Notes

1NC
Our interpretation is that topical affirmatives must defend a
fiated plan by the United States federal government
substantially reducing Direct Commerical Sales and/or Foreign
Military Sales of arms from the United States.
They violate—they defend (whatever)
There are three standards:
First is the grease trap—policy debate ultimately makes people
worse at state governance—when they get out in the world
actually trying to make change debaters find that their skills of
speaking fast and using lingo like “uniqueness” and “impact
turn” ultimately make their persuasion skills worse. People don’t
turn into politicians because of debate, they do debate because
they already are politicians—it should be in our interest to
ensure that politicians gain the worst skills possible so they can’t
spread their ideology and move the government to do worse—
forcing aff teams to defend policy action and preserving policy
only debate is key.
Simultaneously, those who participate in political debate are
actually less likely to become politicians in the future—our
interp means that policy and right leaning teams will do less
actions in the political
Mutz 02 |Diana ( Ph.D. Stanford University, teaches and does research on public opinion, political psychology and mass
political behavior, with a particular emphasis on political communication, At Penn she holds the Samuel A. Stouffer Chair in Political
Science and Communication, and also serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. In 2011, she received
the Lifetime Career Achievement Award in Political Communication from the American Political Science Association. She was
inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.) American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 4
(Oct., 2002), pp. 838-855, The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation |zH

This study advances our understanding of "cross-pressures," a

concept recognized in the earliest studies of American voting, but for which empirical evidence and theoretical deelopement has
been sorely lacking. Although the current consensus suggests that political cross-pressures are of little, if any, consequence for

I find that people whose networks involve greater

political participation,

political disagreement are less likely to participate in politics.

Two social psychological processes are suggested to account for
this effect. First, those embedded in cross-cuttting social and
political networks are, as a consequence, more likely to hold
ambivalent political views, which in turn discourage political
involvement. Second, social accountability pressures in cross-
cutting networks discourage political participation; the
inherently controversial nature of politics is perceived to pose
threats to the harmony of social relationships. 838 A venerable tradition of research
within social psychological studies of voting behavior emphasizes the problems posed by "cross- pressures" for individuals faced with

conflicts and
a voting decision. In early voting research, The People s Choice suggested that

inconsistencies among the factors influencing an individual's

vote decision discouraged voters from early involvement in the
campaign: "Whatever the source of the conflicting pressures,
whether from social status or class identifica- tion, from voting
traditions or the attitudes of associates, the consistent result
was to delay the voter's final decision" (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944,60). The
American Voter even more directly acknowledged the problem of conflicting considerations surrounding political choices: The

person who experiences some degree of conflict tends to cast

his vote for President with substantially less enthusiasm ... and
he is some- what less likely to vote at all than is the person
whose partisan feelings are entirely consistent. [... ] If attitude conflict leaves its
impress on several aspects of behavior it also influences what we will call the individual's involvement in the election. (Campbell et

Likewise, Hovland and colleagues suggested that the

al. 1960,83,

effects of conflicting social influences included "vacillation,

apathy, and loss of interest in con- flict-laden issues" (1953,283).
Second is camouflage—speaking your method out loud lets
policy teams and the PRL learn about what you’re arguing and
better prepare institutions to be able to stop it—in the face of
those institutions you should embrace disguise in order to train
yourself how to hide from the all seeing eye of the state. Then,
when the time is right after you’ve left debate, you can use your
skills to ambush people in their institutions and take it down
from the inside. Without the opacity of our interpretation, leftist
movements get easily co-opted. Specifically true of debate—
activism can spark from anywhere, but debate is one of the few
places where you can have both someone on the right and an
audience that allows you to develop the skill of tricking them.
Third is that information is dissuasive and you should endorse
the arbitrariness of the rules of the game – debate has no
transformative power and rules of the game are not the law
Bjerg 11—Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy,
Copenhagen Business School (Ole, Poker: the parody of capitalism
pg 190-198, dml)
In order to understand the conceptual difference, it is important to note that when Baudrillard speaks of the law, he is not referring
to law only in the strictly judicial meaning of the term. Baudrillard is rather drawing on a psychoanalytical tradition from Freud and

Lacan in which the concept oflaw stands for any kind of social regularity, such as
prohibitions, norms, values, morals, conventions, and so on, that structures the
way we act and construct meaning in society. Law constitutes the social order of
society. Viewed from the perspective of an individual immersed in the daily life of society, the difference

between the law of society and the rule of the game is a difference
between necessity and arbitrariness. The law consists not only of
a series of prohibitions and norms. It carries also an account of the

justification and rationality of the law. The law tells us not only
what we should and should not do; it tells us also why we should or should
not do this or that. The law claims to be valid and necessary regardless of

the opinions held by the individual subject included in the law.

The necessity of law is founded on transcendence. This may be the transcendence
of a religious order, a principle of reason and rationality, or a system of tradition. In any case the law justifies

itself with reference to some order beyond the immediate

content of itself. Contrary to the law, the game and the rule are
characterized by their arbitrariness. The rule claims no
justification beyond its immediate appearance. It does not profess to represent a
higher religious order or rational principle. In this way the rule is purely immanent to the

game. Furthermore, the rule tells the subject engaged in the game what
to do and not to do, but it does not give him [them] any reasons why
he [they] should follow the rule . When asked, the rule provides no other

justification for itself than the mere reference to the game itself:
“Because these are the rules of the game!” Baudrillard sums up the difference between the rule and the law: “The Rule plays on an
immanent sequence of arbitrary signs, while the Law is based on a transcendent sequence of necessary signs.”4 Think of the very
simple game you can play when walking on the street in which you are not allowed to step on the lines between the flags of the
pavement. The game is instituted by the invocation of the rule “Don’t step on the lines!” This rule is purely arbitrary. The game could
be played just as well with the complete opposite rule: “You must step on a line for every single step you take!” Furthermore, the
rule gives no reason that it should be followed. It has no “formal, moral or psychological structure or superstructure”5 to support its

functioning. The functioning of the game is dependent on the voluntary

submission to the rule by the players engaging in the game.
Compare this to the traffic regulations prescribed by law: “Don’t walk in the street.” “Cross the street
only at the green light.” These regulations apply unconditionally and must be

obeyed by anyone regardless of whether he wants [they want] to or

not. Traffic regulations come with a series of explicit and implicit reasons why they
should be followed, for instance, that they secure the social order
of the traffic situation for the safety of everyone. The transcendence of law makes the validity of law
unconditional. It is not up to the individual subject of law to decide whether he wants to submit to the law or not.

Conversely, the purely arbitrary character of the rule sets free

the subject and leaves it up to the individual whether he [they]
wants to participate in the game and become obliged by the rules
of the game or not. In Homo Ludens Huizinga indeed proposes voluntariness and freedom as the first in his list of
characteristics of play.6 “because it’s fun” Law as understood by Baudrillard not only constitutes society. In the psychoanalytic tradition that Baudrillard is drawing on, law also plays a crucial role in
the very constitution of the subject. To be a subject is to be subject to law. Without law, there would be no subject. At first glance, law manifests itself as a prohibition banning our access to certain objects and
acts. We may think of the law as an institution necessary in order to discipline our wild and otherwise uncontrolled desires for different forbidden things such as other people’s property (Thou shalt not steal) or
transgressive sexual acts (Thou shalt not commit adultery). In this line of thinking, a society without law would be an anarchical allagainst-all with everybody satisfying her every desire at the expense of everybody
else. However, working along similar lines as Baudrillard, Zizek argues that law has also the latent function of structuring our very being as subjects since the law is what institutes our desires in the first place.
When the law tells us not to do this or that, it carries an underlying fantasmatic message promising that beyond the prohibition of the law lie the objects that may satisfy the desire of the subject. Inherent in the
law is the fantasy of what might happen if the law was not there to prevent me from pursuing my immediate desires. As was the case with the concept of law, it is important to note that the concept of fantasy
differs from its usual meaning. Here is how Zizek explains the term: Fantasy is usually c]onceived as a scenario that realizes the subject’s desire. This elementary definition is quite adequate, on condition that we
take it literally, what the fantasy stages is not a scene in which our desire is fulfilled, fully satisfied, but on the contrary, a scene that realizes, stages, the desire as such. The fundamental point of psychoanalysis is
that desire is not something given in advance, but something that has to be constructed—and it is precisely the role of fantasy to give the coordinates of the subject’s desire, to specify its object, to locate the
position the subject assumes in it. It is only through fantasy that the subject is constituted as desiring: through fantasy, we learn how to desire.7 Based on this understanding, Zizek often uses the concept of
fantasy in conjunction with the concept of ideology.8 Only on a very superficial level is fantasy opposed to law in the sense that we fantasize about the transgression or even the abolition of law. We might think
here of consumerist fantasies of the kind where we imagine gaining access to products that we cannot afford to buy: “If only the law of property or the law of equivalences did not prevent me from having this
sweater or that car I would . . .” On another level, fantasy and law work together in structuring the desire of the subject. By restraining the subject’s access to the objects of desire designated by fantasy, law
prevents the subject from realizing that the qualities and possibilities for enjoyment imagined to belong to the object are in fact projections of the subject’s own fantasy. In this way, the different laws of the
market restraining our access to consumer goods are the condition of possibility for the fantasmatic projections about the amount of happiness, enjoyment, and fulfillment we would attain if we had free and
unlimited access to these goods. The idea of law instituting order in an otherwise anarchical world of unrestrained desire (e.g., in Hobbes) is actually a myth produced in the domain of fantasy and ideology. First,
the myth gives legitimacy to law by explaining why it is necessary, but second and perhaps more importantly the myth tells us what we would really want if it were not for the law restraining us. Thus, the message
of the law is split into the explicit prohibition and the fantasmatic injunction to transgress the law.9 In this way law interacts with fantasy in the domain of ideology in order to teach the subject what and how to
desire. An important implication of this understanding of the relation between fantasy and law is that even in transgression, the subject does not move beyond the domain of law. A thief illegally appropriating
consumer goods by transgressing the law of property does not violate the fundamental principles for the structuring of desire in the consumer society. It may in fact even be argued that his transgressive act
confirms the desirability of the consumer goods. Since the thief will go to such extremities in order to attain the goods, the goods must indeed be something extraordinary. In Baudrillard’s analysis

we live
of the difference between law and rule, we find the following reflection related to transgression: Ordinarily

within the realm of the Law, even when fantasizing its abolition.
Beyond the law we see only its transgression or the lifting of a
prohibition. For the discourse of law and interdiction determines
the inverse discourse of transgression and liberation. However, it
is not the absence of the law that is opposed to the law, but the
Rule.10 Instead of transgression or absence of law, Baudrillard suggests the rule as being opposed to law. The argument is here
not that by following the rule of the game, the player is violating the law of society. The point is rather the much more subtle one

by entering the sphere of the rule and the game the player
that

moves beyond the ideological domain of the law. Law, desire, and subjectivity tie
into each other in a kind of Gordian knot. In the game, where law is substituted for the rule, this knot is cut. In its explicit

contingency, the rule is not supported by fantasy. The rule does not hold a promise of
satisfaction; no sublime object is imagined beyond the rule. The
rule claims to be nothing more than what it is. So what is the attraction of the rule
and the game, if not satisfaction of a desire? Entering the game means voluntarily

submitting to an arbitrary rule with no higher meaning. This act

is, however, a way of delivering oneself from the law. Since
transgression is already inscribed in the law even in the violation
of a prohibition, we are still caught in the web of the law and its
matrix of satisfaction/unsatisfaction. In the violation, we may
contradict the explicit word of the law but we are still confirming
its underlying principle of desire. When choosing to submit to the
rules of a game, however, we step into another order not structured by
the law and desire. We renounce our desire, not in an ascetic abstinence from particular
objects of desire (which is by the way only an extreme sublimation of the objects of desire), but by letting

ourselves be seduced into an order not promising any kind of

satisfaction at all. In this way, we move beyond the law’s matrix of
satisfaction/unsatisfaction. When obeying the law, our conscious rational belief in it is supported by an
unacknowledged irrational belief. Yet,entering the game, we openly acknowledge
the pure contingency of the rule, and so our conscious submission
to it is based on no belief whatsoever. We have no illusions that
the game is nothing but an illusion, and so our approach to the game is perhaps more “realistic”
than our approach to the law. The game’s sole principle . . . is that by choosing

the rule one is delivered from the law. Without a psychological or metaphysical foundation,
the rule has no grounding in belief. One neither believes nor disbelieves a rule—

one observes it. The diffuse sphere of belief, the need for credibility that
encompasses the real, is dissolved in the game. Hence their
immorality: to proceed without believing in it, to sanction a direct
fascination with conventional signs and groundless rules.11 In the game,
desire is suspended and so is desire’s eternal shadow figure, unsatisfaction, which is a
necessary condition for the reproduction of desire. In the game, there is no promise and

therefore no disappointment. In the order of the law, we may

find enjoyment in the momentary and partial satisfaction of our
desires through obtainment of different objects. The joy of the
game stems not from this kind of satisfaction but exactly from the
suspension of the satisfaction/unsatisfaction matrix. In order to understand the
intensity of ritual forms, one must rid oneself of the idea that all happiness derives from nature, and all pleasure from the

satisfaction of a desire. On the contrary, games, the sphere of play, reveal a passion
for rules, a giddiness born of rules, and a force that comes from
ceremony, and not desire.12 As an equivalent to the “giddiness” of which Baudrillard speaks here, we find
in Huizinga’s characteristic of play the notion of “fun.” People play games because it is fun.

Rather than providing a full and conclusive explanation for the

engagement in games, the concept of fun seems to mark the
limitation of such an explanation. “The fun of playing,” Huizinga notes,
“resists all analysis, all logical interpretation.”13 Think again of the game Don’t Step on

the Lines. Why would someone engage in this game? Why would someone chose to

submit himself to the stupid and completely arbitrary rule of not stepping on the lines? In the obvious

absence of sanctions, potential rewards or other kinds of

meaningful satisfactions, the question can only be answered:
“Because it’s fun.” This, however, is probably more of a displacement of the question than an actual answer. In
the tradition of psychoanalysis, we find also the concept of drive. Drive is opposed to desire insofar as desire is focused on a
particular object imagined to provide satisfaction for the desire, whereas drive is not directed at any object. Drive is a short circuit
unmediated by fantasy, where the joy of an act derives from the activity of acting itself. Here is how Zizek defines the difference

Drive . . . stands for the paradoxical possibility that the

between drive and desire:

subject, forever prevented from achieving his Goal (and thus fully satisfying his desire), can nevertheless find
satisfaction in the very circular movement of repeatedly missing its
object, of circulating around it.14 The point is here of course that the concept of drive as opposed to
desire provides an account of fun as opposed to the meaning of ordinary goal-oriented behavior.
Here is how the distinction between goal-oriented desire and self-propelling drive turns out in the words of the legendary poker

player Nick “The Greek” Dandalos: “ The next best thing to gambling and winning is gambling and
losing.”15 game as parody We have seen that the rule is opposed to the law and that the choice of the rule delivers the player
from the ideology of law. What does this say about the relation between game and society? We might for a brief moment be
tempted to proclaim the playing of games as an act of criticism toward the ideology of society. This, however, would be jumping
ahead, and it would fit very badly with the actual position held by different games in our society. How would we think, for instance,

the
of Champions League football as a form of resistance toward society? Furthermore, our analysis has just shown that

domain of the rule and fun is characterized by arbitrariness and

absence of meaning. Hence, it would be contradictory to project a
certain critical and normative intentionality into the mere
engagement in a game. At the same time, the analyses carried out in this book are motivated by the
assumption that there is indeed some kind of sociologically significant relation between the games played in society and society as a

In order
whole. This assumption is shared by Huizinga, whom we have already quoted saying: “All play means something.”16

to avoid the pitfalls of formally fixating the normativity of the

meaning of games in relation to society by making general statements
such as: “games constitute a critique of the ideology of society,”
“games constitute a celebration of societal values,” “games constitute a way of governing the subjects of society,” “games constitute
a way of opposing dominant power structures of society,” and so on, we shall once again turn to Baudrillard for conceptual support:

The rule functions as the parodic simulacrum of the law. Neither

an inversion nor subversion of the law, but its reversion in
simulation. The pleasure of the game is twofold: the invalidation of time and space within the enchanted sphere of an
indestructible form of reciprocity—pure seduction—and the parodying of reality, the formal outbidding of the law’s constraints.17
Insofar as the game emerges as the institution of an extra set of rules governing the subject, it seems to constitute an addition to the
order of the law. Perhaps the social significance of the game lies, however, in the subtraction of fantasmatic ideology from the

On an immediate level, the rules of a game look like

prescriptions of law.

the law of society. The rule “Don’t step on the lines” looks like the regulation
“Only walk on a green light.” However, on closer inspection the rule lacks the fantasmatic

support of ideology. The game thus presents the rule in its naked
arbitrariness. To the extent that the rules of a game carry some
similarity to particular laws of society, the institution of the game
may affect and transform our view of the particular law. The
subtraction of ideology in the game may make us aware of the
ideological dimension of the law, thus causing us to view the law
in the same “naked arbitrariness” as the rule. According to Zizek, any law is
inherently contradictory and basically founded on a violent and
illegitimate move in which law constitutes itself as law. The obvious example
here is of course the allegedly humanistic laws of democracy , which are

founded on the cruel, violent, and anything but democratic brutality of the French Revolution. Underneath the
surface of the normal, rational, legitimate, universal law lies a traumatic truth about the abnormal, irrational, illegitimate, contingent

foundation of the law, and for law to function this traumatic truth must remain
concealed. Zizek states: “Every reign of law has its hidden roots in such an absolute—selfreferential, self-negating—crime
by means of which crime assumes the form of law, and if the law is to reign in its ‘normal’ form, this reverse must be unconditionally

repressed.”18The function of ideology is to conceal the traumatic

contradictions of law in order for law to function in a smooth and
orderly fashion. When the rule, in the words of Baudrillard, functions as the
parodic simulacrum of the law, it simulates the law in the context
of the play world. Since the play world is devoid of the fantasmatic projections of ideology, the rule stands forth in a
more “naked” appearance than the way we are used to seeing the law. The rule of the game mimics

law. It does not pretend to be law. In fact, the rule does not
pretend to be anything more or less than what it is. Given that the
rule is conventional and arbitrary, and has no hidden truth, it
knows neither repression nor the distinction between the
manifest and the latent. It does not carry any meaning, it does
not lead anywhere; by contrast, the Law has a determinate
finality.19 The absence of any kind of justification or
rationalization transcending the rule produces a vacuum around
the game. Contrary to the laws of the social order, the game does not explain or
account for itself. It merely offers itself. Consequently, the game does not
pass any critical or normative judgment on the law and society.
However, the vacuum produced by the rule— the space devoid of
ideology constituted by the game—opens the potential for
critical reflections on the nature of law and society. Indeed, these
reflections cannot be made from within the game. The game
merely opens the space for such reflections.
2NC
 O/V
Extend our interpretation: affirmative teams should defend a hypothetical
plan fiating a substantial reduction of DCS and/or FMS of arms sales from
the United States,
This is NOT a normal framework argument—we believe that our framework
interpretation, while preventing affs from presenting non-normative
models of debate, is actually net better for leftist strategizing and
organizing over time.
Here’s a key framing issue: people don’t move towards politics because of
debate, they’re interested in debate because they’re already inclined to be
politicians—it’s only a question of which interpretation can best ruin the
policy debaters who want to use the state to expand anti-black, anti-queer
capitalism. If we win at the end of the debate that our interpretation is
better for leftist movements overall EVEN IF it does not produce the most
productive debates we should still win—the goal of debate is education
anyway, which means you should vote neg if you think we ruin right wing
education while preserving the safety of left wing movements.
Extensions/Impacts
 Baudy
Endorse the arbitrariness of the rules of the game – debate has
no transformative power and rules of the game are not the law
Bjerg 11—Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy,
Copenhagen Business School (Ole, Poker: the parody of capitalism
pg 190-198, dml)
In order to understand the conceptual difference, it is important to note that when Baudrillard speaks of the law, he is not referring
to law only in the strictly judicial meaning of the term. Baudrillard is rather drawing on a psychoanalytical tradition from Freud and

Lacan in which the concept of law stands for any kind of social regularity, such as
prohibitions, norms, values, morals, conventions, and so on, that structures the
way we act and construct meaning in society. Law constitutes the social order of
society. Viewed from the perspective of an individual immersed in the daily life of society, the difference

between the law of society and the rule of the game is a difference
between necessity and arbitrariness. The law consists not only of
a series of prohibitions and norms. It carries also an account of the

justification and rationality of the law. The law tells us not only
what we should and should not do; it tells us also why we should or should
not do this or that. The law claims to be valid and necessary regardless of

the opinions held by the individual subject included in the law.

The necessity of law is founded on transcendence. This may be the transcendence
of a religious order, a principle of reason and rationality, or a system of tradition. In any case the law justifies

itself with reference to some order beyond the immediate

content of itself. Contrary to the law, the game and the rule are
characterized by their arbitrariness. The rule claims no
justification beyond its immediate appearance. It does not profess to represent a
higher religious order or rational principle. In this way the rule is purely immanent to the

game. Furthermore, the rule tells the subject engaged in the game what
to do and not to do, but it does not give him [them] any reasons why
he [they] should follow the rule . When asked, the rule provides no other

justification for itself than the mere reference to the game itself:
“Because these are the rules of the game!” Baudrillard sums up the difference between the rule and the law: “The Rule plays on an
immanent sequence of arbitrary signs, while the Law is based on a transcendent sequence of necessary signs.”4 Think of the very
simple game you can play when walking on the street in which you are not allowed to step on the lines between the flags of the
pavement. The game is instituted by the invocation of the rule “Don’t step on the lines!” This rule is purely arbitrary. The game could
be played just as well with the complete opposite rule: “You must step on a line for every single step you take!” Furthermore, the
rule gives no reason that it should be followed. It has no “formal, moral or psychological structure or superstructure”5 to support its

functioning. The functioning of the game is dependent on the voluntary

submission to the rule by the players engaging in the game.
Compare this to the traffic regulations prescribed by law: “Don’t walk in the street.” “Cross the street
only at the green light.” These regulations apply unconditionally and must be

obeyed by anyone regardless of whether he wants [they want] to or

not. Traffic regulations come with a series of explicit and implicit reasons why they
should be followed, for instance, that they secure the social order
of the traffic situation for the safety of everyone. The transcendence of law makes the validity of law
unconditional. It is not up to the individual subject of law to decide whether he wants to submit to the law or not.

Conversely, the purely arbitrary character of the rule sets free

the subject and leaves it up to the individual whether he [they]
wants to participate in the game and become obliged by the rules
of the game or not. In Homo Ludens Huizinga indeed proposes voluntariness and freedom as the first in his list of
characteristics of play.6 “because it’s fun” Law as understood by Baudrillard not only constitutes society. In the psychoanalytic tradition that Baudrillard is drawing on, law also plays a crucial role in
the very constitution of the subject. To be a subject is to be subject to law. Without law, there would be no subject. At first glance, law manifests itself as a prohibition banning our access to certain objects and
acts. We may think of the law as an institution necessary in order to discipline our wild and otherwise uncontrolled desires for different forbidden things such as other people’s property (Thou shalt not steal) or
transgressive sexual acts (Thou shalt not commit adultery). In this line of thinking, a society without law would be an anarchical allagainst-all with everybody satisfying her every desire at the expense of everybody
else. However, working along similar lines as Baudrillard, Zizek argues that law has also the latent function of structuring our very being as subjects since the law is what institutes our desires in the first place.
When the law tells us not to do this or that, it carries an underlying fantasmatic message promising that beyond the prohibition of the law lie the objects that may satisfy the desire of the subject. Inherent in the
law is the fantasy of what might happen if the law was not there to prevent me from pursuing my immediate desires. As was the case with the concept of law, it is important to note that the concept of fantasy
differs from its usual meaning. Here is how Zizek explains the term: Fantasy is usually c]onceived as a scenario that realizes the subject’s desire. This elementary definition is quite adequate, on condition that we
take it literally, what the fantasy stages is not a scene in which our desire is fulfilled, fully satisfied, but on the contrary, a scene that realizes, stages, the desire as such. The fundamental point of psychoanalysis is
that desire is not something given in advance, but something that has to be constructed—and it is precisely the role of fantasy to give the coordinates of the subject’s desire, to specify its object, to locate the
position the subject assumes in it. It is only through fantasy that the subject is constituted as desiring: through fantasy, we learn how to desire.7 Based on this understanding, Zizek often uses the concept of
fantasy in conjunction with the concept of ideology.8 Only on a very superficial level is fantasy opposed to law in the sense that we fantasize about the transgression or even the abolition of law. We might think
here of consumerist fantasies of the kind where we imagine gaining access to products that we cannot afford to buy: “If only the law of property or the law of equivalences did not prevent me from having this
sweater or that car I would . . .” On another level, fantasy and law work together in structuring the desire of the subject. By restraining the subject’s access to the objects of desire designated by fantasy, law
prevents the subject from realizing that the qualities and possibilities for enjoyment imagined to belong to the object are in fact projections of the subject’s own fantasy. In this way, the different laws of the
market restraining our access to consumer goods are the condition of possibility for the fantasmatic projections about the amount of happiness, enjoyment, and fulfillment we would attain if we had free and
unlimited access to these goods. The idea of law instituting order in an otherwise anarchical world of unrestrained desire (e.g., in Hobbes) is actually a myth produced in the domain of fantasy and ideology. First,
the myth gives legitimacy to law by explaining why it is necessary, but second and perhaps more importantly the myth tells us what we would really want if it were not for the law restraining us. Thus, the message
of the law is split into the explicit prohibition and the fantasmatic injunction to transgress the law.9 In this way law interacts with fantasy in the domain of ideology in order to teach the subject what and how to
desire. An important implication of this understanding of the relation between fantasy and law is that even in transgression, the subject does not move beyond the domain of law. A thief illegally appropriating
consumer goods by transgressing the law of property does not violate the fundamental principles for the structuring of desire in the consumer society. It may in fact even be argued that his transgressive act
confirms the desirability of the consumer goods. Since the thief will go to such extremities in order to attain the goods, the goods must indeed be something extraordinary. In Baudrillard’s analysis

we live
of the difference between law and rule, we find the following reflection related to transgression: Ordinarily

within the realm of the Law, even when fantasizing its abolition.
Beyond the law we see only its transgression or the lifting of a
prohibition. For the discourse of law and interdiction determines
the inverse discourse of transgression and liberation. However, it
is not the absence of the law that is opposed to the law, but the
Rule.10 Instead of transgression or absence of law, Baudrillard suggests the rule as being opposed to law. The argument is here
not that by following the rule of the game, the player is violating the law of society. The point is rather the much more subtle one

that by entering the sphere of the rule and the game the player
moves beyond the ideological domain of the law. Law, desire, and subjectivity tie
into each other in a kind of Gordian knot. In the game, where law is substituted for the rule, this knot is cut. In its explicit

contingency, the rule is not supported by fantasy. The rule does not hold a promise of
satisfaction; no sublime object is imagined beyond the rule. The
rule claims to be nothing more than what it is. So what is the attraction of the rule
and the game, if not satisfaction of a desire? Entering the game means voluntarily

submitting to an arbitrary rule with no higher meaning. This act

is, however, a way of delivering oneself from the law. Since
transgression is already inscribed in the law even in the violation
of a prohibition, we are still caught in the web of the law and its
matrix of satisfaction/unsatisfaction. In the violation, we may
contradict the explicit word of the law but we are still confirming
its underlying principle of desire. When choosing to submit to the
rules of a game, however, we step into another order not structured by
the law and desire. We renounce our desire, not in an ascetic abstinence from particular
objects of desire (which is by the way only an extreme sublimation of the objects of desire), but by letting

ourselves be seduced into an order not promising any kind of

satisfaction at all. In this way, we move beyond the law’s matrix of
satisfaction/unsatisfaction. When obeying the law, our conscious rational belief in it is supported by an
unacknowledged irrational belief. Yet, entering the game, we openly acknowledge

the pure contingency of the rule, and so our conscious submission

to it is based on no belief whatsoever. We have no illusions that
the game is nothing but an illusion, and so our approach to the game is perhaps more “realistic”
than our approach to the law. The game’s sole principle . . . is that by choosing

the rule one is delivered from the law. Without a psychological or metaphysical foundation,
the rule has no grounding in belief. One neither believes nor disbelieves a rule—

one observes it. The diffuse sphere of belief, the need for credibility that
encompasses the real, is dissolved in the game. Hence their
immorality: to proceed without believing in it, to sanction a direct
fascination with conventional signs and groundless rules.11 In the game,
desire is suspended and so is desire’s eternal shadow figure, unsatisfaction, which is a
 In the game, there is no promise and
necessary condition for the reproduction of desire.

therefore no disappointment. In the order of the law, we may

find enjoyment in the momentary and partial satisfaction of our
desires through obtainment of different objects. The joy of the
game stems not from this kind of satisfaction but exactly from the
suspension of the satisfaction/unsatisfaction matrix. In order to understand the
intensity of ritual forms, one must rid oneself of the idea that all happiness derives from nature, and all pleasure from the

satisfaction of a desire. On the contrary, games, the sphere of play, reveal a passion
for rules, a giddiness born of rules, and a force that comes from
ceremony, and not desire.12 As an equivalent to the “giddiness” of which Baudrillard speaks here, we find
in Huizinga’s characteristic of play the notion of “fun.” People play games because it is fun.

Rather than providing a full and conclusive explanation for the

engagement in games, the concept of fun seems to mark the
limitation of such an explanation. “The fun of playing,” Huizinga notes,
“resists all analysis, all logical interpretation.”13 Think again of the game Don’t Step on

the Lines. Why would someone engage in this game? Why would someone chose to

submit himself to the stupid and completely arbitrary rule of not stepping on the lines? In the obvious

absence of sanctions, potential rewards or other kinds of

meaningful satisfactions, the question can only be answered:
“Because it’s fun.” This, however, is probably more of a displacement of the question than an actual answer. In
the tradition of psychoanalysis, we find also the concept of drive. Drive is opposed to desire insofar as desire is focused on a
particular object imagined to provide satisfaction for the desire, whereas drive is not directed at any object. Drive is a short circuit
unmediated by fantasy, where the joy of an act derives from the activity of acting itself. Here is how Zizek defines the difference

Drive . . . stands for the paradoxical possibility that the

between drive and desire:

subject, forever prevented from achieving his Goal (and thus fully satisfying his desire), can nevertheless find
satisfaction in the very circular movement of repeatedly missing its
object, of circulating around it.14 The point is here of course that the concept of drive as opposed to
desire provides an account of fun as opposed to the meaning of ordinary goal-oriented behavior.
Here is how the distinction between goal-oriented desire and self-propelling drive turns out in the words of the legendary poker

player Nick “The Greek” Dandalos: “ The next best thing to gambling and winning is gambling and
losing.”15 game as parody We have seen that the rule is opposed to the law and that the choice of the rule delivers the player
from the ideology of law. What does this say about the relation between game and society? We might for a brief moment be
tempted to proclaim the playing of games as an act of criticism toward the ideology of society. This, however, would be jumping
ahead, and it would fit very badly with the actual position held by different games in our society. How would we think, for instance,
 the
of Champions League football as a form of resistance toward society? Furthermore, our analysis has just shown that

domain of the rule and fun is characterized by arbitrariness and

absence of meaning. Hence, it would be contradictory to project a
certain critical and normative intentionality into the mere
engagement in a game. At the same time, the analyses carried out in this book are motivated by the
assumption that there is indeed some kind of sociologically significant relation between the games played in society and society as a

In order
whole. This assumption is shared by Huizinga, whom we have already quoted saying: “All play means something.”16

to avoid the pitfalls of formally fixating the normativity of the

meaning of games in relation to society by making general statements
such as: “games constitute a critique of the ideology of society,”
“games constitute a celebration of societal values,” “games constitute a way of governing the subjects of society,” “games constitute
a way of opposing dominant power structures of society,” and so on, we shall once again turn to Baudrillard for conceptual support:

The rule functions as the parodic simulacrum of the law. Neither

an inversion nor subversion of the law, but its reversion in
simulation. The pleasure of the game is twofold: the invalidation of time and space within the enchanted sphere of an
indestructible form of reciprocity—pure seduction—and the parodying of reality, the formal outbidding of the law’s constraints.17
Insofar as the game emerges as the institution of an extra set of rules governing the subject, it seems to constitute an addition to the
order of the law. Perhaps the social significance of the game lies, however, in the subtraction of fantasmatic ideology from the

On an immediate level, the rules of a game look like

prescriptions of law.

the law of society. The rule “Don’t step on the lines” looks like the regulation
“Only walk on a green light.” However, on closer inspection the rule lacks the fantasmatic

support of ideology. The game thus presents the rule in its naked
arbitrariness. To the extent that the rules of a game carry some
similarity to particular laws of society, the institution of the game
may affect and transform our view of the particular law. The
subtraction of ideology in the game may make us aware of the
ideological dimension of the law, thus causing us to view the law
in the same “naked arbitrariness” as the rule. According to Zizek, any law is
inherently contradictory and basically founded on a violent and
illegitimate move in which law constitutes itself as law. The obvious example
here is of course the allegedly humanistic laws of democracy , which are

founded on the cruel, violent, and anything but democratic brutality of the French Revolution. Underneath the
surface of the normal, rational, legitimate, universal law lies a traumatic truth about the abnormal, irrational, illegitimate, contingent

foundation of the law, and for law to function this traumatic truth must remain
concealed. Zizek states: “Every reign of law has its hidden roots in such an absolute—selfreferential, self-negating—crime
by means of which crime assumes the form of law, and if the law is to reign in its ‘normal’ form, this reverse must be unconditionally

repressed.”18The function of ideology is to conceal the traumatic

contradictions of law in order for law to function in a smooth and
orderly fashion. When the rule, in the words of Baudrillard, functions as the
parodic simulacrum of the law, it simulates the law in the context
of the play world. Since the play world is devoid of the fantasmatic projections of ideology, the rule stands forth in a
more “naked” appearance than the way we are used to seeing the law. The rule of the game mimics

law. It does not pretend to be law. In fact, the rule does not
pretend to be anything more or less than what it is. Given that the
rule is conventional and arbitrary, and has no hidden truth, it
knows neither repression nor the distinction between the
manifest and the latent. It does not carry any meaning, it does
not lead anywhere; by contrast, the Law has a determinate
finality.19 The absence of any kind of justification or
rationalization transcending the rule produces a vacuum around
the game. Contrary to the laws of the social order, the game does not explain or
account for itself. It merely offers itself. Consequently, the game does not
pass any critical or normative judgment on the law and society.
However, the vacuum produced by the rule— the space devoid of
ideology constituted by the game—opens the potential for
critical reflections on the nature of law and society. Indeed, these
reflections cannot be made from within the game. The game
merely opens the space for such reflections.
 Camouflage Extension
Extend the camouflage impact—our interpretation of debate ensures that K
teams learn how best to hide themselves from the watchful eye of the PRL.
When confronted with the state, you should learn guerilla warfare—
empirically proven it succeeds better—just look at Vietnam—when the left
makes themselves obvious to institutions, they get shut down really fast—
our interp teaches teams to disguise themselves while learning what policy
teams think they can beat the left with so we can use it against them in the
future when we actually move out of debate into creating larger
movements. This turns the aff—their aff exposes themselves to policy
debate which means they learn how best to shut down their movement—
our interp instead leads to teams learning how to hide themselves which
means they can sabotage policy debate while learning the skills to hide in
the real world.
 Db8 leads to less ptx action
Cross cutting makes us less likely to take action
Mutz 02 |Diana ( Ph.D. Stanford University, teaches and does research on public opinion, political psychology and mass
political behavior, with a particular emphasis on political communication, At Penn she holds the Samuel A. Stouffer Chair in Political
Science and Communication, and also serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. In 2011, she received
the Lifetime Career Achievement Award in Political Communication from the American Political Science Association. She was
inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.) American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 4
(Oct., 2002), pp. 838-855, The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation |zH

political inaction could be induced by the attitudi- nal

First,

ambivalence that cross-cutting exposure is likely to engender

within an individual. If citizens are embedded in networks that
do not reinforce their viewpoints, but instead tend to supply
them with political information that challenges their views, then
such cross-cutting exposure could make people uncertain of
their own positions with respect to issues or candidates, and
make them less likely to take political action as a result. In this
case it is intrapersonal conflict that drives the effect, and the
chain of events is one in which cross-cutting exposure leads to
ambivalence which, in turn, reduces political participation. A relatively
recent resurgence of interest in ambivalence that is, the simultaneous presence of both positive and negative considerations
directed toward the same attitude object has been noted in both qualitative and quantitative approaches to understanding political

. For example, in her in-depth interviews with Americans,

attitudes

Hochschild (1981,1993) noted a tremendous amount of

vacillation and uncertainty in people's views, most of which
appeared to be driven by competing values and considerations
as applied to political questions rather than from a lack of
political expertise. Likewise, efforts to better understand responses to survey questions have suggested that
citizens' opinions are comprised of competing ideas and considerations (Zaller and Feldman 1992; Zaller 1992), and that, as a result,

).
ambivalence is often difficult to distinguish from nonattitudes as typi- cally measured (see also, Alvarez and Brehm 1995,1997

In studies of issues ranging from race to abortion, ambivalence

has been found to play an important part in the formation of
citizens' attitudes. The consequences of political ambivalence
have been less widely explored, although they appear to include
more moderate political positions, less certainty in political
judgments (Guge and Meffert 1998), delayed formation of voting
intentions, and instability in candidate evaluations (Lavine
2001).
Debate ruins political activity
Mutz 02 |Diana ( Ph.D. Stanford University, teaches and does research on public opinion, political psychology and mass
political behavior, with a particular emphasis on political communication, At Penn she holds the Samuel A. Stouffer Chair in Political
Science and Communication, and also serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. In 2011, she received
the Lifetime Career Achievement Award in Political Communication from the American Political Science Association. She was
inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.) American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 4
(Oct., 2002), pp. 838-855, The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation |zH

The second possible reason that cross-cutting political networks

would discourage political participation is because cross-cutting
networks create the need to be ac- countable to conflicting
constituencies. According to this social psychological mechanism, the problem is not that
one is internally conflicted over which side to support, but
rather that one feels uncomfortable taking sides in the face of
multiple competing constituencies. The need for social
accountability creates anxiety because interpersonal
disagreement threatens social relationships, and there is no way
to please all members of one's network and thus assure social
harmony. As Green, Visser, and Tetlock suggest, "The decision maker is
caught in the middle, pushed one way by part of the group, and
pulled the other way by an opposing faction. The individual is
forced to defend a position in what may be perceived as a 'no
win' situation, in which one side will inevitably be alienated"
(2000, 4). If this mechanism alone were at work, we would
expect mainly public forms of political participation to be
affected; in private situations such as the voting booth, cross-cutting networks should pose few problems due to social
accountability. Qualitative evidence in support of the idea that people

avoid politics as a means of maintaining interpersonal social

harmony has been around for some time. In the mid 1950s, Rosenberg
(1954-55), noted in his in- depth interviews that the threat to
interpersonal harmony was a significant deterrent to political
activity. More recent case studies have provided further support for this thesis. In her study of New England town meet-
ings and an alternative workplace, Mansbridge (1980) similarly observed that conflict avoidance was an important deterrent to

). In their focus group discussions, Conover

political participation (see also Eliasoph 1998

and Searing (1998) also found considerable evidence that people

were both aware of and wary of the risks of political discussion
for interpersonal relationships. As one of their focus group
participants put it, "It's not worth it... to try and have an open discussion if it gets them [other citizens] upset"
(1998,25). Verba and Nie (1972) applied a similar logic to their analysis of political participation in which activities were
differentiated not only on the basis of the extent of initia- tive required, and the scope of the outcome, but also on the extent to

Ulbig and Funk

which conflict with others was involved. Moreover, in a recent analysis of national survey data,

(1999) found that individual differences in conflict avoidance

were negatively related to political participation of some kinds,
particularly more public participatory acts such as protesting,
working on a campaign, and political discussion.2 The idea that
conflict avoidance discourages participation is also consistent
with social psychological research on how people handle
nonpolitical interpersonal disagreements. When a person
confronted with a difference of opinion does not shift to the
other person's views or persuade them to adopt his or her own
views, the most likely alternative reaction is to devalue the issue
itself (e.g., 2Research on the "spiral of silence" similarly contends that perceived minority status will affect political preferences
by discour- aging the expression of political viewpoints that are perceived to be unpopular (Noelle-Neumann 1974). However, in this
case political discussion is the dependent, rather than the independent variable. But if one considers discussion as a form of political
participation, the spiral of silence can be interpreted as suggesting that fear of interpersonal conflict inhibits participation, as also
shown by Ulbig and Funk (1999). Nonetheless, the hypothesis that perceived support for one's opinions in the broader political
environment relates to willingness to speak out publicly has received very limited support to date (see Glynn, Hayes, and Shanahan

By devaluing politics and avoiding political

1997). Steiner 1966).

controversy, people effectively resolve the problem. In a recent

experiment manipulating exposure to arguments on opposite
sides of an issue, as well as whether subjects were accountable
to conflicting or unified constituencies, Green, Visser, and
Tetlock (2000) found that cross-pres- sured subjects engaged in
many decision-evasion tactics (including buckpassing,
procrastination, and exiting the situation) in order to avoid
accountability to contradic- tory constituencies. If we generalize
these findings outside the laboratory, we would expect those
with high levels of cross-cutting exposure in their personal
networks to put off political decisions as long as possible or
altogether, thus making their political participation particularly
unlikely. In the analyses that follow, I first examine to what extent cross-cutting exposure within social networks does, in
fact, have adverse implications for political participation of various kinds. Second, I evaluate the extent to which these two proposed
processes of influence intrapersonal ambivalence and interpersonal social accountability account for the overall impact of network
diversity on political participation.

We’ll insert a chart into the debate as proof

Mutz 02 |Diana ( Ph.D. Stanford University, teaches and does research on public opinion, political psychology and mass
political behavior, with a particular emphasis on political communication, At Penn she holds the Samuel A. Stouffer Chair in Political
Science and Communication, and also serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. In 2011, she received
the Lifetime Career Achievement Award in Political Communication from the American Political Science Association. She was
inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.) American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 4
(Oct., 2002), pp. 838-855, The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation |zH

-look at the cross cutting exposure vs frequency of political talk—differentiates between “debate” and “discussion” where
“debate”less political activism while “discussion”more. Therefore, you have an incentive to do force policy teams to do more
debate.
Grease Trap Extension
 Opacity Good
A politics of stealth solves better—prefer our opacity to hide
ourselves from the eye of the state
Stanley 17 (Eric, Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of
California, “Anti-Trans Optics: Recognition, Opacity, and the Image of Force,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 116,
Issue 3, Duke University Press, p. 615-619, July 1, 2017, https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-
quarterly/article/116/3/612/129744/Anti-Trans-Optics-Recognition-Opacity-and-the //)2simmz
Johnson is gone, but the tape remains. How might we read, or radically misread, the
visual grammar of the tape to understand both the kinds of force it represents and
to work against its seeming inevitability? The horrific murder of Johnson might also
be understood as the tape’s extradiegetic final scene, the unfolding of a narrative
structure that is not simply racist and transphobic, which are terms too adjacent to
name the structuring work these forms of violence index. Tracing the history of the
cinematic, as many have argued, is also a way of charting the instantiation of
globalized white supremacy. To be clear, while we must attend to the racist or
otherwise phobic depictions that have compromised public visual culture from
lynching photography and D. W. Griffith’s 1915 The Birth of the Nation to
contemporary times, if we end there we remain in a discursive loop where we
continue to struggle within a regime that will never offer relief. After all, racist
content would have little power if its form were not structured similarly. Here, then,
reading with the tape of Johnson’s beating, we can see the ways optics, as that which
both includes and exceeds narrative, produces Johnson as the “no-body” da Silva
asked us to think.3 Franz Fanon’s often-cited passage from 1952 on his experience
of watching a film in a Paris theater sketches the multiple spaces of seeing and being
seen that constitute the visual as a racialized practice. Fanon states (1967: 140) “I
cannot go to a film without seeing myself. I wait for me. In the interval, just before
the film starts, I wait for me. The people in the theater are watching me, examining
me, waiting for me.” Fanon suggests that the anticipation of blackness in the viewing
apparatus of the cinema, which I would extend to viewing beyond the theater as
well, is imbued with a form of anti-blackness that is not only seen but also otherwise
sensed. Perhaps the most generative aspect of this analysis is that even before the
film begins, the racialized gaze is there, anticipating him, while he also awaits
its arrival. Fanon’s scheme both expands the “time” of the film, meaning it does not
begin or end with the rolling of images, and moves us away from assuming that the
most insipid forms of colonial racism, here anti-blackness, appear through image
alone (Keeling 2003; Marriott 2007). Expanding the time of the image and the image
of time allows us to read the murder of Duanna Johnson as the narrative conclusion
of the beating tape. Further, while Fanon was writing specifically about the
cinematic, his scheme allows us to build a similar analysis of our psychic bonds with
and through surveillance as genre in the contemporary moment. The CCTV footage
of Johnson functions much like what Gilles Deleuze (1989: 101), after Henri
Bergson, called a “time-image.” For Deleuze, a time-image is the collapsing of
past, present, and future that “makes time frightening and inexplicable” (101).
While Deleuze was talking about simultaneity in narrative cinema, the time-image
here might help us understand the specific genre of the tape where past and future
are remade through the present. Or, in other words, the time-image of the tape
reminds us that, perhaps for Johnson, there is no moment other than the time of
violence. Here, Fanon’s insistence that the time of the image does not align with the
opening scene of the film and Deleuze’s time-image illustrate the brutal semiotics of
violence that await, in the interval, both the structure of the visual and the structure
of life outside the theater for trans women of color. Given that representation
produces and does not simply echo what is assumed to reside in the real, what, then,
might representation and recognition offer for a trans politics that resides on the
side of flourishing? By way of obscuring the question of reparation and
redistribution, representation has been produced as the primary site of
struggle over “diversity” for mainstream politics (including mainstream LGBT
politics) in the United States. The last decade has witnessed a vast proliferation of
trans representations that are offered as remedy to the relentless economic, psychic,
affective, and physical violence many trans people, and in particular trans women of
color, endure. These expanding representations are also used to buttress an
argument supporting the unfolding progress of dominant culture. Yet, if we
return to CeCe McDonald’s words that open this essay, we know that with this
increased representation comes heightened, or at least sustained, instances of
violence. While 2014 was named the “Trans Tipping Point” by Time magazine, this
year, 2016, has counted the highest number of trans women of color being violently
murdered in the United States. Yet, following the Johnson tape, if we are to
understand the visual itself as technologies of anti-black and anti-trans optics, then
how might we continue the important project of representation in a visual regime
hostile to black trans life? Rather than an opening toward recognition, a
position where one can make a claim instead of being exclusively claimed,
representation for Johnson is the prefiguration of her undoing . Her being
“clocked” as trans led to her initial arrest, subsequent beating, and, even perhaps,
her murder. Being clocked, or being seen as trans, enacts the double bind of
recognition: being seen by the other brings you into the world, but more often
than not it is also that which might bring you out of it. Through representation—
both the CCTV video and descriptions of Johnson in court—the defense was able to
produce what Judith Butler (1993) and others have called a reversal of defense,
where the party harmed is, through the magic of the law, transformed into the
assumed aggressor. Johnson, and not the state, is made to hold the burden of
proof. Tracing a genealogy of the racial and gendered parameters of recognition
from G. W. F. Hegel and Fanon to da Silva and McDonald and beyond, how might we
imagine the project of recognition as both nondialectical and nondevelopmental?
The brutal scene of Johnson’s beating, replayed as the composed testimony of the
quiet court, reminds us that recognition is not a smooth space of inevitability, even
in struggle. Johnson’s trans identity forces us against a substitutive logic, to once
again face the ways race and gender, as lines of recognition, symbols, and
embodied parameters, ask for more. While Fanon rightly turns our attention to
the limits of recognition in the colonial scene, he also maintains the teleology of
subjectivity by holding on to the dialectics of structure, even for those deemed
nonsubjects. Or, if for him revolutionary violence offers a way through the violence
of anti-black coloniality, how might we push further on Fanon for those who must
remain, as da Silva might suggest, “no-bodies against the state”? Johnson’s attack
and its cinematic afterlife capture the structures of recognition and misrecognition,
representation and disappearance that constitute the work of gender and race in
and as the fields of the visual. While writing from a place of gender self-
determination that works toward gender as an opening, what is left of our various
analytics of recognition? Or, how might we return to the beating tape: not simply to
offer yet another way to imagine what we already know—that race, gender, and
violence are tightly bound— but to ask how this bind might be undone? 4
Furthermore, what tactics of production and sabotage might bring about visual
cultures that detonate the never-ending list of anti-trans violence? This question
specifically addresses those trapped in the interval of seeing and being seen. We
must pose it without a fantasy of closure. To put it another way, at the center of the
problem of recognition lies this: how can we be seen without being known and
how can we be known without being hunted?5 Indeed, being a “no-body against
the state,” a position some are already forced to live, stands against the sovereign
promise of positive representation. Read not as absolute abjection but as a tactic of
interdiction and direct action, being a “no-body” might force the visual order of
things to the point of collapse. On the issue of recognition and radical singularity,
É douard Glissant (1997: 190) has stated, “from the perspective of Western
thought, we discover that its basis is this requirement for transparency . In order
to understand and thus accept you, I have to measure your solidity with the ideal
scale providing me with grounds to make comparisons and, perhaps, judgments. I
have to reduce.” This reduction, which Fanon might call being overdetermined, is,
as we know, unequally distributed and mandated. Glissant offers a totality of
relation in opacity, the radical work of nontransparency that allows for non-
dialectic difference—the collectivization of radical singularity. Glissant
continues, “Agree not merely to the right of difference but, carrying this further,
agree also to the right of opacity that is not enclosure within an impenetrable
autarchy but subsistence within an irreducible singularity” (190). We might read
the current order of popular trans representation to be a variation of agreeing to the
“right of difference,” as transparency is the precondition of visibility politics. Opacity
is here useful not necessarily as a practice of “going stealth,” residing below or
beside the regimes of being seen but not known, although it might be. For Glissant
(1997: 193), it is a form of solidarity without being grasped. Here, I am
suggesting that it might be one form a radical trans politics might take. Opacity with
representation: an irreconcilable tension that opens to something other than the
pragmatism of the transparent and its visual economies of violence. 6 There is no
return and no triumphant narrative to be gleaned here, either from the brutal attack
on Johnson or her subsequent death. There are, of course, countless instances of
trans/queer people organizing, thriving, and resisting, even in the midst of ruthless
encounters. Furthermore, anti- trans and anti-black optics of the visual must be
confronted, by expanding and dangerous practices that open the frame while also
doing away with its necessity. And yet there is the inescapable fact that the
archive of harm, dismemberment, state-sanctioned torture, and death is still
unfolding. This unfolding, which we might call modernity, continues to claim
those who exist against it, banishing the possibility of another history, but
perhaps not banishing the image of something yet to come.
 Voting Key
Voting them down is key—when policy teams heard that the K aff lost on
“framework” they’ll be reassured and think they’re winning the fight
against critical arguments.
Vs Specific Affs
Bataille
 PRF—AFRICOM
Here’s specific evidence—debate is actually worse for acts like
protest
Mutz 02 |Diana ( Ph.D. Stanford University, teaches and does research on public opinion, political psychology and mass
political behavior, with a particular emphasis on political communication, At Penn she holds the Samuel A. Stouffer Chair in Political
Science and Communication, and also serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. In 2011, she received
the Lifetime Career Achievement Award in Political Communication from the American Political Science Association. She was
inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.) American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 4
(Oct., 2002), pp. 838-855, The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation |zH

The second possible reason that cross-cutting political networks

would discourage political participation is because cross-cutting
networks create the need to be ac- countable to conflicting
constituencies. According to this social psychological mechanism, the problem is not that
one is internally conflicted over which side to support, but
rather that one feels uncomfortable taking sides in the face of
multiple competing constituencies. The need for social
accountability creates anxiety because interpersonal
disagreement threatens social relationships, and there is no way
to please all members of one's network and thus assure social
harmony. As Green, Visser, and Tetlock suggest, "The decision maker is
caught in the middle, pushed one way by part of the group, and
pulled the other way by an opposing faction. The individual is
forced to defend a position in what may be perceived as a 'no
win' situation, in which one side will inevitably be alienated"
(2000, 4). If this mechanism alone were at work, we would
expect mainly public forms of political participation to be
affected; in private situations such as the voting booth, cross-cutting networks should pose few problems due to social
accountability. Qualitative evidence in support of the idea that people

avoid politics as a means of maintaining interpersonal social

harmony has been around for some time. In the mid 1950s, Rosenberg
(1954-55), noted in his in- depth interviews that the threat to
interpersonal harmony was a significant deterrent to political
activity. More recent case studies have provided further support for this thesis. In her study of New England town meet-
ings and an alternative workplace, Mansbridge (1980) similarly observed that conflict avoidance was an important deterrent to

). In their focus group discussions, Conover

political participation (see also Eliasoph 1998

and Searing (1998) also found considerable evidence that people

were both aware of and wary of the risks of political discussion
for interpersonal relationships. As one of their focus group
participants put it, "It's not worth it... to try and have an open discussion if it gets them [other citizens] upset"
(1998,25). Verba and Nie (1972) applied a similar logic to their analysis of political participation in which activities were
differentiated not only on the basis of the extent of initia- tive required, and the scope of the outcome, but also on the extent to

Ulbig and Funk

which conflict with others was involved. Moreover, in a recent analysis of national survey data,

(1999) found that individual differences in conflict avoidance

were negatively related to political participation of some kinds,
particularly more public participatory acts such as protesting,
working on a campaign, and political discussion.2 The idea that
conflict avoidance discourages participation is also consistent
with social psychological research on how people handle
nonpolitical interpersonal disagreements. When a person
confronted with a difference of opinion does not shift to the
other person's views or persuade them to adopt his or her own
views, the most likely alternative reaction is to devalue the issue
itself (e.g., 2Research on the "spiral of silence" similarly contends that perceived minority status will affect political preferences
by discour- aging the expression of political viewpoints that are perceived to be unpopular (Noelle-Neumann 1974). However, in this
case political discussion is the dependent, rather than the independent variable. But if one considers discussion as a form of political
participation, the spiral of silence can be interpreted as suggesting that fear of interpersonal conflict inhibits participation, as also
shown by Ulbig and Funk (1999). Nonetheless, the hypothesis that perceived support for one's opinions in the broader political
environment relates to willingness to speak out publicly has received very limited support to date (see Glynn, Hayes, and Shanahan

By devaluing politics and avoiding political

1997). Steiner 1966).

controversy, people effectively resolve the problem. In a recent

experiment manipulating exposure to arguments on opposite
sides of an issue, as well as whether subjects were accountable
to conflicting or unified constituencies, Green, Visser, and
Tetlock (2000) found that cross-pres- sured subjects engaged in
many decision-evasion tactics (including buckpassing,
procrastination, and exiting the situation) in order to avoid
accountability to contradic- tory constituencies. If we generalize
these findings outside the laboratory, we would expect those
with high levels of cross-cutting exposure in their personal
networks to put off political decisions as long as possible or
altogether, thus making their political participation particularly
unlikely. In the analyses that follow, I first examine to what extent cross-cutting exposure within social networks does, in
fact, have adverse implications for political participation of various kinds. Second, I evaluate the extent to which these two proposed
processes of influence intrapersonal ambivalence and interpersonal social accountability account for the overall impact of network
diversity on political participation.
 Queer Affs
A politics of stealth solves better—prefer our opacity to hide
ourselves from the eye of the state
Stanley 17 (Eric, Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of
California, “Anti-Trans Optics: Recognition, Opacity, and the Image of Force,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 116,
Issue 3, Duke University Press, p. 615-619, July 1, 2017, https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-
quarterly/article/116/3/612/129744/Anti-Trans-Optics-Recognition-Opacity-and-the //)2simmz
Johnson is gone, but the tape remains. How might we read, or radically misread, the
visual grammar of the tape to understand both the kinds of force it represents and
to work against its seeming inevitability? The horrific murder of Johnson might also
be understood as the tape’s extradiegetic final scene, the unfolding of a narrative
structure that is not simply racist and transphobic, which are terms too adjacent to
name the structuring work these forms of violence index. Tracing the history of the
cinematic, as many have argued, is also a way of charting the instantiation of
globalized white supremacy. To be clear, while we must attend to the racist or
otherwise phobic depictions that have compromised public visual culture from
lynching photography and D. W. Griffith’s 1915 The Birth of the Nation to
contemporary times, if we end there we remain in a discursive loop where we
continue to struggle within a regime that will never offer relief. After all, racist
content would have little power if its form were not structured similarly. Here, then,
reading with the tape of Johnson’s beating, we can see the ways optics, as that which
both includes and exceeds narrative, produces Johnson as the “no-body” da Silva
asked us to think.3 Franz Fanon’s often-cited passage from 1952 on his experience
of watching a film in a Paris theater sketches the multiple spaces of seeing and being
seen that constitute the visual as a racialized practice. Fanon states (1967: 140) “I
cannot go to a film without seeing myself. I wait for me. In the interval, just before
the film starts, I wait for me. The people in the theater are watching me, examining
me, waiting for me.” Fanon suggests that the anticipation of blackness in the viewing
apparatus of the cinema, which I would extend to viewing beyond the theater as
well, is imbued with a form of anti-blackness that is not only seen but also otherwise
sensed. Perhaps the most generative aspect of this analysis is that even before the
film begins, the racialized gaze is there, anticipating him, while he also awaits
its arrival. Fanon’s scheme both expands the “time” of the film, meaning it does not
begin or end with the rolling of images, and moves us away from assuming that the
most insipid forms of colonial racism, here anti-blackness, appear through image
alone (Keeling 2003; Marriott 2007). Expanding the time of the image and the image
of time allows us to read the murder of Duanna Johnson as the narrative conclusion
of the beating tape. Further, while Fanon was writing specifically about the
cinematic, his scheme allows us to build a similar analysis of our psychic bonds with
and through surveillance as genre in the contemporary moment. The CCTV footage
of Johnson functions much like what Gilles Deleuze (1989: 101), after Henri
Bergson, called a “time-image.” For Deleuze, a time-image is the collapsing of
past, present, and future that “makes time frightening and inexplicable” (101).
While Deleuze was talking about simultaneity in narrative cinema, the time-image
here might help us understand the specific genre of the tape where past and future
are remade through the present. Or, in other words, the time-image of the tape
reminds us that, perhaps for Johnson, there is no moment other than the time of
violence. Here, Fanon’s insistence that the time of the image does not align with the
opening scene of the film and Deleuze’s time-image illustrate the brutal semiotics of
violence that await, in the interval, both the structure of the visual and the structure
of life outside the theater for trans women of color. Given that representation
produces and does not simply echo what is assumed to reside in the real, what, then,
might representation and recognition offer for a trans politics that resides on the
side of flourishing? By way of obscuring the question of reparation and
redistribution, representation has been produced as the primary site of
struggle over “diversity” for mainstream politics (including mainstream LGBT
politics) in the United States. The last decade has witnessed a vast proliferation of
trans representations that are offered as remedy to the relentless economic, psychic,
affective, and physical violence many trans people, and in particular trans women of
color, endure. These expanding representations are also used to buttress an
argument supporting the unfolding progress of dominant culture. Yet, if we
return to CeCe McDonald’s words that open this essay, we know that with this
increased representation comes heightened, or at least sustained, instances of
violence. While 2014 was named the “Trans Tipping Point” by Time magazine, this
year, 2016, has counted the highest number of trans women of color being violently
murdered in the United States. Yet, following the Johnson tape, if we are to
understand the visual itself as technologies of anti-black and anti-trans optics, then
how might we continue the important project of representation in a visual regime
hostile to black trans life? Rather than an opening toward recognition, a
position where one can make a claim instead of being exclusively claimed,
representation for Johnson is the prefiguration of her undoing . Her being
“clocked” as trans led to her initial arrest, subsequent beating, and, even perhaps,
her murder. Being clocked, or being seen as trans, enacts the double bind of
recognition: being seen by the other brings you into the world, but more often
than not it is also that which might bring you out of it. Through representation—
both the CCTV video and descriptions of Johnson in court—the defense was able to
produce what Judith Butler (1993) and others have called a reversal of defense,
where the party harmed is, through the magic of the law, transformed into the
assumed aggressor. Johnson, and not the state, is made to hold the burden of
proof. Tracing a genealogy of the racial and gendered parameters of recognition
from G. W. F. Hegel and Fanon to da Silva and McDonald and beyond, how might we
imagine the project of recognition as both nondialectical and nondevelopmental?
The brutal scene of Johnson’s beating, replayed as the composed testimony of the
quiet court, reminds us that recognition is not a smooth space of inevitability, even
in struggle. Johnson’s trans identity forces us against a substitutive logic, to once
again face the ways race and gender, as lines of recognition, symbols, and
embodied parameters, ask for more. While Fanon rightly turns our attention to
the limits of recognition in the colonial scene, he also maintains the teleology of
subjectivity by holding on to the dialectics of structure, even for those deemed
nonsubjects. Or, if for him revolutionary violence offers a way through the violence
of anti-black coloniality, how might we push further on Fanon for those who must
remain, as da Silva might suggest, “no-bodies against the state”? Johnson’s attack
and its cinematic afterlife capture the structures of recognition and misrecognition,
representation and disappearance that constitute the work of gender and race in
and as the fields of the visual. While writing from a place of gender self-
determination that works toward gender as an opening, what is left of our various
analytics of recognition? Or, how might we return to the beating tape: not simply to
offer yet another way to imagine what we already know—that race, gender, and
violence are tightly bound— but to ask how this bind might be undone? 4
Furthermore, what tactics of production and sabotage might bring about visual
cultures that detonate the never-ending list of anti-trans violence? This question
specifically addresses those trapped in the interval of seeing and being seen. We
must pose it without a fantasy of closure. To put it another way, at the center of the
problem of recognition lies this: how can we be seen without being known and
how can we be known without being hunted?5 Indeed, being a “no-body against
the state,” a position some are already forced to live, stands against the sovereign
promise of positive representation. Read not as absolute abjection but as a tactic of
interdiction and direct action, being a “no-body” might force the visual order of
things to the point of collapse. On the issue of recognition and radical singularity,
É douard Glissant (1997: 190) has stated, “from the perspective of Western
thought, we discover that its basis is this requirement for transparency . In order
to understand and thus accept you, I have to measure your solidity with the ideal
scale providing me with grounds to make comparisons and, perhaps, judgments. I
have to reduce.” This reduction, which Fanon might call being overdetermined, is,
as we know, unequally distributed and mandated. Glissant offers a totality of
relation in opacity, the radical work of nontransparency that allows for non-
dialectic difference—the collectivization of radical singularity. Glissant
continues, “Agree not merely to the right of difference but, carrying this further,
agree also to the right of opacity that is not enclosure within an impenetrable
autarchy but subsistence within an irreducible singularity” (190). We might read
the current order of popular trans representation to be a variation of agreeing to the
“right of difference,” as transparency is the precondition of visibility politics. Opacity
is here useful not necessarily as a practice of “going stealth,” residing below or
beside the regimes of being seen but not known, although it might be. For Glissant
(1997: 193), it is a form of solidarity without being grasped. Here, I am
suggesting that it might be one form a radical trans politics might take. Opacity with
representation: an irreconcilable tension that opens to something other than the
pragmatism of the transparent and its visual economies of violence. 6 There is no
return and no triumphant narrative to be gleaned here, either from the brutal attack
on Johnson or her subsequent death. There are, of course, countless instances of
trans/queer people organizing, thriving, and resisting, even in the midst of ruthless
encounters. Furthermore, anti- trans and anti-black optics of the visual must be
confronted, by expanding and dangerous practices that open the frame while also
doing away with its necessity. And yet there is the inescapable fact that the
archive of harm, dismemberment, state-sanctioned torture, and death is still
unfolding. This unfolding, which we might call modernity, continues to claim
those who exist against it, banishing the possibility of another history, but
perhaps not banishing the image of something yet to come.
2AC
 Notes
You can use a lot of the stuff from black framework and just, your
aff to heg offense against this argument. Go for stuff like
“announcing our aff k2 solvency”, as well as arguments like
Louisville proving solvency for leftist affs creating change.
 Method Debate Good
2. Left v Left debate is good--makes us better decision-
makers around leftist politics, key to leftist advocacy skills and
political planning.
Davis, A. Y., & Barat, F. (2016). Freedom is a constant struggle:
Ferguson, Palestine, and the foundations of a movement. Chicago,
IL: Haymarket Books.
What can we do? How can we do it? With whom? What tactics
should be used? How should we define a strategy that is
accessible to everyone, including a general public that has
reached levels of depoliticization that can make atrocities seem
acceptable? What is our vision? How can we make sure “we” are
talking to “everyone”? How can we catalyze and connect
sustainable, cross-border, and radical movements? These are the
types of questions that many activists ask themselves on a daily
basis, questions that are anchored in the present and will shape
our future. It is easy to feel discouraged and simply let go. There
is no shame in that. We are, after all, engaged in a struggle that
seems, if we look at it using a mainstream political framework and
through a mass media prism, unwinnable. On the other hand, if
we take a step back, look at things from a broader angle,
reflecting on what is happening all over the world and the
history of struggle, the history of solidarity movements, it
becomes clear, sometimes even obvious, that seemingly
indestructible forces can be, thanks to people’s willpower,
sacrifices, and actions, easily broken. When I first thought of
producing a book with Angela Davis, my main goal was to talk
about our struggle as activists. To try to define it in real and
concrete terms. To try to understand what it means to people
engaged in it. Where and how does it start? Does it ever end?
What are the essential foundations for building a movement?
What does it mean physically, philosophically, and
psychologically?