Asian Americans While some Asian Americans embrace the seemingly positive characterization of their
group, others resist it because of the negative consequences it has for the Asian American community. On the one hand, social psychological
experiments have shown that being stereotyped as smart may benefit Asian Americans in test-taking situations because positive stereotypes
about one's group can boost performance. On the other hand, the
model minority myth can be harmful to Asian
Americans who may feel pressure to live up to unrealistic expectations. In addition, believing that Asian
Americans are a model minority diverts attention away from any discrimination they may have faced
and continue to face. Asian Americans who mention discrimination may seem to be complaining about
something that does not exist or is not serious. However, discrimination against Asian Americans is real.
Asian Americans are often mistaken for foreign citizens, are believed to be more loyal to Asia than to the United States,
and have little political support among other Americans. Moreover, although being stereotyped as smart may seem like a good thing, seeming
too competent garners feelings of envy and competition, especially in situations where resources may be scare (such as during bad economic
times). Envied groups are also often viewed cold and unsociable, reflecting a tradeoff between competence and likability in perceptions of
social groups. Thus,
although the model minority's high competence may be (begrudgingly) admired, it can
at same time undermine liking for the group and lead to prejudice. Whites have initiated hate crimes
against Asian because of a belief that Asian Americam were achieving too much and resources, such as
jobs, away from Whites. The model minority myth can also obscure socioeconomic diversity within the Asian American community
and prevent Asian Americans who need assistance getting it. More research is necessary identify the situations in which the mode minority
label benefits as opposed harms Asian Americans. Consequences/or relationships between minority groups Scholars argue that
the
model label serves to undermine positive relation ships between ethnic groups. The minority myth
reinforces the dream by promoting the image that work pays off. This rhetoric can be divisive, because it can
be used as a tool reinforce the subordinate position of minority groups ("they made it, why you?") and
prevent cooperation Asian Americans and other minorities. In addition, the characterization of Americans as a model
minority can be to undermine support for programs help other minority groups to achieve sucess, such as affirmative action, by suggestinging
that affirmative action should be able to work hard and success without any assistance. Consequences for majority groups Asian Americans'
status as the minority also has negative effects Asian
Americans require more years of education to achieve the
same level of income as Whites. Asian Americans, like other minority groups, have not yet achieved a
level of success that is commensurate to the success of Whites, even when education differences are controlled for
across the two groups. Moreover, this is true even of Asian Americans born in the United States, suggesting that a lack of facility with English
does not fully explain the greater achievement of Whites. Taken together, these observations reveal that the model minority
stereotype is problematic
196
Impacts - Orientalism
197
I: Gendered Violence
Orientalism results in gendered violence against Asian American women
Cho 98 (Sumi K. Assistant Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law; B.A., University of
California at Berkeley, 1984; J.D., UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law, 1990; Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, UC
Berkeley, 1992; Assistant Professor of Political Science and Ethnic Studies, University of Oregon, 1993-
94; Faculty Fellow, University ofIowa College ofLaw, 1994-95.)
2
The racial economy of
Historically, immigration laws that were racially discriminatory also discriminated on the basis of gender.
pre-civil rights America preferred a "bachelor society" of single Asian men who proved to be a source of
cheap, vulnerable labor. This preference resulted in the creation of a "yellow proletariat" which helped
to keep wages low, and served as a convenient scapegoat for the socio-economic dislocations of an
industrializing society. 2 As a result, until the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, there were
gross gender imbalances in virtually every Asian ethnic immigrant group in the United States.' The few
women in the U.S. prior to the elimination of racial barriers in immigration laws were seen either as sexual servants with little or no agency in
the bachelor society, or as the domesticated appendages of laboring Asian men. As such, APA women assumed at least a double subaltern
identity, as they occupied a subordinated position within a subordinated group. Historically, this
bachelor society led to the
importation of Asian women as prostitutes. While the disproportionate numbers of men to women
during the Gold Rush era on the West Coast attracted both white and Chinese prostitutes, the former
tended to be independent professionals or wage-earners in brothels. Because many Chinese prostitutes
in California during the nineteenth century were "muijai," or indentured servants and were perceived
as hyper-degraded, they were favorite subjects for white female missionaries' rescue crusades, as well
as for nativist politicians' justifications for restricting and excluding Chinese immigration. Sensational
newspaper headlines reflected the widespread characterizations of APA women as the abused chattel
of brutal Chinese proprietors. Such characterizations effectively combined the racialized narrative of a
harsh, heathen and unassimilable Chinese culture with a gendered dimension that reflected images of
sexual slavery. Historical stereotypes of Chinese prostitutes, metaphorized as "lotus blossoms,"29would remain intact in subsequent,
including contemporary, reformulations of APA women's identity. The "domesticated" lotus-blossom version of Asian female identity,
however, co-existed with the "foreign" counterpoint known as the "dragon lady"-a conniving, predatory force who travels as a partner in crime
with men of her own kind. These two Asian female identities covered the range of behavior from tragically passive to demonically aggressive,
in one- dimensional and stereotypical forms. Similarly, the process of objectification that women in general experience takes on a particular
virulence with the overlay of race upon gender stereotypes. Generally, objectification diminishes the contributions of all women, reducing
50
their worth to male perceptions of female sexuality. In the workplace, objectification comes to mean that the value of women's
contributions will be based not on their professional accomplishments or work performance, but on male perceptions of their vulnerability to
harassment. Asian Pacific women suffer greater harassment exposure due to racialized ascriptions (for
example, they are exotic, hyper-eroticized, masochistic, desirous of sexual domination, etc.) that set
them up as ideal gratifiers of western neocolonial libidinal formations. In a 1990 Gentleman's Quarterly article
entitled "Oriental Girls," Tony Rivers rehearsed the racialized particulars of the "great western male
fantasy": Her face-round like a child's,.., eyes almond-shaped for mystery, black for suffering, wide-spaced for innocence, high cheekbones
swelling like bruises, cherry lips....When you get home from another hard day on the planet, she comes into existence, removes your clothes,
bathes you and walks naked on your back to relax you.... She's
fun you see, and so uncomplicated. She doesn't go to
assertiveness- training classes, insist on being treated like a person, fret about career moves, wield her
orgasm as a non-negotiable demand.... She's there when you need shore leave from those angry
feminist seas. She's a handy victim of love or a symbol of the rape of third world nations, a real trouper.
As the passage demonstrates, Asian Pacific women are particularly valued in a sexist society because they
provide the antidote to visions of liberated career women who challenge the objectification of women
In this sense, this gender stereotype also assumes a "model minority" function, for it deploys this idea of Asian Pacific women to "discipline"
white women, just as Asian Pacific Americans in general are frequently used in negative comparisons with their "non-model" counterparts,
African Americans." The passage is also a telling illustration of how colonial and military domination are interwoven with sexual domination to
create the "great western male fantasy." Military involvement in Asia, colonial and neocolonial history, and the derivative Asian Pacific sex
tourism industry have established power relations between Asia and the West that in turn have shaped stereotypes of Asian Pacific women.
198
I: Colonial Domination/Yellow Peril

Orientalism perpetuates anti-Asian stereotypes, racism, and colonial domination. The
yellow peril is defined out of otherness, the Model Minority is created through
studies of Confucianism. Anti-asian racism culminates in police brutality but the
model minority renders it all invisible
Bakli 14 (Sara, asian american activist, What is Orientalism, and how is it also racism?,
http://reappropriate.co/2014/04/what-is-orientalism-and-how-is-it-also-racism/, 4/17/14)//MNW
While Orientalism led to a Western fascination with Asia as an exotic land equal parts captivatingly romantic and terrifyingly barbaric
perhaps the
most important aspect of Orientalism is how it defined Asian men and women against the
Western norms of gender identity. Compared to stalwart European men and chaste European women,
Asian men and women were recast in the European imagination as specific counter-points to these
expected gender norms: Asian women became hypersexualized, unsatiable, creatures in one Medieval text
described as standing thirteen feet tall and having ox-tails emerging from their genitals, whereas described by Marco Polo as either dainty
courtesans or voracious prostitutes whereasAsian men are portrayed as slight, stooping, meek and unassertive
barbarians who attack in faceless hordes to make up for their easy defeat in single combat by European
men. Furthermore, in Orientalism, the land of the Orient is, itself, feminized, which invites subsequent conquest
in overtly sexual language by the virile West. Polo discusses the many Asian wives that Western
traders take, literally wresting the Asian woman from the Asian man. Columbus endeavour to discover
Asia by sea was cast as taking possession of these lands. Thus, in Orientalism, the Orient is not merely
the Other of the West, but an Other that stands as a prize or trophy, to be dominated or conquered
by the West. Importantly, when the West is the standard against which the Orient is defined, the Orient cannot, by definition,
be a point of empathy. As defined in its distance from norm, Asia instead becomes a thing to be
possessed, and populated with a people who are not quite normal and therefore not quite human.
In short, when the Orient becomes a land of the Other, the people of the Orient become the Other,
too; Orientalism becomes dehumanization. This, not surprisingly, paved the way for multiple Western
efforts to colonize economically, culturally, and militaristically Asia. I neednt go into the many examples of
the Wests incursions into the East, all of which share at their core the perception that the West has a moral and cultural imperative to subdue
through whatever means necessary the bizarre traditions and abnormal people of the Eastern Other based entirely upon the Orients
deviancy. How Orientalism leads to anti-Asian racism A
quick consideration of the many anti-Asian stereotypes of
today reveal their roots in the over-arching Orientalism that still persists in the Wests conception of
the East. We are the Perpetual Foreigner never quite normal, never quite one of us: this is a
contemporary recapitulation of the Asian as the Orientalized Other. Sexually, many of the gender
stereotypes that were first invented during Marco Polos time the hypersexualized lotus blossoms
and dragon ladies; the barbaric and cowardly effeminate men still thrive today. Even the Model
Minority myth has its roots in Orientalism: simultaneous awe of exotic Asian cultural traditions that
emphasize academia with fear of the intellectual Chinese Yellow Peril threat. Orientalism is frequently
mistaken as being synonymous with cultural appropriation and misappropriation because the fantasy of Orientalism has been constructed and
reinforced through the misappropriation of exaggerated Eastern cultural traits and practices to build and maintain the East as an exotic place
of beauty and terror. When Katy Perry goes all-out geisha, she is invoking and perpetuating the theatre of Orientalism. When challenged,
defenders of Orientalism will claim that this theatre is a love declaration (as Vincent Vidal writes above), forgetting that these love
declarations bear little resemblance to the culture from which they are appropriated, and further removes the agency of the East to
represent itself, [thereby preventing] true understanding, as Said writes. Furthermore, Orientalism refers not just to the
cultural appropriation, but to the impact this appropriation has on our percepetion of Asia and Asian-
ness. Orientalism is more fundamentally the positioning of Asian people as the proverbial Other,
always serving as a counter-point to the normative West, forever an orbiting satellite, never able to define itself for itself
within the Western cannon. Orientalism eternally casts the Asian person as stereotype, and never allows the
Asian body to be normal. Is Orientalism racist? So, in the end, one must ask whether Orientalism is racism. The answer to this
question demands not only a definition of Orientalism as I have provided here but also a redefinition of racism, itself. Racism is not
199
merely overt hatred or abuse of people based on race: it is not casual instances of race-based
mockery. Racism is, more fundamentally, the institutions that perpetuate and allow acts of racial
oppression to take place. Orientalism is the cultural framework against which tangible racism is
practiced against Asian people in the West. In America, when Chinese coolies are lynched, the act is
justified by the perception of Chinese men as physically weak, economically invasive, and culturally
barbaric. When Japanese Americans are interned, the act is justified by the belief that these citizens
are innately un-American and perpetually foreign. When Asian and Asian American women are
brutally raped, the act is justified by the assertion that the sexuality of Asian women invites deviancy.
When Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz beat Vincent Chin to death, the act is justified by the conflation
of Chinese and Japanese as the faceless Other.
200
Impacts Islamophobia
201
I: Militarized Education
The war on terror continues everyday within the school system
Giroux 2015, Henry, holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies
Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University, The new war zone , FROM SCHOOL TO THE PRISON PIPELINE,
http://www.artsandopinion.com/2015_v14_n5/giroux-12schools.htm, , (Haq 7/2/2017)
World renowned author Ngugi wa Thiong'o observed that "Children are the future of any society [and that] if you want to know
the future of a society look at the eyes of the children. If you want to maim the future of any society, you simply maim
the children." If one important measure of a democracy is how a society treats its children, especially
young children who are Black, Brown or Muslim, there can be little doubt that US society is failing. As the
United States increasingly models its schools after prisons, students are no longer viewed as a social
investment in the future. In the aftermath of 9/11, students have become collateral damage. They are the most
recent victims of a punishing state in a society that "remains in a state of permanent, endless war." Students are now viewed as a
potential threat, and Muslim students are viewed as potential terrorists. One result is that schools increasingly
have come to resemble war zones, spaces marked by distrust, fear and demonization. For example, there are more
police in the schools than ever before. Security has become more important than providing children with a critical education and supportive
learning environment. And authority in many of the schools is often handed over to the police and security forces who are now asked to deal
with all alleged disciplinary problems, however broadly defined. In most case, these involve trivial infractions such as violating a dress code,
scribbling on a desk, or holding a two-inch toy gun. It is hard to believe that young people are subjected to such horrendous practices --
children being handcuffed and carted off to jail for minor incidents -- and that
such draconian practices could take place in a
society that views itself as a democracy. Stripped of their public mission as institutions that nurture young people to become
informed, critically engaged citizens, schools have become punishing factories. No longer spaces of joy, critical teaching, and support, schools
are now modeled after prisons. The lesson that young people are learning about themselves is that they can't be
trusted, cannot rely on the informed judgments of teachers and administrators, and that their behavior is constantly subject to procedures
that amount to both an assault on their dignity and a violation of their civil liberties. Schools have become institutions in which creativity is
viewed as a threat, discipline a virtue, and punishment the reward for not conforming to what amounts to the dictates of a police state. How
many more images of young school children in handcuffs do we have to witness before itbecomes clear that the educational
system is broken, reduced largely to a punishing factory defined by a culture of fear and an utter distrust of young people? The most
recent example can be seen in the case of Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old Muslim high school ninth
grader who was questioned by school administrators and the police for bringing a homemade digital clock to
school that he had made himself. Ahmed is a gifted young man who makes his own radios, works on his go-kart, tinkers with circuit boards
and has a love for robotics. He is a young man whose immense curiosity for the world has been channeled into the kind of skills than any
decent school would recognize not only as a gift but as something to promote and nurture given the potential future he might have as a
budding engineer or scientist. Ahmed
brought a clock he had made to school to show his teachers. What should
have been viewed as creative act was interpreted as a crime. Instead of being praised for his invention, he got pulled
out of class, interrogated and eventually cuffed with his hands behind his back, and hauled off to a police station. There is more at stake here
than a sad example of adults who have defaulted on any sense of responsibility and informed judgment -- from the classroom teacher and
principal to the police who arrested Ahmed. Ahmed's case is another example of the terrible price young people are
paying: they are routinely treated with distrust, disdain and suspicion. This issue could have been resolved in ten
minutes. Instead, it becomes another case of the culture of fear that dominates the country poisoning a
school and turning the people who run it into hysterical adjuncts of the criminal justice system. Ahmed has vowed
never to show or take any of his inventions to schools again. Surely, schools should not be places that not only kill a
student's imagination, but position them to live in fear whenever they enter a school building. Ahmed's case is part of a larger trend
that has turned schools across the country into war zones and educators into prison guards. What happened to Ahmed is far
from unusual. As Glenn Greenwald points out: The behaviour here is nothing short of demented. And it's easy to mock, which in turn has
the effect of belittling it and casting it as some sort of bizarre aberration. But it's not that. It's the opposite of aberrational. It's the natural,
inevitable byproduct of the culture of fear and demonization that has festered and been continuously inflamed for many years. The
circumstances that led to this are systemic and cultural, not aberrational. When young people are viewed as a threat rather than as a social
investment, their behaviours are increasingly being criminalized in the streets, malls, schools, and many other places once considered safe
spaces. As compassion and social responsibility give way to mass hysteria, punishment and fear as the most important modalities mediating
the relationship of youth to the larger social order, schools resort more and more to zero tolerance policies that are punitive in nature and
often result in the handing over of disciplinary problems to the police rather than educational personnel. With the growing presence of police,
surveillance technologies and security guards in schools more and more of what kids do, how they act, how they dress, and what they say is
defined as a criminal offence. Suspensions, expulsions, arrests, and jail time have become routine for poor minority youth. The most minor
infractions both in schools and on the street are now viewed as criminal acts.
Rather than treating such behaviours as part of
the professional responsibilities of teachers and administrators, such infractions are now the purview of
the police. A toxic mix of racism, Islamophobia and fear has transformed schools into outposts of thoughtlessness and
202
stupidity, all hallmarks of the war on terror. What should be viewed a teachable moment becomes a criminal offense. In this
instance, youth such as Ahmed become the object of a new mode of governance based on the crudest forms of disciplinary control often
leading to the growth of what has been called the school-to-prison pipeline. Ahmed's case reveals why police should not be in public schools
and that the targeting of children by criminalizing their behaviour represents the antithesis of how a school should treat its children. How
much longer can a nation ignore the transformation of schools into punishing factories and what I view as a war on youth? What does it mean
when a nation becomes frozen ethically and imaginatively in providing its youth with a future of hope and opportunity? Under such
circumstances, it is time for parents, young people, educators, writers, labor unions and social movements to take a stand and to remind
themselves that not only do young people deserve more, but so does an aspiring democracy that has any sense of justice, vision and hope for
the future. Schools should be places that educate students not punish them. Educators should assume responsibility for their roles as informed
administrators and teachers. The classroom should be a place where the critical capacities of students are encouraged.
Schools not only
teach knowledge and values, they also speak to the kind of future that young people might inhabit.
Surely, there is no room for schools that turn what might be dreams for children into nightmares.
203
I: Genocide
Islamophobia is the genocide of people of color
Hussain 12 , Murtaza Hussain is a Toronto-based writer and analyst focused on issues related to Middle Eastern politics., 12-31-2012,
"Anti-Muslim violence spiralling out of control in America," No Publication,
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121230135815198642.html, , (Haq 7/2/2017)
On the evening of December 27, an Indian immigrant to America named Sunando Sen was pushed by a stranger
onto the subway tracks in New York City and struck and killed by an oncoming train. Sen had called New York
home for years, and after years of hard work and struggle had recently managed to achieve his lifelong goal of opening a small business of his
own, a copy shop in Upper Manhattan. His roommate, MD Khan expressed shock at the death of his friend, a soft spoken man who liked to
stay up late watching comedy shows and listening to music: "He was so nice, gentle and quiet It's broken my heart." The following day, the
NYPD announced the arrest of Erika Menendez, a 31-year-old woman who had been spotted on security footage fleeing the scene after Sen
had been pushed. Upon being detained and taken to a 112th Precinct police station for questioning, Menendez
confessed to Sen's
murder and revealed as her motivation a desire to commit violence against Muslims . As she told detectives:
"I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims Ever since 2001 when
they put down the Twin Towers, I've been beating them up." Sunando Sen was not a Muslim, but as a
brown-skinned foreigner living in the United States, he was targeted and killed in an act of hate
which is the by-product of an ongoing campaign of bigotry and demonisation against Muslims living
in America. Muslim-Americans, as well as Hindus, Sikhs and others who purportedly "look Muslim"
have been humiliated, assaulted and in many cases murdered by individuals often galvanised to violence by
politicians and media figures who have enthusiastically engaged in public hatemongering against the Muslim community in the country. Anti-
Muslim violence increases The 9/11 attacks precipitated a surge in hate crimes, but even as the events themselves recede further into
history, the level of hatred and violence directed at Muslim communities is paradoxically increasing.
Within the past month, in New York alone, police have suspected racial hatred as being the motive behind several crimes. This includes a
string of murders specifically targeting Middle Eastern storekeepers in Brooklyn, the last of whom, a
78-year old Iranian
immigrant named Rahmatollah Vahidipour, was shot to death while closing his boutique and whose
lifeless body was then dragged to a backroom and covered over with merchandise from his store.
Within the same week as Vahidipour's murder another Muslim man was viciously beaten by two men who
preceded their attack by asking him whether he was "a Hindu or a Muslim", while another man was
stabbed several times outside of a mosque in a random attack by an assailant who screamed "I'm
going to kill you Muslim", while repeatedly plunging a knife into his victims' body. Far from being
aberrations, these incidents are in line with national statistics which show anti-Muslim violence in America nearing record highs,
a trend which comes in tandem with highly public campaigns against mosque construction as well as fear-mongering by politicians and media
figures regarding alleged plots by Muslim-Americans to override the constitution and impose Islamic law on the country. The US election cycle
also saw Muslims used as convenient targets for politicians seeking office, with one example being incumbent Illinois House of
Representatives Republican Joe Walsh who told a cheering crowd at a campaign rally that "Muslims are here
trying to kill Americans everyday", before making a baseless and highly incendiary claim that radical Islam had
"infiltrated" the Chicago suburbs and that Muslims there were planning an attack that would "make 9/11 look like
child's play". While working the crowd into hysterics was a convenient campaign strategy for Walsh, just days later the Muslim community
experienced the consequences of his rhetoric. A
man opened fire on an Illinois mosque while it was packed with
hundreds of congregants for Ramadan. The next day, another mosque was hit with an acid bomb
thrown at a window while worshippers had gathered for night services.
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Alternatives
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A: Asian Rage
The alternative is Asian rage, an embodied experience which flips the script on the
docile model minority and sparks emotional connections in our communities
Asian American rage is a tool we weaponize rage to collapse the myth of the model
minority, and to break down white supremacy. Under the paradigm of the model
minority, Asians are perceived as docile, our grief is accepted but our anger is seen as
ungrateful. Our rage turns these perceptions on their head instead of internalizing
the melancholy of the status quo, our rage empowers and resists.
Chandra 14 (Ravi, psychiatrist and poet, Asian American Anger: Its A Thing!, pg. 14-22)//MNW
Asian Americans very easily find themselves under threat as well. While we might call Rodgers anger self-centered and say Asian American
cultural anger responds to bigger threats, the latter still holds tensions that must be reckoned with on a personal level. We
might find
cultural anger more justifiable, but it is tied to identity struggles that impact relations between all
individuals. We could cite a long and undeniable history of racism and violence against Asian Americans
in the U.S., from the earliest Chinese immigrants through Japanese American internment to the
continuing hate crimes against South Asians post 9-11. We recently passed the 32nd anniversary of the
murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit, a seminal moment in Asian American history. There are still those who deny this was a hate
crime, including one of the murderers yet the fact remains that Chins murderers got off essentially scot-free. A Chinese American
mans life was worth only three years of probation and a $3720 fine that was never even paid. The list
goes on. Balbir Singh Sodi, murdered days after 9-11 in Mesa, Arizona. Fong Lee, a 19-year old Hmong
American man who was brutally shot multiple times in the back while he was on the ground, by a
Minneapolis police officer in 2006. Cau Bich Thi Tran, a 25-year old Vietnamese American mother of
two shot by a San Jose policeman in 2003 three seconds after he entered her house responding to her
own 911 call, claiming he mistook her vegetable peeler for a weapon. Sunando Sen, an Indian
immigrant pushed to his death on a New York City subway track in 2012 by a woman who stated she
was retaliating for 9-11. The six people killed and four injured by a white supremacist in the Oak Creek,
Wisconsin Sikh Temple massacre in 2012. In 2012, at least 4.1% of hate crimes reported to the FBI were against Asians and
Pacific Islanders, but critics counter there is significant underreporting. 54% of Asian American teens reported being bullied in a recent survey,
far above the rates of whites and other minorities. When we raise our voices in anger about violence and harassment targeting our
communities, we are not crying wolf. The isolated
incidents are not isolated they are part of a pattern of
hatred directed against all minority groups. There is a serious and significant danger to which we
remain alert and sensitive. Asian Americans are victims of bias that renders them outsiders and
others to be discriminated against, harassed and even killed. Trauma can also be transmitted
intergenerationally. There is evidence that experiences of parents and ancestors leave their marks on
gene expression and thus can predispose children to anger and other difficult emotions and alter their
response to stress. Men (and women) also absorb the stories of their families and forebears struggles, here and abroad. In Korea and
in Korean Americans, for example, there is a word for this han a collective feeling of oppression and cultural suffering that becomes woven
into personal identity. As Asian Americans, we often think in terms of group identity and affiliation so I think there is an Asian American han,
which vies with cultural amnesia and dissociation from the totality of the Asian American experience to define the Asian American soul. Some
of us cant forget; others try to flee into the supposed safety of the river of forgetfulness, and so perpetuate the problem. This is all occurring
at the same time that some Asian American groups are experiencing financial prosperity and success. We
are stereotyped as the
Model Minority, which ignores the great diversity between groups and also the complicated stories
within groups and individuals (see Jenn Fangs and Marie Myung-Ok Lees analyses at Reappropriate.com and Salon.com,
respectively). Asians are seen as quiet, docile, submissive, and silent worker drones who do their job
without complaint, and for their service are held up as ideals by even our own Amy Chua (in her recent book
The Triple Package), causing a backlash of resentment and hostility, as well as internal and external conflict
as Asian Americans struggle to find and assert their own identities. Anger arises in the context of
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discrimination, violence, racism, misunderstanding and even dismissal of our perspectives, potentials,
histories and individualities. Where financial success does not occur, as in many parts of the Asian American experience, the
complications of poverty and disenfranchisement violence, mental and physical health problems, and so forth cause deep and interlocking
problems, and plenty of food for anger. Success might in itself be soothing but it is incomplete and therefore, is
not. Financial success, even when it occurs, cannot compete with relational or moral victory, and does
not translate into freedom from suffering. The successful Asian American man can feel excluded, unrelated and demoralized
everywhere from the big screen to the boardroom to the bedroom. When not excluded, he and his cultures are openly
mocked, stereotyped, appropriated and insulted, an ignorance-fueled hazing by some in the white
majority. Despite this, he is viewed as having no right to be angry. All speak to a sense of emasculation and
disempowerment, isolation and injustice, silencing, marginalization and victimization. While it feels at times (for some of us) that the
landscape is changing quickly, we cannot feel distant to racial and cultural inequities. As human beings, no matter our socioeconomic status,
we remain sensitive to the suffering of not only our groups but all groups. The instant we become insensitive to others suffering is the instant
we become party to the perpetuation of that suffering. You may have heard this slogan: If youre not angry, youre not paying attention. We
cant help but pay attention, so anger is one of our understandable reactions. We get to this feeling honestly. But in the end, the righteous
anger of the socially conscious may be an aspirational anger, available only to those relatively unburdened by more proximal issues, such as
family conflicts. To paraphrase Tolstoy, happy families are all of a piece; unhappy ones tell myriad dark tales. Yet
there are themes
common to the genesis of the frustrated, angry Asian American man. All of us are victims, first, of our
own families and their limitations. Children are always on the front line of their familys issues from the
time of birth. Amy Chua, for example, infamously promoted the Tiger Mom parenting strategy, but she angered Asian American men
and women who were harmed by harsh, critical parents. Dr. Su Yeong Kim showed that harsh and tiger parenting led to higher
rates of depression, lower self-esteem, and poorer performance in school in Chinese American children.
The ranks of the angry and suffering often come saddled with issues created by their family situations.
The children of immigrants are often frustrated by a large generation and cultural gap with their
parents. They can feel torn between worlds. Expectations for success at school and work, for
obedience can run high, leaving them in a double bind of both loving their parents and being angry or
disappointed with them, of trying to please parents and also trying to assert themselves. Male children
especially may be prized at home and put on a pedestal, yet feel alienated or socially stunted in the outside world, feeling that their family
situation didnt prepare them to relate to the broader American scene and women in particular. Emotional growth may be devalued, and they
are sometimes alienated from parents who dont understand the pressures they experience due to race or class. Sexuality can be repressed at
home, and uncertain outside. Until recently, Asian males were categorically seen as less masculine, less powerful, and thus less desirable to
women, leading to self-esteem issues and understandable anger. Anecdotally, Asian American males have longer periods of being single than
either white males or Asian American women leaving room for frustration and anger directed at Asian American women and whites. And of
course, the man who feels undesirable or disempowered might take out his frustrations on the nearest available person with lower status his
wife, girlfriend or women more generally. Men might seek power and control in their relationship when unable to attain them outside the
home. Patriarchy, more than culture, explains misogyny and Asian families can be patriarchal, privileging men and boys and allowing them to
feel entitled towards women, or especially disappointed when spurned. Anger at controlling or smothering mothers may lead to confusion and
anger about identity and relationships. Anger at fathers complicates the assertion and development of masculinity. Asian Americans may feel
silenced by their own families, who value face over dealing with conflicts or mental illness. Nerd, gaming and pop culture, including a subset
of male Asian Americans, is often particularly misogynistic, as Arthur Chu of recent Jeopardy-fame pointed out in the Daily Beast recently.
Frustration and aggression may be unchecked and in fact kindled and reinforced in this alternate family that provides a validation of a kind of
masculinity and an escape from isolation at the very least. The
Asian American man can feel not only relationship-less
but stateless, a refugee adrift in a sea of longings, unmoored and un-amoured, always on the edge of
social defeat, scanning the horizons for some island to call home. Perpetually estranged by the
presumptions and rejections of others, the stereotypes and gross and subtle racisms of a limited
cultural imagination, he is always reminded of outsider status and exclusion. To be unloved, to not be touched, to
have your masculinity indicted first by your family, then popular culture, then the women youre attracted to is a decidedly unpleasant and,
even excruciating scenario. It is a situation conducive to unhappiness, resentment, and alienation yet it is not uncommon for the young Asian
American man. Feeling frustration and anger is understandable, but it is complicated. Expressing it outwardly towards more powerful targets
invites blowback and retribution. Stifling it lends to passivity. Misogyny and abuse become, then, a safe expression of power against an even
more vulnerable victim. While
Ive highlighted the potential sources of conflict between Asian American men
and women, I should point out that many Asian American men are angry on behalf of women as well.
Weve seen the abuse of our mothers, witnessed mistreatment of our sisters, friends and colleagues,
and carry anger towards the perpetrators. We worry for our daughters. Our masculine rage and
concern is protective and empathic, we aim to be responsible and responsive to womens issues. But this
doesnt immunize us from the problems of anger, or shield us from sometimes also being hurt by and angry with the women in our lives. You
207
can be enlightened to everyone but your family, as the saying goes; thus anger enters our relationships and complicates them. Speaking for
myself, as Ive witnessed the explosive effects of anger, I feel particularly self-conscious and wary of being in angers grasp, even so-called
righteous anger or moral outrage. But were still not free, either of the stimuli for anger or the need for it. Poet and community activist
Bao Phi says one
thing that Ive been thinking about lately is how other people can accept Asian peoples
grief, but not our anger. Other people can accept, and in many cases consume, the stories of tragedies
and sorrow from Asian and Asian American people. They have a harder time accepting, validating, or
seeing our anger. Anger at injustice, at being silenced. Im a person that accepts my anger, and is
comfortable talking about it. Beyond that, theres not much to say, really. I mean, I didnt become a poet to make friends. I didnt
write about these things to be popular. If the goal was to be popular, I wouldnt be a poet. I dont invite hatred, and I certainly dont enjoy
being hated. But, as you say, the people who take the time to really read my work understand that it comes from the challenge of love, and
with hope we can all be better. Including my own jagged, flawed self. As psychiatrists, we know the importance of empathizing with and
validating anger we know that it often comes from a place of hurt. Anger
can be an activator, empowering the angry
person to take charge of their lives in a meaningful way. Anger in relationships and human relations is
unavoidable, at least on occasion, and provides an energy and intensity that might be in some way necessary
for the relationship. With perspective and mindfulness, conflict can help couples become closer, better
friends. Anger at society, when received with empathy, can lead to constructive change. Phil Yus Angry Asian
Man blog advances the cause of awareness and activism about issues of discrimination. His yearly message in ads for the San Francisco
International Asian American Film Festival is Stay Angry, CAAMFest! Indeed, the
Center for Asian American Media (CAAM)
and many other non-profit institutions vital to our communities were born out of a sense of disaffection
with the status quo and a wish to change it. Anger is necessarily part of what we bear, a marker of
discontent. Anger resonates across Asian America, as it does across all distressed and marginalized
communities.
[chandra can be read as sexist if taken out of context so this answers that] Anger is a
powerful strategy of resistance and activism, and even though it can be dangerous,
our alternatives exploration of anger and specific implementation of anger as an
empowering survival strategy means anger doesnt consume us and become hostility
Chandra 14 (Ravi, psychiatrist and poet, Asian American Anger: Its A Thing!, pg. 14-22)//MNW
This is not to say that angry Asian American men are necessarily abusive or even angry with Asian
American women. Our relationship is, after all, largely characterized by love, support and shared
struggle. But we are dealing with an insidious and shapeshifting emotion and mindset that do have an
impact on our ability to be supportive of one another and at their extreme, do lead to abuse, with the statistics to prove
it. Anger does not always abuse, but it is always a crisis for relationship. All the more reason to understand this fearsome,
powerful, and in the thick of it, consuming, raw passion. Are we rising with anger, or rising out of it?
Can we put borders on rage, or is it by nature without bounds, first looking for expression, then
satisfaction, then control, and then carrying out its own oppressive strategy? I think we would agree
that anger, whatever its benefit, however necessary it might be, and in any case, how unavoidable
should not be in charge of a personality. That would be yielding to resentment, hostility, bitterness and continued suffering and
difficulty in relationship. We have to find ways of leavening anger, and perhaps even empowering people to
increasingly be beyond its reach, while empathizing with its source as a marker of identity. But of course,
the main motto in dealing with anger is strike while the iron is cold. Its sacrosanct that you can never tell an angry person to not be angry
or to just get over it. Unless you want them to be more angry, harden your own heart and give yourself points for a lack of empathy. Dont
add insight to injury is another motto. As my friend, transpersonal analyst Seymour Boorstein is fond of saying, dont give them an insight.
Give them a crust of bread.
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A: Conscientization
The alternative is to use debate as a site for Asian American conscientization, which
allows us to break free from the model minority myth on a communal level
Western individualism isolates Asian Americans stories in educational settings are

key to breaking isolaiton and forming community-based, critical consciousness to
engage in racial institutions
Osajima 7 (Keith, Professor of Race and Ethnic Studies at University of Redland, Replenishing the
Ranks: Raising Critical Consciousness Among Asian Americans, Journal of Asian American Studies
Volume 10, Number 1, pg 59-83, Feb 2007)//MNW
While the respondents identi ed relevant information as a key to their development, exposure to information on racism and Asian
Americans is not the only element of an education for critical consciousness. The interviews reveal that conscientization
is a social
process, where connections, support and encouragement from others play a critical facilitative role.
For many respondents, the development of their critical consciousness had not happened in isolation,
working or studying on their own. Instead, relationships with other people had contributed to their growth in a
variety of ways. First, contact and conversation with others had helped respondents to break a sense of
isolation in their lives. The chance to talk to other Asians about their lives and experiences with
discrimination had helped respondents to see that their individual experiences were not unique. As
they had seen similarities and patterns, it was easier for them to see how broader forces, like racism,
shaped their individual lives. Their descriptions of this process were quite consistent and similar. Joe
Yamamoto, a third-generation Japanese American, had grown up in central California. In high school, Joe had liked to party and had come
close to not graduating. After working a series of jobs, he had decided to head back into school, rst at a community college and then at a
University of California campus, to pursue his interest in math. Joe had not identi ed as a Japanese American. He had been aware that things
happened to him, perhaps because he was Japanese, but did not make any connections to racial discrimination. At the University of California,
Joe had enrolled in an Asian American Studies course, mainly because it ful lled a general education requirement. During
the class,
interactions with fellow Asian students, along with information on racism against Asians in the United
States, had led Joe to realize, for the first time, that he was treated differently because of his race.
Describing an in-class interactive activity where students were put in pairs and asked to interview each other about their lives, Joe articulated
this process of self-discovery: We found a lot of similarities between ourselves. . . . That was the rst time I got a chance to hear other people
say the exact same things that I had gone through. . . its because Im Asian, because Im Japanese that I run into different kinds of experiences
than my Caucasian friends do. And its because of my race. Its not because I wear blue jeans or anything else, its because of how I look.26
Pearl Cruzs understanding of Asian American womens issues had been formed largely in conversation with other women in an Asian
American Studies class: It
was like therapy, group therapy to sit around and swap stories about when I was
growing up. So that was great, sharing things that everybody had experienced and thought they were
the only ones who had experienced.27 Soon Park had developed a stronger understanding of racism through her interactions
with others in an Asian American student organization. I asked her what it was about being in the student group or being in classes that had
helped her to develop a commitment to working in the Asian American community, Soon offered the following response: I think more
understanding how other Asians have the same experiences as I do, and Im not the only one. I remember going to one of my first meetings
and theres maybe 10 people, and it was more like a rap session. I remember people talking about their experiences about racism, what
happened to them and thinking thats really awful. I cant believe thats happened to that person and thinking all these things happened to
me. Were all in the situation where we all share this common kind of pain and experience.28 In the
context of American society, it is understandable how breaking through the sense of isolation can
facilitate the development of critical consciousness. Isolation is closely tied to the powerful ideological
emphasis on individualism in the United States. Andrew Barlow notes that Ameri- cans are told that their well-
being is up to them, that people must fend for themselves as far as their personal welfare is
concerned.29 A consequence of growing up with this view is implicit in the interviews. Respondents had interpreted their experiences,
good and bad, through individual lenses, as events that happened, in isolation, only to them. Through interactions with other
Asian Americans, they had realized they were not alone, that others had similar family and cultural
experiences, and experiences with racial discrimination. This discovery had led them to question their
209
individualistic interpretations and had opened the possibility that their lives could be understood as
part of an Asian American experience.
Debate is a space for young Asian Americans to develop the critical thinking skills
needed to become politically active and critically conscious advocates, giving them
the language to name and shape their world
The fact that these

young Asian Americans, from widely varying class, geographic, political, and ethnic
backgrounds, could find their way to Asian American activism speaks to the real possibility that young
people can become critically conscious and politically active. Their active involvement is especially noteworthy given the
post-Civil Rights climate that surrounds them, where the political momentum has shifted to the right and hopes for student activism are often
drowned in a sea of apathy or hopelessness. These
Asian Americans had gone against the grain and had become
politically involved. They had realized what Cornell West calls the politics of conversion, where the tendency
toward nihilism is countered by a chance for people to believe that there is hope for the future and a
meaning to struggle.18 So, what had happened to change and shape their views? What had contributed to the development of their
critical consciousness? Analysis of the interviews reveals common patterns of factors and conditions that contribute to the development of an
Asian American critical consciousness. In
talking about how they had become interested in Asian American issues,
respondents invariably pointed to moments when new information and perspectives profoundly
affected their thinking by helping them to see how their lives, as Asian Americans, were shaped by
larger historical and social forces. In this way, the information had carried significant meaning and
relevance, helping them to understand their lives in new ways. For Brian Kim, for example, conscientization had
begun in an Asian American history course. It really changed my view on how this society works and where we t in. He said,
I just never thought of what our history is here or what my, say our ancestors came here for, the first generation. I just never knew. That
first class had inspired Brian to switch out of his pre-med studies and declare a major in Asian American Studies. Echoing Cornell Wests notion
of conversion, Brian says, So thats where I am now. So you see Im a converted Asian. An
Asian American psychology class
had exerted a transformative impact on Margaret Eus thinking. Information about the Asian American
experience was meaningful because it had helped her to make sense of experiences in her life and
family. It had offered language and concepts that explained why and how racism and sexism operated: That was the first time that
academically I was reading something that was so relevant to my experience and my identity. . .
.[E]verything made so much sense. It was like somebody was explaining my life history, my life pattern on paper, and in theory
and in literature.19 David Tan echoes Margarets comments. Like many of his peers, David Tan had not been interested in political activism
when he graduated from high school. He was all about having fun. When he had entered college, he said,I was paying attention more to the
women than to the professors. But, information in an Asian American Studies class had resonated deeply with David; his professor had
offered insights that not only helped him to understand his life experiences, but also inspired him to learn more: He went into the issues of
family relations, generational con icts, the model minority, anti-Asian violence. Just everything that happened in my life, he explained it. Thats
when I realized, this is what I want to do. I need to learn more.20 While formal Asian American courses had played pivotal roles in
conscientization, the
classroom was not the only place where respondents had been exposed to life-altering
perspectives and information. David Tans critical consciousness had deepened through his
participation in a student group. The group had showed the movie, Who Killed Vincent Chin, about the 1982 slaying of a Chinese
American man by two unemployed, white auto workers. It had struck a deep nerve. As David had watched Vincent Chins mother ght to win
justice for her son, David had thought of his grandmother and the struggles she faced as an immigrant, non-English-speaker woman. Here, the
content of the movie and articles had intersected with Davids life and led him to make new connections: Thats
an example of that
sort of connection, of seeing things and knowing how race played a part and seeing how those kinds of
elements played itself out in my life and my familys life, especially for my grandmother.21 Pearl Cruz had
begun to change when a friend invited her to attend a meeting to organize a campus protest. Watching and listening to powerful and
articulate women of color speak out about racism and sexism had inspired Pearl: I went home that summer and devoured every piece of
feminist literature I could get my hands on. So Im just sitting there reading like a maniac all summer long, just digesting what had happened
that year. . . . It was really something, it hit me all at once.22 Ryan Suzukis interest in issues of oppression had first been piqued in diversity
training workshops he took as a resident advisor. Later, in graduate school, a key mentor, Ricardo Munoz, had helped Ryan to develop his
conceptual and analytic understanding. Munoz had pushed Ryan to do more reading about the systematic nature of oppression in the United
210
States. Ryan describes Munozs in uence as follows: He really put a much more intellectual analysis to things. . . . It was more about the
systematic things that were going on, about changing structures, about resources, those kinds of things, rather than just that a person needs
to be sensitized.23 In these cases, we begin to see more precisely what it means to have a relevant and meaningful education. For Joe,
Ryan, and David, con-
scientization meant being able to see themselves in larger social structural contexts,
not simply as individuals but as people whose lives intersect with and are shaped by race and racism.
For Brian, information about the history of Asian Americans had prompted critical re ections on two levels. First, because he had never known
about the history of Asian Americans, the class had given him new information that had helped him to understand his family history. Second, it
had led him to critically re ect upon his previous education. He questioned why he hadnt learned any of this before? Why was his experience
absent from U.S. history courses? This
process had led him to think more critically about the racism embedded in
his educational experiences. Margaret had experienced a similar reaction. She had realized that her education had only taught her
about European American history, prompting her to ask, how many students were out there who never would take this class. . . and would
never really know more than one version of history? Her Asian American courses had provided the analytic tools and language needed to
see the reason and logic of racism, sexism, and heterosexism. Conscientization
for these respondents meant being able
to name their world. That is, a meaningful education had helped them to recognize and
understand the impact that societal conditions and forces of oppression have on their lives and the
lives of others. As Freire writes, the process of conscientization, or education for critical consciousness, involves
a constant clari cation of what remains hidden within us while we move about in the world, and it
provokes recognition of the world, not as a given world, but as a world dynamically in the
making.24 Such recognition often inspires people to work against that oppression, thus beginning
their active efforts to transform the world.25 Naming the world was an important step toward
actively changing it.
Conscientization interrupts normal explanations of life to generate criticaly conscious

students who engage in political activism
Given the profound change that conscientization had effected in the lives of respondents, it is not
surprising that many of them wanted to be in positions where they could help to create for others the
educational experiences that were so meaningful to them. They took leadership positions in student
organizations; they helped to organize and put on educational programs; they worked in community
organizations; they pursued graduate studies; and they took positions in student affairs to work closely with new cohorts of Asian
American students. Pamela Kim, who wanted to become a professor of Asian American Studies, best expresses their desire: One of the reasons
why I want to be a professor of Asian American Studies is because I want to help these kids who are going through the same things that I did. I
want to help them gure things out, to help educate them about these issues because I had no idea about them while I was growing up. I could
see what these kids are all going through in college, and it helps to be where you can pop those bubbles that they have around themselves.37
As they go about the task of trying to replenish the ranks by raising critical consciousness amongst new
groups of Asians, a number of lessons learned from their collective experiences may provide helpful
guides. From the interviews, we can identify critical elements that contribute to conscientization. While these
elements do not guarantee that conscientization will follow, incorporating them into ones practice may enhance the possibility that efforts
will be successful. First, respondents described the
importance of obtaining information and conceptual tools that
helped them to cognitively understand how their lives and the lives of others are shaped by larger
historical and social- structural forces. An Asian American Studies course on a college campus was the most common source of
relevant information, but as we have seen exposure can take place in many venues. People can learn from reading on their own, from student
groups, and from multimedia sources. Second,
breaking through isolation and interrupting the tendency to explain
their life experiences solely in individual terms re ects a social dimension to conscientization. Contact
and conversation with other Asian Americans was often the most effective way to help respondents
make connections between their lives, the experiences of others, and information on the Asian
American experience. Connections to key mentors and peers provided a safe environment in which to think and question further.
Third, respondents described important affective aspects of conscientization. When respondents
talked about important moments in their education or key social support that made a difference,
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invariably they referred to how they felt about these experiences. They were angered by the realization that their
schooling had not taught them about racism or the Asian American experience. They felt inspired by the experiences of other Asian Americans
who struggled to overcome harsh conditions. They were excited to learn more. Fourth, respondents commitment to Asian
American issues was deepened when they transformed understanding into action. Involve- ment in
protests, organizing, programming, teaching, and research gave respondents a chance to extend their knowledge and
learn from efforts to make change. Finally, the study indicates that conscientization occurs when the discrete
elements work in combination. No respondent described his or her conscientization in terms of a single
element. It was not a purely intellectual or cognitive experience in a classroom, absent of social or
affective elements. Nor was it a purely social or affective experience without information and conceptual tools. Instead, respondents
described multifaceted and interrelated experiences that reinforced each other, inspiring further thinking and commitment to action. For
activists seeking to raise the critical consciousness of Asian Americans, the studys ndings carry implications for practice. For some, combining
elements in a single venue, like an introductory course or a training program, will be the main focus. In these cases,
the study suggests
that the course or program should offer substantive content and concepts to lay the cognitive
foundation needed for people to see themselves in relation to the world. It also should include social activities to
break isolation and opportunities for people to share stories with each other in a non-judgmental, safe environment. On a broader level, the
study suggests that there
is a value in and need to offer a range of experiences across campus and
community to increase the likelihood that students will combine, on their own, elements that
contribute to conscientization. Pressure to have one person, course, or program that single-handedly transforms students lives
subsides when we recognize that the interrelated process of conscientization bene ts from contributions across diverse segments of the
community. The importance of combining influences also casts new light on how different
parts of the campus and
community can work collaboratively to raise critical consciousness. Breaking from binary constructions
that often pit academic programs against student life activities, or divide academe from community, the
study shows how conscientization arises when people are exposed to and combine lessons learned
from a variety of sources. This process implies that increased appreciation for the work done across
campus and community, along with greater coordination of influences, is an important dimension of
conscientization.
212
A: Toxicity
The alternative is to reject the western rationality of the 1AC in favor of toxicity
Toxicity disrupts the violent logics of Empire and allows for a queer and raced
knowledge production that offers alterantive horizons for eduction and society
Chen 12 (Mel, Associate Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Vice Chair for Research at UC
Berkeley, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect, Duke University Press p. 217-
221)//MNW
For Munoz, dis- But what is a toxic body, after all? How can we reconceptualize a harmful body when our bodies are themselves deemed
harmful to others? It is useful here to turn to queer theory's uptake of the toxic, where it retained a certain resonance
and a certain citational pull. Eve Sedgwick's use of toxic to describe an expellable interiority (one that shameful elements are not, since they
are proper terms of ones identity) is taken up in Munoz's Disidentifications to refer to discursively toxic elements, the "toxic force" of illicit
desire, and images and stereotypes toxic to identity, all uses that seem to repeat Sedgwick's ultimately exterior, or alienated, quality of
toxicity." For Munoz, disidentification represents the willing uptake of toxic elements to pose new
figurations of identity and minoritarian-majoritarian politics. Taking Munoz's suggestions further, and taking
toxicity's ontological shape-shifting from mercury to traumatic sociality seriously, I believe that we
can, in a sense, claim toxicity as already "here," already a truth of nearly every body, and also as a
biopolitically interested distribution (the deferral of toxic work to deprivileged or already "toxic subjects"). Such a distribution, in
its failure to effectively segregate, leaks outside of its bounds to "return," and it might allow a queer theoretical move that
readily embraces, rather than refuses in advance, heretofore unknown reflexes of racialiry, gender,
sexuality, (dis-)ability.57 In assuming both individual and collective vulnerability, it suggests an ulterior ethical stance." If we were
to release toxicity from its own stalwart anti-ness, its ready definition as an unwelcome guest, it has
the possibility to intervene into the binary between the segregated fields of "life" and "death," vitality
and morbidity. Tox- icity straddles boundaries of "life" and "nonlife," as well as the literal bounds of bodies (quite independently of
toxicity's inununitary representation), in ways that introduce a certain complexity to the presumption of integrity of either lifely or deathly
subjects. Using the worldly ontologies described earlier, we might consider reframing the terms of intimacy itself, so that it might not be re-
stricted to operating between only human or animate entities. Intimacy is, furthermore, temporalized, in the sense that it is cognate with
intimation. Intimacy might be thought of as a temporalized notion insofar as it might provide a hint or prediction of the future. In these final
paragraphs, I connect the "aberrant" socialities implicated within discourses of toxicity to those suggested in queer (political) futures. What
futurity might such a present suggest, particularly if we read these futures back into politically sexualized and racialized maps of desirability
and repulsion? Here I draw inspiration from the feminist disability theorist Alison Kafer, whose book theorizes a queer-crip approach to
disability, one that, in its disentangling of the discourses of morbidity and sexual exile that contain and fIx dis/abled bodies, refuses the
"grim imagined futures" associated with them and moves toward a resolutely optimistic futurity."
According to J.Jack Halberstam's III a Queer Time and Place, above and beyond the temporal closures and fissures wrought by (the U.S. ad-
vent of) AIDS, the queer
life narrative necessarily has a trajectory very different from heterosexual,
heteronorrnative, reproductive time."? Such a notion of queer time can be worked to emphasize its
racial and gendered dimensions. On the "racial" dimension of time, or racialized temporality, David Eng has argued that it was
Freud's attempt to negate the primitive that fundamentally motivated and underlaid his developmental narrative of sexuality, as well as his
rendering of homosexuality" The idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny replicates itself teleologically in science and in public life alike,
for instance in the notion that child is to adult as primitive is to modern. Thus, the animalization of (queer) children cannot be divorced from
the vote bearing African American figure in the nineteenth-century Harpers Weekly cartoon considered in chapter 3. Interracial frameworks
whether human or animal or stone (which bears the mark lre")-are constantly haunted by the possibility of anachro-nism. Within global
capitalism's racialized arrangements of labor, the racially marked body in the contemporary or modernist moment is a "freaky" subject of
unacceptable temporal transit. It is not coinci- dental that in the United States the animality of childhood, in which a child represents an
animalizable early evolutionary stage, is the only (marginally) acceptably queer one. Thus, both queer and racial temporalities are a kind of
shimmering presence. They are less easily bound to capital or to any other regimented time; or perhaps we could say that the time of capital is
also no Ionger in the form it might have once been. And so queer and racially marked bodies are present (that is, in the present time) but
strangely so, embracing anachronism and "touching the past" (to evoke the historian Carolyn Dinshaw)" Heather Love suggests in her
introduction to Feeling Backward, an exploration of literary texts that circle around queer suffering, that the contemporary juncture of affect
studies and queer studies is attentive to the possibility that it is presently at a turning point, asking how to articulate or assume a queer
political vision (within and beyond scholarship) that must do something with its history of shame, stigma, embarrassment, and pain. She
describes this as "the emphasis on damage in queer studies.T" Recent work has engaged a turn toward the embrace of acknowledgment of
abjection as a site of work and healing in domains such as literature, the creative arts, and sexual practices, particularly in relation to queer of
color proximities to racial abjection. Juana Maria Rodriguez theorizes the importance of politically incorrect desire, exercised in sexual
fantasy, as one kind of utopic practice: she advises that "we must learn to read submission and service differently," even if-or as-we find
213
ourselves occupying sexual positions written through with painful histories." Indeed, the antipathy toward submission or service in and of
itself does seem to collude too neatly with the autonomous urges of neoliberal culture, and would do well to think through the arguments for
interdependence articulated within disability theory and activism. Toxicity,
at least in its mode of "intoxication," embraces
the ambivalent, in Love's words, "abject/exalted" combination proper to queerness itself (She even
uses the words damage and toxicity to refer, as Munoz and Sedgwick do, to the stigmatization of
queerness and the painful affects associated with the recuperation of historical texts that represent "tear-
soaked accounts of same-sex desire.") 65 Negativity and death, of course, also attach to disabled bodies with terrible regularity, and they
appear in different valences. But affective nuances are in- formative. Ato Quayson's literary study Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the
Crisis of Representation focuses on doubt: he traces a notion of "skeptical interlocution" through a number of literary works, suggesting that
"there is always an anticipation of doubt within the perceptual and imagined horizon of the disabled character in literature, and that this
doubt is incorporated into their representation."" Quayson's study suggests a complication of sociality by a negating affect. In view of the
attempts of these works to suggest a future politics, or the recommendations for politics that might be extracted from them, toxic
affect
is certainly not suggested as a panacea. It is a (re-)solution to the question of what to do with the
ambivalence of queerness only to the extent that it does not represent a choice: it is already here, it is
not a matter of queer political agency so much as a queered political state of the present. If toxicity is
ambivalently constructed by a barely tenable political community, that fragility is not acknowledged. Nevertheless, an uptake, rather
than a denial of, toxicity seems to have the power to turn a lens on the anxieties that produce it and
allow for a queer knowledge production that gives some means for structural remedy while not
abandoning a claim to being just a little bit "off." The growing acknowledgment of a shared condition of toxicity within the
United States- not only in terms of citing numbers of toxins present in people's bodies, toxins whose hospitality toward the body is uncertain
(or toward whom the body doesn't know whether it should be hospitable), but also in terms of the resigned acknowledgment that toxic
assets were part of the fabric of u.s. capitalism -is not just evidence of a fall, or a radical shifting of political and economic fortunes. It is also
evidence that the interstices of the otherwise suffocating cultures of neoliberalism may be engaged, productive, and immensely meaningful.
Thus, toxicity, as a queer thing or affect, both is and is more than horizon, which is unpredictable and,
furthermore, synchronically traceable only to the extent that we not remain ontologically faith- ful.
Toxicity fails over and again to privilege rationality's favorite partner, the human subject, rather
defaulting to chairs, couches, and other sexual orientations, but we might be wrong to disavow its claim
to rationality altogether. If we let affect fall to object life, or to the inter- animation that surrounds us, one example of which toxicity
illuminates very precisely, then perhaps there is a chance to take up (not revive, as it is far from "old and tired") queer as
something both like itself and yet also entirely different.
214
Poetry/Narratives
What Kind of Asian Are You?
Dang 13 [Original poem text: What kind of Asian are you? Alex Dang, 2013 some edits made by JG
& KA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoP0ox_Jw_w
So he said to me: "What kind of Asian are you?" And I said back
That's a loaded question.
What kind of Asian do you EXPECT me to be?
Because any way you slice that egg roll,
I'm still pretty much whatever you want to see.
I've played many a Far East stereotype:
awkward math genius,
cold and calculated Kung-Fu expert,
assistant to "Dr. Jones, you crazy!"
You want me to drive? How so?
I can give you
Tokyo Drift,
Jeremy Lin
Mario Kart,
Tiger Woods,
and Blinker left on for about half a mile
I am the foremost expert on
all things Asian.
The Mejii era and the ban of the Samurai?
Done.
Confuciusism versus Daoism? I'll give it to you with no slant!
What's the difference between Asian stereotype
1 and 2?
WELL LET ME TELL YOU.
Let me tell you anything YOU
want to know about my culture
Let me tell you in a Mulan-esque soliloquy
of me staring in the mirror asking

215
Who IS that girl staring that I see?
Let me tell you about Jackie Chan
and Bruce Lee and how they are related
BY BLOOD to me
Let me tell you about being so marginalized
it's to the point of "I really CAN'T believe
that's Asian!"
Let me tell you about derogatory terms
and origins of words such as chink gook and Jap
Let me tell you about the struggle
of Asian parents not knowing the language
so we ate pet food because it was cheaper
Let me tell you about the job of interpreter
when you're still playing with LEGO blocks but
you're English is already that much better
than your guardians
Let me tell you about honor and dignity
Let me tell you about a society that
projects us as nothing but the secondary role
and never the leading man.
Let me tell you all the things you don't want
to know.
Like how chink comes from
the clanking of metal to railroads
as the slaves built train tracks for
this country to be connected.
Like how every time you lump an Asian person
into one culture is systematically making us
assimilate into an America we thought was
better than our war torn home and every time you confuse me
with some other nationality that I might share similar
216
features to is stripping away my individuality
And I still feel the shame of being Asian
the envy of blonde hair
and blue eyes
And I still feel the ash of the incense burn
my hands
when I prayed for my family
And I still remember thinking my skin
was what I was worth
And I still feel the ironwork of my bones
grow stronger with every train of thought
that passes by
And I still feel pride
And I still feel heritage
And I still feel Japanese
And I still feel American
And I still feel
217
2nc Extensions - Performance Solves
This empowerment is KEY to participation in the political

Fulgado 03 (Carmencita-Mia Q. , graduated from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan.
M.A. and B.A. in English @ St. Johns University, March 2003 Asian Americans and American Politics:
From Discrimination to Participation, http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~ganterg/sjureview/vol1-1/asian.html,
brackets in original text)
It was and remains a viable means to [politically] empower Asians in America by redefining them as
Asian Americans and organizing them into an inter-Asian coalition to raise their socio-historical status
and to improve their lives (Wei 271). And at the heart of the Movement was the city of New York with
its Asian American college students and activists protesting for political empowerment. What is political
empowerment? It is the ability to invest ones strength to gaining power. It is the capacity in which one
exercises his or her fundamental constitutional rights. Political empowerment for Asian Americans can
only be fostered through awareness and involvement. Whether it was by political demonstrations,
rallies, or finally landmark Supreme Court cases, Asian Americans empowered themselves by voicing
their concerns. Even after the Movement, Asian Americans are a dramatically growing population in
New York and with numbers comes power, yet only if those numbers are organized.
The performance of the 1NC and breaking the silence about the model minority is key to intervene
the white supremacist demand for assimilation
Beeman 15 (Angie, Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Connecticut and Assistant Professor of
Sociology Baruch College, February 2015, Teaching to Convince, Teaching to Empower: Reflections on
Student Resistance and Self-Defeat at Predominantly White vs. Racially Diverse Campuses
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Angie_Beeman/publication/273120621_Teaching_to_Convince_
Teaching_to_Em power_Reflections_on_Student_Resistance_and_Self-
Defeat_at_Predominantly_White_vs._Racially_Diverse_Campuses/links/54f72f0c0cf28d6dec9e1865.pd
f)
What is astonishing about this resistance and disrespect is that it comes from European Americans even
when they are the numerical minority in the classroom. What is even more troubling is that when I see
this happen, all of the students of Color turn and listen to whatever the European American male
objector is saying and few challenge him. They show him more respect than they show other students
of Color. This is incredibly revealing about the way racism and power dynamics work in the classroom.
Resistance, then, functions to maintain White privilege in at least two ways. The first has to do with the
situation I just described. The resistance often comes from a European American man, who dominates
the conversation while students of Color defer to his feigned expertise on the subject. His voice is the
dominant one and has the power to shut down conversations on racism and marginalize alternative
perspectives, usually held by people of Color. Second, faculty constantly faced with this resistance may
come to feel disempowered and choose not to openly address racism in their courses. When they do,
they are faced with all of the challenges I have already laid out, which European American faculty do
not face to the same degree and frequency. In the example of my problem student, while I was
supposedly of higher status as the professor in the class, he constantly questioned my authority and
that reproduced his privileged position as White and male. I have not yet disrupted this privilege in
the classroom by calling attention to the oppression in the room. Rodriguez-Silva (2012) argues that
people of Color avoid calling out racist situations as a means of emotional survival. Likewise, I fear that
to do so would make me even more vulnerable in the classroom, especially with belligerent problem
students, such as the one described above. I have, however, made mention of how European
218
Americans and men tend to dominate discussions, even when the room is mostly full of women and
people of Color. I have yet to point this out explicitly during the moments it happens in my classroom. I
used to try to manage resistant students by listening respectfully to them and trying to reason with
them. This only resulted in circular conversations between the two of us and excluded students who
genuinely wanted to learn about racism. To encourage students of Color, I had to show them that they
could disagree with these resistant European American students. Therefore, I now directly disagree
with false comments made by resistant students and point to weaknesses in their arguments. When my
students see me doing this, they feel more confident in challenging their European American
classmates. It is as if I have granted them permission to disrupt the power arrangement. Another kind
of resistance I have noticed, especially at City Community College, involves a denial of racism directed
towards Asian Americans. When I saw this happening in my Ethnic Groups class, I shared with students
a scenario from their textbook. In it a professor of Ethnic Studies discussed how upset her students
became when they learned that Asian Americans were angry about the racism they faced. She pointed
out that they did not have a problem reading about African American or Latino/a anger all semester. To
this, a student stated that they expected African Americans and Latino/as to be angry. However, of
Asian Americans, she said, Their anger made me angry, because I didnt even know the Asian
Americans felt oppressed. I didnt expect their anger (Feagin & Booher Feagin, 2011, p. 301). I have not
yet seen the same level of objection to learning about racism and Asian Americans at State College.
However, I overhear students commenting on how there are too many Asians, and some students have
told me that their friends tried to discourage them from coming to State College for this reason. State
College is often compared to Berkeley due to its Asian American population as well as students
expressing an uncertainty of attending State College because they hear its full of Asians. For the record,
38 percent of students at State College are classified as Asian or Pacific Islander and 36 percent are
European American. They are no more taking over the college than are White students. There are
several tools I use to handle resistance to learning about racism faced by Asians in the United States. I
tell the story of Yuri Kochiyama and her friendship with Malcolm X. Students read about Yuris
experiences in internment camps and how that radicalized her, leading her to become active with the
Black Power movement (Fujino, 2005). I also share poetry slams from Yellow Rage and a reading by
Sandra Oh about Yuri Kochiyama that brings some of my Asian American students to tears. There is a
history of silence about racism in the Asian American community, which stems in part from the
internment experience. When we do not address the racism Asian Americans experience today in the
United States, we continue to perpetuate that silence. Internalizing the model minority image may be a
survival strategy for Asian Americans, but we must remember that that image is in fact a myth. Rather
than just teaching students the definition of the model minority myth, I give them a history of why it
developed and how it continues to divide Asian Americans from other people of Color.
Performance is embodied, engaging audiences and communities at a visceral level

Jew 11 (Kimberly May, Instructional Coordinator for Diversity Scholars, Ethnic Studies; Associate
Professor, Theatre Department, Perspectives on Asian American Performance Art: Contexts,
Memories, and the Making of Meaning on Stage. An Interview with Canyon Sam, Denise Uyehara, and
Brenda Wong Aoki. MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S., Volume 36, Number 4, Winter 2011,
pp. 141-158)//MNW
Canyon Sam: I think while literature and print allows you more room to roam in some ways,
performance is very direct in the way it touches peopleit reaches peoples hearts and emotions
immediately and powerfully, at the sensory level. In my show The Dissident, audience members told me
they could pick up political pamphlets about any number of important causes and endangered groups,
and though they were sympathetic, put the pamphlet down again. Whereas to see and witness the
experience of the nun character in my show facing the brutal conditions of arrest, imprisonment, and
219
torture by this repressive government was something that impacted them personally. Audiences can
see it and hear it and become witnesses when they see a dramatic scene and become identifi ed with a
character. Denise Uyehara: Performance art offers a very immediate and do-it-yourself form in which
artists can express complex, contradictory ideasin particular, contradiction within the body. The
moment I walk on stage, my body signifi es my ethnicity and gender. Its already contradictory to many
that this Asian face can speak English. So I fi gure, lets mix it up completely: the form is also the
content and both will blow your mind. It also gives renegade artists a chance to be in dialogue with
more straight-up Asian American theater and community-based workshops. Many performers of color
have begun teaching workshops, passing the baton to emerging artists. Ive learned to create space for
all different types of performance in these laboratories, but I always challenge artists to go beyond the
straightforward narrative, because life isnt really a simple narrative with an easy answer. If my
narrative is that easy, then I am no longer dangerous; I am co-opted. My performance art also informs
my playwriting for the stage: I include moments of post-modern movement, scraps of text, fl ashes of
images, and juxtaposition of strange objects and ideas on the theater stage. To paraphrase a mentor of
mine, Marta Savigliano, human beings are very complex creatures who can hold contradictory ideas in
their minds and their heads do not explode. If that is the case, perhaps we need to expect more of our
audience than a simple, linear story. Brenda Wong Aoki: There is something so powerful about fi rst
voiceit transcends gender, race, and economics; it gets to the heart. And you cant dispute it: this is
my experience, my heart is on a plate. Psychologists always say that when youre fi ghting with people,
you should always use I words because the fi rst voice is so immediate, so intimate. In performance
art you can speak in your fi rst voice, you can break the fourth wall, you can talk directly to the
audience. And the audience has a fi rst voice too. One of the most amazing things to happen to me was
when we performed Uncle Gunjiros Girlfriend at Stanford University. After the performance we put up
microphones and asked people to witness to being people of mixed race. Of the eight hundred
audience members, half stayed and talked through the night. These were not just students but also
community members experiencing personal catharses in front of us. As the performers, we were like,
can we go home now?
The notion of an objective/universal context comes from a space occupied exclusively by white
males and is no longer the reality. The only way to challenge oppression is by using narrative to voice
our own contexts.
leu.edu/faculty/411)
Thus, one of the tasks of Asian American Legal Scholarship is to break the silence that surrounds our
oppression. An important tool in breaking this silence is the use of personal narrative. Narrative will
allow us to speak our oppression into existence, for it must first be represented before it can be erased.
In the face of this institutional disapproval, outsiders can either conform to the dominant objective
mode of discourse or continue telling their stories. One problem with the former is that many people
find this dominant objective voice to be foreign.' In addition to being foreign, the dominant voice may
not adequately capture the power and intensity of dealing with racism as effectively as a narrative-
based legal scholarship can.'3 7 In order to pursue the latter course, however, the case must be made
for narrative. 138 I describe two strategies for validating narrative. The first, and as I will argue,
ultimately unsuccessful, stategy takes place within the rational/empirical mode.139 The second
strategy takes place within post-modem or post-structural theory." By placing the use of narrative
220
squarely on post-structural theory, I hope to dispel the notion expressed by one commentator that
"postmodern 'theory' can be perceived as the discourse of privileged members of society who claim to
explain and justify different voice scholarship and, in so doing, attempt to colonize the writing of
minorities and outgroup members." When the legal academy was made up exclusively of white males, a
legal scholar did not have to reveal the context from which he spoke because everyone occupied the
same context. This shared context fostered a false sense of acontextuality, where one could pretend
to be aper- spectival because only one perspective was represented.' 4 2 With the entry of women and
persons of color into the legal academy and with their use of personal narratives in scholarship,
whether perspective matters has become a contested issue. Other disciplines recognize the
importance of perspective. 43 Even science, once the model for the study of law, has recognized that
the perspective of the observer matters.145 For example, there was a longstanding dispute among
46
physicists about whether light was a wave or a particle.' Adherents of the wave theory, limited by
their perspective, were unable to see that light sometimes behaved like a particle. Like- wise, adherents
of the particle theory were unable to see that light sometimes behaved like a wave. Each group was
unable to see what the other group saw; the groups were unable to see that light could be both wave
and particle.47 Just as science has learned that the perspective of the observer can not only affect, but
can also determine, what is observed, law must also recognize the importance of perspective. Professor
Laurence Tribe reminds us, "[d]ifficult as it is to view the world from someone else's perspective, not to
148
make the effort is to ignore what science learned long ago.' The lesson from science for the legal
academy is simple: Listen.
221
2NC Answers/Extensions
222
A2: Perm (Plan)

Our movement will be hijacked if we are forced to bind ourselves within the
institution
Lowe 96, Lisa, Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Immigrant Acts: On Asian
American Cultural Politics (41-42), (Haq 7/5/2017)
One manner by which Asian American Studies interdisciplinarity and self-determination can be
incorporated into the university is through a particular deployment of a brand of multiculturalism,
which must be clearly distinguished from panethnic or cross-racial coalitions of students and faculty
which ally with other groups around the demand for more radical transformations of the university. 6
Exploiting the notion of multiculturalism, the university can refer to the study of ethnic cultures in its
claim to be an institution to which all racial and ethnic minority groups have equal access and in which
all are represented, while masking the degree to which the larger institution still fails to address the
needs of populations of color. For example, though many universities have begun to reappraise their
curricula in the humanities, adding texts by non-Western or female authors to Western civilization
courses, there are fewer Black students attending college today than in 1975. A multiculturalist agenda may thematize the pressures that
demographic increases of immigrant, racial, and ethnic populations bring to the educational sphere. But these pressures are
registered only partially and inadequately when the studies of ethnic traditions are, on an intellectual
level, assimilated as analogues of Western European traditions or exoticized as primitive and less
developed and, on an institutional level, tokenized as examples of the universitys commitment to diversity, while being marginalized
through underfunding. Such pluralist multiculturalism may be, for the contemporary period, a central arena for what Antonio Gramsci called
hegemony, the process by which a ruling group gains consent of its constituents to determine the cultural, ideological,
and political character of a state. The terrain of multiculturalism is then marked by the incorporative process by which a ruling group elicits the
consent of
racial, ethnic, or class minority groups through the promise of equal participation and
representation; but to the extent that multiculturalism as a discourse designed to recuperate conflict and difference through
inclusion is itself the index of crisis in a specific dominant formation, the terrain of multiculturalism also provides for the activities of racial,
class, and sexual minority groups who organize and contest that domination. Within
this context, we can appreciate the
evident importance of self-determined interventions by groups that both distinguish themselves from
liberal multiculturalism and do not exclusively reproduce pluralist arguments of inclusion and rights.
The establishment of a canon of Asian American literature is one part of a project of institutional
change within which racialized Americans as social subjects articulate an educational space within the
university and constitute literary objects as expressions of a distinct, self-determining group and
through which the notion of the subject interpellated by the university is altered and revised in light
of the heterogeneous social formations of racialized immigrant subjects. Yet, paradoxically, according
to the contradiction that I have just outlined, the definition of an ethnic literature, figured by an
ethnic canon, may compromise the critical project of institutional change if it is forced to subscribe to
criteria defined by the majority canon in order to establish the formal unity of a literary tradition; for it
is precisely the standard of a literary canon that the Eurocentric and professionalizing university
demands of Asian Americans and other racial and ethnic minority cultures so as to formalize those
cultures as developed traditions. In drawing a distinction between major and minor literatures, David Lloyd has argued that
the Anglo-European function of canonization is to unify aesthetic culture as a domain in which material stratifications and differences are
reconciled. A major literary canon traditionally performs that reconciliation by means of a selection of works that uphold a narrative of
ethical formation in which the individual relinquishes particular differences through an identification with a universalized form of subjectivity;
a minor literature may conform to the criteria of the major canon, or it may interrupt the function of reconciliation by challenging the
concepts of identity and identification and by voicing antagonisms to the universalizing narrative of development.
223
A2: Perm (SP3)

Our scholarship cannot be explained by the modes of postmodernism
American Cultural Politics (31), (Haq 7/4/2017)
Asian American cultural forms emphasize instead that because of the complex history of racialization,
sites of minority cultural production are at different distances from the canonical nationalist project of resolution, whether posed in either
national modern or postmodern multiculturalist versions. In Chapter 2, Canon, Institutionalization, Identity, a discussion of the university as
a contradictory site for Asian American formation, I consider the ways in which Asian American literature may produce effects of dissonance,
fragmentation, and irresolution even and especially when that literature appears to be performing a canonical function. 71 The
kind and
degree of contradiction that exists between the historical specificities of immigrant displacement and
racialization and canonized forms of national culture generates formal deviations whose significances
are misread if simply assimilated as modernist or postmodernist aesthetic modes. Asian American work
is not properly or adequately explained by the notion of postmodernism as an aesthetic critique of high
modernism, for Asian American work emerges out of very different contradictions of modernity: out of
the specific conditions of racialization in relation to modern institutions of state government, bourgeois
societys separate spheres, and the liberal citizen-subject.
224
A2: Cap
The state is the root cause. Marxs analysis is incomplete and doesnt account for the
grand contradiction of immigration.
The specific history of the United States and the crucial role of racialized immigrant labor, however, reveal the limits of
Marxs analysis of the state and civil society. To the extent that Marx adopts the abstract and universalist
propositions of the economic and political spheres, his classic critique of citizenship cannot account for the
particular racialized relations of production on which this nation has been founded. Despite its trenchant
indictment of liberal democracy as the protector of capitalist relations, Marxs theory cannot account for the historical
conditions through which U.S. capital profited precisely from racializing Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino
immigrant labor in distinction to white labor and excluding those racialized laborers from citizenship.
Furthermore, it cannot account for the current global restructuring of capitalism in which U.S. capital
maximizes its profits through strategies of mixed production and flexible accumulation that cross
national boundaries, erode national political institutions such as citizenship, and make use of racialized
female immigrant labor. 62 Asian immigrant and Asian American communities can be one site for generating such a critique, for rather
than exemplifying the assimilation of private particularities into the abstract universality of the national political sphere, Asian Americans
formed through a history of racialized immigrant labor exploitation remain in contradiction with that universality or, indeed, inhabit the
contradictions of that universality. Marx
describes the dissolution of economic difference in its displacement
onto the political terrain of representation in liberal democratic states; yet the historical exclusion that
racializes Asian immigrant labor and the formation of the Asian American that rearticulates that
racialization, even as citizen, reveal race to be that material evidence that cannot be dissolved into
political representation. Therefore, it was on racial equality that the Civil rights movement focused its energies and through race that
a coalition of Blacks, Chicanos, and Asians could form. Yet these struggles have revealed that the granting of rights does not abolish the
economic system that profits from racism. 63 In our present moment, it is an understanding of race not as a fixed singular essence, but as the
locus in which economic, gender, sex, and race contradictions converge, that organizes current struggles for immigrant rights, prisoners rights,
affirmative action, racialized womens labor, and AIDS and HIV patients in communities of color.
225
A2: Other positions

Our kritik is key to open up the debate space for horizontal community building
across other positions
The latter project proposes immigration as the locus for the encounter of the national border and its
outsides as the site of both the law and the crossing of the borders that is its negative critique. Immigration as both symbol and
allegory does not metaphorize the experiences of real immigrants but finds in the located contradictions of immigration both the critical
intervention in the national paradigm at the point of its conjunction with the international and the theoretical nexus that challenges the global
economic from the standpoint of the locality. In addition, the
allegory of immigration does not isolate a singular
instance of one immigrant formation, but cuts across individualized racial formations and widens the
possibility of thinking and practice across racial and national distinctions. The specific history of Asian
immigration in relation to U.S. citizenship is different from the histories of other migrant or racialized
groups, such as African Americans, Native Americans, and Chicanos/ Latinos, yet the Asian American
critique of citizenship generated by its specific history opens the space for such cross-race and cross-
national possibilities. One of the important acts that the immigrant performs is breaking the dyadic,
vertical determination that situates the subject in relation to the state, building instead horizontal
community with and between others who are in different locations subject to and subject of the state.
Asian American culture is thus situated to generate what Dipesh Chakrabarty has termed other
narratives of self and community that do not look to the state/ citizen bind as the ultimate construction
of sociality.
226
A2: But we need prisons

The criminal justice system does not provide justice for Asian Americans because they
are viewed as Other
Bedi 3 (The Constructed Identities of Asian Americans and African Americans: A Story of Two Races in the Criminal Justice
System)Sheila Bedi is an Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Northwestern School of Law and an attorney with the
Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center. Her work focuses on ending mass imprisonment and enforcing the rights of
people caught up in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Previously, Bedi served as the deputy legal director of the
Southern Poverty Law Center in New Orleans and Mississippi where she represented people who are imprisoned in federal
class action litigation challenging abusive prison conditions and worked on community-based policy campaigns aimed at
reducing incarceration rates, ensuring fairness in the administrative of justice, and improving access to public education and
mental health services. Bedi worked with people who were formerly incarcerated and their families on hard fought campaigns
that closed abusive prisons and jails, protected people who were imprisoned from sexual violence, improved access to counsel
for poor defendants and people living behind bars, developed alternatives to imprisonment and reduced the number of
children who are tried and convicted in the adult criminal justice system. Some of her honors include the Public Voices
Fellowship, the Heroes for Children Award, the NAACP's Vernon Dahmer Award, the NAACP's Fannie Lou Hamer Award.
Hate Crime: The Death of Vincent Chin The whole mood [in Detroit] was totally anti-Japanese. People
who had Japanese cars were getting their cars shot at, and it didnt matter if they were white. And then
if you were Asian, it was assumed that you were Japanese . . . and there was personal hostility towards
us.64 Vincent Chins Chinese American parents adopted him from China in 1961 and brought him to
Michigan. He became a United States citizen in 1965. At twenty-seven, he worked hard at his job as an
engineer. He was to be married on June 21, 1982. His friends threw him a bachelor party on June 19,
two days before the wedding. Chin and a group of four friends went to the Fancy Pants Lounge, a strip
bar right outside of Detroit. There they had a few drinks, tipped the dancers generously, and generally
carried on the all-American traditions associated with bachelor parties. Ronald Ebens, an assembly line
foreman for Chrysler and his stepson, Michael Nitz, an unemployed Chrysler assembly line worker, sat
across from Chin and his friends. Ebens began to yell racial slurs at Chin, calling him a chink and a
nip.65 Ebens stated, Its because of you little mother fu**ers that were out of work.66 Finally,
after several exchanges across the bar, Chin walked up to Ebens and confronted him. A astaght ensued
in the bar, and both parties were removed from the bar by management. Once outside the bar, Ebens
removed a baseball bat from his stepsons car. Chin saw Ebens with the bat and oed the scene, running
across a divided highway. Chins friends divided up, with Jimmy Choi following Chin on foot, and the
other two in their vehicle. Ebens and Nitz, who were in their car, observed Choi, who was on foot, and
asked him where his friend was. When Choi claimed that he did not know, Nitz threw a bottle at him.
Choi eventually found Chin, and they oed to a popular McDonalds hoping to and safety in numbers.
Meanwhile, Nitz and Ebens came across Jim Perry and offered him twenty dollars to help them and the
Chinese guy. Ebens and Nitz found Chin and Choi in the McDonalds parking lot. Chin and Choi at-
tempted to oee again. Choi got away, but Nitz grabbed Chin in a bear hug from behind while Ebens beat
Chin with the baseball bat on the head and back. Police ofacers who had been working security at
McDonalds arrived on the scene and ordered Ebens to drop his bat. Chin was rushed to the hospital,
where he lapsed into a deep coma. Doctors performed emergency brain surgery, but Chins brain
ceased functioning. He was kept on a ventilator for four days. He was pronounced dead ave days be-
fore he was to be married.67 On March 16, 1983, Wayne County Judge Kaufman found Ebens and Nitz
guilty of manslaughter after a plea bargain and sentenced each to three years probation and a $3,000
ane. The prosecutor was not even present during this proceeding.68 Judge Kaufman was quoted as
227
saying, Had it been a brutal murder, of course [Ebens and Nitz] would be in jail . . . . These werent the
kind of men you send to jail. Were talking about a man whos held down a responsible job with the
same company for eighteen years, and his son who is employed and a part-time student . . . these men
are not going to go out and harm somebody else. I just dont think that putting them in prison would do
any good for them or for society. You dont make the punishment at the crime, you make the
punishment at the criminal.69 Similarly, the death of Vincent Chin illustrates how the criminal justice
system dehumanizes Asian Americans. Not one of the jurors in the Cincinnati trial had ever interacted
with an Asian American. The initial trial judge did not consider Chins murder, where the accused
swung a baseball bat at his head as if the were hitting a home run, to be a brutal murder.85 The only
logical conclusion could have been that Chins murder was not brutal because he was perceived as the
other, a foreign inter- loper who did not belong and from whom judges and juries could disas-
sociate.
Media and law enforcement is silent on the question of sinophobic violence

Kim 7 (Nadia, Brandeis University, Asian Americans Experiences of Race and Racism, Handbooks of
Sociology and Research p. 131-144)//MNW
Beyond surveys, the criminal justice system and the mass media have been inattentive to the specific
struggles of Asian Americans, but so. Although anti-Asian violence rose steadily in the 1990s and has been
spiking in years like 2001 after 9/11, the American public is largely unaware of the high rates of anti-Asian violence
and hate crimes. For instance, the middle to late 1990s witnessed high rates of anti-Asian violence, rates that have since remained steady even
considering high rates of underreporting. And despite nationwide declines in some years, anti-Asian hate crimes have increased sharply in
various states like Connecticut, Michigan, Nevada, and Wyoming. Murders on the whole have also increased (National Asian Pacific American
Legal Consortium 2002). Hate crimes overall are underreported due to a combination of factors. Some states
do not comply with federal regulations and thus do not collect any hate crimes data. In addition, most
state institutions do not label crimes as racially motivated. Such race aversion can be traced to their
refusal to consider the victims account alone as sufficient evidence, their inability to see racism
(especially true in the case of Asian groups who are tagged model minorities), and their reluctance to admit
to the extent of racism. Indeed, state governments own police forces have come under fire for their racist practices. In addition, mass
media rarely report anti-Asian hate crimes. Another contributing factor is the large immigrant
contingent among Asian Americans who are disadvantaged by language barriers, lack of cultural understanding,
legal status, mistrust of police, and a multitude of other factors. These forms of underreporting mean that even the disturbing statistics to
follow are underestimates. National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortiums yearly audits of anti-Asian violence found thatbetween
1995 and 1996 alone hate crimes against Asian Americans jumped up from an already high base.
Threats and intimidation more than doubled while harassment increased 161 percent. Between 1994 and
1996 vandalism and destruction increased 177 percent. The dramatic increases in anti-Asian crime are even more
disturbing in light of the FBIs reporting of an overall 7 percent decrease in hate crimes between 1995
and 1996. Also troubling is that Asian Americans are increasingly subject to racially motivated crimes in their homes, workplaces, and
schools. Those who suffered hate crimes at their homes tended to live in public housing. In Asian Americans places of employment hate
crimes increased 117 percent between 1995 and 1996. In the same year the FBI found a similar increase in school-based hate crimes. K-12
schools experienced a 27 percent increase in anti-Asian crimes. Asian American students were also
more vulnerable on college campuses where they experienced a startling 100 percent increase in hate
incidents in recent years. NAPALCs 2000 report found that anti-Asian crimes on college campuses were an increasingly alarming problem,
one that had not been adequately addressed by college campuses or by the nation. In 2000 an Asian American interest
magazine called aMagazine conducted an online survey and found that 33 percent of the 559
respondents either had been called an ethnic slur or had been the target of a racially motivated verbal
assault on college campuses. Another 5 percent had been physically attacked because of their race. In line with stereotypes of Asian
Americans as a foreign competitive threat schools like UC Berkeley with large Asian populations have reported high rates of anti-Asian
228
incidents. Another disturbing finding revealed that among the 25 percent of the 260 surveyed Berkeley students who had experienced anti-
Asian discrimination, most had not reported the incidents. The students did not think that the crimes were important enough, that reporting
would make a difference, and did not know of any campus resources to help them deal with the issue. Anti-Asian incidents on
college campuses are telling for two reasons. First, they problematize and perhaps challenge the notion that higher education fosters
individuals more liberal views on race. Second, they show the connection between model minority stereotypes and
anti-Asian racism that this piece has discussed throughout. That is, Asian American college students are too model
minority, hence, too much competition. Among the numerous campuses plagued by anti-Asian incidents some examples of
hate incidents are worth noting. In a widely publicized incident in 1996 a former University of California-Irvine student Richard Machado had
emailed 59 Asian students and staff the message that he would find and kill every one of [them] personally and signed it Asian hater.
Machados statements to witnesses that he wanted to kill Asians because they were such tough academic competition made him the first
person in the United States to be convicted of a federal hate crime via computer transmission. In
another incident four year later
at SUNY-Binghamton, three white students on the schools wrestling team attacked four Korean
American students outside their dorm, all the while yelling, This is what you get for being chinks!
They fractured the skull of student John Lee and caused him to have a cerebral concussion and internal
bleeding. The schools response was slow and did not clearly condemn the crime as racially motivated. As
New York has no hate crimes laws on the books, the attackers were also not charged with a hate crime. In the same year white men at Cornell
University also attacked an Asian American female after shouting racial and gender epithets at her. Similarly, at UC Davis white fraternity
brothers beat a group of Korean American males in an opposing fraternity to the point that one had to be rushed to the hospital for
emergency surgery. The scuffle was precipitated by one of the white male fraternity members calling one of the Asian male fraternity
members a f**king chink! There have also been many murders of Asian Americans. Since the tragic death of Vincent Chin in 1982 for which
the convicted killers never spent a night in jail, there have been a substantial number of murders and attempted murders of Asian Americans.
Although most of these murders have received very little media coverage, some of the more publicized murders have been those of Thien Ly,
Kuan Chung Kao, Won Joon Yoon, Joseph Ileto, and Balbir Singh Sodhi. In 1996 Thien Ly, a young Vietnamese American
who had recently earned a Masters degree at Georgetown University, was stabbed to death by two
young white supremacists while he was exercising. After the killer Gunner Lindberg had bragged in a letter about kill[ing] a Jap he
became the first person in California to be sentenced to death for a racially motivated murder. In 1997 a 33-year-old Chinese
American engineer named Kuan Chung Kao was shot dead by Rohnert Park police. Based upon his racial identity
and his carrying a stick, one of the officers believed Kao to be a martial arts expert and killed him within 34 seconds of arriving at his home.
After shooting him, they handcuffed him and prevented his wife, a registered nurse, from administering potentially life-saving CPR. Kao died
shortly thereafter. Despite mass organized protests neither of the police officers has been punished or charged with any kind of misconduct. In
1999 a white supremacist named Benjamin Smith went on a shooting spree to kill Jews, blacks, and mud people, his derogatory term for
Asians. As Indiana University student Won Joon Yoon, a Korean American, was leaving church Smith shot him dead (Smith also killed Ricky
Byrdsong, an African American and former Northwestern University basketball coach). A month later in California a white supremacist named
Buford Furrow asked Filipino-American postal worker Joseph Ileto to mail a letter for him. When Ileto agreed Furrow shot him twice. Although
Ileto tried to run away Furrow gunned him down as a good target of opportunity because Ileto was Hispanic or Asian and was a federal
employee. Finally, the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi in Mesa, Arizona, is one of the first-known racially motivated murders in the wake of 9/11.
Sodhi, a South Asian American, was landscaping the grounds of his Chevron gas station on September 15, four days after 9/11, when Frank
Roque shot and killed him because of Sodhis supposed likeness to al-Qaeda members. After later trying to kill Afghani and Lebanese
Americans Roque was finally arrested, at which time he claimed himself a patriot. Two years later he was sentenced to death for Sodhis
killing. The silent dilemma of hate crimes against Asian Americans is in dire need of publicity and, more
importantly, solutions. Reaching solutions will require a much better understanding of the racial subordination of Asian Americans in the first
place.
229
Ext: Whiteness Model Minority

To participate in the political asian americans must be a model minority and move
toward whiteness
Eng and Han 2k (David L, Professor in the Program in Asian American Studies at uPenn, Shinhee,
Ph.D. and psychotherapist in private practice in New York City. Her clinical specializations include Asian
and Asian American mental health, transnational adoptees, LGBT population and college students with
learning and study-skills problems, identity, depression and anxiety, A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia,
Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 10(4):667700)//MNW
If we conceptualize the model minority myth as a privileged stereotype through which Asian Americans
appear as subjects in the contemporary social domain, then we gain a more refined understanding of
how mimicry specifically functions as a material practice in racial melancholia. That is, Asians Americans
are forced to mimic the model minority stereotype in order to be recognized by mainstream societyin
order to be at all. However, to the extent that this mimicry of the model minority stereotype functions only to
estrange Asian Americans from mainstream norms and ideals (as well as from themselves), mimicry can operate only as
a melancholic process. As both a social and a psychic malady, mimicry distances Asian Americans from the mimetic ideals of the nation.
Through the mobilization and exploitation of the model minority stereotype, mimicry for Asian
Americans is always a partial success as well as a partial failure to assimilate into regimes of whiteness.
Let us analyze this dynamic from yet another angle. Although Asian Americans are now largely thought of as model minorities living out the
American dream, this stereotyped dream of material success is partial because it is at most configured as economic achievement. The
success of the model minority myth comes to mask our lack of political and cultural representation. It
covers over our inability to gain full subjectivities, to be politicians, athletes, and activists, for
exampleto be recognized as all American. To occupy the model minority position, Asian American
subjects must follow this prescribed model of economic integration and forfeit political representation
as well as cultural voice. In other words, they must not contest the dominant order of things; they must
not rock the boat or draw attention to themselves. It is difficult for Asian Americans to express any
legitimate political, economic, or social needs, as the stereotype demands not only an enclosed but also
a passive self-sufficiency. From an academic point of view, the model minority stereotype also
delineates Asian American students as academically successful but rarely well-roundedwell-rounded in
tacit comparison to the unmarked (white) student body. Here is another example of Bhabhas concept of mimicry as nearly successful
imitation. This nearly successful assimilation attempts to cover over that gapthe failure of well-roundednessas well as that unavoidable
ambivalence resulting from this tacit comparison in which the Asian American student is seen as lacking. This
material failure leads
to a psychic ambivalence that works to characterize the colonized subjects identifications with
dominant ideals of whiteness as a pathological identification. This is an ambivalence that opens upon
the landscape of melancholia and depression for many of the Asian American students with whom we
come into contact on a regular basis. Those Asian Americans who do not fit into the model minority
stereotype (and this is probably a majority of Asian American students) are altogether erased from
not seen inmainstream society. Like Kingstons grandfather in China Men, they are often rejected by their own families as well.9
The alienation of Asian bodies is primarily defined by the institution

The period from 1850 to World War II was marked by legal exclusions, political disenfranchisement,
labor exploitation, and internment for Asian-origin groups in the United States. While some of the legal and
political exclusions have been lifted in the period following the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 and the Immigration and Nationality
Act of 1965, the problems of legal definition have continued for Asian origin communities. Indeed, the McCarran-Walter Act, an
expression of the cold war era, legislated strict quotas, created an area called the Asia-Pacific triangle based on a strategically
territorial mapping, and contained language delineating the exclusion of and right to deport any alien who
230
has engaged or has had purpose to engage in activities prejudicial to the public interest or subversive
to national security. 26 The 1965 act has initiated not fewer but indeed more specifications and
regulations for immigrants of Asian origins. 27 Immigration, thus, can be understood as the most
important historical and discursive site of Asian American formation through which the national and
global economic, the cultural, and the legal spheres are modulated. Whether that determination is
expressed through immigration exclusion or inclusion, the U.S. nation-state attempts to produce
and regulate the Asian as a means of resolving economic exigencies, primarily through the loci of
citizenship and political representation but also in ways that extend to the question of culture. 28 As the
state legally transforms the Asian alien into the Asian American citizen, it institutionalizes the disavowal of the
history of racialized labor exploitation and disenfranchisement through the promise of freedom in the political sphere. Yet the historical and
continued racialization of the Asian American, as citizen, exacerbates the contradictions of the national project that promises the resolution of
material inequalities through the political domain of equal representation. In the following discussion, I place the legal regulations of the Asian
as aliennoncitizen and the Asian American as citizen in terms of the material contradictions that have emerged as the nation has intersected
with the global economy during the last century and a half. The economic contradictions of capital and labor on the national level, and the
contradictions of the political nation within the global economy, have given rise to the need, over and over again, for the nation to resolve
legally capitalist contradiction around the definition of the Asian immigrant subject.
The history of the legislation of the Asian
as alien and the administration of the Asian American as citizen is at once the genealogy of this attempt
at resolution and the genealogy of a distinct racial formation for Asian Americans, defined not
primarily in terms of biological racialism but in terms of institutionalized, legal definitions of race and
national origin.
231
Ext: Solvency - Islamophobia

Our model of debate is pedagogically valuable. This is the best forum to dissect
Islamophobia, as these forums dont exist elsewhere. Only through our framework
can we engage in deconstruction.
Jasmin Zine, Race, Gender and Imperialism (M.A Cultural Analysis and Social Theory), Critical Race Studies: Global
Perspectives (M.A Sociology, Researches modern day Islamophobia especially in youth bodies, December 2014
"Anti-Islamophobia Education as Transformative Pedadogy: Reflections from the Educational Front Lines",
tps://legacy.wlu.ca/documents/60074/Anti-Islamophobia_Education_Zine_Dec_2014.pdf, , (Haq 7/2/2017)
As an anti-racism scholar and educator, fellow colleagues and I realized from as early as September 12 that there
was an urgency to frame a critical pedagogical response to address and challenge the rampant
Islamophobia affecting the realities of Muslims from all walks of life and social conditions. Among the most vulnerable
were children and youth, who received little support from schools in dealing with the backlash that many were experiencing
on a routine basis. Most schools were reluctant to engage in any response beyond the politically neutral
arena of crisis management. Among the school districts that I was in contact with, there was a clear resistance to
addressing or even naming issues of racism and Islamophobia. In fact, the discursive language to name
and define the experiences that Muslims were encountering on a day-to-day basis did not even exist
within the educational discourse. While schools were reluctant to name specific incidents as racism part of an all-too-common
denial the notion of Islamophobia did not have any currency at all. In fact, it was not a part of the
language or conceptual constructs commonly used by educators, even by those committed to
multicultural and antiracist pedagogy. 112 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:3 Zine: Anti-Islamophobia
Education 113 I realized the urgency to map a new epistemological and pedagogical terrain by creating an
educational framework for addressing Islamophobia. Within the existing equity-based educational
frameworks, one could find the conceptual and pedagogical tools to address issues of racism, classism,
sexism, homophobia, ableism, and anti-Semitism. However, the discursive foundations for dealing with
Islamophobia and the accompanying educational resources simply did not exist. Developing a new framework to
fill this gap involved coining a new term: Anti-Islamophobia Education. Being able to name and define the experience of
Muslims as the result of Islamophobia was critical to shaping the kind of interventions that would take place from a critical
educational standpoint. Before outlining a methodology for conducting anti-Islamophobia education, it was
necessary to develop some discursive foundations, arrive at a definition of Islamophobia, and create an
understanding of what it was that we sought to challenge and resist. From a socio-psychological standpoint, the
notion of Islamophobia is often loosely translated as an attitude of fear, mistrust, or hatred of Islam and
its adherents. However, this definition presents a narrow conceptual framework and does not take
into account the social, structural, and ideological dimensions through which forms of oppression are
operationalized and enacted. Applying a more holistic analysis, far from being based on mere ignorance, Islamophobic attitudes
are, in fact, part of a rational system of power and domination that manifests as individual, ideological, and systemic forms of discrimination
and oppression. The idea that discrimination, be it based on race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, or religion, simply stems from ignorance
allows those engaged in oppressive acts and policies to claim a space of innocence.
By labeling Islamophobia as an essentially
irrational fear, this conception denies the logic and rationality of social dominance and oppression,
which operates on multiple social, ideological, and systemic levels. Therefore, to capture the complex
dimensions through which Islamophobia operates, it is necessary to extend the definition from its
limited conception as a fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims and acknowledge that these attitudes
are intrinsically linked to individual, ideological, and systemic forms of oppression that support the logic
and rationale of specific power relations. For example, individual acts of oppression include such practices as name-calling or
personal assault, while systemic forms of oppression refer to the structural conditions of inequality regulated through such institutional
practices as racial profiling or denying jobs or housing 114 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:3 opportunities. These
exclusionary practices are shored up by specific ideological underpinnings, among them the purveyed notions designed to pathologize Muslims
Understanding the dimensions of how systems of oppression
as terrorists and impending threats to public safety.
such as Islamophobia operate socially, ideologically, and systemically became a key component of
developing educational tools that would help build the critical skills needed to analyze and challenge
these dynamics. From a discursive standpoint, I locate anti-Islamophobia education within a integrative anti-racism framework5
that views systems of oppression based on race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and religion as part of a multiple and interlocking nexus that
reinforce and sustain one another. Based on this understanding, I have mapped some key epistemological foundations for anti-Islamophobia
232
education.6 This includes the need to reclaim the stage through which Islam is represented from the specter of terrorists and suicide
requires adopting a pedagogical approach that
bombers to a platform of peace and social justice. Reclaiming the stage
shifts the popular media discourse away from the negative, essentialized referents and tropes of abject
Otherness ascribed to Muslims. This move involves presenting a critical counter-narrative in order to reframe
the Manichean worldview and clash of civilizations narratives typically being purveyed in order to present a more
nuanced, reasoned, and critical perspective of the global sociopolitical realities that Muslim individuals and societies are confronting,
Another foundational aspect of anti-Islamophobia education involves interrogating
engaging, and challenging.
the systemic mechanisms through which Islamophobia is reinforced, by analytically unraveling the
dynamics of power in society that sustain social inequality. Racial profiling, which targets groups on the basis of their
race, ethnicity, faith, or other aspects of social difference, and similar issues are major systemic barriers that criminalize and pathologize entire
communities. In schools, the practice of color-coded streaming, whereby a disproportionate number of racially and ethnically marginalized
youth are channeled into lower non-academic level streams, is another example of institutionalized racism. Negative perceptions held by
teachers and guidance counselors toward racialized students have often led to assumptions of failure or limited chances for success, based on
such false stereotypes as the notion that Islam doesnt value education for girls or Black students wont succeed. These negative attitudes
are relayed to students through the hidden curriculum of schooling and lead to lower expectations being Zine: Anti-Islamophobia Education
Developing critical pedagogical tools to analyze and develop
115 placed upon youth from specific communities.7
challenges to these systems of domination is part of building a transformative and liberatory pedagogy,
one geared toward achieving greater social justice in both schools and society. Another key goal of anti-
Islamophobia education involves the need to demystify stereotypes. Since 9/11, renewed Orientalist constructions of difference have
permeated the representation of Muslims in media and popular culture. Images of fanatical terrorists and burqa-clad women are seen as the
primary markers of the Muslim world. Deconstructing
and demystifying these stereotypes is vital to helping
students develop a critical literacy of the politics of media and image-making. Critically examining the
destructive impact of how these images create the social and ideological divide between us and
them is important to exposing how power operates through the politics of representation.
233
Ext: Alternative Reject Model Minority

We must refuse the figure of the Asian-American model minority as a modality of
white supremacy
and Re-narrations]
It is just as the U.S. prison has morphed into a multilayered structure of civic and social death that Asian
Americans have galvanized viable, even thriving renditions of multicultural American civic life. Such is
the historical condition of possibility for these multiple, civil society-based Asian Americanisms: while
the very articulation and material gravity of Asian Americanism sits on the precipice and precedent of
the 1965 Immigration Actan alleged liberalization of a historically racist and xenophobic set of
policieswe must contextualize this change in federal immigration law as a measure that further
facilitated the effective expulsion of criminalized populations from U.S. civil society. In this context, the
1965 Act amounts to a selective incorporation of an Asian immigrant population into the normative
workings of an embryonic, post-civil rights multicultural civil society. It also suggests a state-
proctored cultural and political validation of contemporary Asian-American civil society over and against
the durable immobilization, confinement, and enhanced penal segregation of other racially
pathologized populations. Finally, in the wake of the Immigration Acts demographic effects, we must
retheorize the vexing versatility of the Asian-American model minority paradigm as something other
than a stereotype run amuck: that is, we must understand the cultural figure of the Asian-American
model minority (both collective and embodied) as a modality of white supremacy and racial ordering
that exceeds the empirical validity of the paradigm itself.
234
Ext: Alternative Generic

Our kritik is key to rethink the state/citizen bind that constitutes dominant socialty
The latter project proposes immigration as the locus for the encounter of the national border and its
outsides as the site of both the law and the crossing of the borders that is its negative critique. Immigration as both symbol and
allegory does not metaphorize the experiences of real immigrants but finds in the located contradictions of immigration both the critical
intervention in the national paradigm at the point of its conjunction with the international and the theoretical nexus that challenges the global
economic from the standpoint of the locality. In addition, the
allegory of immigration does not isolate a singular
instance of one immigrant formation, but cuts across individualized racial formations and widens the
possibility of thinking and practice across racial and national distinctions. The specific history of Asian
immigration in relation to U.S. citizenship is different from the histories of other migrant or racialized
groups, such as African Americans, Native Americans, and Chicanos/ Latinos, yet the Asian American
critique of citizenship generated by its specific history opens the space for such cross-race and cross-
national possibilities. One of the important acts that the immigrant performs is breaking the dyadic,
vertical determination that situates the subject in relation to the state, building instead horizontal
community with and between others who are in different locations subject to and subject of the state.
Asian American culture is thus situated to generate what Dipesh Chakrabarty has termed other
narratives of self and community that do not look to the state/ citizen bind as the ultimate construction
of sociality.
Focus on the contradictions of the Asian Immigrant disrupts the universiality of the
nation-state
As such, to focus on Asian Americans as immigrants is not to obscure the understanding that almost half
of Asian Americans are U.S.-born citizens, and of that group, many date the history of their settlement in the United States
back four or five generations. It is not to draw attention away from the fact that most Asian Americans are now
currently naturalized or native-born citizens and that Asian American struggles for inclusion and equality have significantly advanced
American democratic ideals and their extension. 17 It is rather to observe that the life conditions, choices, and expressions of
Asian Americans have been significantly determined by the U.S. state through the apparatus of
immigration laws and policies, through the enfranchisements denied or extended to immigrant
individuals and communities, and through the processes of naturalization and citizenship. 18 It is to
underscore that both in the period from 1850 to World War II and in the period after 1965, immigration
has been a crucial locus through which U. S. interests have recruited and regulated both labor and
capital from Asia. It is also to maintain that there has been an important continuity between the
considerable distortion of social relations in Asian countries affected by U.S. imperialist war and
occupation and the emigration of Asian labor to the United States throughout the last century.
Immigrant acts, then, attempts to name the contradictions of Asian immigration, which at different
moments in the last century and a half of Asian entry into the United States have placed Asians within
the U.S. nation-state, its workplaces, and its markets, yet linguistically, culturally, and racially marked
Asians as foreign and outside the national polity. 19 Under such contradictions, late-nineteenth-century Chinese
immigrants labored in mining, agriculture, and railroad construction but were excluded from citizenship and political participation in the state.
20 The contradiction of immigration and citizenship took a different but consistently resonant form during World War II, when U.S.-born
Japanese Americans were nominally recognized as citizens and hence recruited into the U.S. military, yet were dispossessed of freedoms and
properties explicitly granted to citizens, officially condemned as racial enemies, and interned in camps throughout the Western United
States. 21 Philippine immigration after the period of U.S. colonization animates yet another kind of contradiction. For Filipino immigrants,
modes of capitalist incorporation and acculturation into American life begin not at the moment of immigration but rather in the homeland
already deeply affected by U.S. influences and modes of social organization. 22 The situations of Filipino Americans, or U.S. Filipinos,
235
foreground the ways in which Asian Americans emigrating from previously colonized sites are not exclusively formed as racialized minorities
within the United States but are simultaneously determined by colonialism and capital investment in Asia. 23 These
different
contradictions express distinct yet continuous formations in the genealogy of the racialization of Asian
Americans: the Chinese as alien noncitizen, the American citizen of Japanese descent as racial enemy, and the American citizen of Filipino
descent as simultaneously immigrant and colonized national. By insisting on immigrant acts as contradictions and
therefore as dialectical and critical, I also mean to emphasize that while immigration has been the locus of
legal and political restriction of Asians as the other in America, immigration has simultaneously been
the site for the emergence of critical negations of the nation-state for which those legislations are the
expression. If the law is the apparatus that binds and seals the universality of the political body of the
nation, then the immigrant, produced by the law as margin and threat to that symbolic whole, is
precisely a generative site for the critique of that universality. The national institutionalization of unity
becomes the measure of the nations condition of heterogeneity.
236
AFF Answers
237
S: Cultural Norms
AFF solves cultural norms
Worldwide Wednesdays 12 (Posted on May 9, 2012 by AmasianV in Public Health, Worldwide
Wednesdays https://amasianv.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/the-sexual-education-of-asian-americans/)
Acording to 2009 CDC figures, only 27% of male teens (age 15-19) had spoken with their parents about
abstinence and contraception. A sobering statistic? Maybe. A surprising one? Not really. I spent a
moment of self-reflection and realized that I have never, to this day, spoken with my parents about sex
let alone ways to prevent teen pregnancy. Aside from shielding my eyes during sex scenes in a movie, or
what my parents called tm by tm b (perverted), they were largely mum on the subject of sex. While
some parents advocate avoiding sex, my parents collective strategy was to avoid talking about it
altogether. I suppose part of the reason was an unspoken expectation that parts of my education would
be handled by my older brothers. After all, my parents are Vietnamese immigrants, strangers initially to
American culture unaccustomed to its norms and values. Their logic was that some things might be better
addressed by my brothers, my familys trailblazers of the American experience. I have three older
brothers and only one has made a passing attempt at sexual education: an awkward, mumbling
monologue about STDs before they were called STIs and to make sure you use condoms to avoid them.
No mention of how to use them, no demonstration of how to put one on a banana, nothing about getting
a girl pregnant. It felt more like an obligation than an education. The reality was that by the time he
initiated the conversation, I had already been informed. I learned everything, well nearly everything in
my 8th grade health class. Where my family failed me public education prevailed. I wondered how many
other Asian Americans shared my experience growing up sexually uneducated by their parents. I had long
inferred that their silence indicated that sex was simply a matter of cultural taboo. A 2006 study of 165
Asian American college students indicated that parents provided minimal education on a range of sexual
topics with the least amount of information being provided from fathers to sons. The study also indicated
that the students received implicit messages that conveyed strict sexual behavior. Statements such as
romance is for marriage or that dating can wait until college conveyed clear expectations about their
childrens sexual conduct without ever explicitly referring to sexual intercourse. As to why Asian
Americans receive such little sexual information from their parents the authors of the study speculate,
If parents do not initiate these discussions because of the taboo, as was suggested by many of the open-
ended responses, then their children may feel that it is not their place to ask such questions. At the same
time, a lack of shared vocabulary or difficulty in expressing complex ideas may also create obstacles to
intergenerational knowledge or values transmission in some immigrant families.
238
S: Islamophobia
We can challenge islamophobia through the state
Jack Jenkinsfollow, Senior Religion Reporter at ThinkProgress. Player of harmonica and ukulele, 12-7-2015, "Why It Matters That
The President Rejected Islamophobia Last Night, And Why More Politicians Should," ThinkProgress, https://thinkprogress.org/why-it-matters-
that-the-president-rejected-islamophobia-last-night-and-why-more-politicians-should-4b89475361a0, , (Haq 7/2/2017)
On Sunday night, President Barack Obama addressed the nation in the wake of the tragic San Bernardino
killingsa speech that included one of his most powerful rebukes of Islamophobia yet. But unlike many
previous appeals to religious tolerance, the presidents call for an inclusive America was arguably geared towards achieving one
immediate, specific goal: saving American lives. While outlining his larger plan to defeat the militant group ISIS, also called
ISILwhich the San Bernardino shooters claimed to supportObama harshly condemned those who wish to discriminate against others
based on their religion. Without naming names, the president spoke against the slew of politicians who have made anti-Muslim comments in
recent months, and addressed the plight of Muslim Americans who are currently enduring violenceincluding shootingsas part of an
ongoing Islamophobic backlash. The relevant sections are below, and worth reading in full: Heres what else we cannot do. We cannot turn
against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That, too, is what groups like ISIL want. ISIL does not
speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death, and they account for a tiny fraction of more than a billion Muslims around
the worldincluding millions of patriotic Muslim Americans who reject their hateful ideology But just as it is the responsibility of Muslims
around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization, it is the responsibility of all Americansof every faithto reject
discrimination. It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country. Its our responsibility to reject proposals that
Muslim Americans should somehow be treated differently. Because when we travel down that road, we lose. That kind of divisiveness, that
betrayal of our values plays into the hands of groups like ISIL. Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports
heroesand, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country. We have to remember that.
Obamas words werent just timely, they were almost certainly intentional; his speech was clearly targeted directly
at those propagating the rising tide of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. Just two days before, Jerry Falwell Jr. delivered a chilling
speech to Liberty University, an evangelical Christian college well known for producing and hosting some of Americas most influential
conservative leaders. Speaking before a crowd of thousands, Falwell, who is president of the school, called for his students to begin carrying
more guns, saying that if the victims of last weeks tragic San Bernardino shooting had been armed, they could have end[ed] those Muslims
before they walked in and killed them. He reached for his own firearm as he spoke, which he claimed was holstered to his back.
Studies
have shown that condemnations of Islamophobia from high-ranking politicians can actually have a
powerfuland potentially life-savingimpact on average citizens. Other prominent conservativesespecially GOP
presidential candidateshave also parroted anti-Muslim rhetoric over the past few months, with some ratcheting up the vitriol since the San
Bernardino murders. Ben Carson abandoned his traditionally inclusive stance on other religions earlier this year by declaring that he could not
support a Muslim president. Marco Rubio called for shutting down mosques and any placewhere radicals are being inspired. Ted Cruz and
Jeb Bush posited allowing Christian refugees from Syria into the country, but not Muslims. And just hours before President Obamas speech,
GOP presidential candidate Donald Trumpwho has previously entertained creating a registry for those who claim Islamic faithadvocated
for explicitly profiling of Muslim Americans. But even this bombast obscures a far more disturbing streak of hatred flaring up in communities
across America. Since the attacks in Paris last month, U.S. Muslims all over the country have fallen victim to an unprecedented wave of
Islamophobia, enduring more than 27 incidents of shootings, personal assaults, harassment, protests, and attacks on Islamic houses of
worshipall with threats of more to come. Despite this, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee blasted the presidents words just hours
after his speech. Speaking in New York City during a fundraiser for a settlement in the occupied West Bank, Huckabee chided the president for
protecting the reputation of Islam. I believe that the next president should never believe somehow that it is the job of the United States
president as commander-in-chief to protect the reputation of Islam more than it is to protect the people of the United States of America from
radical Islam, he said, drawing cheers from the crowd. When juxtaposed against this avalanche of anti-Islam sentiment, the presidents
speech may seem like a simple gesture. Yet despite the claims of Huckabee and others, studies have shown that condemnations of
Islamophobia from high-ranking politicians can actually have a powerfuland potentially life-savingimpact on average citizens, and can be
crucial for maintaining domestic peace. ThinkProgress reported earlier this year on a new Pew Research Center study that showed a rapid
increase in positive feelings about French Muslims after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, a surprising and dramatic shift that also occurred in the
United States after the September 11th attacks in 2001. While seemingly unexpected, Pew researcher Richard Wike speculated the shift in
public opinion was caused in part by politicians and other leaders who rebuked anti-Islam messages. The issue of Islamophobia doesnt just
have domestic repercussions. One of the potential reasons for this pattern is that in the days following the attacks [in France], you had
widespread calls for national unity, Wike told ThinkProgress at the time. In 2001, [statements made by President George W. Bush] about
how violent extremism does not represent Islam that had an impact. Wike also pointed to a 2013 paper that tracked this phenomenon
after the September 11 attacks. The author of the paper, Christopher Smith of Claremont University, ultimately concluded that the publics
sudden embrace of American Muslims was largely the of result rhetoric-driven efforts to combat Islamophobia, saying, This counterintuitive
outcome apparently resulted from a bipartisan effort by government and media to avert discrimination by framing Islam in a positive way.
But the issue of Islamophobia doesnt just have domestic repercussions. GOP candidates such as Rubio have already given voice to the idea
nonetheless used to justify calling for a
that ISISs violence constitutes a clash of civilizations, a widely disputed claim that is
long, expensive war against violent extremists in Syria and Iraq. But as Obama rightly noted, the
combination of domestic Islamophobia in Europe and the United States and a full-on ground war in the
Middle East is precisely what ISIS wants. As other other analysts have already pointed out, this creates a
recipe for ISIS recruitment, and strengthens their cause. Or, as the president put it: We should not be drawn once more into a long
and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria. Thats what groups like ISIL want. They know they cant defeat us on the battlefield. ISIL fighters were
part of the insurgency that we faced in Iraq, but they also know that if we occupy foreign lands, they can maintain insurgencies for years,
killing thousands of our troops and draining our resources, and using our presence to draw new recruits. In other words, the
239
presidents repudiation of Islamophobia isnt just the repetition of a platitude about celebrating
diversity. Its also a necessary tool of good governance, geared towards saving the lives of Muslim
Americans, non-Muslim Americans, and U.S. servicemen and women.
240
Latinx Studies Specific
241
Notes
Nepantlerxs - were fifth and sixth grade students who identified as Mexican, Chicanx, or Latinx.
Platicasconversations that allow us to self-discover who we are in relationship to othersare

embedded within Latino culture. Platicas, charlas, chisme: we Latinas are immersed in an oral tradition
since childhood. Our abuelas, ti as, madres, primas, and compan eras surround us with the syncopated
sounds of carcajadas, gritos, and, murmuras, cloaking us in a cocoon of our cultural traditions.
in the disciplines is transparent, disincorporated from the known and untouched by the geo-political
configuration of the world in which people are racially ranked and regions are racially configured. From
a detached and neutral point of observation
242
Poetry
Canserbero: Americanos (Americans)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZSD96rC1cE
Americans are the Venezuelans
The Colombians, the Peruvians, the Ecuadorians
Americans are Chileans, Haitians
Brazilians, Argentines, Mexicans
Americans are all on this earth we fight
It's a shame that there are brotherly peoples
That acts as if it were forgotten
That Americans are all those who in America are
For the many Indigenous people killed here
For the stolen wealth of Potos
For the honor of my oppressed ancestors
We must follow the evolution that we lost in the invasion
And with pride that we are Americans
Grow and make our land in an envied people
For the honor of your oppressed ancestors
We must follow the evolution that we lost in the invasion
Even the desire to have power
Be smaller than the desire to be happy
Until the universities reach the slums
And to the jails in your countries until the arms of this population
Be the preparation more than the bullets of a rifle
We will always be dependent on the beings of oppression and who say for you
Let him sing it and the Santeros in Havana
What sounds from Patagonia to Tijuana
To hear it from Panama to Guatemala
And the Latinos increase in the Big Apple
Which translates to the Caribbean and Brazil
Let it be heard from Montevideo to Santiago and Guayaquil
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Sound from Santo Domingo to Bogota
From Puerto Rico to Caracas from the Assumption to La Paz
While English there is no sea studied by overcoming
If you do not forget Spanish
While Mcdonal and Coca Cola are more consumed
That a single Arepa with melon juice
While the chamos know more about Michael Jackson
That of the Hero that to Espadasos to all I free
We will always be dependent ...
From a borrowed identity we did not get infected
Americans are the Puerto Ricans
The Paraguayans, Uruguayans and Panamanians
Americans are Nicaraguans, Costa Ricans and Dominicans
Americans are all who on this earth fight it
It's a shame that there are brotherly peoples
That acts as if they had forgotten
That Americans are all those who in America are
Americans are the Salvadorans
Guatemantecos, Jamaicans and Cubans
Americans are not just those in North America
If not the ones that one our America Loves
Nach: vive mientras puedas (life while you can)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKywAelSsnY
Live ... live while you can, who assures you
That tomorrow you will continue here Enjoy it now,
It's the only thing you have ...
Looking at photos of his childhood resurrects memory
Far from the lament of the moment
Breathe slow, something bad inside your body grows
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Room three hundred thirteen
Last stop that life offers.
Have not thought about the future in a while
To the hospital for terminal cancer diagnosis insurance
It's your fate and dust to dust
Life is a short road and no return, it is a hindrance,
To the family and its balance, if
Friends bring their best smile and flowers, they wear glass eyes,
Near the delirium, ask them a favor
That do not infect the sadness of their march and give love around
Feels weak so small ...
You only have to dream that someone can achieve all your dreams.
His life was a fleeting step on the face of the earth.
If I went back, I would run in the grass!
Stop mourning every mistake you made
To know the world beyond the people from which it did not come
But the time is over, he looks at you repentant
Tells you, feel, feel, you who are still alive
Chorus]
Live while you can, what is waiting so long
Who tells you how much time remains?
He is your gift now, take advantage of it
Between the ground and the sky there is something, enjoy it!
And just live while you can, what's waiting so long
Never knew anything else, the vice the pain the bargain
Grew up in a neighborhood where the light was always in amber
Calm boy, escaping the edge of glacial violence,
245
Watching neighbors trafficking in the portal.
Her life is calm, she wakes up to go to school at dawn
Thirteen, many at their age already carry guns
Comic that in the streets he sends, he goes unnoticed,
Hidden in the heat of a scarf.
Today he returns home on a gray October afternoon,
When he discovers a dispute between two bands, tension and rage
Screams indecipherable, looking for guilty,
And in a second the fire will have raged.
Without time to escape he feels the resounding whistle
Of an aimless bullet that hits his navel
Bleeding into fragile barks,
Looks at you and says to you: "run, run, you who are still alive!"
[Chorus]
Live while you can, what is waiting so long
And just live while you can, what's waiting so long
The misfortune never stopped her
She suffered to give his people the peace and luxuries she never have
Amateur in her little house always smiled
Her children looked at her, they said that they wanted her
Working tirelessly, so he put soup on the table,
Birthday, overtime and give a surprise,
246
That was the routine with no time for yearning
What was he going to do by cleaning the same floor for 30 years?
Saw his days like a flash, alone without looking back
Lived for others, so they raised her
The laps of her heart soon closed
Fell silent so many disappointments that marked her.
Her children grew up, marched,
It is the law of life and I knew it, the house was empty
Nostalgia and photographs accompany her,
Strange octogenaria in this technology life
Now near the goodbye, cry your past,
Knows that this fast world has already abandoned it
She sees that the time is finished and he looks at you in repentance,
She says: "love, love, you who are still alive"
Nach: Tierra prometida (promised land)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVHtzgSZp2o
I have come because things are going wrong in my native land,
Violence and poverty are advancing at a deadly pace,
I had to go out, find myself a future,
Resurface, resist and survive.
The chimera of crossing the strait in patera,
While the Coast Guard waits for you to catch you,
The odyssey of crossing the whole sphere,
Without destiny or wallet going anywhere.
Will, sacrifice, from building to building,
I go in search of a trade, on the edge of the precipice I am,
A job that pulls me down here,
Give my children shelter, show them who I am.
I fight with their desire and with their hypocrisy,
I fight every day with their Aliens Law,
247
I fight against those who feel my race as a threat,
Those that put a trick and reject me.
You're no more than me, you're no more than me,
This is my struggle and when my boss exploits me, who listens to me?
Without papers there is no work and without work there are no papers,
Spiral trails and Spain caught me in their nets.
What can I do? I breathe hopelessness,
I live in a dark place because my rent does not reach,
I go to the locutorio every day, that is my duty,
To know how they are, that they will have to eat.
Some idiot patriots treat me like a beast,
Abuse in cover, allusion of intruder that is annoyance,
Return to forest NEGRO, this is not your village,
Stranger foreigner without money and I do not integrate myself.
The gray landscape of my country made me flee,
Doing dirty work so as not to commit a crime,
Nostalgia of a childhood that is history,
In my memory a so distant yesterday that I will not live again.
The error of being Columbian, Sub-Saharan, Roman,
The fear of seeing that few tend their hand,
Fear of my skin, fear of my being and my habits,
To see that I pray in another language, irritates them and confuses them.
And who is responsible if I leave and I do not adapt,
To the sudden abduction of the rich neighboring country, only pact,
I share in my community my goods, my evils,
Frustrations and joys, ancestral traditions.
(Spain is not a racist country anyway),
But my name is on the list and some follow the track,
Until when this marginalization?
My difference is an excuse and use it as a reason for oppression.
I have documentation after months of adaptation,
248
After learn your language and a profession,
Study your culture, learn its details,
I will stay in Spain, if your streets let me.
If your streets welcome me. I'll stay.
I will share my customs. And until the
Color of my skin. If your streets hate me.
I'll be here. I came to stay. So get used to it.
249
Links
250
L: Sex Ed
The modern colonial production of knowledge about gender identity exists to
dehumanize the sense of self of the colonized and enslaved. Western discourse about
gender and sexuality legitimate assumptions of inferiority and non-humanity of Black,
Brown and non-western peoples while masking the brutal cruelty of the civilizing
mission.
Maria Lugones 2010 Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy, Interpretation
and Culture, and of Philosophy, and of Women's Studies at Binghamton University in New York.
Toward A Decolonial Feminism Hypatia 25.4 (2010): 742-759.
MARIA LUGONESIn Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System (Lugones 2007), Iproposed to read the relation between the colonizer and the
colonized in terms of gen-der, race, and sexuality. By this I did not mean to add a gendered reading and a racialreading to the already understood colonial
relations. Rather I proposed a rereading ofmodern capitalist colonial modernity itself. This is because the colonial imposition of gender cuts across questions of
ecology, economics, government, relations with the spirit world, and knowledge, as well as across everyday practices that either habituateus to take care of the
world or to destroy it. I
propose this framework not as an ab-stractio n from lived experience, but as a lens
that enables us to see what is hidden from our understandings of both race and gender and the
relation of each to normative heterosexuality.Modernity organizes the world ontologically in terms of atomic, homogeneous,separable
categories. Contemporary women of color and third-world womens critique of feminist universalism
centers the claim that the intersection of race,class, sexuality, and gender exceeds the categories of
modernity. If woman and black are terms for homogeneous, atomic, separable categories, then their in-tersection shows us the absence of black women
rather than their presence. So,to see non-white women is to exceed categorial logic. I propose the modern,colonial, gender system
as a lens through which to theorize further the oppressive logic of colonial modernity, its use of
hierarchical dichotomies and categorial logic. I want to emphasize categorial, dichotomous, hierarchical logic as central to modern,
colonial, capitalist thinking about race, gender, andsexuality. This permits me to search for social organizations from which people have resisted modern, capitalist
modernity that are in tension with its logic.Following Aparicio and Blaser,1I will call such ways of organizing the social,Hypatia vol. 25, no. 4 (Fall, 2010) r by
Hypatia, Inc. the cosmological, the ecological, the economic, and the spiritual non-modern.With Aparicio and Blaser and others, I use non-modern to express
thatthese ways are not premodern. The modern apparatus reduces them topremodern ways. So, non-modern
knowledges, relations, and
values, and eco-logical, economic, and spiritual practices are logically constituted to be at oddswith a
dichotomous, hierarchical, categorial logic.I. THE COLONIALITY OF GENDERI understand the dichotomous hierarchy between the
human and the non-human as the central dichotomy of colonial modernity. Beginning with thecolonization of the Americas and the
Caribbean, a hierarchical, dichotomous distincton between human and non-human was imposed on the
colonized in the service of Western [cis] man. It was accompanied by other dichotomous hierarchical
distinctions, among them that between men and women. This distinction became a mark of the human
and a mark of civilization. Only the civilized are men or women. Indigenous peoples of the Americas
and enslaved Africans were classified as not human in speciesas animals, uncontrollably sexual and
wild. The European, bourgeois, colonial, modern man became a subject/agent, fit for rule, for public
life and ruling, a being of civilization, heterosexual, Christian, a being of mind and reason. The
European bourgeois woman was not understood as his complement, but as someone who repro-duced race and capital
through her sexual purity, passivity, and being home-bound in the service of the white, European,
bourgeois man. The imposition of these dichotomous hierarchies became woven into the historicity of relations,
including intimate relations. In this paper I want to figure out how to think about intimate, everyday resistant
interactions to the colonial difference. When I think of intimacy here, I am not thinking exclusively or
mainly about sexual relations. I am thinking of the interwoven social life among people who are not
acting as representatives or officials. I begin, then, with a need to understand that the colonized became subjects in
colonial situations in the first modernity, in the tensions created by the brutal imposition of the modern, colonial,
gender system. Under the imposed gender framework, the bourgeois white Europeans were civilized;
they were fully human. The hierarchical dichotomy as a mark of the human also became a normative tool to damn
the colonized. The behaviors of the co lonized and their personalities/souls were judged as bestial and
thus non-gendered, promis-cuous, grotesquely sexual, and sinful. Though at this time the understanding of sex was not
dimorphic, animals were differentiated as males and females, the male being the perfection, the female the inversion and deformation of
251
themale.2Hermaphrodites, sodomites, viragos, and the colonized were all under-stood to be aberrations of male perfection. Maria Lugones 743 The
civilizing mission, including conversion to Christianity, was present in the ideological conception of
conquest and colonization. Judging the colonized for their deficiencies from the point of view of the
civilizing mission justified enormous cruelty. I propose to interpret the colonized, non-human males fromthe civilizing perspective as
judged from the normative understanding ofman, the human being par excellence. Females were judged from the nor-mative understanding of women, the
human inversion of men.3From thispoint of view, colonized people became males and females. Males became not-human-as-not-men, and coloni zed females
became not-human-as-not-women.Consequently, colonized females were never understood as lacking becausethey were not men-like, and were turned into
viragos. Colonized men were notunderstood to be lacking as not being women-like. What
has been understood as the feminization
of colonized men seems rather a gesture of humiliation, attributing to them sexual passivity under
the threat of rape. This tension between hypersexuality and sexual passivity defines one of the domains
of masculine subjection of the colonized. It is important to note that often, when social scientists investigate
colnized societies, the search for the sexual distinction and then the construction of the gender
distinction results from observations of the tasks performed by each sex. In so doing they affirm the inseparability of sex
and gender characteristic mainly of earlier feminist analysis. More contemporary analysis hasintroduced arguments for the claim that gender constructs sex. But in
the ear-lier version, sex grounded gender. Often, they became conflated: where you seesex, you will see gender and vice versa. But, if I am right about the
coloniality of gender, in the distinction between the human and the non-huma n, sex had tostand alone. Genderand sex could not be both
inseparably tied and racialized. Sexual dimorphism became the grounding for the dichotomous
understanding of gender, the human characteristic. One may well be interested in arguing thatthe sex that stood alone in the
bestialization of the colonized, was, after all,gendered. What is important to me here is that sex was made to stand alone in the
characterization of the colonized. This strikes me as a good entry point forresearch that takes coloniality seriously and aims to study the
historicity andmeaning of the relation between sex and gender. The colonial civilizing mission was the euphemistic mask of
brutal access to peoples bodies through unimaginable exploitation, violent sexual violation, control of
reproduction, and systematic terror (feeding people alive to dogs or making pouches and hats from the
vaginas of brutally killed indigenous females, for example). The civilizing mission used the hierarchical
gender dichotomy as a judgment, though the attainment of dichotomous gendering for the colonized was not the point of the normative
judgment. Turning the colonized into human beings was not a colonial goal. The difficulty of imagining this as a goal can be appreciated clearly when one sees
that744 Hypatia this transformationof the colonized into men and women would have been a transformation
not in identity, but in nature. But turning the colonized against themselves was included in the civilizing
missions repertoire of justifications for abuse. Christian confession, sin, and the Manichean division
between good and evil served to imprint female sexuality as evil, as colonized females were understood
in relation to Satan, sometimes as mounted by Satan.The civilizing transformation justified the colonization of
memory, and thus of peoples senses of self, of intersubjective relation, of their relation to the spirit
world, to land, to the very fabric of their conception of reality, identity,and social, ecological, and
cosmological organization. Thus, as Christianity be-came the most powerful instrument in the mission of
transformation, the normativity that connected gender and civilization became intent on erasing
community, ecolog ical practices, knowledge of planting, of weaving, of thecosmos, and not only on
changing and controlling reproductive and sexual practices. One can begin to appreciate the tie between the colonial introduc-
tion of the instrumental modern concept of nature central to capitalism, andthe colonial introduction of the modern concept of gender, and appreciate it as
macabre and heavy in its impressive ramifications. One can also recognize,in the scope I am giving to the imposition of the modern, coloni al, gender sys-tem, the
dehumanization constitutive of the coloniality of being. The conceptof the coloniality of being that I understand as related to the process of dehu-manization was
developed by Nelson Maldonado Torres (2008).I use th e term coloniality following Anibal
Quijanos analysis of the capitalistworld system of pow er in
terms of coloniality of power and of modernity, twoinseparable axes in the workings of this system of power. Quijanos analysis
provides us with
a historical understanding of the inseparability of racialization and capitalist exploitation4as constitutive
of the capitalist system of power as anchored in the colonization of the Americas. In thinking of the coloniality
ofgender, I complicate his understanding of the capitalist global system of power,but I also critique his own understanding of gender as only in terms of
sexualaccess to women.5In using the term coloniality I mean to name not just a clas-sification of people in terms of the coloniality of power
and gender, but also the process of active reduction of people, the dehumanization that fits them for the
classification, the process of subjectification, the attempt to turn the col-nized into less than human
beings. This is in stark contrast to the process of conversion that constitutes the Christianizing mission.
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L: Economy
US economic wellbeing is founded upon the colonization and exploitation of Mexican
life.
Anzalda 87 [Gloria Anzalda, Gloria Evangelina Anzalda was an American scholar of Chicana
cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory | Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Aunt
Lute Books, 1987, 10]
La crisis. Los gringos had not stopped at the border. By the, end of the nineteenth century, powerful landowners in Mexico, in
partnership with U.S. colonizing companies, had dispossessed millions of Indians of their lands. Currently, Mexico
and her eighty million citizens are almost completely dependent on the U.S. market. The Mexican government and
wealthy growers are in partnership with such American conglomerates as American Motors. IT&T and Du Pont which own factories called maquiladoras. One-
fourth of all Mexicans work at maquiladoras; most are young women. Next oil, maquiladoras are Mexico's second greatest source of U.S
dollars. Working eight to twelve hours a day to wire in backup lights of U.S. autos or solder miniscule wires in TV sets is not the Mexican way. While the
women are in the maquiladoras, the children are left on their own. Many roam the street, become part of cholo
gangs. The infusion of the values of the white culture, coupled with the exploitation by that culture, is
changing the Mexican way of life. The devaluation of the peso and Mexico's dependency on the U.S.
have brought on what the Mexicans call la crisis. No hay trabajo. Half of the Mexican people are unemployed. In
the U.S. a man or woman can make eight times what they can in Mexico. By March 1987, 1,088 pesos were worth one U.S. dollar. I remember when I was growing
up in Texas how we'd cross the border at Reynosa or Progreso to buy sugar or medicines when the dollar was worth eight pesos and fifty centavos.
253
L: War impact
The affs rhetoric of a big-stick war for America hegemony ignores the fact that the
Chicano already lives in a war- we have for the past 150 years- and are held hostage
in no mans borderland.
Lute Books, 1987, 11-12]
We have a tradition of migration, a tradition of long walks. Today we are witnessing la migracin de los
pueblos mexicanos, the return odyssey to the historical mythological Aztln. This time, the traffic is
from south to north. El retorno to the promised land first began with the Indians from the interior of
Mexico and the mestizos that came with the conquistadores in the 1500s. Immigration continued in the next
three centuries, and, in this century, it continued with the braceros who helped to build our railroads and
who picked our fruit.. Today thousands of Mexicans are crossing the border legally and illegally; ten
million people without documents have returned to the Southwest. Faceless, nameless, invisible,
taunted with "Hey cucaracho" (cockroach). Trembling with fear, yet filled with courage, a courage born
of desperation. Barefoot and uneducated, Mexicans with hands like boot soles gather at night by the
river where two worlds merge creating what Reagan calls a frontline, a war zone. The convergence has
created a shock culture, a border culture, a third country, a dosed country. Without benefit of bridges,
the "mojados" (wetbacks) float on inflatable rafts across el rio Grande, or wade or swim across naked,
clutching their clothes aver their heads. Holding onto the grass, they pull themselves along the banks,
with a prayer to Virgen de Guadalupe on their lips: Ay virgencita morena, mi madrecita, dame tu
bendicin. The Border Patrol hides behind the local McDonalds on the outskirts of Brownsville, Texas or
some other border town. They set traps around the river beds beneath the bridge.14 Hunters in army-
green uniforms stalk and track these economic refugees by the powerful nightvision of electronic
sensing devices planted in the ground or mounted on Border Patrol vans. Cornered by flashlights,
frisked while their arms stretch over their heads "los mojados are handcuffed, locked in jeeps, and then
kicked back across the border. One out of every three is caught. Some return to enact their rite of
passage as many as three times a day. Some of those who make it across undetected fall prey to
Mexican robbers such as those in Smugglers' Canyon on the American side of the border near Tijuana.
As refugees in a homeland that does not want them, many find a welcome hand holding out only
suffering, pain, and ignoble death. Those who make it past the checking points of the Border Patrol find
themselves in the midst of 150 years of racism in Chicano barrios in the Southwest and in big northern
cities. Living in a no-man's-borderland, caught between being treated as criminals and being able to eat,
between resistance and deportation, the illegal refugees are some of the poorest and the most
exploited of any people in the U.S. It is illegal for Mexicans to work without green cards. But big farming
combines, farm bosses and smugglers who bring them in make money off the "wetbacks'" labor-they
don't have to pay federal minimum wages, or ensure adequate housing or sanitary conditions.
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L: STEM
STEM education is inherently exclusionary through their attack on ethnic studies,
which improves the performance of latinx students, to promote the monolingual,
whitewashed study that ignores the struggles of the non-white.
Aguilar-Valdez et al 13 [Jean R. Aguilar-Valdez Carlos A. Lpez Leiva Deborah Roberts-Harris
en Nepantla: the journey of Nepantler@s in science learning and teaching, 2013, 825-826]
The hush surrounding the inclusion of Latin@s in science is deafening. Their exclusion from the conversation in science education research is
mystifying, given the abundant possibility just beyond this wall of silence. The
staggering underrepresentation of Latin@s in
the field of science, currently at only 3 % of the entire workforce (Crisp and Nora 2006), accounts for only 1 percent of
all graduate science degrees awarded each year (NSF 2006). The underrepresentation of Latin@s who declare a major in
any science field, while they are only 10 % of the total science majors, does not account for very high
amounts of student turnover (Crisp and Nora 2006). These dismal figures are indicators that the current methods of
teaching science with Latin@s, and the materials used, are pushing Latin@s out of the field of science.
Paradoxically, the Latin@ population in the U.S. is 50.5 million strong (United States Census Bureau 2010), with 1 in 5 students in public
schools being Latin@, making Latin@s the largest minority group, and in New Mexico are the majority group in our public schools
(Fry and Gonzales 2008). In New Mexico, Latin@ students outnumber Anglo students nearly two to one. With talk of the dire need
to compete scientifically and technologically as a nation, with the assumption that our political and
economic futures are in peril (Domestics Policy Council 2006), comes the reality of the lack of minority
representation in the field of science (NSF 2006) in addition to the leaky pipeline where more and
more students drop out of the trajectory of entering scientific fields with each successive year of
schooling (Chapa and De La Rosa 2006). With all of this before us, we can only help but wonder why issues of science education with
Latin@s have not been more of a priority among the science education community. Additionally, we are witnessing an
increasingly hostile attitude towards ethnic studies programs and other programs that dare to
introduce curriculum specifically for Latin@s and acknowledge the complexities of their struggles. We
refer here to the MexicanAmerican Studies program that was shut down recently by the Tuscon,
Arizona school board. We have seen similar pushes against curricula and pedagogies that accommodate
bilingual and bicultural students in the decades-long push towards English-Only policies across the
nation. Do silenced and delegitimized bilingual, bicultural pedagogies have a place in our countrys
curriculum, or are they also being pushed back across the border? We mention these events, because they highlight
the current context of science education for Latin@ students. Both the dismantled Arizona ethnic studies program and
the efforts towards bilingual, bicultural pedagogies have proven their worth for Latin@ students, but
have faced derision and delegitimization by dominant forces. The MexicanAmerican Studies program
had a proven track record of significantly increasing the achievement of the Latin@ students who are in
those programs, even in the face of many of these programs being dismantled. Students in the Tucson ethnic studies program scored 45
points higher than their non-ethnic studies peers in standardized tests in reading, 59 points higher in writing, and 33 points higher in math, and
67 % of them enrolled in college, above the national average for Latin@s (Ginwright and Cammarota 2011). Additionally, students in bilingual
education programs have been shown in numerous studies to outperform students schooled in English-only settings (Krashen 1996). Yet, there
remains an antipathy towards the curriculum and the staff who dare teach ethnic studies or bilingual education which, at
its root, is based in desires to whitewash biculturality, bilingualism, and any sense of the other and
force a monocultural, White, English-only standard on students who are deeply and historically
bicultural and bilingual. In the case of the ethnic studies program, this has led to a wide-scale banning of books that discuss bicultural
ideas, such as Gloria Anzaldu a s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Looking at the results that ethnic studies and
bilingual/bicultural education have on Latin@ student populations by acknowledging and working with Latin@ students racial, ethnic, cultural
and linguistic identities, it is puzzling that much literature continues to condone educational practices that treat all students in a neutral and
colorblind fashion. Instead, curricular
practices tend to focus on delivering content knowledge in an
objective fashion, which ignores the realities of power and oppression that permeate the lives of
Latin@s in the U.S. and, thus, takes the side of the oppressor (Freire 1970). This willful ignorance, under the
255
guise of colorblindness toward the genuine concerns of Latin@s in our classrooms, has led to oppressive and
inequitable outcomes for Latin@ students in our science classrooms, and for students of color as a
whole (Parsons, Rhodes, and Brown 2011). Science educators cannot claim that they are providing science education for all children while
continuing a collective failure thus far to provide equitable science instruction along racial, cultural, and gender lines in our classrooms
(Walls, Buck, and Akerson 2013).
256
L: Monolingualism
Strict adherence to one form of rhetoric is inherently exclusive and reproduces the
emotionally destructive susto that drains those that live in the borderlands
Anzaldua 87 [Gloria, feminist/queer/race theorist, Borderlands/La Frontera. Pg. 38-44]
Deslenguadas. Sornos los del espaftol deficiente. We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic
aberration, your linguistic mestisaje, the subject of your burla. Because we speak
with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally, and linguistically
somos hu&rfanos we speak an orphan tongue. Chicanas who grew up speaking
Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish. It is
illegitimate, a bastard language . And because we internalize how our language has
been used against us bv the dominant culture, we use our lan guage differences
against each other. Chicana feminists often skirt around each other with suspicion and hesitation. For the longest
time I couldnt figure it out. Then it dawned on me . To be close to another Chicana is like looking
into the mirror. We are afraid of what well see there. Pena. Shame. Low estimation
of self. In childhood we are told that our language is wrong. Repeated attacks on our
native tongue diminish our sense of self. The attacks continue throughout our lives.
Chicanas feel uncomfortable talking in Spanish to Latinas, afraid of their censure.
Their language was not outlawed in their countries. They had a whole lifetime of
being immersed in their native tongue; generations, centuries in which Spanish was
a first language, taught in school, heard on radio and TV, and read in the
newspaper. If a person , Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my 25 native tongue,
she also has a low estimation of me. Often with mexicanas y latinas we'll speak
English as a neutral language. Even among Chicanas we tend to speak English at
parties or conferences. Yet, at the same time, were afraid the other will think we're
agringadas because we don't speak Chicano Spanish. We oppress each other
trying to out-Chicano each other, vying to be the real Chicanas, to speak like
Chicanos . There is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano
experience. A monolingual Chicana whose first language is English or Spanish is
just as much a Chicana as one who speaks several variants of Spanish. A Chicana
from Michigan or Chicago or Detroit is just as much a Chicana as one from the
Southwest. Chicano Spanish is as diverse linguistically as it is regionally. By the end of this century, Spanish speakers
will comprise the biggest minority group in the U.S., a c ountry where students in high schools and colleges are encouraged
to take French classes because French is considered more cultured. But for a language to remain alive it must be used. 6
By the end of this century English, and not Spanish, will be the mother tongue of most Chi canos and Latinos. So, if you
want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to
linguistic identity I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I
cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas
Spanish, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the
257
legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switc h codes without
having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I
would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English
speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimat e.
I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian,
Spanish, white. I will have my serpents tongue my womans voice, my sexual
voice, my poets voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence. My fingers move sly against your
palm Like women everywhere, we speak in c o d e . . . . MELANIE KAYE/KANTROWrrZ7 Vistas, corridos, y comida: My Native Tongue
In the 1960s, I read my first Chicano novel. It was City of Night by J ohn Rechy, a gay Texan, son of a Scottish father and a
Mexican mother. For days I walked around in stunned amazement that a Chicano could write and could get published. W hen
I read / Am Joaquin8 I was surprised to see a bilingual book by a Chicano in print. W hen I saw poetry written in Tex -Mex for
the first time, a feeling of pure jov flashed through me. I felt like we really existed as a people. In 1971, when I started
teaching High School English to Chicano students, I tried to supplement the require d texts with work s by Chicanos, only to
be reprimanded and forbidden to do so by the principal. He claimed that I was supposed to teach American and English
literature. At the risk of being fired, I swore my students to secrecy and slipped in Chicano sh ort stories, poems, a play. In
graduate school, while working toward a Ph.D., I had to argue" with one advisor after the other, semester after semester,
before I was allowed to make Chicano literature an area of focus. Even before I read books by Chicano s or Mexicans, it
was the 30 Mexican movies I saw at the drive-in the Thursday night special of $ 1.00 a carload that gave me a sense
of belonging. Vdmonos a las vistas," my mother would call out and we'd all grandmother, brothers, sister, and cous ins
squeeze into the car. W ed wolf down cheese and bologna white bread sandwiches while watching Pedro Infante in
melodramatic tearjerkers like Nosotros los pobres, the first "real" Mexican movie (that was not an imita tion of European
movies). I remember seeing Cuando los hijos se van and surmising that all Mexican movies played up the love a mother has
for her children and what ungrateful sons and daughters suffer when they are not devoted to their mothers. I remember the
singing-tvpe "westerns of Jorge Negrete and Miquel Aceves Mejia. W hen watching Mexican movies, I felt a sense of home-
coming as well as alienation. People who were to amount to something didnt go to Mexican movies, or bailes, or tune their
radios to bolero, rancherita, and conido music. The whole time I was growing up, there was norteho music sometimes called
North Mexican border music, or Tex -Mex music, or Chicano music, or cantina (bar) music. I grew up listening to conjuntos,
three- or four-piece bands made up of folk musi cians playing guitar, bajo sexto, drums, and button accordion, which Chicanos
had borrowed from the German immigrants who had come to Central Texas and Mexico to farm and build breweries. In the
Rio Grande Valley, Steve Jordan and Little Joe Hernan dez were popular, and Flaco Jimenez was the accordion king. The
rhythms of Tex-Mex music are those of the polka, also adapted from the Germans, who in turn had borrowed the polka from
the Czechs and Bohemians. I remember the hot, sultry evenings when corridos songs of love and death on the Texas -
Mexican borderlands reverberated out of cheap amplifiers from the local cantinas and wafted in through my bedroom
window. Corridos first became widely used along the South Texas/ Mexican border during the early conflict between Chicanos
and Anglos. The corridos are usually about Mexican heroes who do valiant deeds against the Anglo oppressors. Pancho
Villas song, La cucaracha," is the most famous one. Corridos of John F. Kennedy and his death are still very popular in the
Valley. Older Chicanos remember Lydia Mendoza, one of the great border conido singers who was called la Gloria de Tejas.
Her "El tango negro," sung during the Great Depression, made her a singer of the people. The everpresent conidos narrated
one hundred years of border history, bringing news of events as well as entertaining. These folk musicians and folk songs
258
are our chief cultural myth- makers, and they made our hard lives seem bearable. I grew up feeling ambivalent about our
music. Country- western and rock -and-roll had more status. In the 50s and 60s, for the slightly educated and agringado
Chicanos, there existed a sense of shame at being caught listening to our music. Yet I couldnt stop my feet from thumping
to the music, could not stop humming the words, nor hide from myself the exhilaration I felt when I heard it. There are more
subtle ways that we internalize identification, 35 especiall y in the forms of images and emotions. For me food and certain
smells are tied to my identity, to my homeland. W oodsmoke curling up to an immense blue skv; woodsmoke perfuming my
grandmothers clothes, her skin. The stench of cow manure and the yellow patches on the ground; the crack of a .22 rifle
and the reek of cordite. Homemade white cheese sizzling in a pan, melt ing inside a folded tortilla. My sister Hildas hot, spic y
menudo, chile Colorado making it deep red, pieces of panza and hominy floating on top. Mv brother Carito barbequing fajitas in
the back yard. Even now and 3,000 miles away, I can see m y mother spicing the ground beef, pork, and venison with chile.
My mouth salivates at the thought of the hot steaming tamales I would be eating if I were home. Si le preguntas a mi mama, Que
eres? "Identity is the essential core of who we are as individuals, the conscious experience of the self inside. GERSHEN KAUFMAN9
Nosotros los Chicanos straddle the borderlands. On one side of us, we are
constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans, on the other side we hear the
Anglos' incessant clamoring so that we forget our language. Among ourselves we
dont say nosotros los americanos, o nosotros los espanoles, o nosotros los
hispanos. We say nosotros los mexicanos (by mexicanos we do not mean citi zens of Mexico; we do not
mean a national identity, but a racial one). We distinguish between mexicanos del otro lado and
mexicanos de este lado. Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has
nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul
not one of mind, not one of citizenship. Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And
like the ocean, neither animal respects borders. Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres. (Tell me
who your friends are and Ill tell you who you are.) MEXICAN SAYING Si le preguntas a mi mamd, c*Que eres?" te dira, Soy mexicana."
My brothers and sister say the same. I sometimes will answer soy mexicana" and at others will say soy Chicana o soy tejana."
But I identified as Raza" before I ever identified as mexicana" or "Chicana." As a culture, we call ourselves Spanish when
referring to ourselves as a linguistic group and when copping out. It is then that we forget our predominant Indian genes .
We are 70-80 percent Indian. 10 We call ourselves Hispanic 11 or Spanish-American

or Latin American or Latin when linking ourselves to other Spanishspeaking
peoples of the Western hemisphere and when copping out. We call ourselves
Mexican-American 12 to signify we are neither Mexican nor American, but more the
noun "American than the adjective Mexican (and when copping out). Chicanos and other
people of color suffer economically for not acculturating. This voluntary (yet forced)
alienation makes for psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity we don't

identify with the Anglo-American cultural values and we don't totally identify with
the Mexican cultural values. We are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees
of Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so internalized the borderland conflict that
sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one.
A veces no soy nada ni nadie. Pero hasta cuando no lo soy, lo soy. When not copping out, when we know we
are more than noth- 40 ing, we call ourselves Mexican, referring to race and
259
ancestry; mestizo when affirming both our Indian and Spanish (but we hardly ever
own our Black ancestory); Chicano when referring to a politically aware people bom
and/or raised in the U.S.; Raza when referring to Chicanos; tejanos when we are
Chicanos from Texas. Chicanos did not know we were a people until 1965 when Ceasar Chavez and the
farmworkers united and I Am Joaquin was published and la Raza Unida part y was formed in Texas. W ith that recognition, we
became a distinct people. Something momentous happened to the Chic ano soul we became aware of our reality and
acquired a name and a language (Chicano Spanish) that reflected that reality. Now that we had a name, some of the
fragmented pieces began to fall together who we were, what we were, how we had evolved. W e be gan to get glimpses
of what we might eventuall y become. Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of
borders is our reality still. One day the inner struggle will cease and a true integration
take place. In the meantime, tenemos que hacer la lucha. Quien esta protegiendo los ranchos de mi gente? Quien esta
tratando de cerrar la fisura entre la india y el blanco en nuestra sangre? El Chicano, si, el Chicano que anda como un ladron en su propia casa.
Los Chicanos, how patient we seem, how very patient. There is the quiet of the Indian about us. 1 3 W e know how to survive.
When other races have given up their tongue, weve kept ours. We know what it is
to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norte-americano culture. But more
than we count the blows, we count the days the weeks the years the centuries the
eons until the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts theyve
created, lie bleached. Humildes yet proud, quietos yet wild, nosotros los mexicanos-
Chicanos will walk by the crumbling ashes as we go about our business. Stubborn,
persevering, impenetrable as stone, yet possessing a malleability that renders us
unbreakable, we, the mestizas and mestizos, will remain.
260
261
Soft left aff link
Affs that promote policy action to counter exclusionary social impacts reimpose these
impacts in a more elusive form.
Press Releases January 16, 2015
The disproportionate incarceration rate of minorities in general, and blacks in particular, is one of the most pressing
civil rights issues of our time. A new EPI report argues that the United States has a dual criminal justice system that has helped maintain
the economic and social hierarchy predicated on race. In Where Do We Go from Here? Mass Incarceration and the Struggle for Civil Rights,
Robynn J.A. Cox, assistant professor at Spelman College and RCMAR Scholar at the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and
Economics, explains that the mass incarceration of minorities was not an accidental occurrence but the result
of Americas legacy of racism. She examines how public policy, criminal justice officials, and the media have
contributed to the hyper incarceration of minorities, especially black men. As we prepare to celebrate Martin
Luther King Jrs legacy, its essential that we acknowledge how a biased criminal justice system and the
subsequent mass incarceration of African Americans is wreaking havoc on the black community and
preventing us from reaching Kings dream, said Cox. For example, although the right for blacks to vote has been enforced
since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, mass incarceration policies have effectively taken this entitlement away
from numerous African Americans. It is painfully obvious that the dream for civil rights has yet to be fully realized and cemented. Over the past
40 years, U.S. incarceration has grown at an extraordinary rate, and most of this growth can be accounted for by
societys choice for tough-on-crime policies (e.g., determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing laws, limiting discretionary parole
boards, etc.) resulting in more individuals (committing less serious offenses) being sentenced to serve time, and longer prison sentences. For
instance, from1979 to 2009, there was a decrease in the share of individuals sentenced to state facilities
for violent crimes and property crimes, but large increases in the proportion of individuals serving time
for less serious crimes such as drug crimes and other crimes. This shift in focus occured after the federal government
increased federal funding and resources to state and local law enforcement to support the war on drugs. In order to obtain economic gains
from the resulting prison boom, impoverished rural communitiesand the private sectorbegan using prison
construction as part of their economic development strategies, with hopes that prisons would be a
recession-proof industry that would help to stimulate their economy through job creation and regional
multiplier effects. Though blacks have historically experienced incarceration rates above their proportion in society, it has worsened over
time: By 1993 the proportion of black prison admissions was roughly 4 times their proportion in the
population (a 91 percent increase from 1926). Moreover, racial disparities in incarceration persist over time at alleducation
levels. This hyperincarceration has led to disproportionate effects on black employment outcomes and earnings, families, and citizenship status.
In fact, although low-skilled white male employment is hurt by an incarceration, research
has found that previously
incarcerated low-skilled white males are still ranked in the economic hierarchy at the same level or
higher as low-skilled Hispanic and black men without criminal records. Finally, imprisonment leads to the loss
of an individuals ability to participate in the democratic process, and ultimately ones citizenship, through felon
disenfranchisement laws. Taken together, there is ample evidence that the criminal justice system has played an integral part in maintaining
social and economic stratification along racial lines. Discriminatory enforcement practices, such as racial
profiling and differential
treatment by prosecutors, have played a significant role in the mass incarceration of minorities. Evidence
of unequal enforcement of the law can be seen by comparing drug use to drug arrest rates by race. Though
black senior high school students indicate using cocaine and marijuana at lower rates in 1980, 1993, and 2009
than their white counterparts, blacks are arrested at much higher rates for possession and distribution
of drugs. Moreover, while the share of individuals serving time in state prisons for drug offenses that are black increased by almost 50
percent from 1986-2009, the share of whites decreased by 62 percent over this same time period. Systemic racial bias has led to the
development of a dual criminal justice system, which is at the root of our mass incarceration epidemic, said Cox. Without racial bias, it is
unlikely that the United States would have seen such unprecedented growth in incarceration. Therefore, to begin to address it and achieve the
social and economic equality Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of over 51 years ago, we must follow Kings advice and become
262
reeducated about race in America, and we have to wholeheartedly invest in the black community
through education, job training, and employment programs. Failure to address the legacy of racism
passed down by our forefathers and its ties to economic oppression will only result in the continued
reinvention of Jim Crow. This paper continues the Economic Policy Institute project The Unfinished March, which reviews Americas
civil rights successes as well as the significant amount of civil rights work that remains to be done. Each report addresses a specific civil rights
goal, the progress that has or has not been made, and, if necessary, the policy measures needed to fully realize the goal.
263
Impacts
264
I: Exclusion
La frontera-a space of division for the comfort of los gringos- is an unnatural area that
denies the Latinx their identity and holds them in a constant state of suspension and
peril.
Lute Books, 1987, 3-8]
The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.
And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third
country-a border culture. Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish
us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a Vague and
undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state
of transition The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. Los atravesados live here: the squint-
eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the half-breed, the half
dead; in short, those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the "normal." Gringos in the
U.S. Southwest consider the inhabitants of the borderlands transgressors, alienswhether they
possess documents or not, whether they're Chicanos, Indians or Blacks. Do not enter, trespassers will
be raped, maimed, strangled, gassed, shot. The only "legitimate" inhabitants are those in power, the whites
and those who align themselves with whites. Tension grips the inhabitants of the borderlands like a virus. Ambivalence and unrest reside there
and death is no stranger. In the fields, la migra. My aunt saying, 'No corran, don't run. They'll think you're del otro lao." In the confusion,
Pedro ran, terrified of being caught. He couldn't speak English, couldn't tell them he was fifth generation American. Sin papeleshe did not carry
his birth certificate to work in the fields. La migra took him away while we watched. Se lo llevaron. He tried to smile when he looked back at
us, to raise his fist. But I saw the shame pushing his head down, I saw the terrible weight of shame hunch his shoulders. They deported
him to Guadalajara by plane. The furthest he'd ever been to Mexico was Reynosa, a small border town opposite Hidalgo, Texas, not far from
McAllen. Pedro walked all the way to the Valley. Se lo llevaron sin un cen-tavo alpobre. Se vino andando desde Guadalajara. During the
original peopling of the Americas, the first inhabitants migrated across the Bering Straits and walked south across the continent. The
oldest
evidence of humankind in the U.S. the Chicanos' ancient Indian ancestorswas found in Texas and has
been dated to 35000 B.C.3 In the Southwest United States archeologists have found 20,000-year-old
campsites of the Indians who migrated through, or permanently occupied, the Southwest, Aztlan
land of the herons, land of whiteness, the Edenic place of origin of the Azteca. In 1000 B.C., descendants
of the original Cochise people migrated into what is now Mexico and Central America and became the
direct ancestors of many of the Mexican people. (The Cochise culture of the Southwest is the parent culture of the
Aztecs. The Uto-Aztecan languages stemmed from the language of the Cochise people.)4 The Aztecs (the Nahuatl word for people of Aztlan)
left the Southwest in 1168A.D. Now let us go. Tihueque, tihueque, Vamonos, vamonos. Un pajaro canto. Con sus ocho tribus
salieron de la "cueva del origen." los aztecas siguieron al dios Huitzilopochtli. Huitzilopochtli, the God of War, guided them to
the place (that later became Mexico City) where an eagle with a writhing serpent in its beak perched on a cactus.
The eagle symbolizes the spirit (as the sun, the father); the serpent symbolizes the soul (as the earth, the
mother). Together, they symbolize the struggle between the spiritual/celestial/male and the under-
world/earth/feminine. The symbolic sacrifice of the serpent to the "higher" masculine powers indicates
that the patriarchal order had already vanquished the feminine and matriarchal order in pre-Columbian
America. At the beginning of the 16th century , the Spaniards and Hernan Cortes invaded Mexico and, with the
help of tribes that the Aztecs had subjugated, conquered it. Before the Conquest, there were twenty-five
million Indian people in Mexico and the Yucatan. Immediately after the Conquest, the Indian population
had been reduced to under seven million. By 1650, only one-and-a-half-million pure-blooded Indians
remained. The mestizos who were genetically equipped to survive small pox, measles, and typhus (Old
265
World diseases to which the natives had no immunity), founded a new hybrid race and inherited Central and South
America .5 En 1521 nacid una nueva raza, el mestizo, el mexicano (people of mixed Indian and Spanish blood), a race that had never existed
before. Chicanos, Mexican-Americans, are the offspring of those first matings. Our Spanish, Indian, and mestizo ancestors
explored and settled parts of the U.S. Southwest as early as the sixteenth century. For every gold-hungry
conquistador and soul-hungry missionary who came north from Mexico, ten to twenty Indians and
mestizos went along as porters or in other capacities.6 For the Indians, this constituted a return to the
place of origin, Aztlan, thus making Chicanos originally and secondarily indigenous to the Southwest.
Indians and mestizos from central Mexico intermarried with North American Indians. The continual
intermarriage between Mexican and American Indians and Spaniards formed an even greater
mestizaje. El destierro I The Lost Land Entonces corre la sangre no sabe el indio que hacer, le van a quitar su tierra, la tiene que defender,
el indio se cae muerto, y el afuerino de pie. Levdntate, Manquilef. Arauco tiene una pena mas negra que su chamal, ya no son los
espanoles los que le hacen llorar, hoy son los propios chilenos los que le quttan su pan. Levdntate, Pailahuan. Violeta Parra, "Arauco tiene
una pena"7 In the 1800s, Anglos migrated illegally into Texas, which was then part of Mexico, in greater
and greater numbers and gradually drove the tejanos (native Texans of Mexican descent) from their lands,
committing all manner of atrocities against them. Their illegal invasion forced Mexico to fight a war to
keep its Texas territory. The Battle of the Alamo, in which the Mexican forces vanquished the whites,
became, for the whites, the symbol for the cowardly and villainous character of the Mexicans. It became
(and still is) a symbol that legitimized the white imperialist takeover. With the capture of Santa Anna later
in 1836, Texas became a republic. Tejanos lost their land and, overnight, became the foreigners. Ya la
mitad del terreno les vendid el traidor Santa Anna, con lo que se ha hecho muy rica la nacidn americana. < <iQue acaso no se conforman
In
con el oro de las minas? Ustedes muy elegantes y aqui nosotros en ruinas. from the Mexican corrido, "Delpeligro de la Intervencidn"^
1846, the U.S. incited Mexico to war. U.S. troops invaded and occupied Mexico, forcing her to give up
almost half of her nation, what is now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California. With the
victory of the U.S. forces over the Mexican in the U.S.-Mexican War, los norte americanos pushed the
Texas border down 100 miles, from el rio Nueces to el rio Grande. South Texas ceased to be part of
the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Separated from Mexico, the Native Mexican-Texan no longer looked
toward Mexico as home; the Southwest became our homeland once more. The border fence that
divides the Mexican people was born on February 2, 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-
Hidalgo. It left 100,000 Mexican citizens on this side, annexed by conquest along with the land. The land
established by the treaty as belonging to Mexicans was soon swindled away from its owners. The treaty
was never honored and restitution, to this day, has never been made. The justice and benevolence of God will
forbid that . . . Texas should again become a howling wilderness trod only by savages, or . . . benighted by the ignorance and superstition,
the anarchy and rapine of Mexican misrule. The Anglo-American race are destined to be forever the proprietors of this land of promise and
fulfillment. Their laws will govern it, their learning will enlighten it, their enterprise will improve it. Their flocks range its boundless pastures, for
them its fertile lands will yield . . . luxuriant harvests . . . The wilderness of Texas has been redeemed by Anglo-American blood & enterprise.
William H.Wharton9 The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority, seized complete political power,
stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted in it. Con el destierro y el exilio
fuimos desunados, destroncados, destripa- doswe were jerked out by the roots, truncated, disemboweled,
dispossessed, and separated from our identity and our history. Many, under the threat of Anglo
terrorism, abandoned homes and ranches and went to Mexico. Some stayed and protested. But as the
courts, law enforcement officials, and government officials not only ignored their pleas but penalized
them for their efforts, tejanos had no other recourse but armed retaliation. After Mexican-American
resisters robbed a train in Brownsville, Texas on October 18, 1915, Anglo vigilante groups began
lynching Chicanos. Texas Rangers would take them into the brush and shoot them. One hundred
Chicanos were killed in a matter of months, whole families lynched. Seven thousand fled to Mexico, leaving
their small ranches and farms. The Anglos, afraid that the mexicanos would seek independence from the U.S.,
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brought in 20,000 army troops to put an end to the social protest movement in South Texas. Race hatred
had finally fomented into an all out war.
267
I: Exploitation
Colonialism abuses and exploits the areas it colonizes for the benefit of the rich and
wealthy to the expense of indigenous populations Africa proves
Colonialism imbibes values that celebrate and add value to its political trustee, thereby justifying any
extractions of material and human resources or impositions of political rule. In his defense of colonialism, Sir
Winston Churchill described the alleged value and enhancement of colonialism: There has been no lack of critics, at home and abroad, to
belittle Britains colonial achievement and to impugn her motives. But the record confounds them. Look where you will, you will find that the
British have ended wars, put a stop to savage customs, opened churches, school and hospitals, built railways, roads and harbours, and
developed the natural resources of the countries so as to mitigate the almost universal, desperate poverty. They have given freely in money
and materials and in the services of a devoted band of Civil Servants; yet no tax is imposed upon any of the colonial peoples that is not spent by
their own governments on projects for their own good. (Tregonning, 1960, p. i) In contrast to the colonizers perspective, is that of the
colonized that challenges the notion of a beneficial colonial legacy posited by Le Petit Robert. Colonialism
is perceived as bringing
value and enhancement to the colonizer alone through the exploitation and oppression of the colonized.
Ugandan historian T. B. Kabwegyere challenges European claims to colonial development: The argument suggests that, on the
one hand, there was exploitation and oppression but on the other hand the colonial governments did
much for the benefit of Africans and they developed Africa. It is our contention that this is completely
false. Colonialism had only one hand it was a one-armed bandit (As quoted in Boahen, 1987, p. 95). Rather
than seeing value and enhancement, critical essayists identify a host of debilitating legacies from
colonialism including war, cultural extinction, underdevelopment, resource exploitation, imposed
poverty, and overall corruption and abuse. Critical studies of colonialism characterize colonialism not on
the basis of stated intentions for development but imposed power for domination and exploitation:
Colonialism involves the direct territorial appropriation of another geopolitical entity, combined with
forthright exploitation of its resources and labor, and systematic interference in the capacity of the
appropriated culture (itself not necessarily a homogeneous entity) to organize its dispensations of
power. (McClintock, 1992, p. 88) The development of a colony is seen as purposeful restructuring for the most efficient and productive
extraction of its resources to the colonial power: Colonialism is a thoroughgoing, comprehensive and deliberate penetration of a local or
residentiary system by the agents of an external system, who aim to restructure the patterns of organization, resource use, circulation and
outlook so as to bring these into a linked relationship with their own systems. (Brookfield, 1972, pp. 1-2)
In essence colonialism
involves a forced transfer of power and control, resulting in significant changes in land ownership, use of
resources, systems of labor, political entity, and cultural expression. The colonizer considered these
imposed changes as necessary in order to fulfill its mission: to civilize, modernize, and missionize. Memmi
(1991) proposes that the colonizer defends his mission and highlights the merits of his culture in order to absolve himself as well as
[transform] his usurpation into legitimacy (p. 52). Memmi further describes that due to the belief in his supremacy, the prerogative of
producing the reality of colonialism belongs to the colonizer alone, irrespective of the perspectives or experiences of the colonized. This
section juxtaposes the British defense of colonialism in Ghana with an African critique of colonialism, examining both the claimed mission of
British colonialism as well as the historical and contemporary outcomes of British colonialism in Ghana.
Neocolonialism exploits poorer countries, and those who are subjugated under it,
have little sovereignty.
268
Neocolonialism is comprised of those influences and events in countries no longer under colonial rule
that incline them towards colonial examples and features; the condition of reliving in a more subtle and
complex relationship, colonial influences and experiences (Quist H. O., 2001). In Africa, economic dependency upon
global powers facilitated the continued exploitation of nation states that secured independence. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of
Ghana, described this subtle and complex relationship: The neo-colonialism of today represents imperialism in its final
and perhaps its most dangerous stageThe essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject
to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its
economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.A State in the grip of neo-colonialism is not master
of its own destiny. (Nkrumah, 1968, p. ix) Global powers that supported the transitions to sovereignty of African nations also provided
funding that theoretically supported Africas economic development but in truth served to secure Ghanas economic dependency and ensure
profits for those providing assistance, similar to colonialism. For Africa, European
colonialism was essentially a drain of
wealth as metropolitan powers extracted colonial surplus, prohibiting indigenous capital accumulation
(Bertocchi & Canova, 2002). Once colonialism formally ended, Africa inherited the empty shells of colonial states, void of administrative
structures, skilled personnel and resources needed for nation building (Cheru, 2010). Countriesbroke from the colonial fold to become
independent states between 1956 and 1966;.Independent they may have been on paper, but independence dependent upon the financial
largesse of their former colonial masters was the reality (Moyo, 2009, pp. 13-14). Foreign aid offered to newly independent states was both
conditional and unpredictable, inhibiting the creation of economically independent and self-reliant nations. Medium- to long-term poverty
reduction through budget allocation was unfeasible due to the unpredictability of donor flow. The quality of aid was compromised by donor
disbursements dependent upon purchases of donor goods and services (Cheru, 2010). In her book, Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo (2009) contends
that African nations that became aid dependent saw dramatic increases in poverty while cycles of corruption and market distortion lined
government coffers. Ghana became more dependent on aid with no significant reduction in poverty while simultaneously garnering high
standings in Corruption Perception Index (Andrews, 2010). Africas development in post independence was constrained to that which
benefitted the economic interests of global powers and governmental leader recipients, further perpetuating a colonial legacy.
Colonialism ensures exploited peoples remain in a position of economic dependency

Marginalization results when a group finds itself dependent on others and subject to imposed authority
with little to no input (Young, I., 1990). Wolf (1994) suggests that the oppressed are vulnerable to
exchanging outright coercion for a dependency bond. She further theorizes that this is a strategy of
control whereby people in subordinate positions maneuver their oppressors into accepting lines of
obligation toward them. Shillington (1995) describes that rapid colonial conquest in Africa was made possible in part by the European
exploitation of existing African rivalries. Many African rulers accepted European alliances in exchange for
protection from rival groups, not fully aware of the implications of protection until they observed the
brutal conquest of their enemies. Marginalization was achieved economically as the importation of
European manufactured goods destroyed African industrial selfsufficiency and caused dependency upon
foreign imports (Shillington, 1995). This process continues to be observed in the post-independent dependency of former African colonies
on global powers. Though Ghana gained political sovereignty in 1957, the financial resources required for nation building created opportunities
for former colonial powers to maintain economic hegemony through high debt servicing schemes, debt relief strategies, and structural
adjustment policies.
Marginalization in the form of economic dependency continues to occur through the
imposition of neoliberal economic policies by global powers as conditions to Ghanas receipt of loans or debt forgiveness.
Cultural Imperialism !
Cultural imperialism is another face of oppression identified by Young, where individuals experience how the dominant meanings of a society
render the particular perspective of ones own group invisible at the same time as they stereotype ones group and mark it out as the Other
(Young I. , 1990, pp. 58-59). According to Young (1990), cultural imperialism constructs the dominant groups
269
perspective as both normative and universal. The perspectives and knowledge of the targeted group are
made inferior or at best invisible, while that of the dominant group is upheld as the golden standard. In
colonial society, Western culture was dominant with Western education, culture, food, dress, language
and material goods being considered superior and more desirable. Simultaneously Ghanaian culture, traditions, and
practices were associated with illiteracy, backwardness, and inferiority. One of the primary means by which cultural domination and oppression
of subordinates takes place is control over ideology and the content of legitimate social discourse (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, p. 103). Though
not as visible as the use of physical force or legal mandates, the creation of social discourse is a powerful mechanism of control.
Oppressive
colonial discourse was propogated by a variety of disciplines in Europe, including geography, missions,
historians, psychologists and sociologists (Cesaire, 1972). Colonial maps displayed boundaries and place names appointed by
Europeans, abrogating self-determined African nations and African geography. Christian missions identified African people and traditions as
heathen, undermining African culture and spirtuality. Western historians described Africa as devoid of history prior to the arrival of Europeans,
invalidating thousands of years of ancient and advanced civilizations. Pyschologist and sociologists promoted differences in aptitude based on
racial hierarchies, dicrediting African value and humanity. These underlying assumptions and ideologies were then reproduced in the daily
activities of colonialists. In sum, notions of cultural difference readily become systems of judgment and coercion by which one group marks off
and dominates others. These ideas and practices are discursive. Through talk, tales, stories, gossip, anecdotes, messages, pronouncements,
news accounts, orations, sermons, preachments, and the like definitions are presented and feelings are expressedand a sense of group
position is set (Blumer as cited in Brown, 1993, p. 660). Jane Harvey refers to this subtle form of domination in the processes of normal daily
life as civilized oppression (Harvey, 1999). Unconsciously, oppression becomes embedded in rules of conduct, norms and habits, as well as in
the underlying assumptions of institutions, rules and procedures further supported by the media and cultural stereotypes (Young I. , 1990).
Colonial education served as a critical mode of transmission for cultural imperialism. Educational
policies, curriculum and practice mandated the use of English as the media of instruction, the inclusion
of European history, culture and values, and conformity to Western dress and modes of standard. The
Eurocentric education imposed the colonizers history, language, and values while simultaneously
denying demeaning, destroying, or demonizing that which was African.
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I: Dehumanization
Colonization results in dehumanization that enables the worst atrocities and locks the
oppressed into an unchanging status
Oppression Theory serves as a useful framework for exposing, analyzing and critiquing colonialism. Oppression is defined as the
institutionalized collective and individualized modes of behavior through which one group attempts to dominate and control another in order
to secure political, economic and/or social-psychological advantage (Mar'i, 1988, p. 6). Colonialism in Africa was essentially a system of
oppression through which Europeans dominated the continent to secure economic and thus political advantage by exploiting its human and
natural resources. Analysis
of oppression can occur from the macro-level involving financial, political and
social institutions to the micro-level involving internalized perceptions of inferiority (Prilleltensky & Gonick,
1996). The process of oppression has both political and psychological dimensions. The term oppression encapsulates the fusion of institutional
and systemic discrimination, personal bias, bigotry, and social prejudice in a complex web of relationships and structures that shade most
aspects of life in our society (Bell, 2007, p. 3). Using oppression as a framework for colonialism is useful for
examining or analyzing mechanisms of oppression in colonialism. The political dimensions of oppression
began with the destruction or subordination of all existing systems and institutions in the colonized
nation. First of all overcome resistance, smash the framework, subdue, terrorize. Only then will the
economic system be put in place (Sartre, 2005, p. 11). This oppression included the destruction of local
governance, systems and economies, forcing self-sustaining communities to become dependent upon
the colonizer. Cesaire speaks of "societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands
confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out." (1972, p. 43). Oppression
was further institutionalized through the segregation of the colonial world into compartmentalized
sectors of colonialists and natives. Fanon (The wretched of the earth, 1963) described this dichotomy as
a Manichaean world, contrasting the wealth and relative opulence of the foreigners sector with the
poverty and deprivation of the natives sector. Freire (1970/2000) states that this institutionalized
division is ultimately a reflection of a perceived hierarchy in status and worth: For the oppressors, there
exists only one right: their right to live in peace, over against the right, not always even recognized, but
merely conceded, of the oppressed to survival. And they make this concession only because the
existence of the oppressed is necessary to their own existence. (Freire, 1970/2000, p. 57) The psychological
dimensions of oppression include the dehumanization of the oppressed through failure to recognize the
oppressed as people. For the oppressors, human beings refers only to themselves; other people are
things (Freire, 1970/2000, p. 57) Fanon (The wretched of the earth, 1963) notes that the colonized is perceived as an animal and described
with zoological terms such as stink, breeding swarms, and gesticulations (Fanon F. , The wretched of the earth, 1963).
Dehumanization of the colonized is further perpetuated by other forms of ideological aggression
(Memmi, 1991, p. 91). Through exposure to the colonizers fictional literature and educational textbooks, the African learned to associate
himself with the description of the savage that was brought truth by the white man. In the Africans mind, the ideological oppression
contributed to an inferiority complex and a desire to be like the colonizer (Fanon, 1967). In the colonists mind, the perception of the African as
an absolutely evil savage served to justify foreign aid and mitigate any cognitive dissonance resulting from harmful or immoral acts (Fanon F. ,
The wretched of the earth, 1963). Cesaire (1972) notes that the psychological oppression was reinforced through a system of fear not only to
instil inferiority but to ensure that Africans perceived themselves as incapable of defending themselves. In the process of dominating, the
oppressor also becomes dehumanized, losing his capacity to be fully human. The colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the
habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an
animal (Cesaire, 1972, p. 20).
The acts of oppression intended to dehumanize the colonized result only in
transforming the colonizer into an animal, not the colonized. The oppressed, unable to envision change
and fearing the oppressor, becomes resigned to his/her status. Internalizing the dominant discourse, self-depreciation
develops: So often do they hear that they are good for nothing, know nothing and are incapable of learning anything that they are sick, lazy
and unproductive that in the end they become convinced of their own unfitness. (Freire, 1970/2000, p. 63) In addition, an emotional
dependency develops and the oppressed finds himself/herself attracted toward the oppressor and his/her way of life (Memmi, 1991). Young
(1990) posits five potential criteria that characterize oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and
violence.
271
Alternatives
272
A: Nepantala
The alternative is to reject the 1AC in favor of Nepantilism-- the result of the culture
clash-a life draining way of being that is only able to be moved past by taking a
counterstance in direct opposition to clash.
Lute Books, 1987, 78-79]
The ambivalence from the dash of voices results in mental and emotional states of perplexity. Internal strife results in
insecurity and indecisiveness. The mestiza's dual or multiple personality IS plagued by psychic restlessness. In a constant state of
mental nepantilism, an Aztec word meaning torn between ways, la mestiza is a product of the transfer
of the and spiritual values of one group to another. Being tricultural, monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual, speaking a
patois, and in a state of perpetual transition, the mestiza faces the dilemma of the mixed breed: which collectivity does the of a darkskinned
mother listen to? El choque de un alma atrapado entre el mundo del espiritu y el mundo de la tecnica a veces
la deja entullada. Cradled in one culture, sandwiched between two cultures, straddling all three cultures
and their value systems, ta mestiza undergoes a struggle of flesh, a of borders, an inner war. Like all people,
we perceive the version of reality that our culture communicates. Like others having living in more than one culture, we
get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually
incompatible frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision. Within us and within la cultura chicana,
commonly held belief is of the white culture attack commonly held beliefs of the culture, and both attack commonly held beliefs of the Mexican
culture. Subconsciously, we see an attack: on ourselves and our beliefs as a threat and we attempt to block
with a counterstance. But is not enough to stand on the opposite river bank, shouting questions,
challenging patriarchal, white conventions. A counterstance locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked in mortal
combat, like the cop and the criminal, both are reduced to a common denominator of violence. The counterstance refutes the
dominant culture's views and beliefs and, for this, it is proudly defiant. All reaction is limited by, and dependent on,
what it is reacting against. Because the counterstance stems from a problem with authority-outer as well as
inner-it's a step towards liberation from cultural domination. But it is not a way of life. At some point, on our
way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants
somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to
disengage from the dominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or
we might go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.
Nepantla in our classrooms help cross over the identities of Chicana/ Latinx students
to help them find and better their voice in education policies
Prieto & Villenas 12 (Linda Prieto & Sofia A. Villenas (2012) Pedagogies from Nepantla: Testimonio, Chicana/Latina Feminisms and
Teacher Education Classrooms, Equity & Excellence in Education, 45:3, 411-429, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2012.698197,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2012.698197)
Resonating with political urgency, our

testimonios speak through nepantla with Chicana/Latina feminist
perspectives. They capture symbolically the dialectical tension between our lives and the ideological
configurations of education (Pesquera & Segura, cited in Garcia, 1997); they capture how we embrace ambiguity
and fragmentation through our mestiza consciousness (Anzaldu a , 1987). Nepantla speaks to and informs the
difficult and often overlapping spaces of cultural dissonance, conciencia con compromiso, and carin o .
They are unpredictable spaces but full of possibility for magic, for agency (Cortez, 2001). Nepantla in our
classrooms signal uncertain terrain, crossings, moving between identities, and confronting and
contesting powerprecisely the agency of our everyday lives. Pedagogies within/from nepantla
273
reveal fruitful tensions for exploring how we might experience transformative teaching and learning.
Earlier, we discussed our experiences in classrooms within PWIs in conversation with Vargas (2002) and her colleagues who describe dilemmas
for women of color faculty. We described structural challenges (i.e., placement and marginalization of the multicultural education course in
teacher education programs), preconceived views of our ethnic authenticity and academic credentials, and the
deep emotions when our embodied histories meet practices of whiteness in our classrooms. At the
same time, our prospective teachers also are entering nepantla as they encounter their instructors
histories and diverse students voices in our dialogic classrooms. Uncertainty and alterities activate our classrooms
agency and possibility for new relationships and identities, even if not here and now. So how might this happen? Naming, cultivating,
and staying in the moment of dissonance are at the heart of pedagogies of nepantla. As Latina/Chicana teacher
educators, we have shared with our students our testimonios of dissonance, including those experiences of being child translators,
experiencing racist nativism and racial name-calling, and struggles with normative gender roles in our
families. We also share our stories of coping, healing, and resilience. In sharing our testimonios, we call on students to
be with us, which generates its own fruitful dissonance. But cultivating dissonance requires discussions of our interdependency, of our
intertwined destinies. My stories of race-gendered and class oppression and privilege are intertwined with
your stories. What are your stories? In this way, Asher (2005) emphasizes that students and instructors
recognize self/other and work the spaces/interstices at which we are all located. We draw on and
create hybrid identities to examine intersectionality and how we are implicated in social relations of
power. Dwelling in dissonance is a process that activates basic tenets of culturally responsive teaching that call for an active exploration of
self and other. Finally, modeling and allowing students to dwell in moments of dissonance requires protocols
that let students (and us) freeze, name, and reflect on those moments, though sometimes they may
have no words to describe them. All students have knowledge and can derive knowledge from
reflection on uncomfortable dissonance. Our own testimonios of conciencia con compromiso are important to share but not as
heroine stories, for they certainly are not. Rather, they are urgent life stories that compel action in authentic relationships with commitment
and responsibility. Pedagogies of nepantla call on prospective teachers to embark on a journey of their cultural self-awareness, but only with
responsibility and commitment to each other and to their instructor as they develop their commitments toward children and families from
non-dominant communities. The process of conciencia con compromiso in the classroom requires explicit
acknowledgment of how dominant ideologies that are supposed to be heard in a dialogue classroom
are painful. Elenes (2001) draws on Anzaldu a s mestiza consciousness as method to think about the importance of breaking down dualistic
thinking in the classroom and to resist polarization. She recommends elevating the conversation into the philosophical realmthat is, not
debating opinions but instead engaging where such opinions come from. Finally, we cannot forget
classroom pedagogies that connect prospective teachers to local families and community members of
different backgrounds, including white activist role models. Interview projects with community members
that focus on their experiences and stories of talking about race (and its intersections) with friends,
family members and co-workers are invaluable. In addition, developing activities of action that allow
students to reflect on their peer interactions on campus, and to respectively and with humility enter into other borderland
spaces may foster conciencia con compromiso.
The path of conocimiento is a multistep process to fulfill in order to heal the

emotional strain of being across many borders of cultures.
en Nepantla: the journey of Nepantler@s in science learning and teaching, 2013, 829]
This study considers both students and teachers as walking in what Anzaldu a calls the path of conocimiento, (Anzaldu a and Keating 2009, pp. 540578), of which
nepantla is a part. Along this path, (which does not have to necessarily follow the same order detailed here, nor does a persons trajectory necessarily have to
involve every stage) persons from non-dominant cultures go through seven stages when faced with demands
274
from dominant cultures: The Arrebato- deep rupture; fragmentation Nepantla The Coatlicue
statewhere desconocimiento is an option Compromiso Putting Coyolxauhqui back together The
clash of realities and Shifting realities This path presents ways that those from non-dominant
cultures may deal with the painful reality of being broken into fragments by a dominant culture
that wants to partition them and divide out their acceptable pieces disregarding them as a whole.
Going through the stages, and choosing the path of conocimiento [knowing] versus desconocimiento
[unknowing], can ultimately become an act of healing, and those that learn to walk through these stages
of cultural division and redefinition are considered nepantler@s who can then help others transform
through their journey within nepantla and find healing from the initial arrebatos, considered the initial
pain brought on by dominant society, which leads into nepantla where one does not know whether to
assimilate, separate, or isolate from the demands of the dominant culture. A nepantler@ or curander@
can help others through nepantla by offering the necessary tools for survival that they have themselves
found through similar ordeals. The path to conocimiento is a path towards a deep and transformative
knowing, one that goes beyond mere content knowledge and into a deep understanding and a trans-
forming perception of reality and ones place in it. To explain the seven stages of conocimiento more deeply, we must first start with
the arrebato, or the deep rupture and fragmentation. It is a sudden and shocking disturbance to ones wholeness and peace. From this trauma, one is forced
into a state of nepantla, where one is knocked into a limbo state, where one vacillates between many
possibilities in a state of vulnerable and painful chaos. Anzaldua holds that for many bicultural beings
like Latin@s, this liminal space of nepantla is inhabited so regularly that it becomes a sort of home
(Anzaldu a 2002). In this state of nepantla, one becomes split in their awareness, a kind of double
vision where one can walk in more than one world at once. Nepantla can also bring on a level of fear,
however, due to the ordeal of having been shattered by an arrebato that has disturbed ones wholeness.
Nepantla hurts. The Coatlicue state is named after the goddess Coatlicue, who has both the dark aspects of death and the light aspects of life. In the Coatlicue state,
one must come to terms with this type of fragmentation. One can run from it and deny the fragmented state they have been forced into, which could be a form of
desconocimiento, or they can work to own their fragmentation, as in the state of conocimiento. This
journey can be traversed in a way
that can bring about the next stage of compromiso, where one accepts that fragmentation has occurred,
and answers the call toward the potential self through crafting new mestiz@ identities that
incorporate the many fragments into a new conversion, incorporating the multicultural resources within
oneself. In this state, one accepts that identity, like a river, is always changing, always in transition,
always in nepantla and like the river downstream, youre not the same person you were upstream
(Anzaldu a 2002, p. 556). This transformation into a new mestiz@ consciousness requires putting Coyolxauhqui back together, thereby creating new personal and
collective stories of a new form of hybridity that resist assimilation. In putting Coyolxauhqui back together, the pieces may not be in the same order as they were
before, but the
new wholeness of the reconfigured Coyolxauhqui is one deeply aware of the nature of these
fragmentations, and returns with a new mestiz@ consciousness that can see through the demands for
assimilation and turn the established narrative on its head, seeing through, resisting, and subverting its
assumptions (Anzaldu a 2002, p. 560). In repairing Coyolxauhqui, one begins to heal from the oppressive
arrebatos that painfully fragmented you. The next step makes the shift from having worked on ones
own fragmentations and reconfigurations, into the important work of then, acknowledging that we are
constantly negotiating and renegotiating nepantla in a constant reconstruction of ever-shifting iden-
tities, and are therefore life-long in-betweeners or nepantler@s. As we look outside our own struggles
with ongoing arrebatos, we experience a blow-up or clash of realities where others challenges in
nepantla intermesh with our own. In our own walk down the path of conocimiento, an important stage
is to then assist others walking their paths of conocimiento as well. Nepantler@s live on the bridges and
facilitate passage between worlds for those also experiencing nepantla in addition to the fear and shock
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of having to negotiate these new worlds after their own arrebatos. The final stage on the path of
conocimiento is shifting realities, by which one acknowledges that others have realities that differ from
our own, and that we can look beyond our individual separateness into an interrelatedness with others
called la naguala. By acknowledging la naguala, we shift our own perspectives into that of others such
that compassion for their struggles overtakes and transforms investment in ourselves. In negotiating our
own shifting identities with the perspectives of others in la naguala, we are constantly in many positions
of insider/outsider. Anzaldua posits this state through the concept of nos/otras, where nosotras is Spanish for us, but by placing a slash between
nos (meaning us) and otras (meaning others), the concept of nos/otras conveys the mainstream narratives of dividing us from them within the larger
reality that we are all us. By
embracing this concept, as the path of conocimiento would have us do, a form of
deep healing can occur regarding the many splinters that the subaltern face. The future belongs to
those who cultivate sensitivities to differences and who use these abilities to forge a hybrid
consciousness that transcends the us versus them mentality and will carry us into a nosotras position
bridging the extremes of our cultural realities (Anzaldu a and Keating 2000, p. 254).
Nepantla in education allows healing to occur amongst Latin students

en Nepantla: the journey of Nepantler@s in science learning and teaching, 2013, 830-831]
Anzalduas theories help us as science educators to better see the disconnect and tension that occur when we ask students from non-dominant
cultures to appropriate rigid, Western Anglocentric conceptions and languages of science without doing any work towards conocimiento and
healing. What occurs toooften with Latin@ students from non-dominant cultures is desconocimiento, as
an act of self-preservation. Unexamined Anglo-centric science concepts, presented to students through a banking model approach, or
even when presented through an inquiry approach, become an arrebato that sends many students from non-dominant cultures reeling into a state
of nepantla. The question then becomes, as science educators, can we be nepantler@s to guide these students through nepantla toward
conocimiento? Can we actively take our own past experiences negotiating our own walks through nepantla and see our students within la
naguala and as fundamentally nosotras? We feel not only that we can, but that we must. In doing so, guiding
students to put
Coyolxauhqui back together and heal from the fragmentations and compartmentalizations of a narrow
Western science, we science teachers become not only nepantler@s, but we also become curander@s
or agents of healing. In this act of walking through our own paths of conocimiento, we help our students also achieve theirs by helping
students find the resources to emerge stronger, transformed, and recreated as new mestiz@ identities that can traverse the worlds of Western
science with a new strength, without sacrificing their other identities, languages, and resources. The science teacher nepantler@ remembers their
own painful struggles within a dominant world, and by redeeming your most painful experiences you transform them into something valuable,
algo para compartir, or share with others so that they too may be empowered (Anzaldu a 2002, p. 540). As nepantler@ science teachers, we
facilitate passage between worlds, because nepantleras are threshold people and develop perspectives from the cracks (Keating 2006).
Nepantleras use their views from these cracks-between-worlds to invent holistic, relational theories and tactics enabling them to reconceive or
in other ways transform the various worlds in which they exist (Keating 2006). Science teacher nepantler@s must use their own experiences
walking through nepantla to inform their ability to help their students cross the borders they have become adept at traversing through their own
transformations. In an interview, Anzaldua said of nepantler@s: Nepantleras are the supreme border crossers. They act as
intermediaries between cultures and their various versions of reality. [...] They serve as agents of
awakening, inspire and challenge others to deeper awareness, greater conocimiento, serve as reminders
of each others search for wholeness of being. (Anzaldu a 2003, p. 20) Being a nepantler@ in science education is not,
however, without its consequences, as all the authors can each attest to. Their inability or refusal to remain within a single
group or worldview makes them vulnerable to rejection, ostracism, and other forms of isolation
(Keating 2006). A science teacher nepantler@ breaks with the tradition of teaching science in traditional
dominant ways using the dominant language and methods. In doing so, a science teacher nepantler@ is
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in some ways a radical, laying bare her/his own existence and pain to help others across the typically
heavily-guarded gate of science in ways that heal and recreate in strength, instead of strip away and
subtract. A science teacher nepantler@ holds back nothing to help her/his students in nepantla. In walking between the dominant worlds of
science and the worlds of Latin@ students and becoming a bridge and calling that bridge home, a science teacher learns to live with the
arrebatos of colleagues and the dominant structure and negotiate those into conocimientos. It is our hope that in opening up our practices as
nepantler@ science educators, we welcome those new to these ideas into la naguala of our reality with our students, in hopes that we can broaden
our curanderism to acknowledge the broader community of science educators from a place depicted as nos/otras, to a place where we can all take
on science education as nosotras.
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A: Chicana feminist pedagogy
The Alt is to reject the colonized mindset of the 1AC in favor of a Chicana feminist
pedagogy. Incorporating embodied knowledges in the classroom disrupts the
colonizing histories inscribed on the Other
Avin a 16 (Sylvia Mendoza Avina, (2016) is an assistant professor of Chicano Studies at Palomar College in San Marcos, California. Her
research interests include Chicana/o studies in K-12, Chicana feminisms, and Chicana/o educational experiences. That's ratchet: A Chicana
Feminist Rasquache Pedagogy as Entryway to Understanding the Material Realities of Contemporary Latinx Elementary-Aged Youth, Equity &
Excellence in Education, 49:4, 468-479, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2016.1227158, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2016.1227158)
A Chicana feminist rasquache pedagogy, although certainly neither definitive nor prescriptive, is rooted in the following
foundational guiding principles: It (1) centers the material realities of Chicanx/Latinx students; (2) is aware of the
history of inequitable schooling institutions and practices, especially for Chi- canx/Latinx communities;
(3) is committed to not reproducing oppressive schooling practices against any student, but especially
students of color; (4) is under the firm belief that students are creators and holders of knowledge (Delgado Bernal, 2001); (5) actively
seeks to locate and understand the material realities and creative rasquache practices/knowledges of
Chicanx/Latinx youth and incorporate these knowledges into the classroom; (6) is grounded in carino
(Valenzuela, 1999), which involves going against traditional best practices enforced in teacher education
programs and encouraging students to exercise control over their own learning; (7) and, although it is
applicable to all Chicanx/Latinx students, a Chicana feminist rasquache pedagogy is particularly
invested in K-12 students of color who are often policed in regards to their behaviors and forms of
expression within schooling institutions (Dixon- Roman, 2014; Ginwright, 2008). These principles are rooted in
knowing and understanding the material realities of Chicanx/Latinx students, which requires a
commitment to learning about the social conditions of young peoples lives. This is key within a Chicana
feminist rasquache pedagogy, and why I draw so heavily from Ybarra- Frausto and Gloria Anzaldua. Moraga and Anzaldua (1983)
identify the body as a source of knowledge production, coining the term theory in the flesh (p. 23) to
recognize the ways in which our bodies hold histories and produce knowledge. This is particularly useful
in research on Latinx youth, as their bodies are often viewed as juvenile, delinquent, still developing,
and in need of constant surveillance and controlespecially within schools (Ginwright, 2008; Grossberg, 2005;
Quijada, 2008). As such, the knowledges and life experiences of young people of color are diminished,
overlooked, or reprimanded by adults within and outside of schooling institutions, as the their bodies,
experiences, and beings are not considered valid sources of knowledge production. This social construction of
youth as juvenile, delinquent, in process, and as being incomplete human beings unaware of the social conditions of their lives
impacts not only policies enacted in schools that aim to police youth, but also larger governmental
policies that severely affect young peoples quality of life. The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) reports
that more than 16 million children in the U.S.22% of all childrenlive in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, which is
around $23,550 for a family of four. From this, Black, Latinx, and American Indian children make up the highest
child poverty rates (Robins, Stagman, & Smith, 2012). Sixty- ve percent of Latinx children live in low income families, compared to 31% of
White children. Further, children of foreign-born parents are more likely to be low income than those of native-born parents (Lyon, 2008). The
NCCP states overall poverty is the single greatest threat to a childs well-being. Grossberg (2005) o ers that young people today face
unprecedented levels of poverty and violence and make up the fastest growing and largest percentage of homeless within the U.S. Dimitriadis
(2008) adds that 75% of all violent deaths among youth in the industrialized world occur in the U.S., with one out of every three such violent
deaths caused by an adult. During the process of collecting data for this research, the murders of two Brown youth made the news. Trayvon
Martin, a 17-year-old African American youth living in Florida and Andy Lopez Cruz, a 13-year-old Mexican American youth from California were
shot and killed by adult law enforcement o cers. The justi ed lynching of Black and Brown young men and women by police o cers continued
throughout the process of completing this research, adding a sense of coraje to this project. The deaths of these youth of color extend
Grossbergs (2001, p. 112) assertion that there is a war being waged on youth in U.S. society, highlighting the
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intensity of this hate for young Black and Brown bodies in particular. The deaths of these young people of color
highlights how young Brown bodies are read, how they have otherness and deviance inscribed upon their bodies, thus
validating violent attacks against them through statewide and national policies, schooling practices, the
criminal justice system, and through literal attacks against their very beings and bodies (Anzaldua, 1999; Cruz,
2001; Fanon, 2008; Malagon, 2010). For this reason, Chicana feminisms, and Anzalduan thought in particular, offer a
framework in which to understand, address, and incorporate the material realities and embodied
knowledges of youth of color in the classroom, providing a space for young people of color to reflect
on the social conditions of their lives, to make connections among their everyday lived experiences
and the structures of oppression, and to theorize from their bodies and their lived experiences as
raced/classed/sexed and aged beings. Chicana feminisms, and Anzalduan thought specially, offer a
recognition of the historic and continued oppression of Chicanx/Latinx communities, which helps to
understand Chicanx/Latinx youth, particu-larly elementary aged, as multiply marginalized and
therefore nepantlerxs. For Anzaldua (2002), a nepantlera is a threshold person, someone who is neither completely here nor there,
who has a foot in two worlds, occupying a space of liminality that is confusing, painful, but also potentially
transformative, as occupying this in-between space allows for the ability to cultivate a perspective that
can see beneath the surface of social constructions towards other realities and ways of being in the
world. Understanding Chicanx/Latinx students as nepantlerxs is significant because it recognizes the
colonizing histories inscribed on their bodies that dehumanizes them, while also acknowledging the
agency and resistance these young people embody to transform their worlds and their education.
Engaging in conversations with youth of color about their lived experiences or theories in the flesh
(Moraga & Anzaldua, 1983) can contribute to an upheaval, to undoing deficit ideologies of youth of color (Tuck &
Yang, 2011) and moving towards understanding and learning from, with, and through a rasquache praxis
that reflects the everyday lives of Chicanx/Latinx youth.
By sharing our stories, or Platicas it recognizes how they lived their lives and helps
understand their own epistemologies and pedagogies
Avin a 16 (Sylvia Mendoza Avina, (2016) is an assistant professor of Chicano Studies at Palomar College in San Marcos, California. Her
research interests include Chicana/o studies in K-12, Chicana feminisms, and Chicana/o educational experiences. That's ratchet: A Chicana
That platicas tap into Chicanxs/Latinxs unique epistemologies and pedagogies that acknowledge the
positionality of women of color in society, revealing a collective identity and shared experiences. They
offer, As such, the act of platicando serves as a unique way of knowing, teaching, and learning for Chi-
canxs/Latinxs and, as a qualitative research method, reflects a cultural practice embedded within our
personal spaces and relationships. This type of relationship and engagement involved in a platica is in
contrast to traditional dominant research approaches valued in higher education. Specifically, qualitative
research interviews, as outlined by traditional research methodologies, have a tendency to feel distant, cold, and calculated, and reproduce
power dynamics between researchers and the researched (Delgado Bernal, 2001). As a contribution to qualitative research by naming our own
research approaches, Chicana feminist scholars have chosen to incorporate platica as a qualitative research method to blur power dynamics
through reciprocity (Chabram-Dernersesian & de la Torre, 2008; Flores Carmona, 2014; Saavedra & Nymark, 2008; Saavedra & Perez, 2012). In
sharing our own stories and making ourselves vulnerable with our participants, Chicana feminist
researchers are engaging in reciprocity in that the research process is not one way, with the researcher
extracting knowledge from the community. Through platicas, knowledge production is an exchange, and
information about the lives of women of color is centered and shared. Further, the researcher is not
viewed as the expert, but rather the participants, through their stories and lived experiences, serve as
279
the experts of their own lives. Platicas serve as a way to uncover the knowledge and theories embedded
within communities of color (Anzaldua, 1999; Cruz, 2011, 2012, 2013; Del- gado Bernal, 1998, 2001, 2002; Perez, 1999; Saavedra,
2011; Saavedra & Nymark, 2008; Villenas, 1996). As such, the Chicana feminist method of platica is not only an extension of cultural practices
within Chi- cana/Mexican/Mexicana communities, but also steeped in the belief that these communities are experts embodying knowledge and
theory to offer the world that is worthy of academic scholarship and research (Delgado Bernal, 1998, 2002).
Platicas serve as an
approach that is not only in line with cultural practices and traditions but also recognizes young people
of color as experts of their lives. However, much like Chicana feminist scholarship as whole, platicas do not
take into account the positionalities, experiences, or realities of engaging in research with Chicanx elementary-aged youth. For this study,
platicas relied on existing relationships with youth and were adapted to account for elementary-aged youths desire to own the platica and
discuss what was important and meaningful to them when they felt like sharing. In this way, the research method of platica also was rasquache
because of my engagement with Chicanx/Latinx youth: The platicas had to be done when and where the students were available, whether they
remembered our scheduled interviews, or had to reschedule because they needed to watch their younger siblings, or had catechism classes
that evening. Like our praxis, the Chicana feminist method of platica also was rooted in the material realities of these students lives and
reflected their rasquache forms of self-expression. Many
times the students requested to be interviewed in pairs and
groups where they could collabo-ratively share stories about events that happened to them, tell jokes,
exchange gossip, and ask for advice. These activities were luxuries for the youth who found themselves
policed and silenced throughout their entire school days. The platicas, both individual and group, typically lasted from 45
minutes to one hour and were audio recorded and transcribed by myself.
A Chinana feminist rasquache pedagogy allows discussions in the classroom that

reveal how these students are treated and for them to understand how they can take
control of their own identity in the class room
Avin a 16 (Sylvia Mendoza Avina, is an assistant professor of Chicano Studies at Palomar College in San Marcos, California. Her research
interests include Chicana/o studies in K-12, Chicana feminisms, and Chicana/o educational experiences. (2016) That's ratchet: A Chicana
One of the major findings of this research project was the co-construction of a Chicana feminist
rasquache pedagogy. The students and I co-constructed a pedagogical praxis that was grounded in their
material realities and everyday lived experiences. This not only resulted as a finding, but also methodologically, as this praxis
needed to occur throughout the research process in order for the students to feel comfortable, open up, and trust me as the teacher and
researcher. This happened in my recognition and appreciation of their rasquache forms of self-expression and refusal to reprimand them for
engaging in ways that was reflective of their environments. The
everyday social and cultural practices of these Latinx
elementary aged youth: talking out of turn; cussing; code-switching; storytelling; incorporating slang;
sharing jokes and humorous stories; standing up, walking around, or dancing during class; speaking
loudly; requesting music during class; cutting each other down; calling each other out, are examples of
a Chicana feminist rasquache pedagogical praxis in that these practices are dismissed and looked down
upon within traditional educational research and praxis, yet because they are steeped in the social
practices and material realities of Latinx youth, they proved highly e elective in the Chicana/o studies
afterschool class (Dixon-Roman, 2014). Often I found myself thinking if a traditional classroom teacher were to walk into the space, they
would conceive of the course and my praxis as a complete failure as it seemed as if the students had control of the class. In many ways, the
students did have control of the class in that they, their energy, and their rasquache practices often determined the classroom content and
discussion. As a result, our discussions were a success, in that the students engaged with the content outlined in the curriculum in ways that
were meaningful and useful to them. I conceive of this praxis as rasquache as it re effects Ybarra-Fraustos conceptualization of rasquachismo
as embedded within the social and cultural practices of Latinx youth who are down, but not out, fregado pero no jodido. In this way, Ybarra-
Fraustos rasquachismo validates and centers the material realities of raced/classed youth who are expected to leave these realities and life
experiences at the door upon entering their classrooms. Despite
being constructed as too young to understand complex
issues, I found Latinx elementary aged youth desired engaging in conversations about the material
realities of their lives related, but not limited to, immigration, poverty, sexuality, violencetopics
deemed inappropriate for youth (Ginwright, 2010; Quijada, 2008, 2009; Van Ausdale & Feagin, 2001). Because of
280
limitations placed on them as elementary-aged youth, they develop movidas to navigate their
positionalities to speak on and theorize about their lives, revealing their resilience and brilliance. This
rasquache sensibility, then, is useful within educative spaces with youth as it engenders hybridization,
juxtaposition, and integration, pedagogical devices that help to center the experiences of Latina/o
elementary-aged youth in schools and contribute to the development of new narratives of youth of
color as well as humanizing curricula. A Chicana feminist rasquache praxis contributed to the co-
construction of a space where the youth felt comfortable sharing intimate details of their lives, which
facilitated teaching and learning in the classroom space through plati cas, media, problem solving,
critical thinking, and rasquachismo (Quijada, 2008, 2009; Tijerina Revilla, 2004). Although each class had lesson plans and themes
outlined for class discussion for that particular class day, these topics often served as triggers for the Latinx elementary-
aged youth and they would respond with seemingly tangential life stories, taking control of class
discussion and their own learning. The youth revealed their awareness that a Chicana feminist pedagogy
allowed for ownership and a sense of control over classroom content. They exhibited an awareness that
what they experienced in their lives and what they had to say mattered in this classroom space. The
following eld note provides a glimpse into the ebbs and ows and energy of a Chicana feminist rasquache pedagogy in a
K-12 classroom.
Recognizing the material and seeing how it affects the Latinx youth will transform the
teaching inside the classroom creates a space that recognizes the Latinx students as
legitimate forms of knowledge
Avin a 16 (Sylvia Mendoza Avina, is an assistant professor of Chicano Studies at Palomar College in San Marcos, California. Her research
interests include Chicana/o studies in K-12, Chicana feminisms, and Chicana/o educational experiences. (2016) That's ratchet: A Chicana
In this field note, I illuminate what a Chicana feminist rasquache pedagogy looks like in practice in the
afterschool Chicana/o studies class. The Latinx youth recognized that what was meaningful and relevant
to their lives was allowed in our classroom space and, as a result, they shared their thoughts during class
discussion, snowballing o our initial subject for the day. In this way, a Chicana feminist rasquache
pedagogy contributes to youths development in that it allows them to reflect on and share the material
realities in which they are positioned and, further, provides the space for these youth to heal from these
realities while developing critical thinking and problem solving skills (Delgado Bernal, 2001; Tijerina Revilla, 2004). In
this particular field note, the youth used personal stories, hypotheticals, and questions not only with us the
instructors, but with each other, as a way to produce knowledge via their lived experiences and through
critical dialogue with each other (Tijerina Revilla, 2004). Within this short class discussion, the youth covered gender and identity,
gender and sex, gender norms, social constructions, sexuality, sexuality and family, gay marriage, friendships and relationships, traditional
nuclear family expectations versus nonnuclear families, sex and biology, health in their families, and tobacco use by adult family members.
The youth reflected and dialogued on issues immediately relevant to them, revealing their desires to
speak from their positionalities as nepantlerxs, as threshold people who typically are not allowed to
theorize openly about such subjects deemed inappropriate for them or beyond their realm of
comprehension (Anzaldua, 1999; Moraga & Anzaldua, 1983). In this way, the students had control of class discussion
and the curriculum to process what they felt was immediately relevant to them and their lives. Had we
facilitated this discussion using traditional best practices promoted in teacher education programs, the entirety of this conversation would be
viewed as a failure, as the students dominated the class discussion and content, spoke without raising their hands, offered seemingly tangential
stories, and openly discussed inappropriate classroom content, especially for elementary aged youth. We
did not reprimand or
discipline the students for talking about such issues and, instead, exercised carino by showing genuine
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interest in their everyday lives and theorizations that came from their experiences. In this way, a
Chicana feminist rasquache pedagogy builds trusts, exhibits carin o, centers Chicanx/Latinx youth and
their experiences, and refuses to participate in silencing practices, exhibiting a willingness to lose control
of the classroom by allowing students ownership of their education. As it stands, there are very few
spaces for Latinx elementary-aged youth to access information or spaces where they can reflect and
theorize around gender, sexuality, dating, and health, especially through an anti-oppressive, feminist,
and social justice lens (Cruz, 2012; Duncan-Andrade, 2006; Ginwright, 2010; Malagon, 2010; Tijerina Revilla, 2004). A Chicana
feminist rasquache pedagogy serves as an inter-vention within educative spaces to begin having
conversations that are critical, humanizing, and healing for Latinx elementary-aged youth. A Chicana
feminist rasquache pedagogy presents opportunities for youth to temporarily unravel colonizing
constructions of themselves as well as undo colonizing schooling practices. In this way, adults and youth
work together to transform schools and larger society through a Chicana feminist rasquache pedagogy
that is holistic, humanizing, and rooted within Latinx youths paradigms. This is of extreme importance in
a time where students of color are being pushed out of their schooling institutions, are graduating at
lower rates than their White counterparts, and are being targeted by law enforcement officers in the
streets (Malagon, 2010). Altering the ways in which we conceive of youth of color, in and out of schools, is a matter of life and death for
contemporary young people. Recognizing the material realities of their lives is necessary in thinking of
transforming education. Rather than attempting to socialize students into a vision of education that
does not match their material realities historically or contemporarily, educators and schools should
become familiar with the social conditions of their students lives. A Chicana feminist rasquache
pedagogy addresses these realities and centers them within the classroom, thus transforming teaching
and learning. It purposefully avoids reproducing oppressive schooling practices; recognizes students as
creators and holders of knowledge; locates, values, and incorporates students unique rasquache
sensibilities and forms of expression; and exhibits a commitment to Chicanx/Latinx youth by expressing
carin o. This creates an environment that is humanizing for Chi- canx/Latinx, and all students, in that
the sensibilities, practices, knowledges, and forms of expression youth embody are recognized as
legitimate sources of knowledge as well as transformative pedagogical formations.
Chicana feminists have writing of their as a way of teaching of others from the Latinx
perspectives from their social ways of living
Prieto & Villenas 12 (Linda Prieto & Sofia A. Villenas (2012) Pedagogies from Nepantla: Testimonio, Chicana/Latina Feminisms and
Teacher Education Classrooms, Equity & Excellence in Education, 45:3, 411-429, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2012.698197,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2012.698197)
As professionals in academia, Latinas are hardly economically marginalized members of society. What does
testimonio have to do with Latinas who are professionally privileged as instructors and professors in
prestigious universities in the United States? Delgado Bernal and Elenes (2011) posit that, A group identity and group
marginalization continues to exist in academia even when we have attained a relatively privileged status (p. 111). The Latina Feminist
Group (2001) argues that this collective experience of achievement often involves negating our diverse
modes of being and knowing: For racialized ethnic women of subjugated peoples, achievement is always
a double-edged sword. In becoming women of accomplishment, we have had to construct and perform
academic personas that require professionalism, objectivity, and respectability in ways that often
negate our humanity (p. 14). Testimonio then, names the workings and abuses of institutional power, the human costs, and our
collective sobrevivencia (survival and beyond). Latina and women of color creative writers, artists, intellectuals, and
scholar/activists make the case for the intensely political nature of our creative and professional work.
282
Through our stories, we bear witness to our unique and collective experiences as racialized/ethnicized
women in the United States. Different from the traditional genre of testimonio, Latina/Chicana feminist
testimoniantes bear witness to each other as interlocutors through our own voice and authoring. Klahn
(2003) writes, It is from this culturally or politically rooted position that the narrator becomes the voice, her own, of a self who recollects her
memories and those of others in her community (p. 120). Chicana
feminist and borderlands writings have provided the
testimonios and feminista legacies upon which to ground our own teaching selves. With Latina/Chicana
feminist perspectives, we interpret structural conditions, our social locations and life options (Pesquera &
Segura, 1997), and our stories of schooling and community work. These ways of knowing, or Chicana
feminist epistemologies, position Latinas/Chicanas as central subjects and pensadoras (knowers/thinkers). In
this article, the pensadoras included Prieto, who at the time of the study was a doctoral student in the College of Education at a large
southwestern and predominantly white research institution. Villenas was a newly arrived faculty member at the same university during the
years 20032005. We began to get to know one another through a class Villenas was teaching and as colleagues when Villenas invited Prieto to
co-teach the required multicultural education course for prospective teachers. We
continued to teach our own sections of
the course in following semesters. As we began to share our teaching joys and struggles, we developed
an urgent need to bear witness to our lives in our teaching. We wanted to theorize our pedagogy in our
predominantly white teacher education classrooms. Why do we teach the way we do? How do
Chicana/Latina feminist perspectives inform our teaching? How do we mine those spaces of nepantla
of turmoil and transformationas we engage our prospective teachers in the classroom? We decided to
study our own testimonios as political narratives that, while unique, connected us to our foremothers
and to Latinas and women of color in the academy. We carried out our testimonio narratives (Alarco n et al., 2011) as a
method of bearing witness to each other. Over the course of two years, we recorded our narratives and reflected
upon them together and in individual transcriptions and writing. In the process, we noticed our
differences and commonalities. We both experienced immigration raids, translating for our parents as children, and race, ethnic,
gender, and class awareness at an early age. We both were products of public education, and we both became
teachers and, later, teacher educators. In addition to these shared experiences, we also experienced differences growing up in
California. Prieto comes from a rural poor community and grew up in a farm worker family, while Villenas grew up in a majority Latino suburban
barrio, and later in an ethnically diverse middle-class neighborhood. The
analysis of our testimonios focused on
comparison of experiences, events, and emotions that emerged as significant and impactful. From there,
we developed three themes that are elaborated upon in the remaining sections.
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A: Feminist Border Thinking
The alternative is to reject the affirmative in favor of feminist border thinking. Only by
inhabiting the colonial difference from a fractured locus can recuperate the subaltern
and multiply relations and strategies of resistance
Lugones 2010 [Maria, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy, Interpretation
and Culture, and of Philosophy, and of Women's Studies at Binghamton University in New York. Toward
A Decolonial Feminism Hypatia 25.4 (2010): 742-759.
Walter Mignolo begins Local Histories/Global Designs by telling us that Themain topic of this book is the colonial difference in the formation and trans-formation of
the modern/colonial world system (Mignolo 2000, ix). As thephrase the colonial difference moves through Mignolos writing, its meaningbecomes open-ended.
The colonial difference is no t defined in Local Histories.Indeed, a definitional disposition is unfriendly to Mignolos introduction of theconcept. So as I present some
of the quotes from Mignolos text, I am not in-troducing them as his definition of the colonial difference. Rather, thesequotes guide my thoughts on resistance to
the coloniality of gender at thecolonial difference from within the complexit y of his text. The
colonial difference is the space where
coloniality of power is enacted. (Mignolo 2000, ix) Once coloniality of power is intro duced into the analysis, the
colonial difference becomes visible, and the epistemological fractures between the Eurocentric
critique of Eurocentrism is distinguished from the critique of Eurocentrism, anchored inthe colonial
difference. . . . (37)I have prepared us to hear these assertions. One can look at the colonial pastand, as an observer, see the natives negotiating the
introduction of foreign be-liefs and practices as well as negotiating being assigned to inferior positions and being found polluting and dirty. Clearly, to see this is not
to see the coloniality.It
is rather to see peopleanyone, reallypressed under difficult circumstances to occupy
demeaning positions that make them disgusting to the social superiors. To see the coloniality is to see
the powerful reduction of human be-ings to animals, to inferiors by nature, in a schizoid understanding
of reality that dichotomizes the human from nature, the human from the non-human, andthus imposes
an ontology and a cosmology that, in its power and constitution,disallows all humanity, all possibility of
understanding, all possibility of human communication, to dehumanized beings. To see the coloniality is to see
boththe jaqi, the persona, the being that is in a world of meaning wi thout dichot-omies, and the beast, both real, both vying under different powers for
survival.Thus to see the coloniality is to reveal the very degradat ion that gives us two 751 renditions of life and a being rendered by them. The
sole
possibility of such a being lies in its full inhabitation of this fracture, of this wound, where sense is
contradictory and from such contradiction new sense is made a new.[The colonial difference] is the
space where local histories in-venting and implementing global designs meet local histories,the space in
which global designs have to be adapted, adopted,rejected, integrated, or ignored. (Mignolo 2000, ix)[The
colonial difference] is, finally, the physical as well as imag-inary location where the coloniality of power
is at work in theconfrontation of two kinds of local histories displayed in differ-ent spaces and times
across the planet. If Western cosmology isthe historically unavoidable reference point, the multiple con-frontations of two kinds of local histories defy
dichotomies.Christian and Native American cosmologies, Christian andAmerindian cosmologies, Christian and Islamic cosmologies,Christian and Confucian
cosmologies among others only enactdichotomies where you look at them one at a time, not whenyou compare them in the geohistorical confines of the
modern/colonial world system. (ix)Thus,
it is not an affair of the past. It is a matter of the geopolitics of knowledge. It is
a matter of how we produce a feminism that takes the global designs for racialized female and male
energy and, erasing the colonial difference, takes that energy to be used toward the destruction of the
worlds of meani ng of our own possibilities. Our possibilities lie in communality rather than subordina-
tion; they do not lie in parity with our superior in the hierarchy that constitutes the coloniality. That
construction of the human is vitiated through and through by its intimate relation with violence. The
colonial difference creates the conditions for dialogic situations in which a fractured enunciation is
enacted from the subaltern perspective as a response to the hegemonic discourseand perspective.
(Mignolo 2000, x) The transcending of the colonial difference can only be done from a perspective of
subalternity, from decolonization, and,therefore, from a new epistemological terrain where border
thinking works. (45)I see these two paragraphs in tension precisely because if the dialogue is to behad with the modern man, his occupation of the colonial
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difference involves his redemption but also his self-destruction. Dialogue is not only possible at the colonial difference but
necessary for those resisting dehumanization in different 752 and intermingled locals. So, indeed, the
transcending can only be done fromthe perspective of subalternity, but toward a newness of being.
Border thinking . . . is a logical consequence of the colonial difference. . . . [T]he fractured locus of enunciation from a
subaltern perspective defines border thinking as a response tothe colonial difference. (x)It is also the space where the restitution of
subaltern knowledge is taking place and where border thinking is emerging. (ix)The colonial differences, around the
planet , are the housewhere border epistemology dwells. (37) I am proposing a feminist border thinking, where the liminality
of the border is a ground, a space, a borderlands, to use Gloria Anzalduas term, not just a split, not an
infinite repetition of dichotomous hierarchies among de-souled specters of the human. Often in Mignolos
work the colonial difference is invoked at levels otherthan the subjective/intersubj ective. But when he is using it to characterizeborder thinking, as he interprets
Anzaldua, he thinks of her as enacting it. Inso doing he understands her locus as fractured. The reading I want to perform sees the coloniality of gender and
rejection, resistance, and response. It adapts to its negotiation always concretely, from within, as it were. IV. READING THE FRACTURED LOCUS What I am proposing
in working toward a decolonial feminism is to learn about each other as resisters to the coloniality of gender at the colonial difference, without necessarly being an
insider to the worlds of meaning from which resis-tance to the coloniality arises. That is, the
decolonial feminists task begins by her
seeing the colonial difference, emphatically resisting her epistemological habit of erasing it. Seeing it, she
sees the world anew, and then she requires herself to drop her enchantment with woman, the
universal, and begins to learn about other resisters at the colonial difference.12 The reading moves
against the social-scientific objectifying reading, attempting rather to understand subjects, the active
subjectivity emphasized as the reading looks for the fractured locus in resistance to the coloniality of
gender at a coalitional starting point. In thinking of the starting point as coalitional because the fractured locus is in
common, the histories of resistance at the colonial difference are where we need to dwell, learning
about each other. The coloniality of gender is sensed as concrete, intricately related exercises of power, some body to body, some legal, some inside a
room as indigenous female-beasts-not-civilized-women are forced to weave day and night, others at the confessional. The differences in the 753 concreteness and
intricacy of power in circulation are not understood as levels of generality; embodied subjectivity and the institutional are equally concrete. As
the
coloniality infiltrates every aspect of living through the circulation of power at the levels of the body,
labor, law, imposition of tribute, and the introduction of property and land dispossession, its logic and
efficacy are met by different concrete people whose bodies, selves in relation, and relations to the spirit
world do not follow the logic of capital. The logic they follow is not countenanced by the logic of power. The movement of these bodies and
rela-tions does not repeat itself. It does not become static and ossified. Everything and everyone continues to respond to power
and responds much of the time resistantlywhich is not to say in open defiance, though some of the time there is open
defiancein ways that may or may not be beneficial to capital, but that are not part of its logic. From the
fractured locus, the movement succeeds in retaining creative ways of thinking, behaving, and relating
that are antithetical to the logic of capital. Subject, relations, ground, and pos-sibilities are continually transformed, incarnating a weave
from the fractured locus that constitutes a creative, peopled re-creation. Adaptation, rejection, adoption, ignoring, and
integrating are never just modes in isolation of resis-tance as they are always performed by an active
subject thickly constructed by inhabiting the colonial difference with a fractured locus. I want to see
themultiplicity in the fracture of the locus: both the enactm ent of the colonialityof gender and the
resistant response from a subaltern sense of self, of the social, of the self-in-relation, of the cosmos, all
grounded in a peopled memory. With-out the tense multiplicity, we see only either the coloniality of
gender as accomplishment, or a freezing of memory, an ossified understanding of self in relation from a
precolonial sense of the social. Part of what I see is ten se move-ment, people moving: the tension between the dehuma nization and paralysis of
the coloniality of being, and the creative activity of being. One does not resist the coloniality of gender alone. One resists it
from within a way of understanding the world and living in it that is shared and that can understand
ones actions, thus providing recognition. Communities rather than individuals enable the doing; one
does with some one else, not in individualist isolation. The passing from mouth to mouth, from hand to
hand of lived practices, values, beliefs, ontologies, space-times, and cosmologies constitutes one. The
285
production of the everyday within which one exists produces ones self as it provides particular,
meaningful clothing, food, economies and ecologies, gestures, rhythms, habitats, and senses of space
and time. But it is im-portant that these ways are not just different. They include affirmation of life over profit, communalism over
individualism, estar over enterprise, beings in relation rather than dichotomously split over and over
in hierarchically and violently ordered fragments. These ways of being, valuing, and believing have persisted in the resistant response to
the coloniality. 754 Finally, I mark here the interest in an ethics of coalition-in-the-making in terms of both being,
and being in relation that extends and interweaves its peopled ground (Lorde 2007). I can think of the self in
relation as responding to the coloniality of gender at the colonial difference from a fractured locus,
backed by an alternative communal source of sense that makes possible elaborate responses. The
direction of the possibility of strengthening the affirmation and possibility of self in relation lies not
through a rethinking of the relation with the oppressor from the point of the oppressed, but through a
furthering of the logic of difference and multiplicity and of coalition at the point of difference(Lorde 2007).
The emphasis is on maintaining multiplicity at the point of reductionnot in maintaining a hybrid product, which hides the
colonialdifferencein the tense workings of more than one logic, not to be synthesized but transcended . Among
the logics at work are the many logics meeting the logic of oppression: many colonial differences, but one logic of oppression. The responses from the
fragmented loci can be creatively in coalition, a way of thinking of the possibility of coalition that takes
up the logic of de-coloniality, and the logic of coalition of feminists of color: the oppositional
consciousness of a social erotics (Sandoval 2000) that takes on the differences that make being creative, that
permits enactments that are thoroughly defiant of the logic of dichotomies (Lorde 2007). The logic of coalition is defiant
of the logic of dichotomies; differences are never seen in dichotomous terms, but the logic has as its opposition the logic of power. The multiplicity is
never reduced. So, I mark this as a beginning, but it is a beginning that affirms a profound term that Maldonado
Torres has called the decolonial turn. The questions proliferate at this time and the answers are difficult. They require placing, again, an
emphas is on methodologies that work with our lives, so the sense of responsibility is maximal. How do we learn about each other? How do we do it
without harming each other but with the courage to take up a weaving of the everyday that may reveal
deep betrayals? How do we cross without taking over?With whom do we do this work? The theoretical
here is immediately practical. My own lifeways of spending my time, of seeing, of cultivating a depth
ofsorrowis animated by great anger and directed by the love that Lorde (2007),Perez (1999), and Sandoval
(2000) teach us. How do we practice with each other engaging in dialogue at the coloni al difference? How do we know whenwe are doing it? Isnt it the
case that those of us who rejected the offer made to us over and over by white women in
consciousness-raising groups, conferences, workshops,and womens studies program meetings saw the
offer as slamming the door to a coalition that would really include us? Isnt it the case that we felt a
calm, full, substantial sense of recognition when we asked: What do you mean We, White Woman?
Isnt it the case that we rejected the offer from the side of Sojourner Truth and were ready to reject
their answer? Isnt it the case that we Maria Lugones 755 refused the offer at the colonial difference, sure that for them there was only one woman, only
one reality? Isnt it the case that we already know each other as multiple seers at the colonial difference,
intent on a coalition that neither begins nor ends with that offer? We are moving on at a time of crossings, of seeing each
other at the colonial difference constructing a new subject of a new feminist geopolitics of knowing and loving.
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A: Communal Struggle
The alternative is to engage in a communal struggle amongst excluded minorities to
promote a unified front against the distortion and whitewashing of history- this is
necessary prerequisite to any material change.
Lute Books, 1987, 86-87]
The dominant white culture is killing us slowly with its ignorance. By taking away our self-determination,
it has made us weak and empty. As a people we have resisted and we have taken expedient positions, but we have never been
allowed to develop unencumbered-we have never been allowed to be fully ourselves. The whites in power want us people of
color to barricade ourselves behind our separate tribal walls so they can pick us off one at a time with
their hidden weapons; so they can whitewash and distort history. Ignorance splits people, creates prejudices. A
misinformed people is a subjugated people. Before the Chicano and the undocumented worker and the Mexican from the other side can,
come together, before the Chicano can have unity with Native Americans and other groups, we need to know the history of
their struggle and they need to know ours. Our mothers, our sisters and brothers, the guys who hang
out on street corners, the children in the playgrounds., each of us must know our Indian lineage, our
afro-mestisaje, our history of resistance. To the immigrant mexicano and the recent arrivals we must teach our history. The 80
million mexicanos and the Latinos from Central and South America must know of our struggles. Each one of us must know basic facts about
Nicaragua, Chile and the rest of Latin America. The Latinaist movement (Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and other Spanish-speaking people
working together to combat racial discrimination in the market place) is good but it is not enough. Other than a common culture we will have
nothing to hold us together. We
need to meet on a broader communal ground. The struggle is inner: Chicano,
indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black,
Asian-our psyches resemble the border-towns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has
always been inner, and is played out in the outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before
inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the "real" world unless
it first happens in the images in our heads.
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A: Epistemic Disobedience
Engaging in epistemic disobedience and helps to delink the western epistemologies
already placed on our idea of modernity this promises economic growth and
financial prosperity
Mignolo 09 (Walter D. Mignolo, Professor of Romance Studies and Literature at Duke University and Director of the Center for Global
Studies and the Humanities, Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom, )
Now, there are currently two kinds or directions advanced by the former anthropos who are no longer
claiming recognition by or inclusion in, the humanitas, but engaging in epistemic disobedience and de-
linking from the magic of the Western idea of modernity, ideals of humanity and promises of economic
growth and financial prosperity (Wall Street dixit). One direction unfolds within the globalization of a type of
economy that in both liberal and Marxist vocabulary is defined as capitalism. One of the strongest advocates of
this is the Singaporean scholar, intellectual and politician Kishore Mahbubani, to which I will return later. One of his earlier book titles carries
the unmistakable and irreverent message: Can Asians Think?: Understanding the Divide between East and West (2001). Following Mahbubanis
own terminology, this direction could be identified as de-westernization. De- westernization means, within a capitalist
economy, that the rules of the game and the shots are no longer called by Western players and
institutions. The seventh Doha round is a signal example of de-westernizing options. The second direction is being advanced by what I
describe as the decolonial option. The de-colonial option is the singular connector of a diversity of de-colonials.
The de-colonial path has one thing in common: the colonial wound, the fact that regions and people
around the world have been classified as underdeveloped economically and mentally. Racism not only
affects people but also regions or, better yet, the conjunction of natural resources needed by humanitas in places inhabited by
anthropos. De- colonial options have one aspect in common with de-westernizing arguments: the definitive
rejection of being told from the epistemic privileges of the zero point what we are, what our ranking
is in relation to the ideal of humanitas and what we have to do to be recognized as such. However, de-colonial
and de-westernizing options diverge in one crucial and indisputable point: while the latter do not question the civilization of death hidden
under the rhetoric of modernization and prosperity, of the improvement of modern institutions (e.g. liberal democracy and an economy
propelled by the principle of growt h and prosperity), de-colonial options start from the principle that the regeneration of life shall prevail over
primacy of the production and reproduction of goods at the cost of life (life in general and of humanitas and anthropos alike!). I illustrate this
direction, below, commenting on Partha Chatterjees re-orienting eurocentered modernity toward the future in which our modernity (in
India, in Central Asia and the Caucasus, in South America, briefly, in all regions of the world upon which eurocentered modernity was either
imposed or adopted by local actors assimilating to local histories inventing and enacting global designs) becomes the statement of
interconnected dispersal in which de-colonial futures are being played out. Last but not least, my argument doesnt claim originality
(originality is one of the basic expectations of modern control of subjectivity) but aims to make a contribution to growing processes of de-
coloniality around the world. My humble claim is that
geo- and body-politics of knowledge has been hidden from the
self-serving interests of Western epistemology and that a task of de-colonial thinking is the unveiling of
epistemic silences of Western epistemology and affirming the epistemic rights of the racially devalued,
and de-colonial options to allow the silences to build arguments to confront those who take originality
as the ultimate criterion for the final judgment.1
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A: Decolonization
Decolonial thinking activates what hegemony denies. It connects struggles across the
colonial framework without subscribing to the power of the latter it deactivates and
delinks the institutions and knowledges of imperialism and uses them for
emancipation
Panotto 10 [Nicols, Grad. Student. Social y Politico @ FLACSO-Argentina, Walter Mignolo:
Epistemic disobedience. Rhetoric of modernity, logic of coloniality and decolonial grammar
(Buenos Aires 2010), Culture, Plural Space, Politics,
http://postcolonialnetworks.com/2011/07/27/walter-mignolo-epistemic-disobedience-rhetoric-
of-modernity-logic-of-coloniality-and-decolonial-grammar/
This book summarizes the main aspects of the Research Project on Modernity/ Coloniality and the central theorical proposals of
the famous Argentine decolonization theorist, Walter Mignolo. The main thrust of this work is explained thus: if
knowledge is
an instrument of imperial colonization, one of the urgent tasks ahead is the decolonization of
knowledge. First, the book attempts to broaden the definition of colonialism. This concept refers to a
complex matrix in which various spheres intertwine (economy, authority, nature, gender and
sexuality, subjectivity and knowledge) and is based on three main foundations: knowledge
(epistemology), understanding or comprehention (hermeneutics) and the ability to feel
(aesthesis). On the other hand, there also exists a relationship between colonialism and modern rationality,
where the latter is undestood as a construction of a Totality that overrides any difference or possibility of constructing other
totalities. Although
there is a critique of these notions from postmodern writers (postcolonialism
being the wellspring in this field of study), it is circumscribed to European history and the history
of European ideas. Thus, this critique is incapable of reaching deep into the colonial paradigm
and imagination. This is why a decolonial project is ultimately necessary in order to make
possible a programmatic analysis of delinking categories (Anbal Quijano) of colonial knowledge.
The book also takes some of the contributions from the philosopher Erique Dussel as a proposal of decolonization of knowledge, as
exemplified by the differentiation he makes between emancipation (as liberal framework that serves to the pretensions of the
bourgeoisie) and liberation (as a broader category that seeks ways of leaving the european emancipatory project). But
decolonization, for Mignolo, goes further than liberation: it involves both the colonizers and the
colonized (using the ideas of Franz Fanon), by including emancipation/liberation on a same level
within its framework. But because emancipation is a modern project linked to European liberal
bourgeoisie, it is better to think in terms of liberation/decolonization, which includes in itself the
rational concept of emancipation. Mignolo proposes a delinking strategy, which involves
denaturalizing the concepts and fields of knowledge within coloniality. This does not mean
ignoring or denying what cannot be denied, but rather using imperial strategies for decolonial
purposes. Delinking also implies disbelieving that imperial reasoning can itself create a liberating
reason (i.e. proposals of decolonization from a marxist enterprise, which do not involve a radical delinking but rather a radical
emancipation; the reason being marxism offers a different content but not a different logic). Postmodern thought
attempts to be a liberating discourse, but still maintains a European framework that is far from
creating a delinked colonial logic. In this sense, Mignolo argues that while modernity is not strictly a European
phenomenon, its rhetoric -as Dussel argues- is formed by European philosophers, academics and politicians. Hence, modernity
involves colonization of time and space, defining a border in realtion to a self-determining Other
and its own European identity.The project of decolonization proposes a displacement of the
theo- and ego- hegemonic logic of empire into a geo-political and a body-logic of knowledge.
This project arises from a de-clasification and de-identification of imperially denied subjects, as a
de-colonial policy and epistemology that affects both the political and economic control of
neoliberalism and capitalism, each frameworks of the imperialist project. The decolonization
289
process begins when these same agents or subjects, who inhabit the denied languages and
identities of the Empire, become aware of the effects of coloniality on being, body and
knowledge. This process does not imply a call to an external element/actor/project but a movement towards an exteriority
which make visible the difference in the space of experience and the horizon of expectations registered in the colonial space. Is this
a proposal of cultural relativism? No. What Mignolo suggests is a questioning of the posture taken from
divisive borders. In other words, the borders that both unite and separate modernity/coloniality.
Hence is the main proposal of the book: border thinking. This epistemology evokes the pluri-versity and di-
versity of the dynamics between the spaces of experience and horizons of expectations found
within the larger arena of coloniality/modernity. Border thinking implies that decolonization will
not come from the conflicts over the imperial difference but from the spaces of experience and
horizons of expectations generated by the colonial difference. Decolonial critical thinking
connects the pluri-versity of experiences enclosed within the colonial framework with the
delinking uni-versal project that is in constant tension within imperial horizons. It builds a
proposal that goes beyond the implementation of a model constructed within modern
categories (right, center, left) and onto reflecting on the subversive spaces inscribed among the
actions of colonized agents through the fissures and cracks of the imperial system.The concept
of decolonization offered in Mignolos work is a major contribution towards creating a
theoretical framework outside the standards of modern Western philosophy. What must also be
recognized, however, is that this theoretical proposal and its development is still influenced by those same theories and
epistemologies that it intends to criticize. It could be said that the book itself is a decolonization proposal in how it subversively re-
orients traditional theoretical frameworks into a deep questioning of themselves.
Decolonization is pre-req to dialogue, reimagination of the economy and of the

political
Mignolo 05 (Walter, Literature @ Duke. The Idea of Latin America, pp. xviii-xx)
There is one proviso: at this point in time, the colonial difference must be kept in view, because Creoles in the
Americas of European descent (either Latin or Anglo), as well as Creoles of European descent around the world,
may still see civilization and barbarism as ontological categories, and therefore they may have
trouble accepting Indian (or Islamic, for that matter) civilizational processes and histories when entering
into dialogue. There are no civilizations outside of Europe or, if there are, like those of Islam, China or Japan (to follow
Huntingtons classification: see chapter 1), they remain in the past and have had to be brought into the present of Western
civilization. That is the colonial difference that should be kept in mind. The
future can no longer be thought of as
the defense of Western civilization, constantly waiting for the barbarians. As barbarians are ubiquitous
(they could be in the plains or in the mountains as well as in global cities), so are the civilized.
There is no safe place to defend and, even worse, believing that there is a safe place that must
be defended is (and has been) the direct road to killing. Dialogue, properly speaking, cannot take
place until there are no more places to be defended and the power differential, consequently, can be redressed.
Dialogue today is a utopia, as we are witnessing in Iraq, and it should be reconceived as utopistic: a double
movement composed of a critical take on the past in order to imagine and construct future
possible worlds. The decolonial shift is of the essence if we would stop seeing modernity as a goal rather than seeing it as a
European construction of history in Europes own interests. Dialogue can only take place once modernity is
decolonized and dispossessed of its mythical march toward the future. I am not defending despotism of
any kind, Oriental or Occidental. I am just saying that dialogue can only take place when the monologue of
one civilization (Western) is no longer enforced. This book can be read in two different, but complementary, ways.
Readers not familiar with current academic debates can enter through the argument that America was not discovered but invented,
and from there follow the path that made of Latin America an extension of the initial imperial/colonial invention. Those who are
familiar with conversations in the humanities could see the argument itself as an attempt to shift the geography, and the geo-politics
of knowledge, of critical theory (as introduced by the Frankfurt School in the 1930s) to a new terrain of decoloniality. The first
reading can still be performed within the paradigm of modernity that emphasizes the linear evolution of concepts and, above all,
newness. The second reading, however, demands to be performed within the paradigm of (de)coloniality that implies modernity but
290
emphasizes co-existence and simultaneity instead. I will introduce a concept of historico-structural heterogeneity at the end of
chapter 1 to locate the argument in that paradigm of co-existence and to critique the paradigm of newness and historical
progression. Within the limits of European local histories, critical theory pushed humanists and
critical social scientists toward critical explorations of the conditions that make events and ideas
possible, instead of taking ideas for granted and seeing events as carrying their own, essential,
meaning. A critical theory beyond the history of Europe proper and within the colonial history of
America (or Asia or Africa; or even from the perspective of immigrants within Europe and the US
who have disrupted the homogeneity) becomes decolonial theory. That is, it is the theory arising
from the projects for decolonization of knowledge and being that will lead to the imagining of
economy and politics otherwise. By going to the very roots of modern coloniality the invention of America and of
Latin America this book is a contribution to that decolonization of knowledge and being; an attempt to rewrite history following
an-other logic, another language, an-other thinking.
Decolonization rejects colonial violence through art and narratives

Aman Sium-Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada , and Eric
Ritskes- Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada, Decolonization:
Indigeneity, Education & Society, Speaking truth to power: Indigenous, 13
http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/19626/16256
storytelling as an act of living resistance. This issue begins with Mendozas examination of
neoliberalism and nativist longing and, as she demarcates and explores the problem, it is the rest of the issue that sets
out to explore the possible answers to globalized neoliberalism and its reliance on multicultural
difference. While some have spoken to the infinite substitutability of neoliberal globalization, Arif Dirlik (2006) argues that
Rather than erase difference by converting all to Euro/American norms of modernity, capitalist
modernity, as it has gone global, has empowered societies once theoretically condemned to
premodernity or tradition to make their own claims on modernity on the bases of those very
traditions, as filtered through experiences of colonialism... (p. 3). These articulations of Indigenous theory
through story speak against colonial claims of premodernity but not through a claim to neoliberal modernity, but a rejection of
the Truth that this modernity has constructed under the guise of postmodern fragmentation of
truth. While Njoki Wane (this issue) reminds us that colonial imposition leaves Indigenous societies changed
and unable to recraft a pure pre-colonial reality, Indigenous truth rests on the empowerment
of Indigenous land and sovereignty, not needing any legitimation from colonial states or
modernity. These claims to Indigenous epistemologies and truths. Each of the articles can also be seen as
insurgent moments (Mendoza, 2006). Frantz Fanon (1963), the well-known Martinican scholar and activist, promised,
decolonization never takes place unnoticed (p. 36). It makes a spectacle of colonial violence
and Indigenous peoples resistance to it. In the same vein, the contributors to this important
issue write about decolonization in ways that command our attention; and in ways that begin from
familiar sites of personal pain and dislocation, land struggle, historical erasure, and the many other violences inflicted by global
coloniality. These papers dont simply ask but demand
that we conceptualize decolonization in terms that
take on both material and discursive definitions. Honor Ford-Smith (1987) asserts that, The tale-telling
tradition contains what is most poetically true about our struggles. The tales are one place
where the most subversive elements of our history can be safely lodged... (p. 3). While
dominant scholarship might push aside methods such as autoethnography or traditional
storytelling as not rigorous enough or as identity politics, the experiences of those who live out
decolonization are integral to the integrity of the movement, grounding it to the material
realities of the people whose lives bear the scars of colonialism and the long histories of
resistance and triumph. There is a reason that many of the insurgent Indigenous movements around the globe have been
sustained by poets, musicians, and artists
291
The decolonization of thought = liberation
Panotto 10 [Nicols, Grad. Student. Social y Politico @ FLACSO-Argentina, Walter Mignolo:
Epistemic disobedience. Rhetoric of modernity, logic of coloniality and decolonial grammar
(Buenos Aires 2010), Culture, Plural Space, Politics,
http://postcolonialnetworks.com/2011/07/27/walter-mignolo-epistemic-disobedience-rhetoric-
of-modernity-logic-of-coloniality-and-decolonial-grammar/
This book summarizes the main aspects of the Research Project on Modernity/ Coloniality and the central theorical proposals of
the famous Argentine decolonization theorist, Walter Mignolo. The main thrust of this work is explained thus: if
knowledge is
an instrument of imperial colonization, one of the urgent tasks ahead is the decolonization of
knowledge. First, the book attempts to broaden the definition of colonialism. This concept refers to a
complex matrix in which various spheres intertwine (economy, authority, nature, gender and
sexuality, subjectivity and knowledge) and is based on three main foundations: knowledge
(epistemology), understanding or comprehention (hermeneutics) and the ability to feel
(aesthesis). On the other hand, there also exists a relationship between colonialism and modern rationality,
where the latter is undestood as a construction of a Totality that overrides any difference or possibility of constructing other
totalities. Although
there is a critique of these notions from postmodern writers (postcolonialism
being the wellspring in this field of study), it is circumscribed to European history and the history
of European ideas. Thus, this critique is incapable of reaching deep into the colonial paradigm
and imagination. This is why a decolonial project is ultimately necessary in order to make
possible a programmatic analysis of delinking categories (Anbal Quijano) of colonial knowledge.
The book also takes some of the contributions from the philosopher Erique Dussel as a proposal of decolonization of knowledge, as
exemplified by the differentiation he makes between emancipation (as liberal framework that serves to the pretensions of the
bourgeoisie) and liberation (as a broader category that seeks ways of leaving the european emancipatory project). But
decolonization, for Mignolo, goes further than liberation: it involves both the colonizers and the
colonized (using the ideas of Franz Fanon), by including emancipation/liberation on a same level
within its framework. But because emancipation is a modern project linked to European liberal
bourgeoisie, it is better to think in terms of liberation/decolonization, which includes in itself the
rational concept of emancipation. Mignolo proposes a delinking strategy, which involves
denaturalizing the concepts and fields of knowledge within coloniality. This does not mean
ignoring or denying what cannot be denied, but rather using imperial strategies for decolonial
purposes. Delinking also implies disbelieving that imperial reasoning can itself create a liberating
reason (i.e. proposals of decolonization from a marxist enterprise, which do not involve a radical delinking but rather a radical
emancipation; the reason being marxism offers a different content but not a different logic). Postmodern thought
attempts to be a liberating discourse, but still maintains a European framework that is far from
creating a delinked colonial logic. In this sense, Mignolo argues that while modernity is not strictly a European
phenomenon, its rhetoric -as Dussel argues- is formed by European philosophers, academics and politicians. Hence, modernity
involves colonization of time and space, defining a border in realtion to a self-determining Other
and its own European identity.The project of decolonization proposes a displacement of the
theo- and ego- hegemonic logic of empire into a geo-political and a body-logic of knowledge.
This project arises from a de-clasification and de-identification of imperially denied subjects, as a
de-colonial policy and epistemology that affects both the political and economic control of
neoliberalism and capitalism, each frameworks of the imperialist project. The decolonization
process begins when these same agents or subjects, who inhabit the denied languages and
identities of the Empire, become aware of the effects of coloniality on being, body and
knowledge. This process does not imply a call to an external element/actor/project but a movement towards an exteriority
which make visible the difference in the space of experience and the horizon of expectations registered in the colonial space. Is this
a proposal of cultural relativism? No. What Mignolo
suggests is a questioning of the posture taken from
divisive borders. In other words, the borders that both unite and separate modernity/coloniality.
292
Henceis the main proposal of the book: border
thinking. This epistemology evokes the pluri-versity and di-
versity of the dynamics between the spaces of experience and horizons of expectations found
within the larger arena of coloniality/modernity. Border thinking implies that decolonization will
not come from the conflicts over the imperial difference but from the spaces of experience and
horizons of expectations generated by the colonial difference. Decolonial critical thinking
connects the pluri-versity of experiences enclosed within the colonial framework with the
delinking uni-versal project that is in constant tension within imperial horizons. It builds a
proposal that goes beyond the implementation of a model constructed within modern
categories (right, center, left) and onto reflecting on the subversive spaces inscribed among the
actions of colonized agents through the fissures and cracks of the imperial system.The concept
of decolonization offered in Mignolos work is a major contribution towards creating a
theoretical framework outside the standards of modern Western philosophy. What must also be
recognized, however, is that this theoretical proposal and its development is still influenced by those same theories and
epistemologies that it intends to criticize. It could be said that the book itself is a decolonization proposal in how it subversively re-
orients traditional theoretical frameworks into a deep questioning of themselves.
Anti-systemic de-colonization key to end colonial power matrix

Grosfoguel, Ramn, University of California, Berkeley, Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and
Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality 2011
TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, School of
Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts, UC Merced http://escholarship.org/uc/item/21k6t3fq
It is not an accident that the conceptualization of the world-system from decolonial perspectives
of the South will question its traditional conceptualizations produced by thinkers from the
North. Following Peruvian Sociologist Anbal Quijano (1991; 1998; 2000), we could conceptualize the present world-system as a
historical-structural heterogeneous totality with a specific power matrix that he calls a colonial power matrix (patrn
de poder colonial). This matrix affects all dimensions of social existence such as sexuality,
authority, subjectivity and labor (Quijano 2000). The sixteenth century initiates a new global
colonial power matrix that by the late nineteenth century came to cover the whole planet. Taking a
step further from Quijano, I conceptualize the coloniality of power as an entanglement or, to use U.S. Third World Feminist concept,
intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989; Fregoso 2003) of multiple
and heterogeneous global hierarchies
(heterarchies) of sexual, political, epistemic, economic, spiritual, linguistic and racial forms of
domination and exploitation where the racial/ethnic hierarchy of the European/non-European
divide transversally reconfigures all of the other global power structures. What is new in the
coloniality of power perspective is how the idea of race and racism becomes the organizing
principle that structures all of the multiple hierarchies of the world-system (Quijano 1993). For example,
the different forms of labor that are articulated to capitalist accumulation at a world-scale are assigned according to this racial
hierarchy; coercive (or cheap) labor is done by non-European people in the periphery and free wage labor in the core. The global
gender hierarchy is also affected by race: contrary to pre-European patriarchies where all women were inferior to all men, in the
new colonial power matrix some women (of European origin) have a higher status and access to resources than some men (of non-
European origin). The idea of race organizes the worlds population into a hierarchical order of superior and inferior people that
becomes an organizing principle of the international division of labor and of the global patriarchal system. Contrary
to the
Eurocentric perspective, race, gender, sexuality, spirituality, and epistemology are not additive
elements to the economic and political structures of the capitalist world-system, but an integral,
entangled and constitutive part of the broad entangled package called the European
modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system (Grosfoguel 2002). European Judeo-
Christian patriarchy and European notions of sexuality, epistemology and spirituality were globalized and
exported to the rest of the world through the colonial expansion as the hegemonic criteria to racialize,
classify and pathologize the rest of the worlds population in a hierarchy of superior and inferior
293
races. Accordingly, to move beyond this system the struggle cannot be just anticapitalist but an
anti-systemic decolonial liberation. Anti-systemic decolonization and liberation cannot be
reduced to only one dimension of social life such as the economic system (capitalism) like it
happened with the twentieth century Marxist left. It requires a broader transformation of the
sexual, gender, spiritual, epistemic, economic, political, linguistic, aesthetic, pedagogical and
racial hierarchies of the modern/colonial western-centric Christian-centric capitalist/patriarchal
world-system. The coloniality of power perspective challenges us to think about social
change and social transformation in a non-reductionist way.
294
A: Decolonize America
Decolonial critical thought breaks the logic of the borders of nations and the colonial
encounter through affirmation of our America. It enables us to link struggles here
and struggles there as collective we
Linda Marti n Alcoff, philosopher at the City University of New York, Mignolos Epistemology of
Coloniality, Syracuse University, 2007,
https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/new_centennial_review/v007/7.3.al
coff.html Cindy
For Ramos, Paz, Zea, Edouard Glissant, and the many others in this tradition who identified colonial alienation of consciousness,
the solution to alienation is a positional shift to our America in which a philosophy reflective
of its own Latin American reality might be developed. In his most recent work, The Idea of Latin America
(2005), Mignolo expresses doubts about this alternative Latin America construction, predicated as it is on another exclusionary
paradigm. Before we can go about the process of developing a new philosophy and new account of our reality, he argues, we
need a more extensive period of epistemological reflection. We need to develop a decolonial critical theory
that will be more thoroughly delinked from the contemporary variants of the modern imperial
designs of the recent past. The fact that language, space, time, and history have all been colonized
through the colonization of knowledge must give us pause before we borrow the founding concepts of
Eurocentric thought, such as center/periphery, tradition/modernity, and primitive/civilized, or the
very evaluative binary structure that grounds these. Mignolo develops Quijanos concept of the coloniality of
power, then, as a way to name that set of framing and organizing assumptions that justify
hierarchies and make it almost impossible to evaluate alternative claims. Why was it said that there
were no pre-Colombian books or forms of writing, when it was known that the codices had been raided and burned in heaps? How
could the claim that modernity represented an expansion of freedom not be challenged by
its development within the context of colonialism? Why do we continue to conceptualize rationality as separate
from and properly in dominion over the realm of affect, a distinctly Greek and nonindigenous notion, as Mariategui showed many
decades ago? Why is it considered sufficient, even exemplary, to have one Latin Americanist in a
university history department in the United States, when 5 or 10 or even 15 Europeanists are
required? And in philosophy departments, it is not necessary to have a single one. To think through and beyond these
persistent limitations in Western knowledge practices, Mignolo argues that we need to reinscribe
what he calls the colonial difference into the order of representation. If the Eurocentric imaginary of modernity
has forgotten colonialism and relegated the colonized spaces to the periphery and to the past in its description of universal reality
(even if that past paradoxically exists in the present), the task of the colonial difference is to reinscribe simultaneity. To
make
our America no longer considered peripheral and behind the now, hierarchical and binary categories must
be replaced with pluralist and egalitarian ones. Mignolos concept of the colonial difference is thus
an attempt to reveal and displace the logic of the same by which Europeans have represented
their others. Non-Europeans are seen as existing on the same historical trajectory, but further
behind; their goals are the same, but not achieved to the same degree; their knowledge is subject to
the same justificatory procedures, but it is less well-developed. In this way, true otherness or difference is invisible and
unintelligible. By use of the term colonial difference, Mignolo seeks to break out of this logic of the same. He
seeks both to reveal the way in which power has been at work in creating that difference (that is, the way in which
colonialism creates backwardness both materially and ideologically) as well as the way in which
colonial power represents and evaluates difference. The coloniality of power, in other words, produces, evaluates, and manages the
colonial difference. Now here let me signal one of the issues of critical debate I want to raise later on in the paper: What is the
nature of the difference that Mignolo means to signify by the term colonial difference? Is it an absolute or a relative difference;
that is, does it stand alone or is it dependent on its relation to Eurocentrism? Is
it, like the concept of race, an
epiphenomena of colonialism itself, or does it preexist the colonial encounter in the way that
295
Dussel suggests that living labor preexists capitalism? What, in other words, is the metaphysical status of the
colonial difference?
296
297
Ext: Biodiversity
The preservation of indigenous knowledge is necessary to prevent biodiversity decline
and ecological depletion/environmental collapse.
Warren 92 (D. Michael Warren, Director of the Center for Indigenous Knowledge for Agriculture and
Rural Development. Indigenous Knowledge, Biodiversity Conservation and Development Iowa State
University, September 3, 1992.
http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/2334/Reproduced.pdf) [ekp] Ellen Patterson,
7/5/17
Introduction Indigenous knowledge and biodiversity are complementary phenomena essential to human
development. Global awareness of the crisis concerning the conservation of biodiversity [is crucial] is assured
following the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. Of equal concern to
many world citizens is the uncertain status of the indigenous knowledge that reflects many generations
of experience and problem-solving by thousands of ethnic groups across the globe. Very little of this
knowledge has been recorded, yet it represents an immensely valuable data base that provides
humankind with insights on how numerous communities have interacted with their changing
environment including its floral and faunal resources. This presentation provides an overview of recent studies that clearly portray
the active role that rural communities in Africa and other parts of the world have played in (a) generating knowledge
based on a sophisticated understanding of their environment, (b) devising mechanisms to conserve and
sustain their natural resources, and (c) establishing community- based organizations that serve as forums
for identifying problems and dealing with them through local-level experimentation, innovation, and
exchange of information with other societies. Indigenous knowledge, particularly in the African context, has long
been ignored and maligned by outsiders. Today, however, a growing number of African governments and international
development agencies are recognizing that local-level knowledge and organizations provide the foundation for participatory approaches to
development that are both cost-effective and sustainable. The deliberate maintenance of diversity in domesticated and non-
domesticated plants and animals characterizes farming systems across the African continent as well as in most other parts of the world,
providing an important opportunity for systematic in situ maintenance of genetic resources. Informal
agricultural research and development systems parallel those of national governments, providing another
opportunity for national agricultural research and extension services to work with the creative interests and
activities of farmers and other rural people. A growing global network of regional and national indigenous
knowledge resource centers is involved in documenting the historical and contemporary indigenous
knowledge of numerous ethnic groups around the world. Much of this knowledge is at as much risk of
being lost as is the case with biodiversity (Linden 1991). These centers reflect new values that recognize indigenous
knowledge as an important national resource. The centers are establishing national indigenous knowledge data
bases, giving recognition to their citizens for the knowledge they have created, providing a protective
barrier for the intellectual property rights of knowledge that could be exploited economically by the
country of discovery, and laying the foundation for development activities that build on and strengthen the existing
knowledge and organizational base produced through many generations of creative effort by local communities. Indigenous Knowledge and
Although these publications focus on the immediate and long-term negative biological and
Biodiversity.
economic consequences of the loss of biodiversity, several introduce the complementary importance of
cultural diversity that is often reflected in the indigenous knowledge of natural resource management
including that of plants and animals. The Global Biodiversity Strategy, for example, includes as one of its ten principles for
conserving biodiversity the principle that "Cultural diversity is closely linked to biodiversity. Humanity's
collective knowledge of biodiversity and its use and management rests in cultural diversity; conversely,
298
conserving biodiversity often helps strengthen cultural integrity and values" (World Resources Institute et al. 1992:
21). During the past decade progress has been made in understanding the complementarity of cultural
diversity and biodiversity. The ex situ conservation of germplasm has been well-established through the Plant Introduction Stations in
the United States, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, and the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources. A
parallel set of institutions documenting local knowledge about the environment is now being established, indigenous knowledge resource centers
that could play a future role in in situ conservation. Understanding
the indigenous management strategies of farmers
and other rural persons that foster diversity in domesticated and wild species can help in the
establishment of national programs for in situ conservation of germplasm that complement the ex situ programs already in
existence (Wilkes; Altieri and Merrick; Juma). "To acquire a comprehensive base of knowledge for genetic resource conservation, the genetic
establishment must accept a mandate to be concerned not only with germplasm but also the knowledge systems that produce it" (Brush 1989:
22).The role of nineteenth century colonialism and social science in ignoring and sometimes maligning
indigenous knowledge has been well documented (Warren 1989; Slikkerveer 1989; Jackson 1987). Studies that
depicted local communities and their knowledge as primitive, simple and static are now countered by a
rapidly expanding data base generated by both biological and social scientists that describes the complexity
and sophistication of many indigenous natural resource management systems. Studies by Berlin et al., Brush et al.,
Alcorn, Altieri and Merrick, Hunn, Chandler, Colchester, Everett, McKiernan, Dasmann, Oldfield and Alcorn, Messerschmidt, Montecinos and
Altieri, Mooney, Nabham et al., Leakey and Slikkerveer, Johannes, Andrews, Aumeeruddy, Balee, Fairhead, Feit, Gadgil, Gunn et al., Juma, Kiambi
and Opole, Lansing and Kremer, Liebman, Mathias-Mundy et al., McCall, Marks, Posey, Niamir, Thurston, Wamalwa, Price, Farnsworth and
Soejarto, Rajasekaran et al., Rhoades, Reij, Richards, Sharp and Kone, Warren, Sims, Pawluk et al., Tangley, Riley and Brokensha, and Rusten and
Gold explore indigenous knowledge related to wild and domesticated plants and animals and the soils and water upon which they depend. The
authors represent the academic fields of agriculture, horticulture, botany, zoology, forestry, agroforestry, fisheries, ecology, agroecology,
economic botany, wildlife management, aquaculture, animal science, soil science, and hydrology. The fact that so much effort is now
being invested in understanding the basis for indigenous natural resource management indicates that the
negative attitudes commonly held about indigenous knowledge during the colonial era have begun to
change. A review of the published literature during the colonial era does reveal enlightened individuals who understood the value of the
indigenous knowledge. Louis Leakey, for example, described in eloquent detail Kikuyu agricultural knowledge and how it provided the basis for
many Kikuyu farmers to reject European farming techniques being promoted in Kenya at the turn of this century by British agricultural officers.
Indigenous Knowledge and Development. International and national development agencies have
recognized the value of participatory approaches to decision-making for sustainable approaches to
development. During the past decade a rapidly growing set of evidence indicates a strong relationship between
indigenous knowledge and sustainable development. "Serious investigation of indigenous
ethnobiological/ethnoecological knowledge is rare, but recent studies...show that indigenous knowledge of
ecological zones, natural resources, agriculture, aquaculture, forest and game management, to be far
more sophisticated than previously assumed. Furthermore, this knowledge offers new models for
development that are both ecologically and socially sound" (Posey 1985:139-140). Development activities that
work with and through indigenous knowledge and organizational structures have several important
advantages over projects that operate outside them. Indigenous knowledge provides the basis for
grassroots decision-making, much of which takes place at the community level through indigenous
organizations and associations where problems are identified and solutions to them are determined.
Solution-seeking behavior is based on indigenous creativity leading to experimentation and innovations
as well as the appraisal of knowledge and technologies introduced from other societies. Farmers can be
excellent conservators of biodiversity. Small-scale farming systems in Sierra Leone, for example, are characterized
by diversity, which is valued for its own sake (Richards 1985). "Small-scale, resource-poor farmers in developing
countries breed local crop varieties for improved production using informal innovation systems based on
indigenous knowledge...They often employ their own taxonomy, encourage introgression, select, hybridize, field test, record data and
name their varieties" (Lamola 1992: 3). In Niger, a USAID-funded project has discovered a farmer-based agricultural research and extension
system that parallels that of the national government (McCorkle and McClure 1992). Investigating the nature of farmers'
299
experiments that augment biodiversity could be of considerable use to national agricultural development
programs (Haverkort). In Rwanda it was found that farmers "recognise several dozen different potato varieties, which they distinguish
according to plant and tuber traits, as well as agronomic and culinary characteristics" (Haugerud and Collinson 1991: 5). East African farmers
"recognise in maize, as in potato cultivars, important differences in taste, texture, storability, marketability, disease and pest resistance, and
response to moisture stress. At least nine possible end uses, many of them simultaneously relevant on a single farm, help to determine the maize
genotypes east African farmers prefer" (Haugerud and Collinson 1991: 6). "Sustainable agriculture in all nations will require
greater scientific respect for, and more effective collaboration with, those who possess the wisdom of
generations of 'nonscientific' farming" (Haugerud and Collinson 1991: 14). "The characteristics of polycultures that
make them desirable were generally ignored by agricultural researchers. But recently research concerning polycultures
has blossomed and some of their benefits are becoming clear" (Liebman 1987: 115). Polyculture is the norm in farming systems in Africa and
other parts of the world, "a traditional strategy to promote diet diversity, income generation, production
stability, minimization of risk, reduced insect and disease incidence, efficient use of labor, intensification
of production with limited resources and maximization of returns under low levels of technology " (Altieri
1987: 73). "Much of the world's biological diversity is in the custody of farmers who follow age-old farming
and land use practices. These ecologically complex agricultural systems associated with centers of crop
genetic diversity include not only the traditional cultivars or 'landraces' that constitute an essential part
of our world crop genetic heritage, but also wild plant and animal species that serve humanity as biological
resources" (Oldfield and Alcorn l991b: 37). Prain et al. have found that farmers evaluate cultivars using a wide variety of criteria that can be
of immense interest and value to crop breeders. In Zambia, the farmers' evaluation of a high-yielding hybrid maize variety and description of the
positive and negative characteristics of locally-adapted open-pollinated varieties led to a more effective national maize breeding program
(Warren 1989b). Taking the time and effort to record the indigenous agricultural knowledge for a given ethnic group can provide important
guidance for the research agenda for both national and international agricultural research centers (Cashman; Warren 1992c; Richards 1989;
Development agencies are beginning to review the role of indigenous knowledge in the
Titilola et al. 1989).
development process at the policy level. Titilola has demonstrated the cost-effectiveness of adding indigenous knowledge
components into development projects (1990). Lalonde has completed two reports on this topic for the Canadian International Development
Agency. The World Bank held a seminar on the role of indigenous knowledge for agricultural development
(Warren 1991). Two influential policy documents have recently been prepared by the U.S. National
Research Council, one focused on the conservation of biodiversity, the other on sustainability issues in
agriculture and natural resource management. "Development agencies should place greater emphasis on,
and assume a stronger role in, systematizing the local knowledge base--indigenous knowledge, 'gray
literature,' anecdotal information. A vast heritage of knowledge about species, ecosystems, and their use
exists, but it does not appear in the world literature, being either insufficiently 'scientific' or not
'developmental.' Much of this information can be interpreted only by local scientists" (National Research Council
1992: 10). "If indigenous knowledge has not been documented and compiled, doing so should be a research
priority of the highest order. Indigenous knowledge is being lost at an unprecedented rate, and its
preservation, preferably in data base form, must take place a quickly as possible" (National Research Council 1992:
45). The document outlining USAID's newest Collaborative Research Support Program for Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource
Management (SANREM) recognizes that indigenous knowledge must play an important role in sustainable
approaches to development (National Research Council 1991). In Brazil, for example, "the long-term management
strategies of the Kayapo, which actually increase biological diversity, offer many fundamental principles that should
guide development throughout the humid tropics along a path that is both ecologically and socially sound"
(Posey 1985: 140). "The lessons they have learned through millenia of accumulated experience and survival are
invaluable to a modern world in much need of rediscovering its ecological and humanistic roots" (Posey 1985:
156). The International Society of Ethnobiology has played a key role in formulating the inextricable link between cultural and
biological diversity. The Declaration of Belem was adopted at the First International Congress of Ethnobiology and the Kunming Action
Plan was produced at the Second Congress (see the texts in International Traditional Medicine Newsletter, vol. 4, no. 2, Winter 1992). UNESC0
Canada/Man and the Biosphere Program sponsored a workshop on Indigenous Knowledge and Community-Based Resource Management
300
(Streather 1991), while the International Indigenous Commission has submitted a report on indigenous knowledge to the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development in 1991. The
most cost-effective way in which indigenous knowledge can
be systematically recorded and stored so it can be used to facilitate national development efforts may be
through the growing global network of indigenous knowledge resource centers. There are now ten formally
established centers, three with global functions (CIKARD, LEAD, and CIRAN), two with regional roles (ARCIK, REPPIKA), and five with national roles
(GhaRCIK, INRIK, RIDSCA, KENRIK, PhiRCIKSD). Seventeen other regional and national centers are in the process of becoming established (see
appendix). The important issue of intellectual property rights has been thoroughly discussed by Juma, Posey (1989), McNeil and McNeil, Gray,
and the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources. National indigenous knowledge resource centers are organizational structures through
which indigenous knowledge is recorded, stored, screened for potential economic uses at the national level,
and distributed to other centers in appropriate ways. Innovative technologies discovered and used in one
part of the world can often work equally well in similar ecozones in other parts of the world. National
centers are in a position to facilitate and control the sharing of indigenous knowledge. This type of
information exchange has already begun through multilateral and bilateral donor efforts. Two examples are
based on indigenous knowledge from South Asia. The World Bank has disseminated information at the global level on the traditional use of
vetiver grass in India for soil and moisture conservation (Greenfield). The use of neem tree seeds to produce non-toxic biopesticides has also
spread from India to other parts of the world through development agencies such as USAID and GTZ (Radcliffe et al.). National centers can
serve as vehicles to introduce indigenous knowledge components into the formal curricula from primary
school through the university as well as in extension training institutes. This can help to augment the
declining capacity of the traditional means of transmission of this knowledge due to universal primary
education now operating in most newly-independent nations (Ruddle; Ruddle and Chesterfield). National
indigenous knowledge resource centers are beginning to conduct inventories of knowledge that can be of
primary utility in development programs. Examples include indigenous crop pest management systems, farmers
perceptions of positive and negative characteristics of crop varieties, and indigenous approaches to the management of soil,
water, and biodiversity resources. National centers can also identify and delineate the structure and functions of indigenous
organizations that exist in every rural community. Virtually every grassroots organization plays a developmental
function within the community. Strengthening the capacity of these existing organizations can greatly
facilitate sustainable approaches to development (Warren 1992b; Atte 1992). As Africa and the rest of the world move into
the twenty-first century, it is critical that these issues be addressed at the global, regional, national, and local
levels (Seidman; Seidman and Anang). The growing number of newsletters focusing on indigenous knowledge and conservation
of biodiversity indicates the global interest in cultural and biological diversity (see list at the end of the bibliography).
"The formal sector is only starting to open its eyes to the fact that farmers innovate and that local
communities do and can contribute to conservation and breeding. If the world is properly to conserve and
use genetic resources for both present and future generations, the informal sector of the Third World,
that is, the farmers, herbalists, gardeners and pastoralists, must lead us into the next agricultural
revolution" (Mooney 1992: 125).
Indigenous knowledges can prevent the decline of biodiversity loss by its inclusion into
scientific theories of environmental conservation and sustainable ecosystems.
Cultural Survival 15 (Cultural Survival Inc. advocates for Indigenous Peoples' rights and supports
Indigenous communities self-determination, cultures and political resilience since 1972. Indigenous
Knowledge: the Key to Biodiversity Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine, March 2015.
https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/indigenous-knowledge-key-
biodiversity-conservation) [ekp] Ellen Patterson, 7/5/17
Joseph Goko Mutangah initially became involved in biodiversity conservation during the course of his research when he grew concerned about
the deliberate degradation of natural habitats and loss of biodiversity in many Kenyan natural habitats, particularly indigenous forests. With other
research scientists, he formed Habitat Restoration Initiative for Eastern Africa in 1998 with the objective of restoring degraded habitats in the
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region. The initiative later became a committee of Nature-Kenya, which operates under the umbrella of the East African Natural History Society.
Currently my interest and insights in ecological and habitat restoration is expressed through my newly formed African Center of Tropical
Ecology, he says. For the last 10 years, Mutangah has been in charge of the Kenya Resource Center for Indigenous Knowledge.
He explains the centers activities: We document Indigenous knowledge of food and medicinal plants with an
aim to preserve and disseminate traditional knowledge attached to the natural biological resources, and
how such knowledge can add value in the overall conservation and sustainable management of natural
habitats and ecosystems. The change of lifestyles among many societies in the world has greatly influenced the change of culture,
traditional rights and rites, and more importantly dietary habits. The modern trend of migration of local people from rural
to urban and back, modern education systems, modern food diets and medical care, as well as
environmental changes, have all significantly contributed in making Indigenous knowledge and cultural
heritage not only vulnerable but seriously endangered. This threat of extinction of our culture and its embedded
Indigenous knowledge has inspired me to work towards ensuring its protection and continued use in guiding the younger generation in
our society towards sustainable utilization and management of our natural resources, including environmental protection. He continues, In
Kenya, both the Kenya Wildlife Service and Kenya Forest Service have realized they cannot successfully
protect the wildlife in their natural habitats without involving the local people. Their past efforts and experiences
have taught them the importance of joint management for effective and realistic conservation. For example,
in regards to the Kenya Forest Service managed forests, the local communities are allowed limited access into the forests for extracting firewood
and sustainable harvesting of grass as fodder for their livestock and medicinal herbal materials. This understanding and mutual
respect ensures sustenance of the natural biological resources and improved livelihoods of the local
Indigenous people living around the habitats of wildlife conservation areas. Today in Kenya, Indigenous
Peoples (particularly those that depend on forests) regularly face the threat of biodiversity loss, a factor that may
affect their quality of life due to land degradation and deforestation. Mutangah sees the illegal extraction of
timber, charcoal burning, and land encroachment as the major issues causing environmental degradation
on Indigenous land. Reduction of grazing land due to unplanned settlement and reduction of available water as a result of drying up of
rivers are some of the factors that have threatened the lives of Indigenous people in Kenya. The Indigenous people cannot access
important natural resources they used to enjoy, such as traditional foods and medicines, adequate water
supply, game meat, and honey due to excessive exploitation of the habitats, he says. Still, Indigenous Peoples
remain resilient and are fighting to regain and maintain their cultural lifestyles and ancestral land. According
to Mutangah, the majority of Indigenous people in Kenya are pastoralists who used to own their land communally and have managed to maintain
their designated grazing areas as intact as possible. However, Indigenous
people who live in and around the forests, mainly
as gatherers and hunters, are facing pressure to change their lifestyles. Mutangah says they are in constant discussion with the
government, which sometimes evicts them out of the forest: But the outcry of the affected people and that of the general
public make the government sometimes withdraw or suspend its eviction orders. Both the pastoralists,
who live mainly in dry areas, and the forest dwellers, have a very rich traditional culture of protecting the
environment whereby they coexist with nature with little disturbance. This aspect has made these two
groups of Indigenous people maintain their cultural heritage and the rest of the biodiversity without
harming them to alarming levels. Last year Mutangah began serving on the Permanent Forum as a government-nominated member.
He considers the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples a victory in legislative achievement
for Indigenous Peoples. On the local level, he points to Kenyas new constitution (2010) in which the rights of Indigenous people in Kenya
are enshrined. This is one of the greatest tools Indigenous communities can use to claim and protect their rights, he says, adding that pushing
for writing of the policies regarding the rights and issues affecting the minority and marginalized people (Indigenous people) is currently going on
through the National Gender and Equality Commission of Kenya, which is mandated to look after the welfare of the minority and marginalized
communities in Kenya. Since becoming a member of the Permanent Forum, Mutangah says, we as members of the Forum have discussed many
issues about Indigenous people globally and have passed many resolutions to the United Nations Economic and Social Councilespecially
resolutions that emanated from presentations and discussions of last years conference in April-May 2014. He has also participated in similarly
related local and international conferences and workshops, including the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest
Degradation (UNREDD), held in Arusha, Tanzania, and a workshop in Kenya organized by the National Gender and Equality Commission on
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Marginalized and Minority Communities in Kenya. Looking to the future, Mutangah says, As an environmental
research scientist,
having worked with local communities for a long time integrating science and Indigenous knowledge, I
look forward to those strategies that will improve the environment and at the same time improve the
livelihoods of the local people. My specific goals include understanding species composition, population
dynamics, and protection status of relic natural habitats in areas with heavy human pressure with an
attempt of ecosystem rehabilitation. I am interested in the restoration of native tree species, especially those
with economic importance in the community farmlands for improving environmental quality and community
livelihoods. And I will continue working with local communities in achieving their environmental, social-cultural,
and economic aspirations as well as their human rightsall geared toward efforts of reducing poverty and
promotion of human dignity among Indigenous Peoples.
Biodiversity decline causes extinction

Mmom 8 (Dr. Prince Chinedu, University of Port Harcourt (Nigeria), Rapid Decline in Biodiversity: A
Threat to Survival of Humankind, Earthwork Times, December 2008, http://www.environmental-
expert.com/resultEachArticle.aspx?ci d=0&codi=51543) [ekp] Ellen Patterson, 7/5/17
From the foregoing, it becomes obvious that the survival of Humankind depends on the continuous existence and
conservation of biodiversity. In other words, a threat to biodiversity is a serious threat to the survival of Human
Race. To this end, biological diversity must be treated more seriously as a global resource, to be indexed, used, and
above all, preserved. Three circumstances conspire to give this matter an unprecedented urgency. First, exploding human populations
are degrading the environment at an accelerating rate, especially in tropical countries. Second, science is discovering
new uses for biological diversity in ways that can relieve both human suffering and environmental destruction.
Third, much of the diversity is being irreversibly lost through extinction caused by the destruction of natural
habitats due to development pressure and oil spillage, especially in the Niger Delta. In fact, Loss of biodiversity is
significant in several respects. First, breaking of critical links in the biological chain can disrupt the
functioning of an entire ecosystem and its biogeochemical cycles. This disruption may have significant
effects on larger scale processes. Second, loss of species can have impacts on the organism pool from which
medicines and pharmaceuticals can be derived. Third, loss of species can result in loss of genetic material,
which is needed to replenish the genetic diversity of domesticated plants that are the basis of world
agriculture (Convention on Biological Diversity). Overall, we are locked into a race. We must hurry to acquire the knowledge on which a wise
policy of conservation and development can be based for centuries to come
Preservation of biodiversity not only prevents extinction but prevents economic decline
WRI et al. 92 (The World Resources Institute (WRI) is a global research organization that turns big
ideas into action at the nexus of environment, economic opportunity and human well-being. The World
Conservation Union (IUCN), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), In Consultation With: Food
And Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Education, Scientific And Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) Global Biodiversity Strategy: Guidelines for Action to Save, Study, and Use Earth's Biotic
Wealth Sustainably and Equitably http://pdf.wri.org/globalbiodiversitystrategy_bw.pdf) [ekp] Ellen
Patterson, 7/5/17
All life on Earth is part of one great, interdependent system. It interacts with, and depends on, the non-living components of the planet:
atmosphere, oceans, freshwaters, rocks, and soils. Humanity depends totally on this community of lifethis biosphereof
which we are an integral part. In the remote past, human actions were trivial when set against the dominant processes of nature. No
longer. The human species now influences the fundamental processes of the planet. Ozone depletion,
worldwide pollution, and climate change are testimonies to our power. Economic development is essential
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if the millions of people who live in poverty and endure hunger and hopelessness are to achieve a quality
of life commensurate with the most basic of human rights. Economic progress is urgent if we are not only to
meet the needs of the people alive today but also to give hope to the billions born into the world over the next
century. Better health care, education, employment, and other opportunities for a creative life are also
essential components of a strategy for keeping human numbers within the planet's "carrying capacity ."
Development has to be both people-centered and conservation-based. Unless we protect the structure,
functions, and diversity of the world's natural systemson which our species and all others dependdevelopment will
undermine itself and fail. Unless we use Earth's resources sustainably and prudently, we deny people their
future. Development must not come at the expense of other groups or later generations, nor threaten other species' survival. The conservation
of biodiversity is fundamental to the success of the development process. As this Global Biodiversity Strategy explains, conserving
biodiversity is not just a matter of protecting wildlife in nature reserves. It is also about safeguarding the
natural systems of the Earth that are our life-support systems; purifying the waters; recycling oxygen,
carbon and other essential elements; maintaining the fertility of the soil; providing food from the land, freshwaters,
and seas; yielding medicines; and safeguarding the genetic richness on which we depend in the ceaseless
struggle to improve our crops and livestock. Recent years have seen many major reviews of the world situation
and of human needs. A decade ago, the World Conservation Strategy drew attention to the inseparable link between
conservation and development and emphasized the need for sustainability. The report of the World Commission on
Environment and Development Our Common Futurebrought this necessity home to a worldwide audience, whose governments examined
the need for action in their Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond. Biennial World Resources and Environmental Data reports
and annual UNEP State of the Environment reports have provided authoritativeand often disturbingoverviews of the state of the planet. Most
recently, the successor and complement to the World Conservation Strategy, entitled Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for
Sustainable Living has once more emphasized the need for the world community to change policies,
reduce excessive consumption, conserve the life of the planet, and live within the Earth's carrying
capacity. The three organizations that jointly produced this Global Biodiversity Strategy have also been involved with these other major reports
and reviews. In that process, we have become more and more aware that a report is useful only if it leads to actionmore action and better
action than would have been taken otherwise. That is precisely why this new Strategy is built around 85 specific proposals for action and why it
spells out what should be done in sufficient detail for governments and nongovernmental organizations to take up these proposals and develop
them further. This Strategy appears at a time when representatives of many of the world's governments are negotiating a Convention on
Biological Diversity. We offer this Strategy as a complementary initiative. We see it as a basis for the practical action that should be taken while
the Convention is being ratified and entering into force. And we see it as an outline for the diverse actions that will need to be taken by
governments and non-governmental organizations alongside and in support of the Convention. Our own organizations are already deeply
involved in action to conserve biodiversity. This Strategy is as much for us as for other organizations and governments. We shall be further
developing our own programs in its light. We will be monitoring its implementation and all our own work will reflect the assumption that
successful action to conserve the diversity of life on earth is essential for a sustainable human future. The
Goal of Biodiversity Conservation Successful action to conserve biodiversity must address the full range of causes of its current loss
and embrace the opportunities that genes, species, and ecosystems provide for sustainable development. Because the goal of
biodiversity conservationsupporting sustainable development by protecting and using biological
resources in ways that do not diminish the world's variety of genes and species or destroy important
habitats and ecosystemsis so broad, any biodiversity conservation strategy must also have a broad
scope. But the campaign can be broken down into three basic elements: saving biodiversity, studying it,
and using it sustainably and equitably. Saving biodiversity means taking steps to protect genes, species, habitats, and
ecosystems. The best way to maintain species is to maintain their habitats. Saving biodiversity therefore often involves
efforts to prevent the degradation of key natural ecosystems and to manage and protect them effectively.
But since many of the world's habitats have been modified for such human uses as agriculture, the program
must include measures to maintain diversity on lands and in waters that have already been disturbed. A
third component is restoring lost species to their former habitats and preserving species in genebanks, zoos, botanic
gardens, and other off-site (ex situ) facilities. Studying biodiversity means documenting its composition, distribution,
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structure, and function; understanding the roles and functions of genes, species, and ecosystems; grasping the complex links between
modified and natural systems; and using this understanding to support sustainable development. It also means building awareness of
biodiversity's values, providing opportunities for people to appreciate nature's variety, integrating
biodiversity issues into educational curricula, and ensuring that the public has access to information on
biodiversity, especially on developments that will influence it locally. Using biodiversity sustainably and
equitably means husbanding biological resources so that they last indefinitely, making sure that
biodiversity is used to improve the human condition, and seeing that these resources are shared
equitably. "Use" does not, the best economic use of biodiversity may be to maintain it in its natural state
for its ecological or cultural values, as in the cases of forested watersheds or sacred groves. The biodiversity
conservation agenda must encompass much more than concern for protected areas, threatened species,
zoos or seedbanks, and its constituency must be broad-based. It has to take place within the wider context
of the move toward sustainable living discussed in Our Common Future the report of the World Commission on Environment and
Developmentand detailed in Caring for the Earth, the successor and complement to the World Conservation Strategy. (See Box 6, a summary
of the central proposals in Caring for the Earth.) How can biodiversity conservation be addressed within the context of
sustainable development, as it must to succeed? There must be new contacts and partnerships within
communities, bringing biologists and resource managers together with social scientists, political leaders, businessmen,
religious leaders, farmers, journalists, artists, planners, teachers, and lawyers. There must be dialogue between central and
local governments, industry, and citizen's groups, including non-governmental environment and
development organizations, and women's and indigenous peoples organizations. New mechanisms for
discussion, negotiation, and common action are all essential. Biodiversity conservation must take place at
the individual level, the global level, and in between. Effective conservation efforts begin in the fields,
forests, watersheds, grasslands, coastal zones, and settlements where people live and work. But
complementary governmental efforts are needed to address the many facets of biodiversity conservation
beyond the capacity of local communities, or involving resources that are of national importance. By the
same token, international cooperation is essential, given the global nature of the biodiversity crisis and the
lack of national resources in many countries. Many essential elements of biodiversity conservation require
sustained commitment, but will not show immediate results. Policies and institutions, however,
automatically imply consumption. Recognize the ancestral domains of tribal and indigenous peoples and
support their efforts to maintain traditional practices and adapt them to modern pressures and
conditions. Some 200 million indigenous peoples (4 percent of the world's population) live in and have special
claims to territories that, in many cases, harbor exceptionally high levels of biodiversity. Their claim rests on their long
occupation of a particular place; their cultural, spiritual, and economic ties to the area; and their ability, in most
cases, to manage it sustainably. At the same time, the cultural diversity inherent in the world's indigenous
groups is imperiled by the encroachment of dominant societies and economies. Preserving indigenous
territorial rights thus protects biodiversity and the local culture, including knowledge and resource-
management skills with potentially wide applications, as well as spiritual ties to the environment that could
provide direction for the development of a biodiversity ethos in the wider society. Indigenous peoples do not,
however, have all the answers; nor do they want to be left alone in some kind of "human zoo." Many traditional strategies have
already yielded to contemporary economic and social pressures, and most indigenous communities need
government support and services if they are to develop their territories sustainably. Governments should
legally recognize and demarcate tribal and indigenous territories under national law, help indigenous
communities defend their land against incursions, and permit indigenous peoples to develop
organizations to directly represent them in national and international fora. Governments and
development agencies should alsothrough a sustained dialogue without intermediariesdetermine what kind of
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development indigenous groups want, providing information on options, funding, and support services.
Ultimately, the indigenous peoples themselves should determine their own future.
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Ext: Performance good
Performance is key to transform the soul and heal energy.
Lute Books, 1987, 74-75]
Blocks (Coatticue states) are related to my cultural identity. The painful periods of confusion that I suffer from are symptomatic of a larger
creative process: cultural shifts. The stress of living with cultural ambiguity both compels me to write and blocks
me. It isn't until I'm almost at the end of the blocked state that I remember and recognize it for what it is. As soon as this happens, the
piercing light of awareness melts the block and I accept the deep and the darkness and I hear one of my
voices saying, I am tired of fighting. I surrender. I give up, let go, let the walls fall. On this night of the hearing of
faults, Tlazolteotl, diosa de la cara negra, let fall the cockroaches that live in my hair, the rats that nestle in my skull. Gouge out my lame eyes,
rout my demon from its nocturnal cave. Set torch to the tiger that stalks me. Loosen the
dead faces gnawing my cheekbones.
I am tired of resisting. I surrender. I give up, let go, let the walls fall." And in descending to the depths I realize that
down is up, and I rise up from and into the deep. And once again I recognize that the internal tension of oppositions can
propel (if it doesn't tear apart) the mestiza writer out of the metate where she is being ground with corn
and water, eject her out as nahual, an agent of transformation, able to modify and shape primordial
energy and therefore able to change herself and others into turkey, coyote, tree, or human. I sit here before
my computer, Amiguita, my altar on top of the monitor with the Virgen de Coatlalopeuh candle and copal incense burning. My companion, a
wooden serpent staff with feathers, is to my right while I ponder the ways metaphor and symbol concretize the spirit and etherealize the body.
The Writing is my whole life, it is my obsession. This vampire which is my talent does not suffer other suitors. Daily I court it, my neck to its
teeth. This is the sacrifice that the act of creation requires, a blood sacrifice.
For only through the body, through the pulling
of flesh, can the human soul be transformed. And for images, words, stories to have this transformative
power, they must arise from the human body-flesh and bone-and from the Earth's body-stone, sky,
liquid, soil. This work, these images, piercing tongue or ear lobes with cactus needle, are my offerings,
are my Aztecan blood sacrifices.
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Ext: Hybridity
The confusion of attempting to identify with a clearly cut community can blur the lines
between trying to separate from one identity and trying to break down ones
fragmented cultural identity
Lugones, Maria. "Purity, Impurity, and Separation." Signs 19.2 (1994): 469. JSTOR. Web. 01 Nov. 2016.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3174808?ref=search-gateway:4436ae16c1f750148a44b7bba73a76fc>.
Interrupcion Oh, I would entertain the thought of separation as really clean, the two components untouched by each other, unmixed as they
would be if I could go away with my own people to our land to engage in acts that were cleanly ours! But then I ask myself who my own people
are. When I think of my own people, the only people I can think of as my own are transitionals, iminals,
border-dwellers, "world"-travelers, beings in the middle of either/or. They are all people whose acts and
thoughts curdle separate. So as soon as I entertain the thought, I realize that separation into clean, tidy
things and beings is not possible for me because it would be the death of myself as multiplicitous and a
death of community with my own. I understand my split or fragmented possibilities in horror. I
understand then that whenever I desire separation, I risk survival by confusing split separation with
separation from domination, that is, separation among curdled beings who curdle away their
fragmentation, their subordination. I can appreciate then that the logic of split-separation and the logic
of curdle-separation repel each other, that the curdled do not germinate in split separation.
The dual and separate personality of mexican/americans justifies the denial of the
abstract full citizenship of mexican/americans. To reject this complex we must declare
all communities public space and rid of the tie between monoculture and public space,
thus increasing the hybridization of language and the concept of public space
Lugones, Maria. "Purity, Impurity, and Separation." Signs 19.2 (1994): 469-471. JSTOR. Web. 01 Nov. 2016.
II. Split selves Dual personality What
Frank Chin calls a "dual personality" is the production of a being who is
simultaneously different and the same as postcultural subjects, a split and contradictory being who is a
product of the ethnocentric racist imagination (1991). It is one way of dealing with the anomaly of being
cultured and culturally multiplicitous. The case I know best is rural Chicanos. Chicano is the name for the curdled or
mestizo person. I will name the dual personality mexicanlamerican, with no hyphen in the name, to
signify that if the split were successful there would be no possibility of dwelling or living on the hyphen.11
The rural mexican/american is a product of the anglo imagination, sometimes enacted by persons who are
the targets of ethnocentric racism in an unwillful parody of themselves. The anglo imagines each rural
mexican/american as having a dual personality: the authentic mexican cultural self and the american
self. In this notion, there is no hybrid self. The selves are conceptually different, apparently
contradictory but complementary; one cannot be found without the other. The anglo philosophy is that
mexican/americans should both keep their culture (so as to be different and not full citizens) and assimilate (so as to be
exploitable), a position whose contradictoriness is obvious. But as a split dual personality, the authentic
mexican can assimilate without ceasing to be "cultured," the two selves complementary, the
ornamental nature of the mexican self resolving the contradiction. The mexican/american can assimilate
because the mexican in mexicanlamerican is understood to be a member of a superfluous culture, the
culture an ornament rather than shaping or affecting american reality. A simple but stoic figure who will
defend the land no matter what, the mexican/american will never quite enter the twentieth century and
will not make it in the twenty-first, given that in this scheme for the next century the land will no longer
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be used for farming but for the recreation of the anglo upper class. The authentic mexican is a romantic
figure, an anglo myth, alive in the pages of John Nichols's Milagro Beanfield War (1976): fiercely conservative and
superexploitable. As americans, rural mexican/americans are not first-class citizens because the two sides of
the split cannot be found without each other. The complementarity of the sides becomes clearer: the
assimilated mexican cannot lose culture as ornamental and as a mark of difference. So a
mexican/american is not a postcultural american. The promise of postculturalism is part of what makes
assimilation appealing, since the mexican/american knows that only postculturals are full citizens. But
assimilation does not make the mexican/american postcultural. So making the anglo ideals of progress
and efficiency one's own serves one only to become exploitable but not to achieve full participation in
anglo life. Anglos declare mexican/americans unfit for control and portray them as men and women of
simple minds given to violence, drink, and hard work, accustomed to hardship and poverty, in particular.
The dual personality is part of the mythical portrait of the colonized (Memmi 1967). The split renders the self
into someone unable to be culturally creative in a live culture. Thus "authentic" mexican craft shops
exhibit santos, trasteros, colchas, reredos. Mexican artists cannot depart from the formulaic; they are
supposed to be producing relics for the anglo consumer of the picturesque. The mythical portrait
therefore has acquired a degree of reality that both justifies and obscures anglo dominance. The portrait
does not lack in appeal. It makes one feel proud to be raza because the portrait is heroic. It also makes
one stilted, stiff, a cultural personage not quite sure of oneself, a pose, pure style, not quite at ease in
one's own cultural skin, as if one did not quite know one's own culture, precisely because it is not one's
own but a stereotype and because this authentic culture is not quite a live culture: it is conceived by the
anglo as both static and dying. As Rosaldo says, part of the myth is that "if it moves, it is not cultural" (1989, 212).
This authentic mexican culture bears a relation to traditional culture. It is tradition filtered through anglo
eyes for the purposes of ornamentation. What is anglo, authentically american, is also appealing: it
represents progress, the future, efficiency, material well being. As american, one moves; as mexican,
one is static. As american, one is beyond culture; as mexican, one is culture personified. The culturally
split self is a character for the theatrics of racism. The dual personality concept is a death-loving attempt
to turn raza into beautiful zombies: an attempt to eradicate the possibility of a mestizo/a consciousness,
of our infusing every one of our possibilities with this consciousness and of our moving from traditional
to hybrid ways of creation, including the production of material life. As split, mexican/americans cannot
participate in public life because of their difference, except ornamentally in the dramatization of
equality. If we retreat and accept the "between raza" nonpublic status of our concerns, to be resolved in
the privacy of our communities, we participate in the logic of the split. Our communities are rendered
private space in the public/private distinction. Crossing to the anglo domain only in their terms is not an
option either, as it follows the logic of the split without the terms ever becoming our own, that is the
nature of this-if not of all-assimilation. So, the resistance and rejection of the culturally split self requires
that we declare our communities public space and break the conceptual tie between public space and
monoculturally conceived angloonly concerns: it requires that the language and conceptual framework
of the public become hybrid.
Group differentiated citizenship and a heterogenous public are necessary to avoid the
homogenizing force within a unified public realm of the status quo.
Lugones, Maria. "Purity, Impurity, and Separation." Signs 19.2 (1994): 471-473. JSTOR. Web. 01 Nov. 2016.
Fragmentation In Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a) and "Polity and Difference" (in 1990b), Iris Young
highlights the
concept of a group as central to her understanding of the heterogenous public, a conception of the civic
public that does not ignore heterogeneity through reducing it to a fictitious unity. Instead of a unified
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public realm "in which citizens leave behind their particular group affiliations, histories, and needs to
discuss a general interest or common good," she argues for "a group differentiated citizenship and a
heterogenous public" (1990b, 121). She understands a social group as "a collective of persons differentiated
from at least one other group by cultural forms, practices, or way of life" (1990a, 43). Groups become
differentiated through the encounter and interaction between social collectivities that experience some
differences in their way of life and forms of association as well as through social processes such as the
sexual division of labor. Group members have "an affinity with other persons by which they identify with
one another and by which other people identify them" (1990b, 122). Group identity partly constitutes "a
person's particular sense of history, understanding of social relations and personal possibilities, her or
his mode of reasoning, values and expressive styles" (1990b, 122). Their similar way of life or experience
prompts group members "to associate with each other more than with those not identified with the
group, or in a different way" (1990a, 43). A social group is not something one joins but, rather, "one finds
oneself as a member of a group whose existence and relations one experiences as always already having
been" (1990b, 122). But groups are fluid, "they come into being and may fade away" (1990b, 123). Though there is
a lack of clarity in how Young identifies particular groups, as I understand her, Black Americans, lesbians,
differently abled women, Latinas, and Navajo are examples of social groups. Young thinks that the "inclusion
and participation of everyone in public discussion and decision making requires mechanisms of group
representation" (1990a, 115). The "ideal of the public realm of citizenship as expressing a general will, a
point of view and interesthat citizens have in common and that transcends their differences ..., leads to
pressures for a homogeneous citizenry" (1990a, 116-17). In arguing for group representation as the key to
safeguarding the inclusion and participation of everyone without falling into an egoistic, self-regarding
view of the political process, Young tells us that "it is possible for persons to maintain their group
identity and to be influenced by their perceptions of social events derived from their group specific
experience and at the same time to be public spirited, in the sense of being open to listening to the
claims of others and not being concerned for their own gain alone" (1990a, 120). She sees group representation as
necessary because she thinks differences are irreducible: "People from one perspective can never completely
understand and adopt the point of view of those with other group-based perspectives and histories"
(1990a, 121). Though differences are irreducible, group representation affords a solution to the
homogeneization of the public because "commitment to the need and desire to decide together the
society's policies fosters communication across those differences" (1990a, 121). In her conception of the
heterogenous public, "each of the constituent groups affirms the presence of the others and affirms the
specificity of its experience and perspective on social issues," arriving at "a political program not by
voicing some 'principles of unity' that hide differences but rather by allowing each constituency to
analyze economic and social issues from the perspective of its experience" (1990a, 123). Young sees that each
person has multiple group identifications and that groups are not homogenous but rather that each
group has group differences cutting across it (1990a, 123; 1990b, 48). Social groups "mirror in their own
differentiations many of the other groups in the wider society" (1990a, 48). There are important implications
of group differences within social groups. Significantly, "individual persons, as constituted partly by their
group affinities and relations, cannot be unified, themselves are heterogenous and not necessarily
coherent" (1990a, 48). Young sees a revolution in subjectivity as necessary. "Rather than seeking a wholeness
of the self, we who are the subjects of this plural and complex society should affirm the otherness within
ourselves, acknowledging that as subjects we are heterogenous and multiple in our affiliations and
desires" (1990a, 124). Young thinks the women's movement offer some beginning models for the development
of a heterogenous public and for revolutionizing the subject through the practices it has instituted to
deal with issues arising from group differences within social groups. From the discussion of racial and
ethnic blindness and the importance of attending to group differences among women "emerged
principled efforts to provide autonomously organized forums [for women] who see reason for claiming that
310
they have as a group a distinctiveoice that might be silenced in a general feminist discourse" (1990a, 162).
Those discussions have been joined by structured discussion among differently identifying groups of women" (1990a, 162-63).
311
A2: White Backlash
The only way to avoid exclusion from disregard to cultural borders is realizing and
accepting our own identities without regard for the opinion of white people
Anzaldua 87 [Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera. Pg. 109-110]
I am possessed by a vision: that we Chicanas and Chicanos have taken back or uncovered our true faces, our dignity and self-
I seek an exoneration, a seeing
respect. Its a validation vision. Seeing the Chicana anew in light of her history.
through the fictions of white supremacy, a seeing of ourselves in our true guises and not
as the false racial personality that has been given to us and that we have given to
ourselves. I seek our womans face, our true features, the positive and the negative seen
clearly, free of the tainted biases of male dominance. I seek new images of identity, new
beliefs about ourselves, our humanity and worth no longer in question. Estamos viviendo
en la noche de la Raza, un tiempo cuando el trabajo se hace a lo quieto, en lo oscuro. El
dia cuando aceptamos tal y como somos y para en donde vamos y porqueese dia sera
el dia de la Raza. Yo tengo el conpromiso de expresar mi vision, mi sensibilidad,
mipercepcin de la revalidacion de la gente mexicana, su merito, estimacion, honra,
aprecio, y validez. On December 2nd when my sun goes into my first house, I celebrate el dta de la Chicana y el Chicano.
On that day I clean my altars, light my Coatlalopeuh candle, burn sage and copal, take el bano para espantar basura, sweep my
house. On that day I bare my soul, make myself vulnerable to friends and family by expressing my feelings. On that day I affirm who
we are. On that day I look inside our conflicts and our basic introverted racial temperament. I identify our needs, voice them. I
acknowledge that the self and the race have been wounded. I recognize the need to take care of our personhood, of our racial self.
On that day I gather the splintered and disowned parts of la gente mexicana and hold them in my arms. Todas las partes de nosotros
all you people wound us when you reject us. Rejection strips us of
valen. On that day I say, Yes,
self-worth; our vulnerability exposes us to shame. It is our innate identity you find
wanting. We are ashamed that we need your good opinion, that we need your acceptance.
We can no longer camouflage our needs, can no longer let defenses and fences sprout
around us. We can no longer withdraw. To rage and look upon you with contempt is to
rage and be contemptuous of ourselves. We can no longer blame you, nor disown the
white parts, the male parts, the pathological parts, the queer parts, the vulnerable parts.
Here we are weaponless with open arms, with only our magic. Lets try it our way, the
mestiza way, the Chicana way, the woman way. On that day, I search for our essential dignity as a people, a
people with a sense of purposeto belong and contribute to something greater than our pueblo. On that day I seek to recover and
reshape my spiritual identity. /Animate! Raza, a celebrar el dta de la Chicana
312
Para/Disability Studies
313
Links
314
L: Education
The public educational system is built to protect the ruling class through
deculturization and invoking disability through biological inferiority
Erevelles, Kanga, and Middleton 05 (Nirmala Erevelles and Anne Kanga- The University of
Alabama, Renee Middleton- Auburn University Accessed 7-2-17 How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?
Race, Disability, and Exclusion in Educational Policy
<http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utxa/detail.action?docID=274540.>)
The intimate relationship between race and disability in educational contexts has existed since the
inception of the common school movement. The common school, as originally envisioned by Horace
Mann in the mid-19th century, was to become the vanguard of societal redemption and renewal
(Gerber, 1996, p. 161)an institution that would be able to solve all the social, economic, and political
problems of society by placing all its members in a common context and by teaching them a common
set of political and economic beliefs (Spring, 2001). In a historical context, where the immigration of poor illiterate peasants from
Ireland, southern and eastern Europe, and Asia was at an all-time high, there was an urgency to support educational
institutions that would protect class privilege and, at the same time, win consensus for the democratic
ideals and republican virtues articulated by the Anglo Saxon ruling elite (Sarason & Doris, 1979; Spring, 2001).
Moreover, the critical task of creating homogeneity from among this heterogeneous population required
the deculturalization of these immigrantsa process Spring (2001) described as the strange mixture of democratic
thought and intolerance [that] combines education for democracy and political equality with cultural
genocidethe attempt to destroy [Other] cultures (p. 168). Additionally, it was this same historical context
that witnessed the ruthless colonization of Native American peoples, the annexation of their territories, as well as the
brutal enslavement of Africans by the New Republic. In each of these examples, the violence embedded in these acts of
deculturalization, exploitation, colonialism, and slavery was justified by linking racial and ethnic
difference from Anglo Saxon norms with biological inferioritythereby invoking the ideological
construct of disability.
Schoolings techniques of normalization are predicated on ableist fears of national

degeneration
Baker 2002 (Bernadette, Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison The hunt for
disability: the new eugenics and the normalization of school children)
Thus Lowe argues that these examples plus the many more that he documents provide considerable evidence of the
survival and even popularity of eugenic ideas in the in the closing decades of the 20th century. His historical
documentation indicates an arbitrary distinction between old and new eugenic discourses within a variety of institutions. He suggests
that in education, specifically, there was no privileged immunity to these wider mutations and
recombobulated discourses. Lowe identifies five areas of educational policy and practice that were
deeply influenced by eugenic ideas for much of the 20th century. 1. Testing-the problem of national
degeneration central to eugenics led directly to the search of the means to test the population so as to
ascertain its ability levels. 2. Differential treatment-The explicit and implicit suggestion that at the heart of any understanding of
mankind or womankind lay differences and contrast between races led to the belief that individuals from different ethnic backgrounds should
had differing educational potential and should be treated differently. 3. Quality of Home Life and Mothering- The
concern for national
degeneration led to a questioning of both hereditary influences and environment. The quality of home
life be came a focus and separate schooling tracks for girls and boys were established to have girls
become more efficient mothers. 4. Transmission of Opinions Through Childrens Books and School Texts-To the extent that school
315
books were and remain radicalized they have reflected in part the influence of eugenic education. 5. The Planning of Educational Buildings-
although more oblique, the planning of educational buildings was influenced in part by eugenic thinking insofar as there was support for and
implementation of the view that the future leaders of society should receive their education both at school and in universities whose
architecture was a constant reminder of a Greco-Roman and Gothic racial and intellectual heritage of which they considered themselves a part.
Elementary school teachers try to fore students with disabilities to be normal

Dalkilic and Vadeboncoeur 2016(Maryam Dalkilic and Jennifer Vadeboncoeur, Professors at the
University of British Columiba, Progress Toward Democratic Inclusive Classrooms: A Critical Analysis of
Perspectives on Inclusive Early Childhood Education)
Conformity as agency focused on the importance of conforming to social norms as a display of agency,
especially for children labeled with disabilities, notably through selfawareness of differences, and self-regulation of behaviours
to fit in with peers. Childrens agency did not involve their desire or comfort with self-regulation; rather, their
agency stemmed from taking charge of their own inclusion through understanding and working to
match the ECEs expectations of normal behaviour. Parents and educators also conformed to social expectations by adhering
to contemporary discourses of inclusion, through encouraging childrens self-regulation. Conventional notions of disability, such
as the idea of individual deficit in the medical model of disability, were thus implicitly reproduced in
practices of inclusion. Children were seen as responsible for ending their own marginalization by erasing characteristics associated with
their labels (Slee & Allan, 2001). Arguably, adults conformity to contemporary perspectives on inclusion is complicit in creating educational
settings that are hostile toward diversity. 6 Othering as vulnerability stated expectations for un-inclusive environments: there
was a
circular relationship between isolation faced by children with labels and educators insecurity in working
with these children. Isolation and insecurity were regarded as vulnerabilities that prevented successful
inclusion. Children with differences increased educators insecurity in working with them; in turn, insecure
educators were unable to reduce childrens isolation and othering. Insecure educators were tempted to
place the blame on children for being different from their peers. The root of educators insecurity can be linked to the
narrative of normal development (Walkerdine, 1984). Educators are conditioned to expect certain behaviours and characteristics as normal, at
the expense of children who do not display these traits. The narrative of normal development has designated binary categories of children as
being typical or atypical, where the latter category is seen as an active threat to homogenous and inclusive classrooms. Confronted with
so-called atypical children, educators assume it should be childrens responsibility to become normal.
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L: Cartesian Dualism
The AFFs politics relies on a Cartesian dualism that separates the mind from the body
and results in internalized hatred
Campbell 08, Fiona Campbell, Dr Fiona Kumari Campbell is the Convenor of the Disability Studies
Program in the School of Human Services at Griffith University and Director of the Social Justice Stream
of the Socio-Legal Research Centre. She has been involved in disability activism for 25 years and
currently specialises in research on the deployment of disability in law and new technologies, Exploring
Internalized Ableism Using Critical Race Theory, 2008
Internalized ableism means that to assimilate into the norm the referentially disabled individual is
required to embrace, indeed to assume an identity other than ones own and this subject is repeatedly
reminded by epistemological formations and individuals with hegemonic subjectifications of their
provisional and (real) identity. I am not implying that subjects have a true or real essence. Indeed, the subjects formation is in a
constant state of fluidity, multiplicity and (re)formation. However, disabled people often feel compelled to fabricate who
they are to adopt postures and comportments that are additional to self. The formation of internalized ableism
cannot be simply deduced by assessing the responses of individuals to Althussers famous interpolative hailing Hey you, there (Althusser &
Balibar, 1979). Whilst a subject may respond to Hey you there, crip! it is nave to assume that an affirmative response to this hailing
repressively inaugurates negative disabled subjectification. In fact, the adoption of more positive or oppositional ontologies of disability by the
subject in question may be unexpectedly enabling. As Susan Park (2000: 91) argues what is at stake here is not so much the accuracy behind
the hailing privilege, but the power of the hailing itself to instantly determine (or elide) that thing it is naming. Nonetheless, censure and the
cancellation of the legitimacy of oppositional subjectivities remains common place as Cherney reminds us with respect to Deaf culture: If
abnormal [sic] bodies must be fixed to fit within dominant cultural views of appropriateness then the Deaf celebration of their differences must
be read as an illegitimate model of advocacy. (Cherney, 1999, p. 33). Foucaults (1976; 1980) theorization of power as productive may provide
some offerings from which to build a conversation about internalized ableism. I am not so much interested in the external effects of that
power, but for the moment wish to concentrate on what Judith Butler aptly refers to as the psychic life of power. She describes this
dimension: an account of subjection, it seems, must be traced in the turns of psychic life. More
specifically, it must be traced in the peculiar turning of a subject against itself that takes place in acts of
self-reproach, conscience, and melancholia that work in tandem with processes of social regulation
(Butler, 1997b, p.19). In other words, the processes of subject formation cannot be separated from the subject
him/herself who is brought into being though those very subjectifying processes. The consequences of
taking into oneself negative subjectivities not only regulate and continually form identity (the disabled
citizen) but can transcend and surpass the strictures of ableist authorizations. Judith Butler describes this process
of the carrying of a mnemic trace One need only consider the way in which the history of having been called an
injurious name is embodied, how the words enter the limbs, craft the gesture, bend the spine how
these slurs accumulate over time, dissimulating their history, taking on the semblance of the natural,
configuring and restricting the doxa that counts as reality. (Butler, 1997b, p. 159) The work of Williams and Williams-
Morris (2000) links racism experienced by African Americans to the effects of hurtful words and negative cultural symbols on mental health,
especially when marginalized groups embrace negative societal beliefs about themselves. They cite an international study by Fischer et al
(1996) which inter alia links poor academic performance with poor social status. Although using different disciplinary language Wolfensberger
(1972) in his seven core themes of SRV, identified role circularity as a significant obstacle to be overcome by disabled people wanting socially
valued roles. Philosopher Linda Purdy contends it is important to resist conflating disability with the
disabled person. She writes My disability is not me, no matter how much it may affect my choices. With
this point firmly in mind, it should be possible mentally to separate my existences from the existence of
my disability. (Purdy, 1996, p. 68). The problem with Purdys conclusion is that it is psychically untenable, not
only because it is posited around a type of Cartesian dualism that simply separates being-ness from
embodiment, but also because this kind of reasoning disregards the dynamics of subjectivity formation
to which Butler (1997a; 1997b) has referred. Whilst the outputs of subjectivity are variable the experience
317
of impairment within an ableist context can and does effect formation of self in other words disability
is me, but that me does not need to be enfleshed with negative ontologies of subjectivity. Purdys bodily
detachment appears locked into a loop that is filled with internalized ableism, a state with negative
views of impairment, from which the only escape is disembodiment; the penalty of denial is a flight from
her body. This finds agreement in the reasoning of Jean Baudrillard (1983) who posits that it is the simulation, the appearance
(representation) that matters. The subject simulates what it is to be disabled and by inference abled and
whilst morphing ableist imperatives, in effect performs a new hyper reality of be-ing disabled. By
unwittingly performing ableism disabled people become complicit in their own demise reinforcing
impairment as an outlaw ontology.
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L: Critical Race Theory
Their epistemology is flawed- critical race theory precludes the use of a social model
of disability because of a rigid reliance on a biological model of disability; the impact is
the exclusion of the disabled body
As mentioned in the introduction, this

analysis that maps a critical relationship between race and disability is
potentially controversial because both these categories of social difference have proved to be uneasy
bedfellows, especially in educational contexts. Despite the critical intervention of Disability Studies in
educational and other contexts, disability continues to be theorized via a deficit model that associates
disability with deviance and disorder. This is especially true with regard to cognitive/learning disabilities
because, in educational contexts, the social construct of intelligence is valorized more than anything
else. It is this association of disability with deviance and the lack of intelligence that has caused
several race scholars to distance themselves from any critical analysis of the category of disability as is
evidenced in the critiques leveled against Herrnstein and Murrays (1994) controversial book, The Bell
Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. For example, in response to this text, distinguished intellectuals like Stephen
J. Gould (1995), Henry Louis Gates (1995), Howard Gardner (1995), and Jacqueline Jones (1995), among others, have argued against making any linkages between
disability and race because such linkages erroneously demonstrate the collective stupidity of the group (Jones, 1995, p. 81; italics added). Stated simply,
critical race theorists have actively sought to distance race from any associations with disability because
they have recognized that this association has been used to justify the brutality of slavery, colonialism,
neocolonialism, and the continued exploitation of people of color (Erevelles, 2000; Gould, 1981; Sarason & Doris, 1979).
Interestingly enough, some scholars in the area of special education have also sought to distance
themselves from analyses that link race and disability together. For example, one such scholar, Kauffman (1989), critiqued
proponents of the Regular Education Initiative (REI) for comparing special education with racial discrimination. Kauffman claimed that equating race with disability,
when discussing equal educational opportunity, is demeaning to racial groups experiencing discrimination because their differences (i.e., differences in skin color)
are trivial compared with those of students with disabilities who need complex accommodations to meet their educational needs. Accusing REI supporters of
making emotional claims that the segregation of students with disabilities is similar to apartheid, Kauffman distinguished between the civil rights claims of racial and
ethnic minorities and those of students with disabilities. According to Kauffman, although racial and ethnic minorities have argued for equal access to educational
opportunity regardless of their differences, people with disabilities have described equal opportunity as the access to a differentiated education designed
specifically to meet their unique needs. In making these claims, Kauffman sought to demonstrate that, whereas race (i.e., skin
color) is irrelevant to teaching and learning outcomes, disability is not, and so any relationship between
these two categories is problematic to say the least. In this chapter, we critique both these positions on the
grounds that they draw on narrow definitions of race and disability that are rooted in biological
determinism. For example, in the first position, race theorists have invoked the biological definition of
disability as an immutable and pathological abnormality rooted in the the medical language of
symptoms and diagnostic categories (Linton, 1998, p. 8). By doing this, they have ignored critical theoretical
interventions from scholars in the area of Disability Studies, who have argued for a social model of
disability (Linton, 1998; Oliver, 1990; Thomson, 1997). The social model offers a sociopolitical analysis that describes disability as an ideological construction
used to justify not only the oppressive binary cultural constructions of normal/ pathological, autonomous/dependent, and competent citizen/ ward of the state, but
also the social and racial divisions of labor (Erevelles, 2000; Linton, 1998; Russell, 1998). In other words, Disability
Studies scholars have
described disability as a socially constructed category that has historical, cultural, political, and
economic implications for social life. In a similar fashion, Kauffman showed his commitment to biological
determinism when he described race solely in terms of skin color. This narrow definition of race as
319
wholly determined by physical characteristics has been rejected by scholars in the area of critical race
theory. Arguing for the significance of race in almost all aspects of American life, novelist Toni Morrison pointed out that, Race has become
metaphoricala way of referring to and disguising forces, events, classes, and expressions of social
decay and economic divisions far more threatening to the body politic than biological race ever was
(cited in Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 49). Expanding on this definition, critical race theorist Lopez (2000) argued that race is neither an essence
nor an illusion, but rather an on-going contradictory, self-reinforcing plastic process subject to the
macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro-effects of daily decisions (p. 165).
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L: Agamben
Agambens state of exception resecures political authority but this same idea creates
the state as opposed to a disabled body excepted from participation in the work of
the state
Baker 13 [Bernadette M. Baker, Curriculum and Instruction Professor @ University of Wisconsin-
Madison, research areas of philosophy, history, and post-foundationalist curriculum studies; William
James, Sciences of Mind, and Anti-Imperial Discourse pg 233; Cambridge University Press; 09/30/2013;
accessed 07/30/2013; Google Books.]
Two Innovations: Distributive Causality and the Bottom-line Lunatic The problems that the state of exception poses for
constitutional law in Agambens account can only arise as such under the belief that one is operating
within a humanist notion of the rational decision-making and volitional perceiver. What James elaborates in the
Lowell lectures goes far beyond that, and then returns to it, and what nonetheless indirectly results is a rationale for
political philosophy and expectation for governance that maintains the aporia at the heart of democratic
traditions. This occurs in the very midst of - even via - the sensitivity to or empathy for the suffering of the
insane and the talents of the psychic. Taylors cautious insights regarding the bigger picture of disciplinary formations, the
Iamesian oeuvre, and the relative bypassing of some of James work since its publication can be coupled, then,
to how internalist debates within emergent scientific disciplines had implication for strategies of
nation- building, social diagnosis, and criticism. If, as Agamben suggests, claiming a state of exception has
become a way of resecuring and enlargening political authority in contemporary Western democracies and is
in turn transforming the very nature of governance into more totalitarian forms, then it proves interesting
to examine what happens when the state is considered mental rather than geopolitical and the exceptionalism
could disqualify one from actively participating in any form of political authority, totalitarian or otherwise."5 As
alluded to earlier, the subject at the heart of political philosophies such as Agambens usually carries ableist
and adultist presumptions indicative of a historically and implicitly masculinized public sphere, with
contemporary borders between nations, races, religions, or languages operating as the context, nuancing the
frame of reference - for example, the differences between German and Italian constitutions. Through James Exceptional Mental States, the
dependencies of discourse that inextricably intertwine political philosophys obsession with governance
and the requirement for the normal subject become more thoroughly exposed. At the same time, the
philosophical stakes in the trajectories that Taylor fruitfully lays out become understandable in regard, not to the political authority
of elected officials, but the condition of being able to be worked upon on earth. As noted earlier, James
introduction of Myers version of the subliminal consciousness was his reference to the unconscious and a crucial turn in the objectification of
mind - he proffered it as the most likely explanation for multiplicity - an explanation that if fully indebted to Myers had to rely on apparently
mystical themes that loosely resonated both with reincarnation theses and/or with spiritism. As Taylor notes, James in the end could not(page
ends)
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L: Sex Ed (SP2)
Canada proves that sex education is designed to outline who and what LGBTQ+ and
disabled people need to be. Comprehensive sex education contends itself to be
diverse and inclusive, but mimics the narrowed view of neoliberal mentality and
reinforces violence against disabled people in the name of normal
McMinn 17 (TL McMinn thesis for Master of Arts Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto Sex Education as Neoliberal Inclusion:
Hetero-cis-ableism in Ontarios 2015 Health and Physical Education Curriculum
<http://search.proquest.com/docview/1884603730?pq-origsite=gscholar>)
The following research question informed this study: how does hetero-cis-ableism operate in the Ontario H&PE
curriculum to construct idealised versions of gender and sexual difference while erasing those that are
less valuable? The analysis of this research question resulted in the acquisition several significant passages that aided in the creation of
seven categories (example, special education/accommodations, sensitivity and controversy, diversity and difference, furthering a cause,
inclusion, identity and self-concept) that fit within the five original themes (disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression,
mental health). Discourse Analysis The following discourse analysis, split into the seven categorical sections, contains the passages that I felt
best reflected my research question. (bad) Example. The (bad) Example category was only seen within the disability and mental health themes
and was primarily found within the personal safety and injury prevention and substance use, addictions, and related behaviours sections. The
category was used in conjunction with human development and sexual health in that many sexual health discussions surround the use of
contraception and abstinence with the clear point of avoiding or minimising the risk of illness and pregnancy in relation to sexual activity. In this
instance to be an example, and almost always a bad example, is in direct connection to consequence(s) for bad or poor behaviour and/or
actions of an individual. Being safe and protecting yourself is a good thing; it is a natural instinct and it makes sense to have developments and
lessons on the subject within health curricula. However, the rhetoric of doing bad things
(smoking/drugs/drinking/sex/other risky behaviour) will lead to illness and injury and isnt that
something you should avoid? is in direct contrast with language that consists of and insists on the
inclusion and integration of disabled children (Ontario's Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 60). The curriculum
content that focuses solely on consequences of poor life choices or acting without thinking (all of which
could leave the individual disabled, ill, or dead) counteract the positive narrative curriculum designers are trying to
instil. This is not suggesting that we cease to warn children of the dangers and effects of smoking, drugs,
or alcohol, or that wearing protective equipment, whether you are riding a bike or considering having
sex, isnt important. It is; but what is just as important is how and why we say it. Figure 1: Grade 8 example of
dangerous behaviours p.215 of the 2015 Ontario Grade 1-8 Health and Physical Education Curriculum Figure 1, while accurate (in terms of a
cause and effect rationality), and to the point, leaves a bad taste in my mouth regarding the negativity that is associated with the onset or
potentiality of disability. While these are severe and dangerous situations that are being discussed, there is nothing following that states that
having or acquiring a disability is not the death of life; the prompt simply ends with may even lead to death (see Figure 1). How these types of
situations are handled is not surprising, however, as Western society has been trained to look at difference with
scrutiny and apprehension; difference in this case would be the acquisition of a spinal cord or heard injury. I acknowledge that these
negative overtones were created to cause fear and to instil a disturbing and even nagging narrative in the students mind that would, hopefully,
cause them to think twice before entering potentially dangerous situations, however,
it does not consider the effect this
narrative has on life with disability or the meaning of it as a whole and creates an attitude that disability
is only created through thoughtlessness. As disability is already looked at as a negative and is always
already linked to death, this message of doom reinforces the adage better dead than disabled and
may present those already living with disabilities, regardless of how it was acquired, with a sense of
helplessness and hopelessness in regards to their own futurity and longevity (Schaller, 2008; Shildrick, Death,
debility and disability, 2015).This works with instances of mental health as well as, and although mental health
awareness is a key component of the 2015 H&PE curricula, the messages are never about mental illness
(or disability) as a part of life, only as something that needs to be taken care of or as something that needs
322
to be prevented. Although the above figure does not strictly relate to mental health, it does suggest that possible situations that may
lead to injury or death could be related to mental, physical, emotional, or social harm resulting from mental health and/or addition
problems and furthers this when it asks to describe behaviours that can help to reduce risk and three of the last examples are using self-
acceptance, coping, and help-seeking skills (see Figure 1) suggests that possible reasonings for unsafe behaviours may be due to mental health
concerns. It does not, however, pursue this any further within the teacher prompt or student response. The
concern for mental
health and mental health awareness is apparent throughout the beginning of both 2015 H&PE curricula,
however, the lack of attention throughout the documents, especially that dedicated to primary and
middle grades, suggests that the conversations are viewed as unnecessary, overwrought, and just plain
uncomfortable to have.
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L: Health discourse
The Affirmatives quest for sexual health is undergirded by ableism which produces
dichotomies between the able-body and those deemed unfit
Goodley, Dan, 2012 (PhD, BSc, professorial visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales School of
Social Sciences, visiting scholar at the University of Iceland Centre for Disability studies, Editorial
advisory board member for NASEN journals, editorial board member for the Disability and society,
Educational Action Research, Scandinavian journal of Disability study, Ethnographica Journal of Culture
and Disability, The Journal of Inclusive Practice in Further and Higher Education, Disability and the Global
South, ESRC Peer Review College member, Illustrator for viewpoint: The learning disability magazine
and a columnist for Community living magazine.)
In chapter 13, Fiona Kumari Campbell stalks ableism through an analysis of the way in which dis/abled bodies and minds their subjectivities
are culturally and often quite latterly fused together. She defines ableism
as a network of beliefs, processes and practices
that produce a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect
species- typical and therefore essential and fully human. Disability then is cast as a subjectively
diminished state of being human. Ableism denotes the meaning of a health body, a normal
mind, how quickly we should think and the kinds of emotions that are okay to express. She
notes that we all live and breathe ableist logic, our bodies and minds daily become aesthetic
sculptures for the projection of how we wish to be known un our attempt to exercise
competency, sexiness, wholeness and an atomistic existence. It is harder to find the language and space to
examine the implications of a failure to meet the standard or any ambivalence we might have about the ground of the perfectibility project.
First, she outlines an approach to expressing ableism (its theoretical feature and character), and second, provides an example of how ableism
works globally in the knowledge production of disability. Finally, she
discusses the possibility of disabled people turning
their back on emulating abledness as a strategy for ontological and theoretical disengagement.
The quest for health is a form of moral judgement which cuts us off from our own
vulnerability
Goodley, Dan, 2012 (PhD, BSc, professorial visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales School of Social Sciences, visiting scholar at the University of Iceland Centre for Disability studies, Editorial
advisory board member for NASEN journals, editorial board member for the Disability and society, Educational Action Research, Scandinavian journal of Disability study, Ethnographica Journal of Culture and Disability, The Journal
of Inclusive Practice in Further and Higher Education, Disability and the Global South, ESRC Peer Review College member, Illustrator for viewpoint: The learning disability magazine and a columnist for Community living magazine.)
The critique of modernity that we find in the nineteenth century philosophy chapters such as Soren Kierkgarrd and especially Nietzsche pivots
on the physiological view that modern persons are in denial when it comes to facing up to their own
vulnerability. We fail to recognize, let along celebrate pain, loss and death. In these powerful critiques of modernity, we hear tell of a
culture that is being emptied of passion, on the other hand, and the stoked-up with objectivity and scientific essentialism on the other. The
blight of objectivity is such that it empties lives of meaning and purpose and replaces the candor that honest reflexivity inspires with denial and
fear, particularly in relation to our carnal frailties. This
outline of Nietzsches ideas might double as a kritiq of
medicine from a disability perspective, and it takes our thinking down a track that owes nothing to a
fixed view of the moral superiority of the healthy, wholesome subject. For Nietzsche it is difficult to love life if we
dont cherish death to celebrate health if we live in constant fear of infirmity. If we turn these intrinsic carnal dimensions of living and being
into ontological negativism of our own lives, then we will not want others to remind us of what we; might become. This attitude of modernity
and the moderns is the attitude of the we described in the preceding sentences and it is also the
perspective of normality and
non-disablement as it cheats itself out of the very qualities that health humanity deal with that it is
and must be (Smith 2005: 564) argues that Nietzsches yes to life empowers a disabled persons
capacity to live life to the full, unrestricted by norms and standards defined and imposed by non-
disabled people.
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L: Hegemony and Economy
Nationalist strategies of hegemony and economics are prefigured by ableist
epistemological reduction of the rest of the world.
Soldatic and Biyanwila 2006 [Karen and Janaka Graduate School of Education; Organisational and
Labour Studies;University of Western Australia, disability and Development: A Critical Southern
Standpointon Able-Bodied Masculinity, T ASA Conference 2006, University of Western Australia &
Murdoch University, 4-7 December 2006 TASA 2006 Conference Proceedings
Authoritarian ethno-nationalism, nature and able-bodied patriarchy While

strengthening conditions for global capital to
invest and operate, the states attempts to gain legitimacy is increasingly based on patriarchal ethno-
nationalist strategies. In contrast to previous closed economy projects, this nationalist development discourse is committed to market-
driven politics. While there are different versions of this nationalist project, they are grounded in able-
bodied patriarchal constructions of nationhood where the nation is represented as masculine reason. This depiction of the 8
nation-state as masculine reason excludes women from the social and ascribes them to nature. In effect, women are engaged in reproducing
the nation, biologically, culturallyas well as symbolically (Yuval-Davis, 1997). By casting the Tsunami as an irrational actof nature, humanity is
masculinised while nature is feminised. The masculinity implied in patriarchal ethno-nationalist strategies is an
able-bodied masculinity. The emphasis on ability relates to how culturally mediated economic
activities, discipline, control, subjugate and reproduce bodies as well as embodiment. The body is
central to the self as a project as well as social status (Turner, 2001). In effect, the body is shaped by both
cultural and material practices. The dominant forms of masculinity articulated in nationalist projects
are an able-bodied masculinity, which is based on evading the shared frailty of human beings and the
vulnerability as social beings(Turner. 2001). While the body is inescapable in the construction of masculinity, the bodily
performance that valorises ability is also related to the de-valuation of the disabled body (Connell, 1995: 56). The able-bodied
masculinity of ethno-nationalist projects overlaps with fascist tendencies which Connell describes as a
naked assertion of male supremacy (1995: 193). The fascist image of masculinity combines disparate dispositions of
unrestrained violence of frontline soldiers, rationality (bureaucratic institutionalisation of violence) and ironically, irrationality too (thinking
with the blood,the triumph of the will) (Connell, 1995:193). In
turn, elements of dominance as well astechnical
expertise are core features of able-bodied masculinity that subordinate disabledbodies and
women.The Southern disabled stand point suggested in this paper emerges from a culturalcritique within the South itself. The
dominant representation of nation in terms of able-bodied ethno-nationalist patriarchy is at the heart
of this critique. The feminisation of both nation and nature by able-bodied ethno-nationalist patriarchy deploys notions of tradition and
motherland with strategic intent. With women narrowed to their maternal and nurturing function, this representation of women as biological
reproducers of the nation is central for the domestication of women while restricting their status as citizens.While relegating women and
disabled bodies into the private sphere of the household(Das and Addlakha, 2001; Mohanty, 2002) the patriarchal ethno-nationalist projects
maintain a masculinised public sphere. Just as a womans status as citizen within the 9 public domain is conditioned by the active role of the
state constructing relations in the private domain, of marriage and the family (Yuval-Davis, 1997), the citizenship status of disabled bodies are
also shaped by similar interventions (Meekosha and Dowse, 1997).This is even more so for women with disabilities, who are regarded as unfit
to reproduce the nation (Das and Addlakha, 2001). In responding to the Tsunami, the humanity of the imperial state merged with able-bodied
patriarchal state strategies to separate and evade the inhumanity of poverty and war that continue to reproduce disabling structures and
cultures in the South. By contesting the privileged/hegemonic position of theNorthern notions of development, disability, and disasters, the
Southern disabledstandpoint is aimed at deepening politics of impairment. Conclusion The delineation of disability as natural and disability
caused by war and poverty as cultural is a specific value-laden framework. The separation of natural and human disasters obscures their
shared properties and how culture and history mediates indefining them. While the tsunami had a natural dimension as an ecological event,
the consequences of that event were shaped by pre-existing culturally mediated material practices. By the time the Tsunami arrived in Sri Lanka
and Aceh, the Southern body had already endured extensive destruction and violence under ethno-nationalist state strategies and Northern
notions of development. Despite the billion dollar pledges the response of rich Northern nation states, impairments caused by war and
poverty endure. Thus, the Tsunami can be deployed as a material metaphor to examine the Southern disabled body, where those freaks of
nature provide opportunities for western scientific technocratic expertise and imperial benevolence.
For politics of impairment,
disabling barriers generated by war and poverty in the South are inseparable from market-driven
325
development and global military networks. With the majority of people with disabilities located in the South or the majority
world, the ongoing articulation of North-South relations is significant for elaborating a critical Southern standpoint on able-bodied masculinity.
326
L: competitiveness/productivity/efficiency
The focus on competitiveness, productivity, and efficiency is an ableist epistemology
that blindly reproduces the favoring of the abled body over the disabled.
Wolbring 2012 [Gregor, assistant professor, Dept of Community Health Sciences, Program in Community
Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, University of Calgary, University of Calgary, ABLEISM, DISABILITY
STUDIES AND THE ACADEMY, http://fedcan.ca/fr/blog/ableism-disability-studies-and-academy ]
As much as science and technology advances enable a beyond species-typical ableism, how we judge
and deal with abilities and what abilities we cherish influence the direction and governance of science
and technology processes, products and research and development. The increasing ability of changing,
improving, modifying, enhancing the human body and other biological organisms including animals and
microbes in terms of their abilities beyond their species-typical boundaries and the starting ability to
synthesis, to generate, to design new genomes, new species from scratch (synthetic biology) leads to a
changed understanding of oneself, ones body, and ones relationship with others of ones species,
other species and ones environment. Ableism is, however, not just linked to body abilities. The report Converging Technologies
for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science used the term productivity
over 60 times and the term efficiency 54 times to sell their story. Productivity and efficiency are two abilities themselves
so the report serves to highlight how science and technology will enable the ability to be productive and the ability to be efficient. These
terms productivity and efficiency are also closely linked to the term competitiveness, another
cherished ability. Indeed one of the introductory lectures at the workshop that was the basis for the report was entitled Converging
technologies and competitiveness by the Honourable Phillip J. Bond, a former United States Undersecretary for Technology in the Department
of Commerce. And this is still not the end of ableism.
327
L: economic efficiency
Economic efficiency is a tool used to strip disabled people of access to resources.
Garland-Thompson 2005 (Rosemarie Garland-Thompson is is Professor of Women's, Gender, and
Sexuality Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, Winter 2005, Feminist Disability Studies,
Signs, Volume 30, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/423352, accessed 6/29/12, JK)
Susan Wendells 1996 study, The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reections on Disability, uses the careful reasoning of philosophical
discourse to lay out a constructivist logic of disability. She addresses particularly well the denition of disability and the question of who counts
as disabled. Feminist theoretical concepts such as standpoint epistemology, difference, othering, caring, body theory, and the politics of
language provide Wendell with a set of concepts familiar to feminists, which she productively applies to a disability analysis. The
Rejected
Body targets adeptly the ideological concept of normalcy crucial to the construction of disabled
identity. Normal is the category obscured by its own privilegeits normalcythat casts people with
disabilities into pathologized others. Normal grounds the oppressive system of representation that
makes cripples and freaks from the raw material of human variation. Marta Russells 1998 book, Beyond Ramps:
Disability at the End of the Social Contract, is a call to activism that presents Americas betrayal of disabled people as
emblematic of how the politics and policies of late capitalism have ravaged the democratic project.
While carefully explicating the particular sociopolitical issues that involve disability, Russell argues persuasively that the failureindeed the
refusalof our government to honor the American social contract with regard to disabled people indicates the failure of the democratic ideal
on which this country was founded. Her
economic and political critique of an ethos of economic efciency used
to strip disabled people of access to resources and privilege echoes feminist explications of gender
inequities embedded in American liberal ideologies.
328
L: Capitalism/Jobs
In the capitalist workplace, the impaired are undervalued because they cannot
compete in the labor markets
Robert 2003. Pamela M. Robert, Department of Sociology, Roosevelt University 2003 Disability
Oppression in the Contemporary U. S. Capitalist Workplace KL
This study of the ADAs implementation phase makes clear that employees with disabilities often are
hired and retained less for their value as producers than for their value as symbols. As producers, they
typically are undervalued; as symbols, they provide employers with the appearance of responsiveness
to disability advocates, adherence to stated policies, or compliance with laws. Contemporary work
organizations, as Acker (1990) famously underscored, commonly operate with a notion of an ideal employee. Sometimes explicitly but more
often implicitly, this ideal is a white, able-bodied male, against which non-whites, women, and people with disabilities are invidiously
compared. Individuals who do not fit the ideal get hired, but disproportionately in lower-level jobs and
often astokens. The concentration of employees with disabilities at the bottom of the occupational structure is consistently revealed by
employment data, and tokenism seems to account in many cases for their hiring and retention. Capital not only often undervalues the labor of
employees with disabilities, but commonly treats such employees as an unreasonable drain on revenues. This can be seen most clearly in the
area of accommodations. Capital, which of course admits no universal right to employment, admits no necessity to design and organize
production processes to accommodate all possible employees, including employees with disabilities. In this context, accommodations, even the
reasonable accommodations required under the ADA, are easily viewed not as necessary measures for realizing the potential of the labor
force but as unnecessary costs. As a colleague and I have reported elsewhere (Harlan and Robert, 1998), employers use a variety of subterfuges
to prevent employees with disabilities from requesting accommodations. Ultimately, the least likely type of accommodation to be granted is
any that might be perceived by able-bodied employees as equally useful to them. Thus, requests for more flexible work schedules or relief from
mandatory overtime routinely get denied. Granting such requests could easily snowball into numerous requests from able- bodied employees
for comparable accommodations. More
fundamentally, granting such requests would threaten to expose the
contingent character of the workplace routines that capital imposes on its employees. Ultimately,
granting such requests could potentially lay bare the arbitrary nature of capitalist authority. It is thus
no wonder that, as one employee with a disability explained, They [employers] dont want to set a
precedent (42). In the capitalist context of competitive labor markets and job hierarchies, of course,
even undervalued and token employees can be perceived as threatening by co-workers and
supervisors. If, as is known, white males can feel threatened by the prospect of minorities or women
performing comparable or higher-level jobs, consider how easy it is for able-bodied employees to feel
threatened by the prospect of employees with disabilities doing comparable work. Some alienation
and harassment of employees with disabilities doubtless stems from workplace enactment of wider
cultural patterns, but much is due to the competitive nature of the capitalist workplace itself.
Alienating and harassing employees with disabilities is a way of effectively sidelining them in the
competitive struggle.
329
L: Animal Rights
By talking about metal abilities, animal rights activists are putting the value of
disabled peoples lives in question
Taylor 17 (Sunaura, Beasts of Burden)
When animal advocates describe animals as voiceless, even when it is meant simply as a metaphor, it
gives power to those who want to view animals as mindless objects. In the long run, activists will help
animals more if we treat them as active participants in their own liberationas the expressive subjects
animal advocates know them to beremembering that resistance takes many forms, some of which may
be hard to recognize from an able-bodied human perspective. Ableism manifests itself within animal
advocacy movements in a more egregious way as well. One of the most prevalent lines of argument in defense of animal
rights is structured around ableist assumptions about cognitive capacity, coupled with a rhetorical instrumentalization of disabled people. In
2010 autistic animal activist Daniel Salomon published an article in the Journal for Critical Animal Studies
called From Marginal Cases to Linked Oppressions that drew attention to the problem. In it Salomon
critiques animal-rights discourse for its neurotypical bias, which not only perpetuates ableism within
animal-rights theory but also, he argues, actually reinforces speciesism. Although one would assume
that theories of animal rights would oppose speciesism, one of the most prevalent animal-rights
arguments privileges rational thought, which invariably places humans in a hierarchy above nonhumans.
As Salomon puts it, The framing of animal ethics needs to be critiqued; a neurotypical bias remains implicit in the way animal ethics is typically
framed, which keeps intact and perpetuates speciesism. The argument Salomon is critiquing is known in philosophy as the argument from
marginal cases.
The theory attempts to defend the rights of animals by comparing their mental capacities to
those of certain humans. The comparison is problematic both for humans and for animals, flattening
varied communities into stereotypes and saying nothing of their differences. It also implicitly ends up
privileging capacities that philosophers have long held to be morally relevant (such as rationality)
capacities that in the Western tradition of moral philosophy and legal theory are central to deciding who
is a person, someone who has rights or is the subject of ethical duties and obligations. Although this
line of argument has deep historic roots, it was made popular by philosopher Peter Singer in the 1970s
and remains a common tactic used by those who are arguing for animal rights. The argument suggests that there
is no morally relevant ability that all animals dont have but all humans do. Not all animals have language for instance, but not all humans do
either. At its most basic, this
argument does not sound particularly problematic; it is a version of the argument
I make. It can even be understood as anti-ableist, because it emphasizes that there is no one specific
ability shared by all humans that gives us value. Nonetheless, the danger of the argument is evident in
the very act of deciding which abilities are morally relevant. Morally relevant abilities are those
associated with the capacity to reason: self-awareness, language, the ability to imagine a future, and the
ability to comprehend death. When the moral relevance of these abilities is taken for granted and left
unchallenged, the argument upholds reason as the yardstick of value, implicitly assuming that it is
possible to identify beings who are obviously morally valuablerational human beings with morally
relevant abilities. The distinction puts the moral relevance of groups who lackor are assumed to lackthese specific privileged abilities
into question. Those who use the theory to defend animal rights argue that there will always be some humans (intellectually disabled
individuals, infants, the comatose, and elderly people with dementia the marginal cases) who dont have certain morally relevant abilities.
They say that if we agree that these humans have moral status even though they lack important capacities, then there is no reason why
nonhuman animals who have similar capacities to these people should not be granted moral status as well. Although
many people
use this argument to show that both disabled individuals and animals have moral value and should be
granted certain protections, invariably intellectually disabled individuals, infants, the comatose, and
elderly people with dementia become lumped together as a single groupthe marginal caseswhose
330
lack of abilities is compared to that of nonhuman animals, who are also often and troublingly flattened
into a single group. The worth of these groups is then put up for debate. For animals, who are nearly always written out of the debate
altogether, this move has some benefits (at least they are being considered), but for intellectually disabled people, it offers little except risk. As
Salomon suggests, the argument has the truly unfortunate effect of pitting intellectually disabled individuals against animals, implying that if
the animals go down, so should the intellectually disabled people. Whether
the thinker then concludes that all of these
groups are indeed morally relevant, as many theorists do, or that some members of these groups are
less morally relevant than rational human beings, the damage has been done. The value of disabled
peoples lives has been put into question. For a group of people who have won basic rights and
protections only within the past few decades, this is an offensive and frightening gamble. Arguments that
compare animals to intellectually disabled people miss the more important point that a focus on specific human and neurotypical morally
relevant abilities harms both populations. Those of us invested in advancing justice for all species should not be arguing that since we care for
intellectually disabled people, we should care for animals. This line of thought is ableist and anthropocentric, as it centers the human as the
yardstick of moral worth and implicitly devalues and flattens out intellectual disability. Instead we must argue against the very notion that
beings with neurotypical human capacities are inherently more valuable than those without. The problem is not reason itself but rather the
ways in which reason has been held up as separate from and more valuable than emotion, feeling, and other ways of knowing and being. This
definition of reason stems from a history of patriarchy, imperialism, racism, classism, ableism, and anthropocentrism, and too often carries
these oppressions within it. These issues are particularly important to keep in mind when theorizing liberation for those who do or may lack
reason, such as nonhuman animals and individuals with significant intellectual disabilities. Intellectual inferiority has been so easily
animalized because animals themselves have long been understood as intellectually inferior. The association of animals with cognitive
deficiency must be challenged, not only because many species exhibit signs of human intelligence and because animal minds are complex in
their own right (in ways that often cannot easily be compared and contrasted with human capacities), but because intellectual capacity should
not determine a beings worth and the protections they are granted. Cognitive capacity is widely accepted as an indicator of a nonhuman
animals value. Many people wont eat pigs because they have been shown to be at least as intelligent as dogs, but they will guiltlessly eat
chicken or fish because it is presumed that these animals do not think or have feelings. And nearly everyone has heard a story or two of an
outstanding or heroic animal who was spared her fate as dinner because of something uniquely intelligent she did. Remember Yvonne, our
famous German dairy cow who outsmarted her captors and so was spared death? Another cow who made the news that year was not so lucky:
She escaped but did not manage to avoid her captors, and so she had to wait until judgment day rolls back around, as one paper
lightheartedly put it. It seems this cow just was not smart enough to garner enough sympathy for a pardon. We need to crip animal ethics,
incorporating a disability politics into the way we think about animals. It is essential that we examine the shared systems and ideologies that
oppress both disabled humans and nonhuman animals, because ableism perpetuates animal oppression in more areas than the linguistic. To
me, far from proving that animal justice is impossible and silly, the complexity of sentience and the vast array of mysterious life and nonlife on
this planet show that we need a nuanced understanding of different abilities and the different responsibilities those abilities engender.
331
L: Post-structuralism
Critical theorists constantly ignore the disabled body
Erevelles 2000 (Nirmala, EDUCATING UNRULY BODIES: CRITICAL PEDAGOGY, DISABILITY
STUDIES, AND THE POLITICS OF SCHOOLING)
In recent years, critical theorists of education have begun to examine the discursive practices by which
student subjectivity (as constructed by race, class, gender, and sexuality) is produced, regulated, and even resisted
within the social context of schooling. To pursue such analyses, the poststructuralist turn in critical pedagogy has sought
to recover the importance of the body as the site of political and cultural activity in educational
contexts. Thus, for example, Peter McLaren has suggested that educational theorists explore how student subjectivities are constituted and
reconstituted by the disciplining discourses of schooling that penetrate the level of the body.2 Similarly, Henry Giroux has argued for a critical
border pedagogy that foregrounds those practices that support the body/subject as the site of cultural struggle over social forms such as
language, ideologies, significations, and narratives, in order to create borderlands in which diverse cultural resources allow for the fashioning
of new identities within existing configurations of p~wer. Yet, even thoughcritical theorists of education have privileged
the theorization of the body along the axes of race, class, gender, and sexuality, they have consistently
omitted any mention of the disabled body. Such omissions reflect the historical practices within
American public education that continue to marginalize the issue of disability by maintaining two
educational systems -one for disabled students and one for everyone else. Based on these discriminatory
educational policies, more than five million students with disabilities have experienced segregation in special
education programs that are, in effect, both separate and ~nequal.~ This has contributed to the continued
unemployability of disabled people in a highly competitive market economy and thus the conditions of poverty in which many of them live. In
light of this oppressive context, it is indeed ironic that critical theorists of education are silent regarding
issues of disability, especially since these theorists claim to be united in their attempts to empower the
powerless and to transform social inequalities and injustices.5 Alternatively, scholars in the newly burgeoning field of
disability studies have argued that disability is a social construction - a representation, a cultural interpretation of physical transformation or
configuration, and a comparison of bodies that structure [unequal] social relations and institutions.6 Critical of how radical theorists of
difference have historically regarded disability as a minoritizing discourse limited to a narrow, specific, relatively fixed population or area
of inquiry, they
have, on the other hand, foregrounded the universalistic dimension of disability studies
by demonstrating its relevance not only for disabled people but also for the lives of people across the
spectrum. They have therefore argued that it is necessary to create theories that conceptualize
disabled and non-disabled people as integral, complementary parts of a whole universe as well as to
examine critically historical and cross-cultural research on practices that divide communities along
disability lines, as well as those that unite people and promote equity.s
332
L: Feminism
Many Femminists are ableists
Shipley 11 (Diane, Writer for the Washington Post Caitlin Moran and feminisms ableism problem)
This week sees the publication of award-winning journalist Caitlin Morans first book, How to Be a Woman. Part memoir, part feminist treatise,
it was excerpted in The Times this weekend, complete with pictures of her styled as Rosie the Riveter. Excited to read it, I enjoyed the
description of her adolescence until I read one line that Im convinced made my heart stop beating for a second. Talking about herself at age 13,
Moran writes: I am, by and large, boundlessly positive. I have all the joyful ebullience of a retard. Im not sure whats more offensive: that she
used a word the majority of people with a developmental disability find demeaning, that shes promoting such a facile stereotype, or that
while Moran advocates against misogyny, she apparently sees no problem with using language that
another marginalised group finds hateful. This may be a particularly egregious example, but shes not
the only feminist to use ableist language or demonstrate this type of ignorance. As a woman with
disabilities, I often feel ostracized by mainstream feminist media, which seems almost exclusively
focused on the experiences of able-bodied people. Disability rights too often feels like an afterthought.
Last Autumn, Feministings coverage of Jon Stewarts Rally to Restore Sanity didnt spare one sentence to suggest that the name played on
fears around mental illness, conflating it with poor judgement. (When one commenter pointed this out, they were given the Im sorry you
were offended treatment.) But I shouldnt have been surprised:
in 2009, a group of women feminists with disabilities
and their allies challenged the site over its history of ableist language use and scant representation of
disability issues. Of particular concern was one writers complaint that having doors opened for her
made her feel (horrors!) like an invalid. Meanwhile, Jezebel has reported incorrect information about Bipolar Disorder and ran
a series in which a guest blogger diagnosed reality TV stars with mental illnesses, as an explanation for their unreasonable behaviour. When
some readers complained about the ableist nature of these posts, editors advised them to skip them. Its
even more disappointing
when discriminatory language is used by feminist academics whose job it should be to question
oppression. I recently checked out Rosalind Gills Gender and the Media from the library and was dismayed to find that the author states
magazines aimed at young women can produce some almost Schizophrenic splits in which girls have no language to talk about their own
experiences. Echoing this sentiment, in March Lisa Solod wrote a piece for The Huffington Post which asked, Is feminism schizophrenic or
what? Clearly were supposed to be shocked by this invocation of a severe mental illness, despite the writers having no understanding of the
disorder (its nothing to do with split personalities). Worse, they
dont seem to have grasped that people with
Schizophrenia might not want their experiences turned into a cheap metaphor by able-bodied people
for the sake of hyperbole. Maybe you think none of these things matter because theyre not intended to
offend. But theyre all rooted in ignorance of what living with a disability involves and help perpetuate
the idea that people with disabilities are somehow inferior. Thats not necessarily a conscious choice, but it is thoughtless,
and what makes it worse is that its sanctioned by the culture we live in. No one at Caitlin Morans publishing house or The Times appears to
have questioned her use of the R word, and I cant understand why. The fact that women have been historically discriminated against doesnt
give able-bodied women the right to discount the feelings of people with disabilities. In fact, when they persist in doing so, its doubly
disappointing.
333
Impacts
334
I: Violence
The pervasiveness of ableist rhetoric has made it commonplace and common sense
where disability is indistinguishable from evil and justifies violence in the name of
purity and heroism
Cherney 11 (James L. Cherney- Wayne State University Disability Studies Quarterly Vol. 31 No 3 (2011)
accessed 7-4-17 The Rhetoric of Ableism <http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1665/1606>)
I work to expose and critique the rhetorical structure that argument theory labels the "warrant." Stephen Toulmin defined the warrant as the
"self-authorizing statement" connecting the "grounds" of an argument (also called "data") to the "claim."12 He defined claims as "assertions
put forward publicly for general acceptance" and grounds as "statements specifying particular facts about a situation facts, observations,
statistical data, previous conclusions, or other specific information [used] as immediate support for [a] claim."13 Thus, warrants
are the
reasoning thatas "the previously agreed general ways of arguing applied in the particular case"are
relied upon "as ones whose trustworthiness is well established."14 I use the term "rhetorical norms" to
describe warrants that become commonplace assumptions that govern interpretation and promote an
ideological orientation throughout a culture. In Toulmin's formulation, most warrants are "field-dependent,"
meaning that they appear and work primarily within a specialized discipline or area such as mathematics,
sport, or law.15 What I call rhetorical norms transcend field boundaries to become generally available for
interpretation across a culture; they become "common sense," or reasoning that one need not justify or defend because
it works and appears in so many places that to question its legitimacy in one area would require reconsidering its use in all the others.16
Common to the culture as a whole, rhetorical norms appear arhetorical; not requiring defense by argument they
make reasonable the discriminatory action that would otherwise appear to violate other cultural norms
of justice or equity. Two rhetorical norms of ableist culture I have discussed elsewhere; I briefly explore a third in this article to
demonstrate how these rhetorical norms sustain ableist rhetoric and discrimination. One warrant that informs ableist rhetoric is seeing
deviance as a sign of evil. Western
art and literature have long relied on the convention of displaying physical
abnormalities to reveal the presence of evil that would otherwise be invisible. As Paul Longmore notes,
"Disability has often been used as a melodramatic device Among the most persistent is the association
of disability with malevolence. Deformity of body symbolizes deformity of soul. Physical handicaps are
made the emblems of evil."17 At the foundation of this visual rhetoric is a long-standing religious
perspective that reads physical imperfection as evidence of moral imperfection. Ruth Mellinkoff catalogues
extensively the appearance of various deviant physiques and disabilities in Northern European art of the late middle ages. She argues that
"Disease, deformity, and physical features different from those of the majority were linked with evil and
sin, and so it is not surprising to find these alleged imperfections attached in artistic representations to
historical, legendary, and contemporary figures who were viewed as ignoble or evil."18 Mellinkoff maintains
that this artistic tradition was not particular to the period on which she focuses, tracing "an amazingly consistent pattern of thought [that] has
persisted in Western society, from at least as early as ancient Greece into our own time."19 Using
physical deviance to render evil
visible saturates the Western artistic tradition, and it plays a crucial role in such genres as horror stories
and films about demonic possession. Indeed, in these narratives the rhetorical norm is essential, for viewers and readers who fail
to interpret the deviant/disabled body as possessed will not understand the plot at all. In the possession narrativefrom Cotton Mather's 1689
treatise Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions to Peter Blatty's contemporary 1973 touchstone The Exorcistthe
audience must learn to see or read the possessed body's physical difference as proof of a spiritual Other's presence.20 Unlike
many texts
that simply display ableist associations between disability and criminality, monstrosity, or immorality,
the possession narrative requires the audience to adopt the ableist perspective that "deviance is evil" in
order to comprehend the story. The possession narrative literally puts a face on evil, and it teaches us to
recognize that face by its extreme deviance from the "norm." Similarly, ableist rhetoric often dictates
realizing ability as arising directly and simply from the physical body, employing a warrant that specifies
"body is able." The social systems of sport provide an excellent example, for these activities privilege
335
particular skills or physical capacities by rewarding their presence or performance within the structure
of a game. Without the sport of golf, having the capacity to club a small white ball extremely accurately over long distances would be
meaningless; only in the context of the game does this become an ability that elevates the victorious winner
to obtain rewards of fame and wealth. The rules of such games create spaces where particular performances appear salient,
which shape expectations of bodily capacity, and which identify as "disabled" or "incapacitated" those whose bodies do not or cannot
participate. As I argue elsewhere, this rhetoric played a
central role in the 1998-2001 controversy over whether
professional golfer Casey Martin should be allowed to use a cart during play in Professional Golf Association
(PGA) events as an accommodation for his disability.21 Arguments opposing Martin's case frequently depended on the
rhetorical norm "body is able" by locating his ability entirely in his body; sport's presumed celebration of natural physical prowess obscures the
ways rules always already privilege some physical capacities over others. Presuming
that the rules created a "level playing
field" to which everyone had equal access, advocates for the PGA argued that "fair play" required that nobody be
given the unfair advantage of using a device that others were not allowed to employ. Although the decision
to grant his accommodation was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, the widespread opposition to
Martin's case showed the depth of this norm's pervasiveness. As this case demonstrates, the ableist equation of
ability and body protects ableist institutions and architecture from scrutiny, locating as simple
knowledge the clearly questionable assumption that one's abilities inhere in one's physical corpus. As the
capacities privileged, rewarded, and normalized by cultural systems that depend on their presence and performance, "abilities" are thoroughly
social constructs communicated rhetorically. Knowing them as such reverses the ableist episteme that "body is able," opening to critique
potentially any claim that some skill should be favored over others.
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I: Self-Hate
Internalized negativity is a result of oppression, forcing the oppressed, specifically the
disabled. This replicates the pain, fear, and confusion of that negativity.
Campbell 08 [Fiona Campbell, Dr Fiona Kumari Campbell is the Convenor of the Disability Studies
Program in the School of Human Services at Griffith University and Director of the Social Justice Stream
of the Socio-Legal Research Centre. She has been involved in disability activism for 25 years and
currently specialises in research on the deployment of disability in law and new technologies, Exploring
Internalized Ableism Using Critical Race Theory, 2008]
Internalization involves apprehending that which belongs to the other [and incorporating it
as] ones own (Wertsch, 1998, p.53). Clearly the processes of internalization are not straightforward and
predictable. As Fanon remarks: In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the
native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white mans values
(Fanon, cited in McClintock, p.329). But the absorption process is deeper implying a belief that the subaltern body requires something that
only their superior dominators have or can give them (Oliver, 2004, 78). This may be a somewhat lumpy and indigestible process as many
words obstinately refuse, sound alien in the voice of the one who enacts them through speech. In any case, the
internalization of
negativity ultimately shapes and inspires technologies of self and ways such technologies
become mediated within a range of networks: Internalized oppression is not the cause of our
mistreatment; it is the result of our mistreatment. It would not exist without the real external oppression that forms
the social climate in which we exist. Once oppression has been internalized, little force is needed to keep us
submissive. We harbour inside ourselves the pain and the memories, the fears and the
confusions, the negative self-images and the low expectations, turning them into weapons with
which to re-injure ourselves, every day of our lives. (Mason, as cited Marks, 1999, p.25). Internalized ableism
means that to assimilate into the norm the referentially disabled individual is required to
embrace, indeed to assume an identity other than ones own and this subject is repeatedly
reminded by epistemological formations and individuals with hegemonic subjectifications of
their provisional and (real) identity. I am not implying that subjects have a true or real essence. Indeed the subjects'formation
is in a constant state of fluidity, multiplicity and (re)formation. However, disabled people often feel compelled to fabricate who they are to
adopt postures and comportments that are additional to self. The formation of internalised ableism cannot be simply deduced by assessing the
responses of individuals to Althussers famous interpolative hailing Hey you, there (Althusser & Balibar, 1979). Whilst a subject may respond
to Hey you there, crip! it is nave to assume that an affirmative response to this hailing repressively inaugurates negative disabled
subjectification. In fact the
adoption of more positive or oppositional ontologies of disability by the
subject in question may be unexpectedly enabling. As Susan Park (2000: 91) argues what is at stake here is not so
much the accuracy behind the hailing privilege, but the power of the hailing itself to instantly determine (or elide) that thing it is naming.
Nonetheless, censure and the cancellation of the legitimacy of oppositional subjectivities remains common place as Cherney reminds us with
respect to Deaf culture: If
abnormal [sic] bodies must be fixed to fit within dominant cultural views of
appropriateness then the Deaf celebration of their differences must be read as an illegitimate
model of advocacy. (Cherney, 1999, p. 33)
337
I: Eugenics
Abelist bias leads to eugenics, and the oppression of those with disabilities
Weedston 17 (Lindsey, Phd from Western Washington University Fascism, Eugenics, and Ableism)
Probably the
most difficult axis of oppression to get average people to take seriously is ableism. It doesnt make
a whole lot of sense on the face of it, because obviously disabled, autistic, and mentally/chronically ill people have issues. Employers
are
allowed to pay disabled people almost nothing. It is legal in the U.S. to pay disabled employees less than
a dollar per hour. People in wheelchairs dont have actual physical access to many basic places because
companies dont want to build ramps. People openly discriminate against anyone with an intellectual disabilities. The
problem is, deep down, or not that deep down, people think that those affected by ableism deserve it.
Companies would lose money on disabled employees. Creating accommodations for a small amount of people is hard and expensive.
Mentally ill people, autistic people, and people with intellectual disabilities cant handle responsibilities.
Employing them would just slow down the company. God forbid they be allowed in an important job like a doctor or police officer or
congressperson. Could you imagine? Society
is better off without people like those in important positions. Or
maybe just better off without them at all, right? Should they even be allowed to reproduce if their genes
are going to hold back society? And now you have eugenics. Eugenics is an essential part of fascism. Its not just about
white supremacy, where they think that the white race will be stronger if they dont mix genes with other races (the opposite is true but
whatever). They think that theyll be stronger if they eliminate all the genes that cause illness and disability.
Disabled people were among those brought to the Nazi concentrations camps. Imprisoning and
sterilizing disabled, autistic, and mentally/chronically ill people is a common feature of fascist regimes.
Also, the U.S. government participated in it in the 1910s-1920s. It involved a lot of involuntary sterilization. Tens of
thousands of women. And again from the 1940s all the way to the 1970s on Puerto Rican woman. Involuntary sterilization is probably no longer
acceptable, and its unlikely that you could again get away with tricking women into this with all the easy access to information we have now.
So how to you keep sick people from reproducing? Enter Trumpcare. For many years, pre-existing conditions
kept the sickest among us from gaining access to healthcare unless they had a good amount of money.
And that amount of money got better as the years went on and healthcare became ever more
ridiculously expensive in this country. Obamacare, as flawed as it was, at least got rid of this massive, disgusting injustice that
killed people on a regular basis. Like, all the time. And now theyre not only trying to bring it back, theyre trying to add all kinds of things to the
list of pre-existing conditions, including things that fucking everyone has, like acne and anxiety. Oh and more and more people are getting
asthma because of, surprise surprise, air pollution! And with the even sharper spikes in common, life-saving drugs like epi pens and insulin
lately, this is going to kill so many more people than it ever killed before. The only people who will be safe are the rich and the healthy. Which
basically means the lucky. People lucky enough to be born rich, people lucky enough to be born healthy and not get sick or injured later, or
both. The rest of us can die. Those of us who are not born into rich families can die if we are or get sick. And only the healthy will survive to pass
on our genes. Great. So at the same time Im blown away by the fact that people dont take ableism seriously, but I can also get it. If its been so
easy to justify eugenics for all these years, honestly, how the fuck are we going to even get to a place where people will stop using ableist slurs
that have been ingrained into their vocabulary for their entire lives? But honestly. If you could at least realize whats happening here. That
theyre trying to start up eugenics again hardcore. And for the love of god, please, make it stop before my friends start dying?
338
Alternatives
339
A: Performance/Disability Art
Disability Arts is a nexus for revealing the effects of ableism- disability performance
challenges the dominant western epistemologies that actively stigmatize disabled
bodies
Eisenhauer 07 (Accessed 7-2-17 Just Looking and Staring Back: Challenging Ableism Through
Disability Performance Art )
As part of the political engagement with the social and cultural construction of disability inherent to the Disability People's Movement,1 the
current
Disability Arts Movement emphasizes "the potential of disability arts as a progressive, emancipatory
force at both the individual and social levels" (Barnes & Mercer, 2001, p. 529). Disability2 culture reflects a diverse
group of people with physical or mental conditions that result in a common cultural experience of
discrimination, stigma tization, segregation, and medicalization (Sandahl, 1999). Therefore, central to the Disability
Arts Movement is a critical interrogation of the cultural construction of disability through the "growing
politicization of disabled people" (Barnes & Mercer, 2001, p. 529). This article aims to extend the discourse of disability within art education to
include an engagement with the sociopolitical issue of ableism in art curriculum. Literature regarding disability in art education has focused upon issues related to
teaching students with disabilities articulated with a language of inclusion, accommodation, main streaming, and therapy (Anderson, 1992, 1994; Anderson &
Barnfield, 1974, 1978; Anderson, Colchado & McAnally, 1979; Carrigan, 1994; Clements & Clements, 1984; Copeland, 1984; Guay, 1993, 1994; Morreau & Anderson,
1984; Sherill, 1979; Uhlin & DeChiara, 1984). The dominant discourse of disability in art education particularly in the
years preceding the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 has historically reflected what Blandy
(1991) calls a functional-limitations orientation in which disability is defined in terms of a persons
limitations. Such an orientation is linked with the medical model in which "disabilities are perceived as
potentially curable through treatment" (p. 180). In the years following the ADA, Blandy (1991, 1994) argued for an important shift from a
functional limitations orientation to a sociopolitical orientation in art education. One of the key premises of the socio political
orientation is that the perceived limitations of a person with a disability result from "the failure of social
systems to accommodate the needs and aspirations' of all citizens" (Blandy, 1994, p. 180). Rather than viewing disability as an
individual limitation, a sociopolitical orientation to disability engages disability and the very concept of limitation as social constructions by emphasizing how such
discourses serve to oppress those with disabilities (Blandy, 1991). A
sociopolitical orientation to disability frames disability as the
result of human-made environments rather than personal limitations. "Such environments are
informally and formally shaped and defined by programs, policies, curricula, architectural plans, and
other assorted practices" (Blandy, 1994, p. 131). In order to actualize a sociopolitical orientation to disability
within art education, Blandy recognized the need for changes to occur in preservice teacher education.
His recommendations emerged from the underlying idea that providing preservice teachers opportunities to work with disabled people would support an overall
shift toward preparing future teachers from a socially reconstructivist point of view. His recommendations included increasing preservice teachers' knowledge
about students with disabilities, federal and state laws, disability literature, and alternative systems of language, including sign language. Likewise, Blandy
recognized the need for preservice teachers to have opportu nities to interact with people with disabilities in their fieldwork (Blandy, 1994). In this article, I build
upon these important recommendations while extending the sociopolitical orientation described by Blandy (1991 )
in order to advocate for the
inclusion of ableism alongside other important sociopolitical issues such as sexism, racism, and
homophobia in art curriculum. Ableism, like other sociopolitical issues, references a combi nation of
discrimination, power, and prejudice related to the cultural privileging of able-bodied people. This shift toward
engaging ableism as a sociopolitical issue in the art curriculum extends the sociopolitical orientation to include a newer affirmative model described by Swain and
French (2000). The affirmative model Directly challenges presumptions of personal tragedy and the
determination of identity through the value-laden presumptions of non-disabled people. Whereas the social
model is generated by disabled people's experiences within a disabling society, the affirmative model is borne of disabled people's
experiences as valid individuals, as determining their own lifestyles, culture, and identity.... [The]
affirmative model is held by disabled people about disabled people. Its theoretical significance can also only be developed by
disabled people who are proud, angry, and strong' in resisting the tyranny of the personal tragedy model of disability and impairment, (pp. 578-581) The
340
affirmative model suggests that disability encompasses "positive social identities, both individual and
collective, for disabled people" (p. 569). The affirmative model challenges tragedy-based discourses arguing
instead that disabled peoples are "proud, angry, and strong" (p. 569). While the sociopolitical orientation advocated by Blandy
(1991) argued to enhance preservice teachers' experiences with disabled students and their understanding of policy, the affirmative model
emerges from within rather than outside the disability community and emphasizes the cultural
contributions of disabled artists as important voices through which to challenge cultural oppression. The
integration of the sociopo litical and affirmative models serve as an important way to encourage students to critically reflect upon their own cultural understanding
of disability through the Disability Arts Movement. The
conceptual understanding of artists in the Disability Arts Movement
marks a significant shift from prior discourses of disability. Within the Disability Arts Movement a critical
distinction is made between disabled people doing art and disability artists (Barnes & Mercer, 2001). The inclusion of
disabledpeople doing art in art curriculum places an emphasis upon the representation of difference through a curriculum of admiration and appreciation in which
individual artists are admired for their ability to create work similar to other able-bodied artists. In contrast, the
discourse of the disability artist
engages in a critical process of questioning the sociopolitical construction of disability and related ableist
ideologies. Such work can include the expression of admiration and appreciation inherent to the
construct of disabled people doing art while also introducing critical questions about the formation,
main tenance, and possible disruption of ableist ideologies. As Sutherland (1997) describes: It's what makes a disability artist
different from an artist with a disability. We don't see our disabilities as obstacles that we have to overcome before we try to make our way in the non-disabled
cultural world. Our politics teach us that we are oppressed, not inferior, (p. 159) Similarly, performance artist Mary Duffy advocates for the term disabled people
rather than people with disabilities. "Describing
ourselves as disabled people is a more unifying thing rather than
tagging disabilities on afterwords and pretending we're just trying to be normal" (Mitchell & Snyder, 1997). The
disability performance artists discussed in this article, critically engage the sociopolitical issue of ableism through a personal and critical examination of the cultural
inscription of their bodies as disabled people. Challenging the tendency to equate normality and beauty in Western aesthetics, Mary Duffy's autobiographical work
explores her body as a contradictory site in which she is culturally constructed as simultane ously beautiful, erotic, hideous, and repulsive. Carrie Sandhal similarly
engages the cultural inscription of her body, focusing particularly on the interconnection of the medical and popular objectification of her body experienced through
the stare. Likewise, Petra Kuppers' community based performance work, Traces, aims to call out the cultural expec tation that the bodies of people with mental
illnesses should perform a form of visual violence as represented in the majority of portrayals of people with mental illnesses in popular media. Each of these artists
pursues what Barnes and Mercer (2001) describe as a feminist politics of signification in which "subversive representations or performances illuminate and confront
discriminatory barriers and attitudes" (p. 529). These disability performance artists create work that actively calls out the
stigmatization of the disabled body, thereby revealing the normative function of ableism. These artists'
work represents a rethinking of the discourse of disability in art from one solely framed within a
language of accommodating indi vidual limitations, to a discourse that emphasizes the critical role of art
in troubling the social and political issue of ableism. Within an issues oriented art education curriculum, ableism emerges as an
important cultural issue among others. An affirmative model of disability positions disability cultures and the resulting
cultural issue of ableism "in simi larly complex ways to the way race, class, and gender have been theo
rized" (Davis, 1997, p. 1). As Swain and French (2000) state, "Policies, provision, and practice, whether in community living
or education, can only be inclusive through full recognition of disability culture and the affirmative
model generated from the experiences of disabled people" (p. 580). Therefore, disability in the art classroom is
not only about inclusion, defined as appropriately accommodating students with disabilities, but is also
about the exploration of disability culture and the sociopolitical issue of ableism in arts curriculum.
341
A: Deconstruction
We propose a deconstruction of the current education system through a method of
asking questions
Slee and Allan 2001 (Roger Slee and Julie Allan, Professors at the University of Stirling, Excluding
the included: A reconsideration of inclusive education)
we propose deconstruction as a principal methodology, cannot easily be concluded, and indeed closure is something we
Inevitably, a article of this kind, in which
are anxious to avoid. We offer a series of questions that are intended as openings for the kind of dialogue that
seems to be necessary. The Relationship Between Ideas and Politics a Theory of Activism? We have suggested that
deconstruction can be used as a tool for helping to read policy documents against themselves and to
understand how we have got to where we are. This might then help us to decide how to move on. But how do
the ideas produced by deconstruction relate to the kinds of politics that are necessary in order to make such moves? Is there a need for a theory of activism which
enables ideas about inclusion to be enacted? If so, how is this initiated and by whom? New Forms of Research for New Aspirations a New Politics of Research? What
kinds of research will provide us with appropriate forms of educational settlement for young disabled
people? This implies a new politics of research (Gitlin, 1994) which raises further questions about the relations of research production (Clough & Barton, 1995); identity and the privileging of particular values (Oliver,
1996; Moore, Beazley & Maelzer, 1998; Corker & French, 1999). The partisan research (Troyna, 1995) genre to which we have signed up is one aspect of the general call to activism. The politics of research relationships and the role
of non-disabled researchers and activists are at the heart of this discussion of new educational relationships. Forms of Schooling? Envisioning and Stipulating Inclusion that Eschews the Modernist Blueprint? This article has raised
Regular schooling was never meant for all comers.

questions about the nature of policy that ties itself to the existing assumptions about regular and special education.
Its constitution reflects this fact. Many children find that schooling does not serve them well and placing
more children into the current system of schooling will exacerbate failure for increasing numbers.
Assimilation appears to be flawed on all levels. It is a form of cultural genocide that denies the
legitimacy of difference and which also falls on its own academic sword. Inclusive schooling may well
imply an array of offerings; the key issues will revolve around the authenticity of choice and destination.
342
A: Toxicity
The alternative is to reject the ableism of the Affirmative in favor of toxicity. Toxicity
invites us to think transcorporally to rethink disability not as the negative underside
or incapacitated but as the condition of possibility for new intimacies that undermine
biopolitical governance
Chen 12 [Mel, Assoc. Prof. Gender and Womens Studies and Vice Chair for Research, Dir. of the Center
for the Study of Sexual Culture @ UC Berkeley, Animacies: Biopolitical Racial Mattering and Queer
Affect, p. 190
Here I move from exploring toxicitys contemporary pervasiveness as a notion, to exploring its purported and experienced mechanisms in the human body. This shift concerns the role of
metaphor in biopolitics, since the seemingly metaphorical productions of cultural expressions of toxicity are not necessarily more concrete than the literal ones, which are themselves
subjectness or
composed of complex cultures of immunity thinking. Reflecting on the ambiguous subject-object relations of toxicity, I use animacy theory to ask how the flexible
objectness of an actant raises important questions about the contingencies of humanness and
animateness. These contingencies are eminently contestable within critical queer and race and disability
approaches that, for instance, disaggregate verbal patients from the bottom of the hierarchy. Since, as I argued in chapter 1, animacy hierarchies are
simultaneously ontologies of affect, then such ontologies might benefit from a reconceptualization of
the order of things, particularly along unconventional lines of race, sexuality, and ability.3 Toxicitys Reach Toxins
have moved well beyond their specific range of biological attribution, leaking out of nominal and literal bounds. A politician will decry the toxic political atmosphere;4 Britney Spears will sing
Dont you know that youre toxic / And I love what you do;5 an advice columnist will caution us to keep a healthy distance from toxic acquaintances.6 One book is written for workers
suffering the ravages of a toxic personality, describing what they do as poison, corrupt, pollute, and contaminate. . . . We define the toxic personality as anyone who demonstrates a pattern
of counterproductive work behaviors that debilitate individuals, teams, and even organizations over the long term.7 Thus, toxic people, not just chemicals, are appearing in popular social
discourse, suggesting a shift in national sentiment that registers an increasing interest in individual bodily, emotional, and psychic security. For the rhetoric of security inevitably has
ramifications not simply related to health: as the previous chapter delineated, recent concerns about the toxicity of lead were especially charged in terms of race, sexuality, ability, and nation.
Let us probe the affective dynamics of one example in detail, the paradoxical conceit of the now-popular phrase toxic assets, associated with policies of financial deregulation in the United
States that entered a new phase in the early 1990s. Notably, the toxic assets of significance that originated at that time and that are held responsible for global economic fallout are the
financial products composed of grouped mortgages tied to a hypervalued and unstable residential real estate market. We might say that this complex financial product, this toxic asset, is a
good precisely because it entails capital value; yet it has unfortunately becomeconsidering the discourse in which toxic asset has meaningnot only toxic but also perhaps
untouchable (as an affective stance), unengageable (as tokens of exchange with limited commensurability), and perhaps even disabling (that is, it renders the corporation that buys it up
also invalid). The term toxic assets thus reflects an effort to externalizebut also to indict for their threatening closeness (to home)corrupt layers of financial organization. These examples
illustrate that there seems to be a basic semantic schema for toxicity: in this schema, two bodies are proximate; the first body, living or abstract, is under threat by the second; the second has
the effect of poisoning, and altering, the first, causing a degree of damage, disability, or even death. In English, this adjectival meaning of toxicof or related to poison, which means that a
body or its blood could be harmed by an external agenthas endured since the 1600s, according to the oed, and it was concretized into the noun toxin in 1890; it is debatable when the
metaphorical use emerged. If we are willing to assign literal to toxicitys application to the human body and metaphoric to all others, then these metaphorical mappings are not always
very sound. Linnda Durre, author of Surviving the Toxic Workplace, identifies certain personalities as toxic; among them is one she dubs The Delicate Flower: If someone is sitting there
constantly saying: Youre wearing perfume. Im going to have an allergy attack, or: Youre eating meat. Thats so disgusting, its like grinding, grinding, whining, whining every day of your
life.8 Durre would rather expunge the workplace of such complaints; she fails to consider that the design of a workplace might well place certain people, including those susceptible to allergy
the definition of toxin has always been the outcome of political negotiation and a
attacks, at a radical disadvantage. If
threshold value on a set of selected tests, its conditionality is no more true in medical discourse than in social discourse, in which ones definition of a toxic irritant coincides with
habitual scapegoats of ableist, sexist, and racist systems. Toxicitys first (under threat) and second (threatening) bodies are thus in the eye of the beholder. Faced with toxicitys broad and
hungry reach, the contemporary culture of the United States is witnessing both the notional release and proliferation of
the metaphor of toxicity, while also marking its biopolitical entrainment as an instrument of difference.
While the first seems important for allowing a kind of associative theorizing, it is simultaneously important to retain a fine sensitivity to the vastly
different sites in which toxicity involves itself in very different lived experiences (or deaths), for instance, a brokers
relation to toxic bonds versus a farm workers relation to pesticides. Furthermore, the deployment of the first can leave untouchedor even depend onthe naturalized logic of the second.
Disability scholars have discussed the deployment of disability as a trope that ultimately reconsolidates ability; David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder have elucidated the idea of narrative
prosthesis, a kind of narrative deployment of disability that entrenches a kind of ableist idealization of privileged subject positions. 9 Indeed, we might argue that the workplace psychologist
Linnda Durre is doing just that in her formulation of The Delicate Flower. As Michael Davidson reminds us, we cannot consider the prosthesis only at the level of narrative trope, given the
widespread problems around access to such essential medical devices; he writes, sometimes a prosthesis is still a prosthesis.10 Think about how often culture recruits languages of disability:
the corporation was crippled; dont use me as a crutch. The toxic people debated in self-help guides and pop songs should not be detached from an understanding of how toxins function
in, and impair, actual bodies and systems. Furthermore, such impairment, as some scholars and activists assert, should be understood as a societal production, and not (only or even) as a
All cultural productions of toxicity must be rethought as

problem proper to an individual that must be cured or corrected. Immunitary Fabric
an integral part of the affective fabric of immunity nationalism. When immunity nationalism is individuated through biopower, in a culture of
responsibility, self-care, anxious monitoring, and the like, toxicity becomes a predictable figure. The apprehension of a toxin relies minimally on two discourses: science and the body.
Science studies and feminist studies have worked to study and materially reground these two figures which often stand as both ontologically basal and hence unindictable. In Bodies That
Matter, Judith Butler engages the biological insofar as she asks us to reconsider the discursive pinning of sex to biology and of gender to the realm of social and cultural life; but as she
warns us, assigning originary status to sex or biology obfuscates genders contribution to (and ontologizing of ) sex; that is, both gender and sex matter.11 Rather than displacing the extant
materiality of the body, she focuses on its partially ontologizing figurations. It is often hard to get a grip on what, precisely, the body is supposed to mean and what we ask it to do, and on
how we demand of it so much symbolically, materially, and theoretically. Questions of the body become particularly complex when
343
taking into account the various mixings, hybridizations, and impurities that accompany contemporary bodily
forms, from genetically modified food to the cyborg triumphed by Donna Haraway.12 What, indeed, becomes of life now that Haraways vision has in some regard prevailed? Though her
Manifesto for Cyborgs is over twenty-five years old, it has proved eerily prescient in its view of the ever-seamless integration of machines, humans, animals, and structures of capital. Human
bodies, those preeminent containers of life, are themselves pervaded by xenobiotic substances and nanotechnologies. Toxicity becomes significant now for
reasons beyond the pressing environmental hazards that encroach into zones of privilege, beyond late-
transnational capitalism doing violence to national integrities. Because of debates around abortion (such as those about when life is
technically said to begin) and around the lifeliness or deathliness of those in persistent vegetative states, not only can we not tell what is alive or dead, but the diagnostic
promise of the categories of life and death is itself in crisis, not least when thinking through the necropolitics
that Achille Mbembe proposes for postcolonial modes of analysis.13 For when biopolitics builds itself upon life or death or even
Agambens bare life14much like kinship notions that build only upon humans and hence fail to
recognize integral presences of nonhuman animalsit risks missing its cosubstantiating contingencies in
which not only the dead have died for life, but the inanimate and animate are both subject to the
biopolitical hand. Nan Enstad notes that toxicity forces us to bridge the analytical polarization of global and local
by placing the body in the picture and to consider commodities in new ways in the context of global
capitalism, for instance, capitalisms remarkable success at infusing lives and bodies around the world
with its products and by-products. 15 Yet, considering the reach of toxicity thinking described earlier, I
would like to expand her fairly concrete take on the body (for all the discursive complication she admits) by suggesting that
many bodies are subject to the toxiceven toxins themselvesand that it is worth examining the toxicities that seem to
trouble more than human bodies. Indeed, it is one way for us to challenge the conceptual integrity of our notions of the body.
For biopolitical governance to remain effective, there must be porous or even co-constituting bonds
between human individual bodies and the body of a nation, a state, and even a racial locus like
whiteness. This is especially salient within the complex political, legal, and medical developments of immunity. For toxicitys coextant figure is
immunity: to be more precise, threatened immunity. Immune systems are themselves constituted by the intertwinings of scientific, public, and
political cultures together.16 Even further, we know that the medicalized notion of immunity was derived from political brokerages. It is no surprise that discourses on sickness bleed from
medical immunity discourse into nationalist rhetoric. Ed Cohens A Body Worth Defending details the history of immunity as a legal concept, tracking its eventual adoption into medicine, a step
that eventually enabled people to speak of immune systems with a singular possessive, as in my immune system.17 Cohens historicization of immunity gives insight into the breadth of
contemporary expressions of immunity and toxicity, and their many affects in relation to threat. Analyzing the period after this discursive migration, Emily Martins anthropological study of
twentieth-century immune systems, Flexible Bodies, details a twentieth-century shift in contemporary thinking about immunity to something private or personal maintained by internal
processesaway from a previous focus on public hygiene, in which immunity was seen as related to unconnected factors from the outside.18 This internalization, even privatization, of
immunity helps to explain the particular indignation that toxicity evokes, since it is understood as an unnaturally external force that violates (rather than informs) an integral and bounded self.
This is what Cohen calls the apotheosis of the modern body, the aban195 donment of humans integral relation to their environments and the insistence on a radical segregation of self and
immunity seems to
world fueled by a bellicose antagonism. We can further consider the Italian political philosopher Ricardo Espositos elucidation of the ways in which
work as a kind of destructive negative protection of life.19 In Espositos immunizing paradigm, immunity is contracted on a poisoned
affect of gratitude (on the basis of membership in a community) that undercuts the final possibility of individual immunity. Esposito identifies the shaky prescription of the introjection of the
negative agent as a way to defend against its exterior identity. Intriguingly, through poisoned affect, or an affect of gratitude that is somehow fatally compromised, toxicity thus sneaks into
Espositos elaboration of immunity in the realm of affect rather than as a formal object; it is thus never fully addressed beyond the given questions of negativity in relation to immunity. This
It could be productive, I
may not be surprising, as the history of immunity does not confirm that toxicity was there from the start. But if it was not there, then what was?
think, to use this theorization of immunity to ask questions of the absence or presence of toxicity (both are here) as
a means of approaching immunity, and particularly to take the consideration of poisoned affect and its compromise to individual immunity further. I suggest that toxicity incontrovertibly
meddles with the relations of subject and object required for even the kind of contractual immunitary ordering that Esposito suggests. Thus, while the threat of toxicity is held to a clear
subject-object relation, intoxication (of an object by a toxin) is never held to an advantageous homeopathic quantity (in light of the biopolitical interjection of negativity): indeed, this is the
function of poisoned affect seen fully through. Not only is political immunity challenged, the very nature of this alteration cannot be fully known. Who is, after all, the subject here? What if the
object, which is itself a subject, has been substantively and subjectively altered by the toxin? Could we tell a history of intoxication in relation to political immunity that sits next to Espositos?
There are clearly many more questions than answers here about the history of the political affect of immunity. Toxic Worlding Recall that matters of life and death have arguably underlain
queer theory from the early 1990s, when radical queer activism in relation to aids blended saliently with academic theorizing on politics of gender and sexuality. More recently, Lee Edelman
life and death

takes up a psychoanalytic analysis of queernesss figural deathly assignment in relation to a relentless reproductive futurism.20 Jasbir Puar points to
economies that place some queer subjects in the privileged realm of a biopolitically optimized life, while
other perverse subjects are consigned to the realm of death, as a result of the successes of queer
incorporation into the domains of consumer markets and social recognition in the postcivil rights, late
twentieth century.21 Similar affective pulses of surging lifeliness or morbid resignation might reflect the legacy of the deathly impact of aids in queer scholarship. Suggesting a
horizonal imagining whose terms are pointedly not foretold by a pragmatic limitation on the present, Jos Esteban Muoz in Cruising Utopia offers a way around the false promise of a
To enact a method
neoliberal, homonormative utopia whose major concerns are limited to gay marriage and gay service in the military: lifely for a few, deathly for others.22
that prioritizes a queer reach for toxicitys worlding, I want to interleave considerations of toxicity and
344
intoxication with a toxic sensorium: a sense memory of objects and affects that was my felt orientation to the world
when I was recently categorized as ill. It seems never a simple matter to discuss toxicity, to objectify it. It is yet another matter to experience something that
seems by one measure or another to be categorized as a toxin, to undergo intoxication, intoxification. This difference raises questions about toxic methodology, which in some way inherits
anthropologys question about what can be done to respond to crises of objectivity. While no simple solution exists, it is my interest to attenuate the exceptionalisms that attain all too easily
in, for instance, the previous chapters assessment of lead toxicitys discursive range: it is possible for a reader to comfortably reside in a certain sense of integral, nontoxic security in that
analysis. To intensify toxicitys intuitive reach, I engage toxicity as a condition, one that is too complex to imagine as a property of one or another individual or group or something that could
itself be so easily bounded. I would like to deemphasize the borders of the immune system and its concomitant attachments to life and death, such that the immune systems aim is to
realize and protect life. How can we think more broadly about synthesis and symbiosis, including toxic vapors, interspersals, intrinsic mixings, and alterations, favoring interabsorption over
corporeal exceptionalism? I will not address these questions from a point of view of mythic health. Rather, I will tell a tale from the perspective of the existence that I have recently claimed,
one that has been quite accurately considered toxic. In other words, I move now from a theoretical discussion of metaphors about threat into what feels, for me personally, like riskier
I
terrain, the terrain of the autobiographical. As academics are often trained to avoid writing in anything resembling a confessional mode, such a turn is fraught with ambivalence.
theorize toxicity as it has profoundly impacted my own health, my own queerness, and my own ability to
forge bonds, and in so doing, I offer a means to reapproach questions of animacy with a different lens. This theorization through the personal is
not intended as a perfect subjectivity that opposes an idealized objectivity. Rather, it is meant as a complementary kind of knowledge production, one
that in this context invites both the sympathetic ingestion (or intoxication) of what remains a marked experience, and the empathetic memory of past association. It centers on a set of states
and experiences that have been diagnosed as multiple chemical sensitivity and heavy metal poisoning, and can be used to think more deeply about this condition and what it offers to
thinking about bodies and affect. As such, my repository of thoughts, experiences, and theorizations while illones that queerly and profoundly changed my
relationship to intimacycould be considered a kind of archive of feelings, to use Ann Cvetkovichs important terminology. 23 These are feelings that are neither exclusively traumatic, nor
exclusively private, nor a social archive proper to certain groups: they are feelings whose publics and intimacies are not clearly bounded or determinable. Such feelingsand their intimacies
offer a way to come at normative affects margins. Where Lauren Berlant notes, of less institutionalized interactions, that intimacy names the enigma
of this range of attachments . . . and it poses a question of scale that links the instability of individual lives to the trajectories of the collective, I mean to destabilize
where the toxic and its affects can be located.24 I have for the last few years suffered from the effects of mercury toxicity, perhaps related to receiving
for a decade in my childhood weekly allergy shots which were preserved with mercury, and having a mouth full of metal fillings which were composed of mercury amalgam. That said, I am
not invested in tracing or even asserting a certain cause and effect of my intoxication, not least because such an endeavor would require its own science studies of Western medicines
ambivalent materialization of heavy metal intoxication as an identifiable health concern. Rather, I wish to chart such intoxications with and against sexuality, as both of these are treated as
biologized and cultural forms with specific ethical politics. In early-twenty- first- century U.S. culture, queer subjects are in many ways treated as toxic assets, participating in the flow of capital
as a new niche market, yet also threatening to dismantle marriage or infiltrate the military, and thus potentially damaging the very economic and moral stability of the nation. But what
happens when queers become intoxicated? Recall the earlier secondary Oxford English Dictionary meanings of queer as both unwell and drunk, the latter of which is now proclaimed to be
obsolete; such meanings shadow queerness with the cast of both illness and inebriation. While Muoz meditates on the possibilities of ecstasythe drugas a metaphor for pleasurable
queer temporalities, 25 I explore an intoxication that is not voluntary, is potentially permanent, is ambivalent toward its own affective uptake, and produces an altered affect that may not
.
register its own pleasure or negativity in recognizable terms Let me get specific and narrate what my toxic cognitive and bodily state means, how it limits, delimits, frames, and undoes.
Today I am having a day of relative well-being and am eager to explore my neighborhood on foot; I have forgotten for the moment that I just dont go places on foot, because the results can
be catastrophic. Having moved to a new place, with the fresh and heady defamiliarization that comes with uprooting and replanting, my body has forgotten some of its belabored
environmental repertoire, its micronarratives of movement and response, of engagement and return, of provocation and injury. It is for a moment freein its scriptless version of its future
to return to former ways of inhabiting space when I was in better health. Some passenger cars whiz by; instinctively my body retracts and my corporeal-sensory vocabulary starts to kick back
in. A few pedestrians cross my path, and before they near, I quickly assess whether they are likely (or might be the kind of people) to wear perfumes or colognes or to be wearing sunscreen.
I scan their heads for smoke puffs or pursed lips pre-release; I scan their hands for a long white object, even a stub. In an instant, quicker than I thought anything could reach my organs, my
liver refuses to process these inhalations and screams hate, a hate whose intensity each time shocks me. I am accustomed to this; the glancing scans kick in from habit whenever I am
witnessing proximate human movement, and I have learned to prepare to be disappointed. This preparation for disappointment is something like the preparation for the feeling I would get as
a young person when I looked, however glancingly, into the eyes of a racist passerby who expressed apparent disgust at my Asian off-gendered form. I imagined myself as the queer child who
was simultaneously a walking piece of dirt from Chinatown. For the sake of survival, I now have a strategy of temporally displaced imaginations; if my future includes places and people, I
pattern-match them to past experiences with chemically similar places and chemically similar people. I run through the script to see if it would result in continuity or discontinuity. This system
of simultaneous conditionals and the time-space planning that results runs counter to my other practice for survival, an investment in a refusal of conditions for my existence, a rejection of a
history of racial tuning and internalized vigilance. To my relief, the pedestrians pass, uneventfully for my body. I realize then that I should have taken my chemical respirator with me. When I
used to walk maskless with unsuspecting acquaintances, they had no idea that I was privately enacting my own bodily concert of breath-holding, speech, and movement; that while
concentrating on the topic of conversation, I was also highly alert to our environment and still affecting full involvement by limiting movements of my head while I scanned. Sometimes I had
no breath stored and had to scoot ahead to a clearer zone while explaining hastily I cant do the smoke. Indeed, the grammatical responsibility is clear here: the apologetic emphasis is
always on I-statements because there is more shame and implicature (the implicit demand for my interlocutor to do something about it) in the smoke makes me sick, so I avoid it. Yet the
. The question then becomes

individuated property-assignation of I am highly sensitive furthers the fiction of my dependence as against others independence
which bodies can bear the fiction of independence and of uninterruptability. I am, in fact, still seeking ways to effect a smile
behind my mask: lightening my tone, cracking jokes, making small talk about the weather, or simply surging forward with whatever energy I have to connect with a person on loving terms. I
did this recently when I had to go with a mask into Michaels crafts shop, full as it is of scents and glues and fiberboard. The register clerk was very sweet, very friendly, and to my relief did not
consider the site of our intersubjectivity to be the two prominent chemical filter discs on either side of my mask. Wearing the mask with love is the same way I learned to deal with a rare
racial appearance in my white-dominated hometown in the Midwest, or with what is read as a transnationally gendered ambiguity. It seems the result I receive in return is either love or
Suited up in both racial skin and chemical mask, I am perceived as a walking symbol of
hostility, and it is unpredictable.
a contagious disease like sars, and am often met with some form of repulsion; indeed, sars! is what has been used to
interpellate me in the streets. As many thinkers have noted, the insinuation or revelation of a disability, particularly invisible
disability, dovetails interestingly with issues of coming-out discourses of sexuality and passing. Both Ellen
Samuels and Robert McRuer have discussed the ways in which coming out as disabled provocatively overlaps with, and also differs from, coming out as queer.26 How does a mask help
interrupt the notion of passing? How does it render as damaged (or, at least, vulnerable) a body that might otherwise seem healthy? Not wearing a chemical mask counts as a guise of
passing, of the appearance of non-disability: I look well when I am maskless in public, at least until I crumple. The use of the literal
mask as an essential prosthesis for environmentally ill subjects is notable in light of Tobin Sieberss deployment of masquerade as an exaggeration of disability symbols to manage or
This dialogic friction between actual mask as facial appurtenancethe

intervene in social schemas about ability and disability.27
masks literal locus on the faceand mask or masquerade as a racial, non-disabled, or sexuality
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metaphor points to the central significance of face as intersubjective locus, and it exemplifies the expropriability of a facial notion of embattlement to the rest of the (human) body or
to social spheres of interaction;28 but it also points to the complexities that emerge when the actual facial signification of
disability rubs up against the facial mask metaphor. Arguably, a chemical mask can serve as its own masquerade, but it also slips and slides into
orthogonal significations. Its reading as exaggeration, in particular, competes with its reading as racializing and masculinizing toxic threat, where the skin of the mask ambivalently locates the
threat on either side of it. The same ambivalence may be attributed to the skins of some toxic bodies, whereas the
synecdochal attribution of toxicity applies either to the (rest of the) toxic body itself (the mask standing for the human sars vector) or to an exterior, vulnerable body that renders it so (Fanons
Is, then, the toxic body the

skin, which the mask covers, standing in for the colonial racialized visualities that render his blackness toxic to a white collective). 29
disabled body? Or is the toxic body that collective body that biopolitically inoculates itself against a
stronger toxin by affording itself homeopathic amounts of a negative toxin (disabled bodies) while
remaining in a terrible tension with these negated entities? Given my condition, I must constantly
renegotiate, and recalibrate, my embodied experiences of intimacy, altered affect, and the porousness
of the body. The nature of metal poisoning, accumulated over decades, is that any and every organ,
including my brain, can bear damage. Because symptoms can reflect the toxicity of any organ, they form
a laundry list that includes cognition, proprioception, emotion, agitation, muscle strength, tunnel
perception, joint pain, and nocturnality. Metal-borne damage to the livers detoxification pathways
means that I cannot sustain many everyday toxins: once they enter, they recirculate rather than leave. I can sometimes become autism-spectrum in
the sense that I cannot take too much stimulation, including touch, sound, or direct human engagement, including being unable to meet someones gaze, needing repetitive, spastic
movements to feel that my body is just barely in a tolerable state; and I can radically lose compassionate intuition, saying things that I feel are innocuous but are incredibly hurtful. The word
mercurial means what it meansunstable and wildly unpredictablebecause the mercury toxin has altered a self, has directly transformed an affective matrix: affect goes faster, affect goes
hostile, goes toxic. Traditional psychology here, I suspect, can only be an overlay, a reading of what has already transformed the body; it cannot fully rely on its narratives. Largely two quarters
of the animated agents of the metropolis that is, motor vehicles and pedestrians, but not the nonhuman animals or the insectscan be toxic to me because they are proximate instigators.
The smokestacks, though they set the ambient tone of the environment, are of less immediate concern when I am surviving moment to moment. Efficiency is far from my aim; that would
mean traversing the main streets. Because I must follow the moment-to-moment changes in quality of air to inhale something that wont hurt me, turning toward a thing or away from it
. It also
correspondingly, humans are to a radical degree no longer the primary cursors of my physical inhabitation of space. Inanimate things take on a greater, holistic importance
means that I am perpetually itinerant, even when I have a goal; it means I will never walk in a straight
line. There are also lessons here, reminders of interdependency, of softness, of fluidity, of receptivity, of immunitys
fictivity and attachments impermanence; life sustains evenor especiallyin this kind of silence, this kind of pause, this dis-ability. The heart pumps
blood; the mind, even when it says, I cant think, has reflected where and how it is. Communion is possible in spite of, or even because of, this fact. To conclude this narration of a day
navigating my own particular hazards: Ive made it back home and lie on the couch, and I wont be able to rise. My lover comes home and greets me; I grunt a facsimile of greeting in return,
looking only in her general direction but not into her eyes. She comes near to offer comfort, putting her hand on my arm, and I flinch away; I cant look at her and hardly speak to her; I cant
recall words when I do. She tolerates this because she understands very deeply how I am toxic. What is this relating? Distance in the home becomes the condition of these humans living
together in this moment, humans who are geared not toward continuity or productivity or reproductivity but to stasis, to waiting, until it passes. In such a toxic period, anyone or anything that
I manage to feel any kind of connection with, whether its my cat or a chair or a friend or a plant or a stranger or my partner, I think they are, and remember they are, all the same ontological
thing. What happens to notions of animacy given this lack of distinction between living and lifely things? I am shocked when my lover doesnt remember what I told her about my phone
earlier that day, when it was actually a customer service representative on a chat page, which once again brings an animating transitivity into play. And I am shocked when her body does not
reflect that I have snuggled against it earlier, when the snuggling and comforting happened in the arms and back of my couch. What body am I now in the arms of ? Have I performed the
inexcusable: Have I treated my girlfriend like my couch? Or have I treated my couch like her, which fares only slightly better in the moral equations? Or have I done neither such thing? After I
recover, the conflation seems unbelievable. But it is only in the recovering of my human-directed sociality that the couch really becomes an unacceptable partner. This episode, which occurs
again and again, forces me to rethink animacy, since I have encountered an intimacy that does not differentiate, is not dependent on a heartbeat. The couch and I are interabsorbent,
interporous, and not only because the couch is made of mammalian skin. These are intimacies that are often ephemeral, and they are lively; and I wonder whether or how much they are really
made of habit. Animate Objects, Inanimate Subjects By its very definition, the toxin, as much as it may have been categorized as inanimate, is more than mere matter, for it has a potency that
can directly implicate the vulnerability of a living body. Prototypically, a toxin requires an object against which its threat operates. This threatened object is an object whose defenses will be
put to the test, in detection, in fighting off, and finally in submission and absorption. But some confusion occurs when we note that the object of toxicity, its target, is an animate oneand
hence potentially also a kind of subject and that the toxin, the subject of toxicity, is inanimate. Thinking back to the linguistics of animacy hierarchies detailed in chapter 1, we note that in
In a schema of toxicity, likely

this case, various categories of assessment, particularly of worthiness to serve as agents or patients of verbs, tell opposing stories.
subjects are equally likely objects, despite their location in very different parts of the animacy hierarchy. In a scene of human intoxication, for toxins and their
human hosts, the animacy criteria of lifeliness, subjectivity, and humanness (where the human wins) come up short against mobility and sentience (where the toxin wins). And this is before
toxicity becomes us, we become the toxin. The mercurial, erethic,

even considering what occurs in that moment and the ensuing life of intoxication;
emotionally labile human moves toward quicksilver, becomes it. There is, indeed, something unworlding that might be said to take place in
the cultural production of toxic notions. A normal worlds order is lost when, for instance, things that can harm you permanently are not even visible to the naked
eye. Temporal orders become Moebius strips of identity: How could it do this to me? And yet in that
instant, the me that speaks is not the me before I was affected by it. Recent attention to inanimate objects, from Jennifer
Terrys work on the love of inanimate objects such as the Eiffel Tower and the Berlin Wall to news coverage of men having serious emotional relationships with their dakimakura pillows,
represents certain kinds of reversals of expectation regarding a kind of vitality that objects are afforded within human worlds.30 Thinking beyond the rubric of fetishism, it is useful to build
upon this work to ask questions of the subjects facing these objects and to consider how to mark their subjectivity as such or why we do so. Consider, for instance, the example of my couch,
We might indeed let go of an attachment to

with which my relationality is made possible only to the degree that I am not in possession of human sociality.
the idea that social states or capacities are possessed by one animate entity and think rather in terms of
transobjectivity.31 Transobjectivity releases objectivity from at least some of its epistemological strictures
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and allows us to think in terms of multiple objects interspersed and in exchange. Stacy Alaimos term
transcorporeality suggests we think beyond the terms of the bodily unit and affirm the agencies of the
matter that we live among.32 The sentience of the couch, in our meeting and communing, then becomes my own sentience as well. Nikolas Rose, in The Politics of Life
Itself, has observed the impact of recent dramatic changes in the field of biology, particularly in the life-making capacities of genetics and the role of pharmaceuticals in vital self-management.
33 To Rose, these shifts constitute an epistemological and technical event, and he pronounced that contemporary biopolitics must now be considered molecular in character. This focus on
molecularity is important when thinking about neurotoxicities, which I consider less a part of the spread of pharmaceutical self-management than a sign of the mediations we must now make
about toxins between environmental givens (that toxins surround us) and self (that toxins are us). In particular, what are the affectations or socialities attributed to toxicity, and what is the
affect attaining between a toxin and its host? I consider two different senses of molecularity, one of which takes the notion of a particle at face value, the other of which leaves behind a
strict biological or physical schema and considers a particles affective involvement on radically different scales. I also want to make more explicit a relationship between xenophobia and
xenobiotics; xenobiotics are substances understood to be not proper to the human body, that is, inherently alien to the body, whether or not they are recognized as such by it. Both lead and
mercury are chemically classified as metals. They are often further described as heavy metals, a category whose chemical definition remains contested since heavy variously refers to
atomic weight and molecular density. Heavy metal toxins have sites of entry, pathways of action, and multiple genres of biochemical-level and organ-specific reaction in the body. Lead and
mercury are both classified as neurotoxic, which means that they can damage neurons in the brain. Sensory impairment correlated to mercurys neuronal damage, for instance, can include
loss of proprioception, nystagmus (involuntary eye movement), and heightened sensitivity to touch or sounds. But their effectivity is potentially comprehensive: Like most other toxic metals,
lead and mercury exist as cations, and as such, can react with most ligands present in living cells. These include such common ligands as sh, phosphate, amino, and carboxyl. Thus they have the
potential to inhibit enzymes, disrupt cell membranes, damage structural proteins, and affect the genetic code in nucleic acids. The very ubiquity of potential targets presents a great challenge
to investigations on mechanisms of action.34 The ubiquity of potential targets further informs us that the transformation by a toxin and its companions can be so comprehensive that it
historical
renders their host somewhat unrecognizable. Furthermore, to state perhaps the obvious, research on contemporary toxicitiesor indeed, to broaden our field of inquiry, on
intoxicationconfirms for us our experiences: that under certain conditions, some of them enduring or seemingly permanent, social beings
can also become radically altered in their sociality, whether due to brain-specific damage or not. They are overcome, overwhelmed, overtaken by other
substances. Although the bodys interior could be described as becoming damaged by toxins, if we were
willing to perform the radical act of releasing the definition of organism from its biological pinnings,
we might from a more holistic perspective approach toxicity with a lens of mutualism. The biologist Anton de Bary, who
developed a theory of symbiosis in 1879, defined three types: commensalism, mutualism, and parasitism. Thinking of toxins as symbiotesrather than, for instance, as parasites which seem
only to feed off a generally integral being without fundamentally altering it (which would perhaps be our first guess)not only captures some toxic affectivity but enables me to
shift modes of approach. Ultimately, amountsthat is, scalesare inconsequential here; it is affectivity that matters, and the distinction between parasite and symbiosis is irrelevant. It is
worth noting here that my thinking bears some resemblance to Deleuzian interspersal and symbiosis. Deleuze and Guattari write substantively about molecularity in relation to becoming-
animal, referring to particles as belonging or not belonging to a molecule in relation to their proximity to one another; but such molecules are defined not by material qualities but rather
more so as entities whose materiality is purposefully suspended.35 Thus, they compare verbal particles to food alimentary particles that in a schizophrenics actions enter into proximity
with one another. Deleuze and Guattaris thinking is useful in the sense that I attempt not only to accentuate proximal relations among categorically differentiated entities (across lines of
animacy), but equally to emphasize the insistent segregations of material into intensified condensations (affective intensities) of race, geography, and capital. In this light, the toxicities tied
to heavy metals function as a kind of assemblage of biology, affect, nationality, race, and chemistry. And yet, their analysis leaves little room for distinctions between actual and abstract,
offers a
particularly in their creative distinction between molecularity and molarity. Thus, I find it useful to hold on to a certain concrete materiality here, insofar as it
potentially critical purchase for thinking through queer relating and racialized transnational feeling, and
further because mere metaphors, as we have seen, can sometimes overlook their own effectivity in literal fields.36 Queering Intimacy There is a potency and intensity to two animate or
inanimate bodies passing one another, bodies that have an exchangea potentially queer exchangethat effectively risks the implantation of injury. The quality of the exchange may be at the
molecular level, airborne molecules entering the breathing apparatus, molecules that may or may not have violent bodily effects; or the exchange may be visual, the meeting of eyes
unleashing a series of pleasurable or unpleasurable bodily reactions, chill, pulse rush, adrenaline, heat, fear, tingling skin. The necessary condition for toxicity to be enlivenedproximity, or
intimacymeans that queer theories are especially rich for thinking about the affects of toxicity. At the same time, queer theories can further benefit from the lessons of disability theory,
particularly by rethinking its own others. Thinking and feeling with toxicity invites us to revise, once again, the sociality that queer theory has in many ways made possible. As a
relational notion, toxicity speaks productively to queer-utopian imagining and helps us revisit the question of how and where subject-
object dispositions should be attributed to the relational queer figure. But even further, queer theory is an apt home for the consideration of toxicity, for I believe the twoqueerness and
toxicityhave an affinity. They truck with negativity, marginality, and subject-object confusions; they have, arguably, an affective intensity; they challenge heteronormative understandings of
intimacy. Both have gotten under the skin. Yet queer theorys attachment to certain human bodies and other human objects elides from its view the queer socialities that certain other,
nonhuman intimacies portend. What are the exceptionalisms that can haunt such theorizing? Let us revisit the scene from the previous chapter of the child who inappropriately licks his lead-
toxic painted train, the scene that is constantly conjured as one that must be avoided at all costs. The mobility of ingestible air and the nonemptiness of that air demonstrate that the act of
lead licking is a fantasy of exception. It is not only a fantasy that not-licking is a viable way to contain heterosexuality in its bounds, but it is also a fantasy that not-licking is a viable way to
contain the interconstitution of people and other people, or people and other objects. Look closely at your childs beloved, bright-red train: you may choose to expel it from your house, for the
toxins that the sight of it only hints at; but you will pay the cost of his proper entrainment. What fingers have touched it to make it so? How will you choose to recover your formerly benign
feelings about this train? Love has somehow to rise above the predetermined grammar of such encounters, for the grammar itself predicts only negative toxicity. So how is it that so much of
this toxic world, in the form of perfumes, cleaning products, body products, plastics, all laden with chemicals that damage us so sincerely, is encountered by so many of us as benign or only
pleasurable? How is it, even more, that we are doing this, doing all this, to ourselves? And yet, even as the toxins themselves spread far and wide, such a we is a false unity. There is a
relation ship between productivitys queers (not reproductivitys queers, that is) and hidden, normative intoxications. Those who find themselves on the underside of industrial development
bear a disproportionate risk, as environmentalists and political economy scholars alike have shown.37 In her article Akwesasne: Mohawk Mothers Milk and pcbs, environmental justice
activist Winona LaDuke describes a multipronged activist project led by the Mohawk midwife and environmentalist Katsi Cook.38 Cook developed the Mothers Milk pcb-monitoring breast
milk project, begun in 1984 and ongoing today, in response to the demonstrated toxic levels of pcbs on the Akwesasne reservation, which straddles the border between the United States and
Canada and is located very close to a primary emitter of pcbs, a General Motors site established in 1957 which is now a Superfund site. This proximityand gms improper disposal practices
meant that both the St. Lawrence River and the Akwesasne wells, the sources of water on which the Mohawks relied, had toxic concentrations of pcbs. Indeed, Akwesasne is one of the most
highly polluted Native American reservations. Cook emphasizes strengthening womens health so that their critical role as the first environment of babies be taken seriously for existing and
future bodily toxicity. These molecular intimaciesparticles passed on via breast milk to babiesare implicated in regimes of gendered labor and care. Cooks activism connects the poisoning
of the turtles to the fate of the Mohawks in a cosmology that reiterates the shared potency of live turtles and earthly support. Turtles are critically important in the Mohawk cosmology, which
connects them to the earth itself; LaDuke mentions that North America is called Turtle Island, which comes from a common Native American origin story. Such a cosmology does not depend,
for instance, on the narrow ecology of edibles that informs mainstream U.S. food safety advocacy (wherein bigger animals eat smaller animals, a logic that articulates the threat of ocean fish to
humans). It serves as a reminder that to the degree that mainstream animacy frameworks have become dominant law, such law could potentially be recodified if the animate orders on which
it depends were interrupted. The interruptions demand recognizing the contradictions within matter itselfwhether through accepting that worldviews (and their cosmologies) are
legitimately contestable, especially in a time of problematization and retrenchment diagnosed as posthuman, or through revitalized understandings of matters own complexity that can
cross the discursive boundaries of science. Cosmologies, of course, are as much written into Western philosophies as they are in Akwesasne cultures, and the life and death hidden within their
objects has a binding effect on their theoretical impulse. In her important book Queer Phenomenology, Sara Ahmed gives extensive, unabashed attention to tables, at one point writing
extensively about her orientation (in a larger discussion of sexuality and orientations) toward a table of hers and that tables orientation toward her. She writes, we perceive the object as an
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object, as something that has integrity, and is in space, only by haunting that very space; that is, by co-inhabiting space such that the boundary between the co-inhabitants of space does not
hold. The skin connects as well as contains. . . . Orientations are tactile and they involve more than one skin surface: we, in approaching this or that table, are also approached by the table,
which touches us when we touch it.39 Ahmed works here with an important and profound assertion by Maurice Merleau-Ponty that sensory engagement binds sensing and sensed objects to
one another; in this way, my skin is simultaneously the skin of the world. Yet, if we were to stretch this intercorporeality further, it appears that Ahmed still presumes the proper integrity of
her body and of the table, an exclusion of molecular travel that permits her to position one thing against another. Ahmed is talking mainly about the perception of integrity; but I wonder what
happens when percepts are to some degree bypassed, for instance, by the air itself. When physically copresent with others, I ingest them. There is nothing fanciful about this. I am ingesting
their exhaled air, their sloughed skin, and the skin of the tables, chairs, and carpet of our shared room. Ahmeds reading thus takes the deadness and inanimacy of that table as a reference
point for the orientation of a life, one in which the table is moved according to the purposes and conveniences of its owner. And while it would be unfair to ask of her analysis something not
proper to its devices, I do wonder how this analysis might change once the object distinctions between animate and inanimate collapse, when we move beyond the exclusionary zone made up
of the perceptual operands of phenomenology. The affective relations I have with a couch are not made out of a predicted script and are received as no different from those with animate
beings, which, depending on the perspective, is both their failing and their merit. My question then becomes: What is lost when we hold tightly to that exceptionalism which says that couches
are dead and we are live? For would not my nonproductivity, my nonhuman sociality, render me some other humans dead, as certainly it has, in case after case of the denial of disabled
existence, emotional life, sexuality, or subjectivity? And what is lost when we say that couches must be cathected differently from humans? Or when we say that only certain couches as they
are used would deserve the attribution of a sexual fetish? These are only questions to which I have no ready answers, except to declare that those forms of exceptionalism no longer seem very
reasonable. Indeed, the literary scholar John Plotzs careful review essay on new trends in materiality theories, Can the Sofa Speak? A Look at Thing Theory, itself never arrives at confronting
the possibility of the sofas speech, seeming to presume that the question of sofas remains at the level of humorous titular play, no explanation needed.40 It seems that animacy and its affects
are mediated not by whether you are a couch, a piece of metal, a human child, or an animal, but by how holistically you are interpreted and how dynamic you are perceived to be. Stones
themselves move, change, degrade over time, but in ways that exceed human scales. Human patients get defined, via their companion technologies, as inanimate, even as they zip right by
you in a manual wheelchair. And above and beyond these factors related to the power of interpretation and stereotype, there is the strict physicality of the elements that travel in, on, and
through us, and sometimes stay. If we ingest each others skin cells, as well as each others skin creams, then animacy comes to appear as a category itself held in false containment, insofar as
it portends exteriorized control relationships rather than mutual imbrications, even at the most material levels. Nancy Tuana, reading New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in terms of
interactionist ontology, writes, There is a viscous porosity of fleshmy flesh and the flesh of the world. This porosity is a hinge through which we are of and in the world. I refer to it as
viscous, for there are membranes that affect the interactions.41 Furthermore, the toxicity of the queer to the heterosexual collective or individual body, the toxicity of the dirty subjects to
the hygienic State, the toxicity of heavy metals to an individual body: none of these segregations perfectly succeeds even while it is believed with all effort and investment to be effective. In
toxicity does not repel but propels queer loves, especially once we release it from exclusively human hosts,
perhaps its best versions,
disproportionately inviting dis/ability, industrial labor, biological targets, and military vaccine recipientsinviting loss and its losers
and trespassing containers of animacy. We need not assign the train-licking boy of the previous chapter so surely to the nihilistic underside of futurity or to his
own termination, figurative or otherwise. I would be foolish to imagine that toxicity stands in for utopia given the explosion of resentful, despairing, painful, screamingly negative affects that
surround toxicity. Nevertheless, I am reluctant to deny the queer productivity of toxins and toxicity, a productivity that extends beyond an enumerable set of addictive or pleasure-inducing
Unlike viruses, toxins

substances, or to neglect (or, indeed, ask after) the pleasures, the loves, the rehabilitations, the affections, the assets that toxic conditions induce.
are not so very containable or quarantinable; they are better thought of as conditions with effects,
bringing their own affects and animacies to bear on lives and nonlives. If we move beyond the painful
antisocial effects to consider the sociality that is present there, we find in that sociality a reflection on
extant socialities among us, the queer-inanimate social lives that exist beyond the fetish, beyond the
animate, beyond the pure clash of human body sex.
348
A: Reject
The alternative is to reject the affs ableist rhetoric- by failing to undermine the
rhetorical foundation of ableism, the aff allows the destructive impacts of ableism be
recreated
Cherney 11 (James L. Cherney- Wayne State University Disability Studies Quarterly Vol. 31 No 3 (2011)
accessed 7-4-17 The Rhetoric of Ableism <http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1665/1606>)
Every orientation, perspective, and ideology has its basis somewhere; we are taught to understand the world as we
do. In other words, we learn meaningit does not arise naturally from objects or relationships. In Hall's words,
"there is no one, final, absolute meaningno ultimate signified, only the endlessly sliding chain of
signification."6 Earlier, Kenneth Burke argued similarly that "Stimuli do not possess an absolute meaning" and pointed out
that "Even a set of signs indicating the likelihood of death by torture has another meaning in the
orientation of a comfort-loving skeptic than it would for the ascetic whose world-view promised eternal
reward for martyrdom." Burke concludes: "Any given situation derives its character from the entire
framework of interpretation by which we judge it."7 From the perspective of ableism as a framework of
interpretation, we identify its dimensions by examining the linguistic codes and rhetorical assumptions
that govern sense making. As Burke put it, "We discern situational patterns by means of the particular
vocabulary of the cultural group into which we are born. Our minds, as linguistic products, are
composed of concepts (verbally molded) which select certain relationships as meaningful." In other words, meaning
exists primarily as a function of language rather than a natural or necessary consequent of material objects or bodies. Our comprehension of
reality itself arises from our perspective, so "different frameworks of interpretation will lead to different conclusions as to what reality is."8
Complicating the simple materiality of things does not necessarily entail rejecting material existence: things can exist as
simultaneously material and rhetorical constructs. Material might be experienced "directly" by a body,
but whatand howthis material "is" depends on filters that shape perception. Repeated stress on a
knee may promote swelling, strain ligaments, and alter the shape of cartilage. Depending on the way it is
described, this might be understood as "injury," expected "wear and tear," or "a natural consequence of
running long distances." If the condition causes pain, it might be considered "trauma," a "danger signal," or the simple
"cost that one pays for extraordinary performance." To say and understand what happened we use "stress," "swelling,"
"ligaments," and "cartilage" as concepts that we have created to relate to the experience in particular ways. Substitute "stress" with
"strenuous activity," "work," "play," or "abuse" and the condition changes yet its materiality remains the
same. Exchange "swelling," with "inflammation," "being sore," "recovery mechanisms," or "cushioning," and this alters the proscribed
treatments. Replace "ligaments" and "cartilage" with "tissues," "sinews," "flesh," or "well designed structural components" and the anatomy
itself becomes something else. The event could not be explained at all if the words were lost or it involved something unnamed. The
context in which observers place something and the implications of the words used to make it
meaningful rhetorically construct the experience. We say what happened, and if we do not or cannot, then the characteristics
of the event remain undefined, unfixed, and mutable. Material may exist independently of our subjective awareness, but what something is,
how it should be, and why it matters cannot exist except as a function of language. Whatever the factual (or material, or empirical, or
scientific) status
of disability, my only concern here is the concept's meaning. Disability is a loaded term,
weighted down with tools and supplies sufficient for the task of making difference. Such baggage begs to be
unpacked. But the project quickly becomes complicated because the ropes that bind the luggage are largely invisible as common sense.
Racism and sexism may have no legitimate place in this "civilized" world, but the precepts governing
modern civility continue to allow an ableist orientation. This requires those who would undermine
ableist thinking to step outside of the rhetorical foundations bounded by ableist assumptions in order
to recognize ableism as a destructive and dangerous perspective. In rhetorical terms, the problem is
349
one of studying from within a rhetoric that denies its own rhetoricity. Researchers have addressed this issue with
other rhetorics. Michael Calvin McGee and John R. Lyne used the term "antirhetoric" to describe the "cool,
comfortably neutral technical reason (associated in the public mind with computing machines and sterile laboratories)" that
scientists since Plato have sought to perfect.9 As McGee and Lyne make clear, antirhetorics are still a form of rhetoric, whose
"appeal to objective knowledge and its accompanying denunciation of rhetoric is one of the most
effective rhetorical strategies."10 Similarly, in their study of the Law and Economics movement, Edward M. Panetta and
Marouf Hasian, Jr. used the term "anti-rhetoric," which they define as "any foundational quest for truth
that privileges itself as the only or primary 'rational,' 'objective,' and 'neutral' means of acquiring
epistemic knowledge."11 Practicioners of anti-rhetorics deny their own rhetoricity so as to appear value
neutral, mere messengers of the truth, who by being above the sticky political world of rhetoric are not
tainted with its excesses. Recognizing ableism requires a shift in orientation, a perceptual gestalt framed
by the filter of the term "ableism" itself. The same texts that broadcast "Ableism!" to those oriented to perceive it are usually
read innocently even when viewed from a liberal, humanitarian, or progressive perspective. Ableism is so pervasive that it is
difficult to identify until one begins to interrogate the governing assumptions of well-intentioned
society. Within the space allowed by these rhetorical premises, ableism appears natural, necessary, and
ultimately moral discrimination required for the normal functioning of civilization. Consider a set of stairs. An
ableist culture thinks little of stairs, or even sees them as elegant architectural devicesespecially those grand marble masterpieces that
elevate buildings of state. But disability rights activists see stairs as a discriminatory apparatusa "no crips allowed" sign that only those aware
of ableism can readthat makes their inevitable presence around government buildings a not-so-subtle statement about who belongs in our
most important public spaces. But the device has become so accepted in our culture that the idea of stairs as oppressive technology will strike
many as ludicrous. Several years ago when I began to study ableism, a professorunconvinced of the value of the projectquestioned my
developing arguments by pointing to a set of steps and exclaiming, "Next you'll be telling me that those stairs discriminate!" He was right.
The alternative is key to challenging ableism and rejecting societal oppression

Shier, Sinclair, Gault 11 (University of Windsor: Challenging ableism and teaching about disability
in the a social work classroom: A training module for generalist social workers working with people
disables by the social environment )
The concept of disability has become common use in discussions of oppression and diversity within social work curriculum.
Disability is
recognized as an issue of discrimination that results in inequality at a social and individual level. There are
omissions, though, within the literature that would help social work practitioners conceptualize appropriate methods of practice with people
disabled by the social environment. As a corrective, the
following offers a framework for a diversity training module that is
intended to help undergraduate generalist social work students and direct service practitioners to think about the issue of
disability in relation to current social and theoretical contexts. Disability issues related to the physical, developmental,
learning, and mental health aspects of people are present amongst all populations and age groups. Therefore, even if a practitioner is not
working within a disability-specific agency, they should expect to encounter disability issues both visible and invisible amongst their
clientele.
Initially, a theoretical context of the concept of disability, and in particular the experiences within Canada, is provided. We draw on firsthand accounts within the
literature to show some common themes identified by people disabled by the social environment. The intention is to make connections
between theories of disability and how each relates specifically to real-life situations. We find it useful to make
these points at the outset, because when understanding oppression we need to go to the source of where that oppression
occurs. Not doing so results in policy platforms, social theories, and service delivery frameworks that
attempt inclusivity, but by the language used (Bolt, 2005) and the outcomes experienced (van Daalen-Smith, 2007) in many ways help to create
and/or maintain a social system of dependency, degradation, and disempowerment (Wachsler, 2007); essentially,
further marginalizing people from being fully engaged in many, if not all, aspects of society. It becomes critical for a profession like social work to
understand the connection between theories and practical experiences to effectively challenge societal
oppression through our direct work with clients; whether that work is individually focused or directed at a macro level.
350
A key assumption of this training module is that we need to challenge perceptions to effectively teach practitioners about oppression generally
and disability specifically. To elaborate, here is a scenario of questions to consider: When walking through a doorway with someone directly
behind you do you keep the door open for them? Now what do you think when you do that? We are talking here about being mindful; thinking
that happens implicitly in the moment. Mindfulness in social work practice is a concept that has been linked to reflective practice and can
impact how and why we work with people (Hick, 2008; Marash & Phillips, 2008; McFadden, 2008; Mishna & Bogo, 2007). Now, in your mind,
put that person in a wheelchair. Now what do you think? Are your feelings and thoughts about opening the door for someone using a
wheelchair different than for someone who is not? The
way that we interact with the concept of disability, like other
points of diversity such as race, gender, sexual orientation, age, etcetera, is very much a thought process
guided by perception. Our assumption is that to effectively engage undergraduate students or direct practitioners in
understanding oppression we need to consider in further detail how our society, and we as individuals,
have come to these various thought processes.
As a beginning point, the literature review investigates the many concepts related to disability and provides a contextual background of why
people have come to this particular thought process. Rooting
the issue of ableism within the present context of
disability can help practitioners to then break down their own assumptions and thoughts about disability and
base their thinking, instead, on the present social movement of disability issues.
351
352
Ext: Performance Good
Performance makes debate accessible to anyone
Sandahl, 2003 (Sandahl, Carrie Associate Professor, head of Program on Disability Art, Culture and
Humanities Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer?: Intersection of Queer and Crip Identities in the
Solo Autobiographical Performance)
In their introduction to O Solo Homo, however, Hughes and the theater scholar David Romn do delineate how queer artists use monologues
for this purpose and, in the process, for building alternative communities.14 In particular, they explore the material and ideological reasons that
queer artists are attracted to solo performance. The rst is obvious: solo work is cheap and quick to produce. Traditional
theatrical
production is too expensive for many and too time consuming to be an effective way to spread a
message fast. Second, solo performance is about crossing boundaries. It is open to anyone, regardless of
race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality, who chooses to cast himself or herself as a solo performer; the
whims and prejudices of casting directors play no part. Third, it takes seriously the adage that the
personal is political. Hughes and Romn place this genre in the American tradition of witnessing, a project of revising history,
educating others about ones personal experience, and mobilizing them to political or social action. Such
a project is vital to those whose stories have been left out of mainstream accounts of history. Fourth, queer
performers assert a visible presence through solo work. Finally, solo artists not only dene their own identities through autobiographical
performance but dene and critique their communities. The genre challenges audiences to rethink their assumptions about who is on the
inside and who is on the outside of a given
Disabled and Queer Identities are better expressed through autobiographical

performances they are essential to keep the theories from becoming ideologically
ambivalent
Sandahl, 2003 (Sandahl, Carrie Associate Professor, head of Program on Disability Art, Culture and
Humanities Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer?: Intersection of Queer and Crip Identities in the
Solo Autobiographical Performance)
Moreover, the term cripple, like queer, is fluid and ever-changing, claimed by those whom it did not originally define. As a
pejorative, the term queer was originally targeted at gays and lesbians, yet its rearticulation as a term of pride is currently claimed by those
who may not consider themselves homosexual, such as the transgendered, transsexuals, heterosexual sex radicals, and others. The term
crip has expanded to include not only those with physical impairments but those with sensory or mental
impairments as well. Though I have never heard a nondisabled person seriously claim to be crip (as heterosexuals have claimed to be
queer), I would not be surprised by this practice. The fluidity of both terms makes it likely that their boundaries will
dissolve. I am not suggesting that queer theorists would contest disability studies as a field in its own right, but I do think that a thorough
analysis of the fields points of intersection and departure is necessary. My project of extricating disability studies from queer theory echoes the
work of other scholars who have criticized queer theorys tendency to absorb and flatten internal differences, in particular to neutralize its
constituents material and cultural differences and to elevate the concerns of gay white men above all others. The theater scholar Susan
McCully contends that queer theory, in radically deconstructing the normal, has inadvertently led to an ambiguous ideology devoid of an
activist base.8 Warner, who argues for the potential strategic expansiveness of the term queer, would seem to offer a corrective by reminding
his readers that queer theorys vitality depends on its willingness to recognize difference: Theory
has to understand that
different identity environments are neither parallelso that the tactics and values of one might be
assumed to be appropriate for anothernor separable. Queer struggles and those of other identity movements, or
alternatively of other new social movements, often differ in important wayseven when they are intermingled in experience.9 The crip,
queer, solo autobiographical performers I analyze in this essay sort through that intermingled experience onstage and off, in performance and
in interviews.10 Their work suggests that the clash between crip and queer identities queer
and crip identities in solo
autobiographical performance 27 exposes sites for activism and clarifies significant issues for both
groups. In fact, the relationship between them can be considered a system of checks and balances,
353
essential for keeping queer theory or activism and disability studies or activism from becoming
ideologically ambivalent.
354
A2: Perm
Current forms of disability scholarship fails to include disabled peoples- the only
method for solvency is a hybrid of academia and activism
Wolbring 12 (Gregor Wolbring- Department of Community Health Sciences, Specialization in
Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, 7-6-12 accessed
7-3-17 Expanding Ableism: taking down the Ghettoization of Impact of Disability Study Scholars
<http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/2/3/75/htm>)
The first challenge is whether disability studies scholars want to serve their own academic field, or
whether they want to serve disabled people, or both? In order to serve academia scholars have to fulfil their impact
expectations which are, among others, about publishing in high impact journals whereby impact factors are not generated by the amount of
people reading an article but by how often one article is cited by other academics [12]. If scholars want to serve disabled
people, the question is whether they can do so by not interacting with disabled people. Indeed many
disability studies scholars are also activists [13], which goes against the detached objectivity [13], an
expectation in many research fields. It also leads to a reorientation of where one tries to publish. Publication in high
impact academic journals would only make sense if they are: (a) open access allowing a broad group of
disabled people to have access to the writings, and (b) the time from submission to notice of decision
(whether the decision is positive or negative) is reasonable (e.g., less than 3 month) and the time from notice of
acceptance to publication in an open access format is shortly thereafter (e.g., less than 4 weeks). Fulfilling these two characteristics
ensures ones impact is as timely and as broad as possible. Furthermore, to serve disabled people as a scholar, the
publication strategy would also have to include other venues of publication such as blogs and social networking sites in a more non-academic
language given that the level of education of disabled people varies so much. In the end, the
disability studies scholar will have
to be a hybrid, trying to serve academia and disabled people. However, this is not an easy undertaking as
the often-present conflict between disability studies scholars and non-academic disabled people [13]
shows.
355
A2: Special Ed Solves
Special Education is a way to de-politicize the abelism endemic to schooling
Slee and Allan 2001 (Roger Slee and Julie Allan, Professors at the University of Stirling, Excluding the
included: A reconsideration of inclusive education)
In taking up a central problematic affecting one substrata or constituency of the field that has relatively recently come to be known as inclusive education,
we consider struggles in theorising and educational policy-making for education for disabled students. The
problematic that we refer to is best expressed by the philosopher-comic from Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, Anthony Hancock (Goodwin, 1999, p. 211) who
declared: Underneath the hand-made crocodile shoes there are still toes.
A recent evaluation of the progress of the inclusion
programme in the Australian state of Western Australia (Tuettemann et al, 2000) confirms continuing
anxiety about the resilience of traditional forms of special education (Brantlinger, 1997) and its appropriation of
inclusion in order to maintain unreconstructed notions of schooling and educational defectiveness (Skrtic,
1995; Corbett, 1996, Allan, 1999; Barton & Slee, 1999). We maintain that the subversion of inclusion from an emancipatory [4] to a conservative project is
ineluctable given the application of traditional epistemologies of special education to new times (Hall & Jacques, 1989).[5] The
misappropriation of
equity-based research is not limited to that area that has inappropriately come to be known as special
educational Downloaded by [192.3.172.36] at 03:12 24 March 2014 RECONSIDERING INCLUSIVE EDUCATION 175 needs.[6] As Barton has asserted,
special educational needs is a euphemism for the failure of schooling to meet the needs of all children,
a discursive tactic to de-politicise school failure (Barton, 1987) and legitimise the professional interest of
special education workers (Tomlinson, 1996). The reconstruction of traditional special education as inclusive education is a manifestation of what
Brantlinger (1997) refers to, borrowing from Thompson (1984), as meaning in the service of power (p. 7). In his most recent rejoinder to the politics of
masculinities debates, with its attendant and now thoroughly critiqued moral panic about boys underachievement in schooling (Boaler, 1998; Murphy & Elwood,
1998; Arnot, David & Weiner, 1999; Lingard & Douglas, 1999), Connell (2000, p. 6) identifies nostalgia as the biggest problem in the pop-psychology approach to
masculinity. The problem, according to Connell, is that:
Special education is bad for students with disabilities

Collins et al. 16 (Kathleen, Professor at The Pennsylvania State University Dangerous Assumptions
and Unspoken Limitations: A Disability Studies in Education Response to Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier,
Mattison, Maczuga, Li, and Cook (2015))
The central assertion made by Morgan et al. (2015) (i.e., that underrepresentation, rather than
overrepresentation, is the real problem confronting the field) rests on the assumption that special
education services are beneficial and would lead to improved outcomes. In other words, to argue that students need
services but are not qualifying for them is largely an argument about the efficacy of special education placements. This assumption is grounded in
the idea that special education is a rational and largely helpful set of services that lead to improved
outcomes for students with disabilities. Proponents of this view of special education argue that there are two distinct types of students in
school, each with their own unique learning needs (Brantlinger, 2004) and that identifying and placing those students with disabilities in special education will lead to
more positive learning outcomes. A related claim from the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) position paper (2007) argues that the dual system of general and
special education and the idea that the knowledge and skills of general and special education are distinct (pp. 23) and necessary to meet the needs of students with
Yet, the most comprehensive longitudinal outcome study of students with
disabilities is refl ective of this assumption.
disabilities has consistently shown that students exiting special education continue to experience lower
graduation rates, poorer postsecondary outcomes, and higher rates of unemployment and
underemployment (National Longitudinal Transition Study-2; 6 Multiple Voices, 16(1), Spring 2016 NLTS2) (Newman, Wagner, Cameto, & Knokey,
2009) compared to nondisabled peers. Outcomes are particularly discouraging for students labeled with emotional disturbance who are more likely
to drop out and have encounters with the justice system. In fact, 75% of young adults who are given this label in school will have some involvement with the justice
system at some point during their lives. Students
labeled with intellectual disabilities also have among the poorest
postschool outcomes of any group. In 2002, a Presidential Commission was formed to issue recommendations to address the high rates of
unemployment and underemployment (low wages and part-time employment) and the low rates of participation in postsecondary education for students receiving
special education services once they leave school As a part of the 2004 reauthorization of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), states must now publish
their own performance plans addressing data on drop-out rates, participation and performance on statewide assessments, and restrictiveness of placement. States must
also report on factors related to racial and ethnic disproportionality, including data on suspensions and expulsions, particular disability categories, and by
356
restrictiveness of placement. These reports are instructive both in terms of documenting disproportionality as well as the continued sluggish progress being made to
improve outcomes or close achievement gaps. Along with lowered expectations, Elliott (2015) notes that students
with disabilities do not
receive equal, let alone equitable opportunity to learn in relation to three key dimensionstime,
content covered, and cognitive process level. He notes that the differences in non-instructional time
were most notable (p. 60). As Skrtic (1991) argued, In terms of the adequacy of its grounding assumptions,
special education cannot be considered a rational and just response to the problem of school failure (p.
174). Neither can it claim to promote either excellence or equity. Thus, when Morgan and Farkas (2015) suggested that we should be more concerned about students
of color not being classifi ed as eligible for special education, they assumed that special education will lead to improved outcomes, something that the preponderance
of research on the effi cacy of special education does not support. SECOND DANGEROUS ASSUMPTION: STUDENTS ARE DEFICIENT The second
harmful assumption in Morgan et al.s (2015) research asserts that disproportionality, if it exists, results
from within child explanations (such as differences in ability or behavior) or contextual factors (such as
poverty). These kinds of claims are familiar to anyone who has studied disproportionality in any depth.
As Artiles, Kozleski, Trent, Osher, and Ortiz (2010) note, there is a problematic, yet common tendency
to privilege poverty explanations (p. 280) as a way to avoid acknowledging or accounting for race or
ethnicity. Moreover, when Morgan and Farkas (2015) located the issue of overrepresentation either within the bodies, behaviors, or brains of students, they failed
to unpack why it is that only the most subjective disability categories are more likely to be attributed to students of color. Nor do they explain why it is that Black
males, for example, experience higher rates of overrepresentation than Black females. One would assume that brothers and sisters would share social class, and yet,
males of color experience much higher rates of overrepresentation. Losen and Orfi elds (2002) research on the topic is also instructive, because it shows that
overrepresentation varies from state to state, and even district to district, revealing students of color in more affl uent schools tend to experience higher rates of
disproportionality than students who attend more underresourced schools. The defi cit-based assumptions of Morgan et al. (2015) would have us believe that students
of color are disproportionately placed in special education because either they or their environments are defi cient. Drawing on cultural deprivation discourses,
Morgan et al. (2015) suggest that students who come from impoverished backgrounds come to embody defi cits that place them at a higher risk of acquiring learning
or behavioral problems in schools. In so doing, Morgan et al. (2015) naturalize and justify disproportionate placement in special education, higher rates of referral for
behavioral issues, and lower achievement. In other words, they rely on defi cit-based views of children of color, which place the problem of disproportionality not on
referral bias, negative stereotypes, lowered expectations, reduced opportunity to learn, Multiple Voices, 16(1), Spring 2016 7 or the historical legacies of
discrimination, but on students of color themselves, their families, and their communities. Within this argument one hears echoes of the historical legacy of eugenic
era thinking. What one does not hear are scholars who are willing to grapple with the problematic assumptions embedded within their twisted and defi cit-based
logics.
357
AFF Answers
358
Perm
Perm - Institutional reform solves- dismantling racial oppression and disability
oppression in schools is a prerequisite to the democratic classroom
Therefore, we argue that educational policymakers have to view the dismantling of racial oppression in
conjunction with the dismantling of disability oppression. This requires that we institute education
policies that are not based on a deficit model situated within the individual (e.g., remedial classes, special
education, alternative school), but rather policies that support positive rights for all children (i.e., ensuring that social,
economic, and political conditions are improved for effective education to take place). As noted in the Woodstock Report (1993), raising
test scores, instituting competency tests, and increasing teacher standards without addressing the root
cause of the problems has hurt more than it has helped. More specifically, education policy needs to be more
focused on the continuing struggle to liberate schools from the shackles of Plessys separate but equal
dictuma liberation that can only be achieved if education policy is able to creatively respond to the
provocative relationship between race and disability. If education policymakers are committed to the
principles of equal opportunity and social justice for all students, especially those marked oppressively by race
and disability, they will have to: 1. Support a concerted effort to sustain the commitment to public
education. This will require that education policymakers challenge the increasing proliferation of alternative schools,
private schools, and charter schools in an effort to prevent further segregation and the continued
exclusion of students on the basis of race and disability. 2. Reduce class sizes and increase the number
of highly qualified teachers in each public school classroomteachers who are trained to meet the needs of the diverse
student population notwithstanding their race and their disability. 3. Ensure that teacher training programs prepare
educators for teaching in more inclusive settings. This would entail that all teachers attain dual certification in both regular
and special education. 4. Support the radical transformation of classroom organization and planning that is
geared toward a curriculum that is not based on conformity or homogeneity, but on heterogeneity and difference.
5. Support school practices that work toward the dismantling of institutionalized racism and
institutionalized ableism. 6. Reorganize schools so that Whiteness as property and ability as property do
not become the only currency used in schools to achieve academic success. If these steps are followed, only then
will children marked oppressively by race and disability not be perceived as the problem. Only then will public education be truly
democratic.
359
Alt Fails
The alternative places the disability in a relationship of spectatorship that strengthens
the line between normalcy and difference
JANE H. VAN SLEMBROUCK, Ph.D. M.A., Hunter College B.A., Hillsdale College, TRUE BODIES/FALSE
BODIES: DISABILITY, APPEARANCE, AND THE POLITICS OF PERSONAL SINCERITY, UMI 3643389 Published
by ProQuest LLC (2014). Dissertation. June, 2014
Those who had the chance to meet Helen Keller in person often remarked afterward on the beauty of
her blue eyes, describing them as animated and possessing none of the lack-luster look of the blind
(Nielson 134). Where they perhaps expected to see inanimate or lifeless eyes, observers found vitality and
intelligence, and even the attractive illusion of sight. Kellers eyes epitomize her public performance of
disability. The slight bewilderment they produced (how could such animated eyes be blind?) was key to
their appeal: they simulated the visual exchange expected of social interaction even as they invited
onlookers to voyeuristically ponder what it might be like to possess the appearance of sight but be
unable to return an onlookers gaze. Kellers blue eyes promised that disability can be an aesthetic
encounter, even a voyeuristic one, but not one that would destabilize conventional standards of beauty.
Invested with all of the symbolism ascribed to vision in Western culture, Kellers eyes seemed to offer direct access to her exemplary inner life, promising that no
more was she a closed-off enigma (as she was before Annie Sullivan entered her life and educated her) but a lucid intellect whose true self could be divined by
sympathetic onlookers. The ironic fact of the matter was that Kellers blue eyes were made of glass. As a young woman in her twenties she had secretly
undergone surgery to have both of her own eyes removed (one was visibly disfigured from the illness that blinded her as a child)
and replaced with artificial eyes. Their opacity masquerading as transparency, Kellers eyes exemplify
the pressures faced by disabled individuals to at once disclose and conceal their differences. This abiding
tension between performance and interiority is at the heart of True Bodies/False Bodies: Disability, Appearance, and the Politics of Personal Sincerity. My
dissertation considers how American literary representations of bodily difference in the second half of the nineteenth century are
framed by concerns about character, specifically the social expectation that individuals be authentic.
Accounts of disability underscore concerns about the knowability of others and reveal that expectations
of disclosure are often motivated by a need to strengthen the borderline between normalcy and
difference. Obligatory authenticity becomes still more fraught when differences are invisible, allowing individuals to
pass as normal. This project is motivated by my interest in how individuals perform their identities (or refuse to, or are unable to) given the
conflicting pressures to offer a true self and a socially acceptable one. I trace first-person nineteenth-century accounts of
disability ranging from the metaphorical to the literal and spanning a period when the sentimental social duty to sincerely perform ones identity (the contradiction
is key) coexisted with emerging medical epistemological theories and techniques. In fact, social and scientific ways of knowing were in some ways interdependent;
both were grounded in a confidence about the legibility of bodies and character. Literature of the second half of the nineteenth century echoes with questions
about where the true self resides and whether onlookers can hope to discern it. In The House of Seven Gables, the young daguerreotypist Holgrave envisions his
technology burning through merest surface and bringing out secret character (85). In The Confidence Man, Melville analogizes the difficult work of
authenticating currency and the challenge of validating the character of people. Such inquiries reflected a wider attempt to grapple with middleclass values of
sincerity. Karen Halttunen argues that middleclass social interactions at midcentury were informed by a sentimental demand for transparent sincerity, the belief
that the outer self, perceived with care, would offer up the inner. That belief, she writes, crystalized in time into a demand for the mere skillful social performance
of sincerity (188-9). As sincerity codified into genteel manners, the work of distinguishing between truth and hypocrisy became even more challenging. The constant
enterprise (in every sense of the word) of projecting an authentic self, and in turn interpreting the possibly misleading appearances of others, increasingly cast
doubt on sentimental epistemologies. And yet, as I hope to show, the ideal of the constant, transparent self lingered on even as skepticism took root. Robert
Montgomery Bird is an early example of a writer happy to jettison that ideal, yet his work is defined by questions of masquerading and selfhood. Birds experimental
novel Sheppard Lee, the point where my discussion opens, takes it as gospel that identity is nothing if not malleable and performative. Positing a multifarious self
that is made and unmade within the emerging capitalist economy, Sheppard Lee lays the groundwork for considering tropes of bodily difference and appearance.
There is no interiority in Sheppard Lee to be disclosed or divined. Identity is material and therefore mutable: the soul resides in the body like water in
sponges...changed with its changes, and so intimately united with the fleshly matrix, that the mere cutting off of a leg [will] leave the spirit limping for life (181). In
its conviction that selfhood is shaped by the vicissitudes of the capitalist marketplace, Lees narrative anticipates Helen Keller, the writer with whom Ill conclude.
Writing at the turn of the century, Keller had to negotiate the line between projecting a credible self and being inventive and adaptable. In fact, reading Sheppard
Lee and Keller side by side shows just how prescient Bird was in diagnosing an emergent materialist vision of self-making that centered on bodily appearance and
Kellers work betrays the fundamental contradiction inherent in her reception: the public
social reception.
desire that she should have a single, transcendent self across all her writing and visual media, even as
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her celebrity derived from her own history of self-transformation.
The alternative forces a politics of disclosure and codification that recreates the binary
of normalcy and alterity.
JANE H. VAN SLEMBROUCK, Ph.D. M.A., Hunter College B.A., Hillsdale College, TRUE BODIES/FALSE
BODIES: DISABILITY, APPEARANCE, AND THE POLITICS OF PERSONAL SINCERITY, UMI 3643389 Published
by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition ProQuest
LLC.NEW YORK June, 2014
I have talked about the interpretive work of sentimental culture that shaped social interaction and
placed great significance on outer appearance. Disability itselfa central component of this
dissertationis tied up in these networks of visual interpretation, Referring to the presumption that
identities should be seen, Lennard Davis has described disability as a specular moment (Enforcing 12).
I would add that it is also a hermeneutic one. As a manifestation of human embodiment and experience,
physical difference is rarely not figural. The effort to narrate disabilitys myriad variations is an attempt
to bring the bodys unruliness under control, write David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder (6). Bodies that
disrupt the visual field invite explanation, and where explanation lacks, onlookers will rush to supply it.
An amputee veteran may be a figure of sacrifice or of pity. A visibly pregnant woman may be a symbol of
new life or of dependency. It all depends on who is doing the looking. Symbols inform even the most
casual of visual encounters, prompting observers to ask for some form of self-justificationa story that
will publically knit together the disabled subjects inner and outer selves. Those with invisible differences
face an especially complex task of reconciling the inner and outer, ostensibly to satisfy the ideal of
authentic selfhood but in actuality to offer up their nonconformity as a foil for normalcy. Michael
Brub writes that disability is sometimes regarded as the foundation of character itself (570). What
happens, then, when disabilities arent conspicuouswhen anatomy resists being an overt measure of
character? The works I examine offer various responses to the expectation that individuals outside the
corporeal mainstream perform true selvesthrough autobiographical narratives and other forms of
self-stagingeven as the identities they claim may be doubted. It is the narrative of disabilitys very
unknowability that consolidates the need to tell a story about it, write Mitchell and Snyder (6). Bodily
differences seem to all but invite questions and unsolicited interpretation. Freak shows exploit the
desire for readable bodies in crudely literal ways, forcing difference into view with strategies such as
dividing the bodies of intersex performers down the middle between male and female coded grooming
and attire. Even outside those hyperbolic performance spaces, disabled individuals face pressure to
explain themselves to curious onlookersto divulge the exact nature of their difference, to share what
happened. Such expectations in effect ask an already potentially marginalized person to provide a
narrative that justifies his or her marginalization by making the perceived (or imperceptible) difference
the most salient fact about the person and presuming that a private fact is indeed public. The
expectation of self-justification shifts the onus away from society to rethink its boundaries and
reinforces a view of disability as a defect that the individual in question must divulge and
resolve. Considering nonvisible and inconspicuous disability like Kellers deafblindness or Laurences
intersexuality (a social disability, as is Kellers to a great extent) helps expand disability studies beyond
its early, almost exclusive focus on figures with easily ascertainable differences: the disfigured war
veteran, the man in the wheelchair, the woman in leg braces. Led by critics including Tom Shakespeare,
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Tobin Siebers, and Liz Crow, disability scholarship in recent years has been opening to include conditions
like chronic pain and illnessliminal disabilities that may be primarily a product of social exclusion (like
Laurences) or may originate both inside and outside the body (like Kellers). Nonvisible disabilities
deserve attention not only for the obvious ethical reasons of inclusion but also because of the major role
that epistemological systems play in the classification and ranking of bodies. Those systems are both
revealed and put to the test by the presence of ambiguous or unknowable bodies. Robert McRuer
argues that the cultural mandate of compulsory able-bodiedness requires examples of disabled bodies
to prove the norm of ability. Marginal bodies, notes Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, are deployed as foils
for dominant identities: without the female body to distinguish the shape of the male, and without the
pathological to give form to the normal, the taxonomies of bodily value that underlie political, social,
and economic arrangements would collapse (20). Appearances need to line up to expected or
presumed essences in order retain the sharp distinction between normal and abnormal. Bodies that
resist disclosure complicate that boundary, much as miscegenation and racial passing threaten
cherished racial categories. Artistic representations magnify the real-world work of interpretation.
Relative to other minority identities, disability is widely represented in literature, but disabled characters
tend to be figured as underdeveloped outsiders who exist primarily to draw emotional responses from
readers (as is sometimes the case in sentimental fiction) or produce other rhetorical effects (Garland-
Thomson, EB 9). The range of figural types available to disabled characters include sentimental symbols
designed to elicit readers sympathy or pity (Holmes, Garland-Thomson); representations of monstrosity
(Bogdan); narrative widgets for resolving problems in the plot and revealing important facts about able-
bodied characters (Mitchell and Snyder); expressions of excess embodiment whose presence frees
normal subjects from the limitations of embodiment (Garland-Thomson EB 7); and metaphors for other
forms of alterity in a dominant culture whose normal body remains young, healthy, white, male, and
heterosexual (McRuer). Literary scholars in turn posit their own symbolic uses for disability as a category
of study. Disability is the common bond of human vulnerability (Kittay; Siebers, Disability Aesthetics); a
bodily aesthetic reflected in the fragmented human forms of modern art (Art of Disability, Siebers); a
figure for the social body or the body politic (Russell). The range of figural readings of disability itself
(never mind the representations of particular disabled individuals) underscores the close alignment of
textuality and corporeality. This dissertation may be said to offer a metacommentary on the very
business of reading and interpreting marginal bodies in a culture highly invested in the knowability of
others.
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Impacts
363
I: Disposability
Disability is vector of violence which is mapped on racialized subjects and renders
populations disposable
for the Study of Sexual Culture @ UC Berkeley, Unpacking Intoxication, racialising disability, Med
Humanit, 41, p. 26-7]
DOWN SYNDROME AND THE LOGIC OF DEVELOPMENT Opium enters this story a bit later: I came to it through a research project that pursues
the legacies, and the fascinating series of logics, by which an English clinician named Langdon Down came to understand the phenomena he
observed in his young patients as mongoloidism or mongoloid idiocy. Downs influential approach to developmental disabilities has persisted,
if perhaps only in a ghostly nominal lay remainder (medical practice stopped usage of this term after repeated objection in the mid-20th
century); but it also partakes of racialised and temporalised developmental logics that remain robust today. In the years prior to 1866, a
number of English children with identifiable and yet unmapped disabilities presented Down, who understood these descriptively as congenital
mental lesions, with an explanatory opportunity for his studies of idiocy that were popular at the time. Influenced
by Friedrich
Blumenbachs division of the worlds human races into five essential groups,5 including the Mongol, the Malay, the
Ethiopian, the Caucasian and the Native American, and also by contemporary ideas of racial temporalisation, Down devised a theory
that his young white research subjectsdistinguished by not only cognitive, but phenotypical characteristics such as an
epicanthic foldmust have reverted, atavistically, to an earlier racial stage, which he described as Mongolian, or
alternatively as Mongoloid idiot or imbecile. Mongoloid thus became a term to describe people with Down
syndrome, which survives to this day in significant numbers despite no longer being accepted as a clinical term. I note here that
Down syndrome is today often referred to as Trisomy 21, referring to the particularising characteristic of three copies of chromosome 21 in
every cell for most but not all people with Down syndrome, signalling a shift towards genetic accounts of disabilities. Down believed he could
identify atavistic eruptions of earlier racial (Mongoloid) characteristics in the otherwise European descended child. He wrote straightforwardly
and yet swept over exception: A very large number of congenital idiots are typical Mongols. So marked is this, that when placed side by side, it
is difficult to believe that the specimens compared are not children of the same parents. The hair is not black, as in the real Mongol, but of a
brownish colour, straight and scanty. The face is flat and broad, and destitute of prominence. The cheeks are roundish, and extended
laterally.6 I note here that Down almost viewed the down phenotype as more selective than race: that all these childrens images are such that
they must be of the same parents rather than of the same race. With this brief aside, Down suggests something of a queer reproduction of
this congenital condition in such a way that it might be inadequate to simply label Downs description as racialised. Alternatively, we could say
that he imagined non-white parentage as having itself a queer density. The normativity being expressed here is the use of a nonwhite race as a
zone of deferral and marking, which accounts for the other kind of difference (as they interarticulate). To follow my interest in not only
intoxication and its effects, but also its governmentality, I learned a further detail: Down used opium to sedate some of his patients in his
English clinic. I intend to research in what ways this sedation could have been induced for one or many reasons: in the schema of standard
treatment of a condition, the controlled synchronising of an institutionalised population, or a temporal calibration of developmentally delayed
patients understood to be in some sense outside of time. Rife
contemporary examples of racist labelling of nondisabled
East Asian individuals as mongoloid not only mark the potent legacy of Down, but also speak to the
sticking power and attraction of the embodied metaphor as well as of the collapsing of developmental
time. One of the correlates of the racial description of disability, such as mongoloidism, is precisely that
disability resides in the description of races, and may well reside in the defining theme of race itself as a
colonial trope of incapacity. Such exposition can be found in sheer terms, for example, in Jonathan Metzls work Protest Psychosis on
the racialisation of a new variety of schizophrenia by white psychiatrists for black men in Civil Rights-era USA who were by any account
appropriately imbued with political agitation and protest feeling in the deepest sense.7 Thus, the racist enjoyment of certain kinds of onstage
gawky or lumbrous Asian failure may obliquely have to do with a double presentation of social disability in the form of nerdiness, as well as a
hardly suppressed image of Down syndrome. The
white supremacist racial fictions about cognitive disability,
morality and pace of living that frame some racial groups as slower than others, suggest a compact
expression of temporality, race and chemistry: constitutionally deserving of (or suited to) the same.
Within and away from the USA, the temporalised characterisations of delay have been variously applied
to indigenous people and to racialized inheritors of histories of labor and enslavementa broad swath that
includes anyone less securely anchored to the leading edges of modernity. With a non-atomised approach to either disability or race, I am
inclined to think their intertwining is more the usual case than exceptional, and not only because of the vast continued reach of eugenics
364
history and thinking in contemporary technologies of enhancement and reproduction. For instance, the association of certain racial
characteristics with cognitive deficiency continues insidiously in the USA and elsewhere both below and above the surface.
365
I: Value
Hegemonic ableism is socially ingrained and pervasive through all aspects of life;
ableism is a filter through which value is given to bodies
Hutcheon and Wolbring 12 (Emily J. Hutcheon and Gregor Wolbring- Unversity of Calgary Journale
of Diversity in Higher Education 2012, Vol. 5, N. 1, 39-49 accessed 7-3-17 Voices of Disabled Post
Secondary Students: Examining Higher Education Disability Policy Using an Ableism Lens
<http://204.14.132.173/pubs/journals/features/dhe-a0027002.pdf>)
Ideas and structures of meaning (including taken-for-granted ideologies, or hegemonies) were seen to be impactful for
participants lives, social interactions, and self-perception. These meaning-structures were apparent in participants
understanding of ability and bodily preference, which often took the form of their acknowledgment of sociocultural rejection of difference: R:
But I dont know what ideas are causing that, other than that Im different. Thats it. Thats all I can think of. I: . . . causing the people being
hesitant? R: Yeah. It does make them (emphasis) shy . . . when they see me. And other people . . . could care less, and theyre happy to
approach . . . but thats a rarity, or its in the minority, like theres not many people that will do that. (P 006) Hegemonic ableism (as
stated above, defined as a set of processes which delivers sociocultural ability preferences) additionally presumes a rejection of
difference and inaugurates particular understandings of valuable ways of living. An example of this is seen in
Participant 008s own understanding of his caregivers attitudes toward him in the context of the physical and sexual abuse she perpetrated
against him. He expressed this in the form of a poem, of which an excerpt is seen below: You should be able to do this . . . you
need to improve this . . . you ask for too much help . . . you are too demanding . . . you need to be more
independent . . . you should have more confidence . . . you are a burden . . . there is something wrong with
you that you, and only you, need to fix. If you dont that makes you less than human . . . if you lose
control of your body, you will lose all your friends (P 008). This poem demonstrates a vital, yet
unexplored, intersection of body-related ability preference (e.g., the ability to walk or to control ones body) with
other forms of ableism (preferences for other culturally valued abilities which may have little to do with
bodily functioning, including the ability to be independent, self-sufficient, and/or intelligent). Notably, all
participants demonstrated a tendency to internalize ableism in the various forms described above. In some cases, this internalization
resulted in well-known hierarchies within the disability community: I: What associations do you think it makes? To
have that head rest? R: Hmm . . . Well I think it indicates, one, that the impairment is even higher than you think. Um that if you need a
headrest, theres some problems with your neck, theres some problems . . . . So . . . And for some reason I associate mental
disabilities with that as well. I: Oh okay, and you dont want others to make that connection. R: Nope. (P 006) Hegemonic ableism (ability
preferences related to functioning, and other culturally valued abilities) intersected with other hegemonies, including those
which frame gender and sexuality expectations. This was voiced by several participants, including Participant
004: R: Um . . . well . . . kind of actually. I kind of, um . . . be-be-before I talk, people create this image of who . . . who I am.
So when I talk it kind of shatters . . . it shatters that image. And Im kind of afraid of that too. Um, like its more like Im . . .
more kind of . . . vain. Like people see me . . . and of course Im hot. Like hey, yeah (smiles). I: And you dont want that image to be shattered. R:
Yeah. Yeah, like Im kind of . . . when its shattered its kind of like Im more kind of like . . . ugh. I: . . . [D]o you think that having
the
stutter . . . conflicts with the idea of being sexy? (pause) Because you said once you open your mouth you
dont want to shatter the image of being hot. R:Yeah. Uh . . . Well . . . kind of. Though you can make it like a . . . you could like .
. . pull a Hugh . . . Hugh Grant, and like make it cute or charming. (P 004)
366
Speed K!
The affirmatives practice of spreading creates an exclusionary form of debate for
people with disabilities, one of which is dysgraphia. People with dysgraphia have a
hard time writing out things already, the affirmatives fast pace makes it impossible
for them to flow.
Erica Patino, No Date, an online writer and editor who specializes in health and wellness content.
Her work has appeared on websites such as Everyday Health, Health Monitor, and Medscape. She holds
a masters in media studies from New School University in New York, and a B.A. in English literature
from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Understanding Dyspraxia, Accessed 7/5/2017
Dysgraphia is a condition that causes trouble with written expression. The term comes from the Greek
words dys (impaired) and graphia (making letter forms by hand). Dysgraphia is a brain-based issue. Its not the result of
a child being lazy. For many children with dysgraphia, just holding a pencil and organizing letters on a
line is difficult. Their handwriting tends to be messy. Many struggle with spelling and putting thoughts
on paper.[1] These and other writing taskslike putting ideas into language that is organized, stored and
then retrieved from memorymay all add to struggles with written expression. Different professionals may use
different terms to describe your childs struggle with written expression. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5)
doesnt use the term dysgraphia but uses the phrase an impairment in written expression under the category of specific learning disorder.
This is the term used by most doctors and psychologists.
And, spreading also creates a barrier to people who have dyspraxia, they have issues
with fine motor skills, meaning not only do they have trouble flowing, they have
issues with the motor control required to spread.
Patino No Date [Erica, an online writer and editor who specializes in health and wellness content. Her
work has appeared on websites such as Everyday Health, Health Monitor, and Medscape. She holds a
masters in media studies from New School University in New York, and a B.A. in English literature from
the University of Colorado at Boulder, Understanding Dyspraxia, Accessed 7/5/2017
Dyspraxia isnt a sign of muscle weakness or of low intelligence. Its a brain-based condition that makes it hard to plan
and coordinate physical movement. Children with dyspraxia tend to struggle with balance and posture. They may
appear clumsy or out of sync with their environment. [1]Dyspraxia goes by many names: developmental coordination
disorder, motor learning difficulty, motor planning difficulty and apraxia of speech. It can affect the development of gross
motor skills like walking or jumping. It can also affect fine motor skills. These include things like the hand
movements needed to write clearly and the mouth and tongue movements needed to pronounce words
correctly.
Spreading forms a bankrupt form of pedagogy, because(1) It reinforces typical

asymmetrical power relations ( I cant keep up with you, Im not as good as you) and
(2) It harms common education (people with certain disabilities, cannot hear or flow
it)
Sjoberg and Tickner 2012. [Laura, Ph.D in IR from USC, author of 9 books, editor of the
International Journal of Feminist Politics and Professor of IR and J. Ann, founder of feminist
international relations, IR Professor @ AU, frmr president of ISA, professor Emerita @ USC.]
367
Introduction. Feminism and International Relations: Conversations about the Past, Present, and Future.
p11
Feminist research generally, and this book specifically, draws a distinction between communicating to an
audience (where the researcher as the authorial voice gathers correct information and informs the audience of that information) and
communicating with an audience where knowledge is discovered in conversation with diverse others.
Floya Anthias (2002, 282) has characterized the moment of communicating with as a dialogical moment,
where effective dialogue requires an already formulated mutual respect, a common communication
language, and a common starting point in terms of power. It also assumes good will of all the partners in the dialogue
(Anthias 2002, 282). Mutual respect, common language, good will, and common starting points in terms of
power can, of course, never be perfectly achieved. And even finding this rare and excellent combination of qualities between
researchers (or practitioners in the policy world) does not guarantee success. Instead, conversations are difficult, and it is hard to avoid coming
into the dialogue convinced that ones own argument is correct and those of others are flawed.
Feminist conversations, then, are
ideal-types, to be aspired to if never perfectly achieved. Recognizing these limitations, dialogue and diversity are
seen as strengths in feminist theorizing (Ackerly, Stern, and True 2006, 5). Engaging in dialogues that aspire to approximate
the communicative ideal-type described above is not only an exercise in theoretical methodology, it is itself theorizing. Marysia Zalewski (1996)
tells us that theory can be understood as explanation, critique, or practice; feminist conversations are an exercise in
theorizing feminist politics through practice.
The form of education produced by the affirmative is not only exclusionary, it reinforces
social hierarchies of power- independent voting issue.
Sjoberg and Tickner 2012. [Laura, Ph.D in IR from USC, author of 9 books, editor of the
International Journal of Feminist Politics and Professor of IR and J. Ann, founder of feminist
international relations, IR Professor @ AU, frmr president of ISA, professor Emerita @ USC.]
Introduction. Feminism and International Relations: Conversations about the Past, Present, and Future.
p11
Feminist research generally, and this book specifically, draws a distinction between communicating to an
audience (where the researcher as the authorial voice gathers correct information and informs the audience of that information) and
communicating with an audience where knowledge is discovered in conversation with diverse others.
Floya Anthias (2002, 282) has characterized the moment of communicating with as a dialogical moment,
where effective dialogue requires an already formulated mutual respect, a common communication
language, and a common starting point in terms of power. It also assumes good will of all the partners in the dialogue
(Anthias 2002, 282). Mutual respect, common language, good will, and common starting points in terms of
power can, of course, never be perfectly achieved. And even finding this rare and excellent combination of qualities between
researchers (or practitioners in the policy world) does not guarantee success. Instead, conversations are difficult, and it is hard to avoid coming
into the dialogue convinced that ones own argument is correct and those of others are flawed.
Feminist conversations, then, are
ideal-types, to be aspired to if The organization of this book as conversations, interlinked and layered at
different levels, is not just stylistic but substantive. Lucinda Peach (1994, 153) once noted that the
emphasis on collaboration in feminist theorizing means that feminist articles, books, and other
research products might look different from other scholarship, given the tendency of feminists and
feminisms to work in dialogue and conversation. This tendency is not incidental; it is fundamental -
feminisms concerns for the relationship between positionality and knowledge and for understanding
relationships of domination and subordination in politics suggest that dialogue is one of the most
appropriate ways to approach theorizing, analyzing, and practicing global politics
368
369
Queer/Gender Studies
370
Links
371
L: Reform-Generic
Reform doesnt work- it transforms the system just enough to preserve the status quo
Willse and Spade (Craig Willse, a student in Sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New
York. His research interests include science and technology studies, political economy, and the sociology
of biomedicine. He has been an adjunct instructor in sociology and women's studies at Hunter College.
Dean Spade is a transgender attorney, and under of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a law collective
providing direct legal assistance to low-income people and people of color facing gender identity
discrimination, Freedom in a Regulatory State?: Lawrence, Marriage, and Biopolitics)
Critical race theorists and other legal scholars have named these limitations by discussing the
limits of "formal legal equality" demands and identifying how law reform demands often operate
to transform systems facing resistance just enough to stabilize things and preserve the status
quo. 44 The danger of merely tinkering with the legal window dressing and actually stabilizing
relations of disparity attends the fiction that if we change what the law says about a vulnerable
population, we will necessarily change the key conditions of vulnerability. Taking up Foucault's
formulation of governmentality and understanding its differences from sovereignty helps to reveal how the assumption that
"changing what the law says about us will change our lives" inherent in so many legal reform projects operating under the "equality"
banner not only relies on an overly centralized model of power but also misses how law
is often one tactic that
rearranges just enough to maintain the current arrangements. Critiques of neoliberalism have
often conceptualized one of its hallmarks to be a tum toward legal equality and universal rights
that thinly masks and supports increasing racialized-gendered disparities in wealth and life
chances.45 Understanding law as a tactic cautions us away from centering law reform goals in
resistance struggles. Instead of believing what the law says about itself and allowing that to guide resistance strategies
focused on changing what the law says about a given identity, we might look at how the nation is produced
through the production of identities that constitute various populations as needing protection and cultivation (to be
made to live) or as dangerous threats and drains (to be killed or abandoned). Butler asks: How is race lived in the modality of
sexuality? How is gender lived in the modality of race?
How do colonial and neo-colonial nation states
rehearse gender relations in the consolidation of state power? . . . To ask such questions is still to continue
to pose the question of 'identity,' but no longer as a pre-established position or a uniform entity; rather, as part of a dynamic map of
power in which identities are constituted an or erased, deployed and/or paralyzed. 46
Reform bad- erases systemic exploitation, revolves around privileged workers, and
reconsitutes identities to be productive in a heteropatriarchal system
Spade (Dean, assistant professor at Seattle University School of Law, Laws as Tactics)
These critical interrogations of campaigns for inclusion in hate crimes laws have parallels in critiques of anti- discrimination laws.
First, critics of anti-discrimination law inclusion campaigns argue that the single-vector rhetoric of these campaigns, which focus
on being deprived employment or other opportunities "just for being trans," erase the systemic
exploitation and economic marginalization that produces and maintains a racialized and gendered wealth gap and suggest
that "but for" people being fired "just for being trans" equal opportunity exists and the economy is fair. Second, these campaigns
generally center on stories of white, professional, patriotic,64 authorized (in terms of immigration
status) workers whose only barrier to gain l employment was their trans identity.65 Such framings again produce
demands for inclusion from which only the privileged few can actually benefit, and deepen race,
class, national origin and ability divides. Third, critics point out that anti-discrimination laws do not seem to
have resolved wealth and income disparity, disproportionate unemployment and homelessness, and other harms for
372
other groups that have been covered by these laws for decades. Instead, these "advances" are
often used to argue that because formal discrimination is now illegal, disparities in life chances
must be the fault of the populations enduring them. Finally, like hate crimes laws, anti-discrimination laws
posit an individualized vision of discrimination that seeks out abherrant individuals with bad
ideas and leaves broader conditions of distribution unexamined. 66 These critiques intersect with an
analysis of the category of the human and its relationship to legal rights that interrogates claims to universality by exposing that
these purportedly universal protections not only provide rare and limited protection for a small
group, but also primarily operate to stabilize and uphold relations of disparity that will not be
overcome by declarations of equality within a legal system founded on and maintained by
racialized-gendered property relations 67 and a racialized distribution of vulnerability to
premature death. 68 Critics of hate crimes laws make a move parallel to Butler's interrogation of what constitutes life when
they question how grievability is entwined with becoming a population that produces increased punishing power for the criminal
punishment system, and when they examine how trans murder victims' lives and deaths are mobilized as grievable throughthe
erasure of their actual conditions of vulnerability (including homelessness, poverty, racialization) so that their
stories can be told through a narrow narrative that can justify criminalization as a response.
These critiques illuminate law's tactical role in an era where formal legal equality constitutes a
window dressing for growing material inequality and expanding state capacities for racialized-gendered surveillance, caging,
and war-making. They show how little the most vulnerable trans people have to gain from becoming
enfolded into the "equality" and "humanity" frameworks offered by these law reforms, and they
expose how these identities are reconstituted to become productive for ongoing projects of
nationmaking founded in heteropatriarchal slavery and settler colonialism and continued through
criminalization, immigration enforcement, displacement and occupation. These critiques demonstrate how
theories of change based in the idea that if we change what the law says about a group ("make it say we are good and not bad!")
changes in life chances will result misunderstand power. These law reform- centered theories of change rely on
a kind of centralized power that assumes obedience to the law that has not been evidenced, as
anti-discrimination laws have failed to reduce health, income, housing and criminalization disparities corresponding to
race, gender, indigeneity, disability or national origin. Instead, we come to understand the decentralized nature
of governance and the superficial role of legal declarations of formal equality. It turns out that even if we
pass anti- discrimination laws that purport to protect trans people from discrimination, not only do they not work where
they are supposed to work (employment, sometimes public accommodations, housing, social
services), but they also do not even touch the key issues that may determine trans people's life chances. Even
where gender identity and expression discrimination is barred by law, trans women are still placed in men's prisons, arrested for
doing sex work, denied access to domestic violence shelters, denied gender confirming healthcare by Medicaid, deported, and
subjected to all manner of other conditions that attend the racialized- gendered distribution of life chances.
Legal reforms end in augmented scrutiny of queer bodies and uphold other social
hierarchies
Jasbir Puar, 10-26-2007, Associate Professor of Womens & Gender Studies at Rutgers University, Ph.D
in Ethnic studies, "Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times," Drake University Press.
Paradoxically, the decriminalization of sodomy results in accentuated state regulation of sexuality rather
than a decline in such patrolling, commissioning many other actors to intensify other types of scrutiny,
for example, to assess the suitability of homosexuals for adoption and parenting. Hunter locates this
heightened scrutiny as part of the subterranean examination of the social acceptability of those
persons who are the objects of the governments interventions specific to jurisprudence regarding
373
sexuality. Highlighting the Foucauldian entanglement of freedom and regulation, Hunter argues that
deprived of criminal law as a tool, opponents of equality for lesbians and gay men are likely to
concentrate increasingly on the strategy of containment. She delineates several areas where
containment tactics might be most efficacious: disputes involving children, control over expressive
space, otherwise known as the public sphere, and distinguishing the respectability of queer
relationships that reinforce hierarchies of race, class, gender, and citizenship.
LGBT movements and decriminalization of same-sex relationships are part of the

liberalism agenda in hopes of promoting homonationalism
Puar 2013 (Jasbir K., PhD. in Ethnic Studies, Director of the Graduate Program of the top-ranked
Womens and Gender Studies Department at Rutgers University, Homonationalism As Assemblage:
Viral Travels, Affective Sexualities, Jindal Global law review Vol:4 Issue: 2 published November 2013,
page 32, Yung Jung)
As with the U.S., is gay marriage next on the gay equality agenda in India? For whom does a gay rights equality agenda centring marriage
benefit? Is
there any relationship between the reading down of Sec. 377-signalling an increasingly visible
middle-class LGBT movement in India - and the nature and visibility of sexual assaults on women, for example the recent gang-
rape and murder that occurred in New Delhi in December 2012? Are women who transgress their scripted positions within the gender binary
being punished through a backlash against the striving for sexual liberation? Regarding Sec. 377, Oishik Sircar writes: The
decriminalisation of same-sex relationships is clearly an outcome of the gradually increasing cultural
acceptance of diverse sexualities that has taken place as a result of liberalisation and globalisation, as is
evident from the courts constant allusions to international human rights law and case law, and precedents primarily from the
United States. These references made apparent the cultural logic behind the courts judgment: India needs to live up to the
progressive developments in other parts of the (Western) world by decriminalising sodomy. As Anjali
Gopalan, founder of petitioner Naz Foundation, said after the judgment was delivered, Oh my God, weve finally stepped into the 21st
century. This exclamatory declaration seems to be a history-vanishing moment, where the ostensibly
progressive present contributes to queer emancipation at the cost of blinding us to a historicised
understanding of the cruelly liberal genealogies of present-day India.27 Rather than suggesting that these aspirations to join
the 21st century, proclaimed by Gopalan,28 are simply versions of homonationalism as applied to the Indian case, it seems more
prudent to note the divergences and differences that create multiple kinds of homonationalisms. What is
crucial to an/the on-going political struggle in multiple locations is not to critique a long-awaited community-oriented film or the efforts of gay
and lesbian activists in any national location, but to insist on an awareness of homonationalism as an uneven and unpredicatable process. How
do the history of British colonialism, the specific periodisation of liberalisation in India, and the uptake of neoliberal class stratification that
produces privileged transnational networks shape homonationalism as an assemblage?
Inclusion necessitates exclusion They create a normal category of queer which

reestablishes the heteronormativity that criticize
National recognition and inclusion, here signaled as the annexation of homosexual jargon, is contingent
upon the segregation and disqualification of racial and sexual others from the national imaginary. At
work in this dynamic is a form of sexual exceptionalismthe emergence of national homosexuality,
what I term homonationalismthat corresponds with the coming out of the exceptionalism of
American empire. Further, this brand of homosexuality operates as a regulatory script not only of
374
normative gayness, queerness, or homosexuality, but also of the racial and national norms that
reinforce these sexual subjects. There is a commitment to the global dominant ascendancy of whiteness
that is implicated in the propagation of the United States as empire as well as the alliance between this
propagation and this brand of homosexuality. The fleeting sanctioning of a national homosexual subject
is possible, not only through the proliferation of sexual-racial subjects who invariably fall out of its
narrow terms of acceptability, as others have argued, but more significantly, through the simultaneous
engendering and disavowal of populations of sexual-racial others who need not apply
375
L: Legalism
Using legal solutions to address LGBT needs rearticulates legal control over those
rights in the first place
Willse & Spade 04 [Craig & Dean, Craig Willse is assistant professor of cultural studies at George Mason University. He is coeditor of
Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and Death. Dean Spade is a lawyer, writer, and Associate Professor of Law at Seattle
University School of Law. In 2002, he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective in New York City that provides free legal
services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color., FREEDOM IN A
REGULATORY STATE?: LAWRENCE, MARRIAGE AND BIOPOLITICS, Widener Law Review, pp. 314 & 315}
In order to de-emphasize the implications of Lawrence for other sexual acts, the majority emphasizes a
newly-validated and more palatable identity of homosexuality.2 " They do so by addressing homosexuality in terms of
"coupled" behavior, rather than specific acts of sodomy, thereby constructing a homosexual identity more parallel to
incentivized heterosexual family norms.2' This framing contrasts sharply with Hardwick's depiction of homosexual sodomy as a
long-criminalized and reviled aberrant sexual practice. The majority's attempt to rewrite the significance of sodomy, transforming it into an act
constitutive of a sympathetic identity group, moves homosexuality into the "charmed circle of sexual practices," to use Gayle Rubin's terms.' In
so doing, Lawrence rearticulates the definitive distinction between consensual sexual/procreative practices that
the government may not criminally prohibit (contraception, abortion, sodomy) and those in the "outer limits"23
(prostitution, adult incest, etc.) subject to prohibitions. At the same time, as Rubin points out, the fact that a sexual practice can
move across that line (from a prohibited state unworthy of protection to a protected state of relative cultural acceptance) questions
the stability of the system of sexual norms, exposing its mutability. 24 It becomes imperative, then, for the majority
to articulate dearly that they are not questioning a system of sexual regulation in which the state can
criminalize adult consensual sexual behavior and incentivize certain family structures on the basis of
morality. The rhetorical positioning of the majority in this case is no surprise. Courts frequently work to make their
decisions appear centrist, non-controversial, and logically flowing from existing legal doctrines, even
when overturning earlier rulings. Depicting homosexual acts as connected to sympathetic expressions of
love, asserting that the case will not upend other moral and criminal condemnation of sexual outsiders,
and reaffirming traditional incentives and punishments regarding the state's preferred family structure,
should all be expected from a court making the significant move of overturning a ruling that is not even twenty years old. What is, or
should be, more surprising and disturbing, is an embrace of state regulatory power regarding sexuality and
family structure by movements that were, at their inception, opposed to such coercion. In our view, the
acceptance of state regulation of sexuality, gender, and family structure by LGBT organizations focused on formal legal
equality for lesbians and gay men stems from an incomplete conception of the operations of power.
Legal solutions fail and reentrench other forms of social, racial and economic
oppression
This paper examines the ways that the winning decision in Lawrence and its aggrandizement in LGBT legal circles represents a
frightening reduction in the demands of what was, at its inception, a movement against violent and
coercive systems of gender and sexual regulation. While Lawrence marks a shift in the terms of regulation and criminal stigmatization of one type of
consensual adult sexual activity, it nonetheless maintains coercive systems of regulating gender, sexuality, and family
structures through violent and punitive mechanisms. Furthermore, an examination of the strategies of LGBT legal organizations
demonstrates ties between the lauding of the Lawrence victory and the broader framing of a "gay agenda" that focuses on marriage rights and fails to meaningfully
376
oppose state regulation of sexuality, gender, and family structure. As we will argue, the
agenda put forth by the most well-resourced
LGBT organizations works towards achieving formal legal equality.7 In other words, these organizations seek the
security and entitlements distributed by regulatory state institutions and in so doing, fail to oppose the very
mechanisms that maintain and reproduce inequality. This paper attempts to trace the links between the Lawrence decision and
campaigns for gay marriage rights in order to envision movements that seek justice for more than just the most racially and economically privileged lesbians and gay
men. We outline the limits of the agenda represented by Lawrence and propose alternative modes for resisting the coercive regulation of sexuality, gender, and
family formations. The
move we wish to make in this paper-from a strategy for formal legal equality that, we argue,
primarily benefits white and wealthy gay men and lesbians, towards a radical vision of the deregulation
of gender, sexuality, and families-demands a fundamentally different account of how power operates
than that implicit in analyses of Lawrence put forth by LGBT legal organizations. We must develop a
conceptual understanding of the insidious, intimate, and persistent nature of regulatory mechanisms if
we wish to intervene in new or interesting ways that take seriously the goals of broad social, racial, and economic justice
and the radical redistribution of capital and resources. This requires moving away from understanding marriage as simply an enclosed
institution that either includes or excludes and towards understanding marriage as a technology of power that organizes all parts of a population in terms of access
to resources necessary for survival. We turn to the work of Michel Foucault to guide our discussion because it helps
elucidate both the theories of
power we see underwriting much discussion of Lawrence and the theories of power that we believe can inform queer and trans
activist work to formulate more radical goals and more effective strategies.
Another Legalism link, wow

Spade 15 (Dean Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, & the Limits of Law Duke University Press Pg. 139)
The concerns about inclusion I described in the first edition can be difficult to digest. The belief
that marginalized and hated
populations can find freedom by being recognized by law, allowed to serve in the military, allowed to marry,
and protected by anti-discrimination law and hate crime statutes is a central narrative of the United
States. Politicians, primary school textbooks, and the corporate media tell the story that the United States left ugly
histories of white supremacy behind through a civil rights movement that changed hearts, minds, and especially laws to
eradicate racism and bring freedom to all. This simplified narrative is relentlessly reiterated in US culture and has
played a starring role in the past four decades of lesbian and gay rights advocacy where the analogy to the Black civil rights movement
has been a consistent rhetorical tool.1 I argue that social movements must abandon the widely held belief that
oppressed people can be freed by legal recognition and inclusion if we are to truly address and
transform the conditions of premature death facing impoverished and criminalized populations in this
period.
377
L: Queer Friendly
Queer-friendly federal reforms promotes not only heteronormativity by marking
queer bodies as different but equal, but also constructs homonormativity
Lewis 11 assistant professor of Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University (Rachel, Social
Justice, Lesbians under Surveillance: Same-Sex Immigration Reform, Gay Rights, and the Problem of
Queer Liberalism p. 98, 2010 2011, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41336937.pdf) | js
As Alexander has demonstrated, heterosexuality is at once necessary to the states ability to constitute and
imagine itself, while simultaneously marking a site of its own instability (Alexander, 1997, p. 65). If, according to
binaried sex/gender/desire logic, homosexuality is that which shadows the instability of the nations heterosexuality,
then that shadow itself is not constituted outside of nationhood, rather within it, around it, hovering over it. Through
the prescription of heteronormative stability, or shall I say security, the matter of the insecure becomes highlighted: the shadow that is within
and outside, the internally disciplined and the externally quarantined and banished. Turning to Foucaults sketch of flourishing sexualities: as a
circulating sexuality: a distribution of points of power, hierarchized and placed opposite to one another (Foucault, 1978, p.45), the
shadow is imagined, felt, feared, desired, and in some instances, envisioned, to effectively function as a threat.
Thus while queer bodies may be disallowed, there is room for the absorption and management of homosexuality
temporally, historically, and spatially specificwhen advantageous for US national interests. As
homonormativity is one of a range of compartmental sexualities that are tolerated or encouraged, this management is not
consistent and is often only directed towards certain audiences. As a proximity that serves as
surveillance procedures (Foucault, 1978, p.46), homo-nationalism is both disciplined by nation and its
heteronormative underpinnings, and also effectively surveys and disciplines those sexually perverse bodies that
fall outside its purview. Thus the US nation not only allows for homosexual bodies, but also actually disciplines
and normalizes themsuggesting, in fact, the need to attend to theorizations of the nation as not only heteronormative, but
also homonormative. Reading non-normative gay, homosexual, and queer bodies through nation, not against it,
is to acknowledge that (some) nations are productive of non-normative sexualities, not merely repressive of them.
There are at least three deployments of US homonationalism that bolster the nation: 1) it reiterates heterosexuality as the
norm (for example, the bid for gay marriage accords an equal but different status to queers); 2) it fosters nationalist homosexual
positionalities which then police nonnationalist non-normative sexualities; 3) it enables a transnational
discourse of US queer exceptionalism vis-a`-vis perversely racialized bodies of pathologized nationalities, as the recent violence in
Abu Ghraib horrifically lays bare6 (and also in South Park, which I will discuss later)
Attempts to create queer friendly environments become coopted by capitalism

Puar 13 (Jasbir, Associate Professor of Women's & Gender Studies at Rutgers University, Ph.D., Ethnic
Studies - designated emphasis in women, gender, and sexuality, M.A., Women's Studies, B.A., Economics
and German, Rethinking Homonationalism
http://sites.middlebury.edu/sexandsociety/files/2015/01/Puar_Rethinking-Homonationalism.pdf )
Then there is the function of capitalism. The neoliberal accommodationist economic structure
engenders niche marketing of various ethnic and minoritized groups, normalizing the production of, for
example, a gay and lesbian tourism industry built on the discursive distinction between gay-friendly and
not-gay-friendly destinations. Not unlinked to this is what I call the human rights industrial
complex. The gay and lesbian human rights industry continues to proliferate Euro-American
constructs of identity (not to mention the notion of a sexual identity itself) that privilege identity
politics, coming out, public visibility, and legislative measures as the dominant barometers of social
progress
378
L: LGBT inclusion
The affirmatives act of including queer/LGBT groups under the power of the state is
an just an act of pinkwashing-a persuasive political discourse fueled by modified
neoliberalism in attempt to normalize homosexuality and legitimize alternate forms of
hidden violence
Puar 2013 (Jasbir K., PhD. in Ethnic Studies, Director of the Graduate Program of the top-ranked
Womens and Gender Studies Department at Rutgers University, Homonationalism As Assemblage:
Viral Travels, Affective Sexualities, Jindal Global law review Vol:4 Issue: 2 published November 2013,
page2 33-34, Yung Jung)
In keeping with the movement of homonationalism-as-assemblage in its questioning of periodisation and progress, this section discusses what
has become known as pinkwashing, or the practice of covering over or distracting from a nations policies of discrimination of some populations
through a noisy touting of its gay rights for a limited few.29 I focus on Palestine/Israel here for two reasons: one, because after the U.S., Israel
is, in my estimation, the greatest benefactor of homonationalism, for reasons in part because of its entwinement with the U.S., but not only;
and two, because Israelhas been accused of pinkwashing in a manner that apparently no other nation-state
does, and I have been unconvinced that pinkwashing is a practice singular to the Israeli state. Quite simply, pinkwashing has been
defined as the Israeli states use of its stellar LGBT rights record to deflect attention from, and in some
instances to justify or legitimate, its occupation of Palestine. Resonating within a receptive field of
globalised Islamophobia significantly amplified since 9/11 and reliant on a civilisational narrative about
the modernity of the Israelis juxtaposed with the backward homophobia of the Palestinians,
pinkwashing has become a commonly used tag for the cynical promotion of LGBT bodies as
representative of Israeli democracy. As such, it functions as a form of discursive pre-emptive securitisation.
Why is pinkwashing legible and persuasive as a political discourse? First of all, a neoliberal
accommodationist economic structure engenders the niche marketing of various ethnic and minoritised
groups and has normalised the production of a gay and lesbian tourism industry built on the discursive
distinction between gay-friendly and not-gay-friendly destinations. Most nations that aspire to forms of
western or European modernity now have gay and lesbian tourism marketing campaigns. In that sense, Israel
is doing what other states do and what is solicited by the gay and lesbian tourism industry promoting itself. We can of course notice that the
effects of this promotion are deeply detrimental in the case of the occupation. But we might want to pose questions about the specifics of the
Brand Israel Campaign, which has been located as the well-spring of Israels pinkwashing. How does the Brand Israel Campaign differ from a
conventional state-sponsored advertising campaign targeting gay and lesbian tourists?30 Additionally, in some senses Israel is a pioneer of
homonationalism as its particular position at the crosshairs of settler colonialism, occupation, and
neoliberalist accommodationism creates the perfect storm for the normalisation of homosexuality. The
homonationalist history of Israel the rise of LGBT rights in Israel and increased mobility for gays and lesbians parallels the concomitant
increased segregation and decreased mobility of Palestinian populations, especially post-Oslo.31 I have detailed this point at greater length
elsewhere, but to quickly summarise: the advent of gay rights in Israel begins around the same time as the first Intifada, with the 1990s known
as Israels gay decade brought on by the legalisation of homosexuality in the Israeli Defence Forces, workplace anti-discrimination provisions,
and numerous other legislative changes.32 Pinkwashing
operates through an erasure of the spatial logics of control
of the Occupation and the intricate and even intimate system of apartheid replete with a dizzying array
of locational obstacles to Palestinian mobility. That queer Palestinian activists in Ramallah cannot travel to Haifa, Jersusalem,
or Gaza to meet fellow Palestinian activists seems to be one of the most obvious ways the Israeli occupation delimits prohibits, in fact the
possibilities for the flourishing of queer communities and organising that Israelis have enjoyed without hassle. Instead
of
understanding access to mobility and congregation as constitutive of queer identity and community,
pinkwashing reinforces ideologies of the clash of cultures and the cultural difference of Palestinian
homophobia rather than recognising the constraining and suffocating spatial and economic effects of
apartheid. Questions about the treatment of homosexuals in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip fail to take into account the constant and
omnipresent restrictions on mobility, contact, and organising necessary to build any kind of queer presence and politics. What becomes clear is
379
that the purported concern for the status of homosexuals in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is being used to shield the Occupation from
direct culpability in suppressing, indeed endangering, those very homosexuals. Further, the LGBT rights project itself relies on
the impossibility/ absence/ non-recognition of a proper Palestinian queer subject, except within the purview of
the Israeli state itself. It presents the gay haven of Tel Aviv33 as representative of the entire country and
unexamined in terms of its Arab cleansing, while also maintaining Jerusalem as the religious safeguard.
As its shorthand use proliferates in anti-occupation organising forums internationally, pinkwashing must be situated within its
wider homonationalising geopolitical context. That is to say, if pinkwashing is effective, it is not because of
some outstandingly egregious activity on the part of the Israeli government, but because both history
and global international relations matter. So while it is crucial to challenge the Israeli state, it must be done in
a manner which acknowledges that the assemblage of homonationalism going beyond the explicit
activities of any one nation state, even Israel. Building on theoretical points first articulated in TA, I contend that it is crucial to keep
in mind that pinkwashing appears to be an effective strategy not necessarily because of any exceptional
activities on the part of the Israeli state but because of the history of settler colonial violence, the
international LGBT tourism industry, the gay and lesbian human rights industry, and finally, the role of
the U.S.
The 1AC s politics of inclusion is a tactic of homonationalism that depoliticizes gay

culture and aligns the queer with American nationalism
Puar 7 (Jasbir 20007 Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times Jasbir K. Puar is a U.S.-
based queer theorist who is currently an associate professor in the Department of Women's and Gender
Studies at Rutgers University. Duke University Press Pg. 38 & 39)
Through this binary-reinforcing youre either with us or against us normativizing apparatus, the war on terror has rehabilitated someclearly
not all or mostlesbians, gays, and queers to U.S. national citizenship within a spatial-temporal domain I am invoking as homonationalism,
short for homonormative nationalism. Homonormativity has been theorized by Lisa Duggan as a new neo-liberal sexual politics that
hinges upon the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture
anchored in domesticity and consumption. Building on her critique of gay subjects embroiled in a politics that
does not contest dominant heteronormative forms but upholds and sustains them,5 I am deploying the term
homonationalism to mark arrangements of U.S. sexual exceptionalism explicitly in relation to the nation. Foucault notes that the
legitimization of the modern couple is complicit with, rather than working against, the outfitting and
proliferation of compartmental, circulating, and proximity-surveillance sexualities, pursued pleasures and
contacts. We see simultaneously both the fortification of normative heterosexual coupling and the
propagation of sexualities that mimic, parallel, contradict, or resist this normativity. These proliferating
sexualities, and their explicit and implicit relationships to nationalism, complicate the dichotomous implications of casting
the nation as only supportive and productive of heteronormativity and always repressive and
disallowing of homosexuality. I argue that the Orientalist invocation of the terrorist is one discursive tactic that
disaggregates U.S. national gays and queers from racial and sexual others, foregrounding a collusion
between homosexuality and American nationalism that is generated both by national rhetorics of
patriotic inclusion and by gay and queer subjects themselves: homonationalism. For contemporary forms of U.S.
nationalism and patriotism, the production of gay and queer bodies is crucial to the deployment of nationalism,
insofar as these perverse bodies reiterate heterosexuality as the norm but also because certain
domesticated homosexual bodies provide ammunition to reinforce nationalist projects.
380
L: Capitalism
Capitalism is based on an understanding of success that maintains heteronormativity
The Queer Art of Failure. Page 1-3.) /Spiers
Just when you think you have found the land of milk and honey, Mr. Krabs tells poor old SpongeBob SquarePants, you find yourself on the
menu, or worse, in the gift shop as part of the product tie- in for the illusion to which you just waved goodbye. We
are all used to
having our dreams crushed, our hopes smashed, our illusions shattered, but what comes after hope?
And what if, like SpongeBob SquarePants, we dont believe that a trip to the land of milk and honey
inevitably ends at the gift shop? What is the alternative, in other words, to cynical resignation on the
one hand and nave optimism on the other? What is the alternative, SpongeBob wants to know, to working all day for Mr.
Krabs, or being captured in the net of commodity capitalism while trying to escape? This book, a kind of SpongeBob SquarePants
Guide to Life, loses the idealism of hope in order to gain wisdom and a new, spongy relation to life,
culture, knowledge, and pleasure. So what is the alternative? This simple question announces a political project, begs for a
grammar of possibility (here expressed in gerunds and the passive voice, among other grammars of pronouncement), and expresses a basic
desire to live life otherwise. Academics, activists, artists, and cartoon characters have long been on a quest to articulate an alternative vision of
life, love, and labor and to put such a vision into practice. Through
the use of manifestoes, a range of political tactics,
and new technologies of representation, radical utopians continue to search for different ways of being
in the world and being in relation to one another than those already prescribed for the liberal and
consumer subject. This book uses low theory (a term I am adapting from Stuart Halls work) and popular knowledge to explore
alternatives and to look for a way out of the usual traps and impasses of binary formulations. Low theory tries to locate all the in-b etween
spaces that save us from being snared by the hooks of hegemony and speared by the seductions of the gift shop. But it also makes its peace
with the possibility that alternatives dwell in the murky waters of a counterintuitive, often impossibly dark and negative realm of critique and
refusal. And so the book darts back and forth between high and low culture, high and low theory, popular culture and esoteric knowledge, in
order to push through the divisions between life and art, practice and theory, thinking and doing, and into a more chaotic realm of knowing and
unknowing. In this book I range from childrens animation to avant- garde performance and queer art to think about ways of being and knowing
that stand outside of conventional understandings of success. I argue that success in a heteronormative, capitalist society
equates too easily to specific forms of reproductive maturity combined with wealth accumulation. But
these measures of success have come under serious pressure recently, with the collapse of financial
markets on the one hand and the epic rise in divorce rates on the other. If the boom and bust years of
the late twentieth century and the early twenty- first have taught us anything, we should at least have a
healthy critique of static models of success and failure. Rather than just arguing for a reevaluation of
these standards of passing and failing, The Queer Art of Failure dismantles the logics of success and
failure with which we currently live. Under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking,
undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising
ways of low theory being in the world. Failing is something queers do and have always done
exceptionally well; for queers failure can be a style, to cite Quentin Crisp, or a way of life, to cite
Foucault, and it can stand in contrast to the grim scenarios of success that depend upon trying and
trying again. In fact if success requires so much effort, then maybe failure is easier in the long run and offers different rewards. What
kinds of reward can failure offer us? Perhaps most obviously, failure allows us to escape the punishing norms that
discipline behavior and manage human development with the goal of delivering us from unruly
childhoods to orderly and predictable adulthoods. Failure preserves some of the wondrous anarchy of
childhood and disturbs the supposedly clean boundaries between adults and children, winners and
losers. And while failure certainly comes accompanied by a host of negative affects, such as disappointment, disillusionment, and despair, it
also provides the opportunity to use these negative affects to poke holes in the toxic positivity of contemporary life. As Barbara
Ehrenreich reminds us in Bright- sided, positive thinking is a North American affliction, a mass delusion
381
that emerges out of a combination of American exceptionalism and a desire to believe that success
happens to good people and failure is just a consequence of a bad attitude rather than structural
conditions (2009: 13). Positive thinking is offered up in the U.S. as a cure for cancer, a path to untold riches, and a surefire way to engineer
your own success. Indeed believing that success depends upon ones attitude is far preferable to Americans
than recognizing that their success is the outcome of the tilted scales of race, class, and gender. As
Ehrenreich puts it, If optimism is the key to material success, and if you can achieve an optimistic outlook
through the discipline of positive thinking, then there is no excuse for failure. But, she continues, the flip
side of positivity is thus a harsh insistence on personal responsibility, meaning that while capitalism
produces some peoples success through other peoples failures, the ideology of positive thinking insists
that success depends only upon working hard and failure is always of your own doing (8). We know better of
course in an age when the banks that ripped off ordinary people have been deemed too big to fail and the people who bought bad mortgages
are simply too little to care about.
382
L: Utility
The 1ACs politic of utility values a future that relies on the traditional narrative of life
that places specific values on bodies, functionally manifesting the violence the 1AC
criticizes
Winnubst 7 (Shannon, associate professor of Women and Gender Studies at Ohio State University,
Reading Bataille Now, 2007, pp. 85-86)/Spiers
In my musings on the traditional narrative of desire as rooted in an ontological lack, I have argued that
the logic of such a desire locks us into a teleological ordering of knowledge and experience: we know
who/what we are through the purposes we pursue. This teleological ordering narrows in scope in later
modern thought, exemplified perhaps in the texts of John Locke, where utility becomes the singular
criterion to determine the satisfaction of desires demands: we know who/what we are through the
usefulness that our lives/actions achieve. Across both of these schemas of broad teleology and more narrow utility, knowledge
is ordered sequentially as the progressive development of clearer and more useful endpoints. The demarcation of each segment of
thinkingof each conceptthereby becomes critical to the forward march of knowledges ordering of
experience and the world. This seems to make things much worse. It seems to broaden the scope of this
limited economy of epistemological utility and its politics of domination. If this construction of meaning through the
delimitation of concepts is the necessary structure of knowledge, then we find ourselves embedded not only in a limited
economy of the psychosocial world through desire-prohibition-identity, but also in a limited economy of
epistemology: our very impulses to find meaning (through teleology broadly, and utility specifically) and the way that we
undertake this process (through the delimitation of concepts) may already enact a normative order of knowledge that sufficiently conditions
the emergence of utility as our highest value. A crass concept of utility or even of instrumental reason may thereby prove
insufficient as a barometer for transformative politics.
Their politics of utility will always create new forms of oppression and de-legitimize
queer identity- that turns the AFF
Winnubst 7 (Shannon, associate professor of Women and Gender Studies at Ohio State University,
Reading Bataille Now, 2007, pp. 85-86)/Spiers
In my musings on the traditional narrative of desire as rooted in an ontological lack, I have

argued that the logic of such a desire locks us into a teleological ordering of knowledge and
experience: we know who/what we are through the purposes we pursue. This teleological
ordering narrows in scope in later modern thought, exemplified perhaps in the texts of John
Locke, where utility becomes the singular criterion to determine the satisfaction of desires
demands: we know who/what we are through the usefulness that our lives/actions achieve.
Across both of these schemas of broad teleology and more narrow utility, knowledge is ordered sequentially as the progressive development of
clearer and more useful endpoints. The demarcation of each segment of thinkingof each concept
thereby becomes critical to the forward march of knowledges ordering of experience and the
world. This seems to make things much worse. It seems to broaden the scope of this limited
economy of epistemological utility and its politics of domination. If this construction of meaning through the
delimitation of concepts is the necessary structure of knowledge, then we find ourselves embedded not only in a
limited economy of the psychosocial world through desire-prohibition-identity, but also in a
limited economy of epistemology: our very impulses to find meaning (through teleology broadly, and utility
383
specifically) and the way that we undertake this process (through the delimitation of concepts) may already enact a normative order of
knowledge that sufficiently conditions the emergence of utility as our highest value. A crass concept of utility or even of instrumental reason
may thereby prove insufficient as a barometer for transformative politics.
384
Impacts
385
I: Pinkwashing
The aff is a pinkwashed strategy that the state will use to justify colonial genocide,
endless military expansion, and strengthen the prison-industrial complex
Spade 15 (Dean Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, & the Limits of Law Duke University Press Pg. 140-143)
In the first edition, I argued that rather
than freeing marginalized and endangered populations, gaining legal
recognition and inclusion both fails to improve their material circumstances and bolsters the very
apparatuses of violence that target them. In the period since this book was originally published, an important new way of
naming and conceptualizing this dynamic has emerged in queer resistance discourse. The term pinkwashing has become a way for
activists to talk about how lgbt legal equality is being used to legitimize and expand the apparatuses of
state violence. Pinkwashing is most frequently used to describe the explicit strategy that the Israeli
government has undertaken in recent years to market itself as a human rights leader based on its stances on same-
sex marriage and lgbt military service. In 2005, after three years of development with US marketing executives, Israel announced a new
campaign to rebrand itself to change its international image. Brand research had shown that all over the world Israel was a country associated
with war and the oppression of Palestinians. Its new campaign, Brand Israel, was designed to portray Israel as a
modern democracy in the Middle East, surrounded by countries with less enlightened policy and
culture. Brand Israel would portray the country as a place of technological innovation, environmental awareness, and diversity.2 One
element in the campaign is to portray Israel as a country that recognizes gay and lesbian rights and as an ideal destination for gay and lesbian
tourism. It also aims to represent Palestinian society as homophobic and Israel as a safe haven for gays and lesbians in the region.
Palestinian queer and trans activists brought the worlds attention to Israels strategic framing of itself as
gay friendly and of Arab and Muslim people and countries as homophobic for purposes of covering over
and distracting from its ongoing brutal colonization and occupation of Palestine by coining the term
pinkwashing.3 As part of its efforts, Israel has provided financial resources to media outlets to produce news coverage about Israel as a gay
and lesbian tourist destination. Israel has also funded tours of Israeli gay activists to the United States and Canada who frame
conversations about gay politics in Israel that ignore and therefore normalize the context of colonialism in which
these politics play out. Shifting the conversation about Israel to one focused on gay activism among those who benefit from the
apartheid system in Israel helps make that system become taken for granted or invisible and ignores the plight of everyone suffering from that
system. In short, it washes the conversation about Palestine and occupation out of the picture. The Israeli think tank the Reut Institute has
published research endorsing this kind of strategy, arguing that Israel should support and fund content that is as far left as possible while still
retaining a Zionist approachthat is, a commitment to never questioning Israels colonization of Palestine and control over Palestinian land and
people.4 The Israeli government funds films, traveling delegations of activists, and other cultural and political events that promote discussion of
Israel, even some that mildly critique some Israeli policy, as long the underlying message affirms and normalizes the occupation. This strategy
helps bring audiences with otherwise left or critical politics, such as those who oppose homophobia and transphobia or support
environmentalism, into affirming the Israeli colonial project and associating Israel with issues they see as progressive. The term
pinkwashing has helped activists name and discuss the particular strategy of coopting the concept of
antihomophobia to redeem the tarnished image of a government, or particular institutions of that
government, such as the military, that are associated with violence, racism, and colonialism. The analysis
of pinkwashing developed by Palestinian queer and trans activists is immensely useful for understanding the strategic
uses of equality politics to forward state violence, by Israel and other governments. The United States under the Obama
administration has also increasingly promoted a progay and to some extent a pro-lgbt image of itself to cover up and distract
from the ongoing expansions of brutal racist violence undertaken by the administration.5 In recent years, outrage has been
growing about Obamas drone wars, his record-breaking deportations, his administrations use of widespread surveillance
technologies, his targeting of whistleblowers, the growing wealth divide and his scandalous upward transfer of
wealth in the 2008 bailout, and police violence and the crisis-level expansion of imprisonment, including for-profit
imprisonment, in the United States under his watch. The relentless revelations about the administrations actions and agenda threaten the
national fantasy that the election of a Black president heralds increasing equality, justice, and progressivism. Gay rights, as a symbol of left
politics associated with freedom and liberation, has provided a false marker of progressivism for the administration as it works to maintain this
fantasy. Conveniently, the public assertions that the administration has made of its commitment to gay rights, including the law and policy
386
changes it has accomplished, provide little to no relief for queer and trans people facing increasing precarity as criminalization, austerity, and
border enforcement expand. For the most part, the lgbt politics that the Obama administration have articulated have very little T in them
and are instead about public support for legal recognition of same-sex marriages. Same-sex marriage is an ideal pinkwashing issue for
Obama as well as other elected officials, businesses, and institutions. It allows these actors to claim a politics associated
with equality and liberation while actually endorsing a legal change that does nothing to disrupt the
existing harmful distribution of property, health care, and immigration status through the legal structure
of the marital family. It offers the cover of progressivism for whatever else these players are doing, since they get to use this
charismatic issue to portray themselves as promoters of equality, yet it in no way threatens the existing distribution of wealth that they seek to
protect. Elected officials get to appear simultaneously profamily (a conservative mainstay now ubiquitous across all the parties) and progay
through this issue. Because it provides this political opportunity for elites without actually endangering the brutal systems that keep them in
power, same-sex marriage has become the visible gay rights issue of the day. Unfortunately, its recognition will be of little use to the queer
and trans people facing the worst harms in immigration, health care, criminal punishment, and social welfare systems in the United States.
Similarly, support for gay and lesbian military service, and the ending of dont ask, dont tell, allowed for a portrayal of the US military as a site
of freedom and equality, which is a useful distraction from the realities of its brutality. Supporting
gay and lesbian military
service allowed politicians to simultaneously send a promilitary message and a progay and lesbian
rights message, useful to bolster warm feelings about the military during a period of long, expensive, privatized, unpopular
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian military service have been the most visible sites of pinkwashing
in US politics so far, but trans politics is beginning to join lesbian and gay rights as a site of pinkwashing. As I write today, in December 2014,
trans politics is emerging as a new location of pinkwashing brutal state violence for two apparatuses in particular: the
military and the prison system. In different ways in these contexts, a purported concern for trans well-being is producing advocacy
that legitimizes these broadly harmful institutions, fails to support trans well-being, and further endangers trans lives. The mainstreaming
of trans politicsthe creation of a new image of who trans people are and what we wantgoes hand in hand with the use of
trans politics to pinkwash brutal systems and policies. The term mainstream has multiple meanings that can sometimes be misleading when
it comes to queer and trans politics. Often, when people talk about mainstream gay politics, they mean the version of gay and lesbian rights
advocacy that gets the most media attention and philanthropic support. Sometimes, however, it can sound like the version of lesbian and gay
politics that is most desired by most lesbian and gay people. When I use the term here to talk about how trans politics is mainstreaming, I do
not mean to suggest that the trans politics that is becoming most visible and most supportable by media, philanthropists, and politicians is also
the one most desired by or most beneficial to trans people. In fact, I think the process of mainstreaming means that the key issues trans people
care about get cast aside and to the extent issues trans people care a lot about get picked up, the most important resistance politics get
evacuated from them so that they can be framed in ways that support the aims of the corporate media, politicians, and wealthy philanthropists
rather than the survival needs of trans people. Antipinkwashing analysis helps us identify how this stripped-down,
mainstreamable version of trans resistance can be picked up by elites and made to work against trans
people and for the sustained power of those at the top. The mainstreaming of trans politics is concerning both because of
how it fails to support trans peoples well-being and because of how what becomes the visible trans agenda is not based on
what trans people want or need but on what is desirable and convenient to elites.
387
I: Resource trade-off
Agendas based on providing formal legal rights for LGBT communities trade-off with
resources devoted to those facing the greatest discrimination
This agenda based on individual rights consistently articulates the single issue of discrimination on the
basis of sexual orientation in away that it's the impact of its work to those people for whom sexual
orientation is the only or one of very few vectors of discrimination. It takes the status quo as a given,
and argues only for formal equality the existing distribution of life chances.75 For those reasons, many of its wins are primarily
symbolic-as in ideological constructions of proper sexual behavior, r example. From such a viewpoint, decriminalization of sodomy
statutes becomes the most important legal victory possible, despite the fact that a very small number of
queer and trans people are incarcerated for sodomy, but a disproportionate number are incarcerated
for crimes of poverty such as loitering, prostitution, and possession or sale of illegal drugs. Both in its legal and
rhetorical strategies, this agenda upholds the status quo of maldistribution, and continually asserts, as did the Lawrence
Court, that its demands do not disturb that status quo. For example, Lambda Legal's recent "Leading the Charge for Marriage"
publication frames their outpouring of resources toward the struggle for same-sex marriage as an issue of increasing choice for same-sex
couples.76 "We're fighting for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to have the same choices as everyone else: the choice to be honest
about who we are; the choice to start a family; the choice to live where we want; the choice to get married."77 This assertion of
free
masks the coercive functions of state, relies on an imagined "everyone else" who is free to make such choices as long as they are
not lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and presumes that all or even most of "us" will be able to access those
choices once marriage is legal.78 We envision a broader framework for queer and trans rights, one that makes redistribution a
central goal. Some of the benefits currently conferred upon married couples, such as the ability to immigrate to the U.S. and the recognition of
ties to children produced in a family, are no doubt fundamental to human dignity, but expanding them ever-so-slightly to include a
new class of people, and strengthening the legitimacy of state conferred marital status, rather than
working on deeper reforms of those instances of maldistribution, is short-sighted and unjust. It is not simply
what the sodomy decriminalization/same-sex marriage "rights" package does that concerns us, but what it fails to do. The allocation of
virtually all the resources of the institutionalized LGBT movement toward these goals, and the abandonment (increasing as the
marriage battle heats up) of broader goals that affect more queers, especially those in more dire circumstances,
is unacceptable. The most just approach to opposing gender and sexual orientation oppression would be to devote
resources first to the struggles of those who experience the greatest impact of that discrimination: people surviving in
prisons, people in foster care and juvenile justice, people accessing health care through Medicaid, people working in low-wage jobs or surviving
on benefits, people struggling against immigration policies, people experiencing the intersections of racism and sexual and gender coercion.
Those locations, where the most violent effects of these coercive systems occur, should be the initializing points of action,
as they were at Stonewall, both because of the urgency of those quests for survival and because they are most
instructive of the operations of power. Additionally, these would be the proper starting points of our work because they would
make clear the location of our alliances and our place in a struggle with others who bear the brunt of
state and institutional violence. Our messages about family integrity should echo those of prison abolitionists fighting to preserve
the parental rights of incarcerated mothers, not of George W. Bush as he articulates sexist and heterosexist moral judgments against welfare
mothers. As we see the increasing wealth gap in the U.S. and the increasing consolidation of capital worldwide, fueled by policies decreasing
protections of workers, the natural environment, and aimed at criminalizing poverty and promoting white supremacy, we should recognize that
a necessary result be a growing resistance of rising numbers of people endangered by these changes. It is with them that we should cast our lot
and expect to be victorious.
388
I: Imperialism
The US deems certain forms of queerness acceptable in order to pinkwash over and
justify the violent imperialism it continues to wage
Diaz 8 professor of English at Wayne State University (Robert, Criticism, Transnational Queer Theory
And Unfolding Terrorisms p. 535 538, 2008,
http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1317&context=criticism) | js
Jasbir Puars Terrorist Assemblage: Homonationalism in Queer Times is a refreshing and much-needed addition to this recent queer scholarship.
Like Manalansan and Gopinath, Puar studies queer diasporas and their multiple performance practices. Expanding on Duggans work, she
maps out moments of queer normalization and inclusion within U.S. dominant culture. What is most salient
about this book, however, is that it focuses on the ways in which sexuality aids in policing appropriate forms of
U.S. citizenship and diasporic identity during the current war on terror. The author examines a collection of examples ranging from
South Park episodes, to photographs from Abu Ghraib, to the Lawrence vs. Texas ruling that struck down the Texas sodomy law by arguing that
consensual sex was protected as private. Using these examples, she creates a complex theoretical approach to analyzing the ways in which
sexuality has been mobilized by the United States after September 11th in order to demonstrate the countrys
exceptionalism. Puar takes aim at exceptionalism because it allows the United States to set itself apart from other
more barbaric (i.e., nonsecular, Islamic, and fundamentalist) nation-states and cultures. She argues
that exceptionalism also helps ON JASBIR K. PUARS TERRORIST ASSEMBLAGES 535 to produce a continual state of
paranoia that justifi es the complex methodologies needed to fi ght the war on terror. Her argument is
essential for critics looking for a way to better understand the linkages between sexuality and antiterrorism. Puar
suggests that exceptionalism serves as a strategic and effective means of furthering violence against postcolonial
populations by legitimizing secularism as the key ethical standard of communities in the global north. It is
precisely these secularist values that make the United States more progressive, and what arguably makes the
countrys population more deserving of biopolitical preservation than ethnic and religious minorities within
and outside its borders. Signifi cantly, Puar shows how queer politics can be fueled by regulatory rather than
liberatory purposes. In her introduction (Homonationalism and Biopolitics), Puar notes that government policies around terrorism and
academics writing about these policies produce a version of queerness that abjects racial and national minorities. They do so by acquiescing to
what Rey Chow defi nes as the ascendancy of whiteness, or the mobilizing of cultural difference to serve the racially dominant population in
the United States.4 Key to this abjecting process is the valorization of secularism I mentioned. Puar sees the heightening of secularism as
indicative of homonationalistic impulses motivated by antiterrorism. She defi nes homonationalism as a form of sexual
normalization that accepts particular forms of homosexuality in order to foster American empire: [T]his brand of
homosexuality operates as a regulatory script not only of normative gayness, queerness, or homosexuality,
but also of racial and national norms that reinforce these subjects (2). Although the critique of structures of state
power such as the military is unsurprising, what is refreshing about Puars beginning is that it also takes aim at a particular strand of
queer theory that reiterates a fetishization of queer exceptionality as always already liberatory or always
already based on a transgressive difference. This fetishization in the end elides the many ways that queer populations are also separated by
multiple allegiances. Thus, aside from an automatic assumption of queer as nonnormative, Puar asks how might this term be further
complicated by historicizing queerness within a U.S. context? She argues that layered racial and national af- fi liations are most legible at
the nation-state needs to mark some bodies as terrorist to make these subjects susceptible
moments when
to methods of surveillance and control. Homonationalism is exceedingly present as the nation starts to
deploy more networked technologies of policing justifi ed by international attempts to thwart terrorism.
The fi rst chapter expands on homonationalism. Puar traces the rhetorical strategies deployed by lesbian and gay tourist organizations, 536
ROBERT DIAZ feminists writing about the Middle East, and the cartoon show South Park. Although these organizations and individuals seem to
advocate for universal human rights, they also problematically rely on particular markers of otherness. One example of this othering
tendency is the constant exhibiting of those who practice Islam as automatically intolerant toward women and sexual minorities. The author
questions this assumption by suggesting that Islam is contradictory to and varied among those who practice it. Indeed, in many cases, it even
serves as a powerful source of cultural belonging for sexual minorities. Queers of color in the United States, here notably South Asians living in
urban locales such as New York City, have turned to their ethnic enclaves and religious spaces as a viable way to create community during the
389
governments lockdown on terrorism. These sites ultimately foster cultural belonging for persons outside of the patriotic U.S. citizen, white,
and male population valorized in the national imaginary. Toward the end of the chapter, Puar studies the South Park episodes since they also
demonstrate specifi c homonationalistic tendencies. In one reading, she notes how the preponderance of the (usually male)
metrosexual fi gure in media representations highlights how acceptable forms of queerness tend to
appeal to a consuming, cosmopolitan, white, and elite population. The hyperaestheticizing of hip urbanity has become
a central characteristic for the sense of queer respectability in the United States. This leads to the question, what about other subjects
who do not fi t this acceptable iteration of lesbian or gay culture? In her most intriguing analysis of South Park, she
focuses on an episode that features a guest character: Mr. Slave. Mr. Slave is a leatherbottom who Mr. Garrison (the schools teacher) invites to
class so that he can then prove that the school is intolerant toward homosexuality. Showing that the schools administration is intolerant would
enable Mr. Garrison to sue the school for a substantial amount. Puar centers her analysis on a students statement about Mr. Slave, that he is
Pakistani. She then proceeds to highlight the problematic assumptions of this sentence, by suggesting that the production of the terrorist body
depends upon the oversexualization of the ethnic-national minority that Pakistani indexes. The leather bottom is confl ated with an
interstitial nationality, one that is both cooperative to the United States and one that is easily corruptible as a terrorist entity. She argues that
the perverse and the primitive collide in the fi gure of Mr. Slave: the violence of homophobia is shown to be appropriate when directed toward
a pathological nationality, whereas the violence of racism is always already caught in the naming of the queer (75). In other words, Puar
suggests that even in the most progressive of shows, such as a cartoon ON JASBIR K. PUARS TERRORIST ASSEMBLAGES 537 made for adults
that often satirizes the failed policies of the government, one can see the unevenness of liberal forms of diversity and tolerance (75)
produced as the nation consolidates its citizens within one seemingly cohesive group. The relationality between terrorism and sexuality is
revisited in chapter 2 (Abu Ghraib and U.S. Exceptionalism). Puar studies the controversial Abu Ghraib photographs, which depict Iraqi
prisoners being tortured by U.S. military personnel. These photographs expose the United States failure to treat its prisoners humanely and
ethically. Puar notes that the national grief and embarrassment the Abu Ghraib photos produce have depended upon an understanding of
torture, especially sexual torture, as an uncommon military practice. She contends, however, that these photographs do not mark an
exceptional moment at all. They demonstrate the constant mobilization of sexuality as a policing mechanism that justifi es state violence. More
Muslim
importantly, she argues that the nationalistic shock exhibited by a majority of the countrys population intrinsically polices what
sexuality ultimately means. At its base, this sexuality must be inherently different from the liberated sexuality
practiced in the United States. The obvious point here is that this myopic way of thinking about Muslim sexuality
negates and disavows the multiple ways that the United States itself limits particular sexualities and sexual practices within
its border. Moreover, the focus on Muslim sexuality valorizes sexuality as the site of violence within torture rather than thinking of violence
as a networked strategy in compartmentalizing specifi c terrorist populations for death as it secures the lives of the privileged few. As the
author notes, [T]he sexual is the ultimate site of violation, portrayed as extreme in relation to the individual rights of privacy and ownership
accorded to the body within liberalism (81). Thus, the axiomatic grief that goes hand in hand with the declaration that these pictures are
uniquely abusive fosters the very same practices of marking the ethnic national as outside of the United States citizen. This presumably also
leads to justifi cations for furthering the domination of postcolonial subjects across the globe through
arguments against terrorism. In one brief but astute moment, Puar points out that we know so much about the U.S. military
personal perpetrating the abuse, but very little about the Iraqi prisoners. This lopsided overabundance of information suggests a skewed form
of historiography one that fi lls in the information for the U.S. subject in order to argue for this fi gures unexpected departure from norms of
justice and ethical behavior, while marking the suspected terrorist as only capable of being sexualized and violated, and nothing else. I fi nd
Puars attention to the speed, forms, and 538 ROBERT DIAZ intensity in which these photographs were mass distributed as a new approach to
thinking about their importance. Following the work of Brian Massumi on affect and visuality, Puar shifts away from merely reading these
photographs as representational artifacts, but as sites for exploring how the changing speed, intensity, and distribution of images in an age of
technological simulacra go hand in hand with modern forms of imperial consolidation and expansion. Chapter 3 (Infi nite Control, In- fi nite
Detention) and chapter 4 (The Turban Is Not a Hat) challenge
the false idea that privacy and citizenship have been
secured for queer subjects by specifi c monumental liberatory utterances. Chapter 3 presents a comparative
analysis of the Lawrence vs. Texas case, which uses the Fourteenth Amendment right to privacy to overturn the
criminalizing of sodomy previously set forth in Bowers vs. Hardwick (1987). This ruling also makes the claim that the moral belief that
makes sodomy illegal is outdated, since, in the words of Justice Kennedy, who delivered the majority opinion, When sexuality fi nds overt
expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is enduring (quoted in Puar,
123).5 Puar builds on the criticism by specifi c feminists and queer theorists that Kennedys notion of queer relationships is limited in terms of
its understanding of what intimacy means. According to these critics,
Kennedys description ultimately creates the
boundaries of what counts as valid domesticity and intimacy for protection. Puar then adds that what this
normative domesticity also marks are the limitations of citizenship for racial and ethnic minorities that are
constantly under the threat of surveillance because of multiple panoptic structures (exacerbated by the war on terror). The
390
notion of privacy has always been fl eeting for those subjected to what she refers to as multiple and
boundaryless forms of detention (hence making them, in her words, infi - nite). What the Supreme Court considers
as lasting relationships erases entire populations of queer and racialized persons whose intimacies have been
dictated by the state: [T]he private is a racialized and nationalized construct insofar as it is granted only to heterosexuals but to certain citizens
and withheld from many others and noncitizens (125).
391
I: Biopolitics
They attempt to categorize the queer body which sustains a biopolitical politics of
sameness and encourages a fear of deviance and difference
For Chow, in contemporary times, the ascendancy of whiteness in biopower incorporates the
multiplication of appropriate multicultural ethnic bodies complicit with this ascendancy. Part of the
trappings of this exceptional citizen, ethnic or not, is the careful management of difference: of
difference within sameness, and of difference containing sameness. We can note, for example, that the
multicultural proliferation of the cosmopolitan ethnic la Chow has some demanding limitations in
terms of class, gender, and especially sexuality. That is, what little acceptance liberal diversity proffers in
the way of inclusion is highly mediated by huge realms of exclusion: the ethnic is usually straight, usually
has access to material and cultural capital (both as a consumer and as an owner), and is in fact often
male. These would be the tentative attributes that would distinguish a tolerable ethnic (an exceptional
patriot, for example) from an intolerable ethnic (a terrorist suspect). In many cases, heteronormativity
might be the most pivotal of these attributes, as certain Orientalist queernesses (failed
heteronormativity, as signaled by polygamy, pathological homosociality) are a priori ascribed to terrorist
bodies. The twin process of multiculturalization and heterosexualization are codependent in what Susan
Koshy denotes as the morphing of race into ethnicity, a transmogrification propelled by the
cultivation of white privilege as color-blind meritocracy. (This morphing has also inspired the
politicization of the designation people of color.) While Chow does not explicitly discuss why racial
frames lose their salience (and retain denigrated status) in relation to marketdriven ethnicity, Koshy
adds the accommodation of new immigrants and the resurgence of white ethnicity as compelling
factors that obscure the operations of race and class in transnational contexts.
392
I: WoT
This Homonationalism divides the patriotic from the terrorist ensuring the
elimination of the latter
One mapping of the folding of homosexuals into the reproductive valorization of livingtechnologies of life
includes the contemporary emergence of sexually exceptional U.S. citizens, both heterosexual and otherwise, a
formation I term U.S. sexual exceptionalism. Exceptionalism paradoxically signals distinction from (to be unlike, dissimilar)
as well as excellence (imminence, superiority), suggesting a departure from yet mastery of linear teleologies of
progress. Exception refers both to particular discourses that repetitively produce the United States as an
exceptional nation-state and Giorgio Agambens theorization of the sanctioned and naturalized disregard of the limits of state
juridical and political power through times of state crisis, a state of exception that is used to justify the extreme measures
of the state. In this project, this double play of exception speaks to Muslim and Sikh terrorist corporealities as well
as to homosexual patriots. The sexual torture scandal at Abu Ghraib is an instructive example of the interplay
between exception and exceptionalism whereby the deferred death of one population recedes as the securitization
and valorization of the life of another population triumphs in its shadow. This double deployment of exception and
exceptionalism works to turn the negative valence of torture into the positive register of the valorization of
(American) life, that is, torture in the name of the maximization and optimization of life. As the U.S. nation-state
produces narratives of exception through the war on terror, it must temporarily suspend its
heteronormative imagined community to consolidate national sentiment and consensus through the
recognition and incorporation of some, though not all or most, homosexual subjects. The fantasy of the
permanence of this suspension is what drives the production of exceptionalism, a narrative that is historically and
politically wedded to the formation of the U.S. nation-state. Thus, the exception and the exceptional work in tandem; the state
of exception haunts the proliferation of exceptional national subjects, in a similar vein to the Derridean hauntology in
which the ghosts, the absent presences, infuse ontology with a dierence. Through the transnational production of terrorist
corporealities, homosexual subjects who have limited legal rights within the U.S. civil context gain significant
representational currency when situated within the global scene of the war on terror. Taking the position that
heterosexuality is a necessary constitutive factor of national identity, the outlaw status of homosexual subjects in relation to
the state has been a long-standing theoretical interest of feminist, postcolonial, and queer theorists. This outlaw status is mediated
through the rise during the 1980s and 1990s of the gay consumer, pursued by marketers who claimed that childless
homosexuals had enormous disposable incomes, as well as through legislative gains in civil rights, such as the widely celebrated 2003
overturning of sodomy laws rendered in the Lawrence and Garner v. Texas decision. By underscoring circuits of homosexual nationalism, I note
that some homosexual subjects are complicit with heterosexual nationalist formations rather than inherently or
automatically excluded from or opposed to them. Further, a more pernicious inhabitation of homosexual sexual
exceptionalism occurs through stagings of U.S. nationalism via a praxis of sexual othering, one that
exceptionalizes the identities of U.S. homosexualities vis--vis Orientalist constructions of Muslim sexuality.
This discourse functions through transnational displacements that suture spaces of cultural citizenship in the United States for homosexual
subjects as they concurrently secure nationalist interests globally. In some instances these narratives are explicit, as in the aftermath of the
release of the Abu Ghraib photos, where the claims to exceptionalism resonated on many planes for U.S. citizen-subjects: morally, sexually,
culturally, patriotically. This imbrication of American exceptionalism is increasingly marked through or aided by certain
homosexual bodies, which is to say, through homonationalism.
393
394
A2: Rules/FW
Their Framework is a form of discipline that creates in and out groups as identified on
the K proper
Spade 2K (Dean, Transgender Studies Reader Chap. 23 Mutilating Gender, Spring 2000, Pg. 318)
Discipline, rather than being constituted by minor offences, is characteristically associated with norms, that
is, with standards, that the subject of a discipline comes to internalise or manifest in behaviour, for example
standards of tidiness, punctuality, respectfulness, etc. . . . These standards of proper conduct put into place a mode of regulation
characterised by interventions designed to correct deviations and to secure compliance and conformity . . . It
is through the repetition of normative requirements that the normal is constructed and thus discipline results
in the securing of normalisation by embedding a pattern of norms disseminated throughout daily life and secured through surveillance . . .
[E]xercises and the repetition of tasks characterise the disciplinary model of []power.[21] Disciplinary, productive power
constitutes governance in the sense that it structures the possible field of actions of others.[22] A central
element of this governance is the production, dissemination, and utilization of knowledge.[23] In this understanding of the
workings of domination, law is replaced or supplemented by psychiatry, psychology and medicine, which
create categories of dangerous individuals, subject positions that operate as regulatory instruments.
Their enforcement of rules and norms is a technique of discipline that makes genocide
inevitable
Spade 15 (Dean Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, & the Limits of Law Duke
University Press Pg. 4)
This kind of analysis can be seen in the work of those using industrial complex terms to describe and resist the forces of militarization and
criminal punishment that pervade US society. It can also be seen in the work that is being done for disability justice. Critical disability studies
and the disability rights and disability justice movements have shown us how regimes of knowledge and practices in every area of life establish
norms of healthy bodies and minds, and consign those who are perceived to fall outside those norms to abandonment and imprisonment.7
Policies and practices rooted in eugenics have attempted (and continue to attempt) to eliminate the existence of
people who fall outside those norms. Native scholars and activists have shown how white European cultural norms
determine everything from what property is to what gender and family structure should look like, and how every
instance of the imposition of these norms has been used in the service of the genocide of indigenous
people. In these locations and many others, we can see how the circulation of norms creates an idea that undergirds
conditions of violence, exploitation, and poverty that social movements have resistedthe idea that the national
population (constructed as those who meet racial, gender, sexual, ability, national origin, and other norms) must be protected
from those others (those outside of such norms) who are portrayed again and again in new iterations at various historical moments as
threats or drains. This operation of norms is central to producing the idea of the national body as ever-
threatened and to justifying the exclusion of certain populations from programs that distribute wealth and life
chances (white schools, Social Security benefits, land and housing distribution programs) and the targeting of these same
populations for imprisonment and violence (including criminal punishment, immigration enforcement, racist drug laws,
sterilization, and medical experimentation). Even though norms are incorporated into various spaces and institutions
inconsistently and applied arbitrarily, they still achieve the overall purpose of producing security for some
populations and vulnerability for others. Many social movements have produced analyses of how various groups are harmed by
the promotion of a national identity centered in norms about race, bodies, health, gender, and reproduction. These constructs often
operate in the background and are presumed as neutral features of various administrative systems. The
existence and operation of such administrative norms is therefore less visible than those moments when people are fired or killed or excluded
395
explicitly because of their race or body type or gender, yet they sometimes produce more significant harm because they
structure the entire context of life. I am going to return again and again in the chapters that follow to key examples, such as the
dismantling of welfare programs and the expansion of criminal and immigration enforcement, that are central to contemporary politics and
help illustrate how life chances are distributed through racialized-gendered systems of meaning and control, often in the form of programs that
attest to be race- and gender-neutral and merely administrative.
Their attempt to disqualify our scholarship denies social transformation and queer
existence; theres no rational version of our advocacy
The Queer Art of Failure is an extended meditation on antidisciplinary forms of knowing specifically tied
to queerness; I have made the case for stupidity, failure, and forgetfulness over knowing, mastering, and
remembering in terms of contemporary knowledge formations. The social worlds we inhabit, as so many
thinkers have reminded us, are not inevitable, they were not always bound to turn out this way, and
whats more, in the process of producing this reality, many other realities, fields of knowledge, and ways
of being have been discarded and, to use Foucaults (2003) term, disqualified. Queer studies, like any
other area of study that agrees upon principles, modes of historiography, and sites of investigation, also
has a tendency to solidify into what Foucault calls a science, or a regime of knowing that depends
absolutely upon commonsense narratives about emergences and suppressions. In some queer theoretical
narratives, for example, the psychic abjection of the homosexual must be met by a belated recognition of his or her legitimacy. In other
scholarly endeavors the gay or lesbian subject must be excavated from the burial grounds of history or granted a proper place in an account of
But in more recent queer theory the
social movements, globalized in a rights-b ased project, or written into new social contracts.
positivist projects committed to restoring the gay subject to history and redeeming the gay self from its
pathologization have been replaced by emphases on the negative potential of the queer and the
possibility of rethinking the meaning of the political through queerness precisely by embracing the
incoherent, the lonely, the defeated, and the melancholic formulations of selfhood that it sets in motion.
It is conventional to describe early narratives of gay and lesbian life as hidden from history; this notion, taken from the title of a well-k nown
anthology edited by George Chauncey and others, constitutes gay and lesbian history as a repressed archive and the historian as an intrepid
archaeologist digging through homophobic erasure to find the truth. But as much as we have to excavate some histories that have been
rendered invisible, we also bury others, and sometimes we do both at the same time. You could say
that gay and lesbian
scholars have also hidden history, unsavory histories, and have a tendency to select from historical
archives only the narratives that please. So new formulations of queer history have emerged from
scholars like Heather Love, who argue for a contradictory archive filled with loss and longing, abjection
and ugliness, as well as love, intimacy, and survival. An example of a history from which gay and lesbian scholarship has
hidden is the history of relations between homosexuality and fascism. This is the topic of this chapter as I push toward a model of queer history
that is less committed to finding heroic models from the past and more resigned to the contradictory and complicit narratives that, in the past
as in the present, connect sexuality to politics. When I say that scholarship has hidden from this at times overlapping history, I do not mean that
no one has discussed homosexuality and fascism; in fact there is a large body of work on the topic. But because the role of homosexuality in
fascism is very ambiguous and complicated and has been subject to all kinds of homophobic projection, we often prefer to talk about the
persecution of gays by the Nazis, leaving aside the question of their collaboration in the regime. So, from the outset, I think it is important to
say that there is no single way of describing the relationship between Nazism and male homosexuality, but also that we should not shy away
from investigating the participation of gay men in the regime even if we fear homophobic fallout from doing so. Finally, the purpose of any such
investigation should not be to settle the question of homosexuality in the Nazi Party, but to raise questions about relations between sex and
politics, the erotics of history and the ethics of complicity. As
Gayle Rubin succinctly stated in Thinking Sex, Sex is
always political (1984: 4). This is indisputable, and yet as work by Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, Heather
Love, and others has suggested, there is no guarantee as to what form the political will take when it
comes to sex. Rubins work asks us to think sex in every context, and Foucault prods us to examine our
own investments in cozy narratives of sexual freedom and rebellion. So queer negativity here might refer to a
396
project within which one remains committed to not only scrambling dominant logics of desire but also to contesting homogeneous models of
gay identity within which a queer victim stands up to his or her oppressors and emerges a hero. Bersani has widely been credited for first
questioning the desire to attribute an ethical project to every kind of gay sex. In Is the Rectum a Grave? he commented astutely, While it is
indisputably true that sexuality is always being politicized, the ways in which having sex politicizes are highly problematical. Right- wing politics
can, for example, emerge quite easily from a sentimentalizing of the armed forces or of blue- collar workers, a sentimentalizing which can itself
prolong and sublimate a marked sexual preference for sailors and telephone linemen (2009: 206). As Bersani says, the erotic is an equal
opportunity archive; it borrows just as easily, possibly more easily from politically problematic imagery than from politically palatable material.
This leaves open the question of the relationship between sex and politics. Bersani,
generally speaking, in a move that is later
stretched into a theoretical polemic by Lee Edelman, wants to resist and refuse the desire to make sex
into the raw material for a rational political position. Instead he sees a tyranny of selfhood and a
glorification of one understanding of the political in most claims for democratic plurality, social diversity,
or utopian potential that get written into sex: we clean sex up, he seems to imply, by making it about
self-f ashioning instead of self- shattering. The model of coming to power, a model that Foucault
called a reverse discourse, still provides in many instances the dominant framework for thinking about
sex. Many works in queer studies end with a bang by imagining and describing the new social forms that
supposedly emerge from gay male orgies or cruising escapades or gender- queer erotics or sodomitic
sadism or at any rate queer jouissance of some form or another. Samuel Delany (2001) reads a harmonious narrative of
social contact into anonymous sexual contacts in porn theaters; Tim Dean (2009) finds a new model of ethical conduct in barebacking between
strangers; and even Lee Edelmans (2005) notoriously cranky theories of the queerness of the death drive seem to harbor some tiny opening for
the possibility of an antisocial jouissance. In all three instances, as well as in Bersanis (2009) work, the utopian jouissance seems primarily
available only in relation to male- male anal sex between strangers. But, as I stated earlier, while I am sympathetic to this project of not tidying
up sex, I am less than enthusiastic about the archives upon which these authors draw and the resolutely masculinist and white utopias they
imagine through the magic portals of tricking.
Framework is a move toward its been done this way forever- this linking of success
to generational progress mandates heteronormativity
The Queer Art of Failure. Page 70.)/Spiers
For women and queer people, forgetfulness can be a useful tool for jamming the smooth
operations of the normal and the ordinary. These operations, generally speaking, take on an air
of inevitability and naturalness simply by virtue of being passed on from one generation to
another. Women are most often the repositories for generational logics of being and becoming, and then become the transmitters of that
logic to the next generation. Aided by a few more plot summaries and some animated films, we will see how forgetfulness becomes a rupture
with the eternally self- generating present, a break with a self- authorizing past, and an opportunity for a non- hetero- reproductive future. But
why should women and queer people learn to forget?
Generational logic underpins our investments in the
dialectic of memory and forgetting;3 we tend to organize the chaotic process of historical
change by anchoring it to an idea of generational shifts (from father to son), and we obscure
questions about the arbitrariness of memory and the necessity of forgetting by falling back on
some notion of the inevitable force of progression and succession. De- linking the process of
generation from the force of historical process is a queer kind of project: queer lives seek to
uncouple change from the supposedly organic and immutable forms of family and inheritance ;
queer lives exploit some potential for a difference in form that lies dormant in queer collectivity not as an essential attribute of sexual
We may want to forget family and
otherness but as a possibility embedded in the break from heterosexual life narratives.
forget lineage and forget tradition in order to start from a new place, not the place where the old engenders
the new, where the old makes a place for the new, but where the new begins afresh, unfettered by memory, tradition, and usable pasts.
397
A2: Perm
The perm reproduces the systems of domination that we kritik. (Also works as a state
link)
Spade 9 (Dean, Womens Rights Law Reporter, KEYNOTE ADDRESS: TRANS LAW REFORM STRATEGIES,
CO-OPTATION, AND THE POTENTIAL FOR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE, July 14, 2009, Volume 30, Pg.
297-299)
Hate crimes legislation and anti-discrimination legislation are examples of formal legal equality measures
that often do little to improve the life chances of those most vulnerable to oppression and, at worst,
perpetuate inequalities in the legal system. Murders are not prevented by hate crimes legislation.38
Instead, increased resources for the criminal punishment system means that the same people who face
heightened exposure and violence in that system (people of color, queer and trans people, youth, immigrants, women, and people
with disabilities) will bear the brunt of increased punishing power.39 Hate crime legislation merely offers a new formal
declaration of equality, which often has little more than symbolic value. The quest for such legislation also further mobilizes the
logics of mass imprisonment that trans populations might want to oppose, such as the notion that the value of
human life is determined by the amount of punishment meted out to those who destroy it, or the idea that enhancing criminal punishment
makes people safer. Similarly, anti-discrimination laws declare that conditions of employment are now fair, but
seem to do little to change the ongoing presence of an underclass of low-wage workers and unemployed people who are
disproportionately people of color, trans people, immigrants, people with disabilities, and others who
supposedly have been declared equal by law.40 This force of legal co-optation, and its connections to the stability of
racialized class stratification, rears its head in even the most rudimentary questions of legal practice. How
often must social movement lawyers ask ourselves, "How do we find the perfect plaintiff?" The moments when lawyers decide that
the face of an issue must be someone both judges and the media can embrace (read: white, employed, citizen,
able-bodied) are painful dividing moments for our communities even though they frequently occur behind closed
doors. They are moments when the terms of inclusion and exclusion are set and where racist, classist,
xenophobic, and abelist standards are reproduced. Even the question "is this a winning case?" highlights these issues. Do we
only fight winning cases? In this system, and under these rules of law, whose oppression can be recognized? Who can prevail in court? Can
people who experience multiple vectors of oppression ever be those perfect, winning plaintiffs in this model of practice? These questions guide
lawyers to articulate legal agendas that are relevant to a very narrow swath of a given community, and certainly least relevant to those facing
the most severe manifestations of oppression. Law
seems to push us toward these kinds of individualizing, divisive
decisions that ultimately undermine our anti-oppression goals, weaken solidarity within our communities and
across social movements, and restrict our vision until our victories are actually thinly veiled defeats that strengthen
oppressive systems.
398
A2: Race Analogies
Comparisons and combinations of black liberation and LGBT movements are violent
Kenyon Farrow, 11-8-2004, "Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black?," Kenyon Farrow is a writer and activist in New York City. He is co-editor of the
forthcoming Stand Up! The Shifting Politics of Racial Uplift w/ Jared Sexton on South End Press., Colours of Resistance Archive,
http://www.coloursofresistance.org/552/is-gay-marriage-anti-black/
These comparisons of Gay Civil Rights as equal to Black Civil Rights really began in the early 1990s, and largely
responsible for this was Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and a few other mostly-white gay organizations. This push from HRC, without any visible
black leadership or tangible support from black allies (straight and queer), to equate these movements did
several things: 1) Piss off
the black community for the white gay movements cultural appropriation, and making the straight
black community question non-hetero black peoples allegiances, resulting in our further isolation. 2)
Giving the (white) Christian Right ammunition to build relationships with black ministers to denounce
gay rights from their pulpits based on the HRCs cultural appropriation. 3) Create a scenario in their effort to go
mainstream that equates gay and lesbian with upper-class and white. This meant that the only visibility of non-
hetero poor people and people of color wound up on Jerry Springer, where non-heteros who are poor
and of color are encouraged (and paid) to act out, and are therefore only represented as dishonest,
violent, and pathological.
399
A2: Gay Rights Good
Rights advancement masks heternormative reproductive futurism
Edelman 04 (Lee Edelman, American literary critic and academic, 2004 Duke University Press, NO
FUTURE * Queer Theory and the Death Drive,
https://bagelabyss.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/no_future__queer_theory_and_the_death_drive.pdf)/
Spiers
Thus, while lesbians and gay men by the thousands work for the right to marry, to serve in the military, to adopt
and raise children of their own, the political right, refusing to acknowledge these comrades in reproductive
futurism, counters their efforts by inviting us to kneel at the shrine of the sacred Child: the Child who might
Witness lewd or inappropriately intimate behavior; the Child who might find information about dangerous
"lifestyles" on the Internet; the Child who might choose a provocative book from the shelves of the public library; the
Child, in short, who might find an enjoyment that would nullify the figural value, itself imposed by adult
desire, of the Child as unmarked by the adult's adulterating implication in desire itself; the Child, that is, made to
image, for the satisfaction of adults, an Imaginary fullness that's considered to want, and therefore to want for, nothing. As Lauren
Berlant argues forcefully at the outset of The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, "a nation made for adult citizens has
been replaced by one imagined for fetuses and children." 22 On every side, our enjoyment of liberty is eclipsed by the
lengthening shadow of a Child whose freedom to develop undisturbed by encounters, or even by the threat of potential
encounters, with an "otherness of which its parents, its church, or the state do not approve, uncompromised by any
possible access to what is painted as alien desire, terroristically holds us all in check and determines that political
discourse conform to the logic of a narrative wherein history unfolds as the future envisioned for a Child
who must never grow up. Not for nothing, after all, does the historical construction of the homosexual as
distinctive social type overlap with the appearance of such literary creations as Tiny Tim, David Balfour, and Peter Pan,
who enact, in an imperative most evident today in the uncannily intimate connection between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, a
Symbolic resistance to the unmarried men (Scrooge, Uncle Ebenezer, Captain Hook) who embody, as Voldemort's name
makes clear, a wish, a will, or a drive toward death that entails the destruction of the Child. That Child, immured
in an innocence seen as continuously under seige, condenses a fantasy of vulnerability to the queerness
of queer sexualities precisely insofar as that Child enshrines, in its form as sublimation, the very value for which
queerness regularly finds itself condemned: an insistence on sameness that intends to restore an Imaginary past. The Child,
that is, marks the fetishistic fixation ; of heteronormativity: an erotically charged investment in the rigid
sameness of identity that is central to the compulsory narrative of reproductive futurism. And so, as the
radical right maintains, the battle against queers is a life-and-death struggle for the future of a Child whose ruin is
pursued by feminists, queers, and those who support the legal availability of abortion. Indeed, as the Army of God made clear in the
bombmaking guide it produced for the assistance of its militantly " pro-life" members, its purpose was wholly congruent with the logic of
reproductive futurism: to "disrupt and ultimately destroy Satan's power to kill our children, God's children.""
400
A2: Identity politics bad
Queer negativity is not an independent identity, but the rejection of a social order
that would create such an identity
Spiers
How should we read this constant disruption of narrative signification, a disruption inextricable from the articulation
of narrative as such, but as a version of the death drive, which Barbara Johnson calls, in a different context, "a kind of
unthought remainder ... a formal overdetermination that is, in Freud's case, going to produce repetition or, in
deconstruction's case, may inhere in linguistic structures that don't correspond to anything else"?27 If irony can
serve as one of the names for the force of that unthought remainder, might not queerness serve as another? Queer theory, it follows,
would constitute the site where the radical threat posed by irony, which heteronormative culture
displaces onto the figure of the queer, is uncannily returned by queers who no longer disown but
assume their figural identity as embodiments of the figuralization, and hence the disfiguration, of identity itself.
Where the political interventions of identitarian minorities-including those who seek to substantialize the identities of
lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals-may properly take shape as oppositional, affording the dominant order a
reassuringly symmetrical, if inverted, depiction of its own ostensibly coherent identity, queer theory'S opposition is
precisely to any such logic of opposition, its proper task the ceaseless disappropriation of every propriety. Thus, queerness could never
constitute an authentic or substantive identity, but only a structural position determined by the
imperative of figuration; for the gap, the non coincidence, that the order of the signifier installs both informs and inhabits queerness as
it inhabits reproductive futurism. But it does so with a difference. Where futurism always anticipates, in the image
of an Imaginary past, a realization of meaning that will suture identity by closing that gap, queerness undoes the identities
through which We experience ourselves as subjects, insisting on the Real of a jouissance that social reality and the futurism
on which it relies have already foreclosed.
401
Ext: Impact Calc
Impact calculus must begin with queer subjectivity- their predictive scenario planning
allows privilege to whitewash the everydayness of queer death
Haritaworn 14 (Jin Haritaworn, proff of sociology at the University of New York, Queer Necropolitics,
Routledge, 2014, pg 1)/Spiers
Most prominently, Jasbir Puar (2007), tracing the shift from AIDS to gay marriage, identifies a recent
turn in how queer subjects are figured, from those who are left to die, to those that reproduce life. Yet,
not all sexually or gender nonconforming bodies are fostered for living; just as only some queer deaths
are constituted as grievable (Butler 2004),1 while others are targeted for killing or left to die. This book
comes at a time of growing interest in the necropolitical as a tool to make sense of the symbiotic co-
presence of life and death, manifested ever more clearly in the cleavages between rich and poor,
citizens and non-citizens (and those who can be stripped of citizenship); the culturally, morally,
economically valuable and the pathological; queer subjects invited into life and queerly abjected
populations marked for death. Our discussions are inspired by Achille Mbembes concept of necropolitics a concept he develops
when analysing the centrality of death in subalternity, race, war and terror (Mbembe 2003) and by Puars (2007) insightful elaboration of
queer necropolitics, which attempts to make sense of the expansion of liberal gay politics and its complicity within the US war on terror,
while calling our attention specifically to the differences between queer subjects who are being folded (back) into life and the racialized
Our collection assembles
queernesses that emerge through the naming of populations, often those marked for death (p. 36).
various ways of queering the necropolitical and of interrogating claims to queerness in the face(s) of
death, both spectacular and banal. Thinking through necropolitics on the terrain of queer critique brings
into view everyday death worlds, from the perhaps more expected sites of death making (such as war,
torture or imperial invasion) to the ordinary and completely normalized violence of the market. As many
of the contributors to this volume point out, the distinction between war and peace dissolves in the face
of the banality of death in the zones of abandonment (Biehl 2001; Povinelli 2011) that regularly accompany contemporary
democratic regimes. These are not merely about exclusion; more insidiously perhaps they create their own forms of deadly inclusion. The
insistence on the unremarkable, the ordinary and the mundane is of particular importance. In
contrast to other works in the field
that deal with death in relation to queerness and beyond such as the AIDS epidemic or the Holocaust
contributors in this book focus less on grand moments or processes of commemoration and more on the
everyday and the ordinary. In that respect, our orientation (Ahmed 2006) is not so much towards a past that is remembered and
celebrated. In the place of the finished past, we turn to the present and future(s), including those haunted futures (Ferreday and Kuntsman
2011; Gordon 2011) where queer vitalities become cannibalistic on the disposing and abandon ment of others. Indeed, we argue that the queer
nostalgia for other times, coupled with a victim subjectivity that refuses accountability for current privileges and injustices, may itself work to
naturalize and accelerate death-making logics in the present (Haritaworn, 2013). Furthermore, in considering the rise of homonormative and
transnormative identities as contingent on settler colonialism, anti-blackness and permanent war which provide the conditions of queer
ascendancies we refuse a view of the past as finished and the present as democratic and post-genocidal (e.g. Morgensen 2010; Smith 2007;
see also Bassichis and Spade, Chapter 9 in this book). Using
queer necropolitics as a theoretical entry point and as a
conceptmetaphor, our book explores the processes, conditions and histories that underpin and sustain a
range of unequal regimes of living and dying (Luibhid 2008: 190), consolidating and extending the
existing analytical vocabulary for understanding queer politics and experiences. In putting the concept of queer
necropolitics at the centre of our discussion, the book is in dialogue with the emerging scholarship focussing on the analysis of the
necropolitical (see, for example, Inda 2005; Osuri 2006). We extend this body of scholarship by turning our attention to specifically queer
aspects: deadly underpinnings of militarized queer intimacies, nationalized practices of queer mourning, assimilationist logics of feminist, gay
and transgender rights and criminalizing policies in the name of sexual safety and queer space. Contributors explore
the relations
between queerness and war, immigration, colonization, imprisonment and other forms of population control in various cultural and
political settings. Among the many topics addressed in the chapters of this book are racism in the name of LGBT rights; queer colonialities;
trans migrations; vitality and necropolitics in the new world order; the ontology and phenomenology of sexual and gender violence; the
402
racialization of LGBT, queer and transgender politics in the wars on terror; and regimes of remembering and oblivion of queer and non-queer
lives and deaths.
Framing the political around utilitarianism makes queer resistance impossible and
preserves hetero-normative privilege
Edelman 04 (Lee Edelman, professor in the English Department at Tufts University, 2004, No Future:
Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Page 2)/Spiers
But what helped him most in these public appeals on behalf of America's children was the
social consensus that such an appeal is possible to refuse. Indeed, though these public service
announcements concluded with the sort of rhetorical flourish associated with hard-fought
political campaigns ("We're fighting for the children. Whose side are you on?"), that rhetoric
was intended to avow that this issue, like an ideological Mobius strip, only permitted one side .
Such "self-evident" one-sided-ness the affirmation of a value so unquestioned, because so obviously unquestionable, as that of the Child whose
innocence solicits our defense-is precisely, of course, what distinguishes public service announcements from the partisan discourse of political
argumentation. But
it is also, I suggest, what makes such announcements so oppressively political
not in the partisan terms implied by the media consultant, but political in a far more insidious
way: political insofar as the fantasy subtending the image of the Child invariably shapes the
logic within which the political itself must be thought. That logic compels us, to the extent that
we would register as politically responsible, to submit to the framing of political debate-and,
indeed, of the political field-as defined by the terms of what this book describes as reproductive
futurism: terms that impose an ideological limit on political discourse as such, preserving in the
process the absolute privilege of heteronormativity by rendering unthinkable, by casting
outside the political domain, the possibility of a queer resistance to this organizing principle of
communal relation. For politics, however radical the means by which specific constituencies attempt to produce a more desirable
social order, remains core, conservative insofar as it works to affirm a structure, to authenticate social order, which it then intends to transmit
to the future in the form of its inner Child. That
Child remains the perpetual horizon of every acknowledged
politics, the fantasmatic beneficiary of every political intervention.
403
Ext: Alt Solvency
Queer politics are necessary to analyze biopower
Willse and Spade 5 (Craig Willse, a student in Sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of
New York. His research interests include science and technology studies, political economy, and the
sociology of biomedicine. He has been an adjunct instructor in sociology and women's studies at Hunter
College. Dean Spade is a transgender attorney, and under of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a law
collective providing direct legal assistance to low-income people and people of color facing gender
identity discrimination, Freedom in a Regulatory State?: Lawrence, Marriage, and Biopolitics)
To explore this other model of power, which we discuss in terms of biopolitics, it might be use l to look at what is taken as another defining battle in gay
politics today. Of course we are not the only ones to see links between sodomy and marriage, as the above discussion of Lawrence makes clear. It
is
also not surprising that gay politics might help us move om an analysis of discipline to an
analysis of biopower, as Foucault suggested that sexuality might have been an increasingly
important site of investment because it hinges between the disciplinary and the biopolitical.27 A
biopolitcs-based analysis allows us to engage in critical thinking about the failures of the
priorities of the most well-resourced LGBT organizations, and their failures to address the most pressing and
dangerous issues facing queer and trans people. Our concerns with this "LGBT agenda" become clear when viewed alongside what is claimed to be
the most celebrated incendiary moment in U.S. queer struggles, the Stonewall Uprising. 28 On the night of June 27, 1969, in New York City, low income
gender and sexual outsiders-many of whom were people of color and people of non-traditional gender identities-rebelled against their systemic
targeting by police. Participants in Stonewall were struggling to survive in a city that not only criminalized their very identities, but also excluded them
om economic and educational opportunity, housing, and bar protection om state and institutional violence. The people at the Stonewall that night were
those who lived day-to-day on the front lines of police violence, many because they earned a living through in rmal street economies and und
community in night life havens like the Stonewall bar. In the decades since that time, we have seen the consolidation of lemacy and power in
A significant rce of change has been
organizations whose leadership, priorities and strategies sharply depart om these origins.
the creation of nded organizations led primarily by white lesbians and gay men with economic
and educational privilege that claim to represent a broad-based movement r LGBT rights.29
However, the agendas of those organizations have come to cus on the rights of people with
occupational, educa onal, gender, and race privilege and to marginalize or ignore the struggles
of transgender people, queer and trans people of color, and queer and trans poor people.30 These
organizations have ught r the rights of gay youth to join the Boy Scouts,31 but virtually ignored the stru les of queer and trans youth who remain over
represented and abused in the juvenile justice system. They have ught r the rights of gays and lesbians to pass their apartments on to one another32
and to rent or buy property without facing discrimination,33 but have provided no assistance to queer and trans people stru ling in blatantly homophobic
and transphobic homeless shelter systems a onwide and in the most well- nded housing program r the poor, the criminal jus ce system. They have
waged battles on behalf of gay men who want to share equent flyer miles with their partners,34 and lesbians who want a couple's rate r country club
The interventions
membership,35 but have entirely ignored the plight of queer and trans prisoners who ce shocking violence with no relief.
of the LGBT movement have moved away om Stonewall's original protest of police brutality and
toward a push r hate crimes le sla on, which increases the punishing power of an overtly racist
criminal jus ce system, and has never been determined to deter hate crimes or in
creasesafety.36 Overall, the "gay agenda" has narrowed increasingly over the years, with
occasional tokenization of people of color, ansgender people, and other excluded groups, to the
point where its most core goals now seem utterly aligned with state agendas to regulate
sexuality and family structure. We take recent and ongoing campaigns r same-sex marriage to exempli the narrow scope of this
agenda and its collusion with the legal amework instated by nce. "Marriage Equality" itself is an ironic term, given that
the legal designation of marital status serves to di eren ate between and to pri lege select family
structures and sexual choices, and our c que of the push r same-sex mar age and the consolida
on of LGBT movement resources towards that goal develops om an assumption that marriage
itself institutes and distributes inequalities.37 We see in current public debates about gay
404
marriage an inability to move om a disciplinary to a biopolitical model. For some me, marriage
has been understood as a mechanism of disciplinary society, whether or not descriptions have
always been couched in those exact terms.38 The rise of legal ins tutions of marriage corresponds with the birth of
disciplinary society.39 Clearly, the medico-juridical regulation of marriage (the management of biolo cal and economical reproduc on by states and
doctors) works towards the solidi cation of the enclosure of the family, guaranteeing proper relationships between sexes within the home, and towards
the channeling of adult bodies into such milial arrangements. We
see a recognition of the opera ons of discipline in
critiques of marriage as a sexist institution (reproducing the subordinate status of wives, r
example, in property rela ons) as well as in critiques of how it enforces normative ideals,
rewarding those who meet the demands of discipline and capital r proper reproduc ve
arrangements. An implicit or explicit understanding of disciplinary power not only underwrites critiques of mar age, but also runs through
discourse supporting gay marriage. Advocates r gay marriage will acknowledge that mar age is a awed institution, and the flaws they point out are
those very techniques of discipline described above-its exclusionary principles and its enforcement of ideologies of gender inequality.41 Advocates,
however, set aside these disciplinary concerns, ci ng broader access to the institution and the rights it guarantees as a form of progress.42 Jus cation r
supporting the disciplinary institution of marriage is grounded in the economic and social entitlements attached to it.43 Furthermore, the symbolic
significance of marriage is cited in family-values terms by mainstream gay rights groups that argue that access to entitlements such as property rights
represents a legitimation of the formerly abjected identity of the homosexual;44 the act that wrence addresses the validity of homosexual relationships
attests to this. However, our argument is that these social and economic entitlements are
mechanisms of biopolitics, and that r om marking an incremental liberation of the disciplined
subject, they in ct mark operations of power that discipline cannot lly describe. What then do we mean by
biopolitics? If discipline operates at the level of the body of the individual subject, biopoli cs operates
at the level of the mass of bodies or the population. Biopolitics is characterized by the production of a population with
overall "characteriscs of birth, death, production, illness, and so on."45 If disciplinary mechanisms are discursive (in legal or medical contexts, r
example), biopolitical mechanisms are statistical, grounded in collections and calculations of data.46 Some aspects of biopolitics to which Foucault
alludes include the census and health insurance programs.47 Biopolitics depends upon generalizations and recasts, and there re does not conce itself
with the individual body, as would discipline.48 The disciplining of the family that arranges sexed relations
between bodies towards reproduction makes possible a broader and more general regulation of
the birthrate across a mass of familial enclosures. 49 In other words, if discipline manages the family in terms of gendered
relations, including reproduction, biopolitics manages the na on in terms of phenomena such as population patte s. As Foucault writes, the
purpose of sta stical measures, r example, "is not to modi any ven phenomenon as such, or to
modi a ven individual insofar as he is an individual, but, essentially, to intervene at the level at
which these general phenomena are determined, to intervene at the level of their generality."50
The rces that discipline arranges within the family, biopolitics massi es across families and throughout society.51 Disciplinary power, then, concerns
the individual subject, how the subject sees himself or is seen by society, and what he is or is not allowed or encouraged to do based on his subject
position.52 Biopolitics conce s the distribution of life chances across the population, the collection of data about this distribution and the regulation of
resources at this general level.53 A
biopolitical analysis, therefore, requires moving away from only
understanding marriage as an institution, or an enclosure, and beginning to think of it as a
technology or mechanism for channeling resources and populations. A disciplinary analysis of
gay marriage cites its ideological struggles-attempts to change the meaning of that cultural
institution. Similarly, an analysis of nce in terms of discipline emphasizes ideological changes in the identity category of the homosexual, as it
comes to signify a member of a committed partnership. A biopolitical analysis looks to a register other than ideology or meaning, and draws attention
instead to how marriage serves to set populations in relation to resources such as medical insurance and how that impacts life chances. Thus, while
advocates of same-sex marriage su est it challenge the very institution of marriage and its ability to maintain ideological norms regarding gender and
sex,54 we argue that the legalization of same-sex mar age simply redirects and intensifies biopolical nc ons of the state.
405
Alternatives
406
A: Queer Negativity
Reject the Affirmatives futurity in favor of embracing queer negativity not to negate
hopeful politics, but to abandon them
Spiers
For politics, however radical the means by which specific constituencies attempt to produce a more desirable
social order, remains1 at its core, conservative insofar as it works to affirm a structure, to authenticate social order,
which it then intends to transmit to the future in the form of its inner Child. That Child remains the
perpetual horizon of every acknowledged politics, the fantasmatic beneficiary of every political intervention. Even
proponents of abortion rights, while promoting the freedom of women to control their own bodies through reproductive choice,
recurrently frame their political struggle, mirroring their anti-abortion foes, as a "fight for our children -for our daughters
and our sons," and thus as a fight for the future.2 '-What, in that case, would it signify not to be "fighting for the children"? How
could one take the other "side," when taking any side at all necessarily constrains one to take the side if, by virtue of taking
a side within, a political order that returns to the Child as the image of the future it intends? Impossibly,
against all reason, my project stakes its claim to the very space that "politics" makes unthinkable: the space
outside the framework within which politics as we know it appears and so outside the conflict of visions
that share as their pre supposition that the body politic must survive. Indeed, at the heart of my polemical
engagement with the cultural text of politics and the politics of cultural texts lies a simple provocation: that queerness names the side
of those not fighting for the children," the side outside the consensus by which all politics confirms the absolute
value of reproductive futurism. The ups and downs of political fortune may measure the social order's ' pulse, but queerness, by
contrast, figures, outside and beyond its political symptoms, the place of the social order's death drive: a place,
to be. sure, of abjection expressed in the stigma, sometimes fatal, that follows from reading that figure literally,
and hence a place from which liberal politics strives-and strives quite reasonably, given its unlimited faith in
reason-to disassociate the queer. More radically, though, as I argue here, queerness attains its ethical value precisely
insofar as it accedes to that place, accepting its figural status as resistance to the viability of the social while
insisting on the inextricability of such resistance from every social structure. To make such a claim I examine in
this book the pervasive invocation of the Child as the emblem of futurity's unquestioned value and propose
against it the impossible project of a queer oppositionality that would oppose itself to the structural determinants of
politics as such, which is also to say, that would oppose itself to the logic of opposition. This paradoxical formulation
suggests a refusal-the appropriately perverse refusal that characterizes queer theory-of every substantialization of
identity, which is always oppositionally defined,' and, by extension, of history as linear narrative (the poor man's
teleology) in which meaning succeeds in revealing itself-as itself-through time. Far from partaking of this
narrative movement toward a viable political future, far from perpetuating the fantasy of meaning's eventual realization, the
queer comes to figure the bar to every realization of futurity, the resistance, internal to the social, to every social
structure or form. Rather than rejecting, with liberal discourse, this ascription of negativity to the queer, we might, as I
argue, do better to consider accepting and even embracing it. Not in the hope of forging thereby some more
perfect social order-such a hope, after all, would only reproduce the constraining mandate of futurism, just as any
such order would equally occasion the negativity of the queer-but rather to refuse the insistence of hope itself as
affirmation, which is always affirmation of an order whose refusal will register as unthinkable, irresponsible,
inhumane. And the trump card of affirmation? Always the question: If not this, what? Always the demand to
407
translate the insistence, the pulsive force, of negativity into " some determinate stance or "position" whose
determination would thus: negate it: always the imperative to immure it in some stable and positive
form. When I argue, then, that we might do well to attempt what is surely impossible-to withdraw our allegiance, however
compulsory, from a reality based on the Ponzi scheme of reproductive futurism -I do . not intend to propose some "good" that
will thereby be assured. To the contrary, I mean to insist that nothing, and certainly not what we call the "good," can ever have
any assurance at all in the order of the Symbolic. Abjuring fidelity to a futurism that's always purchased
at our expense, though bound, as Symbolic subjects consigned to figure the Symbolic's undoing, to the necessary contradiction of
trying to turn its intelligibility against itself, we might rather, figuratively, cast our vote for "none of the
above," for the primacy of a constant no in response to the law of the Symbolic, which would echo that law's foundational act, its
selfconstituting negation. The structuring optimism of politics to which the order of meaning commits us, installing as
it does the perpetual hope of reaching meaning through signification, is always, I would argue, a negation of this primal,
constitutive, and negative act. And the various positivities produced in its wake by the logic of political hope depend
on the mathematical illusion that negated negations might somehow escape, and not redouble, such negativity. My
polemic thus stakes its fortunes on a truly hopeless wager: that taking the Symbolic's negativity to the very
letter of the law, that attending to the persistence of something internal to reason that reason refuses, that turning the force of
queerness against all subjects, however queer, can afford an access to the jouissance that at once defines and
negates us. Or better: can expose the constancy, the inescapability, of such access to jouissance in the social
order itself, even if that order can access its constant access to jonissance only in the process of abjecting that constancy of access onto the
queer.
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A: Refusal
The ALT is to refuse to evaluate the affirmative, Academic spaces are traditionally
governed by logics of success that rectify a normalized form of violence only refusing
to evaluate alternative futures in favor of affirming failure as an opposition to utility
logic can resolve the implications of the 1AC.
This book, a stroll out of the confines of conventional knowledge and into the unregulated territories of
failure, loss, and unbecoming, must make a long detour around disciplines and ordinary ways of
thinking. Let me explain how universities (and by implication high schools) squash rather than promote
quirky and original thought. Disciplinarity, as defined by Foucault (1995), is a technique of modern
power: it depends upon and deploys normalization, routines, convention, tradition, and regularity, and
it produces experts and administrative forms of governance. The university structure that houses the
disciplines and jealously guards their boundaries now stands at a crossroads, not of disciplinarity and
interdisciplinarity, past and future, national and transnational; the crossroads at which the rapidly
disintegrating bandwagon of disciplines, subfields, and interdisciplines has arrived offer a choice
between the university as corporation and investment opportunity and the university as a new kind of
public sphere with a different investment in knowledge, in ideas, and in thought and politics. A radical take
on disciplinarity and the university that presumes both the breakdown of the disciplines and the closing of gaps between fields conventionally
presumed to be separated can be found in a manifesto published by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney in 2004 in Social Text titled The
University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses. Their essay is a searing critique directed at the intellectual and the critical intellectual, the
professional scholar and the critical academic professionals. For Moten and Harney, the critical academic is not the answer to encroaching
professionalization but an extension of it, using the very same tools and legitimating strategies to become an ally of professional education.
Moten and Harney prefer to pitch their tent with the subversive intellectuals, a maroon community of outcast thinkers who refuse, resist, and
renege on the demands of rigor, excellence, and productivity.
They tell us to steal from the university, to steal
the enlightenment for others (112), and to act against what Foucault called the Conquest, the
unspoken war that founded, and with the force of law refounds, society (113). And what does the
undercommons of the university want to be? It wants to constitute an unprofessional force of fugitive
knowers, with a set of intellectual practices not bound by examination systems and test scores. The goal
for this unprofessionalization is not to abolish; in fact Moten and Harney set the fugitive intellectual
against the elimination or abolition of this, the founding or refounding of that: Not so much the
abolition of prisons but the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery, that
could have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but abolition as the
founding of a new society (113). Not the elimination of anything but the founding of a new society. And why not? Why not think
in terms of a different kind of society than the one that first created and then abolished slavery? The social worlds we inhabit, after all, as so
many thinkers have reminded us, are not in- low theory 9 evitable; they were not always bound to turn out this way, and whats more, in the
process of producing this reality, many other realities, fields of knowledge, and ways of being have been discarded and, to cite Foucault again,
disqualified. A few visionary books, produced alongside disciplinary knowledge, show us the paths not taken. For example, in a book that
itself began as a detour, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1999), James C. Scott details
the ways the modern state has run roughshod over local, customary, and undisciplined forms of knowledge in order to rationalize and simplify
social, agricultural, and political practices that have profit as their primary motivation. In
the process, says Scott, certain ways of
seeing the world are established as normal or natural, as obvious and necessary, even though they are
often entirely counterintuitive and socially engineered. Seeing Like a State began as a study of why the
state has always seemed to be the enemy of people who move around, but quickly became a study of
the demand by the state for legibility through the imposition of methods of standardization and
409
uniformity (1). While Dean Spade (2008) and other queer scholars use Scotts book to think about how
we came to insist upon the documentation of gender identity on all governmental documentation, I
want to use his monumental study to pick up some of the discarded local knowledges that are trampled
underfoot in the rush to bureaucratize and rationalize an economic order that privileges profit over all
kinds of other motivations for being and doing. In place of the Germanic ordered forest that Scott uses
as a potent metaphor for the start of the modern imposition of bureaucratic order upon populations, we
might go with the thicket of subjugated knowledge that sprouts like weeds among the disciplinary forms
of knowledge, threatening always to overwhelm the cultivation and pruning of the intellect with mad
plant life. For Scott, to see like a state means to accept the order of things and to internalize them; it
means that we begin to deploy and think with the logic of the superiority of orderliness and that we
erase and indeed sacrifice other, more local practices of knowledge, practices moreover that may be
less efficient, may yield less marketable results, but may also, in the long term, be more sustaining.
What is at stake in arguing for the trees and against the forest? Scott identifies legibility as the favored
technique of high modernism for sorting, organizing, and profiting from land and people and for
abstracting systems of knowledge from local knowledge practices. He talks about the garden and gardeners as
representative of a new spirit of intervention and order favored within high modernism, and he points to the minimalism and simplicity of Le
Corbusiers urban design as part of a new commitment to symmetry and division and planning that complements authoritarian preferences for
hierarchies and despises the complex and messy forms of organic profusion and improvised creativity. Legibility, writes Scott, is a condition
of manipulation (1999: 183). He favors instead, borrowing from European anarchist thought, more practical forms of knowledge that he calls
metis and that emphasize mutuality, collectivity, plasticity, diversity, and adaptability. Illegibility may in fact be one way of escaping the political
While Scotts insight about illegibility has implications
manipulation to which all university fields and disciplines are subject.
for all kinds of subjects who are manipulated precisely when they become legible and visible to the state
(undocumented workers, visible queers, racialized minorities), it also points to an argument for
antidisciplinarity in the sense that knowledge practices that refuse both the form and the content of
traditional canons may lead to unbounded forms of speculation, modes of thinking that ally not with
rigor and order but with inspiration and unpredictability. We may in fact want to think about how to see
unlike a state; we may want new rationales for knowledge production, different aesthetic standards for
ordering or disordering space, other modes of political engagement than those conjured by the liberal
imagination. We may, ultimately, want more undisciplined knowledge, more questions and fewer
answers.
410
A: Radical Passivity
The ALT is to reject the AFF in favor of radical passivity, Passing down histories of
colonialism demands an Oedipal inheritance that entraps colonized subjects in
dominated roles; we should be willing to fail at learning the 1ACs story
In what follows I propose a radical form of masochistic passivity that not only offers up a
critique of the organizing logic of agency and subjectivity itself, but that also opts out of certain
systems built around a dialectic between colonizer and colonized . Radical forms of passivity and masochism
step out of the easy model of a transfer of femininity from mother to daughter and actually seek to destroy the mother- daughter bond
altogether. For example, in the work of Jamaica Kincaid the colonized subject literally refuses her role as colonized by refusing to be anything at
all. In Autobiography of My Mother (1997) the main character removes herself from a colonial order that makes sense of her as a daughter, a
wife, and a mother by refusing to be any of these, even refusing the category of womanhood altogether. At the novels beginning the first-
person narrator tells of the coincidence of her birth and her mothers death and suggests that this primal loss means that there was nothing
standing between me and eternity. . . . At my beginning was this woman whose face I had never seen, but at my end there was nothing, no one
between me and the black room of the world (3). Obviously the loss of her mother and the autobiography of that mother that ensues is an
allegorical tale of the loss of origins within the context of colonialism and the loss of telos that follows. But rather than nostalgically searching
for her lost origins or purposefully creating her own telos, the narrator, Xuela Claudette Richardson, surrenders to a form of unbeing for which
beginnings and ends have no meaning. With
no past to learn from, no future can be imagined, and with a
present tense that is entirely occupied by colonial figures, language, logics, and identities, the
colonized self has two options: she can become part of the colonial story or she can refuse to
be part of any story at all. Xuela chooses the latter: Autobiography of My Mother is the unstory of a woman who cannot be
anything but the antithesis of the self that is demanded by colonialism. Xuela neither tells her own story of becoming, nor does she tell her
her mothers unstory as her own she suggests that the colonized mind is
mothers story; by appropriating
passed down Oedipally from generation to generation and must be resisted through a certain
mode of evacuation. While Xuelas relationship to her mother is mediated by loss and longing, her relationship with her half- Scots,
half- Caribbean policeman father is one of contempt and incomprehension. She despises his capitulation to colonialism, to the law, and to his
own mixed heritage, and she tries, through the writing of this narrative, to root out his influence and inhabit completely the space of her absent
Carib mother: And so my mother and father then were a mystery to me; one through death, the other through the maze of living; one I had
never seen, one I saw constantly (41). Choosing
death and absence over a colonized life, Xuela avoids
becoming a mother herself; aborting a child, she avoids love, family, and intimacy and
disconnects herself from all of those things that would define her. In her refusal of identity as
such Xuela models a kind of necropolitical relation to colonialism: her refusal to be is also a
refusal to perform the role of other within a system that demands her subjugation. Whatever I
was told to hate, she says, I loved most (32).
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A: Toxicity
Toxic queer worlding re-conceptualizes heternormative world ordering and animacy
hierarchies foundational to biopolitical governance
for the Study of Sexual Culture @ UC Berkeley, Animacies: Biopolitical Racial Mattering and Queer
Affect, p. 190
Here I move from exploring toxicitys contemporary pervasiveness as a notion, to exploring its purported and experienced mechanisms in the human body. This shift
concerns the role of metaphor in biopolitics, since the seemingly metaphorical productions of cultural expressions of toxicity are not necessarily more concrete than
the literal ones, which are themselves composed of complex cultures of immunity thinking. Reflecting on the ambiguous subject-object relations of toxicity, I use
animacy theory to ask how the flexible subjectness
or objectness of an actant raises important questions about the
contingencies of humanness and animateness. These contingencies are eminently contestable within
critical queer and race and disability approaches that, for instance, disaggregate verbal patients from the bottom of the hierarchy.
Since, as I argued in chapter 1, animacy hierarchies are simultaneously ontologies of affect, then such ontologies
might benefit from a reconceptualization of the order of things, particularly along unconventional
lines of race, sexuality, and ability.3 Toxicitys Reach Toxins have moved well beyond their specific range of biological attribution, leaking out of
nominal and literal bounds. A politician will decry the toxic political atmosphere;4 Britney Spears will sing Dont you know that youre toxic / And I love what you
do;5 an advice columnist will caution us to keep a healthy distance from toxic acquaintances.6 One book is written for workers suffering the ravages of a toxic
personality, describing what they do as poison, corrupt, pollute, and contaminate. . . . We define the toxic personality as anyone who demonstrates a pattern of
counterproductive work behaviors that debilitate individuals, teams, and even organizations over the long term.7 Thus, toxic people, not just chemicals, are
appearing in popular social discourse, suggesting a shift in national sentiment that registers an increasing interest in individual bodily, emotional, and psychic
security. For the rhetoric of security inevitably has ramifications not simply related to health: as the previous chapter delineated, recent concerns about the toxicity
of lead were especially charged in terms of race, sexuality, ability, and nation. Let us probe the affective dynamics of one example in detail, the paradoxical conceit
of the now-popular phrase toxic assets, associated with policies of financial deregulation in the United States that entered a new phase in the early 1990s.
Notably, the toxic assets of significance that originated at that time and that are held responsible for global economic fallout are the financial products composed of
grouped mortgages tied to a hypervalued and unstable residential real estate market. We might say that this complex financial product, this toxic asset, is a
good precisely because it entails capital value; yet it has unfortunately becomeconsidering the discourse in which toxic asset has meaningnot only toxic
but also perhaps untouchable (as an affective stance), unengageable (as tokens of exchange with limited commensurability), and perhaps even disabling (that
is, it renders the corporation that buys it up also invalid). The term toxic assets thus reflects an effort to externalizebut also to indict for their threatening
closeness (to home)corrupt layers of financial organization. These examples illustrate that there seems to be a basic semantic schema for toxicity: in this schema,
two bodies are proximate; the first body, living or abstract, is under threat by the second; the second has the effect of poisoning, and altering, the first, causing a
degree of damage, disability, or even death. In English, this adjectival meaning of toxicof or related to poison, which means that a body or its blood could be
harmed by an external agenthas endured since the 1600s, according to the oed, and it was concretized into the noun toxin in 1890; it is debatable when the
metaphorical use emerged. If we are willing to assign literal to toxicitys application to the human body and metaphoric to all others, then these metaphorical
mappings are not always very sound. Linnda Durre, author of Surviving the Toxic Workplace, identifies certain personalities as toxic; among them is one she dubs
The Delicate Flower: If someone is sitting there constantly saying: Youre wearing perfume. Im going to have an allergy attack, or: Youre eating meat. Thats so
disgusting, its like grinding, grinding, whining, whining every day of your life.8 Durre would rather expunge the workplace of such complaints; she fails to consider
that the design of a workplace might well place certain people, including those susceptible to allergy attacks, at a radical disadvantage. If the definition of
toxin has always been the outcome of political negotiation and a threshold value on a set of selected tests, its
conditionality is no more true in medical discourse than in social discourse, in which ones definition of a toxic irritant coincides with habitual scapegoats of ableist,
sexist, and racist systems. Toxicitys first (under threat) and second (threatening) bodies are thus in the eye of the beholder. Faced with toxicitys broad and
hungry reach, the contemporary culture of the United States is witnessing both the notional release and proliferation of
the metaphor of toxicity, while also marking its biopolitical entrainment as an instrument of difference.
While the first seems important for allowing a kind of associative theorizing, it is simultaneously important to retain a fine sensitivity to
the vastly different sites in which toxicity involves itself in very different lived experiences (or deaths), for
instance, a brokers relation to toxic bonds versus a farm workers relation to pesticides. Furthermore, the deployment of the first can leave untouchedor even
depend onthe naturalized logic of the second. Disability scholars have discussed the deployment of disability as a trope that ultimately reconsolidates ability;
David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder have elucidated the idea of narrative prosthesis, a kind of narrative deployment of disability that entrenches a kind of ableist
idealization of privileged subject positions. 9 Indeed, we might argue that the workplace psychologist Linnda Durre is doing just that in her formulation of The
Delicate Flower. As Michael Davidson reminds us, we cannot consider the prosthesis only at the level of narrative trope, given the widespread problems around
access to such essential medical devices; he writes, sometimes a prosthesis is still a prosthesis.10 Think about how often culture recruits languages of disability:
the corporation was crippled; dont use me as a crutch. The toxic people debated in self-help guides and pop songs should not be detached from an
understanding of how toxins function in, and impair, actual bodies and systems. Furthermore, such impairment, as some scholars and activists assert, should be
understood as a societal production, and not (only or even) as a problem proper to an individual that must be cured or corrected. Immunitary Fabric All
cultural productions of toxicity must be rethought as an integral part of the affective fabric of immunity
nationalism. When immunity nationalism is individuated through biopower, in a culture of responsibility, self-care, anxious
412
monitoring, and the like, toxicity becomes a predictable figure. The apprehension of a toxin relies minimally on two discourses: science and the body. Science
studies and feminist studies have worked to study and materially reground these two figures which often stand as both ontologically basal and hence unindictable.
In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler engages the biological insofar as she asks us to reconsider the discursive
pinning of sex to biology and of gender to the realm of social and cultural life; but as she warns us, assigning originary
status to sex or biology obfuscates genders contribution to (and ontologizing of ) sex; that is, both gender and sex matter.11 Rather than displacing
the extant materiality of the body, she focuses on its partially ontologizing figurations. It is often hard to get a grip
on what, precisely, the body is supposed to mean and what we ask it to do, and on how we demand of it so much symbolically, materially, and theoretically.
Questions of the body become particularly complex when taking into account the various mixings,
hybridizations, and impurities that accompany contemporary bodily forms, from genetically modified food to the cyborg
triumphed by Donna Haraway.12 What, indeed, becomes of life now that Haraways vision has in some regard prevailed? Though her Manifesto for Cyborgs is
over twenty-five years old, it has proved eerily prescient in its view of the ever-seamless integration of machines, humans, animals, and structures of capital. Human
bodies, those preeminent containers of life, are themselves pervaded by xenobiotic substances and nanotechnologies. Toxicity
becomes significant
now for reasons beyond the pressing environmental hazards that encroach into zones of privilege,
beyond late-transnational capitalism doing violence to national integrities. Because of debates around abortion (such as
those about when life is technically said to begin) and around the lifeliness or deathliness of those in persistent vegetative states, not only can we not tell what is
alive or dead, but the
diagnostic promise of the categories of life and death is itself in crisis, not least when
thinking through the necropolitics that Achille Mbembe proposes for postcolonial modes of analysis.13 For when biopolitics
builds itself upon life or death or even Agambens bare life14much like kinship notions that
build only upon humans and hence fail to recognize integral presences of nonhuman animalsit risks
missing its cosubstantiating contingencies in which not only the dead have died for life, but the
inanimate and animate are both subject to the biopolitical hand. Nan Enstad notes that toxicity forces us to
bridge the analytical polarization of global and local by placing the body in the picture and to consider
commodities in new ways in the context of global capitalism, for instance, capitalisms remarkable
success at infusing lives and bodies around the world with its products and by-products. 15 Yet,
considering the reach of toxicity thinking described earlier, I would like to expand her fairly concrete
take on the body (for all the discursive complication she admits) by suggesting that many bodies are subject to the
toxiceven toxins themselvesand that it is worth examining the toxicities that seem to trouble more than
human bodies. Indeed, it is one way for us to challenge the conceptual integrity of our notions of the body. For
biopolitical governance to remain effective, there must be porous or even co-constituting bonds
between human individual bodies and the body of a nation, a state, and even a racial locus like
whiteness. This is especially salient within the complex political, legal, and medical developments of immunity. For toxicitys coextant figure
is immunity: to be more precise, threatened immunity. Immune systems are themselves constituted by the intertwinings of
scientific, public, and political cultures together.16 Even further, we know that the medicalized notion of immunity was derived from political brokerages. It is no
surprise that discourses on sickness bleed from medical immunity discourse into nationalist rhetoric. Ed Cohens A Body Worth Defending details the history of
immunity as a legal concept, tracking its eventual adoption into medicine, a step that eventually enabled people to speak of immune systems with a singular
possessive, as in my immune system.17 Cohens historicization of immunity gives insight into the breadth of contemporary expressions of immunity and toxicity,
and their many affects in relation to threat. Analyzing the period after this discursive migration, Emily Martins anthropological study of twentieth-century immune
systems, Flexible Bodies, details a twentieth-century shift in contemporary thinking about immunity to something private or personal maintained by internal
processesaway from a previous focus on public hygiene, in which immunity was seen as related to unconnected factors from the outside.18 This
internalization, even privatization, of immunity helps to explain the particular indignation that toxicity evokes, since it is understood as an unnaturally external force
that violates (rather than informs) an integral and bounded self. This is what Cohen calls the apotheosis of the modern body, the aban195 donment of humans
integral relation to their environments and the insistence on a radical segregation of self and world fueled by a bellicose antagonism. We can further consider the
Italian political philosopher Ricardo Espositos elucidation of the ways in which immunity seems to work as a kind of destructive
negative protection of life.19 In Espositos immunizing paradigm, immunity is contracted on a poisoned affect of gratitude (on the basis of
membership in a community) that undercuts the final possibility of individual immunity. Esposito identifies the shaky prescription of the introjection of the negative
agent as a way to defend against its exterior identity. Intriguingly, through poisoned affect, or an affect of gratitude that is somehow fatally compromised, toxicity
thus sneaks into Espositos elaboration of immunity in the realm of affect rather than as a formal object; it is thus never fully addressed beyond the given questions
of negativity in relation to immunity. This may not be surprising, as the history of immunity does not confirm that toxicity was there from the start. But if it was not
there, then what was? It
could be productive, I think, to use this theorization of immunity to ask questions of the
absence or presence of toxicity (both are here) as a means of approaching immunity, and particularly to take the
consideration of poisoned affect and its compromise to individual immunity further. I suggest that toxicity
413
incontrovertibly meddles with the relations of subject and object required for even the kind of contractual immunitary ordering
that Esposito suggests. Thus, while the threat of toxicity is held to a clear subject-object relation, intoxication (of an object by a toxin) is never held to an
advantageous homeopathic quantity (in light of the biopolitical interjection of negativity): indeed, this is the function of poisoned affect seen fully through. Not
only is political immunity challenged, the very nature of this alteration cannot be fully known. Who is, after all, the subject here? What if the object, which is itself a
subject, has been substantively and subjectively altered by the toxin? Could we tell a history of intoxication in relation to political immunity that sits next to
Espositos? There are clearly many more questions than answers here about the history of the political affect of immunity. Toxic Worlding Recall that matters of life
and death have arguably underlain queer theory from the early 1990s, when radical queer activism in relation to aids blended saliently with academic theorizing on
politics of gender and sexuality. More recently, Lee Edelman takes up a psychoanalytic analysis of queernesss figural deathly assignment in relation to a relentless
reproductive futurism.20 Jasbir Puar points to life
and death economies that place some queer subjects in the privileged
realm of a biopolitically optimized life, while other perverse subjects are consigned to the realm of
death, as a result of the successes of queer incorporation into the domains of consumer markets and
social recognition in the postcivil rights, late twentieth century.21 Similar affective pulses of surging lifeliness or morbid
resignation might reflect the legacy of the deathly impact of aids in queer scholarship. Suggesting a horizonal imagining whose terms are pointedly not foretold by
a pragmatic limitation on the present, Jos Esteban Muoz in Cruising Utopia offers a way around the false promise of a
neoliberal, homonormative utopia whose major concerns are limited to gay marriage and gay service in
the military: lifely for a few, deathly for others.22 To enact a method that prioritizes a queer reach for
toxicitys worlding, I want to interleave considerations of toxicity and intoxication with a toxic
sensorium: a sense memory of objects and affects that was my felt orientation to the world when I was
recently categorized as ill. It seems never a simple matter to discuss toxicity, to objectify it. It is yet
another matter to experience something that seems by one measure or another to be categorized as a
toxin, to undergo intoxication, intoxification. This difference raises questions about toxic methodology,
which in some way inherits anthropologys question about what can be done to respond to crises of objectivity. While no simple solution exists, it is my
interest to attenuate the exceptionalisms that attain all too easily in, for instance, the previous chapters assessment of lead
toxicitys discursive range: it is possible for a reader to comfortably reside in a certain sense of integral, nontoxic security in that analysis. To intensify
toxicitys intuitive reach, I engage toxicity as a condition, one that is too complex to imagine as a
property of one or another individual or group or something that could itself be so easily bounded. I
would like to deemphasize the borders of the immune system and its concomitant attachments to life
and death, such that the immune systems aim is to realize and protect life. How can we think more
broadly about synthesis and symbiosis, including toxic vapors, interspersals, intrinsic mixings, and
alterations, favoring interabsorption over corporeal exceptionalism? I will not address these questions from a point of view
of mythic health. Rather, I will tell a tale from the perspective of the existence that I have recently claimed, one that has been quite accurately considered toxic. In
other words, I move now from a theoretical discussion of metaphors about threat into what feels, for me personally, like riskier terrain, the terrain of the
autobiographical. As academics are often trained to avoid writing in anything resembling a confessional mode, such a turn is fraught with ambivalence. I
theorize toxicity as it has profoundly impacted my own health, my own queerness, and my own ability to
forge bonds, and in so doing, I offer a means to reapproach questions of animacy with a different lens.
This theorization through the personal is not intended as a perfect subjectivity that opposes an
idealized objectivity. Rather, it is meant as a complementary kind of knowledge production, one that in
this context invites both the sympathetic ingestion (or intoxication) of what remains a marked
experience, and the empathetic memory of past association. It centers on a set of states and experiences that have been
diagnosed as multiple chemical sensitivity and heavy metal poisoning, and can be used to think more deeply about this condition and what it offers to thinking
about bodies and affect. As such, my repository of thoughts, experiences, and theorizations while illones that queerly
and profoundly changed my relationship to intimacycould be considered a kind of archive of feelings,
to use Ann Cvetkovichs important terminology. 23 These are feelings that are neither exclusively traumatic, nor exclusively
private, nor a social archive proper to certain groups: they are feelings whose publics and intimacies are
not clearly bounded or determinable. Such feelingsand their intimaciesoffer a way to come at
normative affects margins. Where Lauren Berlant notes, of less institutionalized interactions, that
intimacy names the enigma of this range of attachments . . . and it poses a question of scale that links
the instability of individual lives to the trajectories of the collective, I mean to destabilize where the
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toxic and its affects can be located.24 I have for the last few years suffered from the effects of mercury toxicity, perhaps related to receiving for
a decade in my childhood weekly allergy shots which were preserved with mercury, and having a mouth full of metal fillings which were composed of mercury
amalgam. That said, I am not invested in tracing or even asserting a certain cause and effect of my intoxication,
not least because such an endeavor would require its own science studies of Western medicines ambivalent materialization of heavy metal intoxication as an
identifiable health concern. Rather, I wish to chart such intoxications with and against sexuality, as both of these
are treated as biologized and cultural forms with specific ethical politics. In early-twenty- first- century
U.S. culture, queer subjects are in many ways treated as toxic assets, participating in the flow of capital
as a new niche market, yet also threatening to dismantle marriage or infiltrate the military, and thus
potentially damaging the very economic and moral stability of the nation. But what happens when
queers become intoxicated? Recall the earlier secondary Oxford English Dictionary meanings of queer as both unwell and drunk, the latter of
which is now proclaimed to be obsolete; such meanings shadow queerness with the cast of both illness and inebriation. While Muoz meditates on
the possibilities of ecstasythe drugas a metaphor for pleasurable queer temporalities, 25 I explore
an intoxication that is not voluntary, is potentially permanent, is ambivalent toward its own affective
uptake, and produces an altered affect that may not register its own pleasure or negativity in
recognizable terms. Let me get specific and narrate what my toxic cognitive and bodily state means, how it limits, delimits, frames, and undoes. Today
I am having a day of relative well-being and am eager to explore my neighborhood on foot; I have forgotten for the moment that I just dont go places on foot,
because the results can be catastrophic. Having moved to a new place, with the fresh and heady defamiliarization that comes with uprooting and replanting, my
body has forgotten some of its belabored environmental repertoire, its micronarratives of movement and response, of engagement and return, of provocation and
injury. It is for a moment freein its scriptless version of its futureto return to former ways of inhabiting space when I was in better health. Some passenger cars
whiz by; instinctively my body retracts and my corporeal-sensory vocabulary starts to kick back in. A few pedestrians cross my path, and before they near, I quickly
assess whether they are likely (or might be the kind of people) to wear perfumes or colognes or to be wearing sunscreen. I scan their heads for smoke puffs or
pursed lips pre-release; I scan their hands for a long white object, even a stub. In an instant, quicker than I thought anything could reach my organs, my liver refuses
to process these inhalations and screams hate, a hate whose intensity each time shocks me. I am accustomed to this; the glancing scans kick in from habit whenever
I am witnessing proximate human movement, and I have learned to prepare to be disappointed. This preparation for disappointment is something like the
preparation for the feeling I would get as a young person when I looked, however glancingly, into the eyes of a racist passerby who expressed apparent disgust at
my Asian off-gendered form. I imagined myself as the queer child who was simultaneously a walking piece of dirt from Chinatown. For the sake of survival, I now
have a strategy of temporally displaced imaginations; if my future includes places and people, I pattern-match them to past experiences with chemically similar
places and chemically similar people. I run through the script to see if it would result in continuity or discontinuity. This system of simultaneous conditionals and the
time-space planning that results runs counter to my other practice for survival, an investment in a refusal of conditions for my existence, a rejection of a history of
racial tuning and internalized vigilance. To my relief, the pedestrians pass, uneventfully for my body. I realize then that I should have taken my chemical respirator
with me. When I used to walk maskless with unsuspecting acquaintances, they had no idea that I was privately enacting my own bodily concert of breath-holding,
speech, and movement; that while concentrating on the topic of conversation, I was also highly alert to our environment and still affecting full involvement by
limiting movements of my head while I scanned. Sometimes I had no breath stored and had to scoot ahead to a clearer zone while explaining hastily I cant do the
smoke. Indeed, the grammatical responsibility is clear here: the apologetic emphasis is always on I-statements because there is more shame and implicature (the
implicit demand for my interlocutor to do something about it) in the smoke makes me sick, so I avoid it. Yet the individuated property-assignation of I am highly
sensitive furthers the fiction of my dependence as against others independence. The question then becomes which bodies can bear the fiction of independence
and of uninterruptability. I am, in fact, still seeking ways to effect a smile behind my mask: lightening my tone, cracking jokes, making small talk about the weather,
or simply surging forward with whatever energy I have to connect with a person on loving terms. I did this recently when I had to go with a mask into Michaels
crafts shop, full as it is of scents and glues and fiberboard. The register clerk was very sweet, very friendly, and to my relief did not consider the site of our
intersubjectivity to be the two prominent chemical filter discs on either side of my mask. Wearing the mask with love is the same way I learned to deal with a rare
racial appearance in my white-dominated hometown in the Midwest, or with what is read as a transnationally gendered ambiguity. It seems the result I receive in
return is either love or hostility, and it is unpredictable. Suited
up in both racial skin and chemical mask, I am perceived as a
walking symbol of a contagious disease like sars, and am often met with some form of repulsion; indeed,
sars! is what has been used to interpellate me in the streets. As many thinkers have noted, the insinuation or
revelation of a disability, particularly invisible disability, dovetails interestingly with issues of coming-out
discourses of sexuality and passing. Both Ellen Samuels and Robert McRuer have discussed the ways in which coming out as disabled
provocatively overlaps with, and also differs from, coming out as queer.26 How does a mask help interrupt the notion of passing? How does it render as
damaged (or, at least, vulnerable) a body that might otherwise seem healthy? Not wearing a chemical mask counts as a guise of passing, of the appearance of
non-disability: I look well when I am maskless in public, at least until I crumple. The use of the literal mask as an essential
prosthesis for environmentally ill subjects is notable in light of Tobin Sieberss deployment of masquerade as an exaggeration of disability symbols to manage or
intervene in social schemas about ability and disability.27 This
dialogic friction between actual mask as facial appurtenance
the masks literal locus on the faceand mask or masquerade as a racial, non-disabled, or sexuality
metaphor points to the central significance of face as intersubjective locus, and it exemplifies the
expropriability of a facial notion of embattlement to the rest of the (human) body or to social spheres of
interaction;28 but it also points to the complexities that emerge when the actual facial signification of
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disability rubs up against the facial mask metaphor. Arguably, a chemical mask can serve as its own masquerade, but it also slips and
slides into orthogonal significations. Its reading as exaggeration, in particular, competes with its reading as racializing and
masculinizing toxic threat, where the skin of the mask ambivalently locates the threat on either side of
it. The same ambivalence may be attributed to the skins of some toxic bodies, whereas the
synecdochal attribution of toxicity applies either to the (rest of the) toxic body itself (the mask standing for the human sars
vector) or to an exterior, vulnerable body that renders it so (Fanons skin, which the mask covers,
standing in for the colonial racialized visualities that render his blackness toxic to a white collective). 29 Is,
then, the toxic body the disabled body? Or is the toxic body that collective body that biopolitically inoculates itself against a stronger toxin by affording itself
homeopathic amounts of a negative toxin (disabled bodies) while remaining in a terrible tension with these negated entities? Given my condition, I must
constantly renegotiate, and recalibrate, my embodied experiences of intimacy, altered affect, and the porousness of the body. The nature of metal poisoning,
accumulated over decades, is that any and every organ, including my brain, can bear damage. Because symptoms can reflect the toxicity of any organ, they form a
laundry list that includes cognition, proprioception, emotion, agitation, muscle strength, tunnel perception, joint pain, and nocturnality. Metal-borne damage to the
livers detoxification pathways means that I cannot sustain many everyday toxins: once they enter, they recirculate rather than leave. I can sometimes become
autism-spectrum in the sense that I cannot take too much stimulation, including touch, sound, or direct human engagement, including being unable to meet
someones gaze, needing repetitive, spastic movements to feel that my body is just barely in a tolerable state; and I can radically lose compassionate intuition,
saying things that I feel are innocuous but are incredibly hurtful. The word mercurial means what it meansunstable and wildly unpredictablebecause the
mercury toxin has altered a self, has directly transformed an affective matrix: affect goes faster, affect goes hostile, goes toxic. Traditional psychology here, I
suspect, can only be an overlay, a reading of what has already transformed the body; it cannot fully rely on its narratives. Largely two quarters of the animated
agents of the metropolis that is, motor vehicles and pedestrians, but not the nonhuman animals or the insectscan be toxic to me because they are proximate
instigators. The smokestacks, though they set the ambient tone of the environment, are of less immediate concern when I am surviving moment to moment.
Efficiency is far from my aim; that would mean traversing the main streets. Because I must follow the moment-to-moment changes in quality of air to inhale
something that wont hurt me, turning toward a thing or away from it correspondingly, humans are to a radical degree no longer the primary cursors of my physical
inhabitation of space. Inanimate things take on a greater, holistic importance. It also means that I am perpetually itinerant, even when I have a goal; it means I will
never walk in a straight line. There are also lessons here, reminders of interdependency, of softness, of fluidity, of receptivity, of immunitys fictivity and
attachments impermanence; life sustains evenor especiallyin this kind of silence, this kind of pause, this dis-ability. The heart pumps blood; the mind, even
when it says, I cant think, has reflected where and how it is. Communion is possible in spite of, or even because of, this fact. To conclude this narration of a day
navigating my own particular hazards: Ive made it back home and lie on the couch, and I wont be able to rise. My lover comes home and greets me; I grunt a
facsimile of greeting in return, looking only in her general direction but not into her eyes. She comes near to offer comfort, putting her hand on my arm, and I flinch
away; I cant look at her and hardly speak to her; I cant recall words when I do. She tolerates this because she understands very deeply how I am toxic. What is this
relating? Distance in the home becomes the condition of these humans living together in this moment, humans who are geared not toward continuity or
productivity or reproductivity but to stasis, to waiting, until it passes. In such a toxic period, anyone or anything that I manage to feel any kind of connection with,
whether its my cat or a chair or a friend or a plant or a stranger or my partner, I think they are, and remember they are, all the same ontological thing. What
happens to notions of animacy given this lack of distinction between living and lifely things? I am shocked when my lover doesnt remember what I told her
about my phone earlier that day, when it was actually a customer service representative on a chat page, which once again brings an animating transitivity into play.
And I am shocked when her body does not reflect that I have snuggled against it earlier, when the snuggling and comforting happened in the arms and back of my
couch. What body am I now in the arms of ? Have I performed the inexcusable: Have I treated my girlfriend like my couch? Or have I treated my couch like her,
which fares only slightly better in the moral equations? Or have I done neither such thing? After I recover, the conflation seems unbelievable. But it is only in the
recovering of my human-directed sociality that the couch really becomes an unacceptable partner. This episode, which occurs again and again, forces me to rethink
animacy, since I have encountered an intimacy that does not differentiate, is not dependent on a heartbeat. The couch and I are interabsorbent, interporous, and
not only because the couch is made of mammalian skin. These are intimacies that are often ephemeral, and they are lively; and I wonder whether or how much they
are really made of habit. Animate Objects, Inanimate Subjects By its very definition, the toxin, as much as it may have been categorized as inanimate, is more than
mere matter, for it has a potency that can directly implicate the vulnerability of a living body. Prototypically, a toxin requires an object against which its threat
operates. This threatened object is an object whose defenses will be put to the test, in detection, in fighting off, and finally in submission and absorption. But
some confusion occurs when we note that the object of toxicity, its target, is an animate oneand hence potentially also a kind of subject and that the toxin, the
subject of toxicity, is inanimate. Thinking back to the linguistics of animacy hierarchies detailed in chapter 1, we note that in this case, various categories of
assessment, particularly of worthiness to serve as agents or patients of verbs, tell opposing stories. In
a schema of toxicity, likely subjects are
equally likely objects, despite their location in very different parts of the animacy hierarchy. In a scene of
human intoxication, for toxins and their human hosts, the animacy criteria of lifeliness, subjectivity, and
humanness (where the human wins) come up short against mobility and sentience (where the toxin
wins). And this is before even considering what occurs in that moment and the ensuing life of intoxication; toxicity becomes us, we become
the toxin. The mercurial, erethic, emotionally labile human moves toward quicksilver, becomes it. There is, indeed, something unworlding
that might be said to take place in the cultural production of toxic notions. A normal worlds order is
lost when, for instance, things that can harm you permanently are not even visible to the naked eye. Temporal orders become Moebius
strips of identity: How could it do this to me? And yet in that instant, the me that speaks is not the
me before I was affected by it. Recent attention to inanimate objects, from Jennifer Terrys work on the love of inanimate objects such as the
Eiffel Tower and the Berlin Wall to news coverage of men having serious emotional relationships with their dakimakura pillows, represents certain kinds of reversals
of expectation regarding a kind of vitality that objects are afforded within human worlds.30 Thinking beyond the rubric of fetishism, it is useful to build upon this
work to ask questions of the subjects facing these objects and to consider how to mark their subjectivity as such or why we do so. Consider, for instance, the
example of my couch, with which my relationality is made possible only to the degree that I am not in possession of
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human sociality. We might indeed let go of an attachment to the idea that social states or capacities are
possessed by one animate entity and think rather in terms of transobjectivity.31 Transobjectivity releases
objectivity from at least some of its epistemological strictures and allows us to think in terms of multiple
objects interspersed and in exchange. Stacy Alaimos term transcorporeality suggests we think beyond the
terms of the bodily unit and affirm the agencies of the matter that we live among.32 The sentience of the couch, in
our meeting and communing, then becomes my own sentience as well. Nikolas Rose, in The Politics of Life Itself, has observed the impact of recent dramatic
changes in the field of biology, particularly in the life-making capacities of genetics and the role of pharmaceuticals in vital self-management. 33 To Rose, these
shifts constitute an epistemological and technical event, and he pronounced that contemporary biopolitics must now be considered molecular in character. This
focus on molecularity is important when thinking about neurotoxicities, which I consider less a part of the spread of pharmaceutical self-management than a sign of
the mediations we must now make about toxins between environmental givens (that toxins surround us) and self (that toxins are us). In particular, what are the
affectations or socialities attributed to toxicity, and what is the affect attaining between a toxin and its host? I consider two different senses of molecularity, one
of which takes the notion of a particle at face value, the other of which leaves behind a strict biological or physical schema and considers a particles affective
involvement on radically different scales. I also want to make more explicit a relationship between xenophobia and xenobiotics; xenobiotics are substances
understood to be not proper to the human body, that is, inherently alien to the body, whether or not they are recognized as such by it. Both lead and mercury are
chemically classified as metals. They are often further described as heavy metals, a category whose chemical definition remains contested since heavy variously
refers to atomic weight and molecular density. Heavy metal toxins have sites of entry, pathways of action, and multiple genres of biochemical-level and organ-
specific reaction in the body. Lead and mercury are both classified as neurotoxic, which means that they can damage neurons in the brain. Sensory impairment
correlated to mercurys neuronal damage, for instance, can include loss of proprioception, nystagmus (involuntary eye movement), and heightened sensitivity to
touch or sounds. But their effectivity is potentially comprehensive: Like most other toxic metals, lead and mercury exist as cations, and as such, can react with most
ligands present in living cells. These include such common ligands as sh, phosphate, amino, and carboxyl. Thus they have the potential to inhibit enzymes, disrupt
cell membranes, damage structural proteins, and affect the genetic code in nucleic acids. The very ubiquity of potential targets presents a great challenge to
investigations on mechanisms of action.34 The ubiquity of potential targets further informs us that the transformation by a toxin and its companions can be so
comprehensive that it renders their host somewhat unrecognizable. Furthermore, to state perhaps the obvious, research on contemporary toxicitiesor indeed, to
broaden our field of inquiry, on historical intoxicationconfirms for us our experiences: that under certain conditions, some of
them enduring or seemingly permanent, social beings can also become radically altered in their sociality, whether due to brain-
specific damage or not. They are overcome, overwhelmed, overtaken by other substances. Although the bodys interior could be
described as becoming damaged by toxins, if we were willing to perform the radical act of releasing
the definition of organism from its biological pinnings, we might from a more holistic perspective
approach toxicity with a lens of mutualism. The biologist Anton de Bary, who developed a theory of symbiosis in 1879, defined three types:
commensalism, mutualism, and parasitism. Thinking of toxins as symbiotesrather than, for instance, as parasites which seem only to feed off a generally integral
being without fundamentally altering it (which would perhaps be our first guess)not only captures some toxic affectivity but enables me to
shift modes of approach. Ultimately, amountsthat is, scalesare inconsequential here; it is affectivity that
matters, and the distinction between parasite and symbiosis is irrelevant. It is worth noting here that my thinking bears some resemblance to Deleuzian
interspersal and symbiosis. Deleuze and Guattari write substantively about molecularity in relation to becoming-animal, referring to particles as
belonging or not belonging to a molecule in relation to their proximity to one another; but such molecules are defined not by material
qualities but rather more so as entities whose materiality is purposefully suspended.35 Thus, they compare verbal
particles to food alimentary particles that in a schizophrenics actions enter into proximity with one another. Deleuze and Guattaris thinking
is useful in the sense that I attempt not only to accentuate proximal relations among categorically differentiated entities (across lines of animacy), but equally
to emphasize the insistent segregations of material into intensified condensations (affective
intensities) of race, geography, and capital. In this light, the toxicities tied to heavy metals function as a kind of
assemblage of biology, affect, nationality, race, and chemistry. And yet, their analysis leaves little
room for distinctions between actual and abstract, particularly in their creative distinction between
molecularity and molarity. Thus, I find it useful to hold on to a certain concrete materiality here, insofar
as it offers a potentially critical purchase for thinking through queer relating and racialized transnational
feeling, and further because mere metaphors, as we have seen, can sometimes overlook their own
effectivity in literal fields.36 Queering Intimacy There is a potency and intensity to two animate or inanimate
bodies passing one another, bodies that have an exchangea potentially queer exchangethat effectively risks
the implantation of injury. The quality of the exchange may be at the molecular level, airborne molecules entering the breathing apparatus,
molecules that may or may not have violent bodily effects; or the exchange may be visual, the meeting of eyes unleashing a series of pleasurable or unpleasurable
bodily reactions, chill, pulse rush, adrenaline, heat, fear, tingling skin. The necessary condition for toxicity to be enlivenedproximity, or intimacymeans that
queer theories are especially rich for thinking about the affects of toxicity. At the same time, queer theories can further benefit from the lessons of disability theory,
particularly by rethinking its own others. Thinking and feeling with toxicity invites us to revise, once again, the sociality
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that queer theory has in many ways made possible. As a relational notion, toxicity speaks productively
to queer-utopian imagining and helps us revisit the question of how and where subject-object
dispositions should be attributed to the relational queer figure. But even further, queer theory is an apt
home for the consideration of toxicity, for I believe the twoqueerness and toxicityhave an affinity.
They truck with negativity, marginality, and subject-object confusions; they have, arguably, an affective
intensity; they challenge heteronormative understandings of intimacy. Both have gotten under the skin.
Yet queer theorys attachment to certain human bodies and other human objects elides from its view
the queer socialities that certain other, nonhuman intimacies portend. What are the exceptionalisms
that can haunt such theorizing? Let us revisit the scene from the previous chapter of the child who inappropriately licks his lead-toxic painted
train, the scene that is constantly conjured as one that must be avoided at all costs. The mobility of ingestible air and the nonemptiness of that air demonstrate that
the act of lead licking is a fantasy of exception. It is not only a fantasy that not-licking is a viable way to contain heterosexuality in its bounds, but it is also a fantasy
that not-licking is a viable way to contain the interconstitution of people and other people, or people and other objects. Look closely at your childs beloved, bright-
red train: you may choose to expel it from your house, for the toxins that the sight of it only hints at; but you will pay the cost of his proper entrainment. What
fingers have touched it to make it so? How will you choose to recover your formerly benign feelings about this train? Love has somehow to rise above the
predetermined grammar of such encounters, for the grammar itself predicts only negative toxicity. So how is it that so much of this toxic world, in the form of
perfumes, cleaning products, body products, plastics, all laden with chemicals that damage us so sincerely, is encountered by so many of us as benign or only
pleasurable? How is it, even more, that we are doing this, doing all this, to ourselves? And yet, even as the toxins themselves spread far and wide, such a we is a
false unity. There
is a relation ship between productivitys queers (not reproductivitys queers, that is) and hidden,
normative intoxications. Those who find themselves on the underside of industrial development bear
a disproportionate risk, as environmentalists and political economy scholars alike have shown.37 In her article
Akwesasne: Mohawk Mothers Milk and pcbs, environmental justice activist Winona LaDuke describes a multipronged activist project led by the Mohawk midwife
and environmentalist Katsi Cook.38 Cook developed the Mothers Milk pcb-monitoring breast milk project, begun in 1984 and ongoing today, in response to the
demonstrated toxic levels of pcbs on the Akwesasne reservation, which straddles the border between the United States and Canada and is located very close to a
primary emitter of pcbs, a General Motors site established in 1957 which is now a Superfund site. This proximityand gms improper disposal practicesmeant
that both the St. Lawrence River and the Akwesasne wells, the sources of water on which the Mohawks relied, had toxic concentrations of pcbs. Indeed, Akwesasne
is one of the most highly polluted Native American reservations. Cook emphasizes strengthening womens health so that their critical role as the first environment
of babies be taken seriously for existing and future bodily toxicity. These molecular intimaciesparticles passed on via breast milk to babiesare implicated in
regimes of gendered labor and care. Cooks activism connects the poisoning of the turtles to the fate of the Mohawks in a cosmology that reiterates the shared
potency of live turtles and earthly support. Turtles are critically important in the Mohawk cosmology, which connects them to the earth itself; LaDuke mentions that
North America is called Turtle Island, which comes from a common Native American origin story. Such a cosmology does not depend, for instance, on the narrow
ecology of edibles that informs mainstream U.S. food safety advocacy (wherein bigger animals eat smaller animals, a logic that articulates the threat of ocean fish to
humans). It serves as a reminder that to the degree that mainstream animacy frameworks have become dominant law, such law could potentially be recodified if
the animate orders on which it depends were interrupted. The interruptions
demand recognizing the contradictions within
matter itselfwhether through accepting that worldviews (and their cosmologies) are legitimately
contestable, especially in a time of problematization and retrenchment diagnosed as posthuman, or
through revitalized understandings of matters own complexity that can cross the discursive boundaries of
science. Cosmologies, of course, are as much written into Western philosophies as they are in Akwesasne cultures, and the life and death hidden within their
objects has a binding effect on their theoretical impulse. In her important book Queer Phenomenology, Sara Ahmed gives extensive, unabashed attention to tables,
at one point writing extensively about her orientation (in a larger discussion of sexuality and orientations) toward a table of hers and that tables orientation
toward her. She writes, we perceive the object as an object, as something that has integrity, and is in space, only by haunting that very space; that is, by co-
inhabiting space such that the boundary between the co-inhabitants of space does not hold. The skin connects as well as contains. . . . Orientations are tactile and
they involve more than one skin surface: we, in approaching this or that table, are also approached by the table, which touches us when we touch it.39 Ahmed
works here with an important and profound assertion by Maurice Merleau-Ponty that sensory engagement binds sensing and sensed objects to one another; in this
way, my skin is simultaneously the skin of the world. Yet, if we were to stretch this intercorporeality further, it appears that Ahmed still presumes the proper
integrity of her body and of the table, an exclusion of molecular travel that permits her to position one thing against another. Ahmed is talking mainly about the
perception of integrity; but I wonder what happens when percepts are to some degree bypassed, for instance, by the air itself. When physically copresent with
others, I ingest them. There is nothing fanciful about this. I am ingesting their exhaled air, their sloughed skin, and the skin of the tables, chairs, and carpet of our
shared room. Ahmeds reading thus takes the deadness and inanimacy of that table as a reference point for the orientation of a life, one in which the table is moved
according to the purposes and conveniences of its owner. And while it would be unfair to ask of her analysis something not proper to its devices, I do wonder how
this analysis might change once the object distinctions between animate and inanimate collapse, when we move beyond the exclusionary zone made up of the
perceptual operands of phenomenology. The affective relations I have with a couch are not made out of a predicted script and are received as no different from
those with animate beings, which, depending on the perspective, is both their failing and their merit. My question then becomes: What is lost when we hold tightly
to that exceptionalism which says that couches are dead and we are live? For would not my nonproductivity, my nonhuman sociality, render me some other
humans dead, as certainly it has, in case after case of the denial of disabled existence, emotional life, sexuality, or subjectivity? And what is lost when we say that
couches must be cathected differently from humans? Or when we say that only certain couches as they are used would deserve the attribution of a sexual fetish?
These are only questions to which I have no ready answers, except to declare that those forms of exceptionalism no longer seem very reasonable. Indeed, the
literary scholar John Plotzs careful review essay on new trends in materiality theories, Can the Sofa Speak? A Look at Thing Theory, itself never arrives at
confronting the possibility of the sofas speech, seeming to presume that the question of sofas remains at the level of humorous titular play, no explanation
needed.40 It seems that animacy and its affects are mediated not by whether you are a couch, a piece of metal, a human child, or an animal, but by how holistically
you are interpreted and how dynamic you are perceived to be. Stones themselves move, change, degrade over time, but in ways that exceed human scales. Human
418
patients get defined, via their companion technologies, as inanimate, even as they zip right by you in a manual wheelchair. And above and beyond these factors
related to the power of interpretation and stereotype, there is the strict physicality of the elements that travel in, on, and through us, and sometimes stay. If we
ingest each others skin cells, as well as each others skin creams, then animacy
comes to appear as a category itself held in false
containment, insofar as it portends exteriorized control relationships rather than mutual imbrications,
even at the most material levels. Nancy Tuana, reading New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in terms of
interactionist ontology, writes, There is a viscous porosity of fleshmy flesh and the flesh of the world.
This porosity is a hinge through which we are of and in the world. I refer to it as viscous, for there are
membranes that affect the interactions.41 Furthermore, the toxicity of the queer to the heterosexual
collective or individual body, the toxicity of the dirty subjects to the hygienic State, the toxicity of heavy
metals to an individual body: none of these segregations perfectly succeeds even while it is believed
with all effort and investment to be effective. In perhaps its best versions, toxicity does not repel but
propels queer loves, especially once we release it from exclusively human hosts, disproportionately
inviting dis/ability, industrial labor, biological targets, and military vaccine recipientsinviting loss and
its losers and trespassing containers of animacy. We need not assign the train-licking boy of the previous
chapter so surely to the nihilistic underside of futurity or to his own termination, figurative or otherwise. I
would be foolish to imagine that toxicity stands in for utopia given the explosion of resentful, despairing, painful, screamingly
negative affects that surround toxicity. Nevertheless, I am reluctant to deny the queer productivity of toxins and
toxicity, a productivity that extends beyond an enumerable set of addictive or pleasure-inducing

substances, or to neglect (or, indeed, ask after) the pleasures, the loves, the rehabilitations, the
affections, the assets that toxic conditions induce. Unlike viruses, toxins are not so very containable or
quarantinable; they are better thought of as conditions with effects, bringing their own affects and
animacies to bear on lives and nonlives. If we move beyond the painful antisocial effects to consider
the sociality that is present there, we find in that sociality a reflection on extant socialities among us, the
queer-inanimate social lives that exist beyond the fetish, beyond the animate, beyond the pure clash of
human body sex.
419
Aff Answers
420
A2: Queer
Edelmans rejection of the possibility of politics fails vote negative to embrace the
uncertainty of the future and the possibility for new social orders.
Bateman 6 [R. Benjamin Bateman is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Virginia. His
dissertation, currently underway, explores gay autobiographies from 1880 to the present. His research
interests include modernism, psychoanalysis, and queer theory. The Future of Queer Theory (on Lee
Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive [Duke UP, 2004]) by R. Benjamin Bateman | ns
65-66 http://www.theminnesotareview.org/journal/ns6566/bateman_r_benjamin_ns6566_stf1.shtml]
Certain readers might chafe at Edelman's suggestion that Butler's politics is insufficiently
radical. After all, Butler has been criticized, like Edelman, for trafficking in recondite theories
and postmodern argot and for failing to offer a viable model of political agency. To be sure,
Butler's post-structuralist and Foucaultian commitments constrain her ability to posit a stable
political agent and to conceive a politics that would radically oppose, rather than merely
reinforce or marginally reinflect, a dominant cultural order. But in her recent work, perhaps
most strikingly in 2004's Undoing Gender, Butler has turned to the "question of social
transformation" (the title of UG's tenth chapter), arguing, quite programmatically, that social
transformation "is a question of developing, within law, within psychiatry, within social and
literary theory, a new legitimating lexicon for the gender complexity that we have always been
living" (219). Lest she be accused of nominalism, Butler stresses the importance of real
bodies in forging such a vocabulary: "the body is that which can occupy the norm in myriad
ways, exceed the norm, rework the norm, and expose realities to which we thought we were
confined as open to transformation" (217). While Edelman rejects the future as a site of social
reproduction, Butler prizes it as a space of uncertainty, an ambiguous terrain upon which
competing and perhaps unforeseeable claims will be made and new social orders elaborated.
Butler's model offers queer theory a brighter future than Edelman's, not simply because it
confers agency upon social actors and highlights the social's capacity for transformation, but
because it supersedes the liberal inclusiveness for which Edelman faults it. Butler's queer
world is not one in which the dominant order remains stable as it incorporates, or ingests,
peripheral sexualities into its fold. Rather, it is one in which the periphery remakes the center,
rearticulating what it means to be "normal" or "American" or "queer." Thus, queers do not
simply enter society on heterosexuality's terms; they recast such terms, seizing upon
instabilities in signification to elaborate previously unarticulated and perhaps unanticipatable
ways of life. Edelman's point that 'queer' names "the resistance of the social to itself" (2002)
combats the very anti-futurism he endorses; in this formulation, queerness functions as the
force that prevents a particular social order from coinciding with itself, from congealing into a
futureless nightmare. Queer, then, might denote the instability of all norms and social orders,
their intrinsic capacity for change.
Edelman rejects the possibility of politics.
Fontenot 6 [Andrea Fontenot University of California, Santa Barbara MFS Modern Fiction Studies
52.1 (2006) 252-256 [Access article in PDF] Lee Edelman. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death
Drive. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. x + 191 pp.]
Edelman's acceptance of the cultural logics linking death and homosexuality may seem hard
to swallow: not only does he ask us to commit political suicide, he systematically refuses the
fantasy of an afterlife, of an alternative future. However bleak this may seem, Edelman's work
envisions for queer theory something much more powerful than politics. In identifying the
broad nexus of forces that participate in reproductive futurism, Edelman enables queer theory
421
to be a voice of resistance to the dominant political order in a more comprehensive way than
any issue or identity based politics could contain. Indeed, the challenge he puts forth is for
queer theory to more effectively channel the dissonant and disruptive effect of sexuality rather
than distance ourselves from it. From my perspective it is not the negativity of his theory that
constitutes its weakness. Rather, it is his failure to imagine the sinthomosexual in more
diverse terms and his unwillingness to recognize possibilities for allegiance with [End Page
255] others who suffer under reproductive futurism's grip on our political culture. It is not just
that his examples happen to all be white middle-class childless mensomething we may
excuse as product of the cultural register he chooses to investigatebut that his entire
imagining of the scope of the sinthomosexual is limited; his exclusive use of "he" to denote
queers and sinthomosexuals alike is only one manifestation. Though he illuminates the
intricate displacements and disavowals required to figure the homosexual's difference in
terms of their narcissistic love of sameness (see 5660), he nonetheless ignores the
differences that exist among those positioned under the sign "homosexual." This becomes a
weakness for his analysis in the section where he deconstructs Jean Baudrillard's nauseating
jeremiad, "The Final Solution," a treatise against "artificial insemination" and the "global
extermination" of meaning it portends (6465). Edelman dedicates six wonderfully reasoned
pages to exposing Baudrillard's outrage at the imminent vanishing of sexual difference (and
thus, for Baudrillard, difference at all) as a homophobic response to the way that the
possibilities of sex without reproduction and reproduction without sex reveal the always
already meaninglessness of sex, even in the heterosexual pairing (6066). What Edelman
misses here, though, is an opportunity to show another face of the figure of the
sinthomosexual. In Baudrillard's paranoid reaction to new technologies of reproduction, it is
not the gay male who is evoked but rather the lesbian mother, that most notorious beneficiary
of this desexualized reproduction. Were Edelman to entertain this difference, he would find
that she is figured in much the same terms as her male counterpart: imperiling both the child
she would bear and the future that the Child is meant to guarantee, despite the efforts of
some lesbian mothers to trade on the capital of reproductive futurism to purchase civil rights.
By simply dismissing queer parents as "comrades in reproductive futurism" (19), capable only
of contributing to the homophobic scapegoating of the sinthomosexual, he ignores their
possibility as allies on the frontier between the Child and children, between the future and
tomorrow. Regardless of these omissions, however, Edelman has certainly articulated a new
direction for queer theory, making No Future required reading both within the field and
beyond.
Queer theory means queer whiteness it attempts to shove people of all races and
classes under a false unifying umbrella
Walter 96 [Suzanna Danuta Walter, Sociology Professor, Georgetown University, Summer 96, From
Here to Queer: Radical Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace (Or, Why Can't a Woman Be
More like a Fag?), Signs, Vol. 21, No. 4, Feminist Theory and Practice pp. 830-869,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175026]
Queer theory's relation to the politics and theorizing of racialized identities is no less fraught
than its relation to feminism and feminist identities. It seems to me-in the little that has
been published explicitly addressing this relationship (and this itself is a problem, because
although there is a growing body of critique from white feminists, I have found little
specifically addressing questions of race and queerness per se)-that lesbian and gay writers
of color are expressing both optimism with the new queer designations as well as
trepidation. The optimism is located in the queer dethroning of gender and the (possible)
opening up of queerness to articulations of "otherness" beyond the gender divide. In other
422
words, if queer can be seen to challenge successfully gender hegemony, then it can make
both theoretical and political space for more substantive notions of multiplicity and
intersectionality. However, queer can "de-race" the homosexual of color in much the same
way "old-time" gay studies often has, effectively erasing the specificity of "raced" gay
existence under a queer rubric in which whiteness is not problematized. Sagri Dhairyam,
in "Racing the Lesbian, Dodging White Critics," critiques the implicit whiteness of
queerness while still attempting to instantiate the category "queer women of color." "'Queer
theory' comes increasingly to be reckoned with as critical discourse, but concomitantly
writes a queer whiteness over raced queerness; it domesticates race in its elaboration of
sexual difference" (1994, 26). Gloria Anzaldfua makes a somewhat different point; she
feels more affinity with queer as a term of more working-class and "deviant" etymology than
what she sees as the historically white and middle-class origins of the designations lesbian
and gay. Cherrie Moraga and Amber Hollibaugh have made a similar argument in their use
of the phrase queer lesbian, stressing their embrace of the term for its difference from
middle-class lesbian feminist identities (1983). Yet Anzalduia also accuses white
academics of co-opting the term queer and using it to construct "a false unifying umbrella
which all 'queers' of all races, ethnicities and classes are shoved under" (1991, 250).
The label queer will be re-reappropriated, curtailing political progress and leading to
violent backlash
Jagose 96 [Annamarie Jagose, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of English, University of Melbourne, Queer
Theory, An Introduction, 1996, p. 103]
Anxiety that 'queer' will continue to connote perversion and illegitimacy has led some to argue
that its adoption is politically a counter productive gesture. 'Its use only serves to fuel existing
prejudice', writes Simon Watney (1992:18), 'and may even lead to an increase in
discrimination and violence'. The objection is that, in choosing to resignify a word which until
recently circulated in the coarse register of slang, advocates of queer alienate themselves
and their cause from people sympathetic to lesbian and gay grievances and inequities.
Campion Reed thinks that to promote queer as a descriptive term may 'only give greater
license to heterosexuals to employ degrading language', and cannot imagine politicians
discussing "'queers" and "faggots" on the senate floor' (quoted in Angelides, 1994:83). Those
who seek to effect political transformation under the rubric of queer have little patience for
this line of argument, since they understand that, as long as political intervention is
constrained by the very system it opposes, political success will necessarily be limited. The
kind of legitimation achieved by lesbians and gays, they argue, is not to be emulated for it is
evidence that they have sold out and betrayed their radical origins in gay liberation. Those
lesbians and gays who are committed to achieving social change by means of democratically
sanctioned structures allege that the queer position is too politically naive and idealistic to be
effective. Ignorant of the real machineries of power, queers will not be able to achieve
anything from the marginalised position they champion.
423
Perm (SP3)
A biopolitics-based analysis allows for critical thinking about homonormativity
To explore this other model of power, which we discuss in terms of biopolitics, it might be useful to look at what is taken as another defining
battle in gay politics today. Of course we are not the only ones to see links between sodomy and marriage, as the
above discussion of Lawrence makes clear. It is also not surprising that gay politics might help us move from an analysis of discipline to an
analysis of biopower, as Foucault suggested that sexuality might have been an increasingly important site of
investment because it hinges between the disciplinary and the biopolitical.27 A biopolitics-based analysis
allows us to engage in critical thinking about the failures of the priorities of the most well-resourced
LGBT organizations, and their failures to address the most pressing and dangerous issues facing queer
and trans people. Our concerns with this "LGBT agenda" become clear when viewed alongside what is
claimed to be the most celebrated incendiary moment in U.S. queer struggles, the Stonewall Uprising.28 On the night of June 27,1969,
in New York City, low income gender and sexual outsiders-many of whom were people of color and people of non-traditional gender identities-
rebelled against their systemic targeting by police. Participants in Stonewall were struggling to survive in a city that not only criminalized their
very identities, but also excluded them from economic and educational opportunity, housing, and bar protection from state and institutional
violence. The people at the Stonewall that night were those who lived day-to-day on the front lines of police violence, many because they
earned a living through informal street economies and found community in night life havens like the Stonewall bar. In
the decades since
that time, we have seen the consolidation of legitimacy and power in organizations whose leadership,
priorities and strategies sharply depart from these origins.
424
AFF Answers
425
A2: State Bad

Total rejection of the institutional logic of the state fails - calculated engagement on
matters of critical importance
Crenshaw 88 [Kimberle, Law @ UCLA, RACE, REFORM, AND RETRENCHMENT: TRANSFORMATION
AND LEGITIMATION IN ANTIDISCRIMINATION LAW, 101 Harv. L. Rev. 1331, lexis]
Simply critiquing the ideology from without or making demands in language outside the rights discourse
would have accomplished little. Rather, Blacks gained by using a powerful combination of direct action,
mass protest, and individual acts of resistance, along with appeals to public opinion and the courts
couched in the language of the prevailing legal consciousness. The result was a series of ideological and
political crises. In these crises, civil rights activists and lawyers induced the federal government to aid
Blacks and triggered efforts to legitimate and reinforce the authority of the law in ways that benefited
Blacks. Simply insisting that Blacks be integrated or speaking in the language of "needs" would have endangered the lives of those who were
already taking risks and with no reasonable chance of success. President Eisenhower, for example, would not have sent federal troops to Little
Rock simply at the behest of protesters demanding that Black schoolchildren receive an equal education. Instead, the
successful
manipulation of legal rhetoric led to a crisis of federal power that ultimately benefited Blacks. Some critics
of legal reform movements seem to overlook the fact that state power has made a significant
difference sometimes between life and death in the efforts of Black people to transform their
world. Attempts to harness the power of the state through the appropriate rhetorical/legal incantations should
be appreciated as intensely powerful and calculated political acts. In the context of white supremacy, engaging in rights
discourse should be seen as an act of self defense. This was particularly true because the state could not assume a position of neutrality
regarding Black people once the movement had mobilized people to challenge the system of oppression; either the coercive mechanism of the
state had to be used to support white supremacy, or it had to be used to dismantle it. We know now, with hindsight, that it did both. Blacks did
use rights rhetoric to mobilize state power to their benefit against symbolic oppression through formal inequality and, to some extent, against
material deprivation in the form of private, informal exclusion of the middle class from jobs and housing. Yet today the same legal reforms play
a role in providing an ideological framework that makes the present conditions facing underclass Blacks appear fair and reasonable. The
eradication of barriers has created a new dilemma for those victims of racial oppression who are not in a position to benefit from the move to
formal equality. The race neutrality of the legal system creates the illusion that racism is no longer the primary factor responsible for the
condition of the Black underclass; instead, as we have seen, class disparities appear to be the consequence of individual and group merit within
a supposed system of equal opportunity. Moreover, the fact that there are Blacks who are economically successful gives credence both to the
assertion that opportunities exits, and to the backlash attitude that Blacks have "gotten too far". Psychologically, for Blacks who have not made
it, the lace of an explanation for their underclass status may result in selfblame and other selfdestructive attitudes. Another consequence of
the formal reforms may be the loss of collectivity among Blacks29. The removal of formal barriers created new opportunities for some Blacks
that were not shared by various other classes of AfricanAmericans. As Blacks moved into different spheres, the experience of being Black in
America became fragmented and multifaceted, and the different contexts presented opportunities to experience racism in different ways. The
social, economic and even residential distance between the various classes may complicate efforts to unite behind issues as a racial group.
Although "White Only" signs may have been crude and debilitating, they at least presented a readily discernible target around which to
organize. Now, the targets are obscure and diffuse, and this difference may create doubt among some Blacks whether there is difference may
create doubt among some Blacks whether there is enough similarity between their life experiences and those of other Blacks to warrant
collective political action. Formal equality significantly transformed the Black experience in America. With
society's embrace of formal equality came the eradication of symbolic domination and the suppression
of white supremacy as the norm of society. Future generations of Black Americans would no longer be explicitly regarded as
America's secondclass citizens. Yet the transformation of the oppositional dynamic achieved through the suppression of racial
norms and stereotypes, and the recasting of racial inferiority into assumptions of cultural inferiority creates several difficulties for the civil
rights constituency. The removal of formal
barriers, although symbolically significant to all and materially significant to some, will do
little to alter the hierarchical relationship between Blacks and whites until the way in which white race
consciousness perpetuates norms that legitimate Black subordination is revealed. This is not to say that white norms alone account for the
conditions of the Black underclass. It is instead an acknowledgment that, until the distinct racial nature of class ideology is itself revealed and
debunked, nothing can be done about the underlying structural problems that account for the disparities. The narrow focus of racial exclusion
that is, the belief that racial exclusion is illegitimate only where the "White Only" signs are explicit coupled with strong assumptions about
426
equal opportunity, makes it difficult to move the discussion of racism beyond the societal selfsatisfaction engendered by the appearance of
neutral norms and formal inclusion. IV. SelfConscious Ideological Struggle Rights
have been important. They may have
legitimated racial inequality, but they have also been the means by which oppressed groups have
secured both entry as formal equals into the dominant order and the survival of their movement in the
face of private and state repression. The dual role of legal change creates a dilemma for Black reformers. As long as race
consciousness thrives, Blacks will often have to rely on rights rhetoric when it is necessary to protect Black interests. The very reforms brought
about by appeals to legal ideology, however, seem to undermine the ability to move forward toward a broader vision of racial equality. In the
quest for racial justice, winning and losing have been part of the same experience. The Critics are correct in observing that engaging in rights
discourse has helped to deradicalize and coopt the challenge. Yet they fail to acknowledge the limited range of options presented to Blacks in a
context where they were deemed "other", and the unlikelihood that specific demands for inclusion and equality would be heard if articulated in
other terms. The abbreviated list of options is itself continent upon the ideological power of white race consciousness and the continuing role
of Black Americans as "other". Future efforts to address racial domination, as well as class hierarchy, must consider the continuing ideology of
white race consciousness by uncovering the oppositional dynamic and by chipping away at its premises. Central to this task is revealing the
contingency of race and exploring the connection between white race consciousness and the other myths that legitimate both class and race
hierarchies. Critics and others
whose agendas include challenging hierarchy and legitimation must not
overlook the importance of revealing the contingency of race. Optimally, the deconstruction of white race consciousness
might lead to a liberated future for both Blacks and whites. Yet, until whites recognize the hegemonic function of racism and turn their efforts
toward neutralizing it, AfricanAmerican people
must develop pragmatic political strategies self conscious
ideological struggle to minimize the costs of liberal reform while maximizing its utility. A primary step
in engaging in selfconscious ideological struggle must be to transcend the oppositional dynamic in
which Blacks are cast simply and solely as whites' subordinate "other".30 The dual role that rights have played
makes strategizing a difficult task. Black people can afford neither to resign themselves to, nor to attack frontally, the legitimacy and
incoherence of the dominant ideology. The subordinate position of Blacks in this society makes it unlikely that African Americans will realize
gains through the kind of direct challenge to the legitimacy and incoherence of the dominant ideology. The subordinate position of Blacks in
this society makes it unlikely that AfricanAmericans will realize gains through the kind of direct challenge to the legitimacy of American liberal
ideology that is now being waged by Critical scholars. On the other hand, delegitimating race consciousness would be directly relevant to Black
needs, and this strategy will sometimes require the pragmatic use of liberal ideology. This vision is consistent with the views forwarded by
theoreticians such as Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Antonio Gramsci, and Roberto Unger. Piven and Cloward observe that
oppressed people sometimes advance by creating ideological and political crisis, but that the form of the
crisisproducing challenge must reflect the institutional logic of the system. The use of rights rhetoric
during the civil rights movement created such a crisis by presenting and manipulating the dominant
ideology in a new and transformative way. Challenges and demands made from outside the institutional
logic would have accomplished little because Blacks, as the subordinate "other", were already perceived
as being outside the mainstream. The struggle of Blacks, like that of all subordinated groups, is a struggle for inclusion, an
attempt to manipulate elements of the dominant ideology to transform the experience of domination. It is a struggle to create a new
status quo through the ideological and political tools that are available. Gramsci called this struggle a "War of
Position" and he regarded it as the most appropriate strategy for change in Western societies. According to Gramsci, direct challenges to the
dominant class accomplish little if ideology plays such a central role in establishing authority that the legitimacy of the dominant regime is not
challenged. Joseph Femia, interpreting Gramsci, states that "the dominant ideology in modern capitalist societies is highly institutionalized and
widely internalized. It follows that a concentration on frontal attack, on direct assault against the bourgeois state war of maneuver can result
only in disappointment and defeat"31 Consequently, the
challenge in such societies is to create a counterhegemony
by maneuvering within and expanding the dominant ideology to embrace the potential for change.
Gramsci's vision of ideological struggle is echoed in part by Roberto Unger in his vision of deviationist doctrine. Unger, who represents another
strand of the critical approach, argues that, rather
than discarding liberal legal ideology, we should focus and
develop its visionary undercurrents: [T]he struggle over the form of social life, through deviationist
doctrine, creates opportunities for experimental revisions of social life in the direction of the ideals we
defend. An implication of our ideas is that the elements of a formative institutional or imaginative
structure may be replaced piecemeal rather than only all at once.32 Liberal ideology embraces communal and
liberating visions along with the legitimating hegemonic visions. Unger, like Gramsci and Piven and Cloward, seems to suggest that the strategy
toward a meaningful change depends on skillful use of the liberating potential of dominant ideology. E. Conclusion For Blacks, the task at hand
is to devise ways to wage ideological and political struggle while minimizing the costs of engaging in an inherently legitimating discourse. A
427
clearer understanding of the space we occupy in the American political consciousness is a necessary prerequisite to the development of
pragmatic strategies for political and economic survival. In this regard, the most serious challenge for Blacks is to minimize the political and
cultural cost of engaging in an inevitably cooptive process in order to secure material benefits. Because our present predicament gives us few
options, we must create conditions for the maintenance of a distinct political thought that is informed by the actual conditions of Black people.
Unlike the civil rights vision, this new approach should not be defined and thereby limited by the possibilities of dominant political discourse,
but should maintain a distinctly progressive outlook that focuses on the needs of the African American community.
Reject monolithic characterizations of bureaucracy -- if they don't have arguments

about our specific policy reform you should reject their arguments as generic to the
point of meaningless
Goodsell 03 [Charles, Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech's Center for Public Administration and Policy
"The Case for Bureaucracy, Fourth Edition" orig. 1984 p. 8-10]
The descriptive category, then, is vast. It embraces thousands of institutions and millions of people. It
incorporates an incredible variety of activities, from investigating child abuse to filling potholes to
combating AIDS to negotiating international treaties and conducting wars. The very enormity of the
category speaks eloquently of the critical importance of our subject. The vast range of organizations
included cries out for thoughtful assessment of individual bureaucracies rather than characterization
by stereotype. Many readers will be aware of the sociological model of bureaucracy posited by Max
Weber early in the past century. To Weber, a bureaucracy was an organization with specified functional
attributes: large size; a graded hierarchy; formal rules; specialized tasks; written files; and employees
who are salaried, technically trained, career-appointed, and assigned stated duties requiring expert
knowledge. Weber regarded his model as an ideal type, useful for description and analysis. 5 Many
academic theorists and researchers contend that by possessing these characteristics, an organization
tends automatically to exhibit certain patterns of behavior. These include rigidity, proceduralism,
resistance to change, oppressive control of employees, dehumanized treatment of clients,
indifference to citizen input, use of incomprehensible jargon, and tendencies toward empire building
and concentration of power. These ascribed traits are, obviously, all pejorative. They also happen to
spring, for the most part, from predisposed beliefs about large organizations rather than from
empirical study. When academic writers on bureaucracy reflect negatively on the consequences of the
"Weberian model," they are often being not neutral social scientists at all but ideological critics of
hierarchical organization-a position shared by many intellectuals. As if by a kind of original sin
embedded in its organizational form, bureaucracy is seen as automatically and perpetually condemned
to incompetence and antidemocratic excess. Returning to my own use of the word, I do not deny that
much if not most of American public administration is made up of organizations that answer to many if
not all of Weber's basic structural characteristics. Yes, steps are often taken to flatten chains of
command, create flexible roles and teams, empower employees and citi zens, and stress service to
citizens. Still, most public sector organizations and jurisdictions continue to feature differentiated levels
of office, bounded areas of authority, internal rules, electronic or paper files, career or at least long-term
employees, and professional experts of one kind or another. So, to that extent, most administrative
components of U.S. government are still essentially "bureaucracies" in the Weberian sense - whatever
that may mean in terms of resultant behavior. (They are not, however, necessarily very big, as we
discover later.) Let me make myself abundantly clear. I do not deny that selected attempts to
deemphasize these structural characteristics in our public administration institutions would be helpful in
many instances. I do not, however, accept the deterministic thought implicit in theories of
bureaucracy that automatically equate any substantial presence of Weber's characteristics with
428
incompetence or rigidity, dehumanized or oppressive conduct, or imperialistic behavior. Hence I am
not, obviously, using the term bureaucracy in the typical pejorative sense. To put the matter another
way, my debating opponents and I disagree not over whether American public administration is
essentially bureaucratic, but over whether that means it is inevitably pathological. 6
429
A2: Serial policy failure

Serial policy failure is a myth -- the history of bureaucracies is closer to serial policy
success! The big problems of exclusion probably can never be "solved" in totality but
that's part of why the constant work of trying to make peoples' lives better is so
important
Goodsell 03 [Charles, Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech's Center for Public Administration and Policy
"The Case for Bureaucracy, Fourth Edition" orig. 1984 p. 38-40]
We conclude our discussion of what citizens experience from bureaucracy by noting some of the
achievements that have been made in recent years with respect to economic, social, and environmental
conditions in the country. Others' writings on tl1is point were mentioned in tl1e pro-bureaucracy
literature covered in chapter l. These achievements are not accomplished by bureaucracy alone,
however, but by the United States as a whole. The reason I put it this way is that while the work of
bureaucracy can be crucial to social progress, individual improvements are often influenced by other
institutions and forces active in the society as well. Needless to say, policy interventions to improve
conditions in any society is a complex and unpredictable business. Plans to meet goals or solve
problems by even the best bureaucracies are at best educated guesses. In fact, few policy problems
are ever completely "solved" in a final sense. To prepare successive editions of The Case for
Bureaucracy over the decades, I have been in the habit of clipping from the newspapers on a daily basis.
Beginning witl1 the mid-1990s, I began to notice, with increasing frequency, articles that report statistics
showing significant and often surprising improvement in various aspects of the quality of American life.
Table 2-9 summarizes some of the trends I encountered in my clippings. Notably, the data for these
gains (1) cover a wide range of problem areas, (2) run counter to cynical thinking that government
action can lead to no good, and ( 3) all take place within a narrow span of years, in the late twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries.23 Throughout this information we see significant, if incremental
improvement. This is so in the quality of the air we breatl1e and of tl1e water in which we swim, as
well as in the safety of our streets, roads, and places of work. Fewer babies die, people live longer,
and smoking and ilie incidence of some cancers are down. There is less hunger, teen-age pregnancy is
diminished, and fewer teens die before their time. Growth in the prison population and in wetlands
destruction is lower, and fewer animal and plant species are in danger. For several years the poverty
rate declined, although that trend was unfortunately reversed more recently as the result of an uneven
economy. These statistics have real meaning for real people. The lives of millions
of Americans have been made markedly better as a result. At the same time, of course,
any rate of progress on serious social problems can never be enough, not even where it is greatest. it
is regrettable that the rate of improvement is often lower for members of racial and ethnic minorities
than for the white population. Moreover, in many areas of social need, little or no headway is being
made. Yet, overall, a substantial spread of notable socioeconomic progress has been made by
America, particularly in the past two or three decades. As mentioned, bureaucracy is not the only source
of this accomplishment. Elected officials are responsible for initiating and funding programs, and much
implementation of public policy is carried out not by government at all but by private parties. Yet
430
government agencies are often at the center of it all. It is in bureaucracy that all the necessary elements
for collective social action are brought together -- legal authority, public resources, professional
expertiese, insitutional knowledge and a sense of mission in behalf of all citizens. Moreover,
bureaucracies are not just passive implementers but social and political advocates for their missions.
The Environmental Protection Agency, to a degree that is dependent on the administration in power,
presses Fish and Wildlife Service urges developers to save habitat for endangered species. Police
departments of the nation seek out more tools and resources to go fight crime. The National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration advocate highway
and workplace safety. The National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention promote medical research and good health practices, as do the tens of thousands of public
health departments and public schools throughout the United States. Unlike the policy-making
activity of elected officials, this work by bureaucrats is undramatic, hidden, ongoing, and persistent. It
is through bureaucracy, directly or indirectly, that much of America's collective action takes place.
Witl1out it, our nation's widespread accomplishments in recent decades would not have been
achieved.
431
A2: Reform Fails

Identifying bureaucratic institutions as a focal point for criticism allows corporations
to use social movements to defund public services and coopts their alternative in the
service of market forces. Our affirmative maintains ambivalence about the state's
perfectibility -- but that's why a positive critique is a necessary bulwark against
neoliberal dismantlement
Clarke 08 [John, Professor of Social Policy, Social Policy and Criminology "Reconstructing nation, state
and welfare: The transformation of welfare states" In: Seeleib-Kaiser, Martin ed. Welfare State
Transformations: Comparative Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 197209.]
Each of the terms here welfare, state and nation has been the focus of multiple challenges (Clarke,
2004). Anti-welfarism, for example, combines and condenses social movement critiques of welfares
inadequacy, inaccessibility, and demeaning conditionality, welfare providers anxieties and
frustrations about the problems of managing relations with client groups, and neo-conservative as
well as neo-liberal critiques of welfare dependency. That such neo-liberal and neo-conservative
challenges have become the dominant position in the reform of some national welfare provision
(most notably in the USA, of course) should not disguise the multiple and contradictory orientations
that are condensed in anti-welfarism and the drive to welfare reform. Active subjects are not only the
fantasy of neo-liberals. Similarly, anti-statism condenses many different doubts about, and challenges
to, the authoritative position of the state as a power in, and over, society. Even those who have
viewed the state as the best available engine for social improvement have doubts about both its
effectiveness and about its dark side: the exercise of power and authority without adequate controls
(social control in the older socialist sense). Social movements in both the North and the South have
both looked to states to underwrite rights, justice and equality, while at the same time looking to an
active and powerful civil society as a means of both challenging and making demands on the state. This
is the double dynamic that Dagninos analysis of social movements in Brazil makes visible driving both
demands on the state and demands for its transformation. Such ambivalence about the state needs to
be kept in view even as we take note of the dominance of neo-liberal market liberating discourses of
anti-statism both in some national settings and in international organisational settings of global
governmentality (Larner and Walters, 2004). Projects of state reform are rarely singular
and coherent (Clarke et al, 2007). The remaking of the apparatuses, practices and personnel
through which the social is governed has been shaped by different forces and has taken different
forms. We might also want to consider how state reform projects have typically been about much more
than the welfare state, but about remaking the whole architecture of governance and the relationships
between state and society, state and economy, as well as inter-state relations. Questions posed in
debates about governance and governmentality, arguments about states becoming disaggregated, or
the shifting relationships between different modes of authority have had little impact on the discussion
of welfare states (as though welfare states were somehow separate from states: see, inter alia,
Newman, 2005; Slaughter, 2004; Hansen and SalskovIversen, forthcoming; van Berkel, 2007).
432
Fatalism about bureaucracy or disengagement from their specific policy programs
amounts to a toxic phobia of institutions that supports a political culture of right-wing
attack and demonization on the public sphere
Amy 07 [Douglas J., Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College "The Case For Bureaucracy"
http://www.governmentisgood.com/articles.php?aid=20&print=1]
The Role of Reform Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that we look at bureaucracy and bureaucrats
through rose-colored glasses or ignore their shortcomings. There are some inherent problems that
can afflict government bureaucracies most notably corruption and waste. And a hundred years ago,
these were rampant problems. The enormously corrupt political machines that existed in many large
cities during the early part of the twentieth century are examples of how badly bureaucracies can go
wrong. But decades of reform efforts have greatly reduced these problems. We have rooted out large-
scale corruption and are increasingly minimizing the amount of bureaucratic inefficiency, excessive
paperwork, etc. These problems have not completely disappeared, and we must continue to try to
improve the performance of our administrative institutions. A good example of this on-going effort
was Vice-President Al Gores project, called the National Performance Review, which sought to reduce
excess federal workers. Between 1993 and 2000, the number of civilian employees in the executive
branch was reduced by 193,000. But while we must be vigilant about pursuing these kinds of reform
efforts, we must not exaggerate the extent of the problems in our administrative agencies. And we
should not allow the occasional failures of government bureaucracies to overshadow their
achievements. A more realistic and accurate view of these institutions recognizes that on the whole they
are working well and they continue to play a crucial role in administering vital programs that are
improving the lives of all Americans. The Real Lessons from Katrina And yet, what are we to make of the
kind of massive bureaucratic failure that occurred when hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans in
the fall of 2005? The Federal Emergency Management Agencys response was too little too late, and the
agency was harshly criticized for its inadequate and bungling efforts. This fiasco seemed merely to
confirm many peoples worst assumptions about the problems of bureaucracy. However, it would be a
mistake to use the failures of FEMA to paint a negative picture of government bureaucracies. FEMA
failed in New Orleans not because of something inherently wrong with government bureaucracies, but
because of a policy of neglect by the Bush administration. First, the administration appointed Michael
Brown to head the agency, a political crony with no experience in emergency response management
and who was fired from his previous job for mismanagement. The agency was then downgraded and
folded into the Department of Homeland Security, where its mission was re-oriented toward fighting
acts of terrorism. Finally, FEMAs budget was slashed, with Bush officials arguing that "Many are
concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into an oversized entitlement program..."30
As the Washington Monthly concluded, FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush
administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government.31 In the end, then, FEMAs
failure in New Orleans was in large part a result of a conservative administration that had only contempt
for the role of government in society and had little interest in ensuring the wellbeing of vital
government agencies. Ironically, the real problem with many public bureaucracies today is not that they
are bloated institutions who are over-staffed and spend too much money, but that they are
understaffed and dont have the funds to do their jobs. The continuing right-wing attack on government
has left many agencies in a weakened state, unable to vigorously pursue their missions. There are not
enough mine inspectors to protect mineworkers. The IRS lacks the personnel to detect and retrieve the
433
billions of dollars lost every year from individuals and corporations that cheat on their taxes. Many
school districts lack the teachers to keep their class size down to a reasonable level. In many cases, we
have gone way past cutting fat out of these bureaucracies and we have begun to cut into flesh and
bone. The main threat to the public interest posed by government bureaucracies these days is not
that they are wasting huge amounts of our money, but that many are not healthy enough to do their
job of promoting and protecting our collective wellbeing. To make matters worse, the very right-wing
forces who are starving these vital agencies then turn around and cite any poor performance by these
debilitated organizations as evidence of the ineptness of government. When President Obama was
elected in 2008, he was committed to revitalizing important federal agencies. For example, he worked to
enable the FDA to have enough inspectors to ensure that our foods are safe to eat; and the Democratic
Congress acted to increase the funding for the Consumer Product and Safety Commission. These were
important steps in the right direction, but much more needs to be done to strengthen the numerous
bureaucracies that serve our vital public interests. Unfortunately, the Republican takeover of the House
of Representatives in 2010 threatens to undermine any systematic efforts to reinvigorate many federal
agencies. Beyond the Bureaucratic Stereotypes The negative stereotypes of bureaucracy that we have
looked at in this article contribute to a political atmosphere that legitimizes the right-wing attack on
government. The problem with these stereotypes is not simply that they are exaggerated and
mistaken, but that conservatives and libertarians are able to exploit these misperceptions to justify
their attempts to defund and hamstring the public sector. The more Americans believe that
bureaucracies are bad, the more likely they are to agree with efforts to slash taxes and gut
government programs. That is why it is increasingly important that we begin to see that most of the
criticisms of government bureaucracy are based more on myth than reality, and that these
administrative agencies play a central role in promoting the important missions of a modern
democratic government.
The distinction between radical withdrawal and reform is distinctly Eurocentric -- they
take the 'with-us-or-against-us' logic of capitalist hegemony and catastrophically apply
it to resistance -- only the permutation allows for autonomist struggle
Day 05 [Richard, professor in the department of global development at Queen's University Gramsci is
Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19280772/Gramsci-is-Dead]
There is no longer the division between reform and revolution, not because the reasons for either
have disappeared, but because the political traditions behind these concepts have exhausted
themselves. CSA, former Italian social centre activist In order to understand precisely how the logic of
hegemony is being challenged by certain elements of contemporary radical social movements, I will now
turn to a discussion of some of the ways in which academic commentators have tried to understand
these activist currents. I dont pretend that what I will present here is anything like a complete overview
of the relevant positions. Rather, I will draw from selected writers who exemplify certain broader
tendencies within the liberal, neoliberal, marxist and postmarxist traditions. My goal in each case is to
assess the ability of these paradigms to comprehend what is newest about contemporary radical social
movements. In so doing, I will engage not only with the current con gurations of the dominant political
paradigms, but with the historical developments that have led them to become what they are. As
theorists of hegemony have long pointed out, dominant ideas tend to take on an appearance of
434
naturalness and inevitability that renders them relatively impervious to critique. This is preciselyand
ironicallywhat makes the hegemony of hegemony so difcult to talk about, and even more difcult
to escape. But, like every other discourse, hegemonic thought does have a history, and this history can
be critically examined to show how it forecloses alternative understandings of the past, present and
future. To work a history in this way is to work against it, to refuse to accept the basic assumptions
that allow it to function. It is to move away from history as such, towards a genealogical account that
offers new narratives with new kinds of social, political, and economic relations in mind (Foucault
1985). In the case at hand, the goal is to show how the logic of hegemony has become hegemonic,
how it has come to structure the political sense that is common to (neo)liberalism and most forms of
marxism, including postmarxism. At the same time, I want to show how the theory and practice of
hegemony are unravelling, being taken apart from within their own traditions by the very forces that
had to be excluded to establish these traditions in the rst place. In the Introduction I proposed a
preliminary definition of hegemony as a struggle for dominance, generally limited to the symbolic,
geographical, economic and political context of a particular nation-state or group of states, but
increasingly occurring at a global level. This de nition was an attempt to capture the shades of meaning
that this term evokes in postmarxism, cultural studies and other disciplines of the humanities and social
sciences. Such an attempt always fails, of course, so I will now begin to unpack this denition, to give it
life by placing it in its historical contexts. Like so much in the western tradition, the concept of
hegemony originated in Ancient Greece, where the term hegemonia signi ed the domination of one
city-state by another. The rhetorical content of this term is not apparent from the dictionary de nition,
however. To understand this we must note how it is used with reference to what is commonly
presented as the commanding height of Ancient Greek civilization: democratic Athens, which provides a
mythical foundation for western ideas about freedom and equality. Athenians are thought to have had a
natural impulse to govern themselves, but the scholarly literature is full of references to The Spartan
Hegemony and The Theban Hegemony, that is, to exceptional times when (rich, genetically correct,
male) Athenians were governed by others. Similarly, Philip of Macedonia (Alexanders father) is known
for having established himself as the hegemon (leader) of most of Greece, primarily by way of superior
military force. Thus to be hegemonized meant to be unable to rule oneself because one was under the
sway of another; not another class, or even another nationSpartans, Thebans and Macedonians
were all considered Greeksbut another political formation in which one did not have an equal
voice. Hegemony, in Ancient Greece, was very clearly seen as a non-democratic from of political
organization.In its current usage the concept of hegemony is deeply tied up with the system of nation-
states that began to form with the rise of European constitutional monarchies, and was further
entrenched by the creation of institutions of liberal democracy. Thus, hegemony must be seen as very
much a modern European phenomenon. Its conditions were established by Enlightenment liberals, who
did not use the term as such, but who provided later theorists with a rich array of concepts that were
essential to the appearance of gegemoniya as a key term in the debates between Russian socialists of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To support my contention that the logic of hegemony
deeply structures the two leading traditions of western social and political theory, I will now turn to a
more detailed discussion of how these two traditionscommonly thought to be mutually
incompatiblein fact share a basic set of assumptions about social organization and social change that
deeply structureand severely limittheir ability to comprehend contemporary radical social
movements.
435
A2: Identity Politics

The Neg politicization of identity places racialized and gendered experience in a
regime of recognition that results in political paralysis and ressentiment
Brown 93 [Wendy, Prof. Pol Sci @ Berkeley, Wounded Attachments, Political Theory, Vol. 21 No. 3
(Aug), p. 390-1]
MANY HAVE ASKED HOW, given the totalizing regulatory and "othering" characteristics of identity in/as language, identity can avoid reiterating
such effects in its ostensibly emancipatory mode.' I want to ask a similar question but in a historically specific, cultural and political register not
because the linguistic frame is unimportant but because it is insufficient for discerning the character of contemporary politicized
identity's problematic investments. There are two levels to this inquiry. First, given the subjectivizing conditions of identity
production in a late modern liberal, capitalist, and disciplinary-bureaucratic social order, how can reiteration of these conditions be averted in
identity's purportedly emancipatory project? What kind of
political recognition can identity-based claims seek-and what kind can they
be counted on to want-that will not resubordinate the subject itself historically subjugated through identity
categories such as "race" or "sex," especially when these categories operate within discourses of liberal
essentialism and disciplinary normalization? Second, given the averred interest of politicized identity in achieving emancipatory political
recognition in a posthumanist discourse, what are the logics of pain in subject formation within late modernity that might contain or subvert
this aim? What are the particular constituents-specific to our time, yet roughly generic for a diverse spectrum of identities-of identity's
desire for recognition that seem as often to breed a politics of recrimination and rancor, of culturally dispersed
paralysis and suffering, a tendency to reproach power rather than aspire to it, to disdain freedom rather
than practice it? In short, where do elements of politicized identity's investments in itself and especially in its own history of suffering
come into conflict with the need to give up these investments in the pursuit of an emancipatory democratic project? I approach these
questions by sketching, first, the discursive context of identity politics' emergence in the United States, and then elaborating, through
reconsideration of Nietzsche's genealogy of the logics of ressentiment, the wounded character of politicized identity's desire within this
context. What this essay is not is a partisan position in the argument about the virtues and vices of a contemporary political formation called
"identity politics," an argument sufficiently stalemated to suggest the limitations of discussing identity either in terms of the (implicitly timeless)
metaphysical or linguistic elements of its constitution or in the moral terms of good and evil. It is, rather, an exploration of the ways in which
certain troubling aspects of the specific genealogy of politicized identity are carried in its political demands, ways in which certain emancipatory
aims of politicized identity are subverted not only by the constraints of the political discourses in which its operations transpire but by its own
wounded attachments.
Identity Politics aspires to the bourgeois ideal which reinscribes capitalism and is a
politics of ressentiment
(Aug), p. 393-5]
In addition to the formations of identity that may be the complex effects of disciplinary and liberal modalities of power, I want to suggest one
other historical strand relevant to the production of politicized identity, this one hewn more specifically to recent developments in political
culture. Although sanguine to varying degrees about the phenomenon they are describing, many on the European and North American Left
have argued that identity politics emerges from the demise of class politics consequent to post-Fordism or pursuant to May 1968. Without
adjudicating the precise relationship between the breakup of class politics and the proliferation of other sites of political identification, I want
to refigure this claim by suggesting that what we have come to call identity politics is partly dependent on the demise of a
critique of capitalism and of bourgeois cultural and economic values. In a reading that links the new identity claims to
a certain relegitimation of capitalism, identity politics concerned with race, sexuality, and gender will appear not as
a supplement to class politics, not as an expansion of Left categories of oppression and emancipation, not as an enriching
complexification of progressive formulations of power and persons-all of which they also are-but as tethered to a formulation of
justice which, ironically, reinscribes a bourgeois ideal as its measure. If it is this ideal that signifies educational
and vocational opportunity, upward mobility, relative protection against arbitrary violence, and reward in
proportion to effort, and if it is this ideal against which many of the exclusions and privations of people of color, gays
436
and lesbians, and women are articulated, then the political purchase of contemporary American identity
politics would seem to be achieved in part through a certain discursive renaturalization of capitalism that can
be said to have marked progressive discourse since the 1970s. What this suggests is that identity politics may be partly
configured by a peculiarly shaped and peculiarly disguised form of resentment-class resentment without class consciousness or class
analysis. This resentment is displaced onto discourses of injustice other than class but, like all resentments, retains the
real or imagined holdings of its reviled subject-in this case, bourgeois male privileges-as objects of desire. From this
perspective, it would appear that the articulation of politicized identities through race, gender, and sexuality require, rather than incidentally
produce, a relatively limited identification through class. They
necessarily rather than incidentally abjure a critique of class
power and class norms precisely because the injuries suffered by these identities are measured by
bourgeois norms of social acceptance, legal protection, relative material comfort, and social
independence. The problem is that when not only economic stratification but other injuries to body and psyche enacted by
capitalism (alienation, commodification, exploitation, displacement, disintegration of sustaining, albeit contradictory, social forms such as
families and neighborhoods) are
discursively normalized and thus depoliticized, other markers of social difference
may come to bear an inordinate weight. Absent an articulation of capitalism in the political discourse of identity, the
marked identity bears all the weight of the sufferings produced by capitalism in addition to that bound to the explicitly politicized
marking.
Politicized identity that seeks recognition of suffering is ressentiment that ends in

political paralysis
(Aug), p. 401-3]
However, it is not only the tension between freedom and equality but the prior presumption of the self-reliant and self-made capacities of
liberal subjects, conjoined with their unavowed dependence on and construction by a variety of social relations and forces, that makes all
liberal subjects, and not only markedly disenfranchised ones, vulnerable to ressentiment: it is their situatedness within power, their production
by power, and liberal discourse's denial of this situatedness and production that casts the liberal subject into failure, the failure to make itself in
the context of a discourse in which its self-making is assumed, indeed, is its assumed nature. This failure, which Nietzsche calls suffering, must
find either a reason within itself (which redoubles the failure) or a site of external blame on which to avenge its hurt and redistribute its pain.
Here is Nietzsche's account of this moment in the production of ressentiment: For every
sufferer instinctively seeks a cause for
his suffering, more exactly, an agent; still more specifically a guilty agent who is susceptible to suffering-in short,
some living thing upon which he can on some pretext or other, vent his affects, actually or in effigy.... This ... constitutes the
actual physiological cause of ressentiment, vengeful- ness, and the like: a desire to deaden pain by means of affects. ..
to deaden, by means of a more violent emotion of any kind, a tormenting, secret pain that is becoming unendurable, and to drive it out of
consciousness at least for the moment: for that one requires an affect, as savage an affect as possible, and, in order to excite that, any pretext
at all.'8 Ressentiment in this context is a triple achievement: it produces an affect (rage, righteousness) that
overwhelms the hurt, it produces a culprit responsible for the hurt, and it produces a site of revenge to
displace the hurt (a place to inflict hurt as the sufferer has been hurt). Together these operations both ameliorate (in Nietzsche's terms,
"anaesthetize") and externalize what is otherwise "unendurable." Now, what I want to suggest is that in a culture already streaked with the
pathos of ressentiment for these reasons, there are several characteristics of late modem postindustrial societies that accelerate and expand
the conditions of its production. My listing is necessarily highly schematic. First, the phenomenon that William Connolly names "increased
global contingency" combines with the expanding pervasiveness and complexity of domination by capital and bureaucratic state and social
networks to create an unparalleled individual powerlessness over the fate and direction of one's own life, intensifying the experiences of
impotence, dependence, and gratitude inherent in liberal capitalist orders and consitutive of ressentiment.'9 Second, the steady
desacralization of all regions of life-what Weber called disenchant- ment, what Nietzsche called the death of God-would appear to add yet
another reversal to Nietzsche's genealogy of ressentiment as perpetually available to "alternation of direction." In Nietzsche's account, the
ascetic priest deployed notions of "guilt, sin, sinfulness, depravity and damnation" to "direct the ressentiment of the less severely afflicted
sternly back upon themselves ... and in this way [exploited] the bad instincts of all sufferers for the purpose of self-discipline, self-surveillance,
and self-overcoming."20 However, the desacralizing tendencies of late modernity undermine the efficacy of this deployment and turn
suffering's need for exculpation back toward a site of external agency. Third, the increased fragmentation, if not disintegration, of all forms of
association until recently not organized by the commodities market-communities, churches, families-and the ubiqui- tousness of the
classificatory, individuating schemes of disciplinary society combine to produce an utterly unrelieved individual, one without insulation from
437
the inevitable failure entailed in liberalism's individualistic construction. In short, the characteristics of late modern secular society, in which
individuals are buffeted and controlled by global configurations of disciplinary and capitalist power of extraordinary proportions, and are at
the same time nakedly individuated, stripped of reprieve from relentless exposure and accountability for themselves, together add up to an
incitement to ressentiment that might have stunned even the finest philosopher of its occasions and logics. Starkly accountable, yet
dramatically impotent, the late modem liberal subject quite literally seethes with ressentiment. Enter politicized identity, now
conceivable in part as both product of and "reaction" to this condition, where "reaction" acquires the meaning that Nietzsche ascribed to it,
namely, as an effect of domination that reiterates
impotence, a substitute for action, for power, for self-affirmation
that reinscribes incapacity, powerlessness, and rejection. For Nietzsche, ressentiment itself is rooted in "reaction"-the
substitution of reasons, norms, and ethics for deeds-and not only moral systems but identities themselves take their bearings in this reaction.
As Tracy Strong reads this element of Nietzsche's thought, Identity ... does not consist of an active component, but is
a reaction to
something outside; action in itself, with its inevitable self-assertive qualities, must then become something
evil, since it is identified with that against which one is reacting. The will to power of slave morality must
constantly reassert that which gives definition to the slave: the pain he suffers by being in the world.
Hence any attempt to escape that pain will merely result in the reaffirmation of painful structures.21 If ressentiment's "cause" is suffering, its
"creative deed" is the reworking of this pain into a negative form of action, the "imaginary revenge" of what Nietzsche terms "natures denied
the true reaction, that of deeds."22 This revenge is achieved through the imposition of suffering "on whatever does not feel wrath and
displeasure as he does"23 (accomplished especially through the production of guilt), through the establishment of suffering as the measure of
social virtue, and through casting strength and good fortune ("privilege" as we say today) as self-recriminating, as its own indictment in a
culture of suffering: "it is disgraceful to be fortunate, there is too much misery."24 But in its attempt to displace its suffering, identity structured
by ressentiment at the same time becomes invested in its own subjection. This investment lies not only in its discovery of a site of blame for
its hurt will, not only in its acquisition of recognition through its history of subjection (a recognition predicated on injury, now righteously
revalued), but also in the satisfac- tions of revenge that ceaselessly reenact even as they redistribute the injuries of marginalization and
subordination in a liberal discursive order that alter- nately denies the very possibility of these things or blames those who experience them for
their own condition. Identity politics structured by ressentiment reverses without subverting this blaming structure: it does not subject to
critique the sovereign subject of accountability that liberal individualism presupposes nor the economy of inclusion and exclusion that liberal
universalism establishes. Thus politicized identity that presents itself as a self-affirmation now appears as the opposite, as predicated on and
requiring its sustained rejection by a "hostile extemal world."25 Insofar as what Nietzsche calls slave morality produces identity in reaction to
power, insofar as identity rooted in this reaction achieves its moral superiority by reproaching power and action
themselves as evil, identity structured by this ethos becomes deeply invested in its own impotence,
even while it seeks to assuage the pain of its powerlessness through its vengeful moralizing, through its wide
distribution of suffering, through its reproach of power as such. Politicized identity, premised on exclusion and fueled by the
humiliation and suffering imposed by its historically structured impotence in the context of a discourse of sovereign individuals, is as likely
to seek generalized political paralysis, to feast on generalized political impotence, as it is to seek its own or
collective liberation. Indeed it is more likely to punish and reproach-"punishment is what revenge calls itself; with a hypocritical lie it
creates a good conscience for itself'-than to find venues of self-affirming action.26
The negatives display of painful history is based on the axiom of You are in Pain
Therefore You Are, this politics of recognition positions the academic audience as
consumers of othered objects, reproducing the subject/object binary, turning the
kritik
Tuck and Yang 2014 [Eve, & K.W., R-Words: Refusing Research. In n D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.)
Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223-248).
Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage Publications. Pp. 228]
The costs of a politics of recognition that is rooted in naming pain have been critiqued by recent
decolonizing and feminist scholars (Hartman, 1997, 2007; Tuck, 2009). In Scenes of Subjection, Sadiya
Hartman (1997) discusses how recognizing the personhood of slaves enhanced the power of the
Southern slaveowning class. Supplicating narratives of former slaves were deployed effectively by
abolitionists, mainly White, well-to-do, Northern women, to generate portraits of abuse that ergo
recognize slaves as human (Hartman, 2007). In response, new laws afforded minimal standards of
438
existence, making personhood coterminous with injury (Hartman, 1997, p. 93), while simultaneously
authorizing necessary violence to suppress slave agency. The slave emerges as a legal person
only when seen as criminal or a violated body in need of limited forms of protection (p. 55).
Recognition humanizes the slave, but is predicated upon her or his abjection. You are in pain,
therefore you are. [T]he recognition of humanity require[s] the event of excessive violence, cruelty
beyond the limits of the socially tolerable, in order to acknowledge and protect the slaves person (p.
55). Furthermore, Hartman describes how slave-as-victim as human accordingly establishes slave-as-
agent as criminal. Applying Hartmans analysis, we note how the agency of Margaret Garner or Nat
Turner can only be viewed as outsider violence that humane society must reject while simultaneously
upholding the legitimated violence of the state to punish such outsider violence. Hartman asks, Is it
possible that such recognition effectively forecloses agency as the object of punishment . . . Or is this
limited conferral of humanity merely a reinscription of subjugation and pained existence? (p. 55).
This voyeuristic display of the other reconstitutes the research subject who feels good
because we can incorporate and validate the experience of the Other as our own. This
economy ventriloquizes the Other, displacing their singularity and infinitely
channeling resistive potential into the circuits of display and consumption
Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage Publications. Pp. 228]
Similarly, at the center of the analysis in this chapter is a concern with the fixation social science
research has exhibited in eliciting pain stories from communities that are not White, not wealthy, and
not straight. Academes demonstrated fascination with telling and retelling narratives of pain is
troubling, both for its voyeurism and for its consumptive implacability. Imagining itself to be a voice,
and in some disciplinary iterations, the voice of the colonised (Simpson, 2007, p. 67, emphasis in the
original) is not just a rare historical occurrence in anthropology and related fields. We observe that much
of the work of the academy is to reproduce stories of oppression in its own voice. At first, this may read as an
intolerant condemnation of the academy, one that refuses to forgive past blunders and see how things have changed in recent decades.
However, it is our view that while many individual scholars have chosen to pursue other lines of inquiry than the pain narratives typical of their
disciplines, novice researchers emerge from doctoral programs eager to launch pain-based inquiry projects because they believe that such
approaches embody what it means to do social science. The collection of pain narratives and the theories of change that champion the value of
such narratives are so prevalent in the social sciences that one might surmise that they are indeed what the academy is about. In her
of the symbolic violence of the academy, bell hooks (1990) portrays the core message from the
examination
academy to those on the margins as thus: No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better
than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to
know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it
has become mine, my own. Re-writing you I write myself anew. I am still author, authority. I am still
colonizer the speaking subject and you are now at the center of my talk. (p. 343) Hookss words
resonate with our observation of how much of social science research is concerned with providing
recognition to the presumed voiceless, a recognition that is enamored with knowing through pain.
Further, this passage describes the ways in which the researchers voice is constituted by, legitimated
by, animated by the voices on the margins. The researcher-self is made anew by telling back the story of
the marginalized/subaltern subject. Hooks works to untangle the almost imperceptible differences
between forces that silence and forces that seemingly liberate by inviting those on the margins to speak,
439
to tell their stories. Yet the forces that invite those on the margins to speak also say, Do not speak in a
voice of resistance. Only speak from that space in the margin that is a sign of deprivation, a wound, an
unfulfilled longing. Only speak your pain (hooks, 1990, p. 343).
Sentimental identification subverts political action by privileging the feelings of the

privileged in their drive to assuage guilt and complicity. Empathy pacifies the impetus
for action and strengthens structures of domination.
Berlant 1998 [Lauren, Prof. English @ U Chicago, Poor Eliza, American Literature, Vol. 70, No. 3, No
More Separate Spheres! (Sep., 1998), Duke University Press, pg. 635-668]
Usually the citation of the Uncle Tom form involves questions about whether intimacy between and among races is possible in the United
States. These questions are frequently played out through love plots in which heterosexual intimacy and gender norms are also deemed fragile.
This casts sexual difference and the conventional hierarchies of value associated with it in the U.S. as vaguely analogous to the scene of racial
difference, wherein visible corporeal distinctiveness is explained as something between species and cultural difference. The King and I
supplements these conventions and reveals their embeddedness in economic and imperial relations by having the King and Tuptim
imaginatively enter the War between the States through Lincoln and Stowe. Where they are concerned, the activity of citation marks a desire
for identification and translation across nations, lexicons, and systems of hierarchy. It also marks the mobility of categories of privilege and
subordination: for example, the King is imperially vulnerable but sexually strong, while Leonowens's lines of privilege are the inverse. For both
figures, identification across radically different cultures involves a serious ambition to act courageously, to learn to become something
radically different than one is. But the will to appropriate difference to explicate and transform the scene of one's own desire necessarily
involves distortion, mistransla- tion, and misrecognition. In The King and I, as in Uncle Tom's Cabin and many other texts of sentimental politics,
the play between various matrices of "difference" produces comedy amidst calamity, making a sort of slapstick of survival. But the desire for
vernacularization, the making local of a nonlocal phenomenon, is a serious one as well.3 The
political tradition of sentimentality
ultimately equates the vernacular with the human: in its imaginary, crises of the heart and of the body's
dignity produce events that, properly publicized, can topple great nations and other patriarchal
institutions if an effective and redemptive linkage can be constructed between the privileged and the
socially abject. Uncle Tom's Cabin is an archive people come to out of a political optimism that the revolution in mass subjectivity for
which it stands might be borrowed for the transformation of other unjust social institutions. The novel's very citation is a sign that an aesthetic
work can be powerful enough to move the people who read it into identifying against their own interests. In so doing, the text of sentimental
politics figures a radical challenge to the bodies and body politic hailed by it. The artwork is shown to be as potentially powerful as a nation or
any world-saturating system: it makes and remakes subjects. Yet the forces
of distortion in the world of feeling politics put
into play by the citation of Uncle Tom are as likely to justify ongoing forms of domination as to give form and language to
impulses toward resistance.4 In The King and I, as in many melodramas, the soundtrack tells this story first, and then the plot follows.
Frustrated by the King's imperiousness, Leonowens begins to think of him as a barbarian. But his head wife, Lady Thiang, sings to her: the King
"will not always say, / What you would have him say, / But now and then he'll say / Something wonderful."5 Because he believes in his
"dreams" and makes himself vulnerable through that belief, he is, it is suggested, worth loving. He is, in that sense, like a woman, and indeed
his, patriarchal authoritarianism is revealed as mere bluster. As a result, the King takes on the sacred aura of a sentimental heroine, complete
with sacrificial death. This plot turn marks a classic moment of politico- sentimental pedagogy. Although he is a tyrant, the King's story de-
mands sympathy, and then empathy, from the women who surround him. Here they become stand-in figures for the audience, witnessing his
death as a process of dramatic detheatricalization. As the play progresses and the King is "humanized" by feeling and therefore put less on
display as a body, the narrative loses focus on the systemic violence of the King's acts. Violence
must be taken offstage tactically
in order to produce startling and transformative lines of empathy, but this empathy is mainly directed
toward the pain of the privileged for being enslaved by a system of barbarous power in which they were
destined, somehow, to be caught. Can we say something general, then, about the contradictions deliberately or inevitably animated by
politically motivated deployments of sentimental rhetoric? Here is a hypothesis: when
sentimentality meets politics, it uses
personal stories to tell of structural effects, but in so doing it risks thwarting its very attempt to perform
rhetorically a scene of pain that must be soothed politically. Because the ideology of true feeling
cannot admit the nonuniversality of pain, its cases become all jumbled together and the ethical
imperative toward social transformation is replaced by a civic-minded but passive ideal of empathy. The
political as a place of acts oriented toward publicness becomes replaced by a world of private thoughts,
leanings, and gestures. Suffering, in this personal-public context, becomes answered by survival, which
440
is then recoded as freedom. Meanwhile, we lose the original impulse behind sentimental politics, which is
to see the individual effects of mass social violence as different from the causes, which are impersonal
and depersonalizing.
Whiteness is constituted via the production of the Other. The desire to tame the
violent excesses of modern society can only perpetuate the logic of domination
Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage Publications. Pp. 223-6]
Research is a dirty word among many Native communities (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999), and arguably, also among ghettoized (Kelley, 1997),
Orientalized (Said, 1978), and other communities of overstudied Others. The ethical standards of the academic industrial complex are a recent
development, and like so many postcivil rights reforms, do not always do enough to ensure that social science research is deeply ethical,
meaningful, or useful for the individual or community being researched. Social science often works to collect stories of pain
and humiliation in the lives of those being researched for commodification. However, these same stories of
pain and humiliation are part of the collective wisdom that often informs the writings of researchers
who attempt to position their intellectual work as decolonization. Indeed, to refute the crime, we may
need to name it. How do we learn from and respect the wisdom and desires in the stories that we (over)
hear, while refusing to portray/betray them to the spectacle of the settler colonial gaze? How do we
develop an ethics for research that differentiates between powerwhich deserves a denuding, indeed
petrifying scrutinyand people? At the same time, as fraught as research is in its complicity with power, it is one of the last places
for legitimated inquiry. It is at least still a space that proclaims to care about curiosity. In this essay, we theorize refusal not just as a
no, but as a type of investigation into what you need to know and what I refuse to write in (Simpson,
2007, p. 72). Therefore, we present a refusal to do research, or a refusal within research, as a way of thinking
about humanizing researchers. We have organized this chapter into four portions. In the first three sections, we lay out three
axioms of social science research. Following the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1990), we use the exposition of these axioms to articulate
otherwise implicit, methodological, definitional, self-evident groundings (p. 12) of our arguments and observations of refusal. The
axioms are: (I) The subaltern can speak, but is only invited to speak her/our pain; (II) there are some
forms of knowledge that the academy doesnt deserve; and (III) research may not be the intervention that is needed. We
realize that these axioms may not appear self evident to everyone, yet asserting them as apparent allows us to proceed toward the often
unquestioned limits of research. Indeed, in dealing with an open secret structure, its only by being shameless about risking the obvious that
we happen into the vicinity of the transformative (Sedgwick, 1990, p. 22). In the fourth section of the chapter, we theorize refusal in earnest,
exploring ideas that are still forming. Our thinking and writing in this essay is informed by our readings of postcolonial literatures and critical
literatures on settler colonialism. We locate much of our analysis inside/in relation to the discourse of settler colonialism, the particular shape
of colonial domination in the United States and elsewhere, including Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Settler colonialism can be
differentiated from what one might call exogenous colonialism in that the colonizers arrive at a place (discovering it) and make it a
permanent home (claiming it). The permanence of settler colonialism makes it a structure, not just an event
(Wolfe, 1999). The settler colonial nation-state is dependent on destroying and erasing Indigenous
inhabitants in order to clear them from valuable land. The settler colonial structure also requires the
enslavement and labor of bodies that have been stolen from their homelands and transported in order
to labor the land stolen from Indigenous people. Settler colonialism refers to a triad relationship,
between the White settler (who is valued for his leadership and innovative mind), the disappeared Indigenous peoples
(whose land is valued, so they and their claims to it must be extinguished), and the chattel slaves (whose bodies are valuable but
ownable, abusable, and murderable). We believe that this triad is the basis of the formation of Whiteness in settler
colonial nation-states, and that the interplay of erasure, bodies, land, and violence is characteristic of
the permanence of settler colonial structures. Under coloniality, Descartes formulation, cognito ergo sum (I
think, therefore I am) transforms into ego conquiro (I conquer, therefore I am; Dussel, 1985; Maldonado-Torres,
441
2007; Ndlvou-Gatsheni, 2011). Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2009) expounds on this relationship of the conquerors sense-of-self to his
knowledge-of-others (I know her, therefore I am me). Knowledge
of self/Others became the philosophical
justification for the acquisition of bodies and territories, and the rule over them. Thus the right to
conquer is intimately connected to the right to know (I know, therefore I conquer, therefore I am). Maldonado- Torres
(2009) explains that for Levi Strauss, the self/Other knowledge paradigm is the methodological rule for the birth of ethnology as a science (pp.
conquest, then, is an exercise of the felt entitlement to
34). Settler colonial knowledge is premised on frontiers;
transgress these limits. Refusal, and stances of refusal in research, are attempts to place limits on conquest and the
colonization of knowledge by marking what is off limits, what is not up for grabs or discussion, what is
sacred, and what cant be known. To speak of limits in such a way makes some liberal thinkers uncomfortable, and may, to them,
seem dangerous. When access to information, to knowledge, to the intellectual commons is controlled by the people who generate that
information [participants in a research study], it can be seen as a violation of shared standards of justice and truth. (Simpson, 2007, p. 74) By
forwarding a framework of refusal within (and to) research in this chapter, we are not simply prescribing limits to social science
research. We are making visible invisibilized limits, containments, and seizures that research already
stakes out. One major colonial task of social science research that has emerged is to pose as voicebox, ventriloquist,
interpreter of subaltern voice. Gayatri Spivaks important monograph, Can the Subaltern Speak? (2010), is a foundational text in
postcolonial studies, prompting a variety of scholarly responses, spin-offs, and counterquestions, including does the subaltern speak? Can the
colonizer/settler listen? Can the subaltern be heard? Can the subaltern act? In our view, Spivaks question in the monograph, said more
transparently, is can
the subaltern speak in/ to the academy? Our reading of the essay prompts our own duet of questions,
which we move in and out of in this essay: What does the academy do? What does social science research do? Though
one might
approach these questions empirically, we emphasize the usefulness of engaging these questions
pedagogically; that is, posing the question not just to determine the answer, but because the rich
conversations that will lead to an answer are meaningful. The questionWhat does or can research do?is not a
cynical question, but one that tries to understand more about research as a human activity. The question is similar to
questions we might ask of other human activities, such as, why do we work? Why do we dance? Why do we do ceremony? At first, the
responses might be very pragmatic, but they give way to more philosophical reflections. Returning to Spivaks question, in Can the Subaltern
Speak? Spivak casts Foucault and Deleuze as hegemonic radicals (2010, p. 23) who unwittingly align themselves with bourgeois sociologists
who fill the place of ideology with a continuistic unconscious or a parasubjective culture . . . . In the name of desire, they tacitly reintroduce
the undivided subject into the discourse of power . . . (pp. 2627) Observing Foucault and Deleuzes almost romantic admiration for the
reality of the factory, the school, the barracks, the prison, the police station, and their insistence that the masses know these (more) real
realities perfectly well, far better than intellectuals, and certainly say it very well, (Deleuze, as cited in Spivak, 2010, p. 27), Spivak delivers this
analysis: The ventriloquism of the speaking subaltern is the left intellectuals stock-in-trade (2010, p. 27). Spivak
critiques the
position of the intellectual who is invested in the ventriloquism of the speaking subaltern for the banality of
what serves as evidence of such speech, and for the ways in which intellectuals take opportunity to conflate the
work and struggle of the subaltern with the work of the intellectual, which only serves to make more
significant/authentic their own work (p. 29). All of it is part of a scheme of self-aggrandizing. Rosalind Morris, reading
Spivak, criticizes nostalgia in the academy that bears a secret valorization and hypostatization of subalternity as
an identityto be recalled, renarrated, reclaimed, and revalidated (2010, p. 8). Subalternity is less an identity than
what we might call a predicament, but this is true in a very odd sense. For, in Spivaks definition, it is the structured place from which the
capacity to access power is radically obstructed. To the extent than anyone escapes the muting of subalternity, she ceases being a subaltern.
Spivak says this is to be desired. And who could disagree? There is neither authenticity nor virtue in the position of the oppressed. There is
simply (or not so simply) oppression. Even so, we are moved to wonder, in this context, what burden this places on the memory work in the
aftermath of education. What kind of representation becomes available to the one who, having partially escaped the silence of subalternity, is
nonetheless possessed by the consciousness of having been obstructed, contained, or simply misread for so much of her life? (Morris, 2010, p.
8) We take this burden of speaking in/to the academy, while being misrecognized as the speaking subaltern or
being required to ventriloquate for the subaltern, as a starting dilemma for the work of representation for decolonizing
researchers. It is our sense that there is much value in working to subvert and avert the carrying out of social science
research under assumptions of subalternity and authenticity, and to refuse to be a purveyor of voices
constructed as such. This is the place from which we begin this essay, inside the knowledge that in the same ways that we can observe
that the colonizer is constituted by the production of the Other, and Whiteness is constituted by the production of
442
Blackness (Fanon, 1968; Said, 1978), the work of research and the researcher are constituted by the production and representation of the
subaltern subject. Further, as we explore in Axiom I, representation of the subject who has partially escaped the silence of subalternity
(Morris, 2010, p. 8) takes the shape of a pain narrative.
The attempt to overcome the conditions of modernity - the founding originary

violences which constitute our current epistemology--is the logic of settler
colonialism. It operates on a fetishization of woundedness.
Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage Publications. Pp. 228-9]
As numerous scholars have denoted, many social science disciplines emerged from the need to provide justifications for social hierarchies
undergirded by White supremacy and manifest destiny (see also Gould, 1981; Selden, 1999; Tuck & Guishard, forthcoming). Wolfe (1999) has
explored how the contoured logic of settler colonialism (p. 5) can be mapped onto the microactivities of anthropology; Guthrie (1976) traces
the roots of psychology to the need to scientifically prove the supremacy of the White mind. The
origins of many social science
disciplines in maintaining logics of domination, while sometimes addressed in graduate schools, are regularly thought
to be just errant or inauspicious beginningsmuch like the ways in which the genocide of Indigenous peoples
that afforded the founding of the Unites States has been reduced to an unfortunate byproduct of the
birthing of a new and great nation. Such amnesia is required in settler colonial societies, argues Lorenzo
Veracini, because settler colonialism is characterized by a persistent drive to supersede the conditions of
its operation, (2011, p. 3); that is, to make itself invisible, natural, without origin (and without end), and
inevitable. Social science disciplines have inherited the persistent drive to supersede the conditions of their
operations from settler colonial logic, and it is this drive, a kind of unquestioning push forward, and not the origins of the
disciplines that we attend to now. We are struck by the pervasive silence on questions regarding the contemporary
rationale(s) for social science research. Though a variety of ethical and procedural protocols require researchers to compose
statements regarding the objectives or purposes of a particular project, such protocols do not prompt reflection upon the
underlying beliefs about knowledge and change that too often go unexplored or unacknowledged. The rationale for
conducting social science research that collects pain narratives seems to be self-evident for many scholars, but when looked at more closely,
the rationales may be unconsidered, and somewhat flimsy. Like a maritime archaeological site, such rationales might be best examined in situ,
for fear of deterioration if extracted. Why do researchers collect pain narratives? Why does the academy want them?
An initial and partial answer is because settler colonial ideology believes that, in fiction author Sherril Jaffes words, scars
make your body more interesting, (1996, p. 58). Jaffes work of short, short of fiction bearing that sentiment as title captures the
exquisite crossing of wounds and curiosity and pleasure. Settler colonial ideology, constituted by its conscription of
others, holds the wounded body as more engrossing than the body that is not wounded (though the
person with a wounded body does not politically or materially benefit for being more engrossing). In
settler colonial logic, pain is more compelling than privilege, scars more enthralling than the body
unmarked by experience. In settler colonial ideology, pain is evidence of authenticity, of the verifiability
of a lived life. Academe, formed and informed by settler colonial ideology, has developed the same
palate for pain. Emerging and established social science researchers set out to document the problems faced by
communities, and often in doing so, recirculate common tropes of dysfunction, abuse, and neglect.
443
Economic Rationality Good

Economic rationality is ethical and solves war self-interest motivates individuals to
sacrifice some autonomy to produce security and protect the rights of others
Aasland 09 (Dag, Prof. of Economics @ U of Agder, Norway, Ethics and Economy: After Levinas, pgs.
65-66)
Business ethics, in the sense of ethics for business, illustrates this: its perspective is that of
an enlightened self-interest where the constraints that are put on the individual, thanks to
the ability to see the unfortunate consequences for oneself, postpone the war, in a direct or
metaphoric sense of the word (ibid.: 70-71). This enlightened self-interest forms the base not
only of the market economy, but also of a social organization and manifestation of human
rights, and even of some ethical theories. It is a calculated and voluntary renunciation of
ones own freedom in order to obtain in return security and other common goals (ibid.: 72).
The fact that economic, political and legal theories appeal to enlightened self-interest does
not imply, however, that we should discard them. Nor should we reject proclamations of
human rights, legal constraints of individual freedom and, for that matter, business ethics,
even if they are based on an enlightened self-interest. It is rather the opposite: such
institutions and knowledge are indispensable because the primary quality of the enlightened
self-interest is that it restricts egocentricity. Our practical reason (which was Kants words for
the reason that governs our acts, where the moral law is embedded as a principle) includes
the knowledge that it can be rational to lay certain restrictions on individual freedom. In this
way practical reason may postpone (for an indefinite time) violence and murder among
people. This has primarily been the raison-dtre of politics and the state, but it is today taken
over more and more by corporate organizations, as expressed in the new term for business
ethics, as corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship (see chapter 2). Thanks to
this postponement of violence provided by politics and economic rationality, people may
unfold their freedom within the laws and regulations set up by society (Burggraeve, 2003:
77).
Economic modeling is good it creates understanding about systemic patterns of

behavior their claims of oversimplification misunderstand the function of modeling
and make systemic analysis impossible
Harford 05 (Tim, the first Peter Martin Fellow at the Financial Times, and was a member of the
Financial Times editorial board from 2006-2009, He previously worked for Shell and for the World Bank,
member of the Royal Economic Society council and a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, The
Undercover Economist, pgs. 11-12)
But many of us love the fact that Ricardo was able, nearly two hundred years ago, to produce insights
that illuminate our understanding today. Its easy to see the difference between nineteenth-century
farming and twenty-first-century frothing, but not so easy to see the similarity before it is pointed out to
us. Economics is partly about modeling, about articulating basic principles and patterns that operate
behind seemingly complex subjects like the rent on farms or coffee bars. There are other models of the
coffee business, useful for different things. A model of the design and architecture of coffee bars could
be useful as a case study for interior designers. A physics model could outline the salient features of the
machine that generates the ten atmospheres of pressure required to brew espresso; the same model
444
might be useful for talking about suction pumps or the internal combustion engine. Today we have
models of the ecological impacts of different disposal methods for coffee grounds. Each model is useful
for different things, but a model that tried to describe the design, the engineering, the ecology, and
the economics would be no simpler than reality itself and so would add nothing to our understanding.
Ricardos model is useful for discussing the relationship between scarcity and bargaining strength, which
goes far beyond coffee or farming and ultimately explains much of the world around us. When
economists see the world, they see hidden social patterns, patterns that become evident only when one
focuses on the essential underlying processes. This focus leads critics to say that economics doesnt
consider the whole story, the whole system. How else, though, could a nineteenth-century analysis of
farming proclaim the truth about twenty-first-century coffee bars, except through grossly failing to
notice all kinds of important differences? The truth is that its simply not possible to understand
anything complicated without focusing on certain elements to reduce that complexity. Economists
have certain things they like to focus on, and scarcity is one of them. This focus means that we do not
notice the mechanics of the espresso machine, nor the color schemes of the coffee bars, nor other
interesting, important facts. But we gain from that focus, too, and one of the things we gain is an
understanding of the systemthe economic system, which is far more all-encompassing than many
people realize.
445
Alt Fails
446
A2: Epistemology
The alt failsan epistemological shift or merely thinking differently about the world
does nothing politically and makes the world more dangerous. Expertise is inevitable.
Cole 12 (David Cole, Professor Of Law at Georgetown, Confronting the Wizard of Oz: National
Security, Expertise, and Secrecy 44 Conn. L. Rev. 1617-1625 (2012),
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1085, 2012)
Rana is right to focus our attention on the assumptions that frame modern Americans conceptions
about national security, but his assessment raises three initial questions. First, it seems far from clear
that there ever was a golden era in which national security decisions were made by the common man,
or the people themselves, as Larry Kramer might put it.8 Rana argues that neither Hobbes nor Locke
would support a worldview in which certain individuals are vested with superior access to the truth, and
that faith in the superior abilities of so-called experts is a phenomenon of the New Deal era.9 While an
increased faith in scientific solutions to social problems may be a contributing factor in our current
overreliance on experts,10 I doubt that national security matters were ever truly a matter of widespread
democratic deliberation. Rana notes that in the early days of the republic, every able-bodied man had to
serve in the militia, whereas today only a small (and largely disadvantaged) portion of society serves in
the military.11 But serving in the militia and making decisions about national security are two different
matters. The early days of the Republic were at least as dominated by elites as today. Rana points to
no evidence that decisions about foreign affairs were any more democratic then than now. And, of
course, the nation as a whole was far less democratic, as the majority of its inhabitants could not vote at
all.12 Rather than moving away from a golden age of democratic decision-making, it seems more likely
that we have simply replaced one group of elites (the aristocracy) with another (the experts). Second, to
the extent that there has been an epistemological shift with respect to national security, it seems likely
that it is at least in some measure a response to objective conditions, not just an ideological
development. If so, its not clear that we can solve the problem merely by thinking differently about
national security. The world has, in fact, become more interconnected and dangerous than it was when
the Constitution was drafted. At our founding, the oceans were a significant buffer against attacks,
weapons were primitive, and travel over long distances was extremely arduous and costly. The attacks
of September 11, 2001, or anything like them, would have been inconceivable in the eighteenth or
nineteenth centuries. Small groups of non-state actors can now inflict the kinds of attacks that once
were the exclusive province of states. But because such actors do not have the governance
responsibilities that states have, they are less susceptible to deterrence. The Internet makes information
about dangerous weapons and civil vulnerabilities far more readily available, airplane travel dramatically
increases the potential range of a hostile actor, and it is not impossible that terrorists could obtain and
use nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons.13 The knowledge necessary to monitor nuclear weapons,
respond to cyber warfare, develop technological defenses to technological threats, and gather
intelligence is increasingly specialized. The problem is not just how we think about security threats; it is
also at least in part objectively based.
447
A2: White anti-racism
The 1AC project of anti-racist consciousness raising relies on the humanist white
critical agent, reproducing white supremacist subjectivity and normalizing it through
the disciplinary apparatus of the academy
Weigman 12 [Robyn, Professor of Literature and Women's Studies and formerly the Margaret Taylor
Smith Director of Women's Studies at Duke, Object Lessons, 139-43]
Whiteness Studies, some of us remember, emerged in the 1990s with the hope of diff erentiating, in the
name of antiracism, the relationships among bodies, identities, and subjectivities that have constituted
the universalist privilege of white racial formation in modernity. From the outset, it was greeted with
skepticism. Did whiteness need more attention; did white people really need to devote more time to
studying themselves? For many feminist scholars the anxieties it raised recalled the turn toward the
study of masculinity that had marked the end of the 1980s, but the critical difficulties that faced it were
far more challenging, in part because the goal of masculinity studies had never been calibrated to the
destruction of masculinity altogether. Indeed, the force of discerning the difference between men and
masculinity had been crucial to opening the door to female masculinity and to forms of masculinity
incongruent with the biogenetic determinations that had accompanied the earliest feminist depictions
of patriarchal sex. Whiteness Studies, on the other hand, arrived fully clothed in abolitionist rhetoric. Its
promise was to destroy not only white supremacy but white identity and identifi cation, if not the white
race itself. While its commitment to social construction was apparent in its consensus that whiteness
was not a biological category, the fields primary discourses struggled to bridge the gap between the
social production of the meaning of whiteness and the privileges that repeatedly accrued to the
corporeal embodiments of white skin. Its methodological resolution fell to the agency of an antiracist
white subject, one whose po liti cal commitments could be made distinct from white supremacy and
refunctioned as crossrace and cross- class struggle through both the refusal and redirection of identifi
cation.2 The contradictions that arise here underlie what George Lipsitz has aptly called the
impossibility of the anti- racist subject, which points to the diffi culty of any critical enterprise that
hopes to undo the multiple eff ects of dominant identity formations by projecting an increasingly
empowered self- knowing subject.3 How such critical agency can be diff erentiated from the narcissism
of white subjectivity that underwrites Western humanist traditions is a major issue, along with the
prospect that white antiracism is itself a symptomatic feature of white self- and social mastery, not its
po liti cal or epistemological displacement. For these reasons, it certainly is no surprise that a de cade
or so into the new century, Whiteness Studies has all but disappeared. To be sure, scholars continue to
study whiteness. David Roediger for one has published three new books in this century and has revised
his fi eld- setting work, Th e Wages of Whiteness. And many new titles across the disciplines have
appeared that demonstrate the ongoing utility of making whiteness an object of inquiry.4 But Whiteness
Studies as an autonomous fi eld, listed on curricula vitae and supported by its own institutional
initiatives, conferences, and publishing venues, has lost most of its critical appeal.5 Th is chapter
proceeds by trying to inhabit the temporal cleavage that marks my conversation so far between what
was once the present urgency of the 1990s, signifi ed by the resonant formulation, Whiteness Studies is
. . . , and the now possible retrospection, Whiteness Studies was . . . I begin by telling the story about
the emergence of whiteness as an injured identity in the aft ermath of Civil Rights reform in order to
sketch the three major premises about whiteness that shape my general itinerary and generate my
448
broadest contention that whiteness is neither monolithic nor historically stable, but produced and
(re)confi gured in complex relation to both the po liti cal projects and critical discourses attending
racialized re sis tance and the mutations and transformations that accompany the proliferating historical
meanings, structures, practices, and psychologies of white racial power itself. I then consider the
broader cultural context of the 1990s in which Whiteness Studies emerged as an institutionalized
academic project before reading, in detail, the pop u lar fable of whiteness that stands at the center of
that de cade: Forrest Gump, the fi lm that one month before the Oklahoma City bombing garnered six
Academy Awards, including Best Picture. As the sixth highest- earning fi lm in the 1990s, Forrest Gump
was more than a box offi ce success; it was a masterpiece of white racial regeneration performed to the
tune of liberal antiracism. Th e heroicism it off ered was profoundly antimuscular, even as its narrative
was driven by indeed obsessed with the violence of the memory archive of twentieth- century racial
struggle. Set in the South at a bus stop, with a protagonist whose great- great- grandfather was the
found er of the Klan and whose mother lives in a run- down plantation, the fi lm follows Gump on a
national sojourn, pro cessing familiar images of racial trauma and social dissent integration, Black
Power, Vietnam, and the murder of national leaders. But Gump, born with a curved spine and
subnormal intelligence, is never fully present to the scenes that engulf him, which arms him with the fi
lms antiepistemological punch line: I may not be a smart man, but I know how to love.6 Knowing how
to love is the fi lms pedagogical answer to the dilemma it confronts the fact not only that the origins
of white identity are bound to a history of white racial violence, but that the present cannot be
conceived apart from it. Th is means that Gump is always in the location of a particularized whiteness.
And yet, since love trumps knowledge and sentiment is valued over interpretation and meaning, the
disposition of the white subject that emerges, now disaffi liated from the inheritances of white
supremacy, is a simultaneously private and unconscious one. Th e route by which the fi lm deprives its
antiracist white subject of critical agency is fascinating, if utterly infuriating, especially given the way it
both tropes and shift s the terms by which the antiracism of Whiteness Studies sought to work. Th is is
not to establish an analogy between Forrest Gump and Whiteness Studies; far from it. But I am
interested in several tense and contradictory convergences the way, for instance, each figures the
antiracist subject through narrative practices that emphasize a discursive blackness and that hold
cross- racial bonding as a means for disarticulating the white subject from white supremacist power
always in terms of male subjects and almost always in language dedicated to the resignification of the
nation. While one depicts consciousness as the form of the white subjects antiracist resolution, the
other fi nds succor in love as a panacea for not having to know the meaning of the history that makes
him, and both sustain their visions on tropes of mobility to de- universalize white power and interrupt
its conflation with white skin. If, for Whiteness Studies, consciousness and critical agency mark the
difference between Forrest Gumps fantasy of postracism and its own, Forrest Gump helps make legible
the unconscious of Whiteness Studies, whose desire to be fully conscious enables it to misrecognize its
own relation to contemporary racial formation. The goal, then, is to discern not simply what Forrest
Gump hopes to forget but what the hyperconsciousness of Whiteness Studies could not let itself know.
Call this, if you will, an analysis of the compulsion to form a disciplinary endeavor called Whiteness
Studies in the first place. In the final section, I return to the present tense of my retrospection, catching
up to the future that is nothing like what Whiteness Studies had hoped.
449
Intersectionality Bad
Intersectional models of identity collude with disciplinary state apparatuses
Puar 05 [Jasbir, Associate Professor of Women's & Gender Studies at Rutgers University Queer Times,
Queer Assemblages Social Text 84-85, Vol. 23, Nos. 3-4, Fall-Winter 2005 Duke University Press]
This unknowable monstrosity is not a casual bystander or parasite; the nation assimilates this effusive discomfort with the unknowability of
these bodies, thus affectively producing new normativities and exceptionalisms through the cataloging of unknowables. It is not, then, that we
must engage in the practice Of excavating the queer terrorist or queering the terrorist; rather, queerness is always already installed in the
project Of naming the terrorist; the terrorist does not appear as such without the concurrent entrance of perversion, deviance, deformity. The
strategy of encouraging subjects of study to appear in all their queernesses, rather than primarily to
queer the subjects of study, provides a subject-driven temporality in tandem with a method-driven
temporality. Playing on this difference, between the subject being queered versus queerness already existing within
the subject (and thus dissipating the subject as such) allows for both the temporality of being and the temporality of
always becoming. As there is no entity, no identity to queer, rather queerness coming forth at us from all directions, screaming its
defiance, suggests to me a move from intersectionality to assemblage. The Deleuzian assemblage, as a series Of dispersed
but mutually implicated networks, draws together enunciation and dissolution, causality and effect. As
opposed to an intersectional model of identity, which presumes componentsrace, class, gender,
sexuality, nation, age, religionare separable analytics and can be thus disassembled, an assemblage is
more attuned to interwoven forces that merge and dissipate time, space, and body against linearity,
coher- ency, and permanency. Intersectionality demands the knowing, naming, and thus stabilizing of identity across space and
time, generating narrarives of progress that deny the fictive and performative of identification: you become an identity, yes, but also
timelessness works to consolidate the fiction of a seamless stable identity in every space. As
a tool of diversity management, and
a mantra of liberal multiculturalism, intersectionality colludes With the disciplinary apparatus of the
Statecensus, demography, racial profiling, surveillancein that "difference" is encased within a
structural container that simply wishes the messiness Of identity into a formulaic grid. Displacing queerness as
an identity or modality that is visibly, audibly, legibly, or tangibly evident, assemblages allow us to attune to intensities,
emotions, energies, affectivities, textures as they inhabit events, spatiality, and corporealities.
Intersectionality privileges naming, visuality, epistemology, representation, and meaning, While
assemblage underscores feeling, tactility, ontology, affect, and information. Most important, given the heightened
death-machine aspect Of nationalism in our contemporary political terraina heightened sensorial and anatomical domination described by
Achille Mbembe as "necropolitics"assemblages
work against narratives Of U.S. exceptionalism that secure
empire, challenging the fixity of racial and sexual taxonomies that inform practices of state surveillance
and control, and befuddling the "us versus them" of the war on terror. For while intersectionality and its
underpinningsan unrelenting epistemological will to truthpresupposes identity and thus disavows
futurity, assemblage, in its debt to ontology and its espousal of What cannot be known, seen, or heard,
or has yet to be known, seen, or heard, allows for becoming/s beyond being's. 14
450

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Subjugated Knowledges Master File ................................................................................................................................................ 1

A2: Terrorism advantage ...................................................................................................................................................... 98

L: Humanism ...................................................................................................................................................................... 163

Links ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 250

I: Self-Hate .......................................................................................................................................................................... 337

A: Queer Negativity ............................................................................................................................................................ 407

Good 1NC/2NC Cards

Even if objectivity is a myth, the valorization of traits associated with objectivity

The 1ACs policy analysis is grounded in an objective instrumental view of rationality

Simulated roleplaying as state policymakers colludes with an imperialist agenda that

Mitchell observes that the

The alternative is to refuse the promise project of empire in order to produce

of ignorance/knowledge produced.66 A Foucaultian guerrilla

The Affirmatives propositional knowledge production is the hallmark of Western

Even if objectivity is a myth, the valorization of traits associated with objectivity

Recent science education research has pointed out that teachers

US vaccinations are built on local experimentation the aff logic of vaccinations

Vaccinations and Western Medicine reinforce imperialism over developing countries,

Developmental discourse creates a dichotomy of America and underdeveloped,

interesting in Agamben's theorizations is the sheer absence of colonialism to considerations of western

Relations of coloniality are the condition of possibility for biopolitical violence.

L: View from Nowhere

I: Imperial subjecthood/Civilizing Mission

promises and nonpromises offered to other others. Foreclosing

A: Critical whiteness studies

A: Third World Feminism

Ext: Discourse/Ideology First

Ext: Debate/Scholarship Key

Debate must be a space for academic engagement

Normative knowledge making practices crowd out alternative knowledge production

Bringing the debate back to race in education is critical to educational opportunities

means to be an engaged intellectual responsive to the possibilities of individual and collective

They are increasingly willing to argue in theoretically insightful and

Ext: Performance/Subjugated Knowledges Good

Performance Good Challenges Dominant modes of knowing/distancing and

Subjugated Knowledges Good Performance is a fugitive communication that

Performance Good Textcentrism Bad Resists White Supremacy/Will to Know the

Personal experience checks against the homogenizing function of academic/expert

Our politic is the only way to demand a subversive encounter

It is particularly within discursive spaces such as debate that whiteness operates to

whitenesss deployment of cultural and

Ext: Experts Bad

White racial melancholia internalizes people of color, necessitating their exclusion in

A2: Terrorism advantage

A2: Democracy Good

IR theory perpetuates colonialism appropriating the knowledge resources and bodies

A2: Legalism good/institutional knowledge

A2: speaking for others

A2: State inevitable

A2: debate not key

A2: rejection does nothing

A2: Pain Narratives Bad

A2: Academic Commodification

Black Studies Specific

L: Queer Theory (SP2)

L: Biopolitical discourse (SP3)

L: View from Nowhere

For Shakur, the

Black feminist thought challenges dominant epistemologies that produce anti-

A: Queer of Color Critique

cultural and behavioral practices is attentive to Sankofa because its

Endorsing a method of uncovering subjugated black knowledge is key to creating a