Georgetown Mills Shepherd

Neg Wake R8

t
Your decision should answer the resolutional question: Is
the enactment of topical action better than the status quo
or a competitive option?
Definitions
Resolved before a colon reflects a legislative forum
AOS 04
(5-12, # 12, Punctuation The Colon and Semicolon,
http://usawocc.army.mil/IMI/wg12.htm)
The colon introduces the following: a. A list, but only after "as follows," "the
following," or a noun for which the list is an appositive: Each scout will carry
the following: (colon) meals for three days, a survival knife, and his sleeping
bag. The company had four new officers: (colon) Bill Smith, Frank Tucker,
Peter Fillmore, and Oliver Lewis. b. A long quotation (one or more
paragraphs): In The Killer Angels Michael Shaara wrote: (colon) You may find
it a different story from the one you learned in school. There have been many
versions of that battle [Gettysburg] and that war [the Civil War]. (The quote
continues for two more paragraphs.) c. A formal quotation or question: The
President declared: (colon) "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The
question is: (colon) what can we do about it? d. A second independent clause
which explains the first: Potter's motive is clear: (colon) he wants the
assignment. e. After the introduction of a business letter: Dear Sirs: (colon)
Dear Madam: (colon) f. The details following an announcement For sale:
(colon) large lakeside cabin with dock g. A formal resolution, after the word
"resolved:"
Resolved: (colon) That this council petition the mayor.

US should means the debate is solely about a policy

established by governmental means
Ericson 03
(Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts California Polytechnic
U., et al., The Debaters Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each
topic contains certain key elements, although they have slightly different
functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions . 1. An
agent doing the acting ---The United States in The United States should

adopt a policy of free trade. Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of

value, the agent is the subject of the sentence. 2. The verb shouldthe first
part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in
the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put
a program or policy into action though governmental means. 4. A
specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase
free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would,
for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing
diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of
policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred. The entire debate
is about whether something ought to occur. What you agree to do, then,
when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient
and compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you
propose.

Military presence is physical forces and infrastructure

GAO 1
General Accounting Office, EUROPEAN SECURITY U.S. and European
Contributions to Foster Stability and Security in Europe
[http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/testimony/214.pdf
November //

<<begin footnote 8>>

DOD defines overseas presence as the mix of permanently stationed forces,
rotationally deployed forces, temporarily deployed forces, and infrastructure required
to conduct the full range of military operations.

<<end footnote 8>>

Couple of net benefits to our interp

First is unified stasis They explode the number of
potential affs removing the incentive for the neg to
conduct in-depth pre-round research which is debates
primary benefit. Externally constrained discussions force
creativity, while preserving avenues for non-traditional
forms of evidence.

Debates benefits come from arguing against a well

prepared opponent that preparation is the only way to
test the epistemology of the aff, their impact claims are
false until tested
Talisse 5 Professor of Philosophy @ Vandy
(Robert, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Deliberativist responses to activist
challenges, 31(4) p. 429-431)
The argument thus far might appear to turn exclusively upon different
conceptions of what reasonableness entails. The deliberativist view I have
sketched holds that reasonableness involves some degree of what we may
call epistemic modesty. On this view, the reasonable citizen seeks to have her
beliefs reect the best available reasons, and so she enters into public
discourse as a way of testing her views against the objections and questions
of those who disagree; hence she implicitly holds that her present view is
open to reasonable critique and that others who hold opposing views may be
able to offer justifications for their views that are at least as strong as her
reasons for her own. Thus any mode of politics that presumes that discourse
is extraneous to questions of justice and justification is unreasonable. The
activist sees no reason to accept this. Reasonableness for the activist consists
in the ability to act on reasons that upon due reection seem adequate to
underwrite action; discussion with those who disagree need not be involved.
According to the activist, there are certain cases in which he does in fact
know the truth about what justice requires and in which there is no room for
reasoned objection. Under such conditions, the deliberativists demand for
discussion can only obstruct justice; it is therefore irrational. It may seem that
we have reached an impasse. However, there is a further line of criticism that
the activist must face. To the activists view that at least in certain situations
he may reasonably decline to engage with persons he disagrees with (107),
the deliberative democrat can raise the phenomenon that Cass Sunstein has
called group polarization (Sunstein, 2003; 2001a: ch. 3; 2001b: ch. 1). To
explain: consider that political activists cannot eschew deliberation
altogether; they often engage in rallies, demonstrations, teach-ins,
workshops, and other activities in which they are called to make public the
case for their views. Activists also must engage in deliberation among
themselves when deciding strategy. Political movements must be organized,
hence those involved must decide upon targets, methods, and tactics; they
must also decide upon the content of their pamphlets and the precise
messages they most wish to convey to the press. Often the audience in both
of these deliberative contexts will be a self-selected and sympathetic group of
like-minded activists. Group polarization is a well-documented phenomenon
that has been found all over the world and in many diverse tasks; it means
that members of a deliberating group predictably move towards a more
extreme point in the direction indicated by the members predeliberation
tendencies (Sunstein, 2003: 812). Importantly, in groups that engage in

repeated discussions over time, the polarization is even more pronounced

(2003: 86 Hence discussion in a small but devoted activist enclave that
meets regularly to strategize and protest should produce a situation in which
individuals hold positions more extreme than those of any individual member
before the series of deliberations began (ibid.) 17 The fact of group
polarization is relevant to our discussion because the activist has proposed
that he may reasonably decline to engage in discussion with those with
whom he disagrees in cases in which the requirements of justice are so clear
that he can be confident that he has the truth. Group polarization suggests
that deliberatively confronting those with whom we disagree is essential even
when we have the truth. For even if we have the truth, if we do not engage
opposing views, but instead deliberate only with those with whom we agree,
our view will shift progressively to a more extreme point , and thus we
lose the truth . In order to avoid polarization, deliberation must take place
within heterogeneous argument pools (Sunstein, 2003: 93). This of course
does not mean that there should be no groups devoted to the achievement of
some common political goal; it rather suggests that engagement with those
with whom one disagrees is essential to the proper pursuit of justice. Insofar
as the activist denies this, he is unreasonable.

Stasis is the internal link to solving the aff debate has

the ability to change peoples attitudes because it forces
pre-round internal deliberation on a focused topic of
debate
Goodin and Niemeyer 3 Australian National University
(Robert and Simon, When Does Deliberation Begin? Internal Reection
versus Public Discussion in Deliberative Democracy Political Studies, Vol 50,
p 627-649, WileyInterscience)
What happened in this particular case, as in any particular case, was in some
respects peculiar unto itself. The problem of the Bloomfield Track had been
well known and much discussed in the local community for a long time.
Exaggerated claims and counter-claims had become entrenched, and
unreective public opinion polarized around them. In this circumstance, the
effect of the information phase of deliberative processes was to brush
away those highly polarized attitudes , dispel the myths and symbolic
posturing on both sides that had come to dominate the debate, and liberate
people to act upon their attitudes toward the protection of rainforest itself.
The key point, from the perspective of democratic deliberation within, is that
that happened in the earlier stages of deliberation before the formal
discussions (deliberations, in the discursive sense) of the jury process ever
began. The simple process of jurors seeing the site for themselves, focusing
their minds on the issues and listening to what experts had to say did

virtually all the work in changing jurors attitudes. Talking among themselves,
as a jury, did very little of it. However, the same might happen in cases very
different from this one. Suppose that instead of highly polarized symbolic
attitudes, what we have at the outset is mass ignorance or mass apathy or
non-attitudes. There again, peoples engaging with the issue focusing on it,
acquiring information about it, thinking hard about it would be something
that is likely to occur earlier rather than later in the deliberative process. And
more to our point, it is something that is most likely to occur within
individuals themselves or in informal interactions, well in advance of any
formal, organized group discussion. There is much in the large literature on
attitudes and the mechanisms by which they change to support that
speculation.31 Consider, for example, the literature on central versus
peripheral routes to the formation of attitudes. Before deliberation,
individuals may not have given the issue much thought or bothered to
engage in an extensive process of reection.32 In such cases, positions may
be arrived at via peripheral routes, taking cognitive shortcuts or arriving at
top of the head conclusions or even simply following the lead of others
believed to hold similar attitudes or values (Lupia, 1994). These shorthand
approaches involve the use of available cues such as expertness or
attractiveness (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986) not deliberation in the internalreective sense we have described. Where peripheral shortcuts are
employed, there may be inconsistencies in logic and the formation of
positions, based on partial information or incomplete information processing.
In contrast, central routes to the development of attitudes involve the
application of more deliberate effort to the matter at hand, in a way that is
more akin to the internal-reective deliberative ideal. Importantly for our
thesis, there is nothing intrinsic to the central route that requires group
deliberation. Research in this area stresses instead the importance simply of
sufficient impetus for engaging in deliberation, such as when an individual is
stimulated by personal involvement in the issue.33 The same is true of online versus memory-based processes of attitude change.34 The suggestion
here is that we lead our ordinary lives largely on autopilot, doing routine
things in routine ways without much thought or reection. When we come
across something new, we update our routines our running beliefs and
pro cedures, attitudes and evaluations accordingly. But having updated, we
then drop the impetus for the update into deep-stored memory. A
consequence of this procedure is that, when asked in the ordinary course of
events what we believe or what attitude we take toward something, we
easily retrieve what we think but we cannot so easily retrieve the
reasons why . That more fully reasoned assessment the sort of thing we
have been calling internal-reective deliberation requires us to call up
reasons from stored memory rather than just consulting our running on-line
summary judgments. Crucially for our present discussion, once again, what
prompts that shift from online to more deeply reective deliberation is not
necessarily interpersonal discussion. The impetus for fixing ones attention on
a topic, and retrieving reasons from stored memory, might come from any of

a number sources: group discussion is only one. And again, even in the
context of a group discussion, this shift from online to memory-based
processing is likely to occur earlier rather than later in the process, often
before the formal discussion ever begins. All this is simply to say that, on a
great many models and in a great many different sorts of settings, it seems
likely that elements of the pre-discursive process are likely to prove
crucial to the shaping and reshaping of peoples attitudes in a citizens jurystyle process. The initial processes of focusing attention on a topic ,
providing information about it and inviting people to think hard about it is
likely to provide a strong impetus to internal-reective deliberation,
altering not just the information people have about the issue but also the way
people process that information and hence (perhaps) what they think about
the issue. What happens once people have shifted into this more internalreective mode is, obviously, an open question. Maybe people would then
come to an easy consensus, as they did in their attitudes toward the Daintree
rainforest.35 Or maybe people would come to divergent conclusions; and
they then may (or may not) be open to argument and counter-argument, with
talk actually changing minds. Our claim is not that group discussion will
always matter as little as it did in our citizens jury.36 Our claim is instead
merely that the earliest steps in the jury process the sheer focusing of
attention on the issue at hand and acquiring more information about it, and
the internal-reective deliberation that that prompts will invariably matter
more than deliberative democrats of a more discursive stripe would have us
believe. However much or little difference formal group discussions might
make, on any given occasion, the pre-discursive phases of the jury process
will invariably have a considerable impact on changing the way jurors
approach an issue. From Citizens Juries to Ordinary Mass Politics? In a
citizens jury sort of setting, then, it seems that informal, pre-group
deliberation deliberation within will inevitably do much of the work that
deliberative democrats ordinarily want to attribute to the more formal
discursive processes. What are the preconditions for that happening? To what
extent, in that sense, can findings about citizens juries be extended to other
larger or less well-ordered deliberative settings? Even in citizens juries,
deliberation will work only if people are attentive, open and willing to change
their minds as appropriate. So, too, in mass politics. In citizens juries the
need to participate (or the anticipation of participating) in formally
organized group discussions might be the prompt that evokes those
attributes. But there might be many other possible prompts that can be
found in less formally structured mass-political settings. Here are a few ways
citizens juries (and all cognate micro-deliberative processes)37 might be
different from mass politics, and in which lessons drawn from that experience
might not therefore carry over to ordinary politics: A citizens jury
concentrates peoples minds on a single issue. Ordinary politics involve many
issues at once. A citizens jury is often supplied a background briefing that
has been agreed by all stakeholders (Smith and Wales, 2000, p. 58). In

ordinary mass politics, there is rarely any equivalent common ground on

which debates are conducted. A citizens jury separates the process of
acquiring information from that of discussing the issues. In ordinary mass
politics, those processes are invariably intertwined. A citizens jury is
provided with a set of experts. They can be questioned, debated or
discounted. But there is a strictly limited set of competing experts on the
same subject. In ordinary mass politics, claims and sources of expertise often
seem virtually limitless, allowing for much greater selective perception.
Participating in something called a citizens jury evokes certain very
particular norms: norms concerning the impartiality appropriate to jurors;
norms concerning the common good orientation appropriate to people in
their capacity as citizens.38 There is a very different ethos at work in ordinary
mass politics, which are typically driven by agrantly partisan appeals to
sectional interest (or utter disinterest and voter apathy). In a citizens jury,
we think and listen in anticipation of the discussion phase , knowing that
we soon will have to defend our views in a discursive setting where they will
be probed intensively .39 In ordinary mass-political settings, there is no
such incentive for paying attention. It is perfectly true that citizens juries are
special in all those ways. But if being special in all those ways makes for a
better more reective, more deliberative political process, then those
are design features that we ought try to mimic as best we can in ordinary
mass politics as well. There are various ways that that might be done.
Briefing books might be prepared by sponsors of American presidential
debates (the League of Women Voters, and such like) in consultation with the
stakeholders involved. Agreed panels of experts might be questioned on
prime-time television. Issues might be sequenced for debate and resolution,
to avoid too much competition for peoples time and attention. Variations on
the Ackerman and Fishkin (2002) proposal for a deliberation day before
every election might be generalized, with a day every few months being
given over to small meetings in local schools to discuss public issues. All that
is pretty visionary, perhaps. And (although it is clearly beyond the scope of
the present paper to explore them in depth) there are doubtless many other
more-or-less visionary ways of introducing into real-world politics analogues
of the elements that induce citizens jurors to practice democratic
deliberation within, even before the jury discussion gets underway. Here, we
have to content ourselves with identifying those features that need to be
replicated in real-world politics in order to achieve that goal and with the
possibility theorem that is established by the fact that (as sketched
immediately above) there is at least one possible way of doing that for each
of those key features.

Second is dialogue
That undermines preparation and clash. Changing the
question now leaves one side unprepared, resulting in
shallow, uneducational debate. Requiring debate on a
communal topic forces argument development and
develops persuasive skills critical to any political
outcome.
Debates critical axis is a form of dialogic communication
within a confined game space---refusing constraint
research impossible and destroys our dialogic model of
policy debate.
Thorkild Hanghj, PhD Dissertation Institute of Literature, Media and
Cultural Studies University of Southern Denmark, PLAYFUL KNOWLEDGE An
Explorative Study of Educational Gaming , 8,
http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_
uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf

Debate games are often based on pre-designed scenarios that include

descriptions of issues to be debated, educational goals, game goals, roles,
rules, time frames etc. In this way, debate games differ from textbooks and
everyday classroom instruction as debate scenarios allow teachers and
students to actively imagine, interact and communicate within a
domain-specific game space. However, instead of mystifying debate
games as a magic circle (Huizinga, 1950), I will try to overcome the
epistemological dichotomy between gaming and teaching that tends to
dominate discussions of educational games. In short, educational gaming is a
form of teaching. As mentioned, education and games represent two
different semiotic domains that both embody the three faces of knowledge:
assertions, modes of representation and social forms of organisation (Gee,
2003; Barth, 2002; cf. chapter 2). In order to understand the interplay
between these different domains and their interrelated knowledge forms, I
will draw attention to a central assumption in Bakhtins dialogical philosophy.
According to Bakhtin, all forms of communication and culture are subject to
centripetal and centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981). A centripetal force is
the drive to impose one version of the truth, while a centrifugal force
involves a range of possible truths and interpretations. This means that
any form of expression involves a duality of centripetal and centrifugal forces:
Every concrete utterance of a speaking subject serves as a point where
centrifugal as well as centripetal forces are brought to bear (Bakhtin, 1981:
272). If we take teaching as an example, it is always affected by centripetal
and centrifugal forces in the on-going negotiation of truths between
teachers and students. In the words of Bakhtin: Truth is not born nor is it to
be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people

collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction

(Bakhtin, 1984a: 110). Similarly, the dialogical space of debate games also
embodies centrifugal and centripetal forces. Thus, the election scenario of
The Power Game involves centripetal elements that are mainly determined
by the rules and outcomes of the game, i.e. the election is based on a
limited time frame and a fixed voting procedure. Similarly, the open-ended
goals, roles and resources represent centrifugal elements and create
virtually endless possibilities for researching, preparing, presenting,
debating and evaluating a variety of key political issues.
Consequently, the actual process of enacting a game scenario involves a
complex negotiation between these centrifugal/centripetal forces that are
inextricably linked with the teachers and students game activities. In this
way, the enactment of The Power Game is a form of teaching that combines
different pedagogical practices (i.e. group work, web quests, student
presentations) and learning resources (i.e. websites, handouts, spoken
language) within the interpretive frame of the election scenario.
Obviously, tensions may arise if there is too much divergence between
educational goals and game goals. This means that game facilitation requires
a balance between focusing too narrowly on the rules or facts of a
game (centripetal orientation) and a focusing too broadly on the
contingent possibilities and interpretations of the game scenario
(centrifugal orientation). For Bakhtin, the duality of centripetal/centrifugal
forces often manifests itself as a dynamic between monological and
dialogical forms of discourse. Bakhtin illustrates this point with the
monological discourse of the Socrates/Plato dialogues in which the teacher
never learns anything new from the students, despite Socrates
ideological claims to the contrary (Bakhtin, 1984a). Thus, discourse
becomes monologised when someone who knows and possesses the truth
instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error, where a thought is
either affirmed or repudiated by the authority of the teacher (Bakhtin,
1984a: 81). In contrast to this, dialogical pedagogy fosters inclusive
learning environments that are able to expand upon students existing
knowledge and collaborative construction of truths (Dysthe, 1996). At this
point, I should clarify that Bakhtins term dialogic is both a descriptive term
(all utterances are per definition dialogic as they address other utterances as
parts of a chain of communication) and a normative term as dialogue is an
ideal to be worked for against the forces of monologism (Lillis, 2003: 1978). In this project, I am mainly interested in describing the dialogical space of
debate games. At the same time, I agree with Wegerif that one of the goals
of education, perhaps the most important goal, should be dialogue as
an end in itself (Wegerif, 2006: 61).

That outweighs and turns the case---prioritize the process

of learning over its substantive conclusions.
Gary Saul Morson, Professor at Northwestern, "The process of ideological
becoming." Bakhtinian perspectives on language, literacy, and learning ( 4):
317-331.

A belief in truly dialogic ideological becoming would lead to schools that were
quite different. In such schools, the mind would be populated with a
complexity of voices and perspectives it had not known, and the student
would learn to think with those voices, to test ideas and experiences against
them, and to shape convictions that are innerly persuasive in response. This
very process would be central. Students would sense that whatever word
they believed to be innerly persuasive was only tentatively so: the process
of dialogue continues. We must keep the conversation going, and formal
education only initiates the process. The innerly persuasive discourse would
not be final, but would be, like experience itself, ever incomplete and
growing. As Bakhtin observes of the innerly persuasive word: Its creativity
and productiveness consist precisely in the fact that such a word awakens
new and independent words, that it organizes masses of our words from
within, and does not remain in an isolated and static condition. It is not so
much interpreted by us as it is further, that is, freely, developed, applied to
new material, new conditions; it enters into interanimating relationships with
new contexts. . . . The semantic structure of an innerly persuasive discourse
is not finite, it is open; in each of the new contexts that dialogize it, this
discourse is able to reveal ever newer ways to mean. (DI, 3456) We not
only learn, we also learn to learn, and we learn to learn best when we
engage in a dialogue with others and ourselves. We appropriate the world
of difference, and ourselves develop new potentials. Those potentials allow us
to appropriate yet more voices. Becoming becomes endless becoming.
We talk, we listen, and we achieve an open-ended wisdom. Difference
becomes an opportunity (see Freedman and Ball, this volume). Our world
manifests the spirit that Bakhtin attributed to Dostoevsky: nothing
conclusive has yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world
and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free,
everything is in the future and will always be in the future.3 Such a world
becomes our world within, its dialogue lives within us, and we develop the
potentials of our ever-learning selves. Letmedraw some inconclusive
conclusions, which may provoke dialogue. Section I of this volume,
Ideologies in Dialogue: Theoretical Considerations and Bakhtins thought in
general suggest that we learn best when we are actually learning to learn.
We engage in dialogue with ourselves and others, and the most important
thing is the value of the open-ended process itself. Section II, Voiced,
Double Voiced, and Multivoiced Discourses in Our Schools suggests that a
belief in truly dialogic ideological becoming would lead to schools that were
quite different. In such schools, the mind would be populated with a

complexity of voices and perspectives it had not known, and the student
would learn to think with those voices, to test ideas and experiences against
them, and to shape convictions that are innerly persuasive in response.
Teachers would not be trying to get students to hold the right opinions but
to sense the world from perspectives they would not have encountered or
dismissed out of hand. Students would develop the habit of getting inside the
perspectives of other groups and other people. Literature in particular is
especially good at fostering such dialogic habits. Section III, Heteroglossia in
a Changing World may invite us to learn that dialogue involves really
listening to others, hearing them not as our perspective would categorize
what they say, but as they themselves would categorize what they say, and
only then to bring our own perspective to bear. We talk, we listen, and we
achieve an open-ended wisdom. The chapters in this volume seem to suggest
that we view learning as a perpetual process. That was perhaps Bakhtins
favorite idea: that to appreciate life, or dialogue, we must see value not only
in achieving this or that result, but also in recognizing that honest and open
striving in a world of uncertainty and difference is itself the most important
thing. What we must do is keep the conversation going.

Externally---being open to revision of truth claims via the

dialogic process is critical to avoid a devolution into
totalitarian ideology
Gary Saul Morson, Professor at Northwestern, "The process of ideological
becoming." Bakhtinian perspectives on language, literacy, and learning ( 4):
317-331.
Northwestern Professor, Prof. Morson's work ranges over a variety of areas:
literary theory (especially narrative); the history of ideas, both Russian and
European; a variety of literary genres (especially satire, utopia, and the
novel); and his favorite writers -- Chekhov, Gogol, and, above all, Dostoevsky
and Tolstoy. He is especially interested in the relation of literature to
philosophy.
Bakhtin viewed the whole process of ideological (in the sense of ideas and
values, however unsystematic) development as an endless dialogue. As
teachers, we find it difficult to avoid a voice of authority, however much we
may think of ours as the rebels voice, because our rebelliousness against
society at large speaks in the authoritative voice of our subculture.We speak
the language and thoughts of academic educators, even when we imagine
we are speaking in no jargon at all, and that jargon, inaudible to us, sounds
with all the overtones of authority to our students. We are so prone to think
of ourselves as fighting oppression that it takes some work to realize that we
ourselves may be felt as oppressive and overbearing, and that our own voice
may provoke the same reactions that we feel when we hear an authoritative
voice with which we disagree. So it is often helpful to think back on the great

authoritative oppressors and reconstruct their self-image: helpful, but often

painful. I remember, many years ago, when, as a recent student rebel and
activist, I taught a course on The Theme of the Rebel and discovered, to
my considerable chagrin, that many of the great rebels of history were the
very same people as the great oppressors. There is a famous exchange
between Erasmus and Luther, who hoped to bring the great Dutch humanist
over to the Reformation, but Erasmus kept asking Luther how he could be so
certain of so many doctrinal points. We must accept a few things to be
Christians at all, Erasmus wrote, but surely beyond that there must be room
for us highly fallible beings to disagree. Luther would have none of such
tentativeness. He knew, he was sure. The Protestant rebels were, for a
while, far more intolerant than their orthodox opponents. Often
enough, the oppressors are the ones who present themselves and really
think of themselves as liberators. Certainty that one knows the root cause of
evil: isnt that itself often the root cause? We know from Tsar Ivan the
Terribles letters denouncing Prince Kurbsky, a general who escaped to
Poland, that Ivan saw himself as someone who had been oppressed by
noblemen as a child and pictured himself as the great rebel against
traditional authority when he killed masses of people or destroyed whole
towns. There is something in the nature of maximal rebellion against
authority that produces ever greater intolerance, unless one is very careful.
For the skills of fighting or refuting an oppressive power are not those of
openness, self-skepticism, or real dialogue. In preparing for my course, I
remember my dismay at reading Hitlers Mein Kampf and discovering that
his self-consciousness was precisely that of the rebel speaking in the name
of oppressed Germans, and that much of his amazing appeal otherwise so
inexplicable was to the German sense that they were rebelling victims. In
our time, the Serbian Communist and nationalist leader Slobodan
Milosevic exploited much the same appeal. Bakhtin surely knew that
Communist totalitarianism, the Gulag, and the unprecedented censorship
were constructed by rebels who had come to power. His favorite writer,
Dostoevsky, used to emphasize that the worst oppression comes from those
who, with the rebellious psychology of the insulted and humiliated, have
seized power unless they have somehow cultivated the value of
dialogue, as Lenin surely had not, but which Eva, in the essay by Knoeller
about teaching The Autobiography of Malcolm X, surely had. Rebels often
make the worst tyrants because their word, the voice they hear in their
consciousness, has borrowed something crucial from the authoritative word
it opposed, and perhaps exaggerated it: the aura of righteous authority. If
ones ideological becoming is understood as a struggle in which one has at
last achieved the truth, one is likely to want to impose that truth with
maximal authority; and rebels of the next generation may proceed in much
the same way, in an ongoing spiral of intolerance.

Our heuristic means we learn about the State without

being it. It wont entrench dominant norms BUT WE ALSO
dont invert the error and NEVER learn about them.
-we are defending a contingent state that does not exist now but we can
bring it about
-Learning about the state good
-We dont have to say the state is always good. Our model gives us another
tool to combat pressing issues

Zanotti 14
Dr. Laura Zanotti is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech. Her research
and teaching include critical political theory as well as international organizations, UN
peacekeeping, democratization and the role of NGOs in post-conict
governance.Governmentality, Ontology, Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency in the
Global World Alternatives: Global, Local, Political vol 38(4):p. 288-304,. A little unclear if
this is late 2013 or early 2014 The Stated Version of Record is Feb 20, 2014, but was
originally published online on December 30th, 2013. Obtained via Sage Database.

By questioning substantialist representations of power and subjects, inquiries

on the possibilities of political agency are reframed in a way that focuses on
power and subjects relational character and the contingent processes of
their (trans)formation in the context of agonic relations. Options for
resistance to governmental scripts are not limited to rejection,
revolution, or dispossession to regain a pristine freedom from all
constraints or an immanent ideal social order. It is found instead in
multifarious and contingent struggles that are constituted within the
scripts of governmental rationalities and at the same time exceed and
transform them. This approach questions oversimplifications of the
complexities of liberal political rationalities and of their interactions with nonliberal political players and nurtures a radical skepticism about identifying
universally good or bad actors or abstract solutions to political problems.
International power interacts in complex ways with diverse political spaces
and within these spaces it is appropriated, hybridized, redescribed, hijacked,
and tinkered with. Governmentality as a heuristic focuses on performing
complex diagnostics of events. It invites historically situated explorations and
careful differentiations rather than overarching demonizations of power,
romanticizations of the rebel or the the local. More broadly, theoretical
formulations that conceive the subject in non-substantialist terms and focus
on processes of subjectification, on the ambiguity of power discourses, and
on hybridization as the terrain for political transformation, open ways for
reconsidering political agency beyond the dichotomy of oppression/rebellion.
These alternative formulations also foster an ethics of political engagement,
to be continuously taken up through plural and uncertain practices, that
demand continuous attention to what happens instead of fixations on
what ought to be.83 Such ethics of engagement would not await the

revolution to come or hope for a pristine freedom to be regained. Instead,

it would constantly attempt to twist the working of power by playing with
whatever cards are available and would require intense processes of
reexivity on the consequences of political choices. To conclude with a
famous phrase by Michel Foucault my point is not that everything is bad, but
that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If
everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my
position leads not to apathy but to hyper- and pessimistic
activism.84

marx
Centering resistance around identity creates an
ahistorical pseudo politics that displaces radical class
analysis
McLaren, Distinguished Fellow Critical Studies @ Chapman U and UCLA
urban schooling prof, and Scatamburlo-DAnnibale, associate professor of
Communication U Windsor, 4
(Peter and Valerie, Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of
difference, Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol. 36, Issue 2, p. 183-199)

Eager to take a wide detour around political economy, post-Marxists tend to

assume that the principal political points of departure in the current
postmodern world must necessarily be cultural. As such, most, but not all postMarxists have gravitated towards a politics of difference which is largely
premised on uncovering relations of power that reside in the arrangement and
deployment of subjectivity in cultural and ideological practices (cf. Jordan & Weedon,
1995). Advocates of difference politics therefore posit their ideas as bold steps forward in advancing
the interests of those historically marginalized by dominant social and
cultural narratives. There is no doubt that post-Marxism has advanced our knowledge of the hidden
trajectories of power within the processes of representation and that it remains useful in adumbrating the
formation of subjectivity and its expressive dimensions as well as complementing our understandings of

post-Marxists
have been woefully remiss in addressing the constitution of class
formations and the machinations of capitalist social organization. In some
instances, capitalism and class relations have been thoroughly otherized;
in others, class is summoned only as part of the triumvirate of race, class, and
gender in which class is reduced to merely another form of difference.
Enamored with the cultural and seemingly blind to the economic, the rhetorical
excesses of post-Marxists have also prevented them from considering the
stark reality of contemporary class conditions under global capitalism. As we hope to show,
the radical displacement of class analysis in contemporary theoretical narratives and
the concomitant decentering of capitalism, the anointing of difference as a primary
explanatory construct, and the culturalization of politics, have had detrimental effects on
left theory and practice. Reconceptualizing Difference The manner in which difference
has been taken up within post-al frameworks has tended to stress its cultural dimensions
while marginalizing and, in some cases, completely ignoring the economic and material
dimensions of difference. This posturing has been quite evident in many post-al
theories of race and in the realm of ludic1 cultural studies that have valorized an
account of differenceparticularly racial differencein almost exclusively
superstructuralist terms (Sahay, 1998). But this treatment of difference and
claims about the relative autonomy of race have been enabled by a
reduction and distortion of Marxian class analysis which involves equating class analysis
the relationships between difference, language, and cultural configurations. However,

with some version of economic determinism. The key move in this distorting gesture depends on the view
that the economic is the base, the cultural/political/ideological the superstructure. It is then relatively

easy to show that the (presumably non-political) economic base does not cause the
political/cultural/ideological superstructure, that the latter is/are not epiphenomenal but relatively
autonomous or autonomous causal categories (Meyerson, 2000, p. 2). In such formulations

the

cultural is treated as a separate and autonomous sphere, severed from its

embeddedness within sociopolitical and economic arrangements. As a result, many of these culturalist
narratives have produced autonomist and reified conceptualizations of
difference which far from enabling those subjects most marginalized by racial difference have, in
effect, reduced difference to a question of knowledge/power relations that can
presumably be dealt with (negotiated) on a discursive level without a fundamental
change in the relations of production (Sahay, 1998). At this juncture, it is necessary to point
out that arguing that culture is generally conditioned/shaped by material forces
does not reinscribe the simplistic and presumably deterministic base/superstructure
metaphor which has plagued some strands of Marxist theory. Rather, we invoke Marx's own
writings from both the Grundrisse and Capital in which he contends that there is a
consolidating logic in the relations of production that permeates society in the
complex variety of its empirical reality. This emphasizes Marx's
understanding of capitalism and capital as a social relationone which stresses the
interpenetration of these categories, the realities which they reect, and one which
therefore offers a unified and dialectical analysis of history, ideology, culture, politics,
economics and society (see also Marx, 1972, 1976, 1977).2 Foregrounding the
limitations of difference and representational politics does not suggest a
disavowal of the importance of cultural and/or discursive arena(s) as sites of contestation and
struggle. We readily acknowledge the significance of contemporary theorizations that have
sought to valorize precisely those forms of difference that have historically been denigrated. This has

been an important development since they have enabled

subordinated groups to reconstruct their own histories and give voice to their
individual and collective identities. However, they have also tended to redefine
politics as a signifying activity generally confined to the realm of representation while
displacing a politics grounded in the mobilization of forces against the material sources of
political and economic marginalization. In their rush to avoid the capital sin of
economism, many post-Marxists (who often ignore their own class privilege) have fallen
prey to an ahistorical form of culturalism which holds, among other things, that
cultural struggles external to class organizing provide the cutting edge of
emancipatory politics.3 In many respects, this posturing, has yielded an
intellectual pseudopolitics that has served to empower the theorist
while explicitly disempowering real citizens (Turner, 1994, p. 410). We do not
discount concerns over representation; rather our point is that progressive
educators and theorists should not be straightjacketed by struggles that fail
to move beyond the politics of difference and representation in the cultural realm. While
space limitations prevent us from elaborating this point, we contend that culturalist arguments
are deeply problematic both in terms of their penchant for de-emphasizing the
totalizing (yes totalizing!) power and function of capital and for their attempts to employ
culture as a construct that would diminish the centrality of class. In a proper historical materialist
undoubtedly

account, culture is not the other of class but, rather, constitutes part of a more comprehensive

theorizations of difference
circumvent and undermine any systematic knowledge of the material
dimensions of difference and tend to segregate questions of difference from
class formation and capitalist social relations. We therefore believe that it is necessary to
theorization of class rule in different contexts.4 Post-al

(re)conceptualize difference by drawing upon Marx's materialist and

historical formulations. Difference needs to be understood as the product of social
contradictions and in relation to political and economic organization. We need to
acknowledge that otherness and/or difference is not something that passively happens, but, rather, is
actively produced. In other words, since systems of differences almost always involve relations of
domination and oppression, we must concern ourselves with the economies of relations of difference that
exist in specific contexts. Drawing upon the Marxist concept of mediation enables us to unsettle our
categorical approaches to both class and difference, for it was Marx himself who warned against creating
false dichotomies in the situation of our politicsthat it was absurd to choose between consciousness and
the world, subjectivity and social organization, personal or collective will and historical or structural

it is equally absurd to see difference as a historical

form of consciousness unconnected to class formation , development of capital and
class politics (Bannerji, 1995, p. 30). Bannerji points to the need to historicize
difference in relation to the history and social organization of capital and
class (inclusive of imperialist and colonialist legacies). Apprehending the meaning and function of
determination. In a similar vein,

difference in this manner necessarily highlights the importance of exploring (1) the institutional and
structural aspects of difference; (2) the meanings that get attached to categories of difference; and (3)
how differences are produced out of, and lived within specific historical formations.5

Capitalism causes inevitable crises, inequality, and

dehumanizationthe alternative is a class-based critique
of the systempedagogical spaces are the crucial staging
ground for keeping socialism on the horizon
McLaren, Distinguished Fellow Critical Studies @ Chapman U and UCLA
urban schooling prof, and Scatamburlo-DAnnibale, associate professor of
Communication U Windsor, 4
(Peter and Valerie, Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of
difference, Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol. 36, Issue 2, p. 183-199)

For well over two decades we have witnessed the jubilant liberal and conservative pronouncements of the

history's presumed failure to defang existing

capitalist relations has been read by many self-identified radicals as an
advertisement for capitalism's inevitability. As a result, the chorus refrain There
Is No Alternative, sung by liberals and conservatives, has been buttressed by the
symphony of post-Marxist voices recommending that we give socialism a
decent burial and move on . Within this context, to speak of the promise of Marx and socialism may
demise of socialism. Concomitantly,

appear anachronistic, even nave, especially since the post-al intellectual vanguard has presumably
demonstrated the folly of doing so. Yet we stubbornly believe that the chants of T.I.N.A. must be combated

Leftists should refuse to

acceptnamely the triumph of capitalism and its political bedfellow neoliberalism, which have worked together to naturalize suffering, undermine
collective struggle, and obliterate hope . We concur with Amin (1998), who claims that
such chants must be defied and revealed as absurd and criminal, and who puts the
for they offer as a fait accompli, something which progressive

humanity may let itself be led by capitalism's

logic to a fate of collective suicide or it may pave the way for an
alternative humanist project of global socialism. The grosteque conditions that
inspired Marx to pen his original critique of capitalism are present and ourishing. The
inequalities of wealth and the gross imbalances of power that exist today are leading to
abuses that exceed those encountered in Marx's day (Greider, 1998, p. 39). Global
capitalism has paved the way for the obscene concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer
hands and created a world increasingly divided between those who enjoy opulent
affluence and those who languish in dehumanizing conditions and economic misery. In every
corner of the globe, we are witnessing social disintegration as revealed by a rise in abject
poverty and inequality. At the current historical juncture, the combined assets of the 225 richest
challenge we face in no uncertain terms:

people is roughly equal to the annual income of the poorest 47 percent of the world's population, while the
combined assets of the three richest people exceed the combined GDP of the 48 poorest nations (CCPA,

2.8 billion peoplealmost half of the world's populationstruggle in

desperation to live on less than two dollars a day (McQuaig, 2001, p. 27). As many as
250 million children are wage slaves and there are over a billion workers who are
either un- or under-employed. These are the concrete realities of our timerealities
that require a vigorous class analysis, an unrelenting critique of
capitalism and an oppositional politics capable of confronting what Ahmad (1998, p.
2) refers to as capitalist universality. They are realities that require something more than that
2002, p. 3). Approximately

which is offered by the prophets of difference and post-Marxists who would have us relegate socialism to

Never before has a

Marxian analysis of capitalism and class rule been so desperately needed. That is not
to say that everything Marx said or anticipated has come true, for that is clearly not the case. Many
critiques of Marx focus on his strategy for moving toward socialism, and with
ample justification; nonetheless Marx did provide us with fundamental
insights into class society that have held true to this day. Marx's enduring relevance
the scrapheap of history and mummify Marxism along with Lenin's corpse.

lies in his indictment of capitalism which continues to wreak havoc in the lives of most. While capitalism's
cheerleaders have attempted to hide its sordid underbelly, Marx's description of capitalism as the
sorcerer's dark power is even more apt in light of contemporary historical and economic conditions.

Rather than jettisoning Marx, decentering the role of capitalism, and

discrediting class analysis, radical educators must continue to engage Marx's
oeuvre and extrapolate from it that which is useful pedagogically,
theoretically, and, most importantly, politically in light of the challenges that confront us.
The urgency which animates Amin's call for a collective socialist vision necessitates,
as we have argued, moving beyond the particularism and liberal pluralism that informs
the politics of difference. It also requires challenging the questionable
assumptions that have come to constitute the core of contemporary
radical theory, pedagogy and politics. In terms of effecting change, what is
needed is a cogent understanding of the systemic nature of exploitation
and oppression based on the precepts of a radical political economy approach
(outlined above) and one that incorporates Marx's notion of unity in difference in which people share

Such an understanding extends far beyond the

realm of theory, for the manner in which we choose to interpret and explore the social world, the
concepts and frameworks we use to express our sociopolitical
understandings, are more than just abstract categories. They imply
intentions, organizational practices, and political agendas. Identifying class
analysis as the basis for our understandings and class struggle as the basis for political
widely common material interests.

implies something quite different than constructing a sense of

political agency around issues of race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Contrary to
transformation

Shakespeare's assertion that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, it should be clear that this

in politics the essence of the ower lies in the

name by which it is called (Bannerji, 2000, p. 41). The task for progressives today
is to seize the moment and plant the seeds for a political agenda that is
grounded in historical possibilities and informed by a vision committed to overcoming
exploitative conditions. These seeds, we would argue, must be derived from the tree of
radical political economy. For the vast majority of people todaypeople of all racial
classifications or identities, all genders and sexual orientationsthe
common frame of reference arcing across difference, the concerns and aspirations that are
most widely shared are those that are rooted in the common experience of everyday
life shaped and constrained by political economy (Reed, 2000, p. xxvii). While postMarxist advocates of the politics of difference suggest that such a stance is
outdated, we would argue that the categories which they have employed to
analyze the social are now losing their usefulness, particularly in light of actual contemporary
social movements. All over the globe, there are large anti-capitalist movements
is not the case in political matters. Rather,

afoot. In February 2002, chants of Another World Is Possible became the theme of protests in Porto

people struggling in the streets havent read about T.I.N.A.,

the end of grand narratives of emancipation, or the decentering of capitalism.
Allegre. It seems that those

It seems as though the struggle for basic survival and some semblance of human dignity in the mean
streets of the dystopian metropoles doesnt permit much time or opportunity to read the heady
proclamations emanating from seminar rooms. As E. P. Thompson (1978, p. 11) once remarked, sometimes
experience walks in without knocking at the door, and announces deaths, crises of subsistence, trench

This, of course, does not mean that socialism will

inevitably come about, yet a sense of its nascent promise animates current
social movements. Indeed, noted historian Howard Zinn (2000, p. 20) recently pointed out that
after years of single-issue organizing (i.e. the politics of difference), the WTO and
other anti-corporate capitalist protests signaled a turning point in the history
of movements of recent decades, for it was the issue of class that more than anything
bound everyone together . History, to paraphrase Thompson (1978, p. 25) doesnt seem to be
warfare, unemployment, ination, genocide.

following Theory's script. Our vision is informed by Marx's historical materialism and his revolutionary

a
socialist humanist vision remains crucial, whose fundamental features include
the creative potential of people to challenge collectively the circumstances
that they inherit. This variant of humanism seeks to give expression to the pain, sorrow and
socialist humanism, which must not be conated with liberal humanism. For left politics and pedagogy,

degradation of the oppressed, those who labor under the ominous and ghastly cloak of globalized capital.
It calls for the transformation of those conditions that have prevented the bulk of humankind from fulfilling

It vests its hope for change in the development of critical

consciousness and social agents who make history , although not always in conditions of
its potential.

their choosing. The political goal of socialist humanism is, however, not a resting in difference but rather
the emancipation of difference at the level of human mutuality and reciprocity. This would be a step
forward for the discovery or creation of our real differences which can only in the end be explored in

the enduring relevance of a radical

socialist pedagogy and politics is the centrality it accords to the
interrogation of capitalism. We can no longer afford to remain indifferent to the horror and
savagery committed by capitalist's barbaric machinations. We need to recognize that
capitalist democracy is unrescuably contradictory in its own self-constitution.
reciprocal ways (Eagleton, 1996, p. 120). Above all else,

Capitalism and democracy cannot be translated into one another without profound efforts at
manufacturing empty idealism.

Committed Leftists must unrelentingly cultivate a

democratic socialist vision that refuses to forget the wretched of the earth, the children of
the damned and the victims of the culture of silencea task which requires more than abstruse

Leftists must
challenge
the true evils that are manifest in the tentacles of global capitalism's reach. And, more
than this, Leftists must search for the cracks in the edifice of globalized
capitalism and shine light on those fissures that give birth to
alternatives. Socialism today, undoubtedly, runs against the grain of received
wisdom, but its vision of a vastly improved and freer arrangement of social
relations beckons on the horizon. Its unwritten text is nascent in the present
convolutions and striking ironic poses in the agnostic arena of signifying practices.

illuminate the little shops of horror that lurk beneath globalizations shiny faade; they must

even as it exists among the fragments of history and the shards of distant memories. Its potential remains
untapped and its promise needs to be redeemed.

case
Calling for legal reform doesnt exclude the affs strategy*
Faithful, black queer street shaman, folk healer and lawyer, 12
(Richael, 'Toward the Heart of Justice' - Keynote Address, Women's Diversity
Conference, March 24, 2012, Adrian College,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2028737)

So, what is it like to be a young, queer, Black, southern female lawyer

working in Virginia on felon disenfranchisement (which Ill explain more about
shortly)? Well, its slow-moving, stressful, and humbling. It requires me to
constantly adapt to my environment, navigate internal and external
politics, and take well-calculated risks. Most of all, it forces me to deal with
broader questions like whether and how engaging with power helps the
people with whom I work, and systems which we need to collectively
dismantle and re-build?
I want to address this fundamental question about strategically approaching
powerful institutions in two parts to provide context to my current work. The
first part is dissecting a myth prevalent in social justice circles. Often, it is
posed this wayis it better to work on the inside or outside the system. I
dont think that this framing is complete. The reality is that each of us
exists within powerful institutionswe buy food within a capitalist economy,
we make consumer decisions manipulated by the advertisement industry, we
receive news generated by corporate media sources, and most important, we
know and love people who not only wholeheartedly embrace these
institutions, but we are closely connected to other humans who are integral
to the perpetuation of these institutionswhom I call decision-makers and
power-brokers.
Many of us are inuenced, and exist within, powerful institutions even if we
are actively resisting their forces. Some of us are re-shaping our relationships
to these institutions by making intentionally choices that tip the balance of
power. Therefore, the real issues that we encounter are not whether to work
within or outside the system. Instead, the real issues are how we
should we exist inside powerful institutions. To which degree should
these institutions affect us? In my view, the existential problem for those who
want to strive toward the heart of justice is how to engage with powerful
institutions without being crushed.
The second part is how we can positively build alternative institutions,
commonly described as working outside the system. Often this part is
posed this way, lodged as a grenade against those seeking justiceif you
dont like the current system and dont have ideas about how to change it,
shut up. First, this rationale is nothing more than a silencing tactic that is

designed to stie critique and is no more productive in addressing problems

that we face. Second, I want to defend speaking out, because expressing
rage, sadness, grief, and excitement is important in itself, as serving as a
mirror into the institutions that we create, and being healing to those who are
airing their reactions.
It is, nonetheless, critical that we work to build alternative institutions that
more responsibly deal with power. And we have to remember that these
alternatives are inspired by, and informed by existing institutions of power.
Here, is where the most creative, fun, imaginative, and powerful work lives.
We see people in the US doing this work all of the timethe Highlander Folk
School that taught literacy and provided civil disobedience training during the
popular Civil Rights Movement; the South Central Farm of the late 1990s,
which was at a time the largest community garden and urban farm in the
country, promoting greater and better food access; the explosion of Ithaca
Hours and other local currencies in the last twenty years created to
encourage neighborhood economies; and even the Occupy Wall Street
Movement, which put democratic consensus governance, an alternative to
majority-rule governance, on the national map. This form of resistance is the
site of many interesting cultural, social, economic and political experiments,
equal in importance to resisting powerful institutions.
One of my favorite radical thinkers, Robin D.G. Kelley, Professor of American
Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, writes
extensively about transformative possibility. In a 2010 interview, his
interviewer asked why he has so much optimism about the future.
Robin says, It doesnt come from any abstract sense of hope. Nor does it
come from any sense of denial about the political realities that confront us
and the extent of power and how it works. It comes out of being a historian.
There are so many historical examples of seemingly impossible
circumstances in which we had these revolutionary transformations.1
Without vivid imagination, no positive future would ever exist. I outline these
frameworks because, like many other people, I try to work on both levels
intentionally engaging with powerful institutions, and affirmatively building
alternative institutions that maintain healthier relationships with power.
Likewise, my fellowship project tries to engage and build on these levels,
creating possibilities beyond the law and electoral politics.
Virginia is one of four states that forever strips citizens civil rights, including
their right to vote, upon a felony conviction. This type of law is commonly
referred to as felon disenfranchisement.In 2004, at least 377,000 people
were estimated to be disenfranchised, or in other words, alienated from their
natural civic and political rights borne from their status as US citizens. Most
notably, disenfranchisement permanently carves out a fraction of the
electorate, which is disproportionately people of color, working-class and
poor, disabled, and likely queer/transgender-identified. For example, about

55% of disenfranchised citizens in Virginia are African-American, which make

up less than 20% of the state population.
In Virginia, the only way for disenfranchised citizens to restore their civil
rights is through individual Governor petition. Only 1,000 people each year
restore their rights, on average. There are ten eligibility criteria that eliminate
or discourage many people from accessing the system. In the end, after
jumping every hoop and climbing every ladder, the Governor may deny an
application for any reason and no reason at all, with no appeal process.
Some criticize the system as being fundamentally broken, unfair, and
inhumane. Others, like brilliant legal scholar, Michelle Alexander, author of
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, argue
that systems such as these are relics of bygone eras that expressly intended
to deny full Black citizenship. I go even further to say that Virginias
disenfranchisement system remains because powerful interests (cut across
race and class lines) cannot maintain their democratic stranglehold if it is
changed. I think that it is designed to silently kill the democratic dream.
My Equal Justice Works fellowship, the Virginia Rights Restoration Project,
which Ill call VRRP, is an initiative aimed at building long-term infrastructure
to dismantle the existing system. VRRPs specific goal is to engineer new,
creative strategies toward the alternative of automatic restoration upon
sentence completion, which was necessary after two hard-fought but lost
campaigns to pressure previous Governors into changing the law.
The overarching strategy of the project is to open the system up. The
prediction is the more it is forced to function the way it is purported to work,
the harder it is to sustain, because as the system must accommodate to
provide greater access, and more people can access it, the sooner its
insidious discriminatory purpose becomes clear. It will transformthe
uncertainty is merely when and how.

Squo attempts at reform not working doesnt mean legal

solutions are useless infusing the aff methodology and
interrogation into legal solutions ruptures the
intelligibility of settler colonialism and creates meaningful
progress and reinterpretation of the liberal rights they
criticize
Bhandar 13 lecturer at Kent Law School and Queen Mary School of Law
her areas of research and teaching include property law, equity and trusts,
indigenous land rights, post-colonial and feminist legal theory,
multiculturalism and pluralism, critical legal theory, and critical race theory

Brenna, Strategies of Legal Rupture: the politics of judgment

[http://www.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/BHANDARBrenna.-Strategies-of-Legal-Rupture.pdf] //
In this article, my aim is to consider the use of law as a political strategy of
rupture in colonial and post - colonial nation states. The question of whether
and how to use law in order to transform and potentially shatter an existing
political - legal order is one that continues t o plague legal advocates in a
variety of places, from Australia, to India, to Canada to Israel/Palestine. For
example, the struggle for the recognition of indigenous rights in the context
of colonial settler regimes has often produced pyrrhic victories. 21 T he
question of indigenous sovereignty is ultimately quashed, and aboriginal
rights are paradoxically recognised as an interest that derives from the prior
occupation of the land by aboriginal communities but is at the same time
parasitic on underlying Crow n sovereignty; an interest that can be justifiably
limited in the interests of settlement. 22 Thus, the primary and inescapable
question remains: how does one utilise the law without re - inscribing
the very colonial legal order that one is attempting to break down? 23
I argue that this is an inescapable dilemma; as critical race theorists and
indigenous scholars have shown, to not avail ourselves of the law in
an effort to ameliorate social ills, and to promote and protect the rights
of oppressed minorities is to essentially abrogate ones political
responsibilities. Moreover, the reality of political struggle (particularly of
the anti - colonial variety) is that it is of a diffuse and varied nature, engaging
multiple different tactics in order to achieve its ends. The notion of the
ruptural defence emerges from the work of Jacques Vergs, a French
advocate and subject of a film by Barbet Schroder entitled Terrors Advocate .
The film is as much a portrait of Vergs life as it is a series of vignettes of
armed anti - colonial and anti - imperial struggle during the decades between
the late 1940s and the 1980s. I should say at the beginning that I do not
perceive Vergs as a heroic figure or defender of the oppressed; we can see
from his later decisions to defend Klaus Barbie, for instance, that his desire to
reveal the violence wrought by European imperial powers was pursued at any
cost. But in tracing the development of what Vergs called the ruptural
defence, the film takes us to the heart of the inescapable paradoxes and
contradictions involved in using law as a means of political resistance in
colonial and post - colonial contexts. I want to explore the strategy of rupture
as developed by Vergs but also in a broader se nse, to consider whether
there is in this defence strategy that arose in colonial, criminal law contexts,
something that is generalisable, something that can be drawn out to form a
notion of legal rupture more generally. To begin then, an exploration of
Vergs rupture defence, or rendered more eloquently, a strategy of rupture.
At the beginning of the film, Vergs comments on his strategy for the trial of
Djamila Bouhired, a member of the FLN, who was tried in a military court for
planting a bomb in a cafe in Algiers in 1956. Vergs states the following in
relation to the trial: The problem wasnt to play for sympathy as left - wing
lawyers advised us to do, from the murderous fools who judged us, but to

taunt them, to provoke incidents that would reac h people in Paris, London,
Brussels and Cairo... The refusal to play for sympathy from those empowered
to uphold the law in a colonial legal order hints at the much more profound
refusal that lies at the basis of the strategy of rupture, which we see unf old
throughout the film. In refusing to accept the characterisation of Djamilas
acts as criminal acts, Vergs challenges the very legal categories that were
used to criminalise, condemn and punish anti - colonial resistance. The refusal
to make the defendan ts actions cognisable to and intelligible within the
colonial legal framework breaks the capacity of the judges to adjudicate in at
least two senses. First, their moral authority is radically undermined by an
outright rejection of the legal terms of refer ence and categories which they
are appointed to uphold. The legal strategy of rupture is a politics of
refusal that calls into question the justiciability of the purported
crime by challenging the moral and political jurisdiction of the
colonial legal order itself. Second, the refusal of the legal categorisation
of the FLN acts of resistance as criminal brought into light the contradictions
inherent in the official French position and the reality of the Algerian context.
This was not, as the official line would have it, simply a case of French
criminal law being applied to French nationals. The repeated assertion that
the defendants were independent Algerian actors fighting against colonial
brutality, coupled with repeated revelations of the use of torture on political
prisoners made it impossible for the contradictions to be rationally
contained within the normal operations of criminal law. The revelation and
denunciation of torture in the courtroom not to prevent statements or
admissions from being admis sable as evidence (as such violations would
normally be used) but to challenge the legitimacy of the imposition of a
colonial legal order on the Algerian people made the normal operation of
criminal law procedure virtually impossible . 24 And it is in this ma king
impossible of the operation of the legal order that the power of the strategy
of rupture lies. In refusing to render his clients actions intelligible to a
colonial (and later imperial) legal framework, Vergs makes visible the
obvious hypocrisy of the colonial legal order that attempts to punish
resistance that employs violence, in the same spatial temporal boundaries
where the brute violence of colonial rule saturates everyday life. In doing so,
this is a strategy that challenges the monopoly of le gitimate violence the
state holds. Vergs aims to render visible the false distinction between
common crimes and political crimes, or more broadly, the separation of law
and politics. 25 The ruptural defence seeks to subvert the order and structure
of the tr ial by re - defining the relation between accuser and accused. This
illumination of the hypocrisy of the colonial state questions the authority of
its judiciary to adjudicate. But more than this, his strategy is ruptural in two
senses that are fundamental to the operation of the law in the colonial settler
and post - colonial contexts. The first is that the space of opposition within
the legal confrontation is reconfigured. The second, and related point, is
that the strictures of a legal politics of recognition are shattered. In relation to
the first point, a space of opposition is, in the view of Fanon, missing in
certain senses, in the colonial context. A space of opposition in which a

genuinely mutual struggle between coloniser and colonised can occur is de

nied by spatial and legal - political strategies of containment and segregation.
While these strategies also exhibit great degre es of plasticity 26 , the control
over such mobility remains to a great degree in the hands of the colonial
occupier. The legal strat egy of rupture creates a space of political
opposition in the courtroom that cannot be absorbed or appropriated
by the legal order. In Christodoulidis view, this lack of co - option is the
crux of the strategy of rupture. This strategy of rupture also poin ts to a
path that challenges the limits of a politics of recognition, often one of
the key legal and political strategies utilised by indigenous and racial minority
communities in their struggles for justice. Claims for recognition in a juridical
frame ine vitably involve a variety of onto - epistemological closures. 27
Whether because of the impossible and irreconciliable relation between the
need for universal norms and laws and the specificities of the particular
claims that come before the law, or because of the need to fit ones claims
within legal - political categories that are already intelligible within the legal
order, legal recognition has been critiqued, particularly in regards to colonial
settler societies, on the basis that it only allows identities, legal claims, ways
of being that are always - already proper to the existing juridical order to be
recognised by the law. In the Canadian context, for instance, many scholars
have elucidated the ways in which the legal doctrine of aboriginal title to land
im ports Anglo - American concepts of ownership into the heart of its
definition; and moreover, defines aboriginality on the basis of a fixed, static
concept of cultural difference. The strategy of rupture elides the
violence of recognition by challenging the legitimacy of the colonial
legal order itself. In an article discussing Vergs strategy of rupture,
Emilios Christodoulidis takes up a question posed to Vergs by Foucault
shortly after the publication of Vergs book, De La Stratgie Judiciare, as to
wh ether the defence of rupture in the context of criminal law trials in the
colony could be generalised more widely, or whether it was not in fact
caught up in a specific historical conjuncture. 28 In exploring how the
strategy of rupture could inform practices and theory outside of the
courtroom, Christodoulidis characterises the strategy of rupture as one
mode of immanent critique. As individuals and communities subjected to the
force of law, the law itself becomes the object of critique, the object that ne
eds to be taken apart in order to expose its violence. To quote from
Christodoulidis: Immanent critique aims to generate within these institutional
frameworks contradictions that are inevitable (they can neither be displaced
nor ignored), compelling (they necessitate action) and transformative in that
(unlike internal critique) the overcoming of the contradiction does not restore,
but transcends, the disturbed framework within which it arose. It pushes it
to go beyond its confines and in the process, fam ously in Marxs words,
enables the world to clarify its consciousness in waking it from its dream
about itself. 29 Christodoulidis explores how the strategy of rupture can be
utilised as an intellectual resource for critical legal theory and more
broadl y, as a point of departure for political strategies that could cause a
crisis for globalised capital. Strategies of rupture are particularly crucial when

considering a system, he notes, that has been so successful at appropriating,

ingesting and making its own, political aspirations (such as freedom, to take
one example) that have also been used to disrupt its most violent and
exploitative tendencies. Here Christodoulidis departs from the question of
colonialism to focus on the operation of capitalism in po st - war European
states. It is also this bifurcation that I want to question, and rather than a
distinction between colonialism and capitalism, to consider how the colonial
(as a set of economic and political relations that rely on ideologies of racial
diff erence, and civilisational discourses that emerged during the period of
European colonialism) is continually re - written and re - instantiated through a
globalised capitalism. As I elaborate in the discussion of the Salwa Judum
judgment below, it is the combi nation of violent state repression of political
dissent that finds its origins (in the legal form it takes) during the colonial era,
and capitalist development imperatives that implicate local and global mining
corporations in the dispossession of tribal p eoples that constitutes the legal political conict at issue. After the Trial: From Defence to Judgment In
response to a question from Jean Lapeyrie (a member o f the Action
Committee for Prison - Justice) during a discussion of De La Stratgie Judiciare
published as the Preface to the second edition, Vergs remarks that there are
actually effective judges, but that they are effective when forgetting the
essence of what it is to be a judge. 31 The strategy of rupture is a tactic
utilised to subvert the order and structure of a trial; to re - define the very
terms upon which the trial is premised. On this view, the judge, charged with
the obligation to uphold the rule o f law is of course by definition not able to
do anything but sustain an unjust political order. In the film Terrors Advocate
, one is left to wonder about the specificities of the judicial responses to the
strategy deployed by Vergs. (Djamila Bouhired , for instance, was sentenced
to death, but as a result of a worldwide media campaign was released from
prison in 1962). While I would argue that the judicial response is clearly not
what is at stake in the ruptural defence, I want to consider the potentia lity of
the judgment to be ruptural in the sense articulat ed by Christodoulidis,
discussed above. Exposing a law to its own contradictions and
violence, revealing the ways in which a law or policy contradicts and
violates rights to basic political freedoms , has clear political - legal
effects and consequences. Is it possible for members of the judiciary to
expose contradictions in the legal order itself, thereby transforming it? Would
the redefinition, for instance, of constitutional provisions guaranteeing r ights
that come into conict with capitalist development imperatives constitute
such a rupture? In my view, the re - definition of the limitations on the
guarantees of individual and group freedom that are inevitably and
invariably utilised to justify state repression of rights in favour of capitalist
development imperatives, security, or colonial settlement have the
potential to contribute to the re - creation of political orders that
could be more just and democratic. We may be reluctant to ever claim
a ju dgment as ruptural out of fear that it would contaminate the
radical nature of this form of immanent critique. Is to describe a
judgment as ruptural to belie the impossibility of justice, the aporia that

confronts every moment of judicial decision - making? I want to suggest that it

is impossible to maintain such a pure position in relation to law, particularly
given its capacity (analogous to that of capital itself) for reinvention. Thus, I
want to explore the potential for judges to subvert state violence e ngendered
by particular forms of political and economic dispossession, through the act
of judgment. In my view, basic rights protected by constitutional guarantees
(as in the Indian case) have been so compromised in the interests of big
business and develo pment imperatives, that re - defining rights to
equality, dignity and security of person, and subverting the interests of
the state - corporate nexus is potentially ruptural, in the sense of
causing a crisis for discrete tentacles of global capitalism. At th is
juncture, we may want to explicitly account for the specific differences
between criminal defence cases and Vergs basic tactic, which is to
challenge the very jurisdiction of the court to adjudicate, to define the act of
resistance as a criminal one, and constitutional challenges to the violation of
rights in cases such as Salwa Judum . While one tactic seeks to render
the illegitimacy of the colonial state bare in its confrontation with anti colonial resistance, the other is a tactic used to re - define the terms
upon which political dissent and resistance take place within the
constitutional bounds of the post - colonial state. These two strategies
appear to be each others opposite; one challenges the legitimacy of the
state itself through refusing the ju risdiction of the court to criminalise
freedom fighters, while the other calls on the judiciary to hold the state to
account for criminalising and violating the rights of its citizens to engage in
political acts of dissent and resistance. However, the common thread that
situates these strategies within a singular political framework is the
fundamental challenge they pose to the states monopoly over
defining the terms upon which anti - colonial and anti - capitalist political
action takes place. Here I will turn to consider a post - colonial context in
which the colonial is continually being re - written, juridically speaking, in light
of neo - liberal economic imperatives unleashed from the late 1980s onwards.
A recent judgment of the Indian Supreme Court provide s an opportunity to
consider a moment in which capitalist development imperatives and the
exploitation of tribal peoples by the state of Chattisgarh are put on trial by a
group of three plaintiffs. The judgment provides, amongst other things, an
opportunit y to consider the strategy of the plaintiffs and also the judicial
response. As I argue below, this judgment presents an instance of rupture
precisely because the fundamental freedoms of the people of Chattisgarh are
redefined by the Court in such a way as to challenge and condemn the
capitalist development imperatives that have put their lives and livelihoods at
risk. Salwa Judum The Indian Supreme Court rendered judgment in the case
of Nandini Sundar and others v the State of Chhattisgarh on July 5th, 2011. In
this case, Sundar, a professor of Sociology at the Delhi University, along with
Ramachandra Guha, an eminent Indian historian, and Mr. E.A.S. Sarma,
former Secretary to Government of India and former Commissioner, Tribal
Welfare, Government of And hra Pradesh, petitioned the Supreme Court of
India alleging, inter alia , that widespread violations of human rights were

occurring in the State of Chattisgarh, on account of the ongoing

Naxalite/Maoist insurgency and the counter - insurgency activities of th e
State government and the Union of India (or the national government). More
specifically, the petitioners alleged that the State was in violation of Articles
14 and 21 of the Indian Constitution. Article 14 guarantees equality before
the law of each citiz en and freedom from discrimination on the basis of race,
religion, caste, sex or place of birth. Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees
the protection of life and personal liberty. While a comprehensive overview of
the Naxalbari movement is beyond the scope of this article, I provide a very
brief description of the movement here, by way of explaining the political and
legal background of the judgment. The Naxalites are revolutionary
communists (Maoists) who split from the Communist Party of India short ly
after independence. The movement includes a social base comprised of
landless, small peasants with marginal landholdings, and adivasis. 32
Bhatia notes that in the state of Bihar, many people join the movement in
order to pursue short - term goals, such as better education, food and
housing, and employment, with revolution a distant concept if not altogether
foreign to more immediate objectives of radical change. 33 Regardless of
whether revolution is the immediate or long - term objective of members of
the N axalite movement, it is clear that along with economic and social rights
lies the desire for freedom from violence and fear in a political context
described by some as semi - feudal. One young Naxalite described the
hangover of feudal attitudes towards lowe r castes by stating the landlords
moustache has got burnt but the twirl still remains. 34 With a powerful and
unrelenting presence in tribal areas, arguably amongst the most
impoverished parts of the country, Naxalites have engaged in nonviolent and
dir ect armed action against state and national governments intent on
pursuing capitalist modes of development at the expense of the poor,
throughout nine different states in India. Specifically, the Naxals have focused
on land rights, minimum wages for labour ers, common property resources
and housing rights. 35 The strategy of armed resistance has met with
criticism across the political spectrum 36 , and it is difficult to gauge the level
of support for the Naxalites amongst left and progressive communities in Indi
a. However, the ascription by Indias Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the
Naxals as the singlest greatest threat to Indias national security 37 was the
precursor to a vicious campaign of repression called Operation Greenhunt
that has attracted criticism by political progressives. This is the background
to the petition brought by Sunder, Guha and Sarma. The petition alleged,
inter - alia, the widespread violation of human rights of people of Dantewada
District and neighboring areas in Chattisgarh. Specifica lly, the petitioners
alleged that the State of Chattisgargh was supporting the activities of an
armed vigilante group called Salwa Judum (Purification Hunt in the Gondi
language). The State was actively promoting the Salwa Judum through the
appointment of Special Police Officers. The government of Chattisgargh, along
with the Union of India government, was alleged to have employed thousands
of special police officers as a part of their counter - insurgency strategies.
The SPOs, a category that finds its origins in colonial policing legislation 38 ,

are members of the tribal communities, and are often minors. The SPOs, as
the Court notes, are armed by the State and given little or no training, to fight
the battles against the Naxalites. At the time the Court passed down its
judgment, 6500 tribal youth have been conscripted into the Salwa Judum
(para 44). He writes that the wholesale militarisation of the movement since
the 1990s has culminated in a vanguard war trapped in an expanding culture
of counterinsur gency. 3 The State of Chattisgargh recruits SPOs (also known
as Koya Commandos) under the provisions of the Chattisgargh Police Act
2007. Under this Act, the SPOs, as the Court notes, enjoy the same powers,
privileges and perform same duties as coordinate constabulary and
subordinate of the Chattisgargh Police. 40 The Union Government of India
sets the limit of the number of SPOs that each state can appoint for the
purposes of reimbursement of an honorarium under the Security Rated
Expenditure Scheme. The State argued on its behalf that the SPOs receive
two months of training covering such things as the use of arms, community
policing, UAC and Yoga training, and the use of scientific and forensic aids in
policing. 41 The Union Government argued that the SPOs have played a
useful role in the collection of intelligence, protection of local inhabitants and
ensuring security of property in d isturbed areas. 42 Despite these attempts
at a defence, the Court found in favour of the petitioners. The Court contrasts
the provisions of the 2007 Act that provide for the conditions under which the
Superintendant of Police may appoint any person as an SPO with the
parallel provisions in the British era legislation. They find that the 2007 Act,
unlike its predecessor, fails to delimit the circumstances under which such
appointments can be made. The circumstances however, do include
terrorist/extremist incidents, and the Court thus finds that the SPOs are
intended to be appointed with the responsibilities of engaging in counter insurgency activities. 43 The Court agrees with the allegations of the
petitioners, that thousands of tribal youth are being ap pointed by both the
State and Union governments to engage in armed conict with the Naxalites,
and that this placing the lives of tribal youth in grave danger. 44 Given that
youth being conscripted have very low levels of education and are often
illiterat e, and that they themselves have likely been the victims of state and
Naxal violence, the Court found that they could not under any conditions of
reasonableness assume that the youth are exercising the requisite degree of
free will and volition in relati on to their comprehension of the conditions of
counter - insurgency and the consequences of their actions, and thus, were
not viewed by the court as freely deciding to join the police force as SPOs. 45
After a very thorough analysis of the conditions under whi ch tribal youths
become SPOs and the use and abuse of the SPOs by the State, the Court
found the State of Chattisgarh to be in violation of Articles 14 and 21 of the
Constitution by appointing tribal youth as SPOs engaged in counter insurgency. The Court s findings in relation to the SPOs are remarkable
insofar as they account for the socio - economic conditions and lived realities
of the tribal youth. In their judgment, however, they go much further than
engaging a contextualised and nuanced approach to the interpretation of the
rights to equality, life and personal liberty. They enquire into the causes of

Naxalite violence, and in doing so, hold capitalist development imperatives to

account; the constitutional rights of tribals and others dispossessed of t heir
lands and livelihoods are being violated in the interests of capital. Drawing on
academic work critical of globalisation, the Court quotes the following: [T]he
persistence of Naxalism , the Maoist revolutionary politics, in India after
over six decades of parliamentary politics is a visible paradox in a democratic
socialist India.... India has come into the twenty - first century with a decade
of departure from the Nehruvian socialism to a free - market, rapidly
globalizing economy, which has created new dynamics (and pockets) of
deprivation along with economic growth. Thus the same set of issues,
particularly those related to land, continue to fuel protest politics, violent
agitator pol itics, as well as armed rebellion.... 46 The Court recognises that
the capitalist development imperatives of the state are the cause of the
armed resistance when they state that the problem lies not with the people of
Chattisgarh, nor those who question th e conditions under which the conict
has been produced, but [t]he problem rests in the amoral political economy
that the State endorses, and the resultant revolutionary politics that it
unnecessarily spawns. 47 Quoting from a report written by an expert g roup
appointed by the Planning Commission of India, the Court takes note of the
irreparable damage caused to marginalised communities by the
development paradigm adopted by the national governmen t since
independence . 48 The economic development pursued has inevitably caused
the displacement of these communities and reduced them to a sub - human
existence. 49 The Expert Group also noted their surprise at the refusal of the
State to recognise the reasons for the political dissent expressed by the
Naxalites, a nd the disruption of law and order. The Court adopts this
observation, and notes that: Rather than heeding such advice [to address the
dehumanisation wreaked by capitalist development policies], which echoes
the wisdom of our Constitution, what we have wi tnessed in the instant
proceedings have been repeated assertions of inevitability [sic] of muscular
and violent statecraft. 50 Following this remarkable assertion of
Constitutional values that are opposed to the state violence used to repress
political dis sent, the Court accounts for the violence rendered by capitalist
development imperatives: The culture of unrestrained selfishness and greed
spawned by modern neo - liberal economic ideology, and the false promises of
ever increasing spirals of consumption l eading to economic growth that will
lift everyone, under - gird this socially, politically and economically
unsustainable set of circumstances in India in general, and Chattisgarh in
particular. 51 The exploitation of natural resources violate principles t hat are
fundamental to governance and this violation eviscerates the promise of
equality before the law, and dignit y of life (Article 21) . 52 Capitalist
development imperatives and neo - liberalism necessarily tarnish and
violate in a primordial sense Ar ticles 14 and 21 of th e Indian Constitution .
53 The Court thus positions the rights to equality and dignity in opposition to
capitalist development imperatives, and most significantly, do not find that
the violation can be justifiably limited. Economic polic ies that violate the
spirit of the Constitution, and run counter to the primary task of the state

which is to provide security for all of its citizens without violating human
dignity cause levels of social unrest that ultimately amount to an abdicatio
n of constitutional r esponsibilities . 54 In their finding that neo - liberal
ideology amongst other economic policies are the root causes of the social
unrest and Naxal militancy, the Court re - values the constitutional and human
rights of its citizens and as serts a radically different vision of the role of the
state in promoting and protecting democracy. Based on the spirit of the
Constitution as enacted at the time of independence, the Court clearly puts
forth a view that the conditions for democracy begin w ith state protection
and enhancement of human dignity and equality, education, and freedom
from violence, rights and values that are contrary to the capitalist economic
policies embraced by the State of Chattisgarh. Constitutional rights claims,
whether we are looking at state of the art constitutions in Canada, South
Africa or elsewhere, do not often go beyond a liberal conception of rights. And
indeed, utilising human rights as a means of provoking political ruptures (as
opposed to ameliorating existin g conditions) surely seems like a rather
bankrupt endeavor, in light of how rights to freedom and liberty have been
effectively co - opted by market imperatives. 55 The ISC judgment thus seems
all the more compelling, in its condemnation of developmental terro rism, and
capitalist greed. The judgment finds in favour of the petitioners. In doing so,
they explicitly critique the capitalist model of development that has
impoverished so many millions of people. They express the view that people
do not rise up in arm ed insurgency against the state without cause, and find
the failure of the State to affirmatively fulfill its obligation to protect the life
and liberty of the SPOs is a breach and violation of the Constitution. They
find, significantly, that the very econ omic policies pursued by the
government, coupled with the treatment of tribals as nothing more than
cannon fodder in the war against the Naxalites, have dehumanised those
most vulnerable t o poverty. The Court adopts the words of Joseph Conrad in
their cond emnation of the impoverishment and exploitation of the tribals by
both the state and union governments. Drawing parallels with Conrads
characterisation of the colonial exploitation of the Congo in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, the Court relates the vilest scramble for loot that ever
disfigured the history of human conscience to the scouring of the earth by
the unquenchable thirst for natural resources by imperialist powers. 56 The
Court also alludes to the virulent auto - immune reaction that e xists like a
germ, waiting to explode, amongst the tribal youths. With no established
mechanism for getting the arms back from the tribal youths, the Court
predicts the possibility of these youths becoming roving groups of armed
men endangering the societ y, and the people in those areas as a third front.
They write that it entirely conceivable that those youngsters refuse to return
the arms Consequently, we would then have a large number of armed
youngsters, running scared for their lives, and in violati on of the law. It is
entirely conceivable that they would then turn against the State, or at least
defend themselves using those firearms, against the security forces
themselves; for their livelihoo d, and subsistence... 57 In finding the
government respons ible for the socio - economic conditions that have led

to revolutionary activity, and in condemning their brutal and inhumane use of

tribal youth in the armed struggle against the Naxalites, (caused, in the view
of the Court, by policies of privatisation tha t leave the state ideologically and
actually incapable of dealing with the social unrest) the Court engages in
an immanent critique of the political ideology and legal policies of
the government. In critiquing the violence of capitalist development
imperat ives pursued by the state, and the inhumane violence utilised by the
state to counter its natural consequences (armed unrest), the Court re invests concepts of liberty, life, and equality with political meaning that goes
beyond their usual liberal interpel lations. The concept of security is
reinterpreted with the interests of the poor in mind, the market logic of
efficiency condemned as a guiding principle and objective of government
policy. Conclusion Outside of a criminal or military law context, a strategy of
rupture might involve an exposure of the contradictions that inhere in
colonial, capitalist legal orders that eviscerate the potentiality that rights hold
to enable ind ividuals to live lives free of fear, violence and exploitation. In
considering how this rupture might occur through the act of judgment, it may
be through challenging the authority of the state to engage its citizens in
ways that violate political and ethi cal norms of freedom. In the judgment
analysed here, the Court seizes the power to define the constitutional norms
and crucially, the meaning of the rights to life, personal liberty and security.
They engage an act of radical re - definition of democratic ri ghts with the
lived conditions of the poorest communities at the forefront of their analysis.
In this judgment the Indian Supreme Court redefines the imperatives of
security as a State obligation to its citizens, to secure for our citizens
conditions of social, economic, and political justice for a ll who live in India... .
58 Without this, the Court notes that the State will not have achieved human
dignity for its citizens. This, for the court, is an essential truth, and policies
which cause vast disaffectio n amongst the poor not only exist in opposition
to this truth but are also necessarily destructive of national unity and
integration . 59 The Court thus identifies Indian democracy as what is at
stake in the revaluing and reinterpretation of rights to life and security of the
person. In directing their analysis at the ways in which neo - liberal capitalism
as a political and economic rationality has launched a frontal assault on the
fundaments of liberal democracy, displacing its basic principles of consti
tutionalism, legal equality, political and civil liberty, political autonomy, and
universal inclusion with market criteria..., 60 the ISC attempts to recuperate
the deracinated vision of democracy that Indian corporateers and
government ministers appear to ha ve in mind. Surely, in a time when even
the most basic conditions for a democracy that attends to the political, social
and economic needs of the common, those with basic common needs of
education, freedom of association and movement, freedom from deprivat ion
and dispossession, are absent, charting such legal terrain opens a space
for political rupture. In considering whether legal judgments can be
ruptural in the sense elucidated by Christodoulidis, and reecting on Sundar
et al , it is clear that an ind ependent judiciary does have the power to
disturb the monopoly of violence exercised by the government, and

to transcend this disturbed framework by offering a radically

different interpretation of security and freedom. Security as the
insurance of egoism reects a Benthamite definition of laws raison dtre as
nothing other than the security of private property. The law exists in order to
provide security for the property - owning classes, security for their actual
wealth and also feelings of security; the law provides freedom from the fear of
loss. In moving far from Benthamite concerns with the protection of private
property, the Court redefines security, a concept fundamental to laws being,
and more particularly, a concept too often used and abused in t he interests
of private corpora tions . Although this use of the law does not refuse the
authority of the court in the way that Vergs strategy of rupture did in the
colonial - criminal law context, it most certainly redefines the ambit of what is
an intel ligible rights claim. By bringing the socio - economic conditions of the
adivasis and tribal peoples to the forefront of their interpretations of the
rights at issue , the Court opens the space for a legal consciousness
that can no longer remain caught up in a fantasy about its own
effectiveness in actually protecting the rights of the poorest and most
vulnerable. This movement by the Indian Supreme Court charts an av enue
that holds promise for the anti - colonial struggles of legal advocates
elsewhere.

2NC
Debating and researching government policy does not
entrench a universal standard colonizer subjecthood, but
refusal on those grounds ironically does
Zanotti, 13 [Laura, associate professor of Political Science at Virginia
Tech., Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2008 and joined the Purdue
University faculty in 2009. Governmentality, Ontology, Methodology: Rethinking Political Agency in the Global World, originally published online 30
December 2013, DOI: 10.1177/0304375413512098, P. Sage Publications]

Unlike positions that adopt governmentality as a descriptive tool and end up embracing the liberal substantialist
ontological assumptions and epistemological framework they criticize, positions that embrace an intra-agential (or

everything is made within specific

practices. Governmentality as a research program that explores the
present as multiply constituted, polytemporal . . . and recombinatory . . . and not just the
expression of a singular logic or the resultant of a linear process61 has an important role to
play as a methodology of inquiry that brings to the foreground the
techniques through which power is practically enacted , the ambiguity
embedded in its practices, and the various tactics for unsettling it that become possible
in the context of multifarious political encounters. Because political power scripts do not
relational) ontology, maintain that nothing is but

stand as substances that preexist the practices of their making and the specific relations that construct them, the
application of a relational ontology and of an archival methodology opens the way for nonidealist, engrained in praxis,

the space for politics is

rooted on ambiguity and performativity, that is on the making and remaking of
meaning, subjects, power, and political spaces in the context of agonic relations. What Does This All
analyses of politics and conceptualizations of political agency. In this framework,

Matter for Political Agency? I will now turn to elaborating more specifically on the relevance of scholarly positions that,
while not necessarily relying mainly on governmentality as a research program, have imagined both power and subjects in
non-substantialist ways and embraced situatedness and ambiguity as the very constitutive space for politics for
conceiving political agency beyond liberal straightjackets. For Richard Ashley and R. B. J. Walker, far from being issues to
be resolved or feared in the name of a sovereign universal truth and the definition of what ones identity is,

ambiguity and uncertainty are indeed political resources to be deployed in sites

of struggles where the differences between inside and outside are uncertain.62 Here political action
is not predicated on asserting the life and freedom or some sovereign
identity, some community of truth that is victimized and repressed by
power.63 Instead, resistance is very much about questioning practices of
power that attempt to impose and fix ways of knowing and doing that shall
be recognized as natural and necessary to autonomous being .64 For Ashley and
Walker, in other words, political action is about questioning assumptions about the
unity of identity, the mighty homogeneity of power, and the stability of categories of thought. Downplaying
ambiguity is indeed itself a technique of power. In taking issue with descriptive governmentality theories, Jacqueline
Best argued representing social events as totally calculable is itself a governmental strategy, part of governments very
attempts to depoliticize them.65 For Best, such representations undermine the analysis of what exceeds efforts to
govern through risk.66 Therefore, one should not be seduced by contemporary governmental strategies own promise of
infallibility. For Best, ambiguity brings to the foreground the limits of knowledge and should be included in current
analyses of governmental tactics. Ambiguity is a fundamental trajectory of power, rooted in the nontransparency of
language that always calls for hermeneutics and opens the possibility for political interpretation and manipulation even in

the presence of governmental strategies of regulation. Indeed, pace liberal institutionalism that looks at norms as
entities and explanatory variables for institutional behavior, regulations are only a shell and norms are always in
context, negotiated and renegotiated in the contingent spaces within which they are interpreted. Postcolonial literature
has also offered interesting insights of how political agency may be exerted in the face of powers self representation as a
powerful and mighty script. Homi Bhabha has argued that colonial powers self-representation as unity is a colonial
strategy of domination and explored the subversive potential of the mimicry and mockery of the colonized.67 For Bhabha,
The display of hybridityits peculiar replicationterrorizes authority with the ruse of recognition, its mimicry, its
mockery. Such a reading of colonial authority profoundly unsettles the demand that figures at the centre of the originary
myth of colonialist power. It is the demand that the space it occupies be unbounded, its reality coincident with the
emergence of an imperialist narrative and history, its discourse nondialogic, its enunciation unitary, unmarked by the
trace of difference-a demand that is recognizable in a range of justificatory Western civil discourses. 68 Bhabha sees

Political agency is a process of hybridization

through transformation of meaning. Thus, Colonial hybridity is not a problem of genealogy or
subjection and resistance as intimately related.

identity between two different cultures which can then be resolved as an issue of cultural relativism. Hybridity is a
problematic of colonial representation and individuation that reverses the effects of the colonialist disavowal, so that other
denied knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authorityits rules of
recognition.69 Political agency is not portrayed as the free subjects total rejection of a unified totalizing assemblage of
power. While (the colonizers) power attempts to reproduce its script by creating the mimic men, that is, the docile
colonial subjects who are almost the same, but not quite,70 it also creates an ambivalence, a contradiction between
same and not quite that can be appropriated by the subaltern. Mimicry is easily camouaged as mockery, with the
colonial subject consequently subverting or refusing to simply repeat the masters lessons. Instead of producing a
controlled imitation or a managed response from the native, the civilizing mission elicits an answer back, a menacing look,
a distorted and disturbing echo.71 Agency is exerted through moves that are imbricated with discourses of power but also
recognize and question them. In this way, universal claims are unsettled and powers purported unity menaced. Bhabha
sends a note of caution to those whose response to subjection is direct opposition, a warning that overcoming
domination, far from getting rid of it, often occasions its mere reversal.72 Thus, Ilan Kapoor suggests that the agent
must play with the cards s/he is dealt, and the hegemon, despite the appearance of absolute strength, needs or desires
the subaltern.73 Purity of identity may not ever have been a possibility, even less when the very ideas of what accounts
for identity and alterity are being rapidly reworked. In relying on Foucaults understanding of power and on feminist
elaborations of Identity,74 Roland Bleiker has embraced a non- substantialist standpoint and the acceptance of ambiguity
as central for conceptualizing human agency and for exploring its actual transformative possibilities. Bleiker questions
positions that see agency as a reection of externally imposed circumstances as well as traditions that bestow the
human subject . . . with a relatively large sense of autonomy.75 Assumptions of fundamental autonomy (or freedom)
would freeze a specific image of human agency to the detriment of all others.76 As Bleiker puts it: A conceptualization
of human agency cannot be based on a parsimonious proposition, a one-sentence statement that captures something like

There is no essence to human agency, no core that

can be brought down to a lowest common denominator, that will crystallize
one day in a long sought after magic formula. A search for such an elusive
centre would freeze a specific image of human agency to the
detriment of all others.77 For Bleiker, universals are indeed tainted with an
imperial avor. This includes the imperialism of ideas of identity based on
liberty and freedom (rather than imbrication, situatedness, and relationality) as the ontological
horizon for understanding human nature and assessing political agency. Nonan authentic nature of human agency.

substantialist positions do not assume the existence of monolithic power scripts or ontologically autonomous subjects; do
not establish linear links between intentions and outcomes, and do not assume that every form of agency needs an
identifiable agent. Instead, they call for careful attention to contexts. In this disposition, Bleiker advocates a modest
conceptualization of agency, one that relies upon Michel de Certeaus operational schemes, Judith Butlers contingent
foundations, or Gilles Deleuzes rhizomes.78 In a similar vein, in a refreshing reading of realism, Brent Steele has
highlighted the problematic aspects of assessing political agency based upon actors intention and focused on contexts as

as actors practice their agency within

the space of a public sphere, intentionalityat bestbecomes dynamic as
new spaces in that sphere open up. Intentions, even if they are genuine,
become largely irrelevant in such a dynamic, violent, and vibrant realm of
human interaction.80 In shifting attention from intention to the context
that made some actions possible, Steele sees agency as a redescription
of existing conditions, rather than the total rejection of or
opposition to a totalizing script. As a consequence, Steele advocates
pragmatist humility for politicians and scholars as well.81 In summary, in non-substantialist
the yardstick for assessing political actions.79 For Steele,

frameworks, agency is conceptualized as modest and multifarious agonic interactions, localized tactics, hybridized
engagement and redescriptions, a series of uncertain and situated responses to ambiguous discourses and practices of
power aimed at the construction of new openings, possibilities and different distributive processes, the outcomes of which
are always to an extent unpredictable.

Political agency here is not imagined as a quest for

individual authenticity in opposition to a unitary nefarious oppressive

Leviathan aimed at the creation of a better totality where subjects can
oat freed of oppression, or a multitude made into a unified subject will
reverse the might of Empire and bring about a condition of immanent social
justice. By not reifying power as a script and subject as monads endowed
with freedom non-substantialist positions open the way for conceptualizing
political agency as an engagement imbricated in praxis. The ethical virtue
that is called for is pragmatist humility, that is the patience of playing with
the cards that are dealt to us, enacting redescriptions and devising tactics for
tinkering82 with what exists in specific contexts. Conclusion In this article, I have
argued that, notwithstanding their critical stance, scholars who use governmentality as a descriptive tool remain
rooted in substantialist ontologies that see power and subjects as standing in a relation of externality. They also downplay
processes of coconstitution and the importance of indeterminacy and ambiguity as the very space where political agency
can thrive. In this way, they drastically limit the possibility for imagining political agency outside the liberal straightjacket.

They represent international liberal biopolitical and governmental power as a

homogenous and totalizing formation whose scripts effectively oppress
subjects, that are in turn imagined as free by nature. Transformations of
power modalities through multifarious tactics of hybridization and redescriptions are not
considered as options. The complexity of politics is reduced to
homogenizing and/or romanticizing narratives and political engagements are
reduced to total heroic rejections or to revolutionary moments.

Specific to Filipino
McCann 12 (Michael McCann, "Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Politics of
Rights Mobilization: Reections on the Asian American Experience," Seattle
Journal for Social Justice: Vol. 11: Iss. 1, Article 9. Available at:
http://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sjsj/vol11/iss1/9**)
IV. T HE P OLITICS OF RIGHTS : L EARNING FROM THE

ASIAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE It is

tempting to draw from my comments so far a fairly cynical view of law and
rights. In short, law and rights simply reflect contests over power, at any moment just registering the ongoing trench
war over who gets what and, specifically, who is included and excluded from full protection by the legal agents of
dominant groups. I

think there is much truth in such a skeptical view, but I also think it is
simplistic. Framing struggles over power, position, and interest as claims of rights can
impart a historically grounded ethical dimension to struggle. This framework can then
open the possibility for changing relationships of power, in part by mobilizing the official
legal establishment, but even more by potentially mobilizing citizens and organizations in civil society who
stand up to challenge either the abuses of rights or the uses of rights to justify abuse, as in these two hist orical cases.

Rights are words, often written on paper, but they become materially powerful when
people, ordinary and extraordinary, invest in them meaning and faith through action to challenge the unjust and
often arb itrary practices of dominant groups through and beyond states. And that is just the message
preached and exemplified by Gordon Hirabayashi: rights must be mobilized and
demanded routinely for them to matter in guiding governmental and social power. As
fine a document as the Constitution is, Gordon Hirabayashi famously told a reporter, it is
nothing but a scrap of paper if citizens are not willing to defend it. 23 Such mobilization of
rights in the cause of justice is hardly easy or natural, however, and Gordons legacy exemplifies what the
struggle takes. For one thing, rights mobilization requires personal virtues of courage and willingness to make
personal sacrifices . Gordon displayed such selfless bravery in his refusal to accept the or der of internment, a defiant

challenge to the illegitimate government denial of basic rights to him and other Japanese Americans. In

waging hi s
campaigns against criminalizing subjugation, he also had to resist the pressures of others in his
community who discouraged rocking the boat and making a bad situation worse by challenging government injustice.

Gordon made a lonely stand in his initial resistance. 24 Young Filipino American
activists in the 1970s, including Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, displayed that same type of
independent courage and persistence in the face of many obstacles and dangers. Indeed, they not only
challenged powerful corporations and the American legal establishment that protected
their unjust practices, but the young activists boldly opposed a dictator (who declared martial law) as well as his elite
supporters in the American government. 25 The young reformers also persisted when other workers, especially senior
manongs , 26 were wary about defiant challenges to the status quo. Gordon was willing to go to prison; Gene and Silme
lost their liv es to assassins. Defiant action to demand rights can be risky business, and often requires such commitment
and willingness to make sacrifices for larger causes.Personal

courage and persistence alone are

rarely sufficient. Struggles for rights also require organizational support, financial
resources, and allied experts, usually including cause-oriented lawyers . Indeed, struggles for
rights typically require movements that enlist many forms of organized support.
The struggle for the ruling on coram nobis and legislated reparations during the 1980s, in particular, illustrates the
important role of committed lawyers, community mobilization, and organizational alliance, both within and beyond the
Japanese American communities. The Filipino Americans workers who initially foug ht for citizenship and workplace
organizing rights, and later for work place justice and democracy in the Philippines, likewise understood the political
imperative to build a movement within the union, as well as within the broader Filipino community and beyond, including
among diverse progressive organizations. Finally,

each of these legacies illustrates that struggles for

rights must be willing to go beyond exclusive reliance on litigation to produce
change . In each campaign, efforts to mobilize media support, to influence public opinion, and
to lobby members of government, the business community, and the academy were critical to
success. Struggles over rights are most productive when they can convince dominant groups that it is both a matter of
public principle and in the political interest of the majority, including the dominant group, to do the right thing. 27 As
Gordon put it, I never look at my case as just my own, or just as a Japanese American case. It is an American case, with
principles that affect the fundamental human rights of all Americans, and, I might add, all peoples. 28

1NR

gender
Capital underlies gender relationsthe aff is a bandaid
solution that distracts from systemic critique
Cotter, assistant professor of English William Jewell College, former research
fellow Center for the Study of Women @ UCLA, 8
(Jennifer, Class, the Digital, and (Immaterial) Feminism, The Red Critique
Vol. 13, Fall/Winter)

when Wajcman discusses technology as socio-material what she

means by the "social" are the cultural practices through which technologies are
(re)interpreted and put to "new" uses in everyday life : "Long after artefacts leave the
More specifically,

research laboratory," she contends, "they continue to evolve in everyday practices of use" (106-107). She
argues that it is this (so called) "interpretative exibility of technology" which "means that the possibility

Social relations in other

words, are only understood by Wajcman as "relations of interpretation"a matter of "recoding" and "re-presenting" technologies in new form. Moreover, what she means by
the "material" aspect of technology is the "embodied"the physical, aesthetic,
and empirical appearance of technology. Technology, in this analytical framework, is
completely abstracted from the historical and material relations of
production that produce it, that convert it into a commodity, and that, moreover, put it to use in the
production process as a tool to increase the extraction of surplus-value from workers. Moreover, gender
as the social relation in which technology is situated according to Wajcman's analysis, is also
reduced to a relation of interpretation. Gender is only understood as a code,
construct, and discourse which becomes "material" through being
"embodied" in the design of technology." "[G]ender relations," she claims, "can be thought of as
always exists for a technology and its effects to be otherwise" (106-107).

materialized in technology, and masculinity and femininity in turn acquire their meaning and character

transformation of
gender relations, therefore, is reduced to a matter of changing cultural attitudes
and values of gender. But the material reality of "gender" is not at root, a code,
construct, aesthetic design, nor is it the "embodiment" of these codes in the physical and
aesthetic design of technology, rather, it is a social relation of capital. Gender
differences and relations are historically (re)produced out of the social division of
labor and property relations. By social division of labor and property relations, to be clear, I mean class:
through their enrolment and embeddedness in working machines" (107). The

the social division of labor and property between those who privately own the means of production and
therefore live and profit off the surplus-labor of workers, and all of the rest who only own their labor to sell
in order to survive and are exploited. Gender relations are a site of social struggle in capitalism because

gender in class society is what Marx and Engels call an "instrument of labor" making
it more or less expensive to use (Manifesto 491). Gender becomes useful to capital,
as an instrument of labor, to raise or lower the rate of exploitation by , for
example, organizing workers into divided and competing labor forces which can be
pitted against each other in order to divide class solidarity and cheapen the cost
of labor. Gender relations are also useful for capital as an instrument of labor, by
serving as tool in controlling the rate of growth and development of the surplus-

labor producing population. For example, in historical conditions in which capital needs to reproduce
the surplus-labor producing population in absolute terms (adding a new generation of workers), gender
serves as a means to push women into reproductive labor and childbearing. Moreover, in historical
conditions of production in which capital is looking to deepen the exploitation of the current workforce

gender has served as a tool to manipulate the rate of

exploitation within the working day by devaluing the labor-power of women,
pulling them into production at a cheaper rate, pushing men out, and , as a
consequence lowing the wages of men as well. Gender, in short, is a tool of class
warfare by the ruling class against workers. The use of gender as an instrument of labor is
within capitalism,

rooted in capital's dependence on labor-power as the only commodity that produces value. As an

culturally modified, revised, etc. depending on

what is most profitable to capital under the existing historical conditions of production. What is
instrument of labor, gender relations can be

not changed, however, with these cultural modifications in gender relations, is the social relations of
production based on the exploitation of surplus-labor. Production for profit is not transformed without
abolishing private ownership of the means of production. " Materiality"

legitimates getting rid

of an outdated ideology of gender that capitalism no longer needs, while
doing nothing to address gender as an instrument of labor to increase the rate of
exploitation and profit.

at: need a blueprint

Blueprints arent keyclass-based critique needs to
cohere and collectivize before it can strategizethis is a
DA to the aff because they delay that process
Bjerre, assistant professor of philosophy Aarhus University, and Lausten,
associate professor of political science Aarhus University, 10
(Henrik and Carsten, The Subject of Politics: Slavoj iek's Political
Philosophy, p. 103-4)

Critique does not necessarily

become less urgent because of the absence of an explicit, alternative vision.
Injustice and indignity are phenomena that are reected back onto the
system that produces them, and the social indignation does contain, in the
negative, if you will, a vision of another future society. The combination of the Hegelian
That being said, one could also turn the problematic around.

double negation (not only to negate the unjust concrete problems of indviduals or groups, but also the

a Marxist political economy points towards a

society where the dark sides of capitalism do not reign. The problem that we are
confronted with, is that it is currently very difficult to make this society present
even as an option. Nonetheless, it must be attempted. When iek, after a public
structures that produced them) and

lecture in the US, was forced by an angry person in the audience to answer the question about what kind
of society it is that he wants, but never talks about, he answered with a seemingly surprised exclamation:

this approach to Marxism is not that different from Marx

and Engels themselves. In German Ideology , it is thus written: Communism is for us not a
state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to
adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the
present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in
existence. (Marx 1975) In any case, iek is an important voice in the reintroduction of Marxism
that has gained some momentum in recent years not least since the global
financial crisis broke out in 2008. His questioning of capitalism has a number of
acute points that are difficult to dismiss, and he seems to be part of a broader
theoretical endeavour to prepare a new program for the left , rather than to merely
Communism, of course! In fact,

repeat old, leftist dogma. And it still very much makes sense to distinguish between left and right, although
it is sometimes denied. Let us, in order to summarise some of the main points of this and the preceding
chapter, quote ieks elaboration of this distinction. While the Right legitimizes its suspension of the
Ethical by its anti-universalist stance that is, by a reference to its particular (religious patriotic) identity
which overrules any universal moral or legal standards the Left legitimizes its suspension of the Ethical
precisely by means of a reference to the true Universality to come. Or to put it another way the Left
simultaneously accepts the antagonistic character of society (there is no neutral position, struggle is
constitutive) and remains universalist (speaking on behalf of universal emancipation): in the leftish

accepting the radically antagonistic that is, political character of

social life, accepting the necessity of taking sides, is the only way to be
effectively universal . (iek 1999: 223f)
perspective,

Rejection creates a space for resistancethats sufficient

Johnston, interdisciplinary research fellow in psychoanalysis Emory U, 4
(Adrian, The Cynics Fetish: Slavoj Zizek and the Dynamics of Belief,
Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society)
Perhaps the absence of a detailed political roadmap in ieks recent writings
isnt a major shortcoming. Maybe, at least for the time being, the most important task
is simply the negativity of the critical struggle, the effort to cure an
intellectual constipation resulting from capitalist ideology and thereby to truly
open up the space for imagining authentic alternatives to the prevailing state
of the situation. Another definition of materialism offered by iek is that it amounts to accepting the
internal inherence of what fantasmatically appears as an external deadlock or hindrance ( iek, 2001d, pp
2223) (with fantasy itself being defined as the false externalization of something within the subject,

From this perspective,

seeing through ideological fantasies by learning how to think again outside
the confines of current restrictions has, in and of itself, the potential to
operate as a form of real revolutionary practice (rather than remaining merely an
instance of negative/critical intellectual reection). Why is this the case? Recalling the analysis of
commodity fetishism, the social efficacy of money as the universal medium of
exchange (and the entire political economy grounded upon it) ultimately relies upon nothing
more than a kind of magic, that is, the belief in moneys social efficacy by
those using it in the processes of exchange. Since the value of currency is, at
bottom, reducible to the belief that it has the value attributed to it (and that
everyone believes that everyone else believes this as well), derailing capitalism by destroying
its essential financial substance is, in a certain respect, as easy as dissolving
the mere belief in this substances powers. The external obstacle of the
capitalist system exists exclusively on the condition that subjects, whether
consciously or unconsciously, internally believe in it capitalisms lifeblood, money, is simply a fetishistic crystallization of a belief in others belief
in the socio-performative force emanating from this same material . And yet, this
namely, the illusory projection of an inner obstacle, iek, 2000a, p 16).

point of capitalisms frail vulnerability is simultaneously the source of its enormous strength: its vampiric
symbiosis with individual human desire, and the fact that the late-capitalist cynics fetishism enables the
disavowal of his/her de facto belief in capitalism, makes it highly unlikely that people can simply be
persuaded to stop believing and start thinking (especially since, as iek claims, many of these people are

Or, the more disquieting possibility to

entertain is that some people today, even if one succeeds in exposing them
to the underlying logic of their position, might respond in a manner
resembling that of the Judas-like character Cypher in the film The Matrix
convinced that they already have ceased believing).

(Cypher opts to embrace enslavement by illusion rather than cope with the discomfort of dwelling in the

faced with the choice between living the capitalist lie or

wrestling with certain unpleasant truths, many individuals might very well
deliberately decide to accept what they know full well to be a false pseudoreality, a deceptively comforting fiction (Capitalist commodity fetishism or the truth? I
desert of the real):

choose fetishism).

perm
Disads
Footnoting---locating class alongside identity strips class
of its concrete, socioeconomic nature
McLaren, Distinguished Fellow Critical Studies @ Chapman U and UCLA
urban schooling prof, and Scatamburlo-DAnnibale, associate professor of
Communication U Windsor, 4
(Peter and Valerie, Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of
difference, Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol. 36, Issue 2, p. 183-199)

In stating this, we need to include an important caveat that differentiates our approach from those

the well-worn race/class/gender triplet which can sound, to the

uninitiated, both radical and vaguely Marxian. It is not. Race, class and
gender, while they invariably intersect and interact, are not co-primary. This
triplet approximates what the philosophers might call a category mistake. On the surface
invoking

the triplet may be convincingsome people are oppressed because of their race, others as a result of their

this is grossly misleading for it is not that

some individuals manifest certain characteristics known as class which then
results in their oppression; on the contrary, to be a member of a social class just
is to be oppressed and in this regard class is a wholly social category (Eagleton,
1998, p. 289). Furthermore, even though class is usually invoked as part of the aforementioned
and much vaunted triptych, it is usually gutted of its practical, social dimension
or treated solely as a cultural phenomenon as just another form of
difference. In these instances, class is transformed from an economic and, indeed,
social category to an exclusively cultural or discursive one or one in which class
merely signifies a subject position. Class is therefore cut off from the political
economy of capitalism and class power severed from exploitation and a power
structure in which those who control collectively produced resources only do so because of the value
generated by those who do not (Hennessy & Ingraham, 1997, p. 2). Such theorizing has had the
effect of replacing an historical materialist class analysis with a cultural
analysis of class. As a result, many post-Marxists have also stripped the idea of
class of precisely that element which, for Marx, made it radicalnamely its status as a
universal form of exploitation whose abolition required (and was also central to)
the abolition of all manifestations of oppression (Marx, 1978, p. 60).
gender, yet others because of their classbut

With regard to this issue, Kovel (2002) is

particularly insightful, for he explicitly addresses an issue which continues to vex the Leftnamely the priority given to different categories of what he calls dominative splittingthose categories of gender, class,
race, ethnic and national exclusion, etc. Kovel argues that we need to ask the question of priority with respect to what? He notes that if we mean priority with respect to time, then the category of gender would
have priority since there are traces of gender oppression in all other forms of oppression. If we were to prioritize in terms of existential significance, Kovel suggests that we would have to depend upon the immediate
historical forces that bear down on distinct groups of peoplehe offers examples of Jews in 1930s Germany who suffered from brutal forms of anti-Semitism and Palestinians today who experience anti-Arab racism
under Israeli domination. The question of what has political priority, however, would depend upon which transformation of relations of oppression are practically more urgent and, while this would certainly depend
upon the preceding categories, it would also depend upon the fashion in which all the forces acting in a concrete situation are deployed. As to the question of which split sets into motion all of the others

, the

class relations entail the state as an

instrument of enforcement and control, and it is the state that shapes and
organizes the splits that appear in human ecosystems. Thus class is both
logically and historically distinct from other forms of exclusion (hence we should not
priority would have to be given to class since

talk of classism to go along with sexism and racism, and species-ism). This is, first of all, because

class is an essentially man-made category, without root in even a mystified

biology. We cannot imagine a human world without gender distinctions

although we can imagine a world without domination by gender. But a world

without class is eminently imaginableindeed, such was the human world for the great
majority of our species time on earth, during all of which considerable fuss was made over gender.

class signifies one side of a larger figure that

includes a state apparatus whose conquests and regulations create races and shape
gender relations. Thus there will be no true resolution of racism so long as
class society stands, inasmuch as a racially oppressed society implies the
activities of a class-defending state. Nor can gender inequality be enacted
away so long as class society, with its state, demands the super-exploitation of
women's labor. (Kovel, 2002, pp. 123124) Contrary to what many have claimed, Marxist theory
does not relegate categories of difference to the conceptual mausoleum; rather, it
has sought to reanimate these categories by interrogating how they are
refracted through material relations of power and privilege and linked to relations of
Historically, the difference arises because

production. Moreover, it has emphasized and insisted that the wider political and economic system in
which they are embedded needs to be thoroughly understood in all its complexity. Indeed, Marx made
clear how constructions of race and ethnicity are implicated in the circulation process of variable capital.
To the extent that gender, race, and ethnicity are all understood as social constructions rather than as
essentialist categories the effect of exploring their insertion into the circulation of variable capital
(including positioning within the internal heterogeneity of collective labor and hence, within the division of
labor and the class system) must be interpreted as a powerful force reconstructing them in distinctly

Unlike contemporary narratives which tend to

focus on one or another form of oppression, the irrefragable power of historical
materialism resides in its ability to reveal (1) how forms of oppression based on categories of
difference do not possess relative autonomy from class relations but rather
constitute the ways in which oppression is lived/experienced within a classbased system; and (2) how all forms of social oppression function within an overarching capitalist
system. This framework must be further distinguished from those that invoke the
terms classism and/or class elitism to (ostensibly) foreground the idea that class
matters (cf. hooks, 2000) since we agree with Gimenez (2001, p. 24) that class is not simply
another ideology legitimating oppression. Rather, class denotes exploitative relations
between people mediated by their relations to the means of production. To marginalize such a
conceptualization of class is to conate an individual's objective location in the
intersection of structures of inequality with people's subjective understandings of
who they really are based on their experiences.
capitalist ways (Harvey, 2000, p. 106).

The affs misreading of history naturalizes violent

relations of production and propagates a form of
conservative racial neoliberalism that turns the case.
Adolph Reed, professor of political science at University of Pennsylvania,
Marx, Race, and Neoliberalism, New Labor Forum 22(1) 13
A Marxist perspective can be most helpful for understanding race and
racism insofar as it perceives capitalism dialectically, as a social totality that
includes modes of production, relations of production, and the pragmatically
evolving ensemble of institutions and ideologies that lubricate and propel
its reproduction. From this perspective, Marxisms most important

contribution to making sense of race and racism in the United States may be
demystification. A historical materialist perspective should stress that
racewhich includes racism, as one is unthinkable without the other
is a historically specific ideology that emerged, took shape, and has
evolved as a constitutive element within a definite set of social
relations anchored to a particular system of production. Race is a
taxonomy of ascriptive difference, that is, an ideology that constructs
populations as groups and sorts them into hierarchies of capacity, civic worth,
and desert based on natural or essential characteristics attributed to them.
Ideologies of ascriptive difference help to stabilize a social order by
legitimizing its hierarchies of wealth, power, and privilege, including
its social division of labor, as the natural order of things.1 Ascriptive
ideologies are just-so stories with the potential to become self-fulfilling
prophecies. They emerge from self-interested common sense as folk
knowledge: they are known to be true unreectively because they seem to
comport with the evidence of quotidian experience. They are likely to become
generally assumed as self-evident truth, and imposed as such by law and
custom, when they converge with and reinforce the interests of powerful
strata in the society. Race and gender are the most familiar ascriptive
hierarchies in the contemporary United States. Ironically, that is so in part
because egalitarian forces have been successful in the last half-century in
challenging them and their legal and material foundations. Inequalities based
directly on claims of race and gender difference are now negatively
sanctioned as discrimination by law and prevailing cultural norms. Of course,
patterns of inequality persist in which disadvantage is distributed
asymmetrically along racial and gender lines, but practically no oneeven
among apologists for those patterned inequalitiesopenly admits to
espousing racism or sexism. It is telling in this regard that Glenn Beck
stretches to appropriate Martin Luther King, Jr., and denounces Barack Obama
as racist, and that Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Ann Coulter accuse Democrats
of sexism. Indeed, just as race has been and continues to be unthinkable
without racism, today it is also unthinkable without antiracism. Crucially, the
significance of race and gender, and their content as ideologies of essential
difference have changed markedly over time in relation to changing political
and economic conditions. Regarding race in particular, classificatory
schemes have varied substantially, as have the narratives elaborating
them. That is, which populations count as races, the criteria determining
them, and the stakes attached to counting as one, or as one or another at
any given time, have been much more fluid matters than our
discussions of the notion would suggest. And that is as it must be because
race, like all ideologies of ascriptive hierarchy, is fundamentally
pragmatic. After all, these belief systems emerge as legitimations of
concrete patterns of social relations in particular contexts. Race
emerged historically along with the institution of slavery in the New World. A
rich scholarship examines its emergence, perhaps most signally with respect
to North America in Edmund Morgans American Slavery, American Freedom
and Kathleen Browns Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs.

Both focus on the simultaneous sharpening of distinctions between slavery

and indentured servitude, and the institutional establishment of black and
white, or African and English, as distinct, mutually exclusive status categories
over the course of the seventeenth century in colonial Virginia.2 Race and
racism took shape as an ideology and material reality during the following
century initially in the context of the contest between free- and slave-labor
systems and the related class struggle that eventually produced the modern
notion of free labor as the absolute control of a worker over her or his
person.3 After defeat of the Confederate insurrection led to slaverys
abolition, race as white supremacy evolved in the South as an element in
the struggle over what freedom was to mean and how it would be
harmonized with the plantocracys desired labor system and the social order
required to maintain it. That struggle culminated in the planter-dominated
ruling classs victory, which was consolidated in racialized
disfranchisement and imposition of the codified white supremacist
regime of racial segregation. In the latter half of the nineteenth century,
the West Coast fights over importation of Chinese labor and Japanese
immigration also condensed around racialist ideologies. Railroad operators
and other importers of Chinese labor imagined that Chinese workers
distinctive racial characteristics made them more tractable and capable of
living on less than white Americans; opponents argued that those very racial
characteristics would degrade American labor and that Chinese were racially
unassimilable. Postbellum southern planters imported Chinese to the
Mississippi Delta to compete with black sharecroppers out of the same
racialist presumptions of greater tractability, as did later importers of Sicilian
labor to the sugarcane and cotton fields. Large-scale industrial production in
the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, of course, depended on
mass labor immigration mainly from the eastern and southern fringes of
Europe. The innovations of race sciencethat is, of racialist folk ideology
transformed into an academic professionpromised to assist employers
needs for rational labor force management and were present in the
foundation of the fields of industrial relations and industrial psychology. Hugo
Mnsterberg, a founding luminary of industrial psychology, included race
psychological diagnosis as an element in assessment of employees
capabilities, although he stressed that racial or national temperaments are
averages and that there is considerable individual variation within groups. He
argued that assessment, therefore, should be leavened with consideration of
individuals characteristics and that the inuence of group psychology
would be significant only if the employment not of a single person, but of a
large number, is in question, as it is most probable that the average
character will show itself in a sufficient degree as soon as many members of
the group are involved.4 As scholarship on race science and its kissing
cousin, eugenics, has shown, research that sets out to find evidence of racial
difference will find it, whether or not it exists. Thus, race science produced
increasingly refined taxonomies of racial groupsup to as many as
sixty-three basic races. The apparent specificity of race theorists just-so
stories about differential racial capacities provided rationales for immigration

restriction, sterilization, segregation, and other regimes of inequality. It also

held out the promise of assisting employers in assigning workers to jobs for
which they were racially suited. John Bodnar and his coauthors reproduce a
Racial Adaptability Chart used by a Pittsburgh company in the 1920s that
maps thirty-six different racial groups capacities for twenty-two distinct jobs,
eight different atmospheric conditions, jobs requiring speed or precision, and
day or night shift work. For example, Letts were supposedly fair with pick and
shovel, and concrete and wheelbarrow, bad as hod carriers, cleaners and
caretakers, and boilermakers helpers; good as coal passers and blacksmiths
as well as at jobs requiring speed or precision; and good in cool and dry,
smoky or dusty conditions; fair in oily or dirty processes; and good on both
day and night shifts.5 Of course, all this was bogus, nothing more than
narrow upper-class prejudices parading about as science. It was
convincing only if one shared the folk narratives of essential hierarchy that
the research assumed from the outset. But the race theories did not have to
be true to be effective. They had only to be used as if they were true to
produce the material effects that gave the ideology an authenticating
verisimilitude. Poles became steel workers in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Buffalo,
Chicago, and Gary not for any natural aptitude or affinity but because
employers and labor recruiters sorted them into work in steel mills.
Even the New Deal embedded premises of racial and gender hierarchy in its
most fundamental policy initiatives. The longer-term implications of the twotiered system of social benefits thus created persist to the present day. This
extensive history illustrates that, as Marxist theorist Harry Chang observed in
the 1970s, racial formation has always been an aspect of class
formation, as a social condition of production. Race has been a
constitutive element in a capitalist social dynamic in which social
types (instead of persons) figure as basic units of economic and
political management.6 Chang perceptively analogized race to what Marx
described as the fetish character of money. Marx, he noted, described money
as the officiating object (or subject as an object) in the reification of a
relation called value and as a function-turned-into-an-object. Race is
similarly a functiona relation of hierarchy rooted in the capitalist division of
laborturned into an object.7 Money seeks gold to objectify itselfgold
does not cry out to be money. Similarly, the cutting edge of racial
determinations of persons is a social imposition on nature, which on its own
yields no such categories.8 Although discussing race specifically, Chang also
puts his finger on the central characteristic of ideologies of ascriptive
hierarchy in general: In practice, the political economic raison detre of racial
categories lies in the iron-clad social validity that is possible if relations are
objectified as the intrinsic quality of racial features. Blacks as the absence
of the minimum guarantee of bourgeois rights (against enslavement and
bondage) presupposes Whites as a guarantee of immunity from such social
degradation.9 This formulation applies equally to populations stigmatized as
feebleminded, natural-born criminals, white trash, poverty cultures, the
underclass, crack babies, superpredators, and other narratives of ascriptive
hierarchy. Each such narrative is a species of the genus of ideologies that

legitimize capitalist social relations by naturalizing them. The characteristic

linking the species of this genus of ascriptive ideologies is that they are
populations living, if not exactly outside the minimum guarantee of
bourgeois rights, at least beneath the customary oor of social worth and
regard. In practice, the latter devolves toward the former. Changs
perspective may help us see more clearly how ascriptive ideologies function.
It certainly is no surprise that dominant classes operate among themselves
within a common sense that understands their dominance unproblematically,
as decreed by the nature of things. At moments when their dominance faces
challenges, those narratives may be articulated more assertively and for
broader dissemination. This logic, for example, underlay the antebellum shift,
in the face of mounting antislavery agitation, from pragmatic defenses of
slavery as a necessary evila stance that presumed a ruling class speaking
among itself aloneto essentialist arguments, putatively transcending class
interests, namely, that slavery was a positive good. It also may be seen in the
explosion of racialist ideology in its various forms, including eugenics, in
justifying imperialist expansionism and consolidating the defeat of populism
and working-class insurgency in the years overlapping the turn of the
twentieth century. That same dynamic was at work displacing the
language of class and political economy by culture and culturology in
the postwar liberalism that consolidated the defeat of CIO radicalism. Later,
racial essentialism helped reify the struggles against southern segregation,
racial discrimination, inequality, and poverty during the 1960s by
separating discussions of injustice from capitalisms logic of
reproduction. Poverty was reinvented as a cultural dilemma, and white
racism singled out as the root of racial inequality. In this way, Changs
perspective can be helpful in sorting out several important limitations in
discussions of race and class characteristic of todays left. It can also help to
make sense of the striking convergence between the relative success of
identitarian understandings of social justice and the steady, intensifying
advance of neoliberalism. It suggests a kinship where many on the left
assume an enmity. The rise of neoliberalism in particular suggests a serious
problem with arguments that represent race and class as dichotomous or
alternative frameworks of political critique and action, as well as those
arguments that posit the dichotomy while attempting to reconcile its
elements with formalistic gestures, for example, the common race and
class construction. This sort of historical materialist perspective throws
into relief a fundamental limitation of the whiteness notion that has been
fashionable within the academic left for roughly two decades: it reifies
whiteness as a transhistorical social category. In effect, it treats
whitenessand therefore raceas existing prior to and above social
context.10 Both who qualifies as white and the significance of being white
have altered over time. Moreover, whiteness discourse functions as a kind
of moralistic expos rather than a basis for strategic politics; this is
clear in that the program signally articulated in its name has been simply to
raise a demand to abolish whiteness, that is, to call on whites to renounce
their racial privilege. In fact, its fixation on demonstrating the depth of

whites embrace of what was known to an earlier generations version of this

argument as white skin privilege and the inclination to slide into
teleological accounts in which groups or individuals approach or
pursue whiteness erases the real historical dynamics and
contradictions of American racial history. The whiteness discourse
overlaps other arguments that presume racism to be a sui generis form of
injustice. Despite seeming provocative, these arguments do not go
beyond the premises of the racial liberalism from which they commonly
purport to dissent. They differ only in rhetorical ourish, not content.
Formulations that invoke metaphors of disease or original sin reify racism by
disconnecting it from the discrete historical circumstances and social
structures in which it is embedded, and treating it as an autonomous force.
Disconnection from political economy is also a crucial feature of
postwar liberalisms construction of racial inequality as prejudice or
intolerance. Racism becomes an independent variable in a moralistic
argument that is idealist intellectually and ultimately defeatist
politically. This tendency to see racism as sui generis also generates a
resistance to precision in analysis. It is fueled by a tendency to inate the
language of racism to the edge of its reasonable conceptual limits, if not
beyond. Ideological commitment to shoehorning into the rubric of racism all
manner of inequalities that may appear statistically as racial disparities has
yielded two related interpretive pathologies. One is a constantly
expanding panoply of neologismsinstitutional racism, systemic
racism, structural racism, color-blind racism, post-racial racism, etc.
intended to graft more complex social dynamics onto a simplistic and
frequently psychologically inected racism/anti-racism political ontology.
Indeed, these efforts bring to mind [Thomas S.] Kuhns account of attempts to
accommodate mounting anomalies to salvage an interpretive paradigm in
danger of crumbling under a crisis of authority.11 A second essentialist
sleight-of-hand advances claims for the primacy of race/racism as an
explanation of inequalities in the present by invoking analogies to
regimes of explicitly racial subordination in the past. In these arguments,
analogy stands in for evidence and explanation of the contemporary
centrality of racism. Michelle Alexanders widely read and cited book, The
New Jim Crow, is only the most prominent expression of this tendency; even
she has to acknowledge that the analogy fails because the historical
circumstances are so radically different.12 From the historical materialist
standpoint, the view of racial inequality as a sui generis injustice and
dichotomous formulations of the relation of race and class as systems of
hierarchy in the United States are not only miscast but also
fundamentally counterproductive. It is particularly important at this
moment to recognize that the familiar taxonomy of racial difference is but
one historically specific instance of a genus of ideologies of ascriptive
hierarchy that stabilize capitalist social reproduction. I have argued previously
that entirely new race-like taxonomies could come to displace the familiar
ones. For instance, the underclass could become even more race-like as a
distinctive, essentialized population, by our current folk norms, multiracial in

composition, albeit most likely including in perceptibly greater frequencies

people who would be classified as black and Latino racially, though as small
enough pluralities to preclude assimilating the group ideologically as a simple
proxy for nonwhite inferiors.13 This possibility looms larger now. Struggles for
racial and gender equality have largely divested race and gender of their
common sense verisimilitude as bases for essential difference. Moreover,
versions of racial and gender equality are now also incorporated into the
normative and programmatic structure of left neoliberalism. Rigorous
pursuit of equality of opportunity exclusively within the terms of given
patterns of capitalist class relationswhich is after all the ideal of racial
liberalismhas been fully legitimized within the rubric of diversity. That
ideal is realized through gaining rough parity in distribution of social goods
and bads among designated population categories. As Walter Benn Michaels
has argued powerfully, according to that ideal, the society would be just if 1
percent of the population controlled 90 percent of the resources, provided
that blacks and other nonwhites, women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender (LGBT) people were represented among the 1 percent in roughly
similar proportion as their incidence in the general population.14 Given the
triumph of racial liberalism, it is entirely possible that new discourses of
ascriptive difference might take shape that fit the folk common sense of our
time and its cultural norms and sensibilities. Indeed, the explosive resurgence
in recent years of academically legitimated determinist discoursesall of
which simply rehearse the standard idealist tropes and circular garbage
in/garbage out faux scientific narrativesreinforce that concern. The
undergirding premises of intellectual programs like evolutionary psychology,
behavioral economics, genes and politics, and neurocriminology are strikingly
like straight-line extrapolations from Victorian race sciencealthough for the
most part, though not entirely, scholars operating in those areas are
scrupulous, or at least fastidious, in not implicating the familiar racial
taxonomies in their deterministic sophistries. Some scholars imagine that
epigeneticsa view that focuses on the interplay of genes and
environment in producing organisms and genotypesavoids determinism by
providing causal explanations that are not purely biological. Recent research
purporting to find epigenetic explanations for socioeconomic inequality
already foreshadows a possible framework for determinist underclass
narratives that avoid the taints associated with biological justifications of
inequality and references to currently recognized racial categories.15
Ironically, some enthusiasts for this epigenetic patter expressly liken it to
Lamarckian evolutionary theory, which stressed the heritability of
characteristics acquired after birth, as though this were insulation against
determinism. As historian of anthropology George Stocking, Jr., and others
have shown, Lamarckian race theory was no less determinist than its
Darwinian alternative, which posited strictly biological determinism. As
Stocking notes, Lamarckians dependence on a vague sociobiological
indeterminism made it all the more difficult to challenge their circular race
theories.16 In any event, narrow approaches that reduce ascriptive ideology
to reified notions of race/racism are not at all up to the challenge posed by

this new determinist turn. Finally, the adamant commitment to a race-first

perspective on inequalities that show up as statistical disparities has a
material foundation. The victories of the civil rights movement carried with
them a more benign and unavoidable political imperative. Legal remedies can
be sought for injustices understood as discrimination on the basis of race,
gender, or other familiar categories of invidious ascription; no such
recourse exists for injustices generated through capitalisms logic of
production and reproduction without mediation through one of those
ascriptive categories. As I have argued elsewhere, this makes identifying
racism a technical requirement for pursuing certain grievances, not the
basis of an overall strategy for pursuit of racial justice, or, as I believe
is a clearer left formulation, racial equality as an essential component of a
program of social justice.17 Yet, for those who insist that racial reductionism
is more than a pragmatic accommodation to the necessities of pursuing legal
or administrative grievances, something more is at play. A historical
materialist perspective can be helpful for identifying the glue that binds that
commitment to a race-first political discourse and practice. All politics in
capitalist society is class, or at least a class-inected, politics. That is also
true of the political perspective that condenses in programs such as
reparations, antiracism, and insistence on the sui generis character of racial
injustice. I submit that those tendencies come together around a politics that
is entirely consistent with the neoliberal redefinition of equality and
democracy along disparitarian lines. That politics reects the social position
of those positioned to benefit from the view that the market is, or can be, a
just, effective, or even acceptable, system for rewarding talent and virtue and
punishing their opposites and that, therefore, removal of artificial
impediments to functioning like race and gender will make it even more
efficient and just.18 This is the politics of actual or would-be race relations
administrators, and it is completely embedded within American
capitalism and its structures of elite brokerage. It is fundamentally
antagonistic to working-class politics, notwithstanding left
identitarians gestural claims to the contrary.

at: straight turn

Proletariat movements overcome racism by focusing on
the superordinate goal of class revolution---collective
organizing along labor lines increases empathy---studies
and empirical examples prove
Charlotte Garden, Assistant Professor, Seattle University School of Law,
and Nancy Leong, Assistant Professor, University of Denver Sturm College
of Law, "So Closely Intertwined": Labor and Racial Solidarity, 81 GEO.
WASH. L. REV. 1135 (13)

The conventional wisdom casts unions as perpetrators of racial capitalism.

360 In this narrative, unions are predominantly white institutions that are
cynically motivated to derive economic value from nonwhite presence
without any interest in bettering the lives of nonwhite individuals or
improving relations between white and nonwhite individuals. 361 In contrast
to this narrative, unions and their members repeatedly demonstrate
that they care about racial justice, and psychological and sociological
research shows that the structure of unions themselves can encourage
racial empathy. Individuals' capacity for empathy and solidarity is not
predetermined; rather, that capacity is generated when people mentally
recategorize one another in terms of commonalities, like "parent" or "union
member". 362 Even tapping one's hands in time with another person
increases empathy,363 leading to an in- crease in prosocial behavior.364
Similarly, research indicates that defining oneself by a group identity other
than race leads to improved attitudes toward and treatment of people of
other races.365 Marginal whites, who do not have all of the advantages of
white privilege, are more susceptible to this effect than other white
individuals. 366 This effect is intensified in the context of group alliances. A
considerable body of literature supports the idea that building group
alliances leads to greater empathy and cohesion among group members.3 67
Research has identified a concept known as "identity fusion," which "occurs
when people experience a visceral feeling of oneness with a group." 368
When it occurs, group identity can supersede individual self-interest. 369
That is, when individuals experience strong identity fusion, the allegiance to
the fused group trumps other priorities. 370 "[B]y channeling their feelings
of agency into the agendas that they share with the group, highly fused
persons are able to act in accordance with a meaning system that extends
beyond their own needs and desires."371 But not all groups are created
equal. Those groups that promote superordinate goals almost universally
diminish group conict and improve relationships among group members.3
72 As one would expect, this documented effect also ows from union efforts
to bring workers together to strive for improved working conditions.3 73
Research supports the idea that unions do indeed shift attitudes about race.

One study found that union members were less racist than nonunion
members. 374 For example, black union members tended to have more
progressive attitudes toward immigration than blacks who were not union
members; and black and Latino union members expressed more positive
attitudes toward one another, suggesting that unions fostered interracial
solidarity among nonwhite groups.375 Anecdotal evidence also supports the
notion that superordinate goals can reduce or trump racism.37 6 Martha
Mahoney tells the story of the Grass Roots Organizing Work ("GROW") Project,
in which organizers succeeded in convincing white workers that "[i]f they
wanted to make any progress with their union, they had to work on a basis of
genuine equality with black workers."13 7 The outcome "was not only
organizational growth for the union but also surprisingly rapid and
dramatic change in racial beliefs." 378 The compilation of this
psychological and sociological information suggests that by encouraging
members to focus on their shared struggle against their employer (their
superordinate goal) unions can affirmatively promote cross-racial
empathy. While unions can still do more to actively encourage this
transformation, the many circumstances in which unions have displayed
racial empathy and succeeded in fostering empathy among their members
provide an important correction of the dominant narrative. In addition
to these positive effects owing from group identification among rank-and-file
members, unions also foster racial empathy through activity at the leadership
level. Many unions have proactively placed people of color in leadership
positions. For example, the AFLCIO sequentially elected Linda ChavezThompson and Arlene Holt Baker to serve as Executive Vice President, one of
its top three leadership positions, 379 while the SEIU includes among its
current leadership Elisio Medina as International Secretary-Treasurer, Gerald
Hudson as the International Executive Vice President, and Valarie Long as
Executive Vice President.380 As noted previously, scholars have cautioned
against the mere "showcasing" of people of color.38 1 The leaders mentioned
here, however have, by all accounts, assumed powerful and substantive
responsibilities within their respective organizationsthat is, regardless of the
ultimate benefits of pure showcasing, the instances of leadership discussed
here extend far beyond showcasing. 382 While we cannot claim that every
instance of including people of color at the union leadership level transcends
showcasing, in some instances such inclusion is robust and genuine.38 3
Unions have also created integral roles for minority caucuses within unions.
For example, the SEIU has encouraged formation and participation of various
minority caucuses, such as its African-American caucus. 384 Such instances
of inclusion yield both the thin benefits associated with showcasing as well as
thicker benefits.385 For example, white rank-and-file union members develop
admiration for accomplished nonwhite leaders, and these positive feelings
regarding their leaders affect their perceptions of the leader's group.386
Taken as a whole, the information presented in this Section reveals that the
claims that unions lack or preclude racial empathy are overstated. We think
it important to acknowledge that academic narratives have played a role
in casting unions as lacking racial empathy, and that such narratives

have an important role to play in creating a more accurate and nuanced

narrative. 387 We hope that more balanced academic treatment will filter into
national discourse and union policy in the future.