Professional Documents
Culture Documents
EDUCATION (2)...................................................................................................................... 41
RULES BAD (1)....................................................................................................................... 42
RULES BAD (2)....................................................................................................................... 43
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First with the Link
A. The 1AC is a typical leftist response to international oppression that remains
silent in the face of the on-going colonization of native North America. The plan
serves as a mask for the state, making it appear benevolent, even as its existence
is contingent upon a continuing legacy of colonization that guarantees continued
international exploitation, turning the case.
Ward Churchill 1996 (Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, BA and MA in
Ill debunk some of this nonsense in a moment, but first I want to take up the posture of self-proclaimed leftist radicals in the same connection. And Ill do so on the basis of principle, because justice is supposed to
the pervasive and near-total silence of the Left in this connection has
been quite illuminating. Non-Indian activists , with only a handful of exceptions, persistently plead that
they cant really take a coherent position on the matter of Indian land rights because
unfortunately, theyre not really conversant with the issues (as if these were
tremendously complex). Meanwhile, they do virtually nothing, generation after
generation, to inform themselves on the topic of who actually owns the ground
theyre standing on. The record can be played only so many times before it wears out
and becomes just another variation of hear no evil, see no evil. At this point, it
doesnt take Albert Einstein to figure out that the Left doesnt know much about such
things because its never wanted to know, or that this is so because its always had
its own plans for utilizing land it has no more right to than does the status quo it
claims to oppose. The usual technique for explaining this away has always been a sort
of pro forma acknowledgement that Indian land rights are of course really important
stuff (yawn), but that one really doesnt have a lot of time to get into it (Ill buy your
book, though, and keep it on my shelf, even if I never read it ). Reason? Well, one is just
overwhelmingly preoccupied with working on other important issues (meaning, what they consider
to be more important issues). Typically enumerated are sexism, racism, homophobia, class inequities,
militarism, the environment, or some combination of these. Its a pretty good evasion,
all in all. Certainly, theres no denying any of these issues their due; they are all
important, obviously so. But more important than the question of land rights? There
are some serious problems of primacy and priority imbedded in the orthodox script.
To frame things clearly in this regard, lets hypothesize for a moment that all of the
various non-Indian movements concentrating on each of these issues were suddenly
successful in accomplishing their objectives . Lets imagine that the United States as a whole were somehow transformed into an entity defined by
matter more to progressives than to rightwing hacks. Let me say that
the parity of its race, class, and gender relations, its embrace of unrestricted sexual preference, its rejection of militarism in all forms, and its abiding concern with environmental protection (I know, I know, this is a
When all is said and done, the society resulting from this scenario is
still, first and foremost, a colonialist society, an imperialist society in the most
fundamental sense possible with all that this implies. This is true because the scenario does
nothing at all to address the fact that whatever is happening happens on someone
elses land, not only without their consent, but through an adamant disregard for
their rights to the land. Hence, all it means is that the immigrant or invading
population has rearranged its affairs in such a way as to make itself more comfortable
at the continuing expense of indigenous people. The colonial equation remains intact
and may even be reinforced by a greater degree of participation, and vested interest
in maintenance of the colonial order among the settler population at large . The dynamic here is not
sheer impossibility, but thats my point).
very different from that evident in the American Revolution of the late 18 th century, is it? And we all know very well where that led, dont we? Should we therefore begin to refer to socialist imperialism, feminist
imperialism, gay and lesbian imperialism, environmental imperialism, African American, and la Raza imperialism? I would hope not. I would hope this is all just a matter of confusion, of muddled priorities among
sexism the preeminent focus of progressive action in North America inevitably perpetuates the internal colonial structure of the United States, does the reverse hold true? Ill state unequivocally that it does not.
There is no indication whatsoever that a restoration of indigenous sovereignty in Indian Country would foster class stratification anywhere, least of all in Indian Country. In fact, all indications are that when left to
their own devices, indigenous peoples have consistently organized their societies in the most class-free manners. Look to the example of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy). Look to the
Muscogee (Creek) Confederacy. Look to the confederations of the Yaqui and the Lakota, and those pursued and nearly perfected by Pontiac and Tecumseh. They represent the very essence of enlightened
egalitarianism and democracy. Every imagined example to the contrary brought forth by even the most arcane anthropologist can be readily offset by a couple of dozen other illustrations along the lines of those I
just mentioned.
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Would sexism be perpetuated? Ask one of the Haudenosaunee clan mothers, who continue to assert political leadership in their societies through the present day. Ask Wilma Mankiller, current head of the Cherokee
nation , a people that traditionally led by what were called Beloved Women. Ask a Lakota womanor man, for that matterabout who it was that owned all real property in traditional society, and what that meant
in terms of parity in gender relations. Ask a traditional Navajo grandmother about her social and political role among her people. Women in most traditional native societies not only enjoyed political, social, and
economic parity with men, they often held a preponderance of power in one or more of these spheres. Homophobia? Homosexuals of both genders were (and in many settings still are) deeply revered as special or
extraordinary, and therefore spiritually significant, within most indigenous North American cultures. The extent to which these realities do not now pertain in native societies is exactly the extent to which Indians
have been subordinated to the mores of the invading, dominating culture. Insofar as restoration of Indian land rights is tied directly to the reconstitution of traditional indigenous social, political, and economic
modes, you can see where this leads: the relations of sex and sexuality accord rather well with the aspirations of feminist and gay rights activism. How about a restoration of native land rights precipitating some
sort of environmental holocaust? Lets get at least a little bit real here. If youre not addicted to the fabrications of Smithsonian anthropologists about how Indians lived, or George Weurthners Eurosupremacist
Earth First! Fantasies about how we beat all the wooly mammoths and mastodons and saber-toothed cats to death with sticks, then this question isnt even on the board. I know its become fashionable among
Washington Post editorialists to make snide references to native people strewing refuse in their wake as they wandered nomadically about the prehistoric North American landscape. What is that supposed to
imply? That we, who were mostly sedentary agriculturalists in any event. Were dropping plastic and aluminum cans as we went? Like I said, lets get real. Read the accounts of early European arrival, despite the
fact that it had been occupied by 15 or 20 million people enjoying a remarkably high standard of living for nobody knows how long: 40,000 years? 50,000 years? Longer? Now contrast that reality to whats been
done to this continent over the past couple of hundred years by the culture Weurthner, the Smithsonian, and the Post represent, and you tell me about environmental devastation. That leaves militarism and racism.
Taking the last first, there really is no indication of racism in traditional Indian societies. To the contrary, the record reveals that Indians habitually intermarried between groups, and frequently adopted both children
and adults from other groups. This occurred in pre-contact times between Indians, and the practice was broadened to include those of both African and European originand ultimately Asian origin as wellonce
contact occurred. Those who were naturalized by marriage or adoption were considered members of the group, pure and simple. This was always the Indian view. The Europeans and subsequent Euroamerican
settlers viewed things rather differently, however, and foisted off the notion that Indian identity should be determined primarily by blood quantum, an outright eugenics code similar to those developed in places
like Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa. Now thats a racist construction if there ever was one. Unfortunately, a lot of Indians have been conned into buying into this anti-Indian absurdity, and thats something
to be overcome. But theres also solid indication that quite a number of native people continue to strongly resist such things as the quantum system. As to militarism, no one will deny that Indians fought wars
among themselves both before and after the European invasion began. Probably half of all indigenous peoples in North America maintained permanent warrior societies. This could perhaps be reasonably construed
as militarism, but not, I think, with the sense the term conveys within the European/Euro-American tradition. There were never, so far as anyone can demonstrate,, wars of annihilation fought in this hemisphere
prior to the Columbian arrival, none. In fact, it seems that it was a more or less firm principle of indigenous warfare not to kill, the object being to demonstrate personal bravery, something that could be done only
against a live opponent. Theres no honor to be had in killing another person, because a dead person cant hurt you. Theres no risk. This is not to say that nobody ever died or was seriously injured in the fighting.
They were, just as they are in full contact contemporary sports like football and boxing. Actually, these kinds of Euro-American games are what I would take to be the closest modern parallels to traditional interIndian warfare. For Indians, it was a way of burning excess testosterone out of young males, and not much more. So, militarism in the way the term is used today is as alien to native tradition as smallpox and atomic
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Finally the Alternative
A. The Alternative is to reject the Affirmative and pursue indigenous land return
as a first priority. This act of impossible realism solves the caseColonization is
the root cause of oppression, and exploitation. Only a return to an indigenous
politics can remedy the ills of colonialism.
Ward Churchill 1996 (Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, BA and MA in
Communications from Sangamon State, From A Native Son pgs 85-90)
The question which inevitably arises with regard to indigenous land claims, especially
in the United States, is whether they are realistic. The answer, of course is , No,
they arent. Further, no form of decolonization has ever been realistic when viewed
within the construct of a colonialist paradigm. It wasnt realistic at the time to expect George Washingtons rag-tag militia to defeat the British
military during the American Revolution. Just ask the British. It wasnt realistic, as the French could tell you, that the Vietnamese should be able to defeat U.S.-backed France in 1954, or that the Algerians would
shortly be able to follow in their footsteps. Surely, it wasnt reasonable to predict that Fidel Castros pitiful handful of guerillas would overcome Batistas regime in Cuba, another U.S. client, after only a few years in
in order
to begin their struggles at all, anti-colonial fighters around the world have had to
abandon orthodox realism in favor of what they knew to be right . To paraphrase Bendit, they
accepted as their agenda, a redefinition of reality in terms deemed quite impossible
within the conventional wisdom of their oppressors. And in each case, they succeeded
in their immediate quest for liberation. The fact that all but one (Cuba) of the examples used subsequently turned out to hold colonizing pretensions of its
the mountains. And the Sandinistas, to be sure, had no prayer of attaining victory over Somoza 20 years later. Henry Kissinger, among others, knew that for a fact. The point is that in each case ,
own does not alter the truth of thisor alter the appropriateness of their efforts to decolonize themselvesin the least. It simply means that decolonization has yet to run its course, that much remains to be done.
The battles waged by native nations in North America to free themselves, and the lands upon which they depend for ongoing existence as discernible peoples, from the grip of U.S. (and Canadian) internal
exploit the land and resources of indigenous nations can be eroded, and that large numbers of non-Indians will join in the struggle to decolonize Native North America. Few non-Indians wish to identify with or defend
the naziesque characteristics of US history. To the contrary most seek to deny it in rather vociferous fashion. All things being equal, they are uncomfortable with many of the resulting attributes of federal postures
and actively oppose one or more of these, so long as such politics do not intrude into a certain range of closely guarded self-interests. This is where the crunch comes in the realm of Indian rights issues. Most nonIndians (of all races and ethnicities, and both genders) have been indoctrinated to believe the officially contrived notion that, in the event the Indians get their land back, or even if the extent of present federal
Hence
even progressives who are most eloquently inclined to condemn US imperialism
abroad and/or the functions of racism and sexism at home tend to deliver a blank
stare or profess open disinterest when indigenous land rights are mentioned.
Instead of attempting to come to grips with this most fundamental of all issues the
more sophisticated among them seek to divert discussions into higher priority or
more important topics like issues of class and gender equality in which justice
becomes synonymous with a redistribution of power and loot deriving from the
occupation of Native North America even while occupation continues . Sometimes, Indians are even slated to
domination is relaxed, native people will do unto their occupiers exactly as has been done to them; mass dispossession and eviction of non-Indians, especially Euro-Americans is expected to ensue .
receive their fair share in the division of spoils accruing from expropriation of their resources. Always, such things are couched in terms of some greater good than decolonizing the .6 percent of the U.S.
population which is indigenous. Some Marxist and environmentalist groups have taken the argument so far as to deny that Indians possess any rights distinguishable from those of their conquerors. AIM leader
Russell Means snapped the picture into sharp focus when he observed n 1987 that: so-called progressives in the United States claiming that Indians are obligated to give up their rights because a much larger group
of non-Indians need their resources is exactly the same as Ronald Reagan and Elliot Abrams asserting that the rights of 250 million North Americans outweigh the rights of a couple million Nicaraguans (continues).
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Leaving aside the pronounced and pervasive hypocrisy permeating these positions, which add up to a phenomenon elsewhere described as settler state colonialism, the fact is that the specter driving even most
radical non-Indians into lockstep with the federal government on questions of native land rights is largely illusory. The alternative reality posed by native liberation struggles is actually much different: While
government propagandists are wont to trumpetas they did during the Maine and Black Hills land disputes of the 1970sthat an Indian win would mean individual non-Indian property owners losing everything, the
native position has always been the exact opposite. Overwhelmingly, the lands sought for actual recovery have been governmentally and corporately held. Eviction of small land owners has been pursued only in
instances where they have banded togetheras they have during certain of the Iroquois claims casesto prevent Indians from recovering any land at all, and to otherwise deny native rights. Official sources
contend this is inconsistent with the fact that all non-Indian title to any portion of North America could be called into question. Once the dike is breached, they argue, its just a matter of time before everybody
has to start swimming back to Europe, or Africa or wherever. Although there is considerable technical accuracy to admissions that all non-Indian title to North America is illegitimate, Indians have by and large
indicated they would be content to honor the cession agreements entered into by their ancestors, even though the United States has long since defaulted. This would leave somewhere close to two-thirds of the
continental United States in non-Indian hands, with the real rather than pretended consent of native people. The remaining one-third, the areas delineated in Map II to which the United States never acquired title at
all would be recovered by its rightful owners. The government holds that even at that there is no longer sufficient land available for unceded lands, or their equivalent, to be returned. In fact, the government itself
still directly controls more than one-third of the total U.S. land area, about 770 million acres. Each of the states also owns large tracts, totaling about 78 million acres. It is thus quite possibleand always has been
for all native claims to be met in full without the loss to non-Indians of a single acre of privately held land. When it is considered that 250 million-odd acres of the privately held total are now in the hands of
major corporate entities, the real dimension of the threat to small land holders (or more accurately, lack of it) stands revealed. Government spokespersons have pointed out that the disposition of public lands
does not always conform to treaty areas. While this is true, it in no way precludes some process of negotiated land exchange wherein the boundaries of indigenous nations are redrawn by mutual consent to an
exact, or at least a much closer conformity. All that is needed is an honest, open, and binding forumsuch as a new bilateral treaty processwith which to proceed. In fact, numerous native peoples have, for a long
there will still be at least some nonIndians trapped within such restored areas. Actually, they would not be trapped at
all. The federally imposed genetic criteria of Indian ness discussed elsewhere in
this book notwithstanding, indigenous nations have the same rights as any other to
define citizenry by allegiance (naturalization) rather than by race . Non-Indians could apply for citizenship, or for some
time, repeatedly and in a variety of ways, expressed a desire to participate in just such a process. Nonetheless, it is argued,
form of landed alien status which would allow them to retain their property until they die. In the event they could not reconcile themselves to living under any jurisdiction other than that of the United States, they
would obviously have the right to leace, and they should have the right to compensation from their own government (which got them into the mess in the first place). Finally, and one suspects this is the real crux of
things from the government/corporate perspective, any such restoration of land and attendant sovereign prerogatives to native nations would result in a truly massive loss of domestic resources to the United
States, thereby impairing the countrys economic and military capacities (see Radioactive Colonialism essay for details). For everyone who queued up to wave flags and tie on yellow ribbons during the United
States recent imperial adventure in the Persian Gulf, this prospect may induce a certain psychic trauma. But, for progressives at least, it should be precisely the point. When you think about these issues in this way,
the great mass of non-Indians in North America really have much to gain and almost
nothing to lose, from the success of native people in struggles to reclaim the land
which is rightfully ours. The tangible diminishment of US material power which is
integral to our victories in this sphere stands to pave the way for realization of most
other agendas from anti-imperialism to environmentalism, from African American
liberation to feminism, from gay rights to the ending of class privilege pursued by
progressive on this continent. Conversely, succeeding with any or even all of these
other agendas would still represent an inherently oppressive situation in their
realization is contingent upon an ongoing occupation of Native North America without
the consent of Indian people. Any North American revolution which failed to free
indigenous territory from non-Indian domination would be simply a continuation of
colonialism in another form. Regardless of the angle from which you view the matter, the liberation of Native North
America, liberation of the land first and foremost, is the key to fundamental and
positive social changes of many other sorts. One thing they say, leads to another. The
question has always been, of course, which thing is to the first in the sequence . A
preliminary formulation for those serious about achieving radical change in the United
States might be First Priority to First Americans Put another way this would mean,
US out of Indian Country. Inevitably, the logic leads to what weve all been so
desperately seeking: The United States at least what weve come to know it out of
North America altogether. From there it can be permanently banished from the planet.
In its stead, surely we can join hands to create something new and infinitely better.
Thats our vision of impossible realism. Isnt it time we all worked on attaining it?
Link: Assistance
Public health assistance only addresses a symptom of a larger overall problem
caused by colonialism. The Kritik solves the rot cause of the case harms
Thomas W. Pogge, Professor Moral & Political Philosophy, Columbia University, 2004 [The Ethics of
Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 262]
These passages suggest that poverty is due to domestic factors, not to foreign influences. This empirical
view about poverty leads rather directly to the important moral error to be exposed: to the false idea that
the problem of world poverty concerns us citizens of the rich countries mainly as potential helpers. I will
therefore examine in detail the empirical view of the domestic causation of severe poverty, showing why it
is false and also why it is so widely held in the developed world. It is well to recall that existing peoples
have arrived at their present levels of social, economic and cultural development through an
historical process that was pervaded by enslavement, colonialism, even genocide. Though
these monumental crimes are now in the past, they have left a legacy of great inequalities
which would be unacceptable even if peoples were now masters of their own development.
Even if the peoples of Africa had had, in recent decades, a real opportunity to achieve similar
rates of economic growth as the developed countries, achieving such growth could not have
helped them overcome their initial 30:1 disadvantage in per capita income. Even if, starting in
1960, African annual growth in per capita income had been a full percentage point above ours each and
every year, the ratio would still be 20:1 today and would not be fully erased until early in the twenty-fourth
century. It is unclear then whether we may simply take for granted the existing inequality as if it had come
about through choices freely made within each people. By seeing the problem of poverty merely in
terms of assistance, we overlook that our enormous economic advantage is deeply tainted by
how it accumulated over the course of one historical process that has devastated the societies
and cultures of four continents.
The international law of human rights, arguably the most benign of all the areas of international law, seeks the
universalization of European cultural, philosophical, and political norms and social
structures. It is largely a culturally specific doctrine which is expressed in the idiom of the [*5] same culture. The human rights corpus is driven -normatively and descriptively -- by what I have called the savage-victim-savior metaphor, in which human rights is a
grand narrative of an epochal contest that pits savages against victims and saviors . 5 In
this script of human rights, democracy and western liberalism are internationalized to
redeem savage non-Western cultures from themselves, and to alleviate the suffering of victims, who are generally non-western and
non-European. The images of the savage Taliban, the Afghan victims mired in pre-modernity, and the American saviors put the metaphor in sharp relief. In the human rights
idiom, North America and the European West --acting generally under the guise of the United Nations and other multilateral agencies -- are
the saviors of hapless victims whose salvation lies only in the transformation of their
savage cultures through the imposition of human rights . The human rights corpus is
presented as a settled normative edifice, as a glimpse of an eternal, inflexible truth. As a result,
attempts to question or reformulate a truly universal regime of rights, one that
reflects the complexity and the diversity of all cultures, have generally been viewed
with indifference or hostility by the official guardians of human rights. This refusal to create a culturally complex and diverse human rights corpus is all the more perplexing
because the view that the human rights doctrine is an ideology with deep roots in liberalism and democratic forms of government is beyond question. In fact, an increasing number of scholars now realize that the
cultural biases of the human rights corpus can only be properly situated within liberal theory and philosophy. Understood from this position, human rights are an ideology with a specific cultural and ethnographic
human rights corpus expresses a cultural bias, and its chastening of a state is
therefore a cultural project. If culture is not defined as some discrete, exotic, and peculiar practice which is frozen in time but rather as the dynamic totality of ideas, forms,
practices, and structures of any given society, then human rights is an expression of a particular European-American
culture. The advocacy of human rights across cultural borders is then an attempt to
displace the local non-Western culture with the "universal" culture of human rights.
Human rights therefore become the universal culture. It is in this sense that the
"other" culture, that which is non-European, is the savage in the human rights corpus
and its discourse.
fingerprint. The
Human rights and international law are both otherizing discourses that construct
the native as primitive and backward. These labels easily shift to discourses of
terrorism that justify violence.
Makau Mutua, Professor of Law and Director, Human Rights Center, SUNY-Buffalo School of Law, 2002
[Terrorism and Human Rights: Power, Culture, and Subordination, Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, p.
lexis]
international law -- including its post-1945 expression through the United Nations --is largely about ordering the
lives of non-European native peoples. The purpose of such ordering is to create a
world in which American and European interests are not threatened or injured by
political and cultural paradigms that may be inconsistent with those interests. That is
why the "othering" process is absolutely essential if Western hegemony is to be
maintained. Although that process is arduous and usually only produces an elite that has no depth in its own society, the West regards that as the first and necessary step towards the recovery or
It bears saying that the history of
reclamation of primitive, backward, and pre-modern societies. As American officials have put it, the "Afghan swamp must first be drained." The West has no illusion that Afghani society will turn into a modern,
Western political democracy overnight. But at the very least it can under the tutelage of the United Nations and other multi-lateral agencies and donors be defanged of virulent anti-Westernism, and placed on a
Link: Law
The law is inherently Eurocentric and the appearance of legality is used to
disguise the colonialist intentions of the plan.
Kenneth B. Nunn, prof. of law, University of Florida School of Law, in 19 97 [Law as a Eurocentric
Enterprise, Law and Inequality, Spring, p. lexis]
Although the European was liberal with his law, he was parsimonious with his rights, and this
is especially true in regard to the right of self-determination. This potent combination is a constant
feature of European contact with other cultures and thus merits further attention. European colonizers
dominated the majority peoples of the world, took their land, and destroyed or corrupted their
cultures. Yet these colonizers always proceeded "legally" through treaties or the dictates of
international law. Ani argues convincingly that the European preoccupation with "legalizing" their
conquests served the double purpose of disarming their victims and bolstering the European
self-image. A key part of the European belief system is faith in the linear notion of "progress," the belief
that later historical developments are superior to preceding ones and that the course of human history
flows from worse to better. This, in combination with the European conviction that white culture was
superior to the world's other cultures made European conquest a matter of pride and self-esteem. Their
conquests needed to be "legal" in order to provide the full psychological benefits. In addition,
the export of European law was deemed as synonymous with the export of European
"civilization" and thus synonymous with progress The concept of "codified law" is a definite
ingredient of that of civilization; for with civilization, according to European ideology, comes order and
legality assures "lasting order" - not moral conduct but consistent and predictable conduct. So that the
"civilized" way - the European way - is to bring laws, however forcibly, and the structures of
European culture ("civilization") to those whom one treats immorally and for whom one has no
respect. From a pragmatic perspective, then, the law cannot be viewed as a positive force for
change. The law must be viewed for what it is, a necessary component for the extension of
white power around the globe. Although the introduction of law into indigenous societies brought
order, it did not - it could not - bring peace. Instead "law was in the vanguard of what its own proponents
saw as a "belligerent civilization,' bringing "grim presents' with its penal regulation and, in the process,
inflicting an immense violence." Consequently, the best choice for people of color who choose to
resist white dominance is to reject the law, to become "out/laws," since "by refusing to relate
to Western order, these individuals [*363] ... succeed in robbing [Europeans] of a potent tool
for psychological and ideological enslavement."
international law is founded, treat the universe as a theater for European and North
American military, political, economic, and cultural interests. 2 This global white
European supremacy over non-European peoples is premised on the notion of Europe
as the center of the universe, Christianity as the fountain of civilization, the
innateness of capitalist economics, and political imperialism as a necessity . 3 In this scheme of
Those biases, on which
international law, the West is the point of reference for the world, and every other country or region is incidental to the [*4] European West. In the current global terror-driven crisis, public discourse implies that the
Judeo-Christian tradition is the moral and naturalist foundation of civilization and reason, without which full humanity is unattainable. In historical terms, Christianity was coupled with the colonial project, fusing the
Political
imperialism -- defined today as global American leadership -- is an indispensable
paradigm in the ordering of the relationship between Europeans and non-European
peoples, with the manifest duty of European peoples to convey the gifts of civilization
to backward and uncivilized races. Thus international law orders the world into the
European and the non-European, and gives primacy to the former. This is done by
creating the notion of the hierarchy of cultures and peoples. The fundamental
principles of international law evidence this inflexible view of the discipline .
Sovereignty and statehood are defined in such a way as to exclude or subordinate
non-European societies. 4 Membership in international society is a prerogative of
American and European powers, which alone decide who -- and on what terms -belongs to this international society and can benefit from the privileges of
international law. Nowhere has this been more evident than in Afghanistan where the United States has arrogated to itself the right to dismantle the state, and to recreate it. The current
crisis leaves no doubt about the identity of the masters of the universe. The international legal order erects, preserves, and
advances the European and American domination of the globe .
church, state, and empire. Capitalism was constructed as innate in humans, and therefore the basis for the regimes of the ownership, protection, and distribution of global resources.
the sea. Of course, each rule conferring authority on a government denies it to all others. The United States government may be restrained in attempts to enforce its law in Canada, and Japanese fisherman may be
barred from fishing near California's coast. Nevertheless, governments have little interest in extending their authority to that extent, at least when compared with their interest in controlling matters at home. For the
most part, governments do not want to invade other countries or apply their law or send their fishermen to other territories. To be sure, there are exceptions, and these exceptions can be of vital importance to the
government power, especially against village or other traditional structures . For example, a government's international
responsibility for injuries to aliens gives that government a mandate to control local officials and practices. Even when the rules do prevent a government
from doing something that it otherwise wants to do , such as denying overflight rights to a hostile state's aircraft (contrary to the Chicago Convention),
it may decide to forgo the short-term advantages derived from violating those rules because it has an
overriding interest in maintaining the overall system. The rules comprising the system as a whole
enable each government to achieve welfare goals for important parts of its population, and hence solidify its standing and legitimacy . Thus, the United States government
may decide not to block transit of Cuban aircraft over United States territory because it derives support from the airline industry [*834] and the traveling public, both of which in turn benefit from transit over Cuba
Impact: Environment
Next to the Impacts
A. The colonialism of early America is the root cause of wars todaythey are
extensions of genocidal carnage against native people
Paul Street, author, March 11, 2004. [Those Who Deny the Crimes of the Past Reflections on American
Racist Atrocity Denial, 1776-2004, http://thereitis.org/displayarticle242.html]
B. Indigenous land return sparks global decolonization movements that are critical
to averting environmental collapse and extinction.
George E. Tinker, Iliff School of Technology, 1996 [Defending Mother Earth: Native American
Perspectives on Environmental Justice, ed. Jace Weaver, p. 171-72]
there were and are cultures that take their natural environment seriously and attempt to live in balance with the created whole around them in ways that help them not overstep environmental limits. Unlike the
Wests consistent experience of alienation from the natural world, these cultures of indigenous peoples consistently experienced themselves as part of the that created whole, in relationship with everything else in
the world. They saw and continue to see themselves as having responsibilities, just as every other creature has a particular role to play in maintaining the balance of creation as an ongoing process. This is
ultimately the spiritual rationale for annual ceremonies like the Sun Dance or Green Corn Dance. As another example, Lakota peoples planted cottonwoods and willows at their campsites as they broke camp to
move on, thus beginning the process of reclaiming the land humans had necessarily trampled through habitation and encampment. We now know that indigenous rainforest peoples in what is today called the state
of Brazil had a unique relationship to the forest in which they lived, moving away from a cleared area after farming it to a point of reduced return and allowing the clearing to be reclaimed as jungle. The group would
then clear a new area and begin a new cycle of production. The whole process was relatively sophisticated and functioned in harmony with the jungle itself. So extensive was their movement that some scholars are
now suggesting that there is actually very little of what might rightly be called virgin forest in what had been considered the untamed wilds of the rainforest. What I have described here is more than just a
coincidence or, worse, some romanticized falsification of Native memory. Rather, I am insisting that there are peoples in the world who live with an acute and cultivated sense of their intimate participation in the
natural world as part of an intricate whole. For indigenous peoples, this means that when they are presented with the concept of development, it is sense-less. Most significantly, one must realize that this
awareness is the result of self-conscious effort on the part of the traditional American Indian national communities and is rooted in the first instance in the mythology and theology of the people. At its simplest, the
worldview of American Indians can be expressed as Ward Churchill describes it: Human beings are free (indeed, encouraged) to develop their innate capabilities, but only in ways that do not infringe upon other
elements called relations, in the fullest dialectical sense of the word of nature. Any activity going beyond this is considered as imbalanced, a transgression, and is strictly prohibited. For example,
engineering was and is permissible, but only insofar as it does not permanently alter the earth itself. Similarly, agriculture was widespread, but only within norms that did not supplant natural vegetation. Like the
threatens the survivability of us all. What I am most passionately arguing is that we must commit to the struggle
for the just and moral survival of Indian peoples as peoples of the earth, and that this
struggle is for the sake of the earth and for the sustaining of all life. It is now
imperative that we change the modern value of acquisitiveness and the political systems and economics that
consumption has generated. The key to making this massive value shift in the world
system may lie in the international recognition of indigenous political sovereignty and selfdetermination. Returning Native lands to the sovereign control of Native peoples
around the world, beginning in the United States, is not simply just; the survival of all
may depend on it.
Impact: Environment
Indigenous knowledge is key to achieving an understanding of how to properly
manage the environment
B.
Rajasekaran, Center for Indigenous Knowledge for Agriculture and Rural Development, Iowa State, 19 93
research, extension, and NGOs for sustainable agricultural development. Studies in Technology and Social Change No. 21. Technology and Social Change Program, Iowa State University, 1993,
http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/docs/004-201/004-201.html)
these
people are well informed about their own situations, their resources, what works and
doesn't work, and how one change impacts other parts of their system (Butler and Waud, 1990). 1.2 Value of
experiences with modern technologies. Local people, including farmers, landless laborers, women, rural artisans, and cattle rearers, are the custodians of indigenous knowledge systems. Moreover,
indigenous knowledge Indigenous knowledge is dynamic, changing through indigenous mechanisms of creativity and innovativeness as well as through contact with other local and international knowledge systems
Indigenous knowledge
systems often are elaborate, and they are adapted to local cultural and environmental
conditions (Warren, 1987). Indigenous knowledge systems are tuned to the needs of local
people and the quality and quantity of available resources (Pretty and Sandbrook, 1991). They pertain to various cultural
(Warren, 1991). These knowledge systems may appear simple to outsiders but they represent mechanisms to ensure minimal livelihoods for local people.
norms, social roles, or physical conditions. Their efficiency lies in the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. According to Norgaard (1984, p. 7): Traditional knowledge has been viewed as part of a romantic
traditional
knowledge treated as knowledge per se in the mainstream of the agricultural and development and environmental management literature, as knowledge that contributes to
our understanding of agricultural production and the maintenance and use of
environmental systems. 1.3 Diversity of indigenous knowledge Indigenous knowledge systems are: adaptive skills of local
people usually derived from many years of experience, that have often been communicated through "oral traditions" and learned through family members over generations (Thrupp, 1989), timetested agricultural and natural resource management practices, which pave the way
for sustainable agriculture
past, as the major obstacle to development, as a necessary starting point, and as a critical component of a cultural alternative to modernization. Only very rarely, however, is
Impact: Environment
Continued lack of understanding of indigenous people and their practices leads to
further decimation of the environment
B.
Rajasekaran, Center for Indigenous Knowledge for Agriculture and Rural Development, Iowa State, 19 93
research, extension, and NGOs for sustainable agricultural development. Studies in Technology and Social Change No. 21. Technology and Social Change Program, Iowa State University, 1993,
http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/docs/004-201/004-201.html)
(Richards,
1985; Warren, 1990). Small-scale farmers are often portrayed as backward, obstinately conservative, resistant to change, lacking innovative ability, and even lazy (IFAP, 1990, p. 24). The International Federation of
conceptual framework Despite continuous importance given to linkages between research-extension-farmer while developing, disseminating, and utilizing sustainable agricultural technologies, several sociopolitical and institutional factors act as constraints for such an effective linkage (Oritz et al., 1991). After a decade of rhetoric about feedback of farmers' problems to extension workers and scientists, a large gap
Researchers perceived
extension agents and institutions to be ineffective and unclear about their mandate,
making researchers reluctant to work with extension. When researchers did work with
extension agents, they tended to look down on them and view them as little more
than available menial labor, an attitude strongly resented by the extension workers.
Keeping these potential constraints in conventional transfer of technology, a
framework for incorporating indigenous knowledge systems into agricultural research
and extension has been developed with the following salient features: strengthening
the capacities of regional research and extension organizations; building upon local
people's knowledge that are acquired through various processes such as farmer-to-farmer communication, and farmer experimentation; identifying the need for extension scientist/
remains between the ideal and reality (Haugerud and Collinson, 1991). Kaimowitz (1992: 105) provided illustrations to support the above statement:
social scientist in an interdisciplinary regional research team; formation of a sustainable technology development consortium to bring farmers, researchers, NGOs, and extension workers together well ahead of the
farmer together at all stages is practically difficult considering the existing bureaucracies and spatial as well as academic distances among the personnel belonging to these organizations. Hence, utilizing the
academic knowledge gained by some extension personnel (subject matter specialists) during the process of validating farmer experiments; outlining areas that research and extension organizations need to
Indigenous land return destroys the sovereignty of the State, and collapsed
capitalism
Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar in Sociology at Yale, 1997 [States? Sovereignty? The
Dilemmas of Capitalists in an Age of Transition, http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwsovty.htm]
The sovereignty of the states - their inward and outward sovereignty within the framework of an interstate system - is a fundamental
pillar of the capitalist world-economy. If it falls, or seriously declines, capitalism is
untenable as a system. I agree that it is in decline today, for the first time in the history of the modern world-system.
A2: Perm
Must insist on hierarchiesThe Alternative must be a priority or it risks being
neutralized as just any other political issue
Ward Churchill 2003 (Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, BA and MA in
Communications from Sangamon State, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, Page 8)
On balance, U.S., progressives have devoted far more time and energy over the
past decade to combating the imaginary health effects of environmental tobacco
smoke and demanding installation of speed bumps in suburban neighborhoodsthat
is, to increasing their own comfort levelthan to anything akin to a coherent
response to the U.S. genocide in Iraq. The underlying mentality is symbolized quite well in the fact that, since they were released in the mid-1990s, Jean Baudrillards
allegedly radical screed. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, has outsold Ramsey Clarks The Impact of Sanctions on Iraq, prominently subtitled The Children are Dying, by a margin of almost three to one. The
theoretical trajectory entered into by much of the American left over the past quartercentury exhibits a marked tendency to try and justify such evasion and squalid selfindulgence through the expedient of rejecting hierarchy, in all its forms. Since
hierarchy may be taken to include anything resembling an order of priorities, we
are faced thereby with the absurd contention that all issues are of equal importance (as
in the mindless slogan, There is no hierarchy to oppression). From there, it becomes axiomatic that the privileging of
any issue over another-genocide, say, over fanny-pinching in the workplacebecomes
not only evidence of elitism, but of sexism, and often homophobia to boot (as in the
popular formulation holding that Third World anti-imperialism is inherently nationalistic, and nationalism is inherently damaging to the rights of women and gays). Having thus foreclosed upon all options for
concrete engagement as mere reproductions of the relations of oppression,
the left has largely neutralized itself, a matter reflected most conspicuously in the
applause it bestowed upon Homi K. Bhabhas preposterous 1994 contention that writing,which he likens to warfare, should be considered the only valid revolutionary act.
A2: Realism
Realism is informed by colonialist views of human nature that depict the savage
native as proof of the need for the state. This serves to absolve the state of its
role in genocide
Anthony J. Hall, Department of Native American Studies University of Lethbridge, April 15, 19 99 [Ethnic
Cleansing of Native North American People,
http://www.akha.org/content/international/ethniccleansingofnorthamericanindigenouspeople.html]
To now read all these years later Mr. McKays dismissive comments about Bruce Clark as the infamous loser
in Temagami and countless and other cases, raises the question of strange argumentative concoctions
youd need to win before a judge with the deep prejudices and sparce historical knowledge of a Mr. Justice
Steele. While I thought he was the last word in judicial ethnocentrism, Mr. Justice Allan McEachern
managed to outdo his Ontario counterpart in the ruling of the lower court on the Delgamuukw case. Mr.
McEachern, who doubles as chair of the judges own self regulating body, pronounced that Indians
have almost nothing of worth to retain for either themselves or the world from their own
Indigenous cultures. To make this point, the BC jurist actually quoted Thomas Hobbes, who
used imaginary North American Indians in 1651, to argue that life without a dictatorial ruler is
nasty, brutish and short. Accordingly, to properly understand the genesis of Dr. Clarks legal
interpretation, you need to know someting of the nature of his formative experiences with judges that, in
my view, were unusually extreme in their ethnocentric hostility to Indian peoples and Indian cultures. What
emerged for him from this experience, was a dawning recognition that the stakes of the contentions
over Aboriginal and treaty rights are so big, and the legacy of legal impropriety so old and so
well protected by layer upon layer of dubious and overtly racist legal precedent, that it is
almost unimaginable that any judge would take the responsibility of overturning this status
quo-- of overturning this institutionalized complicity in genocide that is so deeply ingrained in
the framework of North American experience that it is made to seem normal and natural and
simply a fact of life.
A2: Extinction
By presenting nuclear extinction as the single most important impact, the AFF
naturalizes and legitimizes the on-going colonization of the indigenous periphery.
Masahide Kato, Professor of Political Science, University of Hawaii, 19 93 [Nuclear Globalism: Traversing
Rockets, Satellites, and Nuclear War via the Strategic Gaze, Alternatives, p.351]
By representing the possible extinction as the single most important problematic of nuclear
catastrophe (posing it as either a threat or a symbolic void), nuclear criticism disqualifies the entire
history of nuclear violence, the "real" of nuclear catastrophe as a continuous and repetitive
process. The "real" of nuclear war is designated by nuclear critics as a "rehearsal" (Derrik De Kerkbove) or
"preparation" (Firth) for what they reserve as the authentic catastrophe. The history of nuclear violence
offers, at best, a reality effect to the imagery of "extinction." Schell summarized the discursive position of
nuclear critics very succinctly, by stating that nuclear catastrophe should not be conceptualized "in the
context of direct slaughter of hundreds of millions people by the local effects." Thus the elimination of
the history of nuclear violence by nuclear critics stems from the process of discursive
"delocalization" of nuclear violence. Their primary focus is not local catastrophe, but
delocalized, unlocatable, "global" catastrophe. The elevation of the discursive vantage point
deployed in nuclear criticism through which extinction is conceptualized parallels that of the point of the
strategic gaze: nuclear criticism raises the notion of nuclear catastrophe to the "absolute" point
from which the fiction of "extinction" is configured. Herein, the configuration of the globe and the
conceptualization of "extinction" reveal their interconnection via the "absolutization" of the strategic gaze.
In the same way as the fiction of the totality of the earth is constructed, the fiction of
extinction is derived from the figure perceived through the strategic gaze. In other words, the
image of the globe, in the final instance, is nothing more than a figure on which the notion of
extinction is being constructed. Schell, for instance, repeatedly encountered difficulty in locating the
subject involved in the conceptualization of extinction, which in turn testifies to its figural origin: "who will
suffer this loss, which we somehow regard as supreme? We, the living, will not suffer it; we will be dead.
Nor will the unborn shed any tears over their lost chance to exist; to do so they would have to exist
already."
A2: Identity/Land K
Land Key to Culture
Land is the cornerstone for Indigenous culture: governance, ancestry and religion,
society, all depend on it.
Babcock,Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, 2005 (Hope M.; A Civic-Republican Vision
of
"Domestic Dependent Nations" in the Twenty-First Century: Tribal Sovereignty Re-envisioned,
Reinvigorated, and Reempowered; 2005 Utah L. Rev. 443; Lexis; JLS) But it is said, that they are averse to
society and a social life. Can anything be more inapplicable than this to a people who always live in towns
or clans? Or can they be said to have no "republique," who conduct all their affairs in national councils,
who pride themselves in their national character, who consider an insult or injury done to an individual by
a stranger as done to the whole, and who resent it accordingly. In short, this picture is not applicable to
any nation of Indians I have ever known or heard of in North America. n418 [*537] The republican principle
of having a place within which to practice the art of being a good citizen is (and always has
been) central to tribal society. Indian tribes have always had a concept of territory and
boundaries. Most tribes assigned hunting territories to villages or lineages, which other tribes
and tribal members knew of and respected. n419 Tribes also recognized (and still recognize)
territory through mythical or sacred claims, and the burial sites of lineages and clans marked
territory for most, if not all tribes. n420 Today, a tribe's traditional homeland is the
"centerpiece of contemporary Indian life." n421 Tribal lands and their resources are not only
sustaining for the tribe, but are the tribe's cultural and spiritual base - where ancestors are
buried, and spirits live - and the very topography can provide cleansing and rebirth. n422 You cannot
understand how the Indian thinks of himself in relation to the world around him unless you
understand his conception of what is appropriate; particularly what is morally appropriat e within the
context of that relationship. The native American ethic with respect to the physical world is a matter
of reciprocal appropriation: appropriations in which man invests himself in the landscape, and at the same
time incorporates the landscape into his own most fundamental experience. n423
A2: Identity/Land K
Land Key to Culture
Theres no chance of offense here, land provides the internal link to all facets of
Indigenous culture and ways of life.
Bradford, Chiricahua Apache. LL.M., 2001, Harvard Law School; Ph.D., 1995, Northwestern University; J.D., 2000, University of
Miami. Assistant Professor of Law, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2003 (William; "With a Very Great Blame on Our
Hearts": n1 Reparations, Reconciliation, and an American Indian Plea for Peace with Justice; 27 Am. Indian L. Rev. 1; Lexis; JLS)
The relationship between the land and Indian people is fundamental to their physical
and cultural survival as distinct, autonomous groups. Indian land is constitutive of the Indian
cultural identity n111 and designative of the boundaries of the Indian cultural universe . n112 Indian land
transmits knowledge about history, links people to their ancestors, and provides a code of appropriate moral behavior. From the moment of first contact with European "discoverers," [*26] Indians
proclaimed a sacred responsibility to preserve and transmit Indian land, and with it, identity ,
religion, and culture, to successive generations . n113 The discharge of that responsibility was compromised by federal policies of land acquisition ranging
from fraud and deceit to expropriation and outright theft. Throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, prudence directed Euro-Americans to formally recognize militarily potent Indian tribes as
independent societies and accord them diplomatic recognition as sovereigns. n114 Even subsequent to the defeats of France in the Seven Years' War in 1763 and Britain in the War of Independence in 1781, the
Euro-American foothold in North America remained tenuous, and ongoing military insecurity stymied territorial ambitions while stifling any notions of conquest. Moreover, the United States' land hunger was largely
Still,
if during its first several decades of existence the fledgling government was obliged to
recognize the sovereignty of Indian nations and to respect Indian lan d titles as a matter of
international and domestic law, n117 from the moment of its creation th e United States was
crafting legal solutions to the "problems caused by the . . . fact that the Indian s were here when
the white man arrived[.]"
slaked by available space within the original thirteen colonies, and land acquisitions from Indian tribes were of necessity accomplished by treaties of cession n115 after peaceful negotiations. n116 [*27]
Testimony and the Black Hills; 69 N. Dak. L. Rev. 337; Lexis; JLS)
land
restoration is a cornerstone cultural commitmen t. Economic considerations are important, but not as central. The Black Hills land is of
primary importance because of its sacredness, its nexus to the cultural well being of
Lakota people, and its role as a mediator in their relationship with all other livin g things. As noted by Gerald
Clifford, Chairman of the Black Hills Steering Committee, "until we get back on track in our relationship to the earth, we cannot
straighten out any of our relationships to ourselves, to other people." n68 Land is inherent to Lakota people. It is their
cultural centerpiece - the fulcrum of material and spiritual well being. Without it, there is
neither balance nor center. The Black Hills are a central part of this "sacred text" and constitute its prophetic core: As part of the "sacred text," the land - like sacred texts in other
Such a wide-ranging legal and historical controversy as the Black Hills issue inevitably requires that analytic attention be paid to context and situatedness. For the Sioux Nation,
traditions -is not primarily a book of answers, "but rather a principal symbol of, perhaps the principal symbol of, and thus a central occasion of recalling and heeding, the fundamental aspirations of the tradition." It
guarantees nothing, but it does hold the necessary potential to successfully mediate the past of the tradition with its present predicament.
By addressing only a tiny fragment of his writings, the report implies that Ward tries
to overawe and hoodwink his readers with spurious documentation. Anyone who reads
an essay like "Nits Make Lice: The Extermination of North American Indians 1607- 1996" with its
612 footnotes will get a very different impression . Churchill, they will see, goes far beyond most writers of broad historical
overviews in trying to support his claims. He often cites several references in the same footnote. Ward is deeply
engaged with the materials he references and frequently comments extensively upon
them. He typically mounts a running critique of authors like James Axtell, Steven Katz, and Deborah Lipstadt. Readers will see that
Churchill is familiar with a formidable variety of materials and can engage in a broad range of intellectual discourses. Like most scholars, Churchill practices an implicitly Bayesian (a statistical term)
form of analysis. That is, he evaluates the plausibility of assertions and the credibility of evidence partly on the
basis of his prior beliefs. That government officials connived in generating the 1837-40 smallpox epidemic seems far more plausible to Ward than to the investigating committee precisely because he thinks this is
claim is misconduct. Citing a book without giving a page number is misconduct. Referencing a source that only partially supports an assertion is misconduct. Referencing contradictory sources without detailing their
contradictions is misconduct. Citing a work considered by some to be unserious or inadequate is misconduct. Footnoting an erroneous claim without acknowledging the error is misconduct. Interpreting a text
this list of
transgressions could be greatly expanded. I strongly suspect that many people who vociferously
support the report have read neither it nor any book or essay Ward Churchill has ever
written. Perhaps this should be deemed a form of academic misconduct.
differently than does its author is misconduct. Ghost writing an article is misconduct. Referencing a paper one has ghost written without acknowledging authorship is misconduct. No doubt
...
***Kritiks Good***
Knowledge is Subjective
Knowledge production is based on a violent subjectivity
Chow 6 (Rey, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Modern Culture & Media
Studies, Comparative Literature, and English, The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory,
and Comparative Work, Duke University Press, pg. 40-41)
Often under the modest and apparently innocuous agendas of fact
of bases as war put an end to the violence of warfare, or is such knowledge not simply warfare's
accomplice, destined to destroy rather than preserve the forms of lives at which it aims its focus? As long as knowledge is
produced in this self-referential manner, as a circuit of targeting or getting the other that ultimately consolidates the omnipotence and
omnipresence of the sovereign "self"/"eye"the "I"that is the United States, the other will have no choice but remain just thata target whose
existence justifies only one thing, its destruction by the bomber. As long as the focus of our study of Asia remains the United States, and as long
as this focus is not accompanied by knowledge of what is happening elsewhere at other times as well as at the present, such study will
ultimately confirm once again the self-referential function of virtual worlding that was unleashed by the
dropping of the atomic bombs, with the United States always occupying the position of the bomber , and other
cultures always viewed as the military and information target fields. In this manner, events whose historicity does not fall into the epistemically
closed orbit of the atomic bombersuch as the Chinese reactions to the war from a primarily anti-Japanese point of view that I alluded to at the
beginning of this chapterwill never receive the attention that is due to them. "Knowledge," however conscientiously gathered and however
large in volume, will lead only to further silence and to the silencing of diverse experiences. 54 This is one reason why,
as Harootunian remarks, area studies has been, since its inception, haunted by "the absence of a definable object"- and
by "the problem of the vanishing object."
Limits Bad
A focus on limits engenders violent practices by stopping productive discussions.
Bleiker and Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and Martin,
Senior Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34(3), p.
733-734)JM
A subliminal orientation is attentive to what is bubbling along under the surface. It is mindful of how conscious attempts to
understand conceal more than they reveal, and purposeful efforts of progressive change may engender more violence than
they erase. For these reasons, Connolly emphasises that ethical artistry has an element of navet and innocence. One is not quite sure
what one is doing. Such navet need not lead us back to the idealism of the romantic period. One should not be nave about navet, Simon
Critchley would say.56 Rather, the challenge of change is an experiment . It is not locked up in a predetermined
conception of where one is going. It involves tentatively exploring the limits of ones being in the world, to see if
different interpretations are possible, how those interpretations might impact upon the affects below the level
of conscious thought, and vice versa. This approach entails drawing upon multiple levels of thinking and being,
searching for changes in sensibilities that could give more weight to minor feelings or to arguments that were
previously ignored.57 Wonder needs to be at the heart of such experiments, in contrast to the resentment of
an intellect angry with its own limitations. The ingre d i e n t of wonder is necessary to disrupt and suspend the normal pre s s u
res of returning to conscious habit and control. This exploration beyond the conscious implies the need for an ethos of theorising and
acting that is quite diff e rent from the mode directed towards the cognitive justification of ideas and concepts. Stephen White talks about circ u i
t s of reflection, affect and arg umentation.58 Ideas and principles provide an orientation to practice , the implications
of that practice feed back into our affective outlook, and processes of argumentation introduce other ideas
and affects. The shift, here, is from the vertical search for foundations in skyhooks above or foundations below, to a horizontal movement
into the unknown.
Hope for a better world will, indeed, remain slim if we put all our efforts into searching for a mimetic
understanding of the international. Issues of global war and Third World poverty are far too serious and urgent to be left
to only one form of inquiry, especially if this mode of thought suppresses important faculties and fails to
understand and engage the crucial problem of representation. We need to employ the full register of human
perception and intelligence to understand the phenomena of world politics and to address the dilemmas that emanate from them.
One of the key challenges, thus, consists of legitimising a greater variety of approaches and insights to world politics. Aesthetics is an
important and necessary addition to our interpretative repertoire. It helps us understand why the emergence, meaning and
significance of a political event can be appreciated only once we scrutinise the representational practices that
have constituted the very nature of this event.
Limits Bad
Limits exclude and are an innately subjective process -- Objectifying rules obliterates agency
Bleiker 3 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, Contemporary Political
Theory, 2, p. 39-40)JM
Approaching the political - and by extension dilemmas of agency requires tolerance towards various forms of
insight and levels of analysis, even if they contradict each others internal logic. Such differences often only appear as
contradictions because we still strive for a universal standard of reference that is supposed to subsume all the various
aspects of life under a single totalizing standpoint (Adorno, 1992, 1718). Every process of revealing is at the
same time a process of concealing. Even the most convincing position cannot provide a form of insight that
does not at the same time conceal other perspectives. Revealing always occurs within a frame. Framing is a way of ordering, and
ordering banishes all other forms of revealing. This is, grossly simplified, a position that resonates throughout much of
Heideggers work (1954, 35). Taking this argument to heart is to recognize that one cannot rely on one form of revealing alone.
An adequate understanding of human agency can be reached only by moving back and forth between various
insights. The point, then, is not to end up with a grand synthesis, but to make most out of each specific form of
revealing (for an exploration of this theme, via an analysis of Kants Critique of Judgement, see Deleuze, 1994).
Language has no limits politics transcends to the personal level and becomes infinite
Okadigbo 2 (Chuba, former African Senate President, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChatAfriK/message/2824)JFS
Yes. Dialogue
has no limits especially when the dialogue leads to a general, consensual agreement. The purpose of politics is
the well-being of the masses; the common good is the object of politics . These calculations focus on the
subject of power and politics. Where politics stops, government begins. Where government stops, politics begins. Now, I
give you one example. Do you know, Mr. Editor, that there are already manipulations in the press to reduce the impeachment saga into a
regional affair between North and South? By not being emotive but intellectual about it, I watch that argument with every discretion. Dialogue
is of the essence right now. If you allow any emotive, temperamental or tribal argument in the calculus, we will lose
Since dialogue is intersubjective, it necessitates interpretation and understanding by all parties involved.
Dialogue necessitates that all participants are willing to exert themselves on the part of others in a dialogue to
understand often- diverse positions. Commitment to interpretation also means that efforts are made to grasp the
positions, beliefs, and values of others before their positions can be equitably evaluated (Gadamer, 1994; Ellul, 1985;
Makay & Brown, 1972).
These intersubjective limits are better than imposed limits for self/other worth
Kent et al 2 (Michael L. Kent, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Strategic Communication, Maureen Taylor, Ph.D., is Gaylord Family Chair of
Strategic Communication, Sheila M. McAllister-Spooner, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Communication, Monmouth University, Research in dialogic
theory and public relations)
Genuine dialogue, involves more than just a commitment to a relationship . Dialogue occurs when individuals (and
sometimes groups) agree to set aside their differences long enough to come to an understanding of the others positions.
Dialogue is not equivalent to agreement. Rather, dialogue is more akin to intersubjectivity where both parties
attempt to understand and appreciate the values and interests of the other. Dialogue is both Socratic and Kantian. Dialogue
rests on an acknowledgement of the worth of the other as well as a willingness to continue the conversation
not for purposes of swaying the other with the strength of ones erudition, but as a means of understanding the other and reaching
mutually satisfying positions.
ld require a break with self=absorption. Much of what passes for conversation is actually monologue becau
se it is constructed around a self=other structure such that the "other. is the absence or reflection of self In contr
ast. dialogue is intersubjective It is an openended meeting of subjects. Emil Fackenheim articulates two main precepts fo
r structuring the ground for ethical dialogue.' The first that dialogue begins where one is, and thus is always situated; the
second is that dialogue is Open, and I thus that the outcome is not known in advance. Openness produces refl
exivity, to that one's own round becomes destabilized. In open dialogue one holds one's self available to be surprised, to be
challenged, and to be knocked out of narcissism. Dialogue breaks up monologue, it clears a round for meeting, generating a
place where people cm speak on their own terms. It thus requires attentive listening and
an open mind. Construed in this way, dialogue is a decolonizing practice leading
the 'aggressive and manipulative intellect bred by modern science and discharged into the administration
of things' associated with most of the world's human made perils. And is therefore understandable that feminist and
others critics would write so harshly of traditional argumentation of debate.
Senior Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34(3), p.
735-736)JM
Promoting aesthetic engagements with politics is not to replace social scientific enquiries or to suggest that art
offers a solution to all problems. The point, rather, is that the key political challenges of our time, from terrorism to poverty, are far
too complex not to employ the full register of human intelligence and creativity to deal with them. Aesthetic
engagements with the sublime are central to this endeavour. But to remain valid, such engagements must go beyond a mere process of
aestheticising the political. Establishing societal models based on beauty and harmony has led to dangerous political experiments. We need to
acknowledge, along with George Kateb, that the aesthetic is a dominant force in human life . But we need to do so while
recognising the potentially problematic practice of searching for stability amidst chaos and contingency
through a resort to beauty as the ultimate value . In his view, such unaware and unrationalized aestheticism is responsible for a
great deal of immorality.60 In attempts to transform the ambivalent experience of the sublime into something unambiguously beautiful, moral
limits are often ignored. In contrast to aesthetic cravings, then, the challenge is to cultivate an appreciation of sublimity in
the everyday, and to use the aesthetic not to mask our fears of the uncertain, but to recognise them and search for ways of
The conception of politics devolves to a form of absolute control that overlimits the realm of
the political, making true representation impossible & violence inevitable.
Bleiker and Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and Martin,
Senior Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34(3), p.
736)JM
An aesthetic engagement with the sublime inevitably contains an ethical component. But the ethics we find here is very different
from the automatic and codified form of ethics that prevails in much of the theory and practice of international politics. This
is so because prevailing approaches to scholarship and decision-making have stated a clear preference for the conscious
in the fields of politics and ethics, to the point of imposing order in an attempt to repress ambivalence. The
ethical significance of the aesthetic ensues from the effort to be mindful about the inherent violence of
such forms of representation. It involves relaxing pressures always working to cut the world down to the size
and shape of our fears, needs and desires. Morton Schoolman, for instance, argues that the aesthetic refers to a kind of openness and
responsiveness that contrasts sharply with those tendencies in the modern world towards control and the repression of difference. He
distinguishes formal reason which finds what is unknown and diff e rent from thought to be an obstacle to its
emancipation from fear , from an aesthetic reason that is unafraid of the unfathomable in which it finds the source of
its receptivity to the diversity of diff e rent forms of life.61 John Gray illustrates the practical dimensions of this position by reminding us that
consciousness can actually be an obstacle, that the most accomplished pianist, for instance, is at his or her most skilful when playing with the
least amount of self-awareness .62 Similarly, in the domain of ethics, the conscious self can be both the source of
and challenge the instrumentalist view of politics in favor of a view that considers politics as a space where
ecological subjectivities are formed, contested, destabilized, and re-formed. Ecofeminist political philosophy
wonders how nature can have a voice in the polis. This leads to other sorts of philosophical tasks and questions, as Sandilands
notes.
The kritik doesnt preclude politics it allows for an understanding of it that can solve
problems more effectively.
Zalewski 2K (Marysia, Director, Centre for Gender Studies, Feminism After Postmodernism, p. 67-68)JM
A typical postmodern claim is that power is not something that is simply or only repressive. In keeping with a desire to dismantle dualistic
thinking, postmodernists refuse to perceive power as fundamentally opposed to resistance, hence the intertwined phrase; power/resistance.
Indeed, the idea that there is a monolithic power out there , whether that is patriarchy, racism or capitalism, can lead to a
sense of fatalism and despair, which is hardly the best way to achieve emancipatory ends, postmoderns might argue. This links into
the notion of productive power introduced earlier, which implies that the persistent battle over the meanings of things will inevitably foster new
forms of resistance and new meanings emerge from this. The battles over the words 'queer' and 'nigger* serve as good examples of this. The
consistent postmodern emphasis on disputing meanings and displacing traditional ideas and values,
inevitably leads to a questioning and dishevelling of modernist definitions and certainties about what counts as
politics. This imposition of the authority of correct meaning is something that postmodernists are keen to expose.
Postmodernists also resist the idea that their views of the subject and epistemology lead to an inability to be
political or do politics. If we think of a specific postmodern method, deconstruct ion, we can understand it as something
that questions the terms in which we understand the political , rather than an abandonment of the political. Surely,
postmodernists argue, questioning what counts as politics is a political act? Rethinking what the political is can allow a whole
range of differences of opinions to appear. Additionally, rather than concentrating on the 'why' of things, postmodernists
prefer to focus on effects. So instead of asking. 'Why are women oppressed?', postmodernists are more likely to ask
questions about the effects of particular practices. For example. 'What are the effects of beliefs about the "proper" roles for
women such as those espoused by the Catholic Church?' Or in other (postmodern) words. "How do women gel said [or described] as "good
wives" by the Catholic Church?' Questioning foundations, beliefs about who and what 'the subject is' and opening the notion of politics
surely counts as taking feminist responsibility seriously?
worry about the implementation of their ideas, without realizing that policymakers simply might not care
what international relations scholars have to say, let alone listen to their opinions. At these moments I am reminded of a classic exchange in
Casablanca between Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart. Lorre asks, You despise me, dont you, Rick? Bogart replies, I guess I would if I
thought about you. Although US government officials are not nearly as dismissive of academics and their ideas as Bogart was of Lorre,
they certainly have a low threshold for academic research . Some of their dismissiveness is understandable. Policymakers
need to act in complex situations defined by tremendous uncertainty and with some knowledge of the key participants before deciding what to
do. Academic knowledge rarely meets this standard of usability. Yet the impatience of policymakers cannot be completely
attributed to the kind of knowledge they desire. It also is a result of a general intolerance for theory and frustration with
the ways in which academics collect and analyze information . This dismissal of scholarly knowledge and research can be
dangerous in several ways, including a failure both to acknowledge important developments in world affairs that should affect policy and to
recognize the positive effects of thinking like a scholar.
scientifically driven observation but rather arguments that conform to the political realities of the moment.
Academics consider alternative hypotheses and appeal to evidence to show why their proposed argument is superior to existing
explanations. Many policymakers do not. Academics privilege relatively long, exhaustive, footnote-crowded
papers that methodically consider an issue from all angles. Policymakers, as they rise in status, become less likely to read
anything longer than three pages. I learned the art of writing memos that did not exceed two pages, stripped complex processes
down to their bare bones, and simplified issues to the point of being simple-minded and one-dimensional. The immediate victims of this
makeover were nuance, complexity, and contingency. Academics tend toward probabilistic statements, while
policymakers favor deterministic, if-then statements. Academics tend to favor conclusions that are provisional
and invariably call for further study, while policymakers assert their findings with an air of confidence that
suggests that no further debate is needed.
simplicity over complexity. A close friend of mine who works in the US Department of State tells me that he
and his colleagues like the change in part because it is their version of People magazine .
A second and related shortcoming of early postmodern contributions is their focus on criticising/deconstructing the shortcomings of dominant
Realist and Liberal approaches to international political theory. While essential at a time when there was little space for alternative knowledge,
this process of critique has nevertheless limited the potential of postmodern contributions. Discourses of power politics and
their framing of political practice cannot overcome all existing theoretical and practical dilemmas. By articulating
critique in relation to arguments advanced by orthodox approaches to ir, the impact of critical voices remains
confined within the larger discursive boundaries that were established through the initial framing of these
debates.
The privileging of inventions in invitational rhetoric allows for the development of interpretations, perspectives, courses of actions,
and solutions to problems different from those allowed in traditional models of rhetoric . Rather than the discovery of how to make a case, invitational
rhetoric employs invention to discover more cases, a process Daly (1984) describes as one of creating an atmosphere in which further creativity may flourish [w]e
become breathers/creators of free space. We are windy, stirring the stagnant spaces with life (p. 18). The inclusion of an invitational rhetoric in the array of rhetorics available
suggests the need to revise and expand rhetorical constructs of various kinds to take into account the nature and function of this form. Invitational rhetoric suggests, for example, that the
traditional view of the audience as an opponent ought to be questioned. It challenges the traditional conception of the notion of rhetorical strategies as means to particular ends in that in
invitational rhetoric, the means constitute the ends. It
suggests the need for a new schema of ethics to fit interactional goals other than inducement of
others to adherence to the rhetors own beliefs. Finally, invitational rhetoric provides a mode of communication for women and other marginalized groups to use in their
efforts to transform systems of domination and oppression. At first glance, invitational rhetoric may seem to be incapable of resisting and transforming oppressive systems such as patriarchy
because the most it seems able to do is to create a space in which representatives of an oppressive system understand a differentin this case, a feministperspective but do not adopt it.
Although invitational rhetoric is not designed to create a specific change, such as the transformation of systems of oppression into ones that value and nurture individuals, it may produce such
an outcome. Invitational
rhetoric may resist an oppressive system simply because it models an alternative to the system by being itself an
Other way of thinking/speaking (Daly, 1978, p. xiii)it presents an alternative feminist vision rooted in affirmation and respect and thus
shows how an alternative looks and works. Invitational rhetoric thus may transform an oppressive system precisely because it does not
engage that system on its own terms, using arguments developed from the systems framework or orientation . Such arguments usually
are co-opted by the dominant system (Ferguson, 1984) and provide the impetus to strengthen, refine, and embellish the original edifice, entrenching the system further
(Johnson, 1989, pp. 16-17). Invitational rhetoric, in contrast, enables rhetors to disengage from the dominance and mastery so common to a system
of oppression and to create a reality of equality and mutuality in its place, allowing for options and possibilities not available within the familiar,
dominant framework.
Your interpretation creates a system of exclusion in which certain discourses become Truth foreclosing
all other truths.
Bleiker, 2003. (Roland, Professor of International Relations Harvard and Cambridge, Discourse
and Human Agency, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. p. 27-28)
It is within discourse, one of Foucaults much rehearsed passages (1976, 133) notes, that power and knowledge articulate each other. The work of
the French historian and philosopher epitomizes what is at stake in questions of discourse and agency . For Foucault, discourses are subtle
mechanisms that frame our thinking process. They determine the limits of what can be thought, talked and written in a normal and
rational way. In every society the production of discourses is controlled, selected, organized and diffused by certain procedures. This process
creates systems of exclusion in which one group of discourses is elevated to a hegemonic status , while others are condemned to exile.
Discourses give rise to social rules that decide which statements most people recognize as valid, as debatable or as undoubtedly false. They guide the selection
process that ascertains which propositions from previous periods or foreign cultures are retained, imported, valued, and which are
forgotten or neglected (see Foucault, 1969, 1971, 1991, 5960). Not everything is discourse, but everything is in discourse . Things exist
independently of discourses, but we can only assess them through the lenses of discourse, through the practices of knowing, perceiving and
sensing, which we have acquired over time. Discourses render social practices intelligible and rational and by doing so mask the ways in
which they have been constituted and framed. Systems of domination gradually become accepted as normal and silently penetrate every aspect of society. They cling
to the most remote corners of our mind, for, as Nietzsche (1983, 17) once expressed it, all things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their
emergence out of unreason thereby becomes improbable.
The construction of identity rests on assumption that a static, all encompassing self can be created and
maintained-this causes the marginalization and eradication of difference
Connoly in 2k2 (William, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science @ Johns Hopkins University,
Identity/Difference, expanded edition)
wHere in a nutshell is the thesis of this study: to confess a. particular identity is also to belong to difference. To come to terms
affirmatively with the complexity of that connection is to support an ethos of identity and difference suitable to a democratic culture
of deep pluralism. A few more things can be said to unpack that thesis, and I proceed by reviewing, refining, and augmenting a few
formulations. An identity is established In relation to a series of differences that have become socially recognized. These
differences are essential to its being. If they did not coexist as differences, it would not exist in its distinctness and solidity.
Entrenched in this indispensable relation is a second set of tendencies. . . to congeal established identities into fixed forms, thought
and lived as If their structure expressed the true order of things.... Identity requires difference in order to be, and it converts
difference into otherness in order to secure its own self-certainty. (Identity\Difference, 64) Identity is relational and collective. My
personal identity is defined through the collective constituencies with which I identify or am identified by others (as white, male,
American, a sports fan, and so on); it is further specified by comparison to a variety of things I am not. Identity, then, is always
connected to a series of differences that help it be what it is. The initial tendency is to describe the differences on which you depend
in a way that gives privilege or priority to you. Jews, said Kant, are legalistic; that definition allowed him to define KantianChristian morality as a more spiritual orientation to duties and rights. Atheists, said Tocqueville, are restless, egoistic, and amoral,
lacking the spiritual source of morality upon which stability, trustworthiness, and care for others are anchored. That definition
allowed him to honor the American passion to exclude professed atheists from public office. Built into the dynamic of identity is a
polemical temptation to translate differences through which it is specified into moral failings or abnormalities. The pursuit of
identity feeds the polemicism Foucault describes in the epigraph at the beginning of this essay. You need identity to act and to be
ethical, but there is a drive to diminish difference to complete itself inside the pursuit of identity. There is thus a paradoxical element
in the politics of identity. It is not an airtight paradox conforming to a textbook example in logic, but a social paradox that might be
negotiated. It operates as pressure to make space for the fullness of self-identity for one constituency by marginalizing, demeaning,
or excluding the differences on which it depends to specify itself. The depth grammar of a political theory is shaped, first, by the
way in which it either acknowledges or suppresses this paradox, and, second, by whether it negotiates it pluralistically or translates it
into an aggressive politics of exclusive universality. Traditionally, the first problem of evil is the question of how a benevolent,
omnipotent God could allow intense suffering in the world. Typically, the answer involves attribution of free will to humans to
engender a gap between the creative power of the God and the behavior of humanity. What I call in this book the second problem of
evil flows from the social logic of identity\difference relations. It is the proclivity to marginalize or demonize difference to sanctify
the identity you confess. Intensifying the second problem of evil is the fact that we also experience the source of morality through
our most heartfelt experiences of identity. How could someone be moral, many believers say, without belief in free will and God?
How could a morally responsible agent, others say, criticize the Enlightenment, the very achievement that grounds the moral
disposition they profess? Dont they presuppose the very basis they criticize? <xiv-xv>
Ground
It is bad to believe in permanent, stable foundations because human agency is always changing and the
grey area between objectivism and relativism is ignored
Bleiker, 2000. (Roland, Professor of International Relations Harvard and Cambridge, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global
Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2000. p. 13)
Departing from both a discursive fatalism and an overzealous belief in the autonomy of human action, I search for a middle ground
that can draw together positive aspects of both opposing traditions of thought. I am, in this sense, following authors such as Pierre
Bourdieu and Richard Bernstein, for whom the central opposition that characterises our time, the one between objectivism and
relativism, is largely misleading and distorting. It is itself part of a seductive dichotomy that is articulated in either/or terms: either
there is an ultimate possibility of grounding knowledge in stable foundations, or there are no foundations at all, nothing but an
endless fall into a nihilist abyss. 33 But there are no Either/Or extremes. There are only shades of difference, subtleties that
contradict the idea of an exclusionary vantage-point. My own attempt at overcoming the misleading dichotomy between objectivism
and relativism revolves around two major propositions, which I will sustain and expand throughout this book: (1) that one can
theorise discourses and still retain a concept of human agency; and (2) that one can advance a positive notion of human agency that
is neither grounded in a stable foundation nor dependent upon a presupposed notion of the subject. The point of searching for this
middle ground is not to abandon foundations as such, but to recognise that they are a necessary part of our effort to make sense of an
increasingly complex and transversal world. We need foundations to ground our thoughts, but foundations impose and exclude. They
should not be considered as stable and good for all times. They must be applied in awareness of their function and with a readiness
to adjust them to changing circumstances.
Limits
The Affirmatives Framework Arguments Call for Limitations in How Things are to Be Interpreted-this is
The Same Obsession with Limits Characterized by Modern Thought. We Must Reject Limits in Favor of
The Possibilities of New Political Thought
Dillon in 96 (Michael, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at The University of Lancaster, The Politics of
Security)
What is most at issue here, then, is the question of the limit and of how to finesse the closure of the fatally deterministic or
apocalyptic thinking to which the issue of limits ordinarily gives rise in onto-theological thought: as the authoritative specification of
an eschaton; as the invocation of our submission to it; or in terms of the closure of what it is possible for us to say, do and be in
virtue of the operation of it. The question of the limit has therefore to be posed in a way that invokes a thinking which resists the
siren calls of fatal philosophers and historians alike. That is why limits have to be thought differently, and why the question
concerning limits has to be posed, instead, in terms of that which keeps things in play (for demarcation is lacking nothing can come
to presence as it is) exciting a thinking, in particular, which seeks continuously to keep open the play of [ possibility by subtracting
the sense of necessity, completeness, and smugness from established organ-izations of life, all of which are promoted by an
insistence upon security.
Education (1)
State-centricity makes critical understanding of the world impossible.
Biswas December 2007, (Shampa, Professor of Politics at Whitman College, Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading
Edward Said as an International Relations Theorist, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1, p. 125-126
In making a case for the exilic orientation, it is the powerful hold of the nation-state upon intellectual thinking that Said most bemoans. 31 The
nation-state of course has a particular pride of place in the study of global politics. The state-centricity of International Relations has not just
circumscribed the ability of scholars to understand a vast ensemble of globally oriented movements, exchanges and practices not
reducible to the state, but also inhibited a critical intellectual orientation to the world outside the national borders within which
scholarship is produced. Said acknowledges the fact that all intellectual work occurs in a (national) context which imposes upon ones
intellect certain linguistic boundaries, particular (nationally framed) issues and, most invidiously, certain domestic political
constraints and pressures, but he cautions against the dangers of such restrictions upon the intellectual imagination. 32 Comparing the
development of IR in two different national contexts the French and the German ones Gerard Holden has argued that different intellectual influences, different
historical resonances of different issues, different domestic exigencies shape the discipline in different contexts. 33 While this is to be expected to an extent, there is
good reason to be cautious about how scholarly sympathies are expressed and circumscribed when the reach of ones work (issues covered, people affected) so
obviously extends beyond the national context. For scholars of the global, the (often unconscious) hold of the nation-state can be especially pernicious in the ways
that it limits the scope and range of the intellectual imagination. Said argues that the hold of the nation is such that even intellectuals progressive on domestic issues
become collaborators of empire when it comes to state actions abroad. 34 Specifically, he critiques nationalistically based systems of education and the tendency in
much of political commentary to frame analysis in terms of we, us and our - particularly evident in coverage of the war on terrorism - which automatically sets
up a series of (often hostile) oppositions to others. He points in this context to the rather common intellectual tendency to be alert to the
abuses of others while remaining blind to those of ones own. 35
Kritiks provide the crucial link between knowledge and action- a reorientation of political discourse
towards epistemological concerns
Owen 02, (David, Reader in Political Theory at the University of Southampton, Reorienting International Relations: On
Pragmatism, Pluralism and Practical Reasoning, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3,
http://mil.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/3/653)
Another way of elucidating what is involved in this re-orientation is to note that it links knowledge (and the value of knowledge) to action by encouraging
reflection on problems and problem-constitution. With respect to the former, it orients IR to questions that are both epistemic and ethical:
what are the effects of this kind of practice? Should we seek to govern these practices? If so, how? At what cost? With respect to the latter, it orients IR to
critical reflection on both the political constitution of such-and-such practice as a problem potentially requiring government and IRs
own disciplinary constitution of such-and-such practice as a problem requiring government . In other words, it orients IR both to the task
of addressing problematic practices but also to the task of reflecting on how these practices are constituted as problematic; that is, the
nature of the assumptions, inferences, etc. that are brought to bear in this process of problem-constitution. Thus, for example, IR is
oriented to addressing the problem posed by refugees in terms of how this problem is governed and how existing ways of governing
it may be improved. However, IR is also oriented to reflection on the background picture against which this problem is constituted as a
problem including, for example, the assumption that the liberty and welfare of the human population is best served by its division into
the civic populations of sovereign states who have a primary duty to their own populations. In other words, while addressing the refugee
problem as it is constituted, IR also involves reflecting on the plausibility and value of features of its current constitution as a problem, such as this assumption
concerning sovereignty and human welfare. If this argument has any cogency, it follows that rather than conceiving of IR in terms of a theoretical
war of all against all, we acknowledge that there is a role for different kinds of theoretical practice in IR that engage with different
issues. How though are we to judge between rival positions within these different levels? Between rival accounts of problems and of problem-constitution? The
pragmatist response is to argue that such judgement involves attending to the capacity of the contesting accounts to guide our
judgement and action. But how is this capacity to be judged? Responding to this question requires that we turn to the pragmatisms concern with
growth.
Education (2)
Critical and cross-disciplinary approaches to IR reinvigorate the practice critical approaches are key to
improving the policymaking scene
Biswas December 2007, (Shampa, Professor of Politics at Whitman College, Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading
Edward Said as an International Relations Theorist, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1, p. 124
What Said offers in the place of professionalism is a spirit of amateurism the desire to be moved not by profit or reward but by
love for and unquenchable interest in the larger picture, in making connections across lines and barriers, in refusing to be tied down to a specialty, in caring for ideas and values despite
the restrictions of a profession, an amateur intellectual being one who considers that to be a thinking and concerned member of a society one is
entitled to raise moral issues at the heart of even the most technical and professionalized activity as it involves ones country, its
power, its mode of interacting with its citizens as well as with other societies. (T)he intellectuals spirit as an amateur, Said argues,
can enter and transform the merely professional routine most of us go through into something much more lively and radical; instead
of doing what one is supposed to do one can ask why one does it, who benefits from it, how can it reconnect with a personal project
and original thoughts. 24 This requires not just a stubborn intellectual independence, but also shedding habits, jargons, tones that have inhibited IR scholars from conversing with thinkers and intellectuals
outside the discipline, colleagues in history, anthropology, cultural studies, comparative literature, sociology as well as in non-academic venues, who raise the question of the global in different and sometimes contradictory
ways. Arguing that the intellectuals role is a non-specialist one, 25 Said bemoans the disappearance of the general secular intellectual figures of learning and authority, whose general scope over many fields gave
The analogy I want to put on the table is the comparison of human culture to a huge recreational complex in which a large number of different
games are going on. Outside people are playing soccer on one field, rugby on another, American football on another, and Australian football on another, and so on. In the club house different groups of people
are playing chess, dominoes, poker, and so on. There are coaches, spectators, trainers, and managers involved in each game. Surrounding the recreation complex is wilderness. These
games we might use to characterize different cultural groups: French Catholics, German Protestants, scientists, Enlightenment
rationalists, European socialists, liberal humanitarians, American democrats, free thinkers, or what have you. The variety represents the rich diversity
of intellectual, ethnic, political, and other activities. The situation is not static of course. Some games have far fewer players and fans, and the popularity is
shrinking; some are gaining popularity rapidly and increasingly taking over parts of the territory available . Thus, the traditional sport of Aboriginal
lacrosse is but a small remnant of what it was before contact. However, the Democratic capitalist game of baseball is growing exponentially, as is the
materialistic science game of archery. And they may well combine their efforts to create a new game or merge their leagues. When Nietzsche looks at Europe historically
what he sees is that different games have been going on like this for centuries. He further sees that many of the participants in any one game have
been aggressively convinced that their game is the "true" game, that it corresponds with the essence of games or is a close match to
the wider game they imagine going on in the natural world, in the wilderness beyond the playing fields . So they have spent a lot of
time producing their rule books and coaches' manuals and making claims about how the principles of their game copy or reveal or
approximate the laws of nature. This has promoted and still promotes a good deal of bad feeling and fierce arguments. Hence, in addition any one game itself, within the group pursuing it there have
always been all sorts of sub-games debating the nature of the activity, refining the rules, arguing over the correct version of the rule book or about how to educate the referees and coaches, and so on. Nietzsche's first goal is
of what constitutes right and wrong or good and evil conduct in the game, and this awareness is shared by all those carrying out the same endeavour. To pick up the ball in soccer is evil (unless you are the goalie); and to
Aristotle maintains that there is a way of discovering and appealing to some authority outside any particular game in order to
adjudicate moral and knowledge claims which arise in particular games or in conflicts between different games. Plato, of course, also believed in the existence of such a standard, but proposed a
different route to discovering it. Now Nietzsche emphatically denies this possibility. Anyone who tries to do what Aristotle recommends is simply inventing another
game (we can call it Super-sport) and is not discovering anything true about the real nature of games because reality (that's the wilderness
surrounding us) isn't organized as a game. In fact, he argues, that we have created this recreational complex and all the activities which go on
in it to protect ourselves from nature (which is indifferent to what we do with our lives), not to copy some recreational rule book which that wilderness reveals. Human culture exists as an
In other words,
affirmation of our opposition to or contrast with nature, not as an extension of rules which include both human culture and nature. That's why falsehoods about nature might well be a lot more useful than truths, if they
If we think of the wilderness as a text about reality, as the truth about nature, then, Nietzsche claims, we
have no access whatsoever to that text. What we do have is access to conflicting interpretations, none of them based on privileged access to a "true" text. Thus, the soccer players may think they
and their game is superior to rugby and the rugby players, because soccer more closely represents the surrounding wilderness, but such statements about better and worse are irrelevant. There is nothing rule
bound outside the games themselves. Hence, all dogmatic claims about the truth of all games or any particular game are false.
enable us to live more fully human lives.
Creating epistemological frameworks creates fanatical followers- they will ostracize anyone who steps
against them with violence and other nefarious means
Johnston 99 (Ian, Research Associate, Vancouver Island U, "There's Nothing Nietzsche Couldn't Teach Ya About the Raising of the Wrist".
http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/nietzs.htm)SLS
the offside rule in soccer. Without that the game could not proceed in its traditional way. Hence, soccer players see the
offside rule as an essential part of their reality, and as long as soccer is the only game in town and we have no idea of its history (which
might, for example, tell us about the invention of the off-side rule), then the offside rule is easy to interpret as a universal, a necessary requirement for social activity,
and we will find and endorse scriptural texts which reinforce that belief, and our scientists will devote their time to linking the
offside rule with the mysterious rumblings that come from the forest. And from this, one might be led to conclude that the offside
rule is a Law of Nature, something which extends far beyond the realms of our particular game into all possible games and, beyond
those, into the realm of the wilderness itself. Of course, there were powerful social and political forces (the coach and trainers and owners of the team) who
made sure that people had lots of reasons for believing in the unchanging verity of present arrangements. So it's not surprising that
we find plenty of learned books, training manuals, and locker room exhortations urging everyone to remember the offside rule and to
castigate as "bad" those who routinely forget about that part of the game. We will also worship those who died in defence of the
offside rule. And naturally any new game that did not recognize the offside rule would be a bad game, an immoral way to conduct
oneself. So if some group tried to start a game with a different offside rule, that group would be attacked because they had violated a
rule of nature and were thus immoral. But for contingent historical reasons, Nietzsche argues, that situation of one game in town did not last. The recreational unity of the area split up, and the
growth of historical scholarship into the past demonstrated all too clearly that there was overwhelming evidence that all the various attempts to show that one particular game was
privileged over any of the others, that there was one true game, are false, dogmatic, trivial, deceiving , and so on. For science has revealed
that the notion of a necessary connection between the rules of any game and the wider purposes of the wilderness is simply an
ungrounded assertion. There is no way in which we can make the connections between the historically derived fictions in the rule book and the mysterious and ultimately unknowable directions of irrational
nature. To play the game of science, we have to believe in causes and effects, but there is no way we can prove that this is a true belief and there is a danger for us if we simply ignore that fact. Therefore, we cannot
prove a link between the game and anything outside it. And history has shown us, just as Darwin's natural history has demonstrated, that all apparently eternal issues have a story, a line
of development, a genealogy. Thus, concepts, like species, have no reality--they are temporary fictions imposed for the sake of defending a
particular arrangement. Hence, God is dead. There is no eternal truth any more, no rule book in the sky, no ultimate referee or international Olympic committee chairman. Nietzsche
Take, for example,
didn't kill God; history and the new science did. And Nietzsche is only the most passionate and irritating messenger, announcing over the PA system to anyone who will listen that someone like Kant or Descartes or
Newton who thinks that what he or she is doing can be defended by an appeal to a system grounded in the truth of nature has simply been mistaken. So What's the Problem? This insight is obvious to Nietzsche, and he is
troubled that no one seems to be worried about it or even to have noticed it. So he's moved to call the matter to our attention as stridently as possible, because he thinks that this realization requires a fundamental shift in
how we live our lives. For Nietzsche Europe is in crisis. It has a growing power to make life comfortable and an enormous energy. But people seem to want to channel that energy into arguing about what amounts to
Why is this insight so worrying? Well, one point is that dogmatists get aggressive.
Soccer players and rugby players who forget what Nietzsche is pointing out can start killing each other over questions which admit
of no answer, namely, questions about which group has the true game, which group has privileged access to the truth. Nietzsche
senses that dogmatism is going to lead to warfare, and he predicts that the twentieth century will see an unparalleled extension of
warfare in the name of competing dogmatic truths. Part of his project is to wake up the people who are intelligent enough to respond
to what he's talking about so that they can recognize the stupidity of killing each other for an illusion which they mistake for some
"truth."
competing fictions and to force everyone to adhere to a particular fiction.