***Conditional Ethics Good

Exploring multiple perspectives solves performative pedagogy their failure to do

so leads to a repetition of sameness that turns their advocacy
Medina and Perry '11 Mia, University of British Columbia, Carmen, Indiana University
"Embodiment and Performance in Pedagogy Research: Investigating the Possibility of the Body
in Curriculum Experience" Journal of Curriculum Theorizing Volume 27, Number 3, 2
http://www.academia.edu/470170/Embodiment_and_performance_in_pedagogy_The_possib
ility_of_the_body_in_curriculum
The body in pedagogy and research is a site of learning, of experiencing, of becoming. Furthermore, the role of the body in research
needs to be acknowledged and considered beyondits role as signifier. As we have seen here, by looking at the relationship

between body and space, new perspectives and trajectories in our interpretations of students
learning moments emerge. As argued at the beginning of this paper, the body, like any signifier, exists in relation to its

environment: therefore, space matters. Acknowledging the role of space can help us open up our understanding of the body as
being-in-the-world in order to move to a fuller perspective onbodies and texts.In mapping people s performances, particularly in
relation to embodiment, it was helpfulto reflect back with the participants, considering a specific moment, to talk about how
theyconstructed their contributions and who became implicated in the performance. We were less interested in hearing what they
felt the performance was about, than what they thought was happening and how that happening gets constructed. The

influence of nomadic thought has helped us understand how people function in these dynamics,
and the hybrid nature of peoples performative worlds. This is significant as we think of the role
of the body in the construction of space and subjectivity, as opposed to simply the
representation of such notions. Participants (in this case, educators) in this classroom-based drama activity, engaged in
learning about drama and pedagogy, using both the physical and visual discourses of performance, and the textual discourses of
reflection.As we progress in this field, we are looking at ways to analyse bodies in movement as well as when they are static. This
challenge involves developing new methods of analysis but also new methods of dissemination. With the proliferation of online
journals these challenges have become more realisable. As we receive information in more and more diverse and

forms, an engagement with ideas around embodiment, a continuation of the inquiry put
forwardhere, becomes ever more relevant.
dynamic

A politics of flux is best reject their call for starting points

Medina and Perry '11 Mia, University of British Columbia, Carmen, Indiana University
"Embodiment and Performance in Pedagogy Research: Investigating the Possibility of the Body
in Curriculum Experience" Journal of Curriculum Theorizing Volume 27, Number 3, 2
http://www.academia.edu/470170/Embodiment_and_performance_in_pedagogy_The_possib
ility_of_the_body_in_curriculum
The notion of assemblage with Deleuze and Guattaris nomadic thought can be understood as
the performed organization of language (enunciation) and content (material and conceptual
bodies) (Leander & Rowe, 2006, p. 437). We use this understanding to frame our
examinationof how things happen within a dramatic encounter. George Marcus and Erkan Saka
(2006)inform our use of the concept of assemblage, suggesting that it focuses attention on the
always-emergent conditions of the present .... while preserving some concept of the structural
soembedded in the enterprise of social science research (pp. 101-102). In this study, we look
atthe emerging relationship between the organization of partial assemblage (the
emergingembodied social constructs), in relation to larger assemblages or organized institutions
(largersocial performances outside of the dramatic encounter). We maintain that it is important
toconsider the relationship between language and bodies on the same level (Deluze &
Guattari,1987, as cited in Leander & Rowe p. 437), and always in flux and motion. In alignment
with nomadic thought, we attempt to avoid the notions of beginnings and endings or
hierarchiesbetween language and bodies. In this light, we are looking at relationships not in

terms of fixed meanings, but as emerging, evolving, and unfinished within the experience under
analysis.
Prefer evidence specific to the classroom flexible and manifold perspectives are
necessary for the development of intersubjective meaning thats the only way to
prevent exclusion which means we link turn their impact
Perry et al 13 (Mia Perry, assistant professor of drama, theatre, and education at the University
of Regina, Anne Wessels, PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, Amanda C Wagner, PhD
candidate at the University of British Colombia, May 2nd 2013, From Playbuilding to Devising in
Literacy Education: Aesthetic and Pedagogical Approaches, Journal of Adolescent and Adult
Literacy Volume 56 Issue 8) gz
When considering devising in education, clear conflicts emerge with the constructions of our
formal education systems and evaluation processes within them. Systems of evaluation in
education rely to some degree on a consensus of meaning made; the flexibility in the devising
structure can allow for perspectives, interpretations, and representations that may not fit into
predetermined teaching objectives, evaluation criteria, and even sanctioned school discourses.
The complexity of an artistic approach to practice in an educational setting is a rich terrain for
analysis (see Perry, 2010, for more research in this area). However, this complex space is one
that we consider rich for creativity and learning, one that often calls for a reconsideration of how
curriculum and evaluation can attend to creative inquiry in the classroom . The devising
approach affords extensive opportunities for students to draw on multiple and out-of-school
literacies, to inquire into and express multiple knowledges and perspectives, and to explore the
process of meaning-making and the relationship between text (as performance) and
meaning (as audiencing). In our experiences, the devising process is often a unique place in
schools, one in which the individuality and multiplicities of meaning-making are made explicit
and substantive. Devised theater is a form characterized by a commitment to multiple
perspectives and subjectivities (specifically those of the creators involved), to multimodalities
and literacies (lending equal weight to movement, sound, and visual technologies and text), and,
by extension, to performances that are not led by a sing[ular] vision or an authorial line
(Etchells, 1999, p. 55).

Metaphors bad (generic)

The severance of the head is a violent metaphor that destroys self-determination
and turns the alt
Sinister, 10 staff writer for the Scavenger, Ipinicus Rampant, and No New Year, (Gauche,
Why the use of metaphors is oppressive, The Scavenger, October 10, 2010,
http://www.thescavenger.net/people/why-the-use-of-metaphors-is-oppressive-78235481.html)//JKahn
NB: This post is full of language that may be offensive, derogatory or triggering. I
agree with the premise that language reflects and reinforces certain ideas, and that
its worthwhile to be more aware of the assumptions behind our usage and
understanding (assumptions that make sense of words and give them meaning
beyond their denotative referent; the words face value - what might be the first
entry in a small dictionary). Its a project initially motivated by solidarity with selfdetermination by wanting to respect how people prefer to be addressed, described
or discussed; to respond to their political needs; and to show support for cultural
change through linguistic change. And it inevitably extends to questioning the
assumptions on which all language relies. But Ive found common knowledge and practice
around inclusive language in social justice circles to be both too simple, and too complicated.
Inclusive language 101 The basics of oppressive language are simple to grasp. When you use
language that can refer to or that is associated with a group of people or their
characteristics and circumstances to mean something else (generally derogatory,
but it may not be), you thicken the link between the two: saying gay when you
mean uncool implies that gay people are uncool. It's simple to understand with the
most overt examples, and simple to change: no matter how accustomed you are to using words
like "nigger," "faggot" or "retard," it's not hard to set up an alarm in your mind and find a better
replacement. Often there's no perfect substitute, no word that's quite as powerful but that's because oppression is powerful and there's little that can call up so much
power, so quickly, as a slur that stands in for a whole history of violence. Theres plenty
of existing discussion about words and phrases that can be hurtful or exclusionary and why you
shouldnt use them.

Meloukhia

gives a few examples: Bitch. Cripple. Grow a pair. Lame. Cunt. White trash. He/his/him as a
generic when the gender of a subject is not known. Ballsy. Harpy. Whore. Female impersonator.
Jewed. Real woman. Retarded. Slut. Dumb. Natural woman. Harridan. Witch. Idiot. Man up.
Biological sex. Crazy. Tranny. Invalid. Psycho. Step up. Asexual (not in reference to someone
who identifies as asexual). Breeder. Shrew. She-male. Gay (not in reference to sexual
orientation). Moron. You guys as a generic greeting to a mixed gender group. Skank. Mankind.
Man as a generic for people. Gyp. Halfwit. Insane. Schizo/schizophrenic. Disabled as in
the disabled. Women born women. Ungendering by using he as a pronoun for a trans
woman or she as a pronoun for a trans man. Fat/fatty (as an insult, not an adjective). Some of
these offend because they are commonly used as an insult but also refer to, or are associated
with, a group of people (cunt, moron, insane). Some perpetuate stereotype by associating a

group of people with certain characteristics or actions (ballsy, jewed). Some directly exclude
(biological sex, using male pronouns as generic). Some embody double standards (whore,
shrew). Some depersonalise (the disabled). I dont want to argue for either rejecting certain
words or reclaiming others, and I certainly dont want to make a judgement about who can say
which words, and when. I do want to acknowledge that theres more to language than
vocabulary; more to inclusionary language than banning words and phrases. I want to talk about
when language perpetuates unintended associations and assumptions in ways that are
problematic but not necessarily hurtful. I want to consider this without calling for a ban, without
even asking people to avoid certain phrases or judging them on how they use language. I want to
do this because I love language and I find it fascinating, and while deliberate language is
political, it may not be inclusionary, and it isnt activism. Beyond denotation: Against metaphor
Extending my last piece on analogy, I want to argue against metaphor: against
substituting one thing for another, against reaching into the baggage of one thing
to enrich or complicate our understanding of another. To start with an obvious
example, blackness and darkness is routinely used to stand in for mystery, fear, or
general negativity. Though these associations may exist in many cultures, in mine
it also draws on racism. We use poor to signify lack, but it indicates both the state of having
less (poor people) and being less (poor form). Disability metaphors abound: a publication
which would never refer to people as retards or spastics is likely to use blind and deaf
regularly as a metaphor for ignorance or ineptitude (the Government is blind to growing
dissatisfaction ... etc). Debt is crippling and design is schizophrenic. In

Illness

as Metaphor, Susan Sontag considers late 20th century discourse on

cancer to reveal our times anxiety about uncontrolled economic growth and technological
progress. Rape is used as a metaphor for almost any offence or injustice, from
colonisation to privacy violations to logging of old-growth forests. Consent is relevant
in almost every political conversation - autonomy is essentially consent collectivised - but
alluding to sexual assault is not. Its impossible to escape metaphors intersections with
oppression; most adjectives can be applied to bodies and people, so the words that describe us
(short, young, light) inevitably draw on some other meanings (curt, fresh, unimportant). I want
richly layered associative meaning. I want poetry.

at key to expression
False there are always other ways to communicate things without metaphors
especially the alternative
Hartman, 02 professor of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Florida, Ph.D.
from Stanford University, (Dr. M.J., The Language of Peace: Constructing Non-Violent
Metaphors, Community Coalition Against War & Terrorism, the University of Florida, February
16, 2002, http://grove.ufl.edu/~hardman/peace.html)//JKahn
Background Information Violence in the English Language Much work has been done
delineating the violence in the English language; the evidence is now overwhelming of the
continual thread of violence through English, whether violence is relevant to the topic at hand or
not. We are all also well aware of the damage that verbal violence does, to health and to general
well being. This workshop gives some attention to constructing ways of talking that lead to
understanding, that are vivid, interesting, that can focu Background Information Violence in the
English Language Much work has been done delineating the violence in the English language;
the evidence is now overwhelming of the continual thread of violence through English, whether
violence is relevant to the topic at hand or not. We are all also well aware of the damage that
verbal violence does, to health and to general well being. This workshop gives some attention to
constructing ways of talking that lead to understanding, that are vivid, interesting, that can
focus attention, and all the other things that are used as justification for violence in language but
without the violence. We focus on the thread of generative violence metaphors, in the
guise of war, sex and sports, that pervade our language, developing alternate
generative metaphors that would also have cohesion. If we did not speak of most of
our daily work as some sort of fight or battle, or hear others speak in a constant
stream of their fights and battles, our overall health might be better, for example:
"Johnny don't fight at school. Your mother is helping the war on cancer. Your father has his
battles everyday at work. Your sister has to attack her studies. We just can't have you fighting at
school." How might the above be redone? The workshop will draw on the creativeness of the
audience to weave the threads that could lead us to non-violent, non-hypocritical
language for those of us who would wish a non-violent or at least a less-violent
society. For example, to beat a dead horse involves not only futility but the notion
that, if the horse were alive, violence would lead to success or compliance.

***culture disad

1nc
Their demands on lifting the embargo destroys Cuban cultureturns your sexual
difference arguments
MSNBC 13 (The US exports Cuba may actually want to avoid, April 14, 2013

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/mhp
/51535228#51535228
)//KY

It may difficult to find clothes because of there

is no Gap or there is no Old Navy. But at the same time, it

has also produced a very vibrant cultural scene and musical culture within Cuba . One of the
things Ive looked at has been rap music . By has thrived on the island despite the embargo. But at the same
time, because they didn't have access to digital technology , like samplers and mixers, because they weren't on the tour circuit for
American rap acts. Because they just didn't have MTV, they really innovated and created very

interesting forms ever rich culture that draw on traditional Cuban

instrumentation. That use the human beat box to mimic samples where they didn't have samplers. Came up with a unique
culture. For me, I think that kind of culture would be lost if things completely opened up and
American culture came in.
Destruction of Culture is the Most Perilous Threat to Humanity~Culture has
intrinsic & Utilitarian Value
Drywater in 1999 (Lakshman Guruswamy, Jason Roberts, & Catina Drywater, Prof of Law & Director of the National
Energy & Environmental Law & Policy Institute, JD U of Tulsa, & JD, U of Tulsa, 34 Tulsa LI 713, Summer, p l/n])dw

The cultural heritage of indigenous peoples, a segment of the DNA of our global community,
faces elimination. Because a significant part of the cultural heritage of humankind is finite
and non-renewable, it confronts a threat more perilous than the possible destruction
facing the biological diversity of the natural heritage. More poignantly, the reasons for
protecting biological diversity apply with even greater force to the cultural heritage. While
species and animals facing extinction can reproduce themselves and be raised in
captivity, cultural resources are not capable of such renewal and are unable to
propagate themselves. Once destroyed, they are lost forever! This article faces on how this
critical, non-renewable component of human civilization may be preserved. The cultural
heritage being canvassed in this article posses intrinsic religious and cultural
importance as the heritage of humanity as well as utilitarian value as the DNA of our
civilization. It traverses a broad spectrum of human creativity expressed in archaeological sites,
monuments, art, sculpture, architecture, oral &written records, and living cultures This
cultural heritage deserves protection for historical, religious, biological,
anthropological, and scientific reasons spanning both utilitarian and non-utilitarian
rationales. From the utilitarian standpoint, the cultural heritage embodies invaluable nonreplicable information and data about the historic and prehistoric story of humankind.

Such information may relate to the social, economic, cultural, environmental, and climatic
conditions of past peoples, their evolving ecologies, adaptive strategies and early forms of
environmental management The destruction of these storehouses of knowledge, and the
information contained in these libraries of life, could critically affect how we respond to
the continuing challenges of population growth, resource exhaustion, pollution, and
environmental management. From a non-utilitarian perspective, the despoliation of cultural

resources, where they form part of the religious and cultural traditions of people and
civilizations, desecrates the sacred.

Impact
Turns the caseCuba is the most feminist empowered country in Latin America
and is constantly improvingthe aff allows the United States Machismo attitude
to spill over
Torregrosa 12 (LUISITA LOPEZ TORREGROSA, adjunct professor at Fordham University's Latin American and Latino Studies
Institute and at Columbia University and a guest lecturer at Syracuse University Cuba May Be the Most Feminist Country in Latin
America MAY 1, 2012, http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/cuba-may-be-the-most-feminist-country-in-latinamerica/?_r=0)//kyan

Cuba may just be the most feminist country in Latin America. It ranks No. 3 in the world
when it comes to the political participation of women in Parliament, according to a United Nations
survey on women in politics. And its the only nation in Latin America to rank in the top 20 in the World
Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2011. In sheer numbers and percentages, Cuban womens
advance is notable. Cuba has a high number of female professional and technical
workers (60 percent of the total work force in those areas) and in Parliament (43 percent), as well
as high levels of primary, secondary and tertiary education enrollment, according to the
Gender Gap report. In contrast, Brazil, the regions economic behemoth, ranks 82nd overall in the world, according to the report, though it moved up
three places last year with improvements in womens wages, estimated earned income and the election of a female head of state, President Dilma
Rousseff. What

explains Cubas record? Sarah Stephens, the director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, a
a
report on the status of women in Cuba. Cuban women tell us that they feel lucky
to have come of age since 1959, she says. Before 1959, women comprised only 5
percent of university graduates and only 12 percent of the work force, often
holding menial jobs. Today, she says, women make up 41 percent of the Communist Party, half of the islands work force, the
Washington-based advocacy and research organization that focuses on Cuba and U.S.-Cuba relations and opposes the U.S. embargo, is working on

majority of students in high schools and universities, 60 percent of university faculties and the majority of provosts and department heads (but not
presidents). And women hold top portfolios in ministries and in key provincial positions. Fidel

Castro called for womens

rights as a revolution within a revolution and this commitment became tangible through
changes in legislation and policy, Ms. Stephens says. But, that said, women within the system argue strongly for what remains to
be done, and they criticize the gaps between rhetoric and practice, Ms. Stephens says. Women speak to us about a gender paradox in Cuba a

more market-oriented
economic restructuring that will lay off thousands of state workers, women fear
they will lose their jobs and will not find non-state employment in jobs
traditionally held by men, Ms. Stephens says. Women also worry that the aging of Cubas population will increase family
nation legally committed to equality but harnessed to a historic structure of patriarchy. Going forward, in the

burdens, and hence womens burdens, she says. As the reforms to the economic model take place, and Cuba stops, for example, lunch programs at
work, more food will need to be prepared at home, and that will land on women. Politically, theres a glass ceiling, Ms. Stephens says. Its evident by
looking at Cubas most senior leadership around President Ral Castro. My Page Two column shows how womens

advances

across Latin America are surpassing the United States and matching Europe.
Goodman 09 (Donna Goodman is a member of the Caribbean and Latin America Support
Project (CLASP) steering committee and an activist in New York's Hudson Valley on peace and
union issues. The Struggle for Womens Equality in Latin America Friday, March 13th, 2009
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/03/the-struggle-for-womens-equality-in-latin-america/)//kyan
CUBA: Literacy is 100% for women and men, and women are 65% of university graduates; pay
equity is embedded in law; nearly 40% of women are in the labor force, constituting 46% of all
workers and half of all doctors; some 43% of deputies in the National Assembly are women, the highest
percentage in Latin America and among the highest in the world; maternal mortality, at 34 per 100,000 is
extremely low; infant mortality of six per thousand births is the lowest in Latin America. Abortion is free, as is all health care. The
Cuban constitution grants women equal economic, political, cultural, social and familial rights
with men and prohibits discrimination based on race, skin color, sex, national origin, and
religious belief. These rights are further supported by provisions in various laws, including the Family Code (1975), which
requires men to participate equally in domestic labor, guarantees equal rights to women and men in marriage and divorce, and equal
parental rights; and 1979 and 1984 revisions to the Penal Code, which provide additional penalties for violations

of sexual equality. The womens movement has been important in furthering womens gains.
Women took part in the revolution, including in leadership roles. The Federation of Cuban
Women (FMC), a non-governmental organization with close ties to the government, is the
national agency responsible for the advancement of women and is involved in every facet of society in
promoting equality. Crimes of violence against women, especially rape and sexual assault, are severely
punished in Cuba. The Federation of Cuban Women travels the country to find out if there is hidden violence and to set up
mechanisms for reporting and for community intervention.

2nc link
Tourism decimates local cultures causes physical destruction and cultural
transformation
Lee, 12 - writefix (David, Can cultural traditions be destroyed by over-exposure to tourism?

http://writefix.com/?
page_id=2722/about-thisforum/does-cultural-traditionsuse-as-touist-attraction-will-bedestroyed-or-saved-bytourists)//ah
Today, as the disposable income of citizens are increasing, travelling

to historical attractions and learning

other cultures is becoming popular. Some residents worry about that the surging tourist population
would disrupt the normal life and ruin the culture in their hometown. In this essay, I will analyze the link between
tourists and tourist attractions, and explain why congested travelers may jeopardize the local cultural
tradition. Regarding the place where has historical value as tourist destination elevate its reputation; therefore, both local
inhabitants and governments could earn more money. Citizens and authorities could utilize these funds to improve their living
standard of citizens and to protect the old architectures respectively. Tourists also propagandize

the
characteristics of the place which impress them most to their companions. It is the
reputation that attracts increasing number of visitors to visit the place and
disseminates the cultural tradition to more people. Achieving the attention from governments is
another reason. If the culture is popular enough, governors would take measures to protect this culture efficiently. However, the

crowded travelers undermine the ambience of the tourist venue. Residents become
more materialistic. For instance, some local residents in famous historical villages cheat tourists amid
the temptation of profit. Cultural transformation is happening in these places and
changing their morality. Some tourists ruin the architectures and historical treasure
as well, such as lettering on the priceless brick and touching the objects arbitrarily. Also, the excessive
number of tourists makes the tourist attractions bustle and hustle, and the tranquil and serene living
habits lost. Even though attracting more people increases the income of local
citizens and elevates the reputation of the place , it jeopardizes the life style of the local
residents. Be it residents or scenery, the local historical culture cannot be fully protected . Instead,
governments should shoulder more responsibility.

Competition and hostility destroy unique enviroments and cultures

II, 12 I to I tourism and volunteering consulting website (How Your Travels Will Affect Local Communities http://www.i-toi.com/eco-tourism/local_communities.html)//ah

Tourism can have a negative impact on local communities when done without respect or
consideration. Indeed, tourism can cause hostility, competition, jealousy and the loss or
destruction of the local culture. Many travellers fail to research before they go and simple mistakes which can
often be avoided are often made, causing offence to local people and making the lives of the next travellers to visit that little bit more
difficult. It's vitally important that you make an effort to fit in, to limit the impact of your presence and to show your respect for the
traditions and culture of the community that you are staying in. Otherwise, you are likely to confirm the bad reputation that
travellers are gradually developing. Loss of culture Loss

of culture can take many forms. One major

change can be seen in the production of souvenirs. Once tourists arrive in an area, the local people
realise that money can be made by selling their crafts to visitors. After a while, though, crafts which once had a
spiritual or cultural significance suddenly are just goods. Some designs may be
changed to meet tourists demands and lose all cultural value. Tourists are often unwilling to
completely immerse themselves in the local culture and this means that in order to keep your custom, local communities must adjust
to your needs. Traditional

food, wares and customs are replaced with those of the traveller's
homeland, effectively creating a home away from home. Yet by doing this, by demanding that destinations
change to meet your demand you are taking away the very essence of travel. Therefore, in order to travel responsibly you must
accept your surroundings for what they are and not expect anything else. Culture clashes Tourists are frequently disrespectful of
local customs. Women (and men) often walk around in revealing clothing when the social norm is to politely cover yourself up. This
is particularly important in places of worship and it is often considered extremely rude. This behaviour can cause ill-will and can also
cause the local people to stray from their beliefs and customs. Ill will can also be caused by the way tourists interact with locals.
Many take pictures of local people like animals in the zoo, without subtlety or permission, then move on without purchasing any of
their crafts. Physical influences Tourism

can lead to overuse of natural resources, vandalism

and crime. Competition for local resources is a huge problem in tourist areas. Resorts use an
enormous amount of water to run a golf course, depriving local people of drinking water. Similarly, grazing
land may be destroyed for resort development, therefore significantly damaging the ability of local communities to maintain their

Local
people can no longer play on nearby beaches or visit the local national park, which
doesnt give them much incentive to protect it. This is more often an indirect consequence of tourism as
traditional lifestyles. Frequently local people are denied access to areas that have been set up as tourist destinations.

local people simply cannot afford the prices that tourists can.

Travel Integration prompts forces the disney-ification of cultures creates

ripple effects and multiple negative impacts
Matt, 9 travel specialist with an MBA (Nomadic, Why Travel is Bad for the World
November 28th, 2009, http://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/why-travel-is-bad-for-the-world)//ah

Travel destroys local cultures The globalization of food, travel, hotels, and
language diminishes the very culture we traveled so far to see. Instead of going out to seek the
unknown, most people stay in resorts and hotels, never experiencing the country they are in. We go to McDonalds or eat food we
can get at home. Its as though we travel to never leave home. Wherever

we go, we seem to bring our

western culture with us. Travel makes the world Disneyland From the hill tribes of Thailand to the Andes to
cowboys of America, travelers have a certain expectation of what a place is and how the people should act. We travel to see that

Cultures
around the world then put on a show to give us what we want and in the process
Disneyize their culture. I hate seeing the little hill tribes in Thailand or Native American shows in America or
expectation. We travel to see Crocodile Dundee, Mayans, Native Americans, and hill tribe cultures in Asia.

traditional dance in Vietnam. Its not how they really act. Its how they act for tourists. Doesnt that just cheapen the experience
and, in the end, cause more harm than good? Travel

destroys local economies All that travel in big hotels

and global restaurants doesnt help the local economy . Most of that money is removed by
corporations to the head office. Travelers go with what they know and most will stay at the Marriott before they stay in some
unknown place, never thinking about where the money is going. Travel can be a huge economic boon but only if the money stays
local. Travel

hurts the environment Traveling is not the most eco-friendly of activities. Flying, cruising,
eating out, and driving around all have a negative impact on the environmen t. Most
people when they travel constantly use towels in hotel rooms, leave the air conditioner going, or forget to turn off the lights.

Jetsetting around the world in airplanes or driving around in an RV all contribute to global warming. Between

waste,
development, and pollution, we are doing exactly what The Beach said we would
do- destroy the very paradise we seek. Travel produces short term profits Everyone
tries to grab that last dollar. Travel isnt the only industry this happens with but its the most relevant to us. Instead of building for
the long term, people overdevelop in the name of short term gain. You see it in Thailand with the built up beaches, you see it in
Cambodia, you see it in southern Spain, you see it in Las Vegas with all the casinos (wheres all that water going to come from?). Its
everywhere. Money now, forget later. Eventually, the tourists will stop coming because they will be so put off and so sad the beauty
they came for is gone. While

there is a growing effort among people to mitigate these

downsides, the truth is we cant ignore the negative side of travel . Yet I dont think these
reasons should make us stop traveling. In fact, Im just thinking out loud here. Simply letting the wheels turn. At the end of the day,
these negatives come down to personal choice. You can easily travel the world and not do any of these things. I dont fly much, I
dont stay in giant hotels, I avoid chain restaurants, I stay in local guesthouses, and I wont do tours that exploit animals or the
environment.

culture impacts
Cultural genocide makes life and death meaningless.
Card 2003 (Claudia,, philosophy professor at University of Wisconsin, Winter Hypatia, vol. 18, issue 1, EBSCO host) rsh
Specific to genocide is the harm inflicted on its victims social vitality. It isnot just that ones
group membership is the occasion for harms that are definableindependently of ones identity as
a member of the group. When a group with its own cultural identity is destroyed, its
survivors lose their cultural heritage and may even lose their intergenerational connections. To
use Orlando Pattersons terminology, in that event, they may become socially dead and
their descendants natally alienated, no longer able to pass along and build upon the traditions,
cultural developments (including languages), and projects of earlier generations (1982, 59).
The harm of social death is not necessarily less extreme than that of physical death.
Social death can even aggravate physical death by making it indecent, removing all
respectful and caring ritual, social connections, and social contexts that are capable of making
dying bearable and even of making ones death meaningful. In my view, the special evil of
genocide lies in its infliction of not just physical death (when it does that) but social
death, producing a consequent meaninglessness of ones life and even of its
termination. This view, however, is controversial.
Cultural diversity is key to global survival
Barsh 93 (Russel, Professor of Native American Studies, University of Lethbridge; United
Nations Representative, Mikmaq Grand Council and Four Directions Council, Winter, 26 U.
Mich. J.L. Reform 277, lexis)
There no longer seems to be much difference in the Westernization of the Third World and of the indigenous world. Indigenous
societies are usually more isolated geographically, so the process of convergence is understandably slower. But they are catching up.
While world leaders lament the loss of biological diversity, which holds the key to the renewal and survival of ecosystems, our

planet rapidly is losing its cultural diversity, which holds the key to the renewal and survival of
human societies. Scientists and scholars search for an alternative in their theories while real alternative cultures disappear. It
will be a real struggle to reassert an indigenous perspective on social justice, democracy, and environmental security. The hardest
part of the struggle will be converting words to action, going beyond the familiar, empty rhetoric of sovereignty and cultural
superiority. The struggle will be hardest here in the United States, where the gaps between rhetoric and reality have grown greater
than anywhere on earth. This is the best place to begin, however, because this is the illusory "demonstration" that is studied by the
rest of the world, including the indigenous peoples of other regions. Are American Indians ready to accept this global responsibility?
The current generation of tribal leadership appears unwilling to try. It is firmly committed by its actions to the materialist
path, and it is neutralized by its dependence on a continuing financial relationship with the national government and developers.
The next generation of American Indians may be another matter. Disillusioned and critical, they may yet find a voice

of their own that is both modern and truly indigenous, and they may have the courage to
practice the ideals that their parents merely sloganize. Let us hope so. There is no
alternative for Indian survival or for global survival.
Extinction
UNESCO 1 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (The Earths Linguistic, Cultural, and Biologic
Diversity)//ah
The worlds languages represent an extraordinary wealth of human creativity. They contain and express the total pool of ideas, nurtured over time
through heritage, local traditions and customs communicated through local languages. The

diversity of ideas carried by

different languages and sustained by different cultures is as necessary as the diversity of species
and ecosystems for the survival of humanity and of life on our planet. In many cases the knowledge
of natural cures and remedies for illnesses transmitted by languages through generations and linked to local

plant life have

been lost due to the abandonment of languages and cultures, and the destruction of natural
habitat. Cultural diversity is as necessary for the world as biodiversity is for our planet. Yet, similar to the growing crisis of
extinction faced by the worlds environment, the worlds cultural diversity, particularly the
diversity and richness of languages is being threatened with extinction. Ethnologue lists over 400 languages
that reached near extinction at the end of the twentieth century, while UNESCOs Atlas of the Worlds Languages in Danger of Disappearing (2001)
edition estimates that half of the worlds languages are in varying degrees of endangerment.

***Case

Irigaray pppls
If its at least twohow many are therewhat are the?

Homologation disad
Homoguation DA--Irigaray is too essentalizingher code of feminity ignores and
devalues homologationthat turns the case
Cirillo 92 (Lidia, Feminist activist and leading figure in the World March of Women in Italy Feminist theory: For another
difference - On Luce Irigaray's "difference theory" Extrait du Europe Solidaire Sans Frontires, 1992, http://www.europesolidaire.org/spip.php?article30443)//kyan

What does this term used by the gender difference theorists] homologation mean? I have heard and read
significantly distinct versions of this term. Homologation can be defined as betrayal of ones own femininity,
the assuming of male attitudes and values. Irigaray maintains that competitive,
aggressive women who desire power are not feminine using much the same logic as my
grandmother who told me I was a "maschiaccio" (tomboy), when I reacted to the thousand little power games of children of the
opposite sex and gave the occasional hiding to some of the less robust boys. But in the original version of the "theory of gender
difference" the term in used in a more serious way - meaning supporting the values and points of view of other people, those values
and points of view through which men sustain their needs and that are an expression of their prejudice. This second meaning is not
specific to the "theory of gender difference". However the first meaning is specific to it with its concern with

creating a sort of official code of femininity. Nevertheless the idea can contribute to the development of a feminine
political subject protagonist/being] because it introduces the idea of a radical criticism of what exists, a systematic challenge to the
apparently obvious. But the term itself continually pushes the consciousness of women comrades towards
the first sense which is

both banal and wrong. Also because if this was not the case the fundamental reason for the
homologation of the minority of women who manage to get access the roles and fields
traditionally reserved for men would be easily explained. When in a given society marginalisation, inferior roles
and social insignificance coincide with certain categories of people (women and ethnic minorities in developed capitalist societies)
then their image immediately becomes devalued. A conceptual sleight of hand - overcoming the contradiction between

superiority and inferiority - resolves the problem on paper but not in real life . If gender
difference corresponds in reality to a condition of inferiority, then not only in the eyes of the rest
of society but in those of the oppressed themselves the values of the other finish up by becoming
the only values. The homologation of those women who achieve prestige roles or make it to intellectual
activity is therefore , above all, the shadow of the condition of other women . In the second place it is the
product of the isolation, the loneliness, the last arrived, the few, in a universe solidly structured and built by the other. This leads
us back to oppression and to liberation. The logic that lies behind the objective of constructing a parallel symbolic
order is in a certain sense counterposed to the latter. It seems that sometimes the demand of imposing the symbols of a strong
femininity is to be achieved by Europe Solidaire Sans Frontires Page 8/22 Feminist theory: For another difference - On Luce
Irigaray's "difference theory" keeping an impossible distance from socially weak women: " Those women who believe

in
using laws cannot take account of the complexity of the feminine choice...] because laws
necessarily express a general abstract provision. They end up by putting limits on the problems
of a category of women, obviously the most disadvantaged, and present them as typical of
the feminine condition as a whole. This operation brings women down to the most
miserable conditions, blacks out their different sort of choices as well as the real possibility they have of changing reality to
their advantage, and in this way it denies the existence of a feminine sex. Only a "feminine condition" is presented which nobody can
really identify with."

Biology disad
Biology DA-- focus on the biological is essentailizing and re-entreches patriarchy
independently destroys science and technology
Cirillo 92 (Lidia, Feminist activist and leading figure in the World March of Women in Italy Feminist theory: For another
difference - On Luce Irigaray's "difference theory" Extrait du Europe Solidaire Sans Frontires, 1992, http://www.europesolidaire.org/spip.php?article30443)//kyan

Irigaray's theoretical work creates an "official" code of femininity (among other things it identifies this with things very
close to what has always been common women's places/spaces ) which ends up in laying the bases for a new norm that is
very similar to the old one. The more and more common use of Irigaray's "official" code has been apparent for
some time in left feminist circles and is shown in the exhibition of affection and the rhetoric of starting from oneself (the
imaginary as feminine). In this way they overturn the concerns of traditional feminism , both the radical and Marxist
versions, which were to break feminine schemas, giving space for women to think and live independently. The very idea of homologation in it most
banal sense (and this is the most current one) can become a another way of repeating to women what is appropriate for their sex to do or be. I am
convinced however that the poison in the nicest part of the apple. The natural, fertile and peaceful feminine being that stands behind the "veils of the
strange verses' of Sex and geneaology is the same doll men give to the opposite sex so that they try and model themselves on it as much as possible.
Placing women close to nature is at one and the same time a stereotype and something true. The true part is challenged and pushed back by that which
is historically determined, as oppression. The

ability and possibility of transcending it is taken away because, it

is claimed, women have a biologically determined destiny since they have an uterus and a
vagina. Women began to breathe when their bodies did not have to continue to obey nature, when the by-products of the needs of the reproduction
of and production of men, but also their struggles and the struggle of all the oppressed, left their bodies less exposed to the violence and ravages of
nature. Also from

this point of view what can be a value for men may not certainly be the case for
women who still need science and technology as rationality and "developed thought" for
themselves. I find the image of women as peaceful and non-aggressive particularly
insidious. Naturally it is just that women are sometimes in the leadership of the struggle for peace because this can correspond to
their needs as mothers or because common sense means it is plausible that women reject war. But I do not
find it correct when this leadership is championed in the name of a gender difference that is really linked to
history and sexual roles. Are women naturally more peaceful? You can answer both yes and no. In the animal world where sexual
difference emerges apart from history and culture it is said that the male sexual role makes him in general more aggressive but it is also a fact that the

female can be just as aggressive on occasions(for example when defending her young). Especially since aggression is very
much tied up with other needs, to the type of relations that these needs have with the world in any particular species. If I happened to come
face to face with a tiger I would not waste time worrying what sex he or she was ! Now since men and
women both belong to a species that is able to change its own relations with the world and therefore the way in which its needs are met, their aggression
is not a static fact and is characterised by a feature internal to the species that has become gradually decisive as the possibility or obstacles to the
satisfaction of needs does not lie in nature or other species but in the domination over other men and women. Are women historically more peaceful?
Again one can say yes and no. Women are less susceptible to warlike rhetoric, to the myths of force and destiny and are mothers who don't want their
sons to go off and get slaughtered. But women have mobilised on many occasions to support wars : bestial wars like the Nazi one, class wars, or wars of
national liberation where women took their role in the rebellion of the oppressed. Hostility to war has also characterised the history of other oppressed
groups - the lower classes for instance who were nearly always "persuaded" to go to the slaughter through the threat of execution and military tribunals
rather than out of ideology and ritual. One thing is very clear, something that my

experience first as a woman then as a Marxist has

definitely convinced me. Disarming the oppressed is the first elementary precaution any ruler tries to carry out. The mildness,
the wish for peace and the non-aggression of women are also and more certainly the
consequence of oppression. If the objective of a political protaganist/subject is liberation then our own values have to be developed
within this framework. Women have a great need for their own aggression for their own wars because sexual peace, like social/industrial peace in the
last analysis leaves existing conditions unchanged. In any case, the reason why today you often find women in the leadership of struggles for peace is
the same for which they are often at the head of other struggles - because of their radicalism and militancy. Becoming political protagonists tends to
overturn in practice their values which become the opposite of what oppression had imposed. The "symbolic mother" of the feminine political
protagonist/subject must be in my opinion the god Kali. A mother that generates but also destroys, who kills the old so that the new can be born. You
cannot build a new world without destroying the old.

You definitely linkIrigaray bases her understanding on corporealitythat theres

something inherent to a male body that serves as a baseline understanding to the
world
Stone 04 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty From Political to Realist
Essentialism: Rereading Luce Irigaray Feminist Theory, 2004, uiowa)//kyan
Irigarays new ontology of corporeality obliges her to recast her earlier analysis of symbolic structures. She must now
regard these structures as always bearing the imprint and directionality of bodies which strive for selfcultivation and self-expression. This enables Irigaray to claim knowledge about natural bodies

including, crucially, their sexual duality derived from her analysis of symbolic structures. Since these
structures are always shaped and directed by bodies that actively pursue self-expression, identifying how these
structures are organized allows her to draw inferences about bodies natural shapes and requirements. For Irigaray,
traditional cultural structures are pervasively masculinist: they insistently suppress the possibility of a
femininity defined independently of masculinity. Insofar, then, as some bodies come to self-affirmation within
this tradition, Irigaray concludes that these must be bodies of a distinctively male type. Moreover,
inasmuch as these male bodies express themselves in this tradition, they must be partially constituted by a visceral urge to
suppress the possibility of different types of bodies coming to self-expression through autonomous
representations of femininity: namely, female bodies. Hence, from Irigarays analysis of the asymmetry between cultural
representations of sex, she derives an understanding of males natural, corporeal, difficulty in accommodating female bodies, an
understanding which she presents summarily as follows: The little boy, in order to situate himself vis--vis the mother, must have a
strategy . . . because he finds himself in an extremely difficult situation. Hes a little boy. He has come out of a woman whos different
from him. He himself will never be able to engender, to give birth. He is therefore in a space of unfathomable mystery. He must
invent a strategy to keep himself from being submerged, engulfed. (Hirsh and Olson, 1995: 1078) The boys continuously renewed
strategy is the construction of masculinist culture: through this, male bodies affirm themselves against female

bodies. Evidently, Irigarays controversial claim is to extrapolate from the masculinism of western culture to knowledge of a
natural sexual differentiation underpinning its partiality and exclusions. Having concluded, on this basis, that sexual difference is
natural and real, her later works affirm its reality increasingly bluntly : There is a physiological and morphological

complementarity between the sexes. Why deny it? (1993c: 107). The natural is at least two: male and female
(1996: 35). Controversial as these statements are, they stem directly from the revised analysis of symbolic structures
entailed by Irigarays ontology of active corporeality . So although, in principle, this ontology need
not support a realist essentialist approach to sexual difference , when coupled with Irigarays
analysis of masculinist culture it does support belief in natural bodily differences between the
sexes.
So is her depiction of nature
Stone 09 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty Luce Irigaray and the
philosophy of sexual difference, book)//kyan
In claiming that men and women have inherently different characters as an effect of their
location within nature, Irigaray can be seen to use the concept of nature in two main senses. Firstly, the
nature of something, for her, denotes its defining character or essence in this sense, men and
women are said to have different natures. Secondly, for Irigaray, nature designates the material world or

environment as a whole, which is understood to exist, and to pursue patterns of development, independently of human
transformative activities. This material world includes human beings insofar as they have natures (and act according to those
natures), but excludes humans insofar as they are distinctively cultural beings, engaged in activities of transforming themselves and
the material world around them.

She applies her theory to infants and claim their sex makes them have differnet
relationsthats essentalist
Stone 09 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty Luce Irigaray and the
philosophy of sexual difference, book)//kyan
With respect to psychoanalysis, the early Irigarays background in Lacanian psychoanalysis is well-known and will receive scant
attention here.i My account of the early Irigaray presupposes that she aims for the creation of a new symbolic order that recognises
the sexes as equivalent in value. It appears, though, that the later Irigaray removes herself further from any Lacanian framework.
From the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis, male and female are symbolic positions which individuals must take up, at the
cost of repressing the multiple drives and dimensions of experience which, in their very diversity, are inconsistent with any coherent
sexed identity.ii From this perspective, therefore, sexed identity is always problematic, disturbed by promptings and residues from
the unconscious. In contrast, the later Irigaray assumes that men and women, boys and girls, are

naturally sexed and have direct experience of their sexual specificity. On that basis, she argues that
infant girls and boys develop different relationships to their maternal origin, which
lead them to acquire different psychical dispositions (and pathologies). Since Irigaray emphasises the
importance of early infantile relationships to the mother, her later perspective remains broadly psychoanalytic,
but some feminists may be unhappy about her shift away from the Lacanian insistence that sexed identities can never be completely
or stably achieved. I shall not directly address this issue in this book, because it can be satisfactorily resolved only once Irigarays
later philosophical approach is thoroughly understood. However, inasmuch as I criticise her exclusive belief in natural duality and
attempt to show that sexual difference invariably co-exists with and becomes disturbed by multiple bodily drives, I hope, at least,

to open up a perspective from which we can rethink Irigarays later ideas consistently with a more Lacanian emphasis on the
instability of any sexed identity.

Essentialism disad
Essentialism DAIrigaray bases her study on the western kinship modelsthat is
essentialist and suppresses third-world females
Narayan 98 (Uma, feminist scholar, and a Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College Essence of Culture and a Sense of
History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism Hypatia vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring 1998 )//kyan
In recent decades, feminists have stressed the need to think about issues of gender in

conjunction with, and not

in isolation from, issues of class, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, and have forcefully illustrated that differences among women must be understood and theorized in order to avoid essentialist generalizations about womens problems
(Anzaldba 1987; hooks 1981; Lugones and Spelman 1983). The feminist critique of gender essential- ism does not merely

charge that essentialist claims about women are over- generalizations, but points out that these
generalizations are hegemonic in that they represent the problems of privileged women (most often
white, Western, middle-class, heterosexual women) as paradigmatic womens issues. Such essentialist
generalizations result in theoretical perspectives and polit- ical agendas that efface the problems,
perspectives, and political concerns of many women who are marginalized in terms of their class, race,
ethnicity, and sexual orientation. For instance, analyses that trace womens subordination to their
confinement to domestic roles and the private sphere can constitute problematic essentialist
generalizations if they ignore that the links between femininity and the private sphere are not
trans-historical but have arisen in particular historical contexts. Thus, while the ideology of
domesticity may have immured many middle-class women in the home, it also sanctioned the economic
exploitation of women slaves and working-class women, whose most pressing problems did not
result from their confinement to the private sphere.

This is specifically true when they asked that you should not quote Ignore the
private sphere as in the tag of their Lungurden evidencethis shows their views
are akin to Rousseouas two spheresthat feminine identiiees are inherently tied
to the public spacethat type of essentialism is exactly what were criticizing
intead of recognizing the difference of both sphere the alt asks you to deconstruct
the cultural understanding of gender and the spheres themselvestheres nothing
inherent with being a male or female that makes you able to be in the public sphere
or notMargaret Thatcher proves our argumentradical feminists deprived her
of her femininity and claimed she was no longer a women because she engaged the
state and the public sphere and stood up

Challenge data
Our framework is the only way to ensure accuracy and utilitytheir view from a
purely western, essentialized feminine view marginalizes the experiences of
individuals-Narayan 98 (Uma, feminist scholar, and a Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College Essence of Culture and a Sense of
History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism Hypatia vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring 1998 )//kyan
I believe that antiessentialism

about gender and about culture does not entail a simple-minded opposition to all
instead a commitment to examine both their empirical accuracy and their
political utility or risk. It is seldom possible to articulate effective political agendas, such as those
pertaining to human rights, without resorting to a certain degree of abstraction , which enables the articulation of
salient similarities between problems suffered by various individuals and groups. On the other hand, it seems arguably true
that there is no need to portray female genital mutilation as an African cultural practice or
dowry murders and dowry related harass- ment as a problem of Indian women in ways that eclipse
the fact that not all African women or Indian women confront these problems, or confront them
in identical ways, or in ways that efface local contestations of these problems. The antiessentialist perspective I advocate does
generalizations, but entails

not endorse the view that the existence of cultural and other differences renders equally suspect each and every sort of
generalization or universalistic claim. Kwame Anthony Appiah makes a useful point when he reminds us that it is characteristic of
those who pose as antiuniversalists to use the term universalism as if it meant pseudouniversalism. . . . What they truly object to-and
who would not?-is Eurocentric hegemony posing as universalism (Appiah 1992,58). I would add that many of the essentialist
pictures of Indian culture and the like that I critique are forms of what one might call

pseudoparticularism+qually hegemonic representations of particular cultures whose

particularism masks the reality that they are problematic generalizations about complex and
internally differentiated contexts. Besides, even the injunction to attend to a variety of
differences can hardly avoid the universalistic cast of a general prescription , and no political
agenda can avoid general normative assessments of the salience and weight of particular kinds
of differences.

Hetero disad
Focus on sexual difference is flawedIrigaray results in using heteronormative
essentialism
Gingrich-Philbrook 10 (Craig, "Love's excluded subjects: staging Irigaray's heteronormative
essentialism," 10/21/10,
http://www.tandfonline.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/doi/pdf/10.1080/09502380110033564)//AM

In I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History, Luce Irigaray proposes that our
happiness will only stem from our assuming proper places. While known in broad outline,
Irigarays conditions for this propriety remain largely unspecified. In her prologue, however,
she gestures toward articulating this propriety, describing her book as: concerning the
encounter between woman and man, women and men. An encounter characterized as belonging
to a sexed nature to which it is proper to be faithful. By the need for rights to incarnate this
nature with respect. By the need for the recognition of another who will never be mine. By the
importance of absolute silence in order to hear this other. By the quest for new words which will
make this alliance possible without reducing the other to an item of property. By the
reinterpretation of notable figures or events in our tradition in terms of that horizon. By turning
the negative, that is, the limit of one gender in relation to the other, into possibility of love and
creation. Recognizing the difficulty of what she proposes, Irigaray describes herself as a
political militant for the impossible who wants this program, wants what is yet to be as the
only possibility of a future (1996: 10). The heteronormative essentialism and teleology of this
premillenial tension between a utopian rediscovery of propriety and its apocalyptic collapse will
seem apparent to those for whom such critiques will matter.
I want, in this essay, not to belabour Irigarays essentialism, but to synthesize some of my responses to
its menacing exclusion of the possibility of homosexual love. I dont want to do this indignantly, scornfully, etc., but as an ally with what I
see as Irigarays larger project namely the theorizing of the consequences of the division of emotional labor between the sexes (read genders). This division creates relay points transferring its separation, its
alienation of one possibility from another, to the relations within a variety of complementary subject positions. I end this essay by elaborating one of the transferences made possible by Irigarays proposed
project, arguing that we might use her analysis and its queer critique to remap conceptions of the autobiographical performer and her/his audience, given that this relation between complementary subject

Since Della Pollock proposed this project to Judith Hamera, Erik Doxtader, and myself, I have
boiled at the edges of Irigarays book. How obvious and mundane my critique of its
hereonormativity feels. As if afflicted with Tourette Syndrome, I obsessively repeat this critique,
Loving a woman is not the only way for me to be human. Loving a woman is not the only way
for me to be human. Maybe this repetition would access more authority if I devoted an essay to
this one sentence. At this point in my essay, when I first presented it at the National Communication Association convention in Chicago, I stopped momentarily to put on a costume papal hat I
positions at least as commonly understood also derives from a division of emotional labour.

bought the night before at a sex shop in Chicagos Boys town, a queer neighborhood. I ahd gone out with my partner Jonny and friend Scott. Several years before, Scott and I had gone there by ourselves, attending
another convention. I remember this because an unusually friendly saleshunk had asked Scott and I if we wanted to try a new lubricant which made us laugh, as if hed invited us to do so there, on the spot. But
he meant to feel it and put a drop or so on one of my fingers, which I moved slowly around against my thumb, falling silent. All night, out on our wandering, Id talked with Scott about my then emerging
relationship with Jonny. Later, Scott told me that watching me move that lube around between my thumb and forefinger, in desires great pinch, he knew I loved Jonny. I bought a bottle both nights one for a

When the three of us saw the hat on the sale rack, we knew it was meant to be I love the lonely and the absurd. Its tall, made of how
industrial strength fake velvet,white, with gold polyester trim. It is sublimely tacky, a gorgeous monstrosity masquerading as, well, a gorgeous monstrosity. I stood on a platform at the
convention, wearing my silly hat, and presented an early version of this essay as an ironic encyclical, chanting my obsessive critique as if droning a pronouncement: Loving a woman is not the only way for me
to be human. Loving me is not the only way for her to be human. It is not the only way for us to
interrogate the category of human or woman or man or love. What could inspire so
ludic and ludicrous a performance if not the fatigue of encountering essentialisms such as
Irigarays, of trying to shovel out of this Aegean Stable, of reading, suddenly, from the margin of
her margin, of saying too many times:Oh, no, thats okay. Theres more in this text, of being
com- plicitous in my failure to speak. I want to say: Yes, Professor Irigaray, we have love here,
just like at home. It comes in the paper, when I bring it back to our bed on Sunday,and Jonny and I divide it,and lay quietly with each other. Reading. Though, I will confess, I clip the coupons.
This is my part of the labor. With gratitude to phenomenologist Edmund Husserl (1960: 12) and poet/ physician William Carlos Williams (1946: 9), I ask, cant we just choose
lines of advance that have their basis in the phenomenal nature of our varied loving experiences
themselves; no ideas but in love?
possible felicity in history, one for its actually existing materiality.
shall I say this?

Turns the case compulsory heterosexism supports patriarchy

Johnson, 2005

(Allan G., Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, writer and public speaker, worked
on issues of privilege, oppression, and social inequality, The gender knot: unraveling our
patriarchal legacy, p. 148, accessed on googlebooks)
How we think about heterosexuality is key to patriarchy because ideas about gender are at the
core of patriarchy, and heterosexuality and gender are dened in terms of each other . Whether a
man is considered a real man, for example, or whether a woman is considered a real and legitimate woman depends on their sexual
feelings, behavior, and relationships. ln particular, as dened in most Western cultures, real women and

men are exclusively heterosexual. The denition of a man is so bound up with being
heterosexual that gay men are routinely accused of not being men at all. This is also why lesbians
are often likened to men because they, like real men, are sexually oriented to women. Since real
men and real women" are by denition heterosexual, anyone who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual is stigmatized as a deviant outsider
who threatens the status quo and doesnt deserve a socially legitimate identity. As such, they are suspect and vulnerable

to ostracism, discrimination, and abuse.

Intersex disad
Intersex people disprove the k - link turn
Guenther asst prof phil @ vandy 2010 (Lisa Other Fecundities: Proust and Irigaray on Sexual Difference Differences: A
journal of feminst cultural studies Volume 21, Number 2)
Irigaray offers a trenchant critique of the patriarchal monoculture that fails to recognize sexual difference, and so
represses womens voices, bodies, and ways of being. But

her recent focus on the duality of the sexes, and her

to problems theorizing other forms of difference such as race,
culture, and sexuality, and it may prematurely disqualify possibilities for imagining sexual
difference beyond the magical two. Even Alison Stones recent revision of Irigaray, which attempts to reconcile her
apparent suspicion of multiplicity, lead

account of sexual duality with bodily multiplicity as a way of addressing the exclusion of intersex bodies in her work, still maintains
the primacy of duality and in my view fails to address claims of multiplicity on its own terms. In what follows, I test the limits of
Irigarays approach to sexual difference through a reading of Prousts novel Sodom and Gomorrah, in which I develop a model of
sexual difference based on an irreducible duality of sexual parts, both of which may be found in the same individual but that
nevertheless relate to one another and so become meaningful only through the circulation of an incongruous third element or
libidinal force that generates multiple forms of pleasure and fecundity. Prousts novel opens with an extended comparison of a
sexual encounter between two men to the fertilization of a rare orchid by a bumblebee; the men connect to the sexual difference in
themselves and in the other through their mutual enjoyment of pleasure across a threshold of alterity that is as mobile and
contingent as it is irreducible to sameness. In my reading, this scene from Proust suggests a flexible way of accounting for practices
that complicate the sexual duality of male and female without dissolving it, but also without enshrining it in the figure of the
heterosexual couple. As such, it promises to open new ways of theorizing sexual difference in contexts where to be two is simply
not enough. Irigaray and the Limits of Sexual Difference Alison Stones recent analysis of Irigarays later work addresses precisely
the concerns I have raised here about the relation between duality and multiplicity. In Stones reading, Irigaray is a realist

essentialist, which means that she believes in a natural, irreducible, and really existing sexual
duality.7 This duality has yet to find adequate cultural expression; under patriarchy, and even under certain forms of feminism,
sexual difference is reduced to an explicitly neutral but implicitly masculine monoculture of humanity. For Stone, Irigarays concept
of sexual difference is best understood in terms of different rhythms or temporalities such as expansion and contraction, which are
linked in a process like breathing where each pole, alternately, inhales and exhales air, so that the one expands while the other
shrinks (Luce 90). Female rhythms, like female sexual development, are depicted as irreversible and discontinuous; they are
connected to cyclical processes in nature like the change of the seasons. Male rhythms, on the other hand, are characterized by
homeostatic processes that hover around an ideal mean, building up tension and releasing it while maintaining a steady equilibrium.
Stone locates these processes not only in sexed organisms but also in more diffuse natural processes like weather or the growth of
plants; ultimately, she draws on German Romantic thought to fill in a more general account of male and female principles operating
in all of nature (Luce 9293, 13843, 15460, 193215). Stone frankly acknowledges the limits and potential problems of Irigarays
realist essentialism. It is simply not the case that every woman experiences her body in terms of

irreversible cyclical rhythms, and the reason for this is not merely because our culture fails to
give expression to innate female rhythms. Even in a feminist utopia, it is not clear that each and
every woman would identify with Irigarays account of our real natures, nor is it clear that
everyone who identifies as a woman would count as such for Irigaray. The conviction that there
are two and only two sexes marginalizes an experience of bodily multiplicity that is just as
phenomenologically real and compelling as the experience of sexual duality (Luce 85, 11213).
Irigarays repeated suggestion that the only genuine encounter with difference can happen
between the two sexes enforces a heterosexual paradigm that marginalizes same-sex
relationships (Luce 7, 48, 18990, 22122) and makes it impossible for Irigaray to account for intersex
or transsexual bodies without characterizing them as aberrant or unnatural (Luce 49, 11321).
You definetly link to this argumentIrigaray thinks there are irreducible
differences beween males and females based on corporeal limitsthats innately
biological
Blue 02 (Gwendolyn, PhD student in the department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina, Review of
Luce Irigaray (2002) The Way of Love Trans. Heidi Bostic and Stephen Pluhcek)//kyan

Irigaray's conception of subjectivity as between - two.

Starting from an understanding of subjectivity as engendered between two , rather than as a monolithic entity or as
encompassing multiple relations, Irigaray attempts to account for the specificity of our relations (between male female; child - mother; human - god, etc.), while holding onto the understanding that this relationality is constantly in flux and never fixed. One way to accomplish this is to reconceptualize language,
The next two chapters (Being with the Other; Thanks to Difference) provide an overview of

becoming aware of how the substantive (the noun) fixes time, whereas the verb has the capability of gesturing towards the dynamism of life. Another is to broaden our understanding of identity and belonging moving beyond a phallogocentric (male language-centered) and anthropocentric definition of subjectivity to attempt to acknowledge the elements that bind and sustain all life. For example, Irigaray describes how

Irigaray
focuses on how we could love across difference, not by reducing identity to notions of sameness, but by accounting for belonging through the recognition of the
we need to take into account air, as opposed to language, as the universal element and medium that binds and sustains our encounters and becomings. In her final chapter (Rebuilding the World)

irreducible differences between us. To love across difference, for Irigaray, requires a reformulation of the central logic of Western love, transforming it from a system of
desire based on possession, exchange or absorption/consumption, to one which acknowledges and respects irreducible differences. Although she does not acknowledge it explicitly in this text, Irigaray engages
Hegel (and gestures to her work in I Love to You) by offering a revised version of his notion of recognition, one that moves from a hierarchical lord-servant interaction, to an encounter between two equivalent (not

we come together as different

sexed subjects and when we acknowledge our irreducible differences, the possibility emerges to
recognize our own corporeal limits and thereby anchor our conceptual imaginaries in embodied reality rather than abstract or transcendental conditions of possibility.
equal) embodied subjects. For Irigaray, love occurs when neither subject effaces the other nor displaces her or his embodiment. Rather, when

However, for Irigaray our differences are never complete or fixed for all time; they are always in relation, process and flux. The opportunity for a fecund encounter (for love) exists only when we enable the
conditions for the irreducibility of at least two subjectivities (via symbolization as well as our everyday encounters), as well as when we realize that these subjectivities are themselves continuously open to change
because they are in relation to one another.

Mimicry
Irigarays writing is mimetic
Zakin 11 (Zakin, Emily, "Psychoanalytic Feminism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward
N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/feminism-psychoanalysis/)//kyan

Irigaray's writing style is often mimetic, an approach that she claims has been historically
assigned to the feminine (Irigaray 1985b, 76) and therefore that she adopts deliberately in order to
try to recover the place of her exploitation by discourse (Irigaray 1985b, 76). Irigaray's writing does not
proceed propositionally, laying down theses and supporting arguments, nor is it formulated through conventionally linear
explanations. This is not to say, of course, that she does not draw conclusions or that her writing is empty of insight. But these
insights are reached by mirroring the text she is reading, allowing it to play out its tensions and
contradictions, juxtaposing, transfiguring, and intensifying

its crises and putting its parapraxes (its textual and

conceptual slips of the tongue) on display. Her writing is driven by the vagaries of the author before her, and makes appear, or
unmasks, the structuring forces of the text and its impasses and limits. This reading strategy goes to work on the unconscious logic
of a text, revealing the author's underlying fantasies and anxieties by amplifying and reflecting them, and thereby attempting to
loosen the masculine hold on the symbolic by conveying its unstated postulates and conversing from a different perspective. Intently
attentive to the signifer, to the words and silences of psychoanalytic texts, she aims to retrieve the bodily in language, something
underlying symbolic processes of representation, and to invent a new language and imagine new forms.

Thats badleads to misinterpreted reinforces totalitarianism and turns the aff

Shukaitis 10 (Overidentification and/or bust? Stevphen Shukaitis, Dr Stevphen Shukaitis. Staff position, Lecturer @

University of Essex http://www.variant.org.uk/37_38texts/10Overident.html Variant issue 37 Spring/Summer 2010) //trepka

Zizek, in an essay on Laibach and the NSK31, comments that the reactions of the left to them has first been to take their work as an
ironic satire of totalitarian rituals, followed by an uneasy feeling based on not knowing whether they really

mean it or not. This is usually followed by varying iterations along these lines, wondering if they
really do mean it, or whether they overestimate the publics ability to interpret their multiple
layers of allusion and reference and thus end up reinforcing totalitarian currents.
Also turns the K and the affs understanding of difference
Bhabha 94 (Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature and Language and the
Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University, "Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse," in The
Location of Culture, pp.85-92, book)//kyan
Within that conflictual economy of colonial discourse which Edward Said describes as the tension

between the
synchronic panoptical vision of domination - the demand for identity, stasis - and the counterpressure of
the diachrony of history - change, difference - mimicry represents an ironic compromise. If I may adapt Samuel
Weber's formulation of the marginalizing vision of castration, then colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed,
recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same , but not quite. Which is to say,
that the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence ; in order to be effective,
mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference . The authority of
that mode of colonial discourse that I have called mimicry is therefore stricken by an indeterminacy: mimicry emerges as the
representation of a difference that is itself a process of disavowal. Mimicry is, thus the sign of a double articulation; a complex
strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which 'appropriates' the Other as it visualizes power. Mimicry is also the sign of the
inappropriate, however, a difference or recalcitrance which coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies
surveillance, and poses an immanent threat to both 'normalized' knowledges and disciplinary powers.

Multiplicity disad
Binary disadIrigarays use of sexual difference is terribleshe essentializes
feminism, refutes multiplicity , ignores homosexuals, criticizes androgyny,
precludes race, culture, and sexuality in discussions of feminism, and establishes a
primacy of dualityall of these turn case and is in context of Irigarays at least
two argument
Guenther 10 (Lisa, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Other
Fecundities: Proust and Irigaray on Sexual Difference Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies
Volume 21, Number 2, 2010)//kyan
* Androgyny=partly male and partly female in appearance; of indeterminate sex.
This early work of Irigaray seeks to multiply possibilities for womens self-expression

by recovering a suppressed
sexual difference in which male and female are neither the same nor opposites but are rather irreducibly different
modes of embodiment. In her more recent work, however, Irigaray has emphasized the duality of
sexual difference at the expense of multiplicity. 2 She even goes so far as to claim that,
without a foundation in sexual duality, multiplicity is likely to lead to death (I Love 143). My first
theoretical gesture was therefore to free the two from the one, the two from the many, the other from the same, and to do this in a horizontal way by
suspending the authority of the One: of man, of the father, of the leader, of the one god, of the unique truth, etc. (Democracy 129). Alison Stone
comments: We can see why she links the beliefs in unity and multiplicity: to affirm multiplicity is to see it as the common, unitary, character of all
bodies (Luce85). But it is not clear that all

affirmations of bodily multiplicity must lead to the death of sexual

difference. See, for example, Kelly Olivers argument that Irigarays emphasis on the two is a strategic move to open up multiplicity [. . .].
[I]n order to get multiplicity we must first have two (209). In I Love to You, she claims that across the whole
world, there are, there are only , men and women (47; emphasis added). 3 Racial and other
differences are subordinated to this fundamental sexual dualit y, and Irigaray argues
that they only find adequate expression on the basis of the latter. 4 The heterosexual couple
becomes the model not only for sexual difference but also for ethical and political life. 5 In
Democracy Begins between Two, Irigaray writes: I cannot avoid the conclusion that woma(e)n
and ma(e)n represent two different worlds, two visions of the world that remain irreducibly
distinct (151). The main contours of this difference are carved by ways of engendering and being engendered. Women are
engendered in a body that is of the same gender, they procreate within their own bodies, and
they are able to nourish others with their bodies. Men are born to a different gender, they
procreate outside of themselves, and their bodies are not able to nourish others directly (151). According to
Irigaray, women are thereby more inclined toward intersubjectivity , relations with the other
gender, the physical environment, and the present or future tense, while men favor subject-object relations , the
construct ion or fabrication of worlds, instrumentality, relations to abstract entities like the nation and justice, and the past determining
the present and the future (153). Irigaray criticizes androgyny as a passing fad that offers what may seem to
be an ethical solution to the division of the genders but turns out to be delusional, decadent, and
weird unless it takes sexual difference as both its setting out point and its destination (Je
12223). 6 Irigaray offers a trenchant critique of the patriarchal monoculture that fails to recognize sexual difference, and so represses
womens voices, bodies, and ways of being. But her recent focus on the duality of the sexes, and her apparent suspicion of
multiplicity, lead to problems theorizing other forms of difference such as race,
culture, and sexuality, and it may prematurely disqualify possibilities for imagining sexual 26 Other Fecundities difference beyond
the magical two. Even Alison Stones recent revision of Irigaray, which attempts to reconcile her account of sexual duality with
bodily multiplicity as a way of addressing the exclusion of intersex bodies in her work, still maintains the primacy of duality and
in my view fails to address claims of multiplicity on its own term s. In what fol lows, I test the limits of
Irigarays approach to sexual difference through a reading of Prousts novel Sodom and
Gomorrah, in which I develop a model of sexual difference based on an irreducible duality of
sexual parts, both of which may be found in the same individual but that nevertheless relate to
one another and so become meaningful only through the circulation of an incongruous third element or libidinal force that generates multiple
forms of pleasure and fecundity. Prousts novel opens with an extended comparison of a sexual encounter
between two men to the fertilization of a rare orchid by a bumblebee; the men connect to the
sexual difference in themselves and in the other through their mutual enjoyment of pleasure

across a threshold of alterity that is as mobile and contingent as it is irreducible to sameness . In my

reading, this scene from Proust suggests a flexible way of accounting for practices that complicate the sexual duality of male and female without
dissolving it, but also without enshrining it in the figure of the heterosexual couple. As such, it promises to open new ways of theorizing sexual
difference in contexts where to

be two is simply not enough.

Specifically, she bases her ideas on natural differencethis ignores multiplicity

Stone 09 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty Luce Irigaray and the
philosophy of sexual difference, book)//kyan

This book defends an understanding of sexual difference as natural, challenging the prevailing consensus within feminist theory that
sexual difference is a culturally constructed and symbolically articulated phenomenon. The book supports this challenge with a
distinctive interpretation and critical rethinking of Luce Irigarays later philosophy of sexual difference. According to my
interpretation, the later Irigaray sees sexual difference as a natural difference between the sexes,
which should receive cultural and social expression. Opposing the dominant view that any idea that sexual difference is natural must
be politically conservative and epistemologically nave, I want to show that Irigaray s later conception of sexual difference is
philosophically sophisticated and coherent, and supports a politics of change which importantly aspires not only to improve
womens situations but also to revalue nature and to improve humanitys relations with the natural world. However, I will not
simply defend the later Irigaray, but will criticise her for overlooking what I call the natural multiplicity

within each of our bodies: a multiplicity of forces and capacities such that we are never
simply sexually specific. Given this problem, I shall argue, Irigarays philosophy must be fundamentally
rethought within the framework of a theory of nature as self-differentiating, a theory can which
recognise the reality and value of bodily multiplicity as well as that of sexual duality. Thus, this book is not merely an
exposition of Irigaray butalso develops an original position within feminist thought a philosophy of self-differentiating nature.

Irigaray is a realist essentalistthere is zero way out of the linkshe bases her
ideas through differentiated temporalitiesindependetly she ignores some women
and marginalizes homosexual, transsexual, and intersexual bodies
Guenther 10 (Lisa, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Other
Fecundities: Proust and Irigaray on Sexual Difference Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies
Volume 21, Number 2, 2010)//kyan
Alison Stones recent analysis of Irigarays

later work addresses precisely the concerns I have raised here

about the relation between duality and multiplicity. In Stones reading, Irigaray is a realist
essentialist, which means that she believes in a natural, irreducible, and really existing
sexual duality. 7 This duality has yet to find adequate cultural expression; under patriarchy, and even under certain forms
of feminism, sexual difference is reduced to an explicitly neutral but implicitly masculine
monoculture of humanity. For Stone, Irigarays concept of sexual difference is best understood in terms of
different rhythms or temporalities such as expansion and contraction, which are linked in a process like
breathing where each pole, alternately, inhales and exhales air, so that the one expands while
the other shrinks (Luce90). Female rhythms, like female sexual development, are depicted as
irreversible and discontinuous; they are difference s 27 connected to cyclical processes in nature
like the change of the seasons. Male rhythms, on the other hand, are characterized by homeostatic processes
that hover around an ideal mean, building up tension and releasing it while maintaining a steady equilibrium. Stone
locates these processes not only in sexed organisms but also in more diffuse natural processes like
weather or the growth of plants; ultimately, she draws on German Romantic thought to fill in a more general account of
male and female principles operating in all of nature (Luce9293, 13843, 15460, 193215). Stone frankly acknowledges
the limits and potential problems of Irigarays realist essentialism. It is simply not the case
that every woman experiences her body in terms of irreversible cyclical rhythms ,
and the reason for this is not merely because our culture fails to give expression to innate female
rhythms. Even in a feminist utopia, it is not clear that each and every woman would identify with
Irigarays account of our real natures, nor is it clear that everyone who identifies as a
woman would count as such for Irigaray. The conviction that there are two and only two
sexes marginalizes an experience of bodily multiplicity that is just as phenomenologically real

and compelling as the experience of sexual duality (Luce85, 11213). Irigarays repeated suggestion
that the only genuine encounter with difference can happen between the two sexes enforces a
heterosexual paradigm that marginalizes same-sex relationships (Luce 7, 48, 18990, 22122) and
makes it impossible for Irigaray to account for intersex or transsexual bodies without
characterizing them as aberrant or unnatural (Luce49, 113 21).
Theres no way out of the linkIrigarays sexual duality and multiplicity are
fundamentally opposed
Stone 09 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty Luce Irigaray and the
philosophy of sexual difference, book)//kyan
Accordingly, I aim to rethink Irigarays later philosophy, by synthesising it with two other currents of thought: Judith Butlers
performative theory of gender and the idea of self-differentiating nature articulated within the German tradition of philosophy of
nature. Butlers approach to gender becomes important for my argument because it is strong in the very areas where Irigarays later
philosophy is most problematic. Butler argues that gender, sex division, and heterosexuality are (in a sense to be explained)
culturally produced and can, as cultural artefacts, be subverted and dismantled. Accommodating differences among women, she
argues that norms concerning gender are continually changing and do not confer on women any common identity or experience.
Moreover, she denies that sex difference is more fundamental than other differences, construing it merely as a transient artefact of
these shifting gender norms. Despite these advantages, Butlers thought is problematic in that her stress on the cultural production
of sex and gender privileges culture over matter and nature. A viable synthesis of her thought with that of Irigaray must therefore
considerably revise Butlers thought too, specifically (I will argue) by predicating Butlers claims on the idea that bodies do have

a natural character, but one of multiplicity. By this, I mean that each body is naturally composed of
multiple forces (pre-conscious impulses to pursue particular kinds of activity), where this character of multiplicity
is universally shared by all bodies. This idea of bodily multiplicity conflicts with Irigarays belief in
sexual duality in several ways. One is that multiplicity is common to all bodies, so cannot serve as a
principle that introduces sexual differentiation between them. Being universal to all bodies, there is
nothing in multiplicity as such that could cause these bodies to become specified into two
sexually different forms.

Essentailsm disad
Alt is essentialist and failsit focuses on biological difference, purges transsexual
bodies, and ignores race, class and gender expressionturns the K
GLBTQ 04 (Separtism, http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/separatism.html)//kyan
In the early 1970s, after encountering misogynistic attitudes and practices in the gay liberation movement and anti-lesbian
discrimination in the women's liberation movement, some lesbian feminists decided to create spaces over
which they themselves had autonomy. By ending their dependence on and contact with men, and
by forming communities based on the privileging of lesbian identities (which could be political as well as sexual), these women
developed separatist cultures in urban, suburban, and rural settings. In seeking to minimize their contacts with men,
lesbian separatists created women-only communes and houses, political groups, and businesses, as well as
women-only events, such as music concerts and poetry readings. Lesbian separatists subscribed to a "radical
feminist" philosophy that views gender difference in terms of essentialism. Unlike the liberal feminists of
the mainstream women's movement, who argued that gender was a social construction , lesbian separatists contended
that the differences between men and women are rooted in nature. Thus, women
naturally possessed a female energy characterized by its warmth, nurturing, and pacifist
qualities. On the other hand, due to their male energy, men were hard-wired to be aggressive, competitive,
and destructive. Because men could not, or would not, ever change their ways, lesbian separatists believed that it was
necessary for women to exclude them from their lives. Lesbian separatist feminists also excluded male-tofemale transgendered people from their communities and other women-only spaces. For authors such as
Janice Raymond and Mary Daly, male-to-female transsexuals should not be considered women, but
instead agents of the patriarchy. According to this line of thinking, biology is destiny, because a biological male,
even if a transsexual, will always possess masculine energy and privilege. In the 1970s, a number of
high-profile incidents occurred in which MTF transsexuals were purged from lesbian
communities. For example, in 1973 Beth Elliott, who was serving as Vice President of the San Francisco chapter of the
Daughters of Bilitis, was outed as transsexual and forced to resign her post. Likewise, in 1977 rumors circulated that Sandy Stone, a
recording engineer for Olivia Records (a women's music company), was transsexual. After threats of a boycott from lesbian
separatists, Olivia management asked Stone to resign. By the mid-1980s, many lesbian separatist communities

began to fracture around issues of race, class, and gender expression. Critics from both within and without
the communities charged that radical feminist ideology held the white, middle-class woman
as its standard , and that, in particular, the needs of women of color were ignored. Debates
over sexuality, role playing, and who should be considered a "true" lesbian also polarized womencentered communities, and contributed to their decline.

. Alt fails
Lesbian separatist standpoint epistemology failsignores the differences between
women and is too exclusionary
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of women's studies at Duke University, lived in a Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL
FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM, AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191. 33)//kyan
In some locations, this kind of methodology of additive identity politics often functioned as a response to
the concrete failings

of the liberal system; additive identity politics attempted to shore up the system by accounting for

those who seem to be falling out. Proponents of this methodology in disciplines from political science to theology suggested

that oppressed peoples should be reincorporated into the structure of the system under provisos
such as "epistemological privilege of poor," "preferential option for the oppressed," or " standpoint epistemology."
Oppressed people were addressed by these new methods and incorporated into the system as special or
unique cases. The incorporation of minorities functioned in a way that validated both the power and the privilege of the system.
That is, the inclusion of the oppressed person verified the idea that, although certain people may at times be inadvertently
overlooked, essentially the system can be made to work for all. Once marginalized perspectives are contained, a given worldview can
again be said to represent the whole of one, unified reality for all people. The voices of the oppressed now contained within the
system reinforce the illusion of a wholeness and unity that can be objectively measured and defined. Within additive identity politics,
wholeness follows from studying all the pieces. If we can only incorporate the views of enough Black, female, gay, poor, and so forth,
people, we will then be complete. However, within radical feminist communities, this formulation of

politics began to fail almost immediately. First of all, we were not interested in verifying other
institutions or systems by incorporating marginalized identities into them; indeed our goal was to resist all
male, patriarchal powers. Instead, we sought a more organic way to understand the interconnections of sexism and racism. As
Spelman wrote, "an additive analysis treats the oppression of a Black woman in a society that is racist
as well as sexist as if it were a further burden when, in fact, it is a different burden. To ignore
difference is to deny the particular reality of Black women."[ 16] Additionally, additive identity
politics was built on the ideal of tolerance for all difference; no matter how unlike ourselves
someone was, we should accept her and her experiences as valid and important. This ideology
directly clashed with the central tenet of radical feminism, that is, that all men regardless of race
were bad and that male behavior should not be tolerated but rather should be avoided. A posture of
openness to all was difficult to take up in a community built on exclusionary politics.
Standpoint epistemology and identity politics fails in the context of Radical
feminismits too essetnalizing, monolithic and limiting, shuts down dialogue,
fractures the communitywe present the narrative of Kathy Rudy
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of women's studies at Duke University, lived in a Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL
FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM, AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191. 33)//kyan
Additive identity politics failed in radical feminist communities because it challenged the central

tenets upon which many of these communities were built. Radical feminism used an essentialist
notion of identity to ground its politics in what was thought to be the superior nature of women.
Essentialism saw female identity as an ontological ground, a truth about nature itself and the virtuous nature of women specifically.
The experience of being women, we argued, led to a unified identity that could ground politics. Thus,

even though women of color were in some sense configuring a similar or parallel argument--that is,
that certain racial, class, or ethnic experiences led to an identity that could ground politics--the
(unintended) effect of this argument was to challenge the validity of the primary assumption of
radical feminism, that is, that being a woman (of any color or ethnicity) was a dear and strong political foundation. The
introduction of difference between women pointed out the weaknesses inherent in building a
politics on a cross-racial, cross-cultural, unified identity of "woman."[ 17] Finally and on a very pragmatic level, additive
identity politics failed precisely because the experiences and backgrounds of the women were so
different, and conversation became difficult and sometimes impossible. Whole communities split apart;
even national groups such as the National Women's Studies Association experienced conflicts which left lasting schisms. For many,
the outcome of these struggles was often segregation; additive identity politics allowed us to feel comfortable only

when talking with people from our own ethnic, racial, class, sex, and gender backgrounds.
Subgroups began to form in Durham, not only Black radical feminists, but lesbians from a Catholic

background, lesbians over forty, lesbians with children, Jewish lesbians, and so forth. By the late
1980s, there were few meetings or groups that you could participate in as a whole serf (or even as a plain-old, garden
variety lesbian). The fractures were beginning to grow and cover the entire map of radical feminism. It is at this
point in my narrative that I enter graduate school, in part because the unified community I had sought was
dissolving and in part because I myself was experiencing wider identifications than the narrowly defined
lesbian community allowed. Even though in 1989 I still identified publicly with radical feminism, privately I felt stifled
and confined. For nine years, I had lived in an exclusively female, exclusively lesbian world, where
the requirement for membership was lesbian identity. And it was the only requirement. Month after month,
potluck after potluck, we met; because we had little else in common besides the gender of our partners,
conversations invariably circled around how and when we came out, how our parents were taking it, and so forth . It was a
world that marginalized itself with its hypertrophied attachments to lesbian identity . It wasn't only
that I hated cotton clothing and Birkenstocks, and it wasn't that I desired contact with men (sexual or otherwise), but it was the
constant pressing feeling that I was being left out, that I was missing something. Moreover, the continuing problem of
scarce material resources, competing ideas about oppression, name-calling, policing,

no tolerance of difference or,

a great deal of

conversely too much awareness of difference (which lead to segregation)--these and other phenomena created

tension in our community. By the late 1980s, the peaceful ideal of a unified woman-loving-woman world had all but fallen apart.
Through movies, TV, and novels, I found that my identifications would wander through a much wider terrain
than this community would allow me to live in. I began to feel the need to challenge the
presumption that my lesbianism influenced and affected everything I did and thought; I felt that sexual
identity was no longer, for me, a seamless, monolithic, unfractured whole. I tried to escape the prison
created by lesbian separatism by going to graduate school I would rather be a lesbian in a bigger world,
I told myself, than a citizen of many worlds and identifications who had to hide those components from the view of lesbian separatist
ideology. The transition out of the lesbian community was painful. Many people told me that I was

selling out to seek success in the male-identified institution of academia. Others told me that I wouldn't be able to
exist inside an institution that had never accepted gays or women. I lost most of my anti-institutional,
counterculture, radical feminist friends in this passage. In graduate school, however, I found new friends and
newly emerging theories in postmodern feminism that reflected for me the serious limitations of
a politics based solely on racial, ethnic, gender, sexual preference, or class characteristics . Around
1989, the entire world of feminist theory had become suddenly energized with deconstruction. Works in
the emerging field of queer theory, such as Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Eve Sedgwick's
Epistemology of the Closet, and Diana Fuss's Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference marked the beginning of an
era which directly attacked, from feminist perspectives, the essentialist presuppositions circulating in radical feminist communities.
These works were critical of and opposed to identity-based political change . In critiquing the basis of
identity politics, these

theories help me name my dissatisfaction with political assumptions based on

common physical or cultural traits and orientations. It would be hard to overestimate the influence that these
texts and subsequent conversations had on my thinking; they made me realize that social oppressions were usually
much more complex than identity politics made them appear.

At: nah
Of course, Irigaray will deny being an essentialist but that doesnt mean she isnt
her later works specifically defines natural characters of male/females
Stone 09 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty Luce Irigaray and the
philosophy of sexual difference, book)//kyan
Insofar as I am defending Irigarays later philosophy of sexual difference, I am also unusually within feminist theory defending
essentialism as it figures in her later thought. Although Irigaray explicitly denies being an essentialist, her

later view that men and women have natural characters that need and strive for expression is identifiably
essentialist. iii Generally in philosophy, essentialism is the belief that things have essential properties or
characters that are necessary to their being the (kind of) things they are. A stronger variant of
philosophical essentialism holds that the essences of things consist in their spontaneous tendencies to develop in certain ways to
exhibit certain distinctive patterns of unfolding. iv Within feminism, essentialism denotes the view that women

and men are constituted as such by certain essential characteristics. For simplicity, whenever I discuss
essentialism, I will understand it in this intra-feminist sense. v Irigarays (feminist) essentialism is of a strong form,
holding that womens and mens essential characters consist in the rhythms which ensure that
their bodies and experiences grow and unfold in distinctive ways. In attributing this form of essentialism to
Irigaray, I have no intention of discrediting her later philosophy; rather, I think that the intricacy and fruitfulness of this
philosophy shows that essentialism has underexplored potential which feminists should tap.

Standpoint epistemology link

Irigarays use of standpoint epistemology is uniquely badits essentailizing,
ignores cultural prescriptions, and locks in specific characteristic of masculine
and feminine that reproduce the harms shes criticizingthis is in the context of
her later works and turns the K
Stone 09 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty Luce Irigaray and the
philosophy of sexual difference, book)//kyan
Although Irigarays earlier thought has exerted immense influence on feminist theory, her later philosophy has proved considerably
less popular.vi As one feminist critic writes: Irigarays later work is far more problematic with respect to the

charge of essentialism, and her deployment of sexual difference has seemed increasingly to
suggest certain pre-given and determinant qualities of the feminine. vii The later Irigaray assumes
that men and women naturally have different characters, implying that they are qualified for
distinct ranges of activities. This looks troublingly close to the traditional view that womens
natural character predisposes them to childrearing and the domestic sphere . In
attempting to identify and describe the natural characters of the sexes, Irigaray appears to overlook how deeply any
perceptions of their characters must be shaped by existing cultural prescriptions, prescriptions that
she can only end up reproducing. Moreover, to support her account of the natural differences between the
sexes, she appeals to an understanding of nature as a whole: seemingly, for her, the fixity of the
natural, material world is the ground of the fixity of the social world, whereas, for most feminists: Any theory
of womens liberation must certainly abandon the belief that nature is immutable and fixed;
otherwise, no liberation is possible.viii

At: daley
Your author also concedes Irigaray herself rejects applying sexual difference
models to homosexual bodies, still essentailizes homosexual relations and
independently links to the binary disad
Daley 2012 (Linda, Literary and Communication studies, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, "Luce
Irigarays Sexuate Economy," Feminist Theory, 13(I), 59-79)
Acceptance of Irigarays usefulness within not only feminist philosophy, but also other theoretical domains such as economics,
politics, architecture, education, among others, hinges on an understanding of her central, albeit slippery, thesis of radical sexual
difference. Pheng Cheah and Elizabeth Grosz, editors of the Diacritics special issue on Irigaray and the Political Future of Sexual
Difference, argue forcefully that Irigaray is vulnerable to the charges made by Butler, Cornell and Gates
precisely because

of the difficulty her concept has in denoting both the difference between the sexes
as it exists under patriarchy and phallocentrism, and a generative possibility of a reconfigured relation by
sexed subjects toward the selfs relation to nature as well as toward each other (Cheah and Grosz, 1998: 78). The
being-two, as Cheah and Grosz characterise the potential of Irigarays impossible account of sexual difference, is the only
concrete, sensuous example of two radically different beings immediately available, and also one that
has a capacity for ethical universality (1998: 7). That is, the sexually different relation that is encountered by two
radically different beings not yet available to representation is, for Irigaray, prototypical of all ethical
relations whether same sex (homosexual and homo-social) or hetero-social
relations. By contrast, the sexual difference that patriarchy and phallocentrism privileges is coextensive with the human
beings disavowal of a debt to nature and the loss of respect for nature in the self. Thus, the sexually different, being-two
relation, rather than being the re-inscription of the normative heterosexual couple as Butler and Cornell argue and reject, is an
impossible future encounter within the present concrete reality of the woman/man relation ; a
possible model or prototype for other models of relations of difference/otherness, albeit models that
Irigaray is unlikely to proffer.
At best, they can no link out of the heterorsexual and transsexual disadeven if
there are more than 2 bodiesIrigaray still essentailizes feminism itself
Their scholars are wrong and are only descriptive of her earlier worksher later
works are specifically essentalistat best they can win strategic essentialism
which is still bad
Stone 09 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty Luce Irigaray and the
philosophy of sexual difference, book)//kyan
My defence, criticism, and rethinking of Irigarays later philosophy of sexual difference will be developed in the following stages. I begin, in chapter one, by reviewing feminist
debates around essentialism, tracing how they intersected with the Anglophone reception of Irigarays work, which early critics perceived as essentialist. More recent

scholars have reinterpreted Irigaray as employing traditional essentialist notions of women

merely strategically, to transform their meaning and revalue female identity. These
reinterpretations make good sense of her earlier texts, but are less well supported by her
later writings, which claim that men and women naturally have different characters
and abilities which deserve realisation and expression through a culture of sexual
difference. Most scholars have assumed that this position, being realist, is unacceptably nave epistemologically. In contrast, I will argue that Irigarays later realist
essentialism (as I will call it) is more coherent than merely strategic essentialism, since the latter aims to revalue female identity and bodies only as imagined and symbolised,
reinforcing the conceptual hierarchy of culture over nature.

And reject early Irigaray worksshe herself concedes theyre incoherentvote neg
on presumption
Stone 09 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty Luce Irigaray and philosophy
of sexual difference, book)//kyan
The feminism of sexual difference which Irigaray espouses in her later work differs significa2ntly, I
believe, from that of her earlier work. This earlier work understands sexual difference as the difference between male and female as identities or positions
made available within the symbolic order (that is, broadly, the linguistically articulated realm of culture and meaning). On this understanding, sexual difference
differs importantly from both sex difference the biological difference between the sexes and gender difference the
difference between masculinity and femininity as roles embodied in social practices. x According to the
ix

earlier Irigaray, western culture persistently defines the female as the inferior counterpart of the male, establishing patterns of symbolism that are more fundamental and all-

Irigarays early form of sexual difference

feminism is important in focusing attention on the symbolic constitution of sexual difference and in opening up
pervasive than the contingent, varying, gender roles that result from social practices.

the project of transforming received patterns of symbolism by reconceiving female identity positively. xi But, although sexual difference feminism is usually understood

Irigarays earlier position, she herself moves away from this position, which she comes to
find incoherent.
consistently with

Strategic essentialism risks a fetish mentality while losing sight of the strategy this recreates universality
Spivak 93, Prof of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, 1993
(Gayatri. Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge New York and London. Pg 3-4)

Strategy works through a persistent (de)constructive critique of the theoretical. Strategy is an

embattled concept-metaphor and unlike theory, its antecedents are not disinterested and
universal. Usually, an artifice or trick designed to outwit or surprise the enemy (Oxford
English Dictionary). The critical moment does not come only at a certain stage when one sees
ones effort succeeding. It is not only in that moment of euphoria that we begin to decide that we
had been strategic all along. The strategic use of an essence as a mobilizing slogan or
masterword like woman or worker or the name of a nation is, ideally, self-conscious for all
mobilized. This is the impossible risk of a lasting strategy. Can there be such a thing? At any
rate, the critique of the fetish-character (so to speak) of the masterword has to be persistent all
along the way, even when it seems that to remind oneself of it is counterproductive. Otherwise
the strategy freezes into something like what Subaltern Studies Group started working as a
countermovement within South Asian history as written even by politically t you call an
essentialist position, when the situation that calls forth the strategy is seemingly resolved. The
Subaltern correct historians trying, among other things, to fabricate a national identity in
decolonization: a different structural position from someone working from within the U.S.
university. If one is considering strategy, one has to look at where the groupthe person, the
persons, or the movementis situated when one makes claims for or against essentialism. A
strategy suits a situation; a strategy is not a theory. And if one is considering positivism, one
might take into account the importance of positivism in the discipline of history in the
nineteenth century.7
Within mainstream U.S. feminism the good insistence that the personal is political often
transformed itself into something like only the personal is political. The strategic use of
essentialism can turn into an alibi for proselytizing academic essentialisms. The emphasis then
inevitably falls on being able to speak from ones own ground, rather than matching the trick to
the situation, that the word strategy implies. Given the collaboration between techniques of
knowledge and structures of enablement, better I think to look for the bigger problem: that
strategies are taught as if they were theories, good for all cases. One has to be careful to see that
they do not misfire for people who do not resemble us and do not share the situation of
prominent U.S. universities and colleges.

Even if it can be applied elsewherethe method Irigaray uses to prove sexual

difference is essentialism
Cheah and Grosz 98 (Pheng Cheah and Elizabeth Grosz Of Being-Two: Introduction,
Diacritics 28.1 (1998) 3-18,)//kyan
According to Irigaray, the violent logic of the one that leads to the establishment of patriarchy and the repression of
sexual difference is historically coextensive with the human subject's disavowal of his indebtedness to
nature and his loss of respect for the nature in himself. She argues that the identification of the mother with nature; the reduction of
childbearing to a function of the genealogy of the husband/father; and the alienation of the daughter from her mother as a result of
the sundering of woman's genealogy occur alongside the replacement of a cosmological view of nature as fertile, life-giving earth
with an instrumentalist view of nature as brute matter to be conquered and transcended by the human subject and shaped in
accordance with the human will. 3 Indeed, Irigaray regards the uncontrollable forms of alienation and abstraction in the Marxist
account of the development of global capital--the genesis of the money-form and of commodity fetishism--as inevitable effects of the
sacrifice of natural fertility. 4 She suggests that the crisis of the contemporary era--wars, starvation,

destruction--is the logical historical destiny of all sacrificial, technocratic societies which have been "set up and
managed by men alone." 5
Here is the last paragraph of your authors artilcesays that women are bodily
substrates to familinal and economic systemsI dare you to tell me you dont link
Daley 2012 (Linda, Literary and Communication studies, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, "Luce
Irigarays Sexuate Economy," Feminist Theory, 13(I), 59-79)
Commenting on the limitations of perspectives of some Western feminist economists analyses of the neoclassical paradigm in the Barker and Kuiper
anthology with which I began this article, Eiman Zein-Elabin makes the point that women

share their economic status with a

large number of men and to whom the market/ nonmarket divide, which many see as the root of the gender bias in
economics, also applies (2003: 321). These two examples of womens exploitation in the global South demonstrate the
familial, ethnic and class poverty in which both women and men are structurally mired. However, I have argued that to fully
understand the nature of their economic oppression requires an understanding of their sexually
different experiences of the forces and structures that perpetuate the conditions of that oppression. Irigarays conceptions of
feminine and maternal relations make visible the value to these financial enterprises of womens functioning as
bodily substrates to familial and economic systems. Her conceptualisation of the sexuate nature
of these relations is crucial to the transvaluation of the value traditionally accorded to those areas of
labour attributed to women as women such as sex work, and the labours of care and
reproduction. In the neoclassical paradigm these areas of work often fall outside the shadowy though powerful domain of the market and into
the even more shadowy space of the nonmarket. Irigarays work provides a complex and generative analysis of
how that market/nonmarket divide is sexually reproduced

Martinez
Amelia and I present our own methodology to reconceptualize Being starting with
the fluidity of sexual difference as at least two. The United States federal
government should lift the economic embargo against Cuba. In an unrelated
manner, the debate community should remove barriers to participation of women
in debate. Our method problematizes masculine oppression in both the debate
community and in geopolitical relationships with Cuba. However, we reject their
comparison of the two.
Even if experiences of women and debate and experiences of Cuban women are
equally horrific, they are still distinct experiences --- their metaphor between the
debate community and Cuban women is inaccurate and essentialist --- conclusion
of their 1AC article
Martinez, 9 (Maria Del Carmen, Her body was my country: Gender and Cuban-American exile-community nationalist
identity in the work of Gustavo Perez Firmat, 2009, Palgrave Macmillan 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 3, 295316)

*** THEIR CARD STARTS ***

Moreover, Cuban exile identity has more often than not been constructed in deeply essentialist terms that exclude women from the political realm while foregrounding womens bodies. Cuba has, and continues to be, imagined as a mother, at times monstrous and
vindictive, at times victim, always productive. Indeed, maternal figures like the mulata Virgin of Charity and Mariana Grajales, the Mother of Cuba,5 have long been used to express Cuban nationalist sentiment, both revolutionary and exilic. But central Cuban heroes
of the independence movement and Cuban exile culture were and continue to be men like the generals Jose and Antonio Maceo, and the poet apostle Jose Mart . Cuban and Cuban exile-community nationalist identity remains written as a matter of manly
honor, heroism and masculine material rights.6 In both the Cuban and the Cuban exile community, national identity also continues to be written in terms of familial metaphors, paternalistic codes of honor and other gendered narrative strategies with a long and
troubling tradition metaphors that rest on women who suffer. For instance, during the nineteenth- century Cuban wars for independence, Jose Mart employed the image of suffering mothers and aged mothers to legitimate the cause of a Cuba libre. In speeches
given in Tampa, New York and Key West, Jose Mart referred to the island itself as a mother being raped and crying out to its sons for aid. Some of Mart s most passionate poems and essays on the Cuban struggle for independence employed images of women
as mothers who suffered a trope that he appealed to as evidence of the justness of the cause. For example, in With All and For the Good of All, he writes: Down there is our Cuba, smothered in the arms that crush and corrupt it ... There she is, calling to us.
We can hear her moan; she is being raped and mocked ... Our dearest mother is being corrupted and torn to pieces! (1999, 143). He especially appealed to the image of the aged mother, the mother who had seen her husband and sons die and who remained faithful
to Cuba libre to symbolize commitment to the cause and assure Cubans that they would triumph (Stoner, 1991, 29). For instance, in the August 1892 edition of Patria, Mart described a reception in Philadelphia, where an old woman still wore next to her heart
the badge of a Cuban hero. Everywhere, with their simple mantillas and their lovely gray hair these old women who do not tire of us these widows with the medal of their dead husbands on their breasts follow the flag for which he died. How can men tire when
women are tireless? (Stoner, 1991, 29). Similarly, the first-wave post-1959 Cuban exile community perio dicos continued to symbolize Cuba as a suffering mother, often a mother in chains. For example, the banner of the November 1963 exile perio dico Ideal reads
Cuba: Woman and Mother. The cover features an image of a woman with elements of both Liberty (Marianne) and the Virgin of Charity. Her feet are bare and her hands manacled. Instead of the Phrygian cap associated with Liberty, her head is demurely covered
in a mantilla, a detail that is reminiscent of a virgin figure. Her hands are held out in supplication; tears stream down her face in an expression of anguish. Mothers symbolized the cause, but women were generally excluded from the male domain of exile politics
and organizations, where tradition cast them in a marginal and supportive role (Garc a, 1996, 133). Cuban exile groups of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly those with paramilitary dimensions, excluded women from their organizations as a matter of policy, and
limited the involvement of women in propaganda organizations considered sensitive to operations. Women tended to perform auxiliary services like cooking or the thankless and tedious work of sewing or painting banners. As one woman put it, The men did all
the planning but we always did all the work (Garca, 1996, 134). Even the suffering of female political prisoners in Cuba received almost no attention in the exile press, although the perio dicos devoted endless ink to the suffering of Cuban plantados. As Mar a
Cristina Garc a notes, it was not until the late 1980s that the womens experience even began to be told in the exile press in Miami (1996, 135). Women may symbolize the exile-imagined nation, but they are not written into its political and historical institutions.
In the exile community, as elsewhere, women are endlessly spoken of but rarely speaking subjects endlessly represented but unknowable, that is, at once captive and absent in discourse displayed as a spectacle (De Lauretis, 1990, 115). In recent decades, critics
have produced important theoretical texts on the nature and process of modern nation-building projects. Initially, however, relatively few addressed gender specifically or in a sustained fashion. And with notable exceptions, few examined nationalism at the
intersections of race, class
and gender. Important exceptions include the work of Lynn Stoner, Vera Kutzinski, Jean Stubbs, Verena Martinez-Alier and Helen Safa, who simulta- neously examine gender, race and nationalism in the context of Cuban history and culture. Benedict Andersons
seminal text Imagined Communities inspired a great deal of literature. However, as Anne McClintock asserts, If following Anderson, the invented nature of nationalism has recently found wide theoretical currency, the explorations of the gendering of the national
imaginary remain paltry (1997, 89). Indeed, Anderson failed to address the gendered aspects of nation-building discourses with any significant scope. As a result, feminist critics like Doris Sommer, Carol Pateman, Anne McClintock and others have extended this
theoretical work to offer feminist readings on the process of nation-building. These findings prove particularly helpful in examining the gendered dimensions of exile nationalism in the work of Gustavo Pe rez Firmat. Anne McClintock reworks Anderson to conclude
that nations are contested systems of cultural representation that are, at a basic, constitutive level, constructed in terms of gender difference. She adds, All nationalism are gendered; all are invented and all are dangerous. Moreover, no nation, past or present, has
granted women the same access to rights and resources of the nation-state as men (1997, 89). In the Disorder of Women, Carol Pateman points out that in the discourses of nation and nation-building, womens bodies represent the antithesis of political order
(1991, 153). And yet, nations are configured in terms of (re)productive female bodies. As in the work of Pe rez Firmat, nation-building projects simultaneously foreground womens bodies while excluding women from material matters of national identity or in this
case, exile national identity. McClintock notes, for instance, that during the French revolution, the Republic became figured in the iconic image of a bare-breasted young mother named Marianne or Liberty. Early images of Marianne stress insurgent, revolutionary
action. For instance, in Delacroixs 1830 painting Liberty Leading the People, the barefoot Marianne, bayonet in one hand, French flag in the other, leads the people as they storm the barricades. Her breasts, however, came to carry the most symbolic weight.
Officially commemorated in 1848, Dubrays bust of Marianne features a bare breast with drops of breast milk, symbolizing maternal generosity and abundance. After the revolution, women were incorporated not directly as citizens but only indirectly, through men,
as dependent members of the family in private and public law (McClintock, 1997, 89). In fact, the Napoleonic Code became the first modern law to require that the nationality of a wife must follow after her husbands, a position other European nations adopted.
Thus, a womans political relation to the nation was submerged as a social relation to a man through marriage (McClintock, 1997, 91). In Next Year in Cuba, too, the figure of Marianne (Liberty) reappears in a similar construct. Pe rez Firmat recalls a woman
named Beba who
was famous in exile Miami for having outrageous parties on 20 May Cubas day of Independence from Spain: For the party Beba wrapped herself in a Cuban flag and tied her hands and feet. At around midnight Beba would shake and shudder until not only the
chains but part of her clothing came off too, symbolizing the liberation of Cuba (1995, 74). Beba inhabits the public sphere to some degree; she orchestrates and takes credit for her famous yearly parties. In fact, she has achieved a level of notoriety in the exile
community. In Next Year in Cuba, she becomes, however, mere spectacle; she is known only by her first name, likely a nickname a form of baby. She does not speak, but is, instead, spoken of. She merely shudders, inchoate and sexualized. Her original
interpretation of the historical emblem of Marianne is diminished, to be sure, by the spectacle of undressing before a drunken, hooting crowd.

***THEIR CARD ENDS

Interestingly, Next Year in Cuba contains its very own Mary Anne the narrators pretty blond secretary who frees the narrator from the entangle- ments of Cuban identity and family and offers him the possibility of an unambiguous American identity. In fact, the narrator in the text often describes his early biculturation primarily in terms of a new
proximity to North American women. The first American woman the speaker encounters, Mrs Meyers, his elementary school teacher, represents a silent, stern and inaccessible America. With her thin lips and cold hands, she calls his parents in for a conference because little Gustavo refused to recite the pledge of allegiance. Ultimately, they reach an
agreement and his first crisis of national loyalties comes to a mutually agreeable conclusion. The speaker finds her stern, but diplomatic. Unlike Cuban mothers, he determines that American women will bring you to your knees but they wont make you grovel (1995, 14). In Next Year in Cuba, Pe rez Firmats narrator describes his process of
Americanization as beginning with Mrs Meyers and culminating in his affair with his pretty blond secretary, Mary Anne. When Mary Anne and I fell in love in 1988, I felt I was entering a fascinating, but in some ways, fearsome new world. Not only was she the first americana I had been intimate with, she was the first non-Cuban male or female that
I had gotten to know in any depth (1995, 211). He finds her completely enthralling precisely because she is not Cuban. Mary Anne didnt speak my language, didnt understand my customs, and most importantly, didnt share my exile nostalgia y our sharp differences ignited a passion I had never felt before (212). Initially, she helps him deny the
passage of time. Mary Anne does not share his nostalgia, but she helps him relive his adolescence and makes up for everything I had missed as a Cuban exile. As a pony-sized version of the yeguas [mares] of my high school days she was the americanita of my dreams twenty years later (212). While he is married to his first wife, a Cuban, my future
was my past, and my past was Cuba (254). But sex with Mary Anne was a way of intensely living in the present (217).
Martnez
304 r 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 3, 295316
The speaker vacillates between his wife, who represents Cuba and the past and Mary Anne, who he believes will help him cut the umbilical cord from Mami and Miami (1995, 217). In Mary Anne, he hopes to move beyond a sense of being self-encumbered by exile (162): Mary Anne might give me the opportunity to advance beyond exile, to settle down
once and for all (213). When he made love to Mary Anne, the narrator was making a home in the here and now y Profound physical intimacy y could be a remedy for exile (217). But the transition is not an easy one, as the narrator lurches erratically between conflicting senses of loyalty, both familial and cultural: I wanted to be an American, but I
couldnt afford to give up Cuba (1995, 217). As a result, he returns to his wife and children again and again, where his old life was intact, preserved, like a mummy in a museum (220). Ultimately, the author sees his inability to choose either woman not only as a romantic issue, but a cultural crisis: I wasnt simply wavering between two companions
but between two cultures, two languages, two countries (222). He attempts to reconcile his complex sense of bicultural identity, to some degree, through his choice of partner particularly through the body of Mary Anne. But ultimately, the narrator realizes that she could make me American no more than his wife Rosa could keep me Cuban (222).
In the end, the narrator and Mary Anne are married, and the speaker seems to come to a realization that he didnt have to choose between Cuba and America (222). He finds that his marriage to Mary Anne offers no easy solutions to his contending cultural loyalties. It has, however, made me feel more rooted in this country y (223). To some degree,
for the narrator, sleeping with the americanita of his adolescent fantasies naturalizes him offers him at least the temporary promise of unambiguous American identity. Indeed, her body was my country, and I was a citizen of Mary Anne (216).
Memory, Milicianos and Dismemberment
Nations, as Benedict Anderson writes, always loom out of the immemorial past and glide into a limitless future (1983, 1112). In Next Year in Cuba (1995), Pe rez Firmat draws from the glorious historical past to project the birth of the Cuban nation into a triumphant future past a real Cuba without Castro, when the dead and the living dead will
shake off their shrouds and everything will return to its proper place. In fact, the prologue of the Next Year in Cuba, for instance, describes Miami during the early 1990s, just after the USSR disintegrated. Convinced that Cuba is next, Cuban exiles are in a frenzy. The exile dead are turning in their graves, the living are turning in their American
passports (1995, 2). The very title of Pe rez Firmats book, Next Year in Cuba, refers to the wistful toast offered on New Years Eve that echoes the
Jewish Passover invocation and refers to the future restoration of the Temple an event that will propel the Jews into a glorious messianic future (past). In keeping with exile-identified texts, Pe rez Firmats narrator does not approach the contemporary island except in terms of this future past, that is, in terms of the long-awaited end of the Castro
regime. Like many exiles, he refuses to return to the island under its current government, as this would amount to an emasculation that would, as it were, make an old woman of him. This kind of regreso is not for me. It feels too much like crawling. It reminds me too much of when, as a child, I used to see some old women ascend the stairs of San
Agustn Church on their knees (1995, 37). Instead, in the text, the author recreates Cuba specifically in terms of memory, and projects fantasies of national identity rooted in reclamation onto that space a triumphant future return to a Cuba without Castro. Like the Cuba de ayer, the narrator locates the core of Cuban-American identity in that same
space of excavated memory his childhood in Cuba and adolescence in Miami. In writing his recollections, Pe rez Firmat insists that he cannot initially remember much of his childhood in Cuba, and describes this inability to remember in terms of dismemberment a metaphoric castration. The narrator has jettisoned or buried his memories of
crossing to the United States and employs the language of mutilation to describe his forgetting: I sliced my life in half and threw away the bitter half (1995, 33). The narrator also describes his amnesia in the politically charged terms of the embargo: The Florida Straits have been an unbridgeable chasm, impassable even in memory I have placed an
embargo on my Cuban memories (3435). He sees the past as existing behind unapproachable enemy lines, and tries to plumb his memories in an attempt to reconcile his sense of dislocation, his sense of a split self. In examining the complexities of Cuban-American identity, the author persists in the Cold War constructions of national identity that
forever sever him in two. Indeed, the narrator imagines himself as a boy on the ferry the day he departed from Cuba. He sees the boy he was in Cuba fading in the distance; the figure remains in Cuba, dis-integrated from the man he would become in the United States. The figure haunts him: Sometimes when I see him waving to me, I want to wring his
neck y (1995, 23). The narrators childhood remains in a political limbo in conflict with his adult self. As a result, the work, which is also complex and subtle, often resorts to static, binary and essentialist categories of identity rooted in Cold War constructions of nation constructions that seal communist Cuba off in space and time. The revolution
interferes with the closeness he imagines he would have felt with his father had he grown to manhood in Cuba. The revolution arrived when Gustavo was 11 years old, that is, on the cusp of adolescence that twilight stage between boyhood and manhood, when my hormones were beginning to churn and my fantasies were swerving away from cowboys
and toys
(1995, 42). It also interrupted the process of claiming the masculine privilege that would have soon been his as Gustavo, Jr, the eldest son in a wealthy white family. In Havana, his family enjoyed living in a grand Cuban style complete with big houses, big cars, a big yacht, big jewelry, big furs, big cigars and servants (27). Had it not been for the
revolution, he would have continued growing up in Old Havana, and he and his father would have known the same people and frequented the same bars and brothels (106). In the memoir, the narrator explains that he spent several years in Cuba after the Revolution almost entirely behind closed doors. The revolution returned him to the home
where he once again became what he saw as a coddled and confined nin o de la casa. His parents did not allow him to watch Fidel on T.V. or collect bullets, badges or other military memorabilia like other boys. His mother, Nena, actively interfered with his attempts to identify with these rough, bearded revolutionary men. One night when we were
riding home in my mothers Lincoln, we were stopped by a miliciano who demanded a ride (1995, 29). The soldier sat between Gustavo and his brother, smelling of sweat and gunpowder, and he offered to give the boys bullets as a souvenir: To my disappointment, Nena instantly intervened, declining on our behalf. We rode silently the rest of the
way (29). Eventually, the speaker, it seems, learns to resent the milicianos, not only because they help his mother reassert her control over him, but because they usurp his position of privilege a privilege that had already entitled him to look up his mulata maids skirts. Before the revolution, when Gustavo was 11 or so, his maid Anselia was picking
mangoes up in a tree. Vargas, the black manservant, caught him looking up her skirt and pointed it out to Anselia, who replied, Leave him, its good for him (1995, 43). Pe rez Firmat writes, I suspect that my recollection of Anselias white panties, with strands of curly black hair peeking out from the elastic, has been embroidered with subsequent
fantasies many were the adolescent dreams I spun around the general theme of maid in the mango tree. To this day, I cannot bite into that sweet juicy fruit without thinking of Anselias undies (43). Here, as elsewhere in Cuban and Cuban-American arts and letters, the narrator employs the figure of the sexualized, willing mulata specifically as a marker
of essential Cuban identity who acts to socialize men into a system of masculine privilege. Now the milicianos lounged defiantly on the stairs leading to the speakers grand house, cleaning their guns, demanding to be fed. More importantly, they flirted with the maids, a fact the narrator seems particularly enraged by. Indeed, the maids, who had
hitherto indulged him, were now enthralled by these young bearded men who had just come down from the mountains (1995, 30). The soldiers challenge what would have been his patriarchal authority as the eldest son, as Gustavo, Jr a fact the narrator seems to resent deeply. Gustavo and his family soon leave the island, an act that represents a
complete loss of power and emasculation for the narrators father. In fact,
according to the narrator, for Gustavo Sr, impotence becomes the metaphor for exile. He loses his nation and so loses his erection: Joking about his lack of virility may be his way of expressing the abiding feelings of powerlessness that overtook him when the almace n was confiscated, and he had to leave the country (1995, 108). Exile diminishes his
father, who seems almost absent, invisible, a ghostly double of a man who was once a millionaire: The Revolution cost many people many things; sometimes I think it cost me my father (116). Impotence is Gustavo Srs metaphor for the emasculation of exile. Hyper-sexuality and a focus on the erect penis, however, define the narrators response to the
dismemberment of dispossession. For him, empingue best describes exile: A pinga is a prick not a penis, not a phallus but a prick. When youre empingado, totally and irremediably pissed off, its as if you become engorged with rage, as if you yourself turned into a stiff, throbbing prick of fury (124).
Big Mothers, Mean Mothers
In Next Year in Cuba (1995), Pe rez Firmat articulates Cuban and Cuban- American exile-community nationalist identity in the context of romance and domestic genealogies; he does so in ways that locate women largely outside the realm of history, nation and the modern social contract. In Pe rez Firmats work, as elsewhere, women mothers in
particular act primarily as the keepers of culture rather than as historical agents. According to the narrator, in the United States, Cuban women swaddle children born even in the most American hospital in the most American city in Cuban sounds and habits (1995, 244). The narrator goes to great lengths to explore the problems of identity for
himself and his father, his brothers, his son. But he excludes his mother, daughter and Cuban wife from his discussions of national identity. It simply becomes a non-issue, as if women dwell only within the realm of the domestic, unaffected by public concerns. In this memoir, the entire family is represented, yet only the men truly suffer the loss of a
national place. Exile, for example, devastates Pe rez Firmats father. However, according to the narrator, his mother, Nena, only complains about exile when something goes wrong with the family (165). His eight-year-old son David understands that since his father and his fathers father are Cuban, without Cuba he would be an incomplete man. Thus
he calls himself a machito and tries to strut (1995, 257). But like Nena, Pe rez Firmats daughter, Miriam, apparently has no need for nation. She does not need to flaunt her search for roots in order to find out who she is she leads her life within the realm of the practical (259). Miriam may ask questions about Cuba, but only from her interest in
others rather than from her involvement with herself. Miriam doesnt need Cuba, but she realizes that
others of us do (259). Her national and cultural identity exists only in relation to her father and brother subsumed under male family members. She exists in the practical, that is, the so-called private and domestic realm. Here, Miriam herself reinforces traditional Cuban gender roles. When her father sits with his legs crossed like a woman, as if he
had something to hide rather than as if he had something to flaunt, she reminds him, Papi dont cross your legs that way, its not macho (1995, 259). The narrator seems pleased that Miriam understands that I try to live by a code of conduct that contemporary America society stigmatizes as machista. She may not agree with what she understands
machismo to mean, but she does perceive that the code is important to my own sense of self whats bad for the gander, may be good for the Gustavo (259). While David shows his love for me by strutting around like a young rooster on steroids, Miriam expresses it by encouraging behavior thats foreign or irrelevant to her. Her tolerance of my
machismo is as crucial as Davids espousal of it (260). Indeed, the speakers sense of himself as a Cuban man requires that Miriam internalizes a system of roles that are, indeed, bad for the little boy and for the little girl. If Pe rez Firmats father seems absent and emasculated, his mothers seem omnipresent and enormous, their disordered bodies the
anti-thesis of social order. Pe rez Firmats mothers are formidable. And their ferocity is unleashed against Cuban men themselves. In My Life as a Redneck (1992), Pe rez Firmat, with tongue in cheek, one hopes, employs the language of castration anxiety, characterizing Cuba as a feeble phallus awash in an endless mothering ocean (1992, 224).
The mothering ocean threatens to drown the island in her effluvia (225) or administer spankings (224). Cuban men, like the island itself, are also surrounded by mothers on all sides. Big mothers. Mean mothers. Total mothers (223). These big, mean mothers unleash hurricane-force fury on their recalcitrant men, reducing them to so much flotsam.
The text suggests that, despite their economic and political subordination, Cuban women really have all the power. Apparently, one of the authors uncles regularly throws himself at his wifes feet to beg her forgiveness every time he cheats on her: She always does. Shes a real mother (231). In Next Year in Cuba (1995), Pe rez Firmat, too, employs
the figure of the aged, monstrous mother, his grandmother Constantina, to represent a particular timeless vision of Cuba a Cuba that sidesteps the revolution by remaining rooted in an Old World past and practices. Through her, the narrator is able to point to claims of authentic origin while developing a sense of cuban a that emerges intact as
he reaches manhood a sense of self that evades a complicated and contentious childhood in revolutionary Cuba. Constantina is a complex figure rooted largely in an essentialized, uncontrollable, massive, near-grotesque body. Like the fecund wheat fields of nationalist rhetoric, her immovable body, a constant, unchanging immortal landmass, is
equated by the narrator to the island itself (1995, 144). In the text, she primarily represents
and re-creates Cuban culture through cooking, language and daily, domestic practices in the typical ways women are said to be the keepers of the culture. Despite 20 years of living in Miami, Constantina, who never learned a word of inglis, continued to deep fry everything, typically in lard and olive oil: Going to her house at lunchtime was like
living in Cuba again (146). Linguistically and again through her cooking, Constantina, it would seem, remains untouched by time or place. Many Cuban and Cuban-American authors employ the figure of the grandmother as a figure capable of uniting Cubans on both sides of the Straits. According to Ruth Behar, what unites Cubans inside and outside

the island is that our grandmother is the same (Behar, 1995, 15). In Next Year in Cuba (1995), Pe rez Firmats narrator, however, claims his grandmother as his own, oddly enough, in romantic terms. We were certainly an odd couple, unlikely lovers thrown together by exile. Ours was the ultimate May-December romance, an affair of the heart and the
intestines (1995, 150). He describes the relationship in the language of romance and consent, that is, an adult partnership that began when the narrator began college and that lasted until the author got married and moved away to graduate school: One thing that made the romance possible is that she liked men better than boys. As a young man in
Miami, I was far more interesting than I had been as a little boy in Cuba (145150). Constantina is fearsome. Like the maternal Cuban ocean, her ferocity is often directed against family members. (It is, however, also occasionally directed against public city officials, whom she bribes and browbeats into submission.) In fact, Pe rez Firmats narrator
describes her, not without obvious pride and a hint of reverence bordering on terror, as capable of ripping your heart out with her tongue. A sweet and gentle soul she was not. With her hooked nose, jutting jaw and massive body, she was both an immovable object and an irresistible force (147). Her enormous frame, with endless folds of flesh, trembled
when she cackled or laughed like a big, fat, beautiful hen (147). The narrator describes her as bordering on the monstrous, particularly in that she is nearly immobile and given to fits of neura or depression, during which she refuses to bathe or groom herself. Moreover, Constantina seems to have had what the narrator describes as witch-like
powers, a detail that marks her as monstrous indeed. The narrator explains that her neura was punctuated by periods of intense mania during which she claimed to have visions of the virgin. And Constantina had other half-witch abilities, which she used primarily to interfere in the speakers love life, predicting the character of one girlfriend in
particular and by declaring her a puta or whore. (He reports that the girlfriend in question did, in fact, turn out to be something of a whore.) Through Constantina, Pe rez Firmat is able to ground his sense of cubanidad in a peasant gallego past a trope that mirrors early twentieth-century Cub
nationalist discourses of criollismo, which gestured toward white peasants of Spanish descent as the authentic inhabitants of the island. Abuela Constantina stuffed Gustavo not with hybrid New World Cuban dishes like ajiaco, but rather with classic Spanish dishes like escabeche or pickled swordfish, caldo gallego or Galician stew and torrejas, a
supremely Spanish desert. Linguistically, too, Cuba seems to have had little effect on her Spanish roots. Constantina left Spain for Cuba when she was a teenager, but retained her thick Castilian accent. And despite her size, she occasionally favored Spanish dances including paso dobles and jotas, a Spanish folk dance: She looked like an overfed canary
on a tightrope (1995, 142). Through Constantina, Pe rez Firmat stresses a specifically European and specifically working-class or rather rural peasant inheritance over his own polite Havana upbringing. Abuela Constantina kept the old peasant names for many household items (1995, 145). She ate with a napkin tucked in the neck of her dress and
drank coffee from a saucer a practice that horrified the narrators refined mother. In fact, during a particularly nasty fight, she insulted Constantina by calling her the daughter of illiterate peasants. Constantina countered by shouting that those illiterate peasants had made it possible for her to drive around Havana in a Lincoln Continental (147).
Despite her fierce tongue and her jealousies, Pe rez Firmat describes his grandmother with deep respect and intense love. When last he saw her, he assured her they would see each other in the summer, and she blew him a kiss and batted her eyes in her typical coquettish way. She died in the night, and the narrator experiences her death with a terrific
sense of loss of community and a feeling that exile had maimed us permanently. Through her stories, Constantina provided him with a connection to people and places in Cuba he barely remembered, or who had died long before he was born: I experienced her death as a depopulation, as a thinning out of my mental society (1995, 152). At her funeral,
however, he was surprised that her enormous form looked comfortable in its casket: Her blubbery body had settled in the open casket like rice pudding (1995, 152). As he stood thinking about her, remembering her sitting at the table surrounded by plates of food, her voice seemed to come to him, cackling in laughter like the half-witch she seemed
to be. I heard her voice say to me Dont be sad Gustavito; you know that I am immortal, like the saints (152). Constantina escapes death and takes her place in the eternal sacred. More importantly, for Pe rez Firmats narrator, Constantinas death and burial in Miami mark that city as eternally Cuban, giving him a sad but sure place of permanence:
Miami is a little Havana not only because of the Cubans who still live there, but because, perhaps primarily because, of those who have died there (1995, 152). His grandmother lies buried in a cemetery in Miami, surrounded by other Cuban dead as in a small city. And such a city, even if
inhabited by bones, is a home nonetheless. Her grave provides Gustavo with a sure abode a sense of place that will not shift under his feet or require the negotiation of complex, contending bicultural loyalties: Castro could fall tomorrow, every Cuban in Miami could go back to the island and for me, the city would remain as Cuban as it is today (152).
In that, his grandmother may have given the author whose work reveals a deep desire to find a place of fixed habitation a strangely suitable, if macabre, gift. Home, apparently, is where our dead sleep.
From Exiles to Ethnics
In Next Year in Cuba (1995), Pe rez Firmat writes rather like the last survivor of a medieval plague, writing feverishly to record a disappearing exile way of life, as he believes that with the death of the old-timers in Miami, Cuba is dying too (1995, 164). In Life on the Hyphen (1994), the author admits that, at this point, Cuba is an empty, moveable
series of signs and symbols. He acknowledges that Cuban America exists primarily in shopping malls, restaurants and discotheques (1994, 14) or, for that matter, at a hyper-real theme park-styled restaurant called Bongos in Disney World that I recently discovered. Certainly, in Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way, the author examines Cuba
and Cuban identity as less a place on a map than a series of unstable signifiers. Here he employs the language of border studies to theorize the constructed and unstable nature of Cuban and Cuban-American identity: I do not claim for Cuban America a fixed habitation for I am fully and painfully aware that in this era of mobile homes and shifting
borders, ones sense of place is provisional at best. Like other borders, those of Cuban America are makeshift and moveable (1994, 15). But in Next Year in Cuba (1995), Pe rez Firmat, like older first-generation exile writers, largely writes to anchor Cuban-American identity in fixed, rather reductive geopolitical terms. Pe rez Firmats work marks a
response to a moment of transition, representing a literary effort for Cuban-Americans to remain golden exiles in a world of mojados and wet-foot laws a borderland where nothing is fixed, where nothing is sure. Pe rez Firmat at times foregrounds the unstable nature of identity by employing the language of border studies to describe his Cuban
America. But more often than not, he writes to sketch the contours of Cuban America in the hope of keeping [his] country on the map a little longer (1995, 19). More often than not, the narrator defines Cuban and Cuban-American identity in static, binary terms, fixing and flattening the indeterminate nature of cultural identity in a specifically exileidentified persona. I write to grasp and hold that unchanging core (8). In the meantime, according to Eliana Rivero, Cuban-American literature has clearly begun effecting a transition from e migre /exile categories to that of
ethnic minorities (Rivero, 1990, 166). Other Cuban-American writers have clearly begun to consider themselves ethnics rather than exiles a fact the narrator acknowledges: As an exile, I am not sure I like it (59). This process of establishing themselves in the multicultural US literary scene has just begun to happen, so ethnic Cuban-American
writers continue to struggle, at times unevenly, to deconstruct a former, proscribed way of being in order to create in an entirely new discourse of their vital experience (Rivero, 1990, 180). Eliana Rivero shows that that for most US Hispanics, the emergence of bilingual literature signals an established consciencitization of minority status (Rivero,
1990, 173) a pattern that does not hold true in this case. In fact, unlike most ethnic minority literature, the work in question evidences a sense of separation between Cuban-Americans and other US Hispanic groups. Next Year in Cuba maintains a distinct sense of distance from other Latinos. Certainly, the narrator seems to adhere to an idea of Cuban
exceptionalism that defines Cubans as different from other US Latino groups. In fact, the narrator laments the arrival of subsequent waves of immigrants to Miami: Once upon a time, we were an upwardly mobile tribe, tight-knit and ambitious. Now things are more complicated, for its not so clear where the us ends and the them begins. I must
confess. I miss the old Miami where every Hispanic that you met was certain to be Cuban y (1990, 88). However, as Ruth Behar has noted, ethnic Cuban-American authors like Coco Fusco, Cristina Garc a, Eliana Rivero, Flavio Risech and others now move beyond the geopolitical borders and categories of identity that the exile community relies on.
Typically marked as other in terms of race, gender, sexuality and/or politics, they tend to reject the calcified Cold War categories of identity that have characterized exile-identified Cuban-American cultural productions, which see Cubans as different from other ethnic minority groups. Behar has collected selections of their essays, poems and stories in
Bridges to Cuba/Puentes a Cuba (1995), an innovative, transnational anthology of Cuban and Cuban-American literature and art. The collection clearly shows the direction that Cuban-American literature is taking away from an exile-identified literature toward an ethnic minority literature. As evident in the collection, these ethnic-identified authors
tend to defy the exile lobby and return to Cuba in an effort to uncover aspects of their personal history lost to the machinations of political and ideological forces. They too look to the past to make sense of their history, but do not remain in the nostalgia narrative for long. They find no easy answers, no triumphant reclamation of privilege. Instead, these
Cuban-American writers face the reality of contem- porary Cuba, traveling to the forbidden island a task not without risks.7 Only when we can face the anguish of uprootedness, can we gain access to a past that enriches our present and future, restores the forward movement in develop- mental time and permits the creative integration of a
multicultural identity (Shapiro Rok, 1995, 87). These progressive, transgressive authors are helping to
herald in a new era of dialog and perhaps even healing between Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits, despite the years of bitterness between Cuban expatriates and Cuban nationals. Indeed, they have begun to walk away from the limiting and familiar landscape of Cold War politics, groping toward a dimly lit and hopeful place that requires a new
language.

***CARD BEGINS***
Ultimately, Pe rez Firmats Next Year in Cuba (1995) is a complex, beautifully written evocative text with much to offer the field. The text, however, is also
deeply troubling. Its uncomplicated anti-Castro, pro-embargo position echoes and elaborates an exile-community nationalist
mindset with disturbing implications for Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits or, for that matter, for that long-ago little
girl entering adulthood in an exile community with no place for her outside the monstrous. The
traditional exile-community nationalist worldview Pe rez Firmats text elaborates continues to
leave little room for that girl, now grown, and fully horrified by womens (non) places in the imagined exile nation. Indeed, the attempts to
preserve a traditional way of life evident in the text result in starkly misogynistic definitions of
Cold War national identity. Part of the texts identification as exilic writing rather than ethnic writing is embodied in
definitions of women in essentialist terms, that is, as animalistic forces located in nature mares and
monsoons and monsters. Feminist Cuban-American authors, however, have come to interrogate such
ideas about womens places in the nation; many challenge the gendered and racially marked categories
that uphold the nation and the pro-embargo Cold War constructions of identity that the work of Pe rez Firmat and other exile writers
articulate. Many reclaim images of women as silent symbols of the nation those suffering and
monstrous mothers who give birth to the nation but who have no place there. Indeed, in literature by feminist ethnic
Cuban- American authors, icons of women as representative of nation become speaking, selfdetermined subjects. For instance, in Bridges to Cuba (1995), Ruth Behar troubles and complicates the nineteenth-century trope of Marianne, refashion- ing
the emblem as a central metaphor for radical artistic and political bridge- building projects between Cuban nationals and Cubans living outside the island. Perhaps the bridge to
Cuba, like Independence, is best imagined as a woman (1995, 13). Behars woman-bridge exists in those hopeful in-between spaces outside of nation. The bridge is not a
nationalist monument, but an act unfixed, in process, always unfinished and manifested in daily life. Those artists and intellectuals who defy the exile lobby Pe rez Firmat

Bridges to Cuba (

echoes and who travel back and forth to Cuba themselves act as the bridge between the island and the exile (Behar, 1995, 8).
1995) does not
examine Cuban identity in the context of static binary, reductive Cold War categories; the collection offers no easy answers to the complex, contentious and competing claims

does provide a
complex, multiple sense of place located both in history and the imagination that avoids the
terror of nationalist essentialism. It would appear that the world recorded in Next Year in Cuba (1995) is, indeed,
passing away challenged and complicated by explorations of Cuban-American identity as a set of
multiple, transnational, racialized, competing and feminized representations with connections to other ethnic
minority literatures. These texts have, unlike exile-identified Cuban-American texts, begun to create spaces for women
perhaps even for that alarmed little girl entering adulthood to claim a resistant sense of cultural, ethnic and national identity beyond the
maternal and the monstrous.
*** THEIR ARTICLE ENDS ***
about Cuban and Cuban-American identity or to the hostility that has characterized relations between Cubans on both sides of the Straits. But it

at: Weedon
Weedon flawed essentializes and fails to understand oppression
Scott-Dixon, 2/6/10 (Krista Scott Dixon ~PhD, researcher and professor of Women Studies at York University~
Commentary on "Weedon, Chris. Feminism, Theory, and the Politics of
Difference."http://www.stumptuous.com/comps/weedon.html-http://www.stumptuous.com/comps/weedon.html)
In this chapter, Weedon examines radical feminism in more depth. In radical feminist analysis,

patriarchy is accorded theoretical primacy. Radical feminism challenged the notions of public and private sphere
which had informed traditional liberalism, arguing that the personal was political. Radical feminism also raised issues around male
control of women's bodies. As Weedon notes, "[in] early radical feminist thought, women's bodies are given a foundational status:
they are both the focus of women's oppression on the basis of women's positive difference from men."(p.29) Since patriarchy was
seen in early radical feminist work as the central source of oppression, strategy was organized around reclaiming women's bodies
and often some degree of separatism, such as what Weedon terms "political lesbianism" (p.36). Radical feminism, rather than
privileging abstracted rational consciousness like liberal feminism, argued for the importance of working from women's experiences
since institutional knowledge was male-defined. Heterosexuality was regarded as a social construct and an institution designed to
police narrow definitions of appropriate social and sexual organization. However, as many feminists, particularly feminists of
colour, later

pointed out, the universalizing of patriarchy made invisible the heterogeneity of

women's experiences. Thus, although radical feminism engaged with questions of difference, its
privileging of gender as the difference, and focus on differences between women and men (as
opposed to differences among women themselves), erased the agency and diversity of women.
Later radical theory has attempted to take up these problems in articulating a politics of global feminism. In addition, some
feminists were critical of radical feminism's conception of heterosexuality as an oppressive and
compulsory institution, arguing for a move away from viewing heterosexuality as a tool of
patriarchy and towards an analysis of how heterosexuality has causes and effects in a variety of
material and discursive sites. In doing so, attention can be given to the way in which heterosexuality
has a variety of incarnations and implications for diverse groups and individual women.

Reject essentialism even if its an attempt at "strategic essentialism":

McLaurin 12
(internally quoting Professional Philosopher Lawrence Blum, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education and Professor
of Philosophy @ UMass-Boston. Virginia A. McLaurin is a graduating MA student in the Department of Anthropology and
Sociocultural Anthropology at Amherst. "Stereotypes of Contemporary Native American Indian Characters in Recent Popular
Media" Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2012 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=194126context=theses)
Philosopher Lawrence Blum, in writing on stereotypes as a general phenomenon, attempts a cohesive definition of stereotyping
generalizable across a range of social interactions. Stereotypes are false or misleading generalizations about

groups held in a manner that renders them largely, though not entirely, immune to counterevidence
A stereotype associates a certain characteristic with the stereotyped group (Blum 2004: 251). Blum goes on to provide additional
characteristics inherent to the act of stereotyping, which can be synthesized into a basic definition for the act of
stereotyping: he limits the stereotyped group to the domain of human beings, states that the

group is of a particular
salience (ethnicity, gender, religion, etc. or unique combination thereof), is portrayed as
fundamentally the same (Blum 2004:261), and cannot be conceived of regularly otherwise.
Additionally, summarizes one philosophy paper on Blum, [the stereotyped group] has characteristic Y, where Y is a
characteristic with a large graduation of moral significance (from bad stereotypes to the alleged good stereotypes), and Y is either
false or misleading (Suffis 2012: 4). Blum states that the characteristic (Y) may have a wide range on the moral scale of the
stereotyping person or group, in order to account for the bad stereotypes as well as the good stereotypes. The removal of this
passage can be argued on the basis that the Y characteristic need not register as morally significant to

either group implicated in the stereotype. Features that are morally neutral to all persons involved in a stereotype
can nevertheless constitute stereotypes. Any statement that envisions a group of people, grouped together
based on culturally constructed race, region, age, or another salient feature as fundamentally
the same robs them of their individuality and group diversity (Blum 2004:261). Blum argues that as
methods of dehumanization, these actions are inherently ethically problematic. By this rationale,
even when both groups involved in the stereotype (the stereotyper and the stereotyped) find nothing
morally objectionable to the generalization being made, the kind of sweeping generalization of a

group that acts to flattens difference and cannot allow for individuality becomes a stereotype,
and in Blums estimation has a dehumanizing (and thus a negative effect) on the group being stereotyped.
Alvin M. Josephy (1984:31) agrees, arguing that stereotypical images of Native people have defamed and dehumanized Indians
by dent of their very existence.

at: Fraser
They read old Fraser and this is more important than post-dating on a silly Debt
Ceiling uniqueness arg. Fraser ORGINIALLY thought that feminists need to work
outside the public sphere NOW, she thinks that feminism lost its way in Ks of
identity and needs to re-engage the public sphere. The Aff is stuck in Frasers wave
1 and 2. The implication is that their K of our T arg is backwards and Fraser votes
NEG on framework to engage the public sphere. We can win the debate on this
card alone it straight turns the Aff irrespective of Topicality.
Warnke excerpting Nancy Fraser 13
LA Review of Books, reviewing Frasers newest book Georgia Warnke is Professor of political science, University of California,
Riverside Georgia Warnke on Fortunes of Feminism : From Womens Liberation to Identity Politics to Anti-Capitalism Feminism,
the Frankfurt School, and Nancy Fraser August 4th, 2013 http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/feminism-the-frankfurt-school-andnancy-fraser/
WHEN MAX HORKHEIMER took over the Institute for Social Research in 1930 and brought together a group of thinkers that
included Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse in what would become known as the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, they had
no inkling that later generations of the school would include feminists. Yet in Fortunes of Feminism, Nancy Fraser

looks back at the history of second-wave feminism while being, at the same time, a prominent
second-wave feminist and a prominent member of the Frankfurt Schools third generation . She has
a somewhat easier time than Horkheimer and Adorno. When they began their work, they had long ago given up on the proletariat
revolution that Marx had predicted. Not only had the European working class failed to execute their historic task of ushering in
socialism, many were rapidly becoming fascists. Much of the Frankfurt Schools initial efforts , then, were spent

deriving the position from which a critical theory of society was at all possible . Marx and Lukcs
thought they could take up the standpoint of the proletariat to decipher the future of capitalism
and predict its demise, but how did one ground a critical theory of society once one gave up on
the working class? By the end of their lives, Horkheimer and Adorno had expanded their critique of capitalism into a critique
of Western instrumentalist reason in general, thereby making it unclear not only from what standpoint they were speaking, but
also to whom they were speaking. For Fraser, Marxs 1843 definition of a critical social theory remains

more apt: the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age. Critical theories, she
thinks, take up explicitly partisan standpoints informed by particular social movements : in her case,
second-wave feminism. The task of such theories is therefore two-fold. First, from their partisan
perspectives, they must articulate the pathologies and injustices of capitalist societies and map
the route toward overcoming those pathologies and injustices. Second, they must serve as the
consciences of their own social movements, as sources for critical self-reflection. It goes without
saying that Frasers view is not the only way to articulate the position of a critical social theory. Her comember in the Frankfurt
Schools third generation, Axel Honneth, thinks it is a mistake to take ones theoretical framework from whatever social movements
happen to grab the existing social imagination. But as the previously published essays reprinted in Fortunes of Feminism make
clear, Fraser sees in second-wave feminism a considerable series of insights into the struggles

and wishes of the age, and in critical theory considerable contributions to feminisms necessary
self-criticism. Fraser sees the trajectory of the second-wave feminism as a play in three acts. In
her rendition, the first act is centered on the effort to expose and eliminate gender injustice in postWorld War II capitalist societies. Inspired by liberalism, socialism, Marxism, and the like, feminists sought to
eliminate legal, economic, and political barriers to womens opportunities and to abolish their
inequality with men. Nevertheless, feminisms second act lost its way, Fraser thinks. Inspired now by
Derrida, Lacan, and other pro-structuralists and in sync with the rise of neoliberal economics,
feminists turned to cultural issues and identity politics. Indeed, rather than focusing on equality,
they now demanded recognition for womens difference from men and for their unique attitudes
and strengths. This brings us to the present day and what Fraser perceives as the start of act three, for
which she has high hopes. We could see a reinvigorated feminism join other emancipatory
forces aiming to subject runaway markets to democratic control, she writes in her introduction. The
reprinted essays that follow are representative contributions she has made to each of these acts.

More ev that Fraser NOW wants to instruct activists to engage the State this card
is jaw-dropping and explains her third wave. She now REJECTS anti-structural
feminism. The critical bend of the Aff is COUNTERPRODUTIVE TO HER ARG.
Warnke excerpting Nancy Fraser 13
LA Review of Books, reviewing Frasers newest book Georgia Warnke is Professor of political science, University of California,
Riverside Georgia Warnke on Fortunes of Feminism : From Womens Liberation to Identity Politics to Anti-Capitalism Feminism,
the Frankfurt School, and Nancy Fraser August 4th, 2013 http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/feminism-the-frankfurt-school-andnancy-fraser/

What categorial framework does Fraser think can do better?

What sort of theoretical perspective from the horizon of second-wave feminism can provide a better

diagnosis of post-World War II capitalist societies? Fraser offers a first stab in her 1989 Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late-Capitalist Political Culture. Here she focuses on the question of how late-capitalist societies

Her answer is a tripartite model, the first aspect of which

involves
the particular set of interpretive resources a given
society has for raising claims about what people need and for showing the legitimacy of those
claims. The model is also meant to allow us to locate the boundaries in the society between
political, economic, and domestic dimensions of life. Finally, the model presents needs as sites of
struggle over these boundaries: that is, the economic and domestic relations of power at any
given time will work to keep needs from crossing economic and/or domestic boundaries, and
thereby become political issues
determine which desires are to count, which social needs are the political states responsibility to meet.

the socio-cultural means of interpretation and communication or, in other words,

. Thus, the insistence that domestic battery is a private issue between husband and wife and day-care an economic issue between worker and employer. Even when activists have

succeeded in resetting the boundaries between political, economic and domestic dimensions of life in the form of laws against domestic battery, for example these boundaries can be un-set, in a sense. We can pathologize domestic batterers and their victims,
reducing them to fodder for therapy rather than criminal justice. To be sure, as a way to understand struggles over needs, it is not entirely clear what exactly Frasers model adds. Her Foucauldian caution that expert discourses can depoliticize needs is well taken.
Nevertheless, we can surely understand struggles over needs without an outline of a socialist-feminist critical theory of late-capitalist political culture. In Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Miranda Fricker does fine with simple narrative. Take Frickers example of unwanted advances in the workplace. Before feminists and activists took up the issue, the
available discursive resources (the socio-cultural means of interpretation and communication) did not yet include the language of sexual harassment. Rather, unwanted advances were more often understood as
innocent flirtations about which women were meant to have or to cultivate a sense of humor. Countless workshops and consciousness-raising sessions were necessary to develop a more adequate understanding.
Frasers model sees these workshops as attempts to shift the boundaries between economic and political arenas. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how her model clarifies or how it adds to our understanding of

If these two articles illustrate Frasers role in

what she sees as the first act of second-wave feminism, what about her contributions to the
second? Two articles from this part of Fortunes of Feminism are illustrative, the first of her
critical interventions and the second of her programmatic views. Fraser sees the cultural turn
she thinks feminism took in the 1990s as a mistake. Feminists too narrowly focused on womens
difference from men and too eagerly turned to poststructuralist theories. They did so
at the
expense of the institutional analyses and attention to political economy that characterized
second-wave feminisms first act.
she recalls her severe
puzzlement
incomprehension as a large and influential body of feminist scholars created an
interpretation of
Lacans theory of the symbolic order, which
struggles over needs. And it remains unclear how it contributes to a critical theory of late-capitalist political culture.

, Fraser thinks,

she says

In Against Symbolicism: The Uses and Abuses of Lacanianism for Feminist Politics,

and growing

Jacques

they sought to use for feminist purposes. What disturbed Fraser was not so much

Lacans work itself, but rather the version of his work that she thinks feminists took up: hence, her reference to Lacanianism rather than Lacan in her title. The merit of Lacanianism is that it shows gender to be a discursive construction; sexual identity, the
recognition that one is a man or a woman, is no longer based on biology, but on the process of identification, language, and socialization, in which the child learns societys rules and becomes a subject. In taking on the identity the society prescribes, the child enters

This
analysis is too culturally and historically unspecific for Fraser What we need from discourse
theory are insights into how our social identities are formed and altered over time , how social
groups form and disintegrate over time, how dominant groups retain their cultural dominance,
and what our prospects are for emancipatory change.
The ahistorical and acultural bent of Lacanianism has consequences it reduces
gender inequality to a matter of language and culture neglects socio-economic issues and leaves
women without any prospects for change.
the symbolic order, governed by the incest taboo or what Lacan calls the law of the Father. Subjugation to that law and becoming a subject are thus one and the same. Given the laws phallocentric tilt, women are pretty much condemned.
.

Foucault, Bourdieu, Bakhtin, Gramsci, and Habermas can help us toward these insights, she insists; Lacan, Kristeva,

Saussure, and Derrida cannot.

Dworkin Transphobia Turn

Dworkin is transphobic its inherent to her ideology
Bettcher No Date Talia Bettcher Professor at Cal State LA, works on Trans Studies, Ph.D., UCLA, Philosophy. "Lesbian
Separatism and The Transsexual Empire" http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Raymond.htm
Janice Raymonds The Transsexual Empire: The Making of The She-Male (1979) is

generally considered

(by many trans folk) a classic example of transphobic hate literature. Why did she write it? What explains
it? It is tempting to represent Raymond as having personal issues with trans folk. This may be true for all we know. However,

the transphobia manifested in her work also comes from two larger sources: (A) Mainstream
societys transphobic attitudes; (B) Key tenets of a Lesbian-Separatist feminist framework. By
focusing only on personal issues we lose sight of the larger social and political issues. So its
worth noting that Raymonds book was enthusiastically endorsed by feminist writers such as
Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, and Robin Morgan. Moreover, Raymonds book is not the first example of transphobia in
feminist politics and writing. For example, in 1973, Robin Morgan expelled transwoman Beth Elliot from the West Coast Lesbian
Conference in Los Angeles. Here already, we see the classic accusation of trans deception (which is equated

with rape). Again, Mary Daly accuses trans women of deception and equates it with rape in Gyn/Ecology. In Empire,
Raymond explicitly attacks Sandy Stone (who was working as an engineer at the feminist
collective, Olivia Records). This resulted in considerable controversy. Feminists who supported Raymonds views put pressure on
Olivia Records to have Stone expelled. However, those feminists at Olivia (those who actually knew Stone and had experience
working with her) supported her presence there. Finally, for the good of the collective, Stone left. (After studying with Donna
Haraway, she writes the foundational piece for Trans Studies The Empire Strikes Back A Posttranssexual Manifesto)

Reject transphobia, they perpetuate violence and oppression

IGLHRC No Date, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) is a leading international
organization dedicated to human rights advocacy on behalf of people who experience discrimination or abuse on the basis of their
actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, "Reject Transphobia, Respect Gender Identity: An Appeal to
the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the States of the World"
Every day, people who live at variance to expected gender 1 norms face violence, abuse, rape,

torture and hate crime all over the world, in their home as well as in the public arena. Though most cases of
violence never get documented, we know that in the first weeks of 2009 alone, Trans women have
been murdered in Honduras, Serbia and in the USA. Trans men are equally victims of hate
crimes, prejudice and discrimination despite their frequent social and cultural invisibility. The
basic human rights of Trans people are being ignored or denied in all nations be it out of ignorance,
prejudice, fear or hate and Trans people overwhelmingly face daily discrimination, which results in social exclusion, poverty, poor
health care and little prospects of appropriate employment. Far from protecting Trans citizens, States and International bodies
reinforce social transphobia through short sighted negligence or reactionary politics: Because of the failure of national law and
social justice, in far too many States Trans people are being forced to live a gender which they experience

as fundamentally wrong for them. In most countries, any attempt to change ones gender can lead to legal sanctions,
brutal mistreatment and social stigma. In other countries, legal recognition of gender change is subject to sterilization or other
major surgical intervention. Trans people who cannot or do not wish to submit to this, cannot obtain legal recognition of their
preferred gender, and are forced to come out whenever they cross a border, run into a police patrol, apply for a new job, move into
a new home or simply want to buy a mobile phone. Contributing factors include that current International health classifications
still consider all Trans people as mentally disordered. This outdated vision is insulting and incorrect and is used to justify daily
discrimination and stigmatization in all aspects of Trans peoples lives. Recently though in some countries with very different social
and cultural contexts significant legal advances have been made. Following in the wake of bold judicial decisions, State action has
led to increased acceptance of Trans people within their society. This demonstrates that understanding and progress is possible.
Currently Trans people everywhere in the world rise up to reclaim their human rights and freedom.

They carry an unanimous message that they will no longer accept to be labelled sick or treated
as non human beings on the basis of their gender identity and gender expression.

1NC
First is impact framing
There are more than two gendersthe affs ethic of sexual difference assumes
that there is only masculine and feminine which only serves to reinforce
stereotypes. Elevating gender to a root cause only further obscures complex social
relations
Hooper, 1. Charlotte (University of Bristol research associate in politics), Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender
Politics pp 45-46.
Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan (1993), in their discussion of gendered dichotomies, appear to drop Lacanian psychoanalytic discourse as an
explanation for gendered dichotomies in favor of a more straightforward- ly political account.14Gendered dichotomies, rather than uniformly constructing gendered social relations through universal psychoanalytic mecha- nisms, are seen more ambiguously, as playing a dual role. Where
gendered dichotomies are used as an organizing principle of social life (such as in the gendered division of labor) they help to construct gender
differences and in- equalities and thus are constitutive of social reality, but in

positing a grid of polar opposites, they

also serve to obscure more complex relationships, commonalties, overlaps, and
intermediate positions (Peterson and Runyan 1993, 2425). Elaborating on this view, it can be argued that gendered
dichotomies are in part ideological tools that mystify, masking more complex
social realities and reinforcing stereotypes. On one level, they do help to produce real gen- der differences and

inequalities, when they are used as organizing principles that have practical effects commensurate with the extent that they become embedded in
institutional practices, and through these, human bodies. They constitute one dimension in the triangular nexus out of which gender identities and the
gender order are produced. But at the same time, institutional

practices are not always completely or

unambiguously informed by such dichotomies, which may then operate to obscure more
complex relationships. It is a mistake to see the language of gendered dichotomies as a unied
and totalizing discourse that dictates every aspect of social practice to the extent that we are
coherently produced as subjects in its dualistic im- age. As well as the disruptions and
discontinuities engendered by the inter- sections and interjections of other discourses (race,
class, sexuality, and so on) there is always room for evasion, reversal, resistance, and
dissonance be- tween rhetoric, practice, and embodiment, as well as reproduction of the
symbolic order, as identities are negotiated in relation to all three dimen- sions, in a variety of
complex and changing circumstances. On the other hand, the symbolic gender order does
inform practice, and our subjectivi- ties are produced in relation to it, so to dismiss it as
performing only an ide- ological or propagandistic role is also too simplistic.

Must weigh consequences their moral tunnel vision is complicit with the evil they
criticize
Isaac, Professor of Political Science at Indiana University 2
(Jeffrey C, Dissent Magazine, 49(2), Ends, Means, and Politics, Spring, Proquest)
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have
taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The
concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three
fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of ones intention does not ensure the achievement of
what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally
compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it
is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters;
(2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form
of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of
politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically
repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect;
and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about
intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant.

Just as the alignment with good may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of good that
generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that
ones goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of
pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized
ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It
promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
Second is disads to their methodology
Focus on sexual difference is flawedIrigaray results in using heteronormative
essentialism
Gingrich-Philbrook 10 (Craig, "Love's excluded subjects: staging Irigaray's heteronormative
essentialism," 10/21/10,
http://www.tandfonline.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/doi/pdf/10.1080/09502380110033564)//AM

In I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History, Luce Irigaray proposes that our
happiness will only stem from our assuming proper places. While known in broad outline,
Irigarays conditions for this propriety remain largely unspecified. In her prologue, however,
she gestures toward articulating this propriety, describing her book as: concerning the
encounter between woman and man, women and men. An encounter characterized as belonging
to a sexed nature to which it is proper to be faithful. By the need for rights to incarnate this
nature with respect. By the need for the recognition of another who will never be mine. By the
importance of absolute silence in order to hear this other. By the quest for new words which will
make this alliance possible without reducing the other to an item of property. By the
reinterpretation of notable figures or events in our tradition in terms of that horizon. By turning
the negative, that is, the limit of one gender in relation to the other, into possibility of love and
creation. Recognizing the difficulty of what she proposes, Irigaray describes herself as a
political militant for the impossible who wants this program, wants what is yet to be as the
only possibility of a future (1996: 10). The heteronormative essentialism and teleology of this
premillenial tension between a utopian rediscovery of propriety and its apocalyptic collapse will
seem apparent to those for whom such critiques will matter.
I want, in this essay, not to belabour Irigarays essentialism, but to synthesize some of my responses to
its menacing exclusion of the possibility of homosexual love. I dont want to do this indignantly, scornfully, etc., but as an ally with what I
see as Irigarays larger project namely the theorizing of the consequences of the division of emotional labor between the sexes (read genders). This division creates relay points transferring its separation, its
alienation of one possibility from another, to the relations within a variety of complementary subject positions. I end this essay by elaborating one of the transferences made possible by Irigarays proposed
project, arguing that we might use her analysis and its queer critique to remap conceptions of the autobiographical performer and her/his audience, given that this relation between complementary subject

Since Della Pollock proposed this project to Judith Hamera, Erik Doxtader, and myself, I have
boiled at the edges of Irigarays book. How obvious and mundane my critique of its
hereonormativity feels. As if afflicted with Tourette Syndrome, I obsessively repeat this critique,
Loving a woman is not the only way for me to be human. Loving a woman is not the only way
for me to be human. Maybe this repetition would access more authority if I devoted an essay to
this one sentence. At this point in my essay, when I first presented it at the National Communication Association convention in Chicago, I stopped momentarily to put on a costume papal hat I
positions at least as commonly understood also derives from a division of emotional labour.

bought the night before at a sex shop in Chicagos Boys town, a queer neighborhood. I ahd gone out with my partner Jonny and friend Scott. Several years before, Scott and I had gone there by ourselves, attending
another convention. I remember this because an unusually friendly saleshunk had asked Scott and I if we wanted to try a new lubricant which made us laugh, as if hed invited us to do so there, on the spot. But
he meant to feel it and put a drop or so on one of my fingers, which I moved slowly around against my thumb, falling silent. All night, out on our wandering, Id talked with Scott about my then emerging
relationship with Jonny. Later, Scott told me that watching me move that lube around between my thumb and forefinger, in desires great pinch, he knew I loved Jonny. I bought a bottle both nights one for a

When the three of us saw the hat on the sale rack, we knew it was meant to be I love the lonely and the absurd. Its tall, made of how
shall I say this? industrial strength fake velvet,white, with gold polyester trim. It is sublimely tacky, a gorgeous monstrosity masquerading as, well, a gorgeous monstrosity. I stood on a platform at the
convention, wearing my silly hat, and presented an early version of this essay as an ironic encyclical, chanting my obsessive critique as if droning a pronouncement: Loving a woman is not the only way for me
to be human. Loving me is not the only way for her to be human. It is not the only way for us to
interrogate the category of human or woman or man or love. What could inspire so
ludic and ludicrous a performance if not the fatigue of encountering essentialisms such as
Irigarays, of trying to shovel out of this Aegean Stable, of reading, suddenly, from the margin of
her margin, of saying too many times:Oh, no, thats okay. Theres more in this text, of being
possible felicity in history, one for its actually existing materiality.

com- plicitous in my failure to speak. I want to say: Yes, Professor Irigaray, we have love here,
just like at home. It comes in the paper, when I bring it back to our bed on Sunday,and Jonny and I divide it,and lay quietly with each other. Reading. Though, I will confess, I clip the coupons.
This is my part of the labor. With gratitude to phenomenologist Edmund Husserl (1960: 12) and poet/ physician William Carlos Williams (1946: 9), I ask, cant we just choose
lines of advance that have their basis in the phenomenal nature of our varied loving experiences
themselves; no ideas but in love?
Turns the case compulsory heterosexism supports patriarchy
Johnson, 2005
(Allan G., Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, writer and public speaker, worked
on issues of privilege, oppression, and social inequality, The gender knot: unraveling our
patriarchal legacy, p. 148, accessed on googlebooks)
How we think about heterosexuality is key to patriarchy because ideas about gender are at the
core of patriarchy, and heterosexuality and gender are dened in terms of each other . Whether a
man is considered a real man, for example, or whether a woman is considered a real and legitimate woman depends on their sexual
feelings, behavior, and relationships. ln particular, as dened in most Western cultures, real women and

men are exclusively heterosexual. The denition of a man is so bound up with being
heterosexual that gay men are routinely accused of not being men at all. This is also why lesbians
are often likened to men because they, like real men, are sexually oriented to women. Since real
men and real women" are by denition heterosexual, anyone who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual is stigmatized as a deviant outsider
who threatens the status quo and doesnt deserve a socially legitimate identity. As such, they are suspect and vulnerable

to ostracism, discrimination, and abuse.

Next, Their material descriptions of the womans body reinstalls the binary
Irigaray seeks to escaperecreating the minine as a mute, passive surface that is
constantly penetrated but cannot claim power or subjectivity turns the aff
Butler IN 1993 (Judith, smarter than Irigaray for sure, Bodies That Matter)
The polarity of idealism/materialism has come under question. But that is not to claim that
there are no future questions. For what do we make of Irigarays claim that for Plato, the
inscriptional space is a way of figuring and disfiguring femininity, a way of muting the minine,
and recasting it as mute, passive surface. Recall that for Plato the receptacle receives all things,
is that through which a certain penetrative generativity works, but which itself can neither
penetrate nor generate. In this sense, the receptacle can be read as a guarantee that there will be
no destabilizing mimesis of the masculine, and the feminine will be permanently secured as the
infinitely penetrable. This move is repeated in Derrida in his references to the place without
place where everything marks it, but which in itself is not marked. Have we discovered here the
unmarked condition of all inscription, that which can have no mark of its own, no proper mark,
precisely because it is that which excluded from the proper, makes the proper possible? Or is
this unmarked excluded from the proper, make the proper possible? Or is this unmarked
inscriptional space one whose mark has been erased, and is under compulsion to remain under
permanent erasure? She (is) nothing other than the sum or the process of that which inscribes
itself on her, a son subject, a meme son sujet, but she is not the subject or the present support
of all these interpretations, and she does not reduce to these interpretations. That which
exceeds any interpretation, but which is itself not any interpretation. This description does not
explain, however, why there is this prohibition against interpretation here. Is this not perhaps a
virgin spot in or outside of the territory of metaphysics? Although here Derrida wants to claim
that the receptacle cannot be matter, in Positions he confirms that matter can be used twice,
and that in its redoubled effect, it can be precisely that which exceeds the form/matter
distinction. But here, where mattter and mater are linked, where there is a question of

materiality invested with femininity, and then subjected to an erasure, the receptacle cannot be
matter, for that would be to reinstall it in the binarism from which it is excluded .
They create new hierarchies of oppressionthey place feminine based identities as
the oppressed class separated from any masculine action
Jones, 96. Ph d in poly sci and professor of international studies at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico City,
1996
[Adam, Does Gender Make the World Go Round? Feminist Critiques of International Relations, Review of International Studies 22:4,
http://adamjones.freeservers.com/does.htm, 7/12/07, Stevens]
I have suggested that the

most important, and surely a lasting, contribution of feminist critiques has been to
add a gender dimension to analyses of international relations. Few scholars will be able, in future, to analyze international divisions of
labour, or peace movements, or (pace Enloe) the activities of international diplomats, without attending to feminist perspectives on all these
phenomena. But

feminists' success in exploring the gender variable remains, at this point, mixed. And until feminist frameworks
is hard to see how a persuasive theory or account of the gendering
of international relations can be constructed. Feminist attempts to incorporate a gender variable
into IR analysis are constrained by the basic feminist methodology and all feminists' normative
commitments. A genuinely "feminist approach" by definition "must take women's lives as the
epistemological starting point."(53) And a defining element of feminist approaches, as noted earlier, is a social project aimed at
are expanded and to some extent reworked, it

ameliorating women's structured lack of privilege and emancipating them as a gender-class.

The result is a de facto equating of gender primarily with females/femininity. It is , in its way, a new
logocentrism, whereby (elite) male actions and (hegemonic) masculinity are drawn into the
narrative mainly as independent variables explaining [421] "gender" oppression. Even those works that

have adopted the most inclusive approach to gender, such as Peterson and Runyan's Global Gender Issues, betray this leaning. Peterson and Runyan do
acknowledge that "our attention to gender ... tends to underplay the considerable differences among men and among women," and note that "it is not
only females but males as well who suffer from rigid gender roles."(54) For the most part in their analysis, though, "gender issues" are presented as
coequal with women's issues. The

plight of embodied women is front and centre throughout, while the

attention paid to the male/masculine realm amounts to little more than lip-service.

NOPE Independently, Their epistemology and methodology undermine science

WALBY 2001 Sociology Department, University of Leeds (Sylvia, Against Epistemological Chasms: The Science Question in
Feminism Revisited, Signs, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Winter, 2001), pp. 485-509, JSTOR)

Feminist standpoint epistemology and postmodern epistemology often rest on a rejection of

science and modernist modes of reasoning as adequate or sufficient for feminist analysis
(Harding 1986, 1991; Nicholson 1990). This rejection is not justified. The account of science in such
writings is oversimplified. First, science is equated with empiricism, which is then falsely
conflated with positivism (Harding 1991), the neglect of the sophisticated and diverse rold and
nature of reflexive theorization. Second, science is described as monolithic (Haraway 1988), when it
is actually internally divided, full of contestation , and subject to change as a result of challenges.
Third, science is caricatured as absolutist, as claiming to have discovered the truth about nature and
society, despite its internal debates and its continual replacement of old theories with new .
Contemporary sociology and philosophy of science undermine these accounts of science as monolithic
and absolutist (Quine 1960; Latour 1987, 1993). Fourth, modernist modes of reasoning are often smuggled in
unrecognized through the back door (McLennan 1995), since they are actually indispensable for argumentation and
in order to avoid the problem of relativism.
Western Science is key to survival
Locke 1997 (Edwin A.; Professor of Management University of Maryland-College Park and Senior Writer Ayn Rand
Institute) The Greatness of Western Civilization www.aynrand.org/site/News2?
JServSessionIdr001=7xcem0b1i1.app7a&page=NewsArticle&id=6164&news_iv_ctrl=1077

The triumph of reason and rights made possible the full development and application of science and
technology and ultimately modern industrial society. Reason and rights freed man's mind from the tyranny of religious
dogma and freed man's productive capacity from the tyranny of state control. Scientific and technological progress
followed in several interdependent steps. Men began to understand the laws of nature. They invented an endless
succession of new products. And they engaged in large-scale production, that is, the creation of wealth, which in turn financed and
motivated further invention and production. As a result, horse-and-buggies were replaced by automobiles, wagon tracks by steel

The result of the

core achievements of Western civilization has been an increase in freedom, wealth, health, comfort, and
life expectancy unprecedented in the history of the world . The achievements were greatest in the country where the
rails, candles by electricity. At last, after millennia of struggle, man became the master of his environment.

principles of reason and rights were implemented most consistently--the United States of America. In contrast, it was precisely in
those Eastern and African countries which did not embrace reason, rights, and technology where people suffered (and still suffer)
most from both natural and man-made disasters (famine, poverty, illness, dictatorship) and where life-expectancy was (and is)
lowest. It is said that primitives live "in harmony with nature," but in reality they are simply victims of the vicissitudes of nature--if
some dictator does not kill them first. The greatness of the West is not an "ethnocentric" prejudice; it is an objective fact. This
assessment is based on the only proper standard for judging a government or a society: the degree to which its core values are proor anti-life. Pro-life cultures acknowledge and respect man's nature as a rational being who must discover and create the

conditions which his survival and happiness require--which means that they advocate reason, rights,
freedom, and technological progress. Despite its undeniable triumphs, Western civilization is by no means
secure. Its core principles are under attack from every direction--by religious fanatics, by dictators and, most
disgracefully, by Western intellectuals, who are denouncing reason in the name of skepticism, rights in the name of
special entitlements, and progress in the name of environmentalism. We are heading rapidly toward the dead end of nihilism. The
core values and achievements of the West and America must be asserted proudly and defended to the death.
Our lives depend on them.
Last, Identity political movements are biopolitical --- constrains freedom by
forcing people to conform to norms
Hayward, 10 (Clarissa Rile, Associate Professor of Political Science at Washington University
in St. Louis, and Ron Watson, doctoral student in Political Science at Washington University in
St. Louis, The Politics of Identity after Identity Politics: Identity and Political Theory, 33
Wash. U. J.L. & Pol'y 9, lexis, Tashma)
B. Identity's Burdens
Still, because identities

constrain freedom - because they define "others" whose

exclusion they can promote and at the same time legitimize - "the mobilization of
identity categories for the purposes of politicization always remains threatened by
the prospect of identity becoming an instrument of the power one opposes." 93
Hence the Foucaultian emphasis on genealogizing and more generally on
" refusing" identity , rather than urging states to recognize it via group rights, accommodations for minority cultures, or
"external" protections. As our discussion in Part III suggests, the Foucaultian focus is the cost of identification: its burdens, more so
than its benefits.
[*30] What is worth underscoring, however, is that neither strong multiculturalists nor liberal theorists of recognition quarrel with
the claim that, very often, collective identities have costs. To the contrary, both sets of theorists acknowledge that groups exclude,
and that groups often limit the freedom of members. Both acknowledge that some forms of recognition, because they give those who
are dominant within groups power over those who are subordinate, can promote coercion and enable the restriction of freedom. It is
this worry that drives Taylor's insistence that states protect minority group members' "fundamental rights," such as their rights to
habeas corpus. 94 It is this worry that informs Kymlicka's claim that states should only rarely allow "internal restrictions" by groups.
95 Practices of restricting religious freedom, or of discriminating against female group members, Kymlicka writes, "are inconsistent
with any system of minority rights that appeals to individual freedom or personal autonomy." 96 They "cannot be justified or
defended," he continues, "within a liberal conception of minority rights." 97
The principal differences between the multiculturalist and the Foucaultian positions are, first, their emphases - multiculturalists
stress the benefits of identification, Foucaultians the burdens - and, second, their assumptions about the likely effects of state
recognition. Multiculturalists underscore that well-being is closely bound up with a sense of collective belonging. The costs of
identity, they suggest, are well worth the goods identity provides. As long as "fundamental rights" are protected, as long as
protections are "external," rather than restrictions on important rights and freedoms, people gain more than they lose when states
recognize identity-constituting collectivities. The Foucaultian claim, by contrast, is that identity's

substantial harms outweigh its benefits . Even those identities which liberals view
as entirely beneficial - namely, the identities of autonomous, rational modern selves - subject, and they discipline
human beings. Because people never perfectly fit any identity-category, and because
efforts to make them fit are a kind of violence , state recognition, even when [*31] it
promotes solidaristic feelings of trust and belonging, always also fosters exclusion
and nontrivial forms of unfreedom .

Gender defense

---Not root cause

Extend Hooper 1 there are 2 arguments

1. Gendered dichotomies dont dictate all practices or impacts-they obscure more
complex relationships like ones of race, class and sexuality and the intersections
off all of them
2. Their assumption that gendered dichotomies are totalizing and reproduce
existing orders because theres no way to account for complex and changing
circumstances or any sort of flexibility
While gender has a large impact it isnt monolithic, nor unified
Hooper 1 Charlotte (University of Bristol research associate in politics), Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics pp 45-46.
Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan (1993), in their discussion of gendered dichotomies, appear to drop Lacanian
psychoanalytic discourse as an explanation for gendered dichotomies in favor of a more straightforward- ly political
account.14Gendered dichotomies, rather than uniformly con- structing gendered social relations through universal psychoanalytic
mecha- nisms, are seen more ambiguously, as playing a dual role. Where gendered dichotomies are used as an organizing principle
of social life (such as in the gendered division of labor) they help to construct gender differences and in- equalities and thus are
constitutive of social reality, but in positing a grid of polar opposites, they also serve to obscure more complex relationships,
commonalties, overlaps, and intermediate positions (Peterson and Runyan 1993, 2425). Elaborating on this view, it can be argued
that gendered dichotomies are in part ideological tools that mystify, masking more complex social realities and reinforcing
stereotypes. On one level, they do help to produce real gen- der differences and inequalities, when they are used as organizing
principles that have practical effects commensurate with the extent that they become embedded in institutional practices, and
through these, human bodies. They constitute one dimension in the triangular nexus out of which gender identities and the gender
order are produced. But at the same time, institutional practices are not always completely or

unambiguously informed by such dichotomies, which may then operate to obscure more
complex relationships. It is a mistake to see the language of gendered dichotomies as a
unied and totalizing discourse that dictates every aspect of social practice to the extent that we
are coherently produced as subjects in its dualistic image. As well as the disruptions and
discontinuities engendered by the intersections and interjections of other discourses (race, class,
sexuality, and so on) there is always room for evasion, reversal, resistance, and
dissonance between rhetoric, practice, and embodiment, as well as reproduction of the
symbolic order, as identities are negotiated in relation to all three dimensions, in a variety of
complex and changing circumstances. On the other hand, the symbolic gender order does inform practice,
and our subjectivities are produced in relation to it, so to dismiss it as performing only an ideological or propagandistic role is also
too simplistic.

Proves that the 1ncs Ray evidence denies complex and interpersonal relationships
Crenshaw, PhD, 2
Carrie, PhD, Perspectives In Controversy: Selected Articles from CAD, Scholar
Feminism is not dead. It is alive and well in intercollegiate debate. Increasingly, students rely on feminist
authors to inform their analysis of resolutions. While I applaud these initial efforts to explore feminist thought, I am concerned
that such arguments only exemplify the general absence of sound causal reasoning in
debate rounds. Poor causal reasoning results from a debate practice that privileges empirical proof over rhetorical proof, fostering
ignorance of the subject matter being debated. To illustrate my point, I claim that debate arguments about

feminists suffer from a reductionism that tends to marginalize the voices of significant
feminist authors. David Zarefsky made a persuasive case for the value of causal reasoning in intercollegiate debate as far back as
1979. He argued that causal arguments are desirable for four reasons. First, causal

analysis increases the control of the arguer over events by promoting

understanding of them. Second, the use of causal reasoning increases rigor of analysis

and fairness in the decision-making process. Third,

causal arguments promote understanding of

the philosophical paradox that presumably good people tolerate the existence of
evil. Finally, causal reasoning supplies good reasons for "commitments to policy
choices or to systems of belief which transcend whim, caprice, or the non-reflexive
"claims of immediacy" (117-9). Rhetorical proof plays an important role in the analysis of causal relationships. This is
true despite the common assumption that the identification of cause and effect relies solely upon empirical investigation. For
Zarefsky, there are three types of causal reasoning. The first type of causal reasoning describes the application of a covering law to
account for physical or material conditions that cause a resulting event This type of causal reasoning requires empirical proof
prominent in scientific investigation. A second type of causal reasoning requires the assignment of responsibility. Responsible
human beings as agents cause certain events to happen; that is, causation resides in human beings (107-08). A third type of causal
claim explains the existence of a causal relationship. It functions "to provide reasons to justify a belief that a causal connection
exists" (108). The second and third types of causal arguments rely on rhetorical proof, the provision of "good reasons" to
substantiate arguments about human responsibility or explanations for the existence of a causal relationship (108). I contend that
the practice of intercollegiate debate privileges the first type of causal analysis. It reduces questions of human motivation and
explanation to a level of empiricism appropriate only for causal questions concerning physical or material conditions. Arguments
about feminism clearly illustrate this phenomenon. Substantive debates about feminism usually take one of two forms. First, on the
affirmative, debaters argue that some aspect of the resolution is a manifestation of patriarchy. For example, given the spring 1992
resolution, "[rjesolved: That advertising degrades the quality of life," many affirmatives argued that the portrayal of women as
beautiful objects for men's consumption is a manifestation of patriarchy that results in tangible harms to women such as rising rates
of eating disorders. The fall 1992 topic, "(rjesolved: That the welfare system exacerbates the problems of the urban poor in the
United States," also had its share of patri- archy cases. Affirmatives typically argued that women's dependence upon a patriarchal
welfare system results in increasing rates of women's poverty. In addition to these concrete harms to individual women, most
affirmatives on both topics, desiring "big impacts," argued that the effects of patriarchy include nightmarish totalitarianism and/or
nuclear annihilation. On the negative, many debaters countered with arguments that the some aspect of the resolution in some way
sustains or energizes the feminist movement in resistance to patriarchal harms. For example, some negatives argued that sexist
advertising provides an impetus for the reinvigoration of the feminist movement and/or feminist consciousness, ultimately solving
the threat of patriarchal nuclear annihilation. likewise, debaters negating the welfare topic argued that the state of the welfare
system is the key issue around which the feminist movement is mobilizing or that the consequence of the welfare system - breakup of
the patriarchal nuclear family -undermines patriarchy as a whole. Such arguments seem to have two

assumptions in common. First, there is a single feminism. As a result, feminists are transformed
into feminism. Debaters speak of feminism as a single, monolithic, theoretical and pragmatic entity
and feminists as women with identical m otivations, methods, and goals. Second, these arguments assume that
patriarchy is the single or root cause of all forms of oppression. Patriarchy not only is
responsible for sexism and the consequent oppression of women, it also is the cause of totalitarianism, environmental degradation,
nuclear war, racism, and capitalist exploitation. These reductionist arguments reflect an unwillingness to

debate about the complexities of human motivation and explanation. They betray a reliance upon a
framework of proof that can explain only material conditions and physical realities through empirical quantification. The
transformation of feminists to feminism and the identification of patriarchy as the sole cause of all oppression is related in part to
the current form of intercollegiate debate practice. By "form," I refer to Kenneth Burke's notion of form, defined as the "creation of
appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite" (Counter-Statement 31). Though the framework for
this understanding of form is found in literary and artistic criticism, it is appropriate in this context; as Burke notes, literature can be
"equipment for living" (Biilosophy 293). He also suggests that form "is an arousing and fulfillment of desires. A work has form in so
far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence" (Counter-Statement 124). Burke
observes that there are several aspects to the concept of form. One of these aspects, conventional form, involves to some degree the
appeal of form as form. Progressive, repetitive, and minor forms, may be effective even though the reader has no awareness of their
formality. But when a form appeals as form, we designate it as conventional form. Any form can become conventional, and be sought
for itself - whether it be as complex as the Greek tragedy or as compact as the sonnet (Counter-Statement 126). These concepts help
to explain debaters' continuing reluctance to employ rhetorical proof in arguments about causality. Debaters practice

the convention of poor causal reasoning as a result of judges' unexamined reliance upon conventional form.
Convention is the practice of arguing single-cause links to monolithic impacts that arises out of custom or usage. Conventional form
is the expectation of judges that an argument will take this form. Common practice or convention dictates that a case or
disadvantage with nefarious impacts causally related to a single link will "outweigh" opposing claims in the mind of the judge. In this
sense, debate arguments themselves are conventional. Debaters practice the convention of establishing

single-cause relationships to large monolithic impacts in order to conform to audience expectation.

Debaters practice poor causal reasoning because they are rewarded for it by judges. The convention of arguing single-cause links
leads the judge to anticipate the certainty of the impact and to be gratified by the sequence. I suspect that the sequence is gratifying
for judges because it relieves us from the responsibility and difficulties of evaluating rhetorical proofs. We are caught between our
responsibility to evaluate rhetorical proofs and our reluctance to succumb to complete relativism and subjectivity. To take
responsibility for evaluating rhetorical proof is to admit that not every question has an empirical answer. However, when we

abandon our responsibility to rhetorical proofs, we sacrifice our students'

understanding of causal reasoning. The sacrifice has consequences for our students'
knowledge of the subject matter they are debating. For example, when feminism is defined as a single
entity, not as a pluralized movement or theory, that single entity results in the identification of patriarchy as the

sole cause of oppression. The result is ignorance of the subject position of the
particular feminist author, for highlighting his or her subject position might draw attention to the incompleteness of
the causal relationship between link and impact Consequently, debaters do not challenge the basic
assumptions of such argumentation and ignorance of feminists is perpetuated.
Feminists are not feminism. The topics of feminist inquiry are many and varied, as are the philosophical approaches to the study of
these topics. Different authors have attempted categorization of various feminists in distinctive ways. For example, Alison Jaggar
argues that feminists can be divided into four categories: liberal feminism, marxist feminism, radical feminism, and socialist
feminism. While each of these feminists may share a common commitment to the improvement of women's situations, they differ
from each other in very important ways and reflect divergent philosophical assumptions that make them each unique. Linda Alcoff
presents an entirely different categorization of feminist theory based upon distinct understandings of the concept "woman,"
including cultural feminism and post-structural feminism. Karen Offen utilizes a comparative historical approach to examine two
distinct modes of historical argumentation or discourse that have been used by women and their male allies on behalf of women's
emancipation from male control in Western societies. These include relational feminism and individualist feminism. Elaine Marks
and Isabelle de Courtivron describe a whole category of French feminists that contain many distinct versions of the feminist project
by French authors. Women of color and third-world feminists have argued that even these broad categorizations of the various
feminism have neglected the contributions of non-white, non-Western feminists (see, for example, hooks; Hull; Joseph and Lewis;
Lorde; Moraga; Omolade; and Smith). In this literature, the very definition of feminism is contested. Some feminists argue that "all
feminists are united by a commitment to improving the situation of women" (Jaggar and Rothenberg xii), while others have resisted
the notion of a single definition of feminism, bell hooks observes, "a central problem within feminist discourse has been our inability
to either arrive at a consensus of opinion about what feminism is (or accept definitions) that could serve as points of unification"
(Feminist Theory 17). The controversy over the very definition of feminism has political

implications. The power to define is the power both to include and exclude people
and ideas in and from that feminism . As a result, [bjourgeois white women interested in women's rights issues
have been satisfied with simple definitions for obvious reasons. Rhetorically placing themselves in the same social category as
oppressed women, they were not anxious to call attention to race and class privilege (hooks. Feminist Wieory 18). Debate arguments
that assume a singular conception of feminism include and empower the voices of race- and class-privileged women while excluding
and silencing the voices of feminists marginalized by race and class status. This position becomes clearer when we

examine the second assumption of arguments about feminism in intercollegiate debate - patriarchy is the sole
cause of oppression. Important feminist thought has resisted this assumption for good
reason. Designating patriarchy as the sole cause of oppression allows the
subjugation of resistance to other forms of oppression like racism and classism to the
struggle against sexism. Such subjugation has the effect of denigrating the
legitimacy of resistance to racism and classism as struggles of equal importance .
"Within feminist movement in the West, this led to the assumption that resisting patriarchal
domination is a more legitimate feminist action than resisting racism and other
forms of domination" (hooks. Talking Back 19). The relegation of struggles against racism and class exploitation to
offspring status is not the only implication of the "sole cause" argument In addition, identifying patriarchy as the
single source of oppression obscures women's perpetration of other forms of
subjugation and domination, bell hooks argues that we should not obscure the reality that women can and do
partici- pate in politics of domination, as perpetrators as well as victims - that we dominate, that we are dominated. If focus on
patriarchal domination masks this reality or becomes the means by which women deflect attention from
the real conditions and circumstances of our lives, then women cooperate in suppressing and
promoting false consciousness, inhibiting our capacity to assume responsibility
for transforming ourselves and society (hooks. Talking Back 20). Characterizing patriarchy
as the sole cause of oppression allows mainstream feminists to abdicate
responsibility for the exercise of class and race privilege . It casts the struggle against class
exploitation and racism as secondary concerns. Current debate practice promotes ignorance of these issues because debaters appeal
to conventional form, the expectation of judges that they will isolate a single link to a large impact Feminists become feminism and
patriarchy becomes the sole cause of all evil. Poor causal arguments arouse and fulfill the expectation of judges by allowing us to
surrender our responsibility to evaluate rhetorical proof for complex causal relationships. The result is either the

mar-ginalization or colonization of certain feminist voices. Arguing feminism in debate rounds

risks trivializing feminists. Privileging the act of speaking about feminism over the content of
speech "often turns the voices and beings of non-white women into commodity,
spectacle" (hooks, Talking Back 14). Teaching sophisticated causal reasoning enables our
students to learn more concerning the subject matter about which they argue. In
this case, students would learn more about the multiplicity of feminists instead of
reproducing the marginalization of many feminist voices in the debate itself . The

content of the speech of feminists must be investigated to subvert the colonization of exploited women. To do so, we must explore
alternatives to the formal expectation of single-cause links to enormous impacts for appropriation of the marginal voice threatens
the very core of self-determination and free self-expression for exploited and oppressed peoples. If the identified audience, those
spoken to, is determined solely by ruling groups who control production and distribution, then it is easy for the marginal voice
striving for a hearing to allow what is said to be overdetermined by the needs of that majority group who appears to be listening, to
be tuned in (hooks, Talking Back 14). At this point, arguments about feminism in intercollegiate debate seem to be overdetermined
by the expectation of common practice, the "game" that we play in assuming there is such a thing as a direct and sole causal link to a
monolithic impact To play that game, we have gone along with the idea that there is a single feminism and the idea that patriarchal
impacts can account for all oppression. In making this critique, I am by no means discounting the importance of arguments about
feminism in intercollegiate debate. In fact, feminists contain the possibility of a transformational politic for two reasons. First,
feminist concerns affect each individual intimately. We are most likely to encounter patriarchal domination "in an ongoing way in
everyday life. Unlike other forms of domination, sexism directly shapes and determines relations of power in our private lives, in
familiar social spaces..." (hooks. Talking Back 21). Second, the methodology of feminism, consciousness-raising, contains within it
the possibility of real societal transformation. "lE]ducation for critical consciousness can be extended to include politicization of the
self that focuses on creating understanding the ways sex, race, and class together determine our individual lot and our collective
experience" (hooks, Talking Back 24). Observing the incongruity between advocacy of single-cause relationships and feminism does
not discount the importance of feminists to individual or societal consciousness raising.

Patriarchy not the root causeinseparable from regional conflict and structural
conditions.
Stansell 2010 (Christine, Professor of history at Princeton and the University of Chicago, Global Feminism in a Conservative Age:
Possibilities and Pieties Since 1980, in Dissent, April 1st Edition, pg. 51-52)
But at the same time, the

use of patriarchy as the one-size-fits-all paradigm and the dichotomy of

injured women/male aggressor was totally inadequate. Sex-specific violence was inextricable
from the plague of wars and insurgencies that laid waste to large parts of the world . Rape, torture,
mutilation, and female captivity and enslavement were standard procedures of marauding militias and
terrorist bands in Africa, from Liberia and Sierra Leone to Congo, northern Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, and Somalia. Coerced labor in the sex
tradewhat came to be called sexual slaverywas entangled with poverty, official corruption, labor flows
across borders, and forced migration. Violence was inseparable from politics and reactionary religious
regimes and parties: Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran consolidated power by implementing draconian
interpretations of sharia

Patriarchy is not the root cause of war.

Martin 90
Brian Martin. 1990. (Professor of Social Sciences in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong.
Uprooting War. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw10.html)
While these connections between war and male domination are suggestive, they do not amount to a clearly defined link between the two .

It is too
simplistic to say that male violence against women leads directly to organised mass warfare.
Many soldiers kill in combat but are tender with their families; many male doctors are dedicated
professionally to relieving suffering but batter their wives. The problem of war cannot be
reduced to the problem of individual violence. Rather, social relations are structured to promote
particular kinds of violence in particular circumstances . While there are some important
connections between individual male violence and collective violence in war (rape in war is a notable one),
these connections are more symptoms than causes of the relationship between patriarchy and
other war-linked structures.

---case turn
Extend Jones 6, feminist international relations and the focus on solving
patriarchy only creates new hierarchies of oppression, they ignore masculine
action and the entire masculine realm while focusing on the feminist approach
flips the entirety of the aff as they lead back to the root cause of their impacts
Feminist postmodernism replicates the very hierarchies it problematizes and ignores the plights
of men in favor of personal narratives that kill IRs ability to theorize and our ability to debate
this round
Jarvis, 2K Prof Philosophy @ U South Carolina (Darryl, Studies in International Relations, International Relations and the Challenge of
Postmodernism, pg. 172-174)

Even
war and conflict studies, are not spared from the biased framing of the
gender variable. Cynthia Enloe, for instance, tells of the plight of women during
the Bosnian war and how Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian men used rape as an
instrument of terror. By implication, however, we are left to assume that men in
the Bosnian conflict endured no terror, brutality, or deprivations, but were simply
the perpetrators of atrocities.
Narratives
of this type reveal how exclusive has been the framing of the "gender variable" in
International Relations, where men are characterized as a hegemonic gender-class
whose interests, concerns, actions, and writings are opposed to the interests and
well-being of women.
Jones is plainly
bemused at Ann Tickner's assertion that women have been forced to enter "the
military primarily in the lower ranks." But, asks Jones, "how else does one enter
the military, except at the lower levels? Likewise, Peterson and Runyan assert that
"the plight of both Third World and Western women has been exacerbated by the
debt crisis."136 Third World and Western men, apparentiy, were untouched by
this same debt crisis. And when commenting on the migration south of the border
of "the jobs of many working-class women in the United States," Peterson and
Runyan announce with horror how, between "1979 and 1983, 35% of the workers
who lost jobs because of plant closings in the United States were women." What
they fail to point out, of course, is that this means that fully 65 percent of those
who lost their jobs because of these same plant closings were men
rather than a hegemonic gender-class, statistically men kill each other at a far
greater rate than they do women, commit suicide at a rate almost three times that
of women, constitute about 80 percent of the homeless in the United States,
throughout virtually every community in the world live shorter lives than do
women, and in the developed world suffer a mortality rate due to disease twice
that for women. Crude characterizations of a hegemonic gender class thus display
an anomalous capacity to ignore completely those facts that do not accord with
ideological belief. And postmodern feminists have been most adroit at this,
substituting the evidentiary requirements of systematic observation and reasoned
argument for identity discourses that rely on "perceptions" and "feelings."
for example, Marie Henehan and Meredith Reid Sarkees frame their survey
in such a way as to measure the subjective perceptions of respondents. "The
respondents were asked whether they had perceived gender bias in the course of
their career." In an alternate survey conducted for the same ISA committee,
Christine Sylvester notes that "many respondents report feeling isolated within
their departments and from major networks in the field." Aside from the obvious
the t raditi onal con cern s of Int ernati onal Relation s,

131 Simila rly, in di scu ssing th e Gulf Wa r, Enloe is highly ex clu sive in dealing with gender, adequately na rrating the plight of f emale migrant workers in Ku wait wh o suff ered at rocities like ra pe and torture at the hands of Ira qi troops, but negl ecting the "wi der Ira qi process of detenti on , t ortu re, ex ecuti on , and f orced removal ... of ten s of thou san ds of Ku waiti s" that, "ju dgin g from the human-right s and media report s, [were ] virtually all mal e."1 32

1 33 As Sylvest er writes, "st ates an d th eir regimes conn ect with people called women only to ensure . . . that the benefit s of regi me pa rti cipati on will fl ow f rom 'women ' t o 'men' an d not ev er the other wa y roun d."1 34 With su ch a mindset, facts become su perflu ou s t o the a rgument (s), lea ding to a fallacy of composition wh ere a ssertive prose is itself off ered as eviden ce of the disproporti onate level of burden or vi ctimi zati on that women suffer. Thu s, f or example,

"1 35

.1 37 Moreover, if we look at the availabl e eviden ce f or i ssu es like murder, suici de, homelessness, life ex pectan cy, and mortality rat es, we find that

138

In a recent su rvey conducted f or the Int ernati onal Studi es Associati on (ISA) by the

Committ ee for Stu dy on the Statu s of Women in Internati onal Relati on s,

139

1 40

fact that perceptions of bias or feelings of isolation are not exclusive to women,
questions of the methodological appropriateness of anecdotal evidence need also
to be explored. That the reality of any situation can be gauged from personal
narratives based exclusively upon perception makes for bad social science and
leads, ultimately, to destructive debates that hurl about subjective accusations.
This is simply inverted patriarchy, premised on little
more than fanciful whims about the innate characteristics of women vis-a-vis men.
It replicates the privileging of one gender over another and discharges all hope of
equality between genders on the basis of merit alone.Moreover, it invokes a crude
and unsubstantiated argument derived through intuition, that women feel more
deeply, are better knowers, and thus have better understandings of international
politics. But how is this different from patriarchal-chauvinist claims that men are
more rational, logical, strategic and women more emotional, less reasoned, and
captive to their biological cycles? Both such arguments are equally as preposterous
and need to be abandoned
When Jacqui True notes that
"states demand sacrifices of gendered citizens: mothers, for example, who are
forced to devote "their lives to socializing these dutiful [male] citizens for the
sovereign state as masculine deity," lest we should forget that male citizens have
typically been the cannon fodder who have sacrificed their lives and limbs for the
state.
the point for I R must be to
affirm as illegitimate all suffering and work actively to develop ways of
understanding and prescriptions that might help in its eradication. The "gender
variable" is not inappropriate in this regard, but only when used in inclusive ways.
1 41 Witn ess, for exampl e, the claims of

mat riarchal superiority when stan dpoint femini sts in sist that "women have a di stin ctive, superior view of the worl d, distinctive becau se shaped by those features of thei r ex peri en ces that di stingui sh th em from men , superi or on the . . . ba si s that the oppressed a re capable of a high er form of awaren ess than the oppressor."1 42

, n ot invoked a s a means forwa rd f or understandin g internati onal relati on s. More obvi ou sly, su ch silly meth ods ten d towa rd a perv erse hierarchical index of wh o suffers the most , wh o bea rs th e most burden , feels th e most hu rt .

143 If we wi sh t o con st ru ct hiera rchies of pain and sufferin g, none can be high er than the ultimate sa crifice, a sacrifice made through out hist ory overwh elmingly by male combatants. Th e point of all of this, however, sh ould n ot be to count enan ce again st on e type of sufferin g and in fav or of ot hers. Rath er, the point is t o take issue with those wh o view suff ering, or at lea st disproporti onate suffering, the preserve of one gender, women, and infli ct ed by another gen der, men. More importantly ,

nternational

elations

The decision to just critique fails they should have provided a proposal to
implement change turns the aff
Saloom JD UGA, 6
Rachel, JD Univ of Georgia School of Law and M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from U of Chicago, Fall 2006, A Feminist Inquiry into
International Law and International Relations, 12 Roger Williams U. L. Rev. 159, Lexis
Because patriarchy is embedded within society, it is no surprise that the theory and practice of both international law and
international relations is also patriarchal. 98 Total critique, however, presents no method by which to

challenge current hegemonic practices. Feminist scholars have yet to provide a coherent way
in which total critique can be applied to change the nature of international law and
international relations. Some [*178] feminist scholars are optimistic for the possibility of changing the way the current
system is structured. For example, Whitworth believes that "sites of resistance are always available to those who oppose the
status quo." 99 Enloe suggests that since the world of international politics has been made it can also be remade. 100 She posits
that every time a woman speaks out about how the government controls her, new theories are being made. 101 All of these

theorists highlight the manner in which gender criticisms can destabilize traditional theories.
They provide no mechanism, however, for the actual implementation of their theories into
practice. While in the abstract, resistance to hegemonic paradigms seems like a promising concept, gender theorists have
made no attempt to make their resistance culminate in meaningful change. The notion of rethinking traditional
approaches to international law and international relations does not go far enough in prescribing
an alternative theoretical basis for understanding the international arena. Enloe's plea for
women to speak out about international politics does not go nearly far enough in explaining
how those acts could have the potential to actually change the practice of international
relations. Either women are already speaking out now, and their voices alone are not an
effective mechanism to challenge the system, or women are not even speaking out about world politics
currently. Obviously it is absurd to assume that women remain silent about world politics. If that is the case, then one must
question women's ability to speak up, challenge, and change the system.

---moral absolutism
Moral absolutism fails we lose ourselves to moral constraints instead of being
moved by real concern.
Waldron, professor at the New York University School of Law and Professor of Social and
Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford University, 1993 (Jeremy, Liberal Rights,
Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Public, March 1993,
http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item1143178/?site_locale=en_US)//CS
I have some sympathy with this, but, as I also argue in Chapter 9, the insistence on
absolutism does not make the conflicts go away; it doesn't make the situations
that appear to call for trade-offs disappear. Thosesituations are not some-thing that
consequentialists and their fellowtravelers have perversely invented in order to embarrass
moral absolutists.It is not the theorist's fault that there are sometimes several drowning
people and only one lifeguard. As I said earlier, the world turns out notto be the sort of place
to which absolute moral requirements are an aptresponse. If we insist on the
absoluteness of rights, there is a danger that we may end up with no rights at
all, or, at least, no rights embodying the idea of real concern for the individuals
whose rights they are. Atbest, we will end up with a set of moral constraints
whose absoluteness is secured only by the contortions of agent-relativity that is,
by their being understood not as concerns focused on those who may be affected byour
actions but as concerns focused on ourselves and integrity.

Heteronormative Disad
Redefining identity positions is a prerequisite to alt solvency exclusion
undercuts it also, their epistemology is bad
Butler 90 Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature and the Co-director of the
Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley (Judith , "Gender Trouble," 1990,
http://autof.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/butler-judith-gender-trouble-feminism-and-the-subversion-ofidentity-1990.pdf)//AM

The political assumption that there must be a universal basis for feminism, one which must be
found in an identity assumed to exist cross-culturally, often accompanies the notion that the
oppression of women has some singular form discernable in the universal or hegemonic
structure of patriarchy or masculine domination. The notion of a universal patriarchy has been
widely criticized in recent years for its failure to account for the workings of gender oppression
in the concrete cultural contexts in which it exists. Where those various contexts have been
consulted within such theories, it has been to find examples or illustrations of a universal
principle that is assumed from the start. That form of feminist theorizing has come under criticism for its efforts to
colonize and appropriate non-Western cultures to support highly Western notions of oppression, but because they tend as well to
construct a Third World or even an Orient in which gender oppression is subtly explained as symptomatic of an essential, nonWestern barbarism. The urgency of feminism to this case , exclusion itself might qualify as such an unintended

yet consequential meaning. By conforming to a requirement of representational politics that

feminism articulate a stable subject, feminism thus opens itself to charges of gross
misrepresentation. Obviously, the political task is not to refuse representational politics as if
we could. The juridical structures of language and politics constitute the contemporary field of
power: hence, there is no position outside this field, but only a critical genealogy of its own
legitimating practices. As such, the critical point of departure is the historical precedent, as
Marx put it. And the task is to formulate within this constituted frame a critique of the
categories of identity that contemporary juridical structures engender, naturalize, and
immobilize. Perhaps there is an opportunity at this juncture of cultural politics, a period that
some would call postfeminist, to reflect from within a feminist perspective on the injunction to
construct a subject of feminism. Within feminist political practice, a radical rethinking of the
ontological constructions of identity appears to be necessary in order to formulate a
representational politics that might revive feminism on other grounds. On the other hand, it
may be time to entertain a radical critique that seeks to free feminist theory from the necessity
of having to construct a single or abiding ground which is invariably contested by those identity
positions or anti-identity positions that it invariably excludes. Do the exclusionary practices that
ground feminist theory in a notion of women as subject paradoxically undercut feminist goals
to extend its claims to representation? Perhaps the problem is even more serious. Is the
construction of the category of women as a coherent and stable subject an unwitting regulation
and reification of gender relations? And is not such a reification precisely contrary to feminist
aims? To what extent does the category of women achieve stability and coherence only in the
context of the heterosexual matrix? If a stable notion of gender no longer proves to be the
foundational premise of feminist politics, perhaps a new sort of feminist politics is now desirable
to contest the very reifications of gender and identity, one that will take the variable
construction of identity as both a methodological and normative prerequisite, if not a political
goal. To trace the political operations that produce and conceal what qualifies as the juridical
subject of feminism is precisely the task of a feminist genealogy of the category of women. In the
course of this effort to question women as the subject of feminism, the unproblematic
invocation of that category may prove to preclude the possibility of feminism as a
representational politics. What sense does it make to extend representation to subjects who are

constructed through scientific discourses which purport to establish such facts for us? Does
sex have a history? Does each sex have a different history, or histories? Is there a history of how
the duality of sex was established, a genealogy that might expose the binary options as a variable construction? Are
the ostensibly natural facts of sex discursively produced by various scientific discourses in the
service of other political and social interests? If the immutable character of sex is contested,
perhaps this construct called sex is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was
always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns
out to be no distinction at all.
Biological differences arent the root cause
Guenther asst prof phil @ vandy 2010 (Lisa Other Fecundities: Proust and Irigaray on Sexual Difference Differences: A
journal of feminst cultural studies Volume 21, Number 2)
While critical of Irigarays recent efforts to construct a foundational role for sexual duality, the alternative account I have developed
here nevertheless remains inspired by Irigarays work insofar as it affirms sexual difference as irreducible to the one or the same. In
the Proustian model, male and female parts exist, but they have no inherent content, pattern, or

tendency; what makes them meaningful, and what produces the effect of sexed tendencies or
worlds, are patterns of circulation and exchange, specific practices of sexuality, and local
histories of sexual encounters. Without the search for whatever rare and delicate pleasures we
are capable of experiencing, the material sites of sexual duality remain sterile and
meaningless. This is not to say that biological sex does not exist or does not count as real,
but that it does not mean anything without the continuous but continually shifting patterns of
exchange between bodies. The multiplicity of bodily drives, and the encounters with alterity that
they engender, fertilize the meaning of sexual duality; and likewise, the duality of the sexes
orients and stabilizes, without thereby restricting, the circulation of multiple drives . For Proust,
there is nothing unnatural about a man becoming a woman to penetrate another man who has
become a woman in a different but complementary way. Its as natural as the birds and the bees!23 Far from
betraying or disavowing sexual difference through their transformations, Charlus and Jupien are following its higher law: a law
that seeks pleasure with others in difference and self-differing, but for whom this difference need not appear in one particular shape
or another. The local specificity of such encounters is as rich and varied as the moral botanist could hope for, and the possibilities for
their expression are limited only by our patience to discover them.

Intersex people disprove the k - link turn

Guenther asst prof phil @ vandy 2010 (Lisa Other Fecundities: Proust and Irigaray on Sexual Difference Differences: A
journal of feminst cultural studies Volume 21, Number 2)
Irigaray offers a trenchant critique of the patriarchal monoculture that fails to recognize sexual difference, and so
represses womens voices, bodies, and ways of being. But

her recent focus on the duality of the sexes, and her

to problems theorizing other forms of difference such as race,
culture, and sexuality, and it may prematurely disqualify possibilities for imagining sexual
difference beyond the magical two. Even Alison Stones recent revision of Irigaray, which attempts to reconcile her
apparent suspicion of multiplicity, lead

account of sexual duality with bodily multiplicity as a way of addressing the exclusion of intersex bodies in her work, still maintains
the primacy of duality and in my view fails to address claims of multiplicity on its own terms. In what follows, I test the limits of
Irigarays approach to sexual difference through a reading of Prousts novel Sodom and Gomorrah, in which I develop a model of
sexual difference based on an irreducible duality of sexual parts, both of which may be found in the same individual but that
nevertheless relate to one another and so become meaningful only through the circulation of an incongruous third element or
libidinal force that generates multiple forms of pleasure and fecundity. Prousts novel opens with an extended comparison of a
sexual encounter between two men to the fertilization of a rare orchid by a bumblebee; the men connect to the sexual difference in
themselves and in the other through their mutual enjoyment of pleasure across a threshold of alterity that is as mobile and
contingent as it is irreducible to sameness. In my reading, this scene from Proust suggests a flexible way of accounting for practices
that complicate the sexual duality of male and female without dissolving it, but also without enshrining it in the figure of the
heterosexual couple. As such, it promises to open new ways of theorizing sexual difference in contexts where to be two is simply
not enough. Irigaray and the Limits of Sexual Difference Alison Stones recent analysis of Irigarays later work addresses precisely
the concerns I have raised here about the relation between duality and multiplicity. In Stones reading, Irigaray is a realist

essentialist, which means that she believes in a natural, irreducible, and really existing sexual
duality.7 This duality has yet to find adequate cultural expression; under patriarchy, and even under certain forms of feminism,
sexual difference is reduced to an explicitly neutral but implicitly masculine monoculture of humanity. For Stone, Irigarays concept
of sexual difference is best understood in terms of different rhythms or temporalities such as expansion and contraction, which are
linked in a process like breathing where each pole, alternately, inhales and exhales air, so that the one expands while the other
shrinks (Luce 90). Female rhythms, like female sexual development, are depicted as irreversible and discontinuous; they are

connected to cyclical processes in nature like the change of the seasons. Male rhythms, on the other hand, are characterized by
homeostatic processes that hover around an ideal mean, building up tension and releasing it while maintaining a steady equilibrium.
Stone locates these processes not only in sexed organisms but also in more diffuse natural processes like weather or the growth of
plants; ultimately, she draws on German Romantic thought to fill in a more general account of male and female principles operating
in all of nature (Luce 9293, 13843, 15460, 193215). Stone frankly acknowledges the limits and potential problems of Irigarays
realist essentialism. It is simply not the case that every woman experiences her body in terms of

irreversible cyclical rhythms, and the reason for this is not merely because our culture fails to
give expression to innate female rhythms. Even in a feminist utopia, it is not clear that each and
every woman would identify with Irigarays account of our real natures, nor is it clear that
everyone who identifies as a woman would count as such for Irigaray. The conviction that there
are two and only two sexes marginalizes an experience of bodily multiplicity that is just as
phenomenologically real and compelling as the experience of sexual duality (Luce 85, 11213).
Irigarays repeated suggestion that the only genuine encounter with difference can happen
between the two sexes enforces a heterosexual paradigm that marginalizes same-sex
relationships (Luce 7, 48, 18990, 22122) and makes it impossible for Irigaray to account for intersex
or transsexual bodies without characterizing them as aberrant or unnatural (Luce 49, 11321).

Butler disad
Alt fails essentialist, mimics the strategy of the oppressor, and causes
fragmentation
Butler 90 Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature and the Co-director of the
Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley (Judith , "Gender Trouble," 1990,
http://autof.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/butler-judith-gender-trouble-feminism-and-the-subversion-ofidentity-1990.pdf)//AM
Beauvoir and Irigaray clearly differ over the fundamental structures by which gender asymmetry is reproduced; Beauvoir turns to
the failed reciprocity of an asymmetrical dialectic, while Irigaray suggests that the dialectic itself is the

monologic elaboration of a masculinist signifying economy. Although Irigaray clearly broadens

the scope of feminist critique by exposing the epistemological, ontological, and logical structures of a masculinist
signifying economy, the power of her analysis is undercut precisely by its globalizing reach. Is it
possible to identify a monolithic as well as a monologic masculinist economy that traverses the
array of cultural and historical contexts in which sexual difference takes place? Is the failure to
acknowledge the specific cultural operations of gender oppression itself a kind of
epistemological imperialism, one which is not ameliorated by the simple elaboration of cultural
differences as examples of the selfsame phallogocentrism? The effort to include Other cultures as
variegated amplifications of a global phallogocentrism constitutes an appropriative act that risks a repetition of the self-aggrandizing
gesture of phallogocentrism, colonizing under the sign of the same those differences that might otherwise call that totalizing concept
into question. Feminist critique ought to explore the totalizing claims of a masculinist signifying economy, but also

remain self-critical with respect to the totalizing gestures of feminism. The effort to identify the
enemy as singular in form is a reverse-discourse that uncritically mimics the strategy of the
oppressor instead of offering a different set of terms. That the tactic can operate in feminist and
antifeminist contexts alike suggests that the colonizing gesture is not primarily or irreducibly
masculinist. It can operate to effect other relations of racial, class, and heterosexist subordination, to name but a few. And
clearly, listing the varieties of oppression, as I begin to do, assumes their discrete, sequential coexistence along a horizontal axis that
does not describe their convergences within the social field. A vertical model is similarly insufficient; oppressions cannot be
summarily ranked, causally related, distributed among planes of originality and derivativeness. Indeed, the field of power

structured in part by the imperializing gesture of dialectical appropriation exceeds and

encompasses the axis of sexual difference, process of democratization. The very notion of
dialogue is culturally specific and historically bound, and while one speaker may feel secure that a
conversation is happening, another may be sure it is not. The power relations that condition and
limit dialogic possibilities need first to be interrogated. Otherwise, the model if dialogue risks relapsing into a
liberal model that assumes that speaking agents occupy equal positions of power and speak with the same presuppositions about
what constitutes agreement and unity and, indeed, that those are the goals to be sought. It would be wrong to assume

in advance that there is a category of women that simply needs to be filled with various
components of race, class, age, ethnicity, and sexuality in order to become complete. The
assumption of its essential incompleteness permits that category to serve as a permanently
available site of contested meanings. The definitional incompleteness of the category might then
serve as a normative ideal relieved of coercive force. Is unity necessary for effective political
action? Is the premature insistence on the goal of unity precisely the cause of an ever more bitter
fragmentation among the ranks? Certain forms of acknowledged fragmentation might facilitate
coalitional action precisely because the unity of the category of women is neither presupposed
nor desired. Does unity set up an exclusionary norm of solidarity at the level of identity that
rules out the possibility of a set of actions which disrupt the very borders of identity concepts , or
which seek to accomplish precisely that disruption as an explicit political aim ? Without the presupposition or goal of
unity, which is, in either case, always instituted at a conceptual level, provisional unities might emerge in the context of concrete
actions that have purposes other than the articulation of identity. Without the compulsory expectation that feminist actions must be
instituted from some stable, unified, and agreed upon identity, those actions might well get a quicker start and seem more congenial
to a number of women for whom the meaning of the category is permanently moot.

The alt is essentialist and fails

Butler 90 Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature and the Co-director of the
Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley (Judith , "Gender Trouble," 1990,
http://autof.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/butler-judith-gender-trouble-feminism-and-the-subversion-ofidentity-1990.pdf)//AM

Apart from the foundationalist fictions that support the notion of the subject, however, there is
the political problem that feminism encounters in the assumption that the term
women denotes a common identity. Rather than a stable signifier that commands
the assent of those whom it purports to describe and represent, women , even in the
plural, has become a troublesome term, a site of contest, a cause for anxiety. As Denise
Rileys title suggests, Am I That Name? is a question produced by the very possibility
of the names multiple significations. If one is a woman, that is surely not all one is; the
term fails to be exhaustive, not because a pregendered person transcends the specific
paraphernalia of its gender, but because gender is not always constituted coherently or
consistently in different historical contexts, and because gender intersects with racial,
class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities .
As a result, it becomes impossible to separate out gender from the political and cultural
intersections in which it is invariably produced and maintained.
Essentialism recreates the hiercharchies criticized by the aff Whitworth, Assistant Professor of Political Science York University 94
Sandra, Feminism and International Relations: Towards a Political Economy of Gender in Interstate and Non-Governmental
Institutions, p. 20
Even when not concerned with mothering as such, much of the politics that emerge from radical feminism

within IR depend upon a 're-thinking' from the perspective of women. What is left
unexplained is how simply thinking differently will alter the material realities of relations of
domination between men and women.46 Structural (patriarchal) relations are acknowledged,
but not analysed in radical feminism's reliance on the experiences, behaviours and
perceptions of 'women'. As Sandra Harding notes, the essential and universal 'man', long the
focus of feminist critiques, has merely been replaced here with the essential and universal
'woman'.47 And indeed, that notion of 'woman' not only ignores important differ ences amongst
women, but it also reproduces exactly the stereotypical vision of women and men, masculine and
feminine, that has been produced under patriarchy.48 Those women who do not fit the mould who, for example, take up arms in military struggle - are quickly dismissed as expressing
'negative' or 'inauthentic' feminine values (the same accusation is more rarely made against men).49 In this way,
it comes as no surprise when mainstream IR theorists such as Robert Keohane happily embrace the tenets of radical feminism. 50
It requires little in the way of re-thinking or movement from accepted and comfortable assumptions and stereotypes. Radical
feminists find themselves defending the same account of women as nurturing, pacifist, submissive mothers as do men under
patriarchy, anti-feminists and the New Right. As some writers suggest, this in itself should give feminists pause to reconsider
this position.51

Science disad
Science is crucial to the political goals of feminism
Gross and Levitt 94 (Paul, University of Virginia, and Norman, Rutgers University, Higher Superstition The Academic
Left and Its Quarrels with Science, the John Hopkins University Press, September 1, 1994)
If we examine feminist doctrine, for instance, we find it split, for the most part, into two camps. On the one hand, there is what is usually called
essentialist feminism, which hews to the idea that there are indeed innate differences between the sexes in emotive and cognitive style and in ethical
predisposition. Of course, it is assumed that the feminine side of humanity, its good side, has been cruelly neglected and suppressed, and that the
purpose of feminism is to restore it to its merited preeminence. On the other hand, antiessentialist feminism insists that there are no innate
psychological differences of any importance, and that to posit their existence is not only chimerical but invites the continued repression and exclusion
of women. The grounds for this fear are obvious; myths of essential difference have provided a host of societies with their justifications for mistreating
women and cruelly circumscribing their lives. Not unexpectedly, there have been attempts to synthesize these apparently conflicting views, most
commonly by invoking a species of social constructivist doctrine in order to argue that while there is no congenital difference between men and women
on the psychological and behavioral level, the strictures of a sexist society induce children to grow up thinking and behaving as though there were,
whence women end up being more admirable in their ethical and philosophical outlook even as they are intolerably degraded. This putative
reconciliation, an attempt to have it both ways, is precarious, unstable, and vulnerable to its inherent and quite obvious contradictions. (Feminist
philosopher Sandra Hardings work provides a cautionary example of the pitfalls.) Most feminists sooner or later fall to one side or the other.
Unfortunately, both factions eventually run up against hard facts that are less than encouraging to them. Science, to the extent that it is the bearer of
these bad tidings, becomes the focus of the resulting hostility . To

consider the essentialists first, we observe that they form the

subculture from which goddess worshipers and believers in a supposed golden age of matriarchy are usually drawn. Of course,
insofar as science is generally hostile to superstition, it grants little encouragement to devotees
of the goddess and offers a worldview by and large antagonistic to its mystical whims .

Matriarchalism, by contrast, need not be overtly superstitious or antirational. However, to the extent that it relies on historical
precedent, it is doomed to be disappointed by orthodox historiography, anthropology, and archaeology. There is not much that the
matriarchalists can say in answer short of a retreat, acknowledged or otherwise, into the misty uncertainties of wishful thinking. 9

The case with antiessentialist feminism is more nuanced and ultimately more important.
Antiessentialism is the common creed of most feminists involved in serious intellectual life in or
out of the academy. The reasons for this should be fairly obvious. The doctrine of innate mental
differences between the sexes holds obvious perils for women embarked on scholarly careers in
a society that until recently barred them from such roles. It would be natural therefore to
assume that the relevant branches of science-behavioral and cognitive psychology,
neurophysiology, and so forth-are the allies and benefactors of the antiessentialists precisely
because they have done so much to dispel the myths of female intellectual limitations. Because of
their insights, one cannot, these days, deny the capacity of women for any kind of intellectual or creative activity without revealing
oneself as an ignoramus. Paradoxically, however, this kind of science figures high on the antiessentialist-feminist enemies list. The

problem is the absolutism-the totalizing inclination we spoke of above-that afflicts even the highest
intellectual circles of feminism. The fact is that the behavioral sciences have given an inordinate
amount of time to the question of sex differences and their origins . By and large, the notion of hardand-fast, rigid, categorical differences has been shown up as an absurdity, which ought to give
feminists all the ammunition they need for political arguments in favor of equality of
opportunity.

Biopower DA
Their movement inevitably will frame exemplary figures as leaders --- thats
inherently biopolitical
Gilroy, 2k (Paul, Professor of American and English Literature at Kings College London,
Against Race, Harvard University Press, pg. 185-186, Tashma)
Here the

move toward biopolitics is best understood as an outgrowth of the pattern

politics in earlier periods by a number of writers.11 It is a mood in which the
person is defined as the body and in which certain exemplary bodies at various times during the
199Osthose of Usher, Tupac, Mike Tyson , Michael ]0rdan, ]ada Pinkett Smith, Na- omi Cambell, Lil Kim, and
Veronica Webbcould become impacted instantiations of community. This situation
necessitates a different conception of freedom from those hitherto channeled into
modern citizenship or developed in post-slave cultures , where bodily and spiritual freedoms were
identified as identity

sharply differentiated and freedom was more likely to be associated with death than with life. On this historic frequency, organic
intellectuals ,\ from Frederick Douglass to George Clinton suggested that the most valu- K able forms of freedom lay in the liberation
of the mind. Dr. Funkensteins prescription was Free your mind and your ass will follow. The dualism was problematic, but it could
be forgiven because, against the expectations of raciologists, it was the mind that came first! Racialized biopolitics

operates from altogether different premises that refuse this distinction . It uses a iversal
of these historic priorities to establish the limits of the authentic ! racial community. This is achieved almost exclusively
through the visuals representation of racialized bodiesengaged in characteristic
activities,f l usually sexual or sportingwhich if they do not induce immediate solidar-; ity, certainly ground and solicit
identification.

This development is problematic for several reasons. For one thing, it marks the racial
community exclusively as_a~spacepf_het$erosexual activitykw and confirms the abandonment of
any politics aside from the ongoing oppositional creativity of genderedself-cultivation: an activity
that is en- dowed with almost sacred significance but undertaken in something of the same resolute spirit as working out with
weights. If it survives at allvppli- tics beco,mes_an Exclpsiyey aesthetic concern with all the perils that im- plies. The racialized body,
b1iffed,irivulnerable, and arranged suggestively with a precision that will be familiar to close readers of the Marquis de Sade, whose
writings anticipate this development, supplies its critical evaluatfive principle. Affiliates of the racialized collectivity are thereby led
to focus their attention on themselves, to decipher, recognise and ac- knowledge themselves as subjects of desire, bringing into play
between themselves and themselves a certain relationship that allows them to dis- cover, in desire, the truth of their being."2

***Women Debate Coach

counteradvocacy

1NC
Kai and I encourage more females to decide to become debate coaches and
demand that they be hired
The lack of female coaching is the root cause of the gender problemsolves every
one of their internal links
THEIR AUTHOR Griffin and Raider 89(J. Cinder and Holly Jane, Women in High School Debate
http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/Griffin&Raider1989PunishmentPar.htm)//kyan
However, there are many activity specific elements that discourage female participation

in
high school debate. Structural barriers endemic to the forensics community dissuade female ninth graders from entering
the activity.6 Recruitment procedures and initial exposure may unintentionally create a
first impression of the activity as dominated by men. By and large, it is a male debater or
a male debate coach that will discuss the activity with new students for the first
time. Additionally, most debate coaches are men. This reinforces a socially proven norm to
prospective debaters, that debate is an activity controlled by men . This male exposure
contributes to a second barrier to participation. Parents are more likely to let a son go
on an overnight than they are a daughter, particularly when the coach is male and the squad
is mostly male. This may be a concern even when the coach is a trusted member of the community. While entry barriers are
formidable, female attrition rates effect the number of women in the activity most significantly. 7 Rates of attrition

are

largely related to the level of success . Given the time and money commitment
involved in debate, if one is not winning one quits debating. The problem is isolating the factors
that contribute to the early failure of women debaters. Even if equal numbers of males and females enter at the novice level, the
female perception of debate as a whole is not based on the gender proportions of her immediate peer group. Rather, she looks to the
composition of debaters across divisions. This may be easily understood if one considers the traditional structures of novice debate.
Often it is the varsity debate team, composed mostly of males, who coach and judge novice. Novices also learn how to debate by
watching debates. Thus, the role models will be those individuals already involved in the

activity and entrenched in its values. The importance of female role models and
mentors should not be underestimated. There is a proven correlation between the number
of female participants and the number of female coaches and judges.8 The presence of
female mentors and role models may not only help attract women to the activity, but
will significantly temper the attrition rate of female debaters. Novice, female debaters
have few role models and, consequently, are more likely to drop out than their
male counterparts; resulting in an unending cycle of female attrition in high school debate.
Pragmatically, there are certain cost benefit criteria that coaches on the high school level, given the constraints of a budget, must
consider. Coaches with teams dominated by males may be reluctant to recruit females due to traveling and housing considerations.
Thus, even if a female decides to join the team, her travel opportunities may be more limited than those of the males on the team.
Once a female has "proven" herself, the willingness to expend team resources on her increases, assuming she overcomes the initial
obstacles.

Net Benefit is Post Colonial Feminismtheir notion that the debate community is
Cuba flawed--applying western feminist theory towards the developing
world, which produces academic victimization that terminates in real
victimization and oppression
Wood 2001
(Cynthia, prof of interdisciplinary studies at Appalachian State U, Nepantla: Views From South, 2(3), p. 430-431)
Representations of women in development theory and practice have been a particular focus of postcolonial and postmodern feminist
critics.2 According to Chandra Mohanty, much of the literature on women and development "discursively

colonize[s] the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third world"
and thereby "produces the image of an average third world woman'" who is the object of development
(Mohanty 1991, 53, 56; see also Ong 1988). This homogenization is problematic in itself; without
acknowledgment of women's diversity, universal principles of gender and development can be
and are applied uncritically across region, culture, class, and ethnicity. Beyond the problem of

homogenization, however, is the one of how women are homogenized. The average third world woman defined in the
women and development literature, Mohanty argues, has very specific attributes that are presented as essential to her character: she
is ignorant, irrational, poor, uneducated, traditional, passive, and sexually oppressed (see Mohanty

1991, 56, 72). So defined, the third world woman cannot be anything but a victimof a similarly
homogenized third world man, of universal sexism, of globalization, and of history. The
essentialist characterization of the third-world-woman-as-victim serves simultaneously to
define the first world woman as liberated, rational, and competent (Mohanty 1991, 56). In the context of
development theory and practice, first world women appear as academic specialists on [End Page 430]
gender and development or as development practitioners at international agencies and NGOs .
Mohanty suggests that the third world woman is constructed as essentially "other" to a similarly essentialized and homogenized first
world woman. As Aihwa Ong (1988, 85, 87) points out, since "non-western women are what we are not," the passive and ignorant
figure of the third world woman points to the cultural and intellectual superiority of the first world development expert.

Construction of the third world woman as Other and victim thus functions to authorize the role
of the first world academic and development practitioner as her savior. Since the third world
woman cannot save herself from the forces that oppress her, the development expert must save her.
Because the third world woman is irrational, ignorant, and uneducated, it is not only unnecessary for the
development expert to consult her about the process of development, it would be a mistake to do
so. As she is "identical and interchangeable" (Ong 1988, 85) with every other third world woman in the ways that
matter for development, knowing one woman, what she needs, and how to fulfill those needs, is sufficient for the development
expert to know and develop all other third world women. These representations of third world women in the

field of gender and development supplement what Anna Tsing (1993, 172) describes as the "invocation of the
narrative of progress and development" to justify why and how development is "done,"
particularly to women. The power of such representations cannot be overstated. Between 1967
and 1996, the World Bank alone either implemented or approved eight hundred
projects with some "gender-related action," and this is in addition to "the gender
content of selected sector work" (Murphy 1995, xi, 1; 1997, 1). To the degree that the ideology of "third-worldwoman-as-victim" dominates development discourse, it enacts the romantic (post)colonial drama, as Gayatri Spivak (1999, 284)
suggests, of "white [wo]men saving brown women from brown men."

Turns the aff - leaves women in an endless embargo and is the justifying narrative
for the violence that produced the problems identified in the 1AC
Mohanty 84 (Chandra, women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Under Western Eyes:
Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, p. 351-352)

What happens when this assumption of "women as an oppressed group" is situated in the
context of Western feminist writing about third world women? It is here that I locate the
colonialist move. By focusing on the representation of women in the third world, and what I refered to earlier
as Western feminisms' seif-presentation in the same context, it seems evident that Western feminists alone
become the true "subjects" of this counter-history. Third world women, on the other hand, never
rise above their generality and their "object" status. While radical and liberal feminist assumptions of
women as a sex ciass might elucidate (however inadequately) the autonomy of particular women's struggles in the
West, the application of the notion of women as a homogeneous category to women in the third

world colonizes and appropriates the pluralities of the simultaneous location of different groups of
women in social class and ethnic frameworks. Similarly, many Zed Press authors, who ground themselves
in the basic analytic strategies of traditional Marxism also implicitly create a "unity" of women by substituting
"women's activity" for "labor" as the primary theoretical determinant of women's situation. Here again, women

are constituted as a coherent group not on the basis of "natural" qualities or needs, but on the
basis of the sociological "unity" of their role in domestic production and wage labor." In other words.
Western feminist discourse, by assuming women as a coherent, already constituted group which is placed in
kinship, legal and other structures, defines third world women as subjects outside of social relations,
instead of looking at the way women are constituted as women through these very structures.
Legal, economic, religious, and familial structures are treated as phenomena to be judged by Western
standards, it is here that ethnocentric universality comes into play. When these structures are defined as
"underdeveloped" or "developing" and women are placed within these structures, an implicit image of the
"average third world woman" is produced. This is the transformation of the (implicitly Western)

"oppressed woman" into the "oppressed third world woman." While the category of "oppressed
woman" is generated through an exclusive focus on gender difference, "the oppressed third world woman"
category has an additional attributethe "third world difference!" The "third world difference" includes

paternalistic attitude towards women in the third world."' Since discussions of the various themes I
identified earlier (e.g., kinship, education, religion, etc.) are conducted in the context of the relative
"underdevelopment" of the third world (which is nothing less than unjustifiably confusing development with the
separate path taken by the West in its development, as well as ignoring the directionality of the first-third world
power relationship), third world women as a group or category are automatically and necessarily defined as:
religious (read "not progressive"), family-oriented (read "traditional"), legal minors (read "they-are-still-notconscious-of-theirrights"), illiterate (read "ignorant"), domestic (read "backward") and sometimes revolutionary
(read "their-country-is-in-a-state-of-war-they-must- fight!"). This is how the "third world difference" is

produced. When the category of "sexually oppressed women" is located within particular systems
in the third world which are defined on a scale which is normed through Eurocentric assumptions, not
only are third world women defined in a particular way prior to their entry into social relations , but since no connections are made
between first and third world power shifts, it reinforces the assumption that people in the third world just
have not evolved to the extent that the West has. This mode of feminist analysis, by homogenizing
and systematizing the experiences of different groups of women in these countries, erases all
marginal and resistant modes of experiences. It is significant that none of the texts I reviewed in the Zed
Press series focuses on lesbian politics or the politics of ethnic and religious marginal groups in third world
women's groups. Resistance can thus only be defined as cumulatively reactive, not as something

inherent in the operation of power. If power, as Michel Foucault has argued recently, can really be
understood only in the context of resistance," this misconceptualization of power is both analytically as
well as strategically problematical. It limits theoretical analysis as well as reinforcing Western cultural
imperialism. For in the context of a first/third world balance of power, feminist analyses which perpetrate

the superiority of the West produce a corresponding set of

universal images of the "third world woman," images like the veiled woman, the powerful mother,
the chaste virgin, the obedient wife, etc. These images exist in universal, ahistorical splendor,
setting in motion a colonialist discourse which exercises a very specific power in defining, coding
and maintaining existing first/third world connections.
and sustain the hegemony of the idea of

Also leads to war its the same logic that justified wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Ayotte and Hussein 5 (Kevin J., Prof in the Department of Communication at the
California State U, and Mary E., lecturer in the Department of Communication at the California
State U, Feminist Formations, 17(3), p. 120) JM
Second, the distinction between liberated U.S. women and unenlightened Afghan women is
often amplifi ed by ethnocentric criticisms of a homogenized Islam . For example, one Time article
entitled The Women of Islam implied that the oppressions it described in some countries are intrinsic to
Islam, a notion emphasized by the subtitle nowhere in the Muslim world are women treated as
equals (Beyer 2001, 50). Here, despite the articles overt attempt to describe the diversity of Islamic practices
among Malaysia, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Kashmir, there is still a discursive commitment to
the religious and geographic homogeneity of Islam in the language of a Muslim world. The infi
nite differences among these countries melt away as they become fi xed in the space of a
separate Islamic world to which they are assigned. At the same time, the religious diversity within each
of the countries named in the article vanishes as the label of Islam comes to exhaust the meaning of religion
under those signifi ers.6 The ethnocentrism inherent in the idea of a Muslim world can be discerned when one
contemplates the likely outcry that would follow the identifi cation of Euro-America as a Christian world. The

neocolonial notion of Islam as a marginal Other to the West is particularly evident in the fact
that the women of Islam are all portrayed as Middle Eastern or Asian, despite the enormous
and growing Muslim population in North America and Europe . Once again, the signifi er Islam
undergoes an Orientalist transformation into one pole of a binary opposition, the signifi ed non-Western.

2NC Solvency
Lack of women debate coaches are the biggest internal link
--recruitment
--solves their role modeling claims
--travel opportunity
--proven correlation
--solves attrition
Everyone loses debatesits about the role models---looking about the if you want to stick
aroundalll women see are men on their teammales will work harder and see loses. Debate
coach role model is more important than female debater role model
Is it about femiine or femalegender or sex
If feminnewhat makes you more feminine than kia
If about femalehave an arugment that wouldnt link to a gender aff but links to
an aff about physical sex---one argument that theyll say no link were about gender
that becomes another disad to their affirmative if the solvency defecit is based on
their sex
Focusing on biological sexual difference is bad
Biopower could be onewhich is what Foucault says is problematic
--truns to irigarayfocused on debatetheir irigary argument shave noconnection
to debate
What are the reasons to vote aff-have discussion about d ate and tehn meta level
about knowledgeare they indepent.
We agree with the goal of more women in debatebut we disagree with our
method/performance. The description is bad.
2 main problems
a. which is a better role modelfocus on the travel aspectcant go to debate
tournaments is because either they or their parents are uncomforatable ro schools
dont want to buy extra hotelsthats a much bigger obstacle because everybody
loses debate. Even if they think they can win debates if they cant travel or parents
dont want to send them overnight theres not much winnign can do for that
b. Theyll say that you saying this doesnt hire more debate coachesbut they
create matieral changejust about the method.
Our demands solvedebaters themselves influence the selection of coaches
THEIR AUTHOR Griffin and Raider 89(J. Cinder and Holly Jane, Women in High School Debate
http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/Griffin&Raider1989PunishmentPar.htm)//kyan

Attracting greater numbers of female coaches is a problem on the high school administrative
level. While the debate world alone cannot solve the problem, debate coaches and sometimes debaters themselves can
influence the selection of new coaches or assistants. This is a useful long term goal.
Statistically speaking, females will continue to select activities other than debate if
the problems of gender related argument selection persist. These problems need
to be addressed in tandem. Thus, not only must the community encourage women to
become debate coaches, it must encourage them to remain in the activity.
Female coaches allow for more travel opportunities for womenthats key to
decrease attrition
THEIR AUTHOR Griffin and Raider 89(J. Cinder and Holly Jane, Women in High School Debate
http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/Griffin&Raider1989PunishmentPar.htm)//kyan

Coaches and male participants must be more sympathetic to the needs of younger
female participants. The concerns of a young woman and her parents about
overnight travel and high levels of participation in a traditionally male dominated
activity cannot be ignored. Additionally, it requires a large degree of independence,
a not traditionally female characteristic, for a women to enter debate initially. This
sense of independence needs to be encouraged and applauded. Women should not be
relegated to positions of lesser authority and leadership than their male
counterparts. They should be actively encouraged to run for positions such as team captain.
Women can discuss arguments after debates and engage in intellectual discourse after a round
on the same level as men. Finally, women can shake hands just as firmly as their partners.
Its also the most direct and largest way to increase participation
THEIR AUTHOR Griffin and Raider 89(J. Cinder and Holly Jane, Women in High School Debate
http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/Griffin&Raider1989PunishmentPar.htm)//kyan

The issue of female role models cannot be overstated. An active effort must be
made to increase the number of female coaches on the high school level, resulting in direct
increases in female participation. This is perhaps the most important, yet most difficult issue
for the community to solve. Female coaches should be recruited at all levels.
Greater incentives should be offered to female debaters that graduate from high
school encouraging them to remain in the activity. Recruiting of females for
college debate is not nearly so competitive as recruiting of males. This has a ripple
effect on the number of women entering and consequently coaching in college.
Socially, it is more acceptable for men to travel on business than women. This makes it even
more difficult for a normal, family and business oriented female to enter a community that
places a premium on extensive travel. Men should accept this fact and offers support to
women in this difficult position. While the debate community may not be able to alter
social norms on a macro level, it can provide an arena of support to women as opposed
to reinforcing existing social biases.

At: Perm
1. They dont get permsthe 1AC presents this debate as a question of competiting
metholdolgiesif we proves ours is better they should lose on face
2. Links to the net benefit

The perms link the 1AC speech act chose to engage in a particular construction of
western academic epistemology our links are generated off of this performance and the
framing they engaged in if the perm DOESNT link, they have severed part of the 1AC
which is a voting issue because severance allows the aff to jettison links to key negative
offense
And, perm fails solidarity is just a smokescreen to erase local women, deny
agency, and reinforce dominant Rojas, Actual Activist in Ciudad Juaraz in
Maquiladora Womens Movements, 2005
[Clara. Profesor Estudios Literarios y Lingsticos, Universidad Autnoma de Ciudad Jurez. The V-Day March in Mexico:
Appropriation and Misuse of Local Womens Activism. NWSA Journal 17.2 (2005) 217-227]
We, at least local scholars and activists, recognized and appreciated this act of solidarity, but to

celebrate it uncritically was not easy. It was not easy because in a benevolent process of
supporting a plea for social justice, specifically for the victims and their families, the
international activists were presumably unaware that they were endorsing local dominant
discourses. And although with the best of intentions, those who came legitimated the self-constructed
benefactor status of a few local women who have for so long rearticulated their activism to local
hegemonic groups, erasing many other voices. The "V-Day" march was an urgent reminder of Linda
Alcoffs recommendation for feminists: to be aware of the power of positionality (1991, 532).
Again, who had the power to name? Who spoke? For whom? For what purpose? After the "V-Day"
march, these questions have become more urgent, especially to me as a local feminist rhetorician. 11 It was evident that the
march was a showcase for local, national, and internationally recognized subject positions that
have the symbolic power to speak, name, and represent the women of Jurez. Also, the event
only confirmed the process of (mis)representation and appropriation already referenced above
as experienced in local activism. We local women scholars, aware for some time of this process,
had already taken a critical distance from a few local women activists who had become
prominent figures during the first years of the confrontations, and who precluded, intentionally or not, the possibility of
forwarding women's rights. Taking a distance was the most appropriate thing to do because our public
denunciation, related to the process of appropriation practiced by some of the local women activists, was generally misused and coopted by those in power, mainly local media, seemingly to fracture local women activists' tabula rasa. Our public critique of the
unethical stance of some of the local women activists was, conveniently, misinterpreted as "just a fight among women," or "just
another fight over resources,"12 further debilitating local women's activism. These are only a few examples of the factors that have
created a scenario of despair and skepticism among local activists . At this point, apparently not only local

scholars, but many other women activists in Jurez have decided to personally respond to the
victims' mothers or families' requests or needs, or women's rights issues, and not to heed public
calls for forums, marches, or any other public event that does not have a clear objective.

At: cant perform us

1. This is an impossible burden for the negativespeech time constraints mean
that we culd never perform the entirety of the 1acthey dont get to win because
they spoke first
2. It entrenches dogmatismeven if we dont read this aff or argument, even if
we dont read this aff or argument, THEY dodebate is a search for the best
approach or answer, theyre refusal for change is the same as the Catholic
Churchs denial of Copernicuss heliocentric model
3. The fact that you have changed your aff since you broke it at umich proves our
argumenttheyve added cards such as Daley or Fremon or Webertheres no
reason why they cant take the arguments we make and incorpoarate it into future
debates

Turnwe need to recognize the partiatliy of knowledgeappraoching dialoge with

a sincere attempt to change one aspect without dismissing the entirety of the
others view is the foundation for betterment
Sihra and Anderson 09 (Karen Sihra and Helen M. Anderson Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of
Toronto Exploring Pedagogical Possibilities for a Nonviolent Consciousness P H I L O S O P H Y O F E D U C A T I O N 2 0 0 9
http://ojs.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/pes/article/view/2732)//kyan

Dialogue then becomes an act of satyagraha as it aims to work within the context and intricacy of
ahimsa. The goal is to pay attention to the partiality of knowledge and how it comes together,
rather than to focus on one view overcoming or defeating another. Much that has been written about the
challenges of championing dialogue as a solution to philosophical educational problems could be used to critique Joshees
expectations of dialogue. Yet when couched in the conceptual framework of philosophical humility,

new possibilities for dialogue in educational contexts are opened up, making it a viable response
to the types of violence we have outlined. For example, as Uma Narayan suggests, working together
across difference with an aim to reduce social harms requires intergroup dialogue approached
with humility and caution. For Narayan, humility requires that a person come to dialogue with the assumption that she
may be missing something, that what appears to be a mistake on the part of another may make more sense if she had a fuller
understanding of the context. 26 Approaching dialogue with caution means to sincerely attempt to

carry out [ones] attempted criticism of [another] in such a way that it does not amount to, or
even seem to amount to, an attempt to denigrate or dismiss entirely the validity of [the others]
point of view.
4. Independently, academic debates about feminism and the various forms and
how it should be reformed is goodits the only way to further feminism
Stone 09 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty Luce Irigaray and the
philosophy of sexual difference, book)//kyan
Evidently, my approach to Irigaray is not simply expository, but is also informed by the aim of working out a viable, substantive,
position in feminist philosophy namely, a conception of nature as self-differentiating and manifesting itself in both duality and
multiplicity. Given this orientation, I shall explain Irigarays claims in a critical and analytic style distinct from her own. Her later
writing style is less allusive and opaque than that of her earlier texts, yet often remains evocative and politically inspirational rather
than precise. My relatively exact language may seem incapable of doing justice to her thought. Against this, I would stress that
readers whose intellectual and cultural standpoints differ from those of a text can, just because of this difference, illuminate
previously occluded aspects of the text. This principle is familiar from feminist history of philosophy: current feminist

concerns can unearth dimensions in earlier texts for example, the sexed connotations of their concepts
which have always been present, but can be articulated and more explicit only in the context of
subsequent feminist movements.xii Similarly, predominantly English-speaking feminist debates around
nature, essentialism, and sexual diversity enable us to analyse critically the strengths and
weaknesses of Irigarays later philosophy and so, too, to ascertain how it can be resituated within a
framework that recognises bodily multiplicity as well as duality.

5. The alt of occupying the position of the powerless is a form of domination. The
safe space of the debate round proves the utter narcissism of their project.
Betensky, 4 (Assistant English Prof GWU, Cultural Critique, Vol. 56, Winter)
People in positions of power often enjoy pretending that they are powerless. This is not to say they want
to be powerless. It tends to be only in situations in which there is an agreement stipulating the limits of play that powerlessness is
pleasurable. Sometimes this agreement is explicit, as in role-playing games and domination fantasies that are
articulated and meticulously acted out by consenting subjects. Sometimes this contract is implied, as in television shows, novels, and
films that offer us vicarious experiences of powerlessness on an understanding so obvious (that they are only television shows,
novels, films) it need not be stated. The pleasures of powerlessness rely on a guarantee of safety, on the

existence (and vigilant policing) of barriers so high and impermeable between the imaginary and the

real that the barriers may survive their own breaching and toppling. The enjoyment of
powerlessness is, in some sense, the enjoyment of power. 2 One enduring experience of make-believe
powerlessness among the dominant classes in Western cultures is the practice of impersonating the poor in their own milieu. 3 This
essay seeks to identify the kinds of cultural work carried out under cover of simulated poverty or relative powerlessness by reading
repeated visits to this site of pleasure in Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier and in Barbara Ehren-reich's recent Nickel and Dimed: On
(Not) Getting By in America. Through an analysis of the uncomfortable pleasures lurking in these narratives, I will suggest that such
simulations allow at once for the consolidation of entrenched modes of bourgeois subjectivity and for a blissful "escape" from them
by means of a continually shifting, contrapuntal notion of the other. The pleasures that the experience of simulating powerlessness
yields to the bourgeois subject are not unique to the class-crossing [End Page 130] context. Each of these texts featuring privileged
subjects in impov-erished disguise belongs to the larger tradition of the passing narrative, and specifically to the subset of that
tradition represented most famously by such "white" passing texts as John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me. 4 (Griffin was a white
reporter who took melanin in order to experience life "as" a black man.) Like the "voluntary Negro" passing Gayle Wald analyzes in
Crossing the Line, the impersonation of the relatively powerless is indeed "a theoretically and ideologically impure enterprise"
(2000, 57). Wald shows how the act of passing participates in and deploys very different, and fundamentally asymmetrical, systems
of signification, depending on the "race" of the passer. Whereas "black" passing narratives tend to represent passing as an
opportunistic act prompted by the economic and social constraints experienced by "black" subjects, and hence potentially as an act
that may be perceived as betrayal of the "race," "white" passing narratives tend to represent the act of passing as morally beneficial
and to figure the "white" passer as a courageous hero. In "white" passing narratives, it seems self-evident that the white person who
elects to pass for black deserves some kind of medal; the "white" passer is represented as accomplishing liberation at once for
himself and for all. In "black" passing narratives, by contrast, far from coming across as heroic, self-sacrificing, or valuable for all,
passing is cast as morally dubious and strategically questionable: In contrast to "white" passing narratives, which embrace the
efficacy of passing as a means of tearing down racial prejudice and establishing avenues of "cross-racial" understanding, "black"
passing narratives cast doubt on passing as a form of racial "liberation," drawing on metaphors of concealment and disguise to
highlight the compromised agency of the subject who "crosses over." (15-16) The analogy I want to introduce here between passing
from a "racially" privileged to a "racially" oppressed position and passing from a dominant-class to a dominated-class position is
more than structural. Certainly, the subtle construction of the "white" passer's identity that Wald's comparative analysis reveals has
much in common with the construction of the bourgeois passer's identity, "racial" and socioeconomic privilege having long been
intimate associates. Yet it is the way that the narcissistic practice of the "white" passer [End Page 131] taps into a fund of selfevidence and manages to pass itself off as gutsy and heroic that I wish to target in the context of poverty simulation. By reading the
assumptions of "white" and "black" passing narratives through each other, Wald's work highlights the insidious invisibility with
which the representation of certain "benevolent" and "liberatory" practices, performed from positions of privilege, may consolidate
and even expand the possibilities of these very positions of privilege. The same insidious, polymorphous invisibility of privilege, and
its representational strategies, casts as heroes those who voluntarily and temporarily relinquish their class privilege, blinding us to
their own peculiar opportunism. In these cases of cross-class passing, simulators of poverty know not only that they are not poor
but also that they can't know what it is really like to be poor. They could ask the authentic dominated to give their own accounts of
their experience, but such accounts would never satisfy the demands of the simulators' desire. The desired pleasure is in fact
in the acquisition of another authentic kind of knowledge ,

a kind of knowledge that the dominated truly cannot

provide: knowledge of what it would feel like for "me"the middle-class selfto be relatively
powerless. Yet the knowledge pursued explicitly ("selflessly") is the knowledge of how it feels to be
"authentically" dominated. The pleasurable knowledge needs the cover of the failed-from-the-start,
"disinterested" knowledge in order to justify its production. Despite the precautions it takes and the
protestations it makes, however, the special, pleasurable knowledge for which the dominant class hungersthis is what it would feel
like if I were powerlesskeeps poking out from behind its decoy, the pursuit of authentic, disinterested knowledge of powerlessness.
And when it does, it has to pay, for if the imagination of powerlessness reveals itself to be an interested expression of power, it ceases
to function as what Bourdieu calls a strategy of "soft" dominationa strain of gifting activity that rewards the giver

many times over for a seemingly extravagant, generous expenditure. Thus, narratives such as Harper's are
both received and related with an uneasy combination of desire and vehement disapprobation: they are admired and self-admiring
at the same time that they are ridiculed and apologetically, self-consciously ridiculous. [End Page 132] This secondary passing
functionthe passing of one knowledge for anotherallows

narcissistic pleasure to get itself misrecognized as

politically significant action on behalf of the other, thus contributing a strategy of continued,
euphemized domination to the hegemonic portfolio. Lurking in my argument is the hopeful sense that "soft"
domination can succeed only so long as the pursuit of pleasurable knowledge passes unrecognized for the pursuit of a noble, selfless
knowledge of the other, for the other.

***Post-colonialism Counter
Criticism

2NC Overview
The 1AC is tantamount to a _______ in this debate round though maybe wellmeaning, the 1AC is wholly constrained by Western academic epistemologies that speak
for women of the global South while denying those women agency not only does this
create academic exclusion, but it creates real exclusion that enables imperialism and
violence.
This debate round is a referendum on the representational strategy of the 1ac and the
way that academic discourses commodify developing world women and deploy them for
political projects wholly within its own echo chamber - rather than continue to engage in
this process of imperialist academia, we should de-colonize the debate space and allow
those people to organize and speak for themselves the criticism is a prior question to
the aff

Jeron Cards
First, their creation of the oppressed third world woman furthers eurocentrism
by retaining western women as subjects and objectifying third world women. This
justifies homogenization and paternalistic attitudes towards third world women.
Mohanty 84
(Chandra Talpade, She is the women's studies department chair and professor of
Women's and Gender Studies, Sociology, and the Cultural Foundations of Education
and Dean's Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University, Under Western
Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, boundary 2, Vol. 12/13, Vol. 12,
no. 3 - Vol. 13, no. 1, On Humanism and the University I: The Discourse of
Humanism (Spring - Autumn, 1984), pp. 333-358, JSTOR)//SK
What happens when this assumption of "women as an oppresed group" is situated in the context of Western feminist writing about third world women? It is here that I locate the
colonialist move. By focusing on the representation of women in the third world, and what I refered to earlier as Western feminisms' self-presentation in the same context, it seems

Western feminists alone become the true "subjects" of this counter-history. Third world
women, on the other hand, never rise above their generality and their "object" status.
While radical and liberal feminist assumptions of women as a sex class
might elucidate (however inadequately) the autonomy of particular women's struggles
in the West, the application of the notion of women as a homogeneous
category to women in the third world colonizes and appropriates the
pluralities of the simultaneous location of different groups of women in
social class and ethnic frameworks. Similarly, many Zed Press authors, who ground themselves in the basic analytic strategies of
evident that

traditional marxism also implicitly create a "unity" of women by substituting "women's activity" for "labor" as the primary theoretical determinant of women's situation. Here again,
women are constituted as a coherent group not on the basis of "natural" qualities or needs, but on the basis of the sociological "unity" of their role in domestic production and wage

Western feminist discourse, by assuming women as a coherent,

already constituted group which is placed in kinship, legal and other structures, defines third world women as subjects outside of social relations, instead of looking at the way
women are constituted as women through these very structures. Legal, economic , religious, and familial structures are
treated as phenomena to be judged by Western standards. It is here that ethnocentric
labor.40 In other words,

universality comes into play. When these structures are defined as "underdeveloped" or "developing" and women are placed within these structures, an implicit image of the "average
third world woman" is produced. This is the transformation of the (implicitly Western) "oppressed woman" into the "oppressed third world woman." While the category of "oppressed

!" The
"third world difference" includes a paternalistic attitude towards women in the third world .4' Since
woman" is generated through an exclusive focus on gender difference, "the oppressed third world woman" category has an additional attribute-the "third world difference

discussions of the various themes I identified earlier (e.g., kinship, education, religion, etc.) are conducted in the context of the relative "underdevelopment" of the third world (which is
nothing less than unjustifiably confusing development with the separate path taken by the West in its development, as well as ignoring the directionality of the first-third world power
relationship), third world women as a group or category are automatically and necessarily defined as: religious (read "not progressive"), family-oriented (read "traditional"), legal minors
(read "they-are-still-not-conscious-of-their- rights"), illiterate (read "ignorant"), domestic (read "backward") and sometimes revolutionary (read "their-country-is-in-a-state-of-war-theymust-fight!"). This is how the "third world difference" is produced. When the category of "sexually oppressed women" is located within particular systems in the third world which are
defined on a scale which is normed through Eurocentric assumptions, not only are third world women defined in a particular way prior to their entry into social relations, but since no

it reinforces the assumption that people in the

third world just have not evolved to the extent that the West has. This
mode of feminist analysis, by homogenizing and systematizing the
experiences of different groups of women in these countries, erases all
marginal and resistant modes of experiences . It is significant that none of the texts I reviewed in the Zed Press series
focuses on lesbian politics or the politics of ethnic and religious marginal groups in third world women's groups. Resistance can thus only be
defined as cumulatively reactive, not as something inherent in the
operation of power. If power, as Michel Foucault has argued recently, can really be understood
only in the context of resistance,4 this misconceptualization of power is both
analytically as well as strategically problematic al. It limits theoretical analysis as well as
reinforcing Western cultural imperialism. For in the context of a first/third world balance of power, feminist analyses which
connections are made between first and third world power shifts,

perpetrate and sustain the hegemony of the idea of the superiority of the West produce a corresponding set of universal images of the "third world woman," images like the veiled

These images exist in universal, ahistorical

splendor, setting in motion a colonialist discourse which exercises a very
specific power in defining, coding and maintaining existing first/third
world connections.
woman, the powerful mother, the chaste virgin, the obedient wife, etc.

Their position of charity and false solidarity that takes place from a distance and
above are precisely the sort of voyeuristic investments in suffering that not only
make true solidarity impossible but also invest in the narratives of power at the
root of the violence they describe.
El Kilombo Intergalactico 7 [Collective in Durham NC that interviewed Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Beyond
Resistance: Everything p. 1-2]
In our efforts to forge a new path, we found that an old friendthe Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin Nacional (Zapatista Arm of National Liberation,
EZLN)was already taking enormous strides to move toward a politics adequate to our time, and that it was thus necessary to attempt an evaluation of
Zapatismo that would in turn be adequate to the real event of their appearance. That is, despite the fresh air that the Zapatista uprising had blown into
the US political scene since 1994, we began to feel that even the inspiration of Zapatismo had been quickly contained through its insertion into a wellworn and untenable narrative: Zapatismo was another of many faceless and indifferent third world movements that demanded and deserved

we
viewed this focus on solidarity as the foreign policy equivalent of white guilt ,
quite distinct from any authentic impulse toward, or recognition of, the necessity
for radical social change. The notion of solidarity that still pervades much of the
Left in the U.S. has continually served an intensely conservative political agenda
that dresses itself in the radical rhetoric of the latest rebellion in the darker
nations while carefully maintaining political action at a distance from our own
daily lives, thus producing a political subject (the solidarity provider) that more
closely resembles a spectator or voyeur (to the suffering others) than a participant
or active agent, while simultaneously working to reduce the solidarity recipient to
a mere object (of our pity and mismatched socks ). At both ends of this relationship, the process of solidarity
ensures that subjects and political action never meet; in this way it serves to make
change an a priori impossibility . In other words, this practice of solidarity urges us to
participate in its perverse logic by accepting the narrative that power tells us about
itself: that those who could make change dont need it and that those who need change cant
make it. To the extent that human solidarity has a future, this logic and practice do
not! For us, Zapatismo was (and continues to be) unique exactly because it has provided us with the elements
to shatter this tired schema. It has inspired in us the ability, and impressed upon
us the necessity, of always viewing ourselves as dignified political subjects with
desires, needs, and projects worthy of struggle . With the publication of The Sixth Declaration of the Lacandn
solidarity from leftists in the global north. From our position as an organization composed in large part by people of color in the United States,

Jungle in June of 2005, the Zapatistas have made it even clearer that we must move beyond appeals to this stunted form of solidarity, and they present

wherever in the world we may be located, we must become

companer@s (neither followers nor leaders) in a truly global struggle to change
the world. As a direct response to this call, this analysis is our attempt to read Zapatismo as providing us with the rough draft of a manual for
us with a far more difficult challenge: that

contemporary political action that eventually must be written by us all.

Impact War/Genocide
Orientalist racism is the root cause of war and genocide.
Batur, 07 Associate Professor of Sociology, and Director of Urban Studies, Vassar College, 2007 (Pinar, Heart of Violence:
Global Racism, War, and Genocide, Handbook of the Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations, ed. By Hernn Vera and Joe R.
Feagin, 2007, p. 441-443)

War and genocide are horrid, and taking them for granted is inhuman. In the 21st century, our problem is not only
seeing them as natural and inevitable, but even worse: not seeing, not noticing, but ignoring
them. Such act and thought, fueled by global racism, reveal that racial inequality has advanced
from the establishment of racial hierarchy and institutionalization of segregation , to the
confinement and exclusion, and elimination, of those considered inferior through genocide. In this
trajectory, global racism manifests genocide. But this is not inevitable . This article, by examining global racism, explores the new terms of
exclusion and the path to permanent war and genocide, to examine the integrality of genocide to the framework of global antiracist confrontation.
GLOBAL RACISM IN THE AGE OF CULTURE WARS Racist legitimization of inequality has changed from presupposed biological inferiority to
assumed cultural inadequacy. This defines the new terms of impossibility of coexistence, much less equality. The Jim Crow racism of biological
inferiority is now bein g replaced with a new and modern racism (Baker 1981; Ansell 1997) with culture war as the key to justify difference, hierarchy,
and oppression. The ideology of culture war is becoming embedded in institutions, defining the workings of organizations, and is now defended by
individuals who argue that they are not racist, but are not blind to the inherent differences between African-Americans/Arabs/Chinese, or whomever,
and us. Us as a concept defines the power of a group to distinguish itself and to assign a superior value to its institutions, revealing certainty that
affinity with them will be harmful to its existence (Hunter 1991; Buchanan 2002). How can we conceptualize this shift to examine what has changed
over the past century and what has remained the same in a racist society? Joe Feagin examines this question with a theory of systemic racism to explore
societal complexity of interconnected elements for longevity and adaptability of racism. He sees that systemic racism persists due to a white racial
frame, defining and maintaining an organized set of racialized ideas, stereotypes, emotions, and inclinations to discriminate (Feagin 2006: 25). The
white racial frame arranges the routine operation of racist institutions, which enables social and economic reproduction and amendment of racial
privilege. It is this frame that defines the political and economic bases of cultural and historical legitimization. While the white racial frame is one of the
components of systemic racism, it is attached to other terms of racial oppression to forge systemic coherency. It has altered over time from slavery to
segregation to racial oppression and now frames culture war, or clash of civilizations, to legitimate the racist oppression of domination, exclusion,
war, and genocide. The

concept of culture war emerged to define opposing ideas in America regarding privacy, censorship,
been globalized through conflicts over immigration , nuclear
power, and the war on terrorism. Its discourse and action articulate to flood the racial space of
systemic racism. Racism is a process of defining and building communities and societies based on racialized hierarchy of power. The
citizenship rights, and secularism, but it has

expansion of capitalism cast new formulas of divisions and oppositions, fostering inequality even while integrating all previous forms of oppressive
hierarchical arrangements as long as they bolstered the need to maintain the structure and form of capitalist arrangements (Batur-VanderLippe 1996).
In this context, the white racial frame, defining the terms of racist systems of oppression, enabled the globalization of racial space through the
articulation of capitalism (Du Bois 1942; Winant 1994). The key to understanding this expansion is comprehension of the synergistic relationship
between racist systems of oppression and the capitalist system of exploitation. Taken separately, these two systems would be unable to create such
oppression independently. However, the synergy between them is devastating. In the age of industrial capitalism, this synergy manifested itself
imperialism and colonialism. In the age of advanced capitalism, it is war and genocide. The capitalist system, by enabling and maintaining the
connection between everyday life and the global, buttresses the processes of racial oppression, and synergy between racial oppression and capitalist
exploitation begets violence. Etienne Balibar points out that the connection between everyday life and the global is established through thought, making
global racism a way of thinking, enabling connections of words with objects and words with images in order to create concepts (Balibar 1994: 200).
Yet, global

racism is not only an articulation of thought, but also a way of knowing and acting,
framed by both everyday and global experiences. Synergy between capitalism and racism as
systems of oppression enables this perpetuation and destruction on the global level . As
capitalism expanded and adapted to the particularities of spatial and temporal variables, global racism became part of its
legitimization and accommodation, first in terms of colonialist arrangements. In colonized and colonizing lands, global racism has
been perpetuated through racial ideologies and discriminatory practices under capitalism by the creation and recreation of connections among
memory, knowledge, institutions, and construction of the future in thought and action. What makes racism global are the bridges connecting the
particularities of everyday racist experiences to the universality of racist concepts and actions, maintained globally by myriad forms of prejudice,
discrimination, and violence (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991; Batur 1999, 2006). Under colonialism, colonizing and colonized societies were antagonistic
opposites. Since

colonizing society portrayed the colonized other, as the adversary and challenger
of the the ideal self, not only identification but also segregation and containment were
essential to racist policies. The terms of exclusion were set by the institutions that fostered and
maintained segregation, but the intensity of exclusion, and redundancy, became more apparent
in the age of advanced capitalism, as an extension of post-colonial discipline. The exclusionary
measures when tested led to war, and genocide. Although, more often than not, genocide was perpetuated and fostered by
the post-colonial institutions, rather than colonizing forces, the colonial identification of the inferior other led to
segregation, then exclusion, then war and genocide. Violence glued them together into seamless
continuity. Violence is integral to understanding global racism. Fanon (1963), in exploring colonial oppression,
discusses how divisions created or reinforced by colonialism guarantee the perpetuation, and escalation, of violence for both the colonizer and
colonized. Racial differentiations, cemented through the colonial relationship, are integral to the aggregation of violence during and after colonialism:
Manichaeism [division of the universe into opposites of good and evil] goes to its logical conclusion and dehumanizes (Fanon 1963:42). Within this
dehumanizing framework, Fanon argues that the violence resulting from the destruction of everyday life, sense of self and imagination under

colonialism continues to infest the post-colonial existence by integrating colonized land into the violent destruction of a new geography of hunger and
exploitation (Fanon 1963: 96). The geography of hunger marks the context and space in which oppression and exploitation continue. The historical
maps drawn by colonialism now demarcate the boundaries of post-colonial arrangements. The white racial frame restructures this space to fit the
imagery of symbolic racism, modifying it to fit the television screen, or making the evidence of the necessity of the politics of exclusion, and the violence
of war and genocide, palatable enough for the front page of newspapers, spread out next to the morning breakfast cereal. Two examples of this
geography of hunger and exploitation are Iraq and New Orleans.

2NC Framework
[Slow] The roll of the ballot is to endorse the team who provides the best
representational strategy regarding the struggle for agency of Cuban women
[Semi-Slow] The strategy of the 1AC relies on symbolic reductionism perpetrated by
Western academic discourses, always holding at arms length the voices of the people who
those symbols purport to represent its not a mere coincidence that the rise of
departments like Latin American Studies, African Studies, and Asian Studies
corresponded with the rise of imperialism in Europe. The academic machinery coterminated with the imperialist project thats the Anand evidence
Thus, this is our PRIOR QUESTION argument criticism of representational strategies
must come first because third world women have been wholly erased within the
academia, turned into political symbols for an industrial complex that is more concerned
with publish or perish than meaningful change the western epistemology conflates all
developing world women into an interchangeable stereotype that needs paternalistic
salvation from the west this is colonialist logic that must be rejected thats the Wood
evidence
And, be skeptical of aff epistemology western feminism has wholly colonized the
discourse of women in the third world they project patriarchy and victimization
onto the construction of Third World Difference
Mohanty 84
(Chandra, women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Under Western Eyes: Feminist
Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, p. 334)
The relationship between "Woman"a cultural and ideological composite Other constructed through diverse
representational discourses (scientific, literary, juridical, linguistic, cinematic, etc.)and "women"reai,
material subjects of their collective historiesis one of the central questions the practice of feminist scholarship
seeks to address. This connection between women as historical subjects and the re-presentation of

Woman produced by hegemonic discourses is not a relation of direct identity, or a relation of

correspondence or simple implication.* It is an arbitrary relation set up by particular cultures. I would
like to suggest that the feminist writings I analyze here discursively colonize the material and
historical heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third world, thereby producing/representing a composite, singular "Third World Woman"an image which appears arbitrarily
constructed, but never- theless carries with it the authorizing signature of Western humanist
discourse.' I argue that assumptions of privilege and ethnocentric universality on the one hand, and
inadequate self-consciousness about the effect of Western scholarship on the "third world" in the context of a
world system dominated by the West on the other, characterize a sizable extent of Western feminist
work on women in the third world. An analysis of "sexual difference" in the form of a cross-culturally
singular, monolithic notion of patriarchy or male dominance leads to the construction of a similarly
reductive and homogeneous notion of what I call the "Third World Difference"that stable, ahistorical
something that apparently oppresses most if not all the women in these countries. And it is in the
production of this "Third World Difference" that Western feminisms appropriate and "colonize"
the fundamental complexities and conflicts which characterize the lives of women of different
classes, religions, cultures, races and castes in these countries. It is in this process of homogenization and
systemitization of the oppression of women in the third world that power is exercised in much of
recent Western feminist discourse, and this power needs to be defined and named.

2NC Link Wall

1. Their justification for the aff is liberating the Cuban womenthis is the same
logic that caused the extension of the Gulf Warwe had to liberate their women
because they were so far behindthis logic causes a forced imposition of the
Western feminist narrative causes colonialism
Culture DA-- 1ac Lundgren bases the depiction of Cuban women from a single
experience in a Reggaetn ringthis is the foundation of cultural essentialism that
marginalizes the groups which they use to justify their action and causes
colonialismturns the case
Narayan 98 (Uma, feminist scholar, and a Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College Essence of Culture and a Sense of
History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism Hypatia vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring 1998 )//kyan
One important instance in which the injunction to attend to differences among women can

lead to problems is
when this project is carried out in a manner that avoids essentialism about women by replicating
essentialist notions of cultural differences between Western and Non-western cul- tures .
The project of attending to differences among women across a variety of national and cultural contexts then becomes a
project that endorses and replicates problematic and colonialist assumptions about the cultural
differ- ences between Western culture and Non-western cultures and the women who inhabit them.
Seemingly universal essentialist generalizations about all women are replaced by culturespecific essentialist generalizations that depend on totalizing categories such as Western
culture, Non-western cultures, Western women, Third World women, and so forth. Although
often motivated by the injunction to take differences among women seriously, such moves fracture the universalist
category Woman only slightly, because culture-specific essentialist generalizations differ from
uni- versalistic essentialist generalizations only in degree or scope, and not in kind. The resulting
portraits of Western women, Third World women, African women, Indian women,
Muslim women, or the like, as well as the pictures of the cultures that are attributed to these
various groups of women, often remain fundamentally essentialist. They depict as homogenous
groups of heterogeneous people whose values, interests, ways of life, and moral and political
commitments are internally plural and divergent. Numerous exam- ples of such generalizations are criticized
by Chandra Mohanty, who points out that each of the texts she analyzes assumes women have a coherent
group identity within the different cultures discussed, prior to their entry into social
relations. Thus, Omvedt can talk about Indian women while referring to a particular group of
women in the State of Maharashtra, Cutrufelli about women of Africa, and Minces about Arab
women, as if these groups of women have some sort of obvious cultural coherence.
(Mohanty 1991,70) There are a number of similarities between gender essentialism and cultural essentialism. While gender
essentialism often proceeds to assume and con- struct sharp binaries about the qualities, abilities, or locations of men and
women, cultural essentialism assumes and constructs sharp binaries between Western culture and Non-western cultures or
between Western culture and particular Other cultures. In both cases, the discursive reiteration of such essential

differences operates in a manner that helps construct the senses of gender identity and of cultural
identity that shape the self-under- standings and subjectivities of different groups of people who
inhabit these discursive contexts. With both gender essentialism and cultural essentialism, discourses about difference
often operate to conceal their role in the produc- tion and reproduction of such differences,
presenting these differences as something pre-given and prediscursively real that the discourses of differ- ence merely describe
rather than help construct and perpetuate.

Turns the affcant address feminism without cultural essentialismit will

inevitably co-opt your movement
Narayan 98 (Uma, feminist scholar, and a Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College Essence of Culture and a Sense of
History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism Hypatia vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring 1998 )//kyan

Cultural essentialism often poses a pressing problem for feminist agendas in Third World
contexts, given that essentialist constructions of particular Third World cultures often play a
powerful ongoing role in political movements. that are inimical to womens interests in various
parts of the Third World These essentialist portraits of culture often depict culturally dominant
norms of femininity, and practices that adversely affect women, as central compo- nents of cultural
identity. They often equate womens conformity to the status quo with the preservation of
culture and cast feminist challenges to norms and practices affecting women as cultural betrayals. In such essential- ist
constructions of culture, norms and practices affecting the social status and roles of women are often represented as of central
import to the task of resisting westernization and preserving national culture, reducing Third World feminist

contestations of local norms and practices pertaining to women as betrayals of Nation and Culture. When essentialist
definitions of Third World cultures are cloaked in the virtuous mantle of resistance to Western cultural imperialism, Third World
feminists and others who contest prevailing norms and practices are discursively set up in the roles of cultural traitors and
stooges of Western imperialism. In addition, essentialist pictures of national culture and traditions often

operate to justify the exploitation, domination, and marginalization of religious and ethnic
minorities, and members of socially subordinate castes and the poor ; and they are used to dismiss a variety
of political demands for justice, equality, rights, or democracy as symptoms of the cultural corruption wrought by Western ideas
(Mayer 1995, Howard 1993). These moves are often startlingly exemplified in the political rhetoric and maneuvers of many Third
World fundamentalist and conservative politi- cal movements. Given that essentialist definitions of culture are often

deployed in ways that are detrimental to the interests of many members of the national
community, including various groups of women, I would argue that femi- nists have a serious
stake in challenging such definitions. Viable postcolon- ial feminist perspectives need to engage in rethinking
the prevailing portraits of Western culture and of different Third World cultures, rather than assist- ing in their replication and
reification by conflating political resistance to Western domination and intrusion with essentialist notions of cultural difference
and cultural preservation.

Imperialism disadtheir focus on difference is what justified the construction of

the cultural other and causes actual imperialism and colonialismturns the
casesmargnializes non-western feminine identities
Narayan 98 (Uma, feminist scholar, and a Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College Essence of Culture and a Sense of
History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism Hypatia vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring 1998 )//kyan
Given the similarities between cultural essentialism and gender essen- tialism, it is interesting to encounter culturally essentialist generalizations being
generated as a result of self-conscious feminist attempts to avoid gender essentialism, something that happens not infrequently in class- rooms and
conferences, as well as in academic texts. Why is it that attempts to avoid gender essentialism sometimes generate rather than deter cultural
essentialism? I believe that part of the explanation lies in the prevalence of an incomplete understanding of the relationship

between
gender essentialism and cultural imperialism. The gender essentialism perpetu- ated by
relatively privileged subjects, including Western feminists, is under- stood to be a form of
cultural imperialism, whereby privileged subjects tend to construct their cultural Others in
their own image, taking their particular locations and problems to be those of All
Women. This account ignores the degree to which cultural imperialism often proceeds by means of
an insistence on Difference, by a projection of Imaginary differences that constitute ones
Others as Other, rather than via an insistence on Sameness . Failing to see that cultural imperialism can involve
both sorts of problems, attempts to avoid the Scylla of Sameness often result in moves that leave one foundering on the Charybdis of Difference. .
Reducing cultural imperialism to the problem of the imposition of Sameness conceals the importance of the

role that sharply-contrasting

of cultural differences between Western culture and its various Others
played during colonial times, both in various justifications for colonial rule and in the scripts of various
essen- tialist pictures

nationalist movements that chal- lenged and sought to overthrow colonialism, pictures that resurface in postcolonial attempts at engaging with issues
of cultural difference.

A postcolonial feminist perspective that strives to be attentive to differences

among women without replicating such essentialist notions of cultural differ+ ences needs to
acknowledge the degree to which the colonial encounter depended on an insistence on
Difference; on sharp, virtually absolute, contrasts between Western culture and Other cultures. After all, Kiplings lines Oh, East is East
and West is West and never the twain shall meet (Kipling 1944, 233) were written at a historical moment when East and West were engaged in a
seriously protracted encounter. This frequently

reiterated contrast between Western and Non-western

cultures was a politically motivated colonial construction. The self-proclaimed superiority of
Western culture functioned as the rationale and mandate for colonialism. The colonial self-portrait of
Western culture had, however, only a faint resemblance to the moral, political, and cultural values that actually pervaded Life in Western societies.

Thus liberty and equality could be repre- sented as paradigmatic Western values, hallmarks of its
civilizational superi- ority, at the very moment when Western nations were engaged in slavery, 90 Hypatia colonization, expropriation, and the
denial of liberty and equality not only to the colonized but to large segments of Western
subjects, including women. Profound similarities between Western culture and many of its Others, such as hierarchical social systems,
huge economic disparities between members, and the mistreatment and inequality of women, were systematically ignored in this construction of
Western culture. The colonial

picture of the sharp contrasts between Western culture and its Others
also resulted in seriously distorted representations of various colonized cultures, often as a result of

the prejudiced and ideologically motivated stereotypes held by Western colonizers but also as a result of anti-colonial nationalist movements embracing
and trying to revalue the imputed facets of their own culture embedded in these stereotypes. Thus,

while the British imputed

spiritualism to Indian culture to suggest lack of readiness for the this-worldly project of selfrule, many Indian nationalists embraced this definition in order to make the anticolonialist and
national- ist argument that our culture was both distinctive from and superior to Western
culture. As a result of this colonial process, sharply contrastive essentialist pictures of Western
culture and of various colonized national cultures were reiterated by both colonizers and the
colonized, both of whom failed to register the degree to which their very constitution as Western or Non-western subjects resulted from these
putative con- trasts between cultures.

Irigaray herself concedes the linkher views come from a culturally specific
standpointshe believes her view from a European tradition lets her see the
reality of all human bodies
Stone 09 (Alison, Professor of philosophy, Lancester Universty Luce Irigaray and the
philosophy of sexual difference, book)//kyan
The idea that Irigarays descriptions of nature and sexed humanity differ from traditional patriarchal descriptions may seem
problematic. Is Irigaray hereby claiming to leap to a pre-linguistic, pre-metaphysical, pre-cultural description of nature that would
deny our unavoidable situation in language, culture, and metaphysics? xiii Irigaray does not deny that she claims

knowledge of nature and human bodies from a culturally specific standpoint; rather, in her view,
her cultural location within the European philosophical tradition gives her
epistemic access to nature and to the natural reality of human bodies . This location
offers her the resources to reconceive nature in a novel way and, on that basis, to offer a correspondingly
novel and socially critical account of sexual difference.xiv

And its conflationary of the many women who live in places likeCuba by
showing all Latin American women as oppressed victims of Latin machismo, you
deny women agency and that turns the case
Mohanty 84 (Chandra, women's studies department chair at Syracuse University,
Under Western Eyes:
Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, p. 344)JM
What is problematical, then, about this kind of use of "women" as a group, as a stable category of
analysis, is that it assumes an ahistorical, universal unity between women based on a
generalized notion of their subordination. Instead of analytically demonstrating the production of
women as socio-economic political groups within particular local contexts, this move limits the
definition of the female subject to gender identity, completely bypassing social class and ethnic
identities. What characterizes women as a group is their gender (sociologically not necessarily biologically
defined) over and above everything else, indicating a monolithic notion of sexual difference. Because women
are thus constituted as a coherent group, sexual difference becomes coterminus with female
subordination, and power is automatically defined in binary terms: people who have it (read: men),
and people who do not (read: women). Men exploit, women are exploited. As suggested above, such
simplistic formulations are both reductive and ineffectual in designing strategies to combat
oppressions. All they do is reinforce binary divisions between men and women.
And their depictions of sexual violence are a link -

Mohanty 84 (Chandra, women's studies department chair at Syracuse University,

Under Western Eyes:
Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, p. 337-338)JM
Fran Hosken,'' in writing about the relationship between human rights and female genital mutilation in
Africa and the Middle East, bases her whole discussion/condemnation of genital mutilation on one privileged
premise; the goal of genital mutilation is "to mutilate the sexual pleasure and satisfaction of woman" ("FGM," p.
11). This, in turn, leads her to claim that women's sexuality is controlled, as is their reproductive

potential. According to Hosken, "male sexual politics" in Africa and around the world "share the same
political goal: to assure female dependence and subservience by any and all means" ("FGM," p. 14).
Physical vioience against women (rape, sexual assault, excision, infibulation, etc.) is thus carried out "with an
astonishing consensus among men in the world" ("FGM," p. 14). Here, women are defined consistently as

the victims of male controlthe "sexually oppressed." Although it is true that the potential of male
violence against women circumscribes and elucidates their social position to a certain extent, defining women
as archetypal victims freezes them into "objects-who-defend themselves," men into "subjectswho-perpetrate-violence," and (every) society into powerless (read: women) and powerful (read:
men) groups of people. Male violence must be theorized and interpreted within specific societies,
both in order to understand it better, as well as in order to effectively organize to change it .'*
Sisterhood cannot be assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete, historical and political
practice and analysis.

2NC Impact Wall

Increases colonialism and turns the aff Abu-Lughod 1(Lila, professor of anthropology and Women's and Gender Studies at
Columbia University Orientalism and Middle East Feminist Studies pg 106)AQB
One central question is whether local feminisms, especially those of the early decades of this century,
should be considered "indigenous" or imported, liberating or disciplinary. This
debate has consequences for current discussions about what kind of feminism is appropriate for the Middle East.
In a collection of essays I recently brought together under the title Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity
in the Middle East (1998), some scholars took up these questions, showing indeed that colonial

constructions of women as the locus of Eastern backwardness shaped anticolonial

nationalisms and that feminist projects relied on Western discourses on women's
public roles, marriage, domesticity, and scientific childrearing . But these essays also
explored the selectiveness with which Western ideas and models were appropriated; the significant changes that
were introduced when European ideas were translated into local contexts; and the very ways that middle-class
women themselves were able to make positive use of what seemed like new systems of discipline and regulation.
Following one of the most productive lines of thought made possible by Orientalism, with the division

between East and West (and representation of each) to be understood not as a natural
geographic or cultural fact but as a product of the political and historical
encounter of imperialism, we argued that condemning "feminism" as an inauthentic Western import is
just as inaccurate as celebrating it as a local or indigenous project The first position assumes such a thing as cultural purity; the second underestimates the formative power of colonialism in the

development of the region.

2nc Alt solvency

The altnernative sovlesCuban women have been doing better because of lack of
Western influencetheyre the most feminist country in Latin America and are
specifically doing better than the United Statesthey dont need nor want you to
identify with them
Torregrosa 12 (LUISITA LOPEZ TORREGROSA, adjunct professor at Fordham University's Latin American and Latino
Studies Institute and at Columbia University and a guest lecturer at Syracuse University Cuba May Be the Most Feminist Country in
Latin America MAY 1, 2012, http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/cuba-may-be-the-most-feminist-country-in-latinamerica/?_r=0)//kyan

Cuba may just be the most feminist country in Latin America. It ranks No. 3 in the world when it
comes to the political participation of women in Parliament, according to a United Nations survey on women
in politics. And its the only nation in Latin America to rank in the top 20 in the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2011.

In sheer numbers and percentages, Cuban womens advance is notable . Cuba has a high number
of female professional and technical workers (60 percent of the total work force in those areas) and in
Parliament (43 percent), as well as high levels of primary, secondary and tertiary education
enrollment, according to the Gender Gap report. In contrast, Brazil, the regions economic behemoth, ranks 82nd overall in the world, according
to the report, though it moved up three places last year with improvements in womens wages, estimated earned income and the election of a female

head of state, President Dilma Rousseff. What explains Cubas record? Sarah Stephens, the director of the Center for Democracy
in the Americas, a Washington-based advocacy and research organization that focuses on Cuba and U.S.-Cuba relations and opposes the U.S. embargo,
is working on a

report on the status of women in Cuba. Cuban women tell us that they feel lucky to
have come of age since 1959, she says. Before 1959, women comprised only 5 percent of
university graduates and only 12 percent of the work force, often holding menial jobs. Today, she

says, women make up 41 percent of the Communist Party, half of the islands work force, the majority of students in high schools and universities, 60
percent of university faculties and the majority of provosts and department heads (but not presidents). And women hold top portfolios in ministries
and in key provincial positions. Fidel

Castro called for womens rights as a revolution within a revolution and this
commitment became tangible through changes in legislation and policy, Ms. Stephens says. But, that said,
women within the system argue strongly for what remains to be done, and they criticize the gaps between rhetoric and practice, Ms. Stephens says.
Women speak to us about a gender paradox in Cuba a nation legally committed to equality but harnessed to a historic structure of patriarchy.
Going forward, in the more

market-oriented economic restructuring that will lay off thousands of state

workers, women fear they will lose their jobs and will not find non-state employment in jobs
traditionally held by men, Ms. Stephens says. Women also worry that the aging of Cubas population will increase family burdens, and
hence womens burdens, she says. As the reforms to the economic model take place, and Cuba stops, for example, lunch programs at work, more food
will need to be prepared at home, and that will land on women. Politically, theres a glass ceiling, Ms. Stephens says. Its evident by looking at Cubas
most senior leadership around President Ral Castro. My Page Two column shows how womens

America are surpassing the United States and matching Europe.

advances across Latin

2NC AT Coalitions
Coalitions in the US can never represent the position of the oppressed on the socalled margin.
Spivak 93, Prof of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, 1993
(Gayatri. Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge New York and London. Pg 64)

Let me spell it out here. Postcoloniality in general is not subsumable under the model of the
revolutionary or resistant marginal in metropolitan space. If black Britain or the rainbow
coalition in the United States are taken as paradigmatic of, say, India or the new African
nations, the emphasis falls on Britain or the States as nation-states. It is in this sense that the
aggressive use made by an earlier nationalism of the difference between culture and political
power has now been reversed only in political intent. The main agenda there is still to explode
the fantasmatic whiteness of the metropolitan nation. In a powerful recent essay, Tim Mitchell
has suggeste that the typical Orientalist attitude was the world as exhibition. The new
orientalism views the world as immigrant. It is meretricious to suggest that this reminder
undervalues the struggle of the marginal in metropolitan space. It merely points out that to
remember that that struggle cannot be made the unexamined referent for all postcoloniality
without serious problems. No two-way dialogue in the great currents of international cultural
exchange forgets this.

2NC AT Strategic Essentialism

Strategic essentialism risks a fetish mentality while losing sight of the strategy this recreates universality
Spivak 93, Prof of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, 1993
(Gayatri. Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge New York and London. Pg 3-4)

Strategy works through a persistent (de)constructive critique of the theoretical. Strategy is an

embattled concept-metaphor and unlike theory, its antecedents are not disinterested and
universal. Usually, an artifice or trick designed to outwit or surprise the enemy (Oxford
English Dictionary). The critical moment does not come only at a certain stage when one sees
ones effort succeeding. It is not only in that moment of euphoria that we begin to decide that we
had been strategic all along. The strategic use of an essence as a mobilizing slogan or
masterword like woman or worker or the name of a nation is, ideally, self-conscious for all
mobilized. This is the impossible risk of a lasting strategy. Can there be such a thing? At any
rate, the critique of the fetish-character (so to speak) of the masterword has to be persistent all
along the way, even when it seems that to remind oneself of it is counterproductive. Otherwise
the strategy freezes into something like what Subaltern Studies Group started working as a
countermovement within South Asian history as written even by politically t you call an
essentialist position, when the situation that calls forth the strategy is seemingly resolved. The
Subaltern correct historians trying, among other things, to fabricate a national identity in
decolonization: a different structural position from someone working from within the U.S.
university. If one is considering strategy, one has to look at where the groupthe person, the
persons, or the movementis situated when one makes claims for or against essentialism. A
strategy suits a situation; a strategy is not a theory. And if one is considering positivism, one
might take into account the importance of positivism in the discipline of history in the
nineteenth century.7
Within mainstream U.S. feminism the good insistence that the personal is political often
transformed itself into something like only the personal is political. The strategic use of
essentialism can turn into an alibi for proselytizing academic essentialisms. The emphasis then
inevitably falls on being able to speak from ones own ground, rather than matching the trick to
the situation, that the word strategy implies. Given the collaboration between techniques of
knowledge and structures of enablement, better I think to look for the bigger problem: that
strategies are taught as if they were theories, good for all cases. One has to be careful to see that
they do not misfire for people who do not resemble us and do not share the situation of
prominent U.S. universities and colleges.

2NC AT Rorty/Pragmatism
Pragmatism fails the relentless adherence to an ontological commitment
recreates the harm
Spivak 93, Prof of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, 1993
(Gayatri. Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge New York and London. Pg 16)

We could base our ontological commitments on various forms of coding. It is, to me, spectacular
that someone like Gayle Rubin, coming from a Freudian/Levi-Straussian structuralist
humanism should in fact get into the idea of value as coded in sex-gender systems. Whether we
declare ourselves as essentialists or antiessentialists, if we realize that our ontological
commitments are dependent on various forms of coding, we can presuppose a variety of general
catachrestic names as a grounding. Richard Rorty speaking about the nominalism in
poststructuralism is right on target there. What he does with it is something else. Assuming
ones ontological commitment as susceptible to an examination of value coding and then to
presuppose a catachrestic name in order to ground our project and our investigation allows us to
be thoroughly empirical without necessarily being blind essentialists. Ultimately, if you will
forgive me for saying so, a lot of self-consciously antiessentialist writing seems to be a bit useless
and boring. Its often very derivative, resembling other and better models that are not as scared
of essences. It seems to me that to be empirical in this way would be a much greater challenge,
require much harder work, would make people read different things, primary texts of active
social work. If youre reading development economics you sometimes dont read Cixouss latest
thing. To confuse empirical work with the pursuit of essences is, in itself, something that should
be examined, and I dont see any need for a substantive theory of essentialism.

***Wrong Forumn CA

1nc
Text: We believe the better way to confront the political situationess of the black
body is to remove this discussion from the confines of an intercollegiate debate.
Instead, tournament hosts should confront the political situationess of the black
body in whatever way the hosting squad believes is best. We suggest that Harvard
return to the earlier practice of hosting a public forum wherein we could discuss
the role of whiteness in the debate community.
The Counterplan is mutually exclusive because any permutation will have to
include the affirmatives 1AC advocacy in this debate which is the link to our
offense. Fundamentally, we are offering an approach to disrupt whiteness and
they are defending that they should win this debate round. These approaches are
not compatible and if we win the disadvantages to using the competitive format
and solvency for our counterplan then you vote negative.
The Counterplan solves the case better for two reasons:
First, attempting to create recognition through a competitive debate round is
structurally flawed since there are no written records of decisions and there is
little collective memory of what happened in any given debate

Atchison and Panetta, 09

(Jarrod Atchison, Phd Rhetoric University of Georgia, Assistant Professor and Director of debate at Wake
Forest University, and Edward Panetta, Phd Rhetoric Associate Professor University of Pitt and Director
of Debate at Georgia, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication, Historical Developments and
Issues for the Future, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the Future, The
Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed. (Los Angeles: Sage Publications Inc., 2009)
p. 317-334)

In addition to the structural problems, the collective forgetfulness of the debate community
reduces the impact that individual debates have on the community. The debate community is
largely made up of participants who debate and then move on to successful careers. The coaches
and directors that make up the backbone of the community are the people with the longest
cultural memory, but they are also a small minority of the community when considering the
number of debaters involved in the activity. This is not meant to suggest that the activity is
reinvented every year-certainly there are conventions that are passed down from coaches to
debaters and from debaters to debaters. However, the basic fact remains that there are virtually
no transcriptions available for the community to read, and, therefore, it is difficult to
substantiate the claim that the debate community can remember anyone individual debate over
the course of several generations of debaters. Additionally, given the focus on competition and
individual skill, the community is more likely to remember the accomplishments and talents of
debaters rather than a specific winning argument. The debate community does not have the
necessary components in place for a strong collective memory of individual debates. The
combination of the structures of debate and the collective forgetfulness means that any strategy
for creating community change that is premised on winning individual debates is less effective
than seeking a larger community dialogue that is recorded and/or transcribed. A second
problem with attempting to create community change in individual debates is that the debate
community is comprised of more individuals than the four debaters and one judge that are
present in every round. Coaches and directors have very little space for engaging in a discussion
about community issues. This is especially true for coaches and directors who are not preferred
judges and, therefore, do not have access to many debates. Coaches and directors should have a
public forum to engage in a community conversation with debaters instead of attempting to take
on their opponents through the wins and losses of their own debaters.

Using the competitive debate format to generate change does not generate the
necessary coalitions it just makes the losing team scapegoats for the
communitys problems, which causes a focus on how to win rather than how to
make the community better

Atchison and Panetta, 09 (Jarrod Atchison, Phd Rhetoric University of Georgia, Assistant

Professor and Director of debate at Wake Forest University, and Edward Panetta, Phd Rhetoric Associate
Professor University of Pitt and Director of Debate at Georgia, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech
Communication, Historical Developments and Issues for the Future, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech
Communication: Issues for the Future, The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed.
(Los Angeles: Sage Publications Inc., 2009) p. 317-334)

Competition has been a critical component of the interest in intercollegiate debate from the
beginning, and it does not help further the goals of the debate community to dismiss
competition in the name of community change. The larger problem with locating the "debate as
activism" perspective within the competitive framework is that it overlooks the communal
nature of the community problem. If each individual debate is a decision about how the debate
community should approach a problem, then the losing debaters become collateral damage
in the activist strategy dedicated toward creating community change. One frustrating example of
this type of argument might include a judge voting for an activist team in an effort to help them
reach elimination rounds to generate a community discussion about the problem. Under this
scenario, the losing team serves as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of community change.
Downplaying the important role of competition and treating opponents as scapegoats for the
failures of the community may increase the profile of the winning team and the community
problem, but it does little to generate the critical coalitions necessary to address the community
problem, because the competitive focus encourages teams to concentrate on how to beat the
strategy with little regard for addressing the community problem. There is no role for
competition when a judge decides that it is important to accentuate the publicity of a community
problem. An extreme example might include a team arguing that their opponents' academic
institution had a legacy of civil rights abuses and that the judge should not vote for them
because that would be a community endorsement of a problematic institution. This scenario is a
bit more outlandish but not unreasonable if one assumes mat each debate should be about what
is best for promoting solutions to diversity problems in the debate community.

2nc
The counterplan removes the discussion of whiteness from inter-collegiate debateinstead, we state that Harvard should hold a public debate on the issue of
whiteness in the debate community and issues surrounding this- this solves the aff
best, the Atchison and Pannetta evidence indicates that Towsons speech act has
zero value outside of this round- the community will forget and wont change.
There are no written records or ways to remember the Towson EM beat Wake GM
at Harvard- theres no long term memory in the debate community, the
counterplan is obviously going to do more by having an intense public debate on
the issue
Heres more evidence
Atchison and Panetta, 09 (Jarrod Atchison, Phd Rhetoric University of Georgia, Assistant Professor and Director of
debate at Wake Forest University, and Edward Panetta, Phd Rhetoric Associate Professor University of Pitt and Director of Debate at
Georgia, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication, Historical Developments and Issues for the Future, Intercollegiate
Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the Future, The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed. (Los
Angeles: Sage Publications Inc., 2009) p. 317-334)

This section will address the "debate as activism ~ perspective that argues that the appropriate
site for addressing community problems in individual debates. In contrast to the "debate as
innovation" perspective, which assumes that the activity is an isolated game with educational
benefits, proponents of the "debate as activism" perspective argue that individual debates have
the potential to create change in the debate community and society at large. If the first approach
assumed that debate was completely insulated, this perspective assumes that there is no
substantive insulation between individual debates and the community at large.
From our perspective, using individual debates to create community change is an insufficient
strategy for three reasons. First, individual debates are, for the most part, insulated from the
community at large. Second, individual debates limit the conversation to the immediate
participants and the judge, excluding many important contributors to the debate community.
Third, locating the discussion within the confines of a competition diminishes the additional
potential for collaboration, consensus, and coalition building. The first problem that we isolate
is the difficulty of any individual debate to generate community change. Although any debate
has the potential to create problems for the community (videotapes of objectionable behavior,
etc.), rarely does any one debate have the power to create communitywide change. We attribute
this ineffectiveness to the structural problems inherent in individual debates and the collective
forgetfulness of the debate community. The structural problems stem from the current
tournament format that has remained relatively consistent for the past 30 years. Debaters
engage in preliminary debates in rooms that are rarely populated by anyone other than the
judge. Judges are instructed to vote for the team that does the best debating, but the ballot is
rarely seen by anyone outside the tabulation room.
Given the limited number of debates in which a judge actually writes meaningful comments,
there is little documentation of what actually transpired during the debate round. During the
period when judges interact with the debaters, here are often external pressures (filing evidence,
preparing for the next debate, etc.) that restrict the ability of anyone outside the debate to pay
attention to the judges' justification for their decision. Elimination debates do not provide for a
much better audience because debates still occur simultaneously, and travel schedules dictate
that most of the participants have left by the later elimination rounds. It is difficult for anyone to
substantiate the claim that asking a judge to vote to solve a community problem in an individual
debate with so few participants is the best strategy for addressing important problems.

Using the competitive debate format to generate change does not generate the
necessary coalitions it just makes the losing team scapegoats for the
communitys problems, which causes a focus on how to win rather than how to
make the community better

Atchison and Panetta, 09 (Jarrod Atchison, Phd Rhetoric University of Georgia, Assistant

Professor and Director of debate at Wake Forest University, and Edward Panetta, Phd Rhetoric Associate
Professor University of Pitt and Director of Debate at Georgia, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech
Communication, Historical Developments and Issues for the Future, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech
Communication: Issues for the Future, The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed.
(Los Angeles: Sage Publications Inc., 2009) p. 317-334)

Competition has been a critical component of the interest in intercollegiate debate from the
beginning, and it does not help further the goals of the debate community to dismiss
competition in the name of community change. The larger problem with locating the "debate as
activism" perspective within the competitive framework is that it overlooks the communal
nature of the community problem. If each individual debate is a decision about how the debate
community should approach a problem, then the losing debaters become collateral damage
in the activist strategy dedicated toward creating community change. One frustrating example of
this type of argument might include a judge voting for an activist team in an effort to help them
reach elimination rounds to generate a community discussion about the problem. Under this
scenario, the losing team serves as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of community change.
Downplaying the important role of competition and treating opponents as scapegoats for the
failures of the community may increase the profile of the winning team and the community
problem, but it does little to generate the critical coalitions necessary to address the community
problem, because the competitive focus encourages teams to concentrate on how to beat the
strategy with little regard for addressing the community problem. There is no role for
competition when a judge decides that it is important to accentuate the publicity of a community
problem. An extreme example might include a team arguing that their opponents' academic
institution had a legacy of civil rights abuses and that the judge should not vote for them
because that would be a community endorsement of a problematic institution. This scenario is a
bit more outlandish but not unreasonable if one assumes mat each debate should be about what
is best for promoting solutions to diversity problems in the debate community.
The net benefit is the backlash disad- using the competitive nature of debate
alienates the losing team because they will not be endeared to join a movement
that they just lost to- instead theyll be agitated- this makes them collateral
damage, which results in backlash against their movement which kills its
effectiveness- only the counterplan maintains their movement
More evidence
Atchison and Panetta, 09 (Jarrod Atchison, Phd Rhetoric University of Georgia, Assistant
Professor and Director of debate at Wake Forest University, and Edward Panetta, Phd Rhetoric
Associate Professor University of Pitt and Director of Debate at Georgia, Intercollegiate Debate
and Speech Communication, Historical Developments and Issues for the Future, Intercollegiate
Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the Future, The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical
Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed. (Los Angeles: Sage Publications Inc., 2009) p. 317-334)
If the debate community is serious about generating community change, then it is more likely to
occur outside a traditional competitive debate. When a team loses a debate because the judge
decides that it is better for the community for the other team to win, then they have sacrificed
two potential advocates for change within the community. Creating change through wins
generates backlash through losses. Some proponents are comfortable with generating backlash
and argue that the reaction is evidence that the issue is being discussed. From our perspective,
the discussion that results from these hostile situations is not a productive one where

participants seek to work together for a common goal. Instead of giving up on hope for change
and agitating for wins regardless of who is left behind, it seems more reasonable that the debate
community should try me method of public argument that we reach in an effort to generate a
discussion of necessary community changes. Simply put, debate competitions do not represent
the best environment for community change because it is a competition for a win and only one
team can win any given debate, whereas addressing systemic century-long community problems
requires a tremendous effort by a great number of people.
The "debate as innovation" perspective views each debate in a vacuum with little to no
consequences on any other community. The "debate as activism" perspective views each debate
as a site of resistance where the debate community can confront problems in an effort to change.
Both extremes replicate the education versus competition tension that has been a part of the
debate community ever since the move away from the literary societies. In the final section of
this chapter, we outline a potential solution to the divergent perspectives that is based on
tournament experimentation. Our goal is to outline a blueprint for a community dialogue that
could be replicated week in and week out at regional and national tournaments throughout the
country.

***BUTLER K

Bulter coutner k
Butler good
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of womens studies at Duke University, lived in a
Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM,
AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191.
33)//kyan
A complete review of the works of Butler, Fuss, Sedgwick and others is both impossible and unnecessary here. Instead, I want to
summarize a few points primarily as they relate to radical feminist ideology. These antiessentialist queer theorists

argued in short that biological sex and gender are socially constructed. They noted that the system of
gender construction that inhabited us wrongly presumed that everyone has either an obvious
penis or vagina, that every person has an uncomplicated relationship to that biological entity,
and that owning that piece of equipment necessarily correlated to certain ontological
characteristics. The concept of gender, they suggested instead, exists on an unstable background of
tacit assumptions and fantasies about both "women" and "men." We can no longer appeal to the
transhistorical concepts of "woman" or "woman's essential nature" as a grounding for contemporary feminism, for to do so is to
assume the validity of the very idea that creates the oppression in the first place. As Butler articulated it, `an uncritical appeal to the
system which constructs gender for the emancipation of `women' will dearly be self-defeating."[ 18] These queer theorists reminded
us that there are no fool-proof scientific tests for gender; there is no hormonal, chromosomal, or

anatomical test that can be administered which in every case guarantees that the subject being tested is either a woman or a
man. If gender does not equate or reduce to chromosomes, genes, genitals, or hormones, it can
only be "produced," they suggest, by a wide variety of social events, strategies, and fantasies: who
makes more money, who wears a dress, and so forth, all work to help us organize all people into
these two tracks. Being a "woman" or being a "man" are unfortunately the only options available
to us; these identifications are constructed not by biological or natural "facts," but by a culture
that constantly and consistently places us in one category rather than the other. Gender (and
particularly the idea that there can only be two of them), then, is a matter of social construction;
whether one acts as female or male is a matter of performance--that is, doing the things a woman or man
does and thereby coding ourselves as such--not ontological certainty. The more we do the things that--say,
as in my case--a woman does, the more we feel ourselves to "be" a woman at our core. Our
gender, then, is not a function of an ontological or even biological certainty. Rather, it is established
through a widely accepted social grid that teaches even young children to identify themselves
and behave as either a girl or boy. It is something we (as part of culture) "do," not something we "are." Again, as Butler
expresses it, "there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is
performatively constituted by the very `expression' that are said to be its results."[ 19] Gender isn't
something we're born with, it is something that we are born into; it consists of a catalog of performances
which organize experiences based on the binary man/woman.

Queer Coalition NB
Their type of difference feminism prevents coalition buildingthe alternative is
more inclusive and empirically solves better-deconstruction of the normal is key
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of women's studies at Duke University, lived in a Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL
FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM, AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191. 33)//kyan
Without question, serious

distinctions exist between these queer politics and the lesbian separatists involved in
radical feminism ten or fifteen years ago; examining a few of these distinctions will help develop a fuller picture of the new queer lesbian
world. The first, perhaps most noticeable difference between radical feminists and queer lesbians can be seen in varying
associations with men. For most radical feminists, men--even gay men--were the enemy and thus
coalition with gay men was difficult or impossible. Many preradical feminist lesbians had built coalitions with gay men around many
issues, but the woman-centered, radical feminist lesbians simply dismissed them.[ 24] The current queer environment is radically different. Not only
did the theoretical foundation of separatist analysis prove unviable, but the AIDS epidemic made gay men seem much more vulnerable and less like the

In their eagerness to eliminate the

foundation of woman-centeredness, young queers are able to exist within multiple identities and
move in and out of various communities without the policing associated with identity politics. (A
whole phenomenon exists in queer communities, for example, of lesbians who sleep with men.) This is a world that is infinitely more
flexible about community, coalition, and identity than the lesbian communities associated with radical
feminism. In the process of this queer coalition, many lesbians have enjoyed access to material resources traditionally associated with gay men.
enemy. The door was opened for many lesbians to work in coalition with gay men on certain issues.

These financial and social resources have allowed many queers to engage in more aggressive and confrontational style politics. In organizations such as
Queer Nation, ACT-UP, and Sex Panic, queers take to the streets with non-accommodationist, anti-assimilationist, "in-your-face" techniques designed
to draw attention to issues of sexuality and sexual preference in the public sphere. Queers demonstrate against the Roman Catholic Church's repressive
policies on condoms by disrupting Catholic masses; they protest the wedding of heterosexuality and capitalism by staging "kiss-ins," where same sexpartners engage in heavy petting in suburban malls. They defend and promote cross-dressing, uninhibited displays of sexuality, tight black leather,
spikes, and body piercings. Queer

politics are explicitly and intentionally designed to make "straight" people feel
order to make them think about how contingent the foundations of the
repressive "normal" world really are. Because gay men have had more experience organizing and have more access to material
extremely uncomfortable in

resources and channels of political power, queers make use of these assets to make political points in cultural contexts. It is worth pointing out that the
aggressive in-your-face style of organizing associated with queer

theory stands in stark conflict with the political

strategies of most radical feminists. An excerpt from Sarah Schulman's My American History illustrates this point nicely. "Pre-ACT UP
lesbians," Schulman writes: had difficulty finding efficient, empowering tactics, setting winnable concrete goals, and having a clear idea who was
supposed to be affected by our organizing efforts. There was something in the amorphous, generalized nature of our politics that guaranteed defeat. But
it was only through ACT UP that [we] understood how to sequence political action. First make a demand that is possible. Then propose it brilliantly.
When there is no response hold direct actions until your target is forced, through embarrassment or necessity to respond in some way and then work
with them to see the proposal through, whenever possible. Not only can this kind of focus bring you closer to your ultimate goal, but it creates positive
and satisfying experiences for fellow activists and motivation for strategizing for political change. I remember the first time I participated in an ACT UP
demonstrations where protesters sat in at government offices, and I realized that while the early 80's feminist movement encircled the Pentagon, we
never walked in through its front door.[25] As Schulman's description demonstrates, in the early 1980s, we

thought we were changing

the world by leading more peaceful lives, by not eating meat, by not being sucked into consumerism, by imagining a world run
by women. We thought we were in the midst of a sort of psychic-spiritual revolution, but from today's queer perspective, as Shulman notes, we
never even got in the front door.
Turns solvencythese coalition solves their phallocentricism and androcentric
argumentstheir view of fixed identity fails and locks in tranditional roles of
women, marginializes multiplicity and destroys freedom
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of women's studies at Duke University, lived in a Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL
FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM, AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191. 33)//kyan
I am attracted to and involved with queer theory on many different levels. Although I have moments of nostalgia for the fixed

identities and subtle articulation of desires associated with radical feminism, the new queer world
supplies me with new and exciting ways of orienting myself within feminism. First and maybe most drastically,
queer lesbians have made female desire and sexuality much more visible. Queer theory has
challenged the largely phallocentric and androcentric way that pleasure is constructed
in our culture by representing women as active sexually. It challenges the radical feminist
predilection that nurture of children and the preserves of home and neighborhood
are naturalized women's activities. For me, this development opens up and makes visible realms of desire that
have been repressed for decades. Also, queer communities are much more open to racial, class, and ethnic

differences and are infinitely more successful than separatists in building coalition across a
wide variety of social issues, especially around concerns of race and class. Partly as a result of the AIDS
crisis, lesbians in the last decade have united with gay men and many different kinds of people of color
to build a strong community of political resistance in Durham. Lesbian involvement in Durham's queer
community stands in welcome contra-distinction to the inability of earlier separatists to address the problem of difference. Queer
communities are less dependent upon mechanisms that police membership, less dependent on
similar identifications and identities. In the new queer world, it is expected that people will have
multiple and often conflicting identifies; indeed, a unified subjectivity is often suspected of being nostalgic
and politically problematic. I can now watch police shows on TV, go to church, watch Porn, have male
friends, work in coalition around race and class issues, flirt with straight women, circulate in
both the centers and on the margins of many institutions , in short, live the complicated life of
human subjectivity. Queer theory and practice provide a much greater amount of freedom than
radical feminism.
Freedom is an independent reason to vote neg
Peron, 12
[Jim, President at Laissez Faire Books, The Liberal Tide: From Tyranny to Liberty, 5-15,
http://www.freemarketfoundation.com/ShowArticle.asp?ArticleType=Issue&ArticleId=3325]
The French liberal Frederic Bastiat explained liberal principles in his classic work The Law. Bastiat starts with the fact that all people
are given the gift of life. But he says that life cannot maintain itself alone. Humans have marvelous

faculties to produce that which is required for life and man sits amidst a variety of natural
resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into
products and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed
course. To survive man must apply his rational mind to natural resources. Life requires
freedom and if man is to survive he must keep the product of his labor or, in other
words, he must have rights to property . Liberals have argued that it is for this reason that
legitimate governments are created. Jefferson said the purpose of government was to secure rights already held by the
individual.

Multiplicity good
Questioning gender as a social construction is keymen should not be excluded
the affs binary view of gender recreates the injustices it criticizesmultiplicity
should be the focus
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of women's studies at Duke University, lived in a Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL
FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM, AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191. 33)//kyan
These feminist theorists prodded us to question our attachment to radical feminism's stable category of woman. To think

of women's liberation as an event involving "women only," they said, was not only to miss the
complexities of oppression , but it was also to assume and posit the very category that itself
perpetuates injustice . The lines should not be drawn between women and men, they said but,
rather between those who espouse progressive politics, especially around the issues of sexuality, and
those who don't. They defend a reconstruction of a multiplicity of genders as a way of disrupting
the binary which keeps us locked into the hierarchical man/woman system . They point
to concrete social locations where bifurcated notions of gender are currently problematized--such
as in the activities and self-presentations of transgendered people--and suggest that such practices
subvert the dominant paradigm precisely because they remind us that genders are
performances rather than a biological facts. Without a binary system of gender, we could
experience neither sexism (how could we know what a woman is?) nor homophobia (how could
we imagine partners of the "same sex" if there were an unlimited number of options?).
Their epistemology specifically fails for feminismintersectionality is a preresusitethey reproduce the same harms they criticize
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of women's studies at Duke University, lived in a Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL
FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM, AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191. 33)//kyan

One book that helped me crystallize the fractures we were living through was Elizabeth Spelman's
1988 Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Spelman's was one of the first texts worried
about a unified category of woman from a philosophical point of view; although her work addressed feminism in
general, her points drove to the heart of what we were experiencing in most radical feminist communities. I examine her here at
some length because, for me, she shed new light on the problems associated with a unified politic in an environment of difference.
"The apparent logic of feminist inquiry," she writes, directs me to disregard what differentiates one

woman from another, to see beyond what is peculiar to a woman or to a group of women who can also
be identified as middle-class or working-class, or Jewish or Catholic, or white or Black, or
lesbian or heterosexual. After all, if I am interested in the abstract category of woman then I best not be distracted by
differences among women, for it is their womanness I said I was interested in, not their shape or their color. Any attempt to talk
about all women in terms of something we have in common undermines attempts to talk about the differences among us, and vice
versa. Spelman continues by arguing that in order to talk about this womanness, one group of women must

be held up as the ideal: "The solution has not been to talk about what women have in common as
women; it has been to conflate the condition of one group of women with the condition of all and
to treat the differences of white middle-class women from all other women as if they were not
differences. The real problem has been how feminist theory has confused the condition of one
group of women with the condition of all." Indeed, Spelman persuasively demonstrated that this conflation
was not dissimilar to the way that philosophy (as well as other many other disciplines) had virtually erased
women by simply conflating them with men. She writes that "most philosophical accounts of `man's nature' are not
about women at all. But neither are most feminist accounts of `woman's nature,' or `woman's experience' about all women. There
are startling parallels between what feminists find disappointing and insulting in Western philosophical
thought and what many women have found troubling in much of Western feminism."[ 15] If what
Spelman argued was true, radical feminist ideology was just as oppressive to Black women
as Western philosophy had been to women in general. It was a politically retrograde
fantasy to think that all women could exist under the sign of "woman " with no references to
other realities, other experiences, other identities. And if the sense of woman circulating in our radical

feminist communities was inherently white and therefore inherently racist, how could we talk
about woman in a way that wasn't? How could we escape the problems of our own theories? What was to be done? At
first, many of us thought that we needed to find representations of every possible, marginal identity that exists for lesbian women,
and by bringing all these together, we would have (or at least be striving for) wholeness. Thus, the more oppression an individual
woman represented, the more her voice was valorized. This configuration splintered the essentialist identity politics of radical
feminism into a quest for multiple or additive identities. If one identity-based oppression was bad, two or three or more was worse.

Race DA
Their use of standpoint epistemology is essentalizingignoring racial and
geographic differences marginalizes lesbians of colorcauses policing and only
describes the white, middle-class female natureturns the Case
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of women's studies at Duke University, lived in a Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL
FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM, AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191. 33)//kyan
The radical

feminist community that existed in Durham was white, middle-class, and had tacitly agreed
never to disagree about most issues. People dressed mostly the same, ate the same foods, cut their
hair the same, had the same social activities; the strength of our community was built on the very vulnerable
assumption that being lesbian was enough to hold us all together. By claiming the shared status of victim in male,
heterosexual culture, we thought we could overlook or deny racial, ethnic, religious, class,
geographic , and many other differences . However, although the community in Durham at first
seemed to me like a seamless, safe haven from patriarchy, it became clear very quickly that fractures and
problems existed at many different levels. The first signs of these fissures appeared several years after I moved to Durham
and manifested themselves in conversations about what counted as a real radical feminist. Around 1983, we
started asking each other to declare primary or even sole allegiance to "the women's community."
Class, race, regional, or religious issues and struggles were forced into secondary positions or overlooked
entirely. We began policing ourselves in order to guarantee that our members were faithful to the
principle of putting women first. By the mid-1980s, it had become clear that most generalizations about
women did not hold true especially across racial, class, or ethnicity lines. African American
lesbians and other lesbians of color told white radical feminists in no uncertain terms that the female
nature they had theorized did not represent difference. As white, middle-class lesbian feminists
read their works, we began to realize that the things we thought of as essential to womanness --and
upon which our lesbian feminist politics had been built--largely described white, middle-class women. Thus,
throughout the 1980s, the lesbian feminist idea of a unique female nature slowly began to grow thin, to
lose substance and texture.

The story of Dee and Sandy proves our argumentthey were black lesbian women
living in the separatist community of Durham who were forced out because of the
harassment by those demanding that feminism came firststandpoint
epistemology not only actively serves as the oppressor but also allows white
women to ignore problems by viewing themselves as the victim in every context
this entrenches racism and turns the K
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of women's studies at Duke University, lived in a Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL
FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM, AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191. 33)//kyan
Not surprisingly, then, the first site of fracture in Durham occured primarily over race. By 1984, my particular

two Black women--was locked in struggle over racial issues. As

long as Dee and Sandy identified themselves primarily as women, we all were in harmony. When,
however, they began to use race as a category of political analysis, when they declared that they--as Black
lesbian women--were more oppressed than the rest of us, things began to deteriorate . Drawing our
attention to racism meant putting us white lesbians in the role of oppressor, a role with which we
had no experience or history. Our community was founded on the belief that we--as women--were
oppressed, so much so that identification as the oppressor then seemed impossible.
For us at that point, the equation was simple; men dominated and oppressed women. The
question of race (and later ethnicity) challenged this simple formula and the seamless social world we had built on it.
friend group--which at that time included

I do not mean to imply that we were in any way morally right to question or deny the power of racism. I do want to show, however,
that our resistance to more complex systems of analysis that could include race rested on our

attachment to the purity of our political analysis: men dominated and oppressed women .
Complexifying this equation to include race meant identifying ourselves as white oppressors; it
meant, therefore that our politics were now less absolute, we ourselves less pure. This move was quite painful.
Here is Marilyn Frye, to take just one example, writing about her attempts to incorporate race

into her thinking: "[E]very choice or decision I make is made in a matrix of options. Racism distorts
and limits that matrix in various ways. My being on the white side of racism leaves me a different
variety of options than are available to women of color. It becomes clear why no decision I make can fail to be an
exercise of race privilege. Does being white make it impossible for me to be a good person?"[ 11] For us in Durham, similar
questions emerged. Could we stand to see ourselves as oppressors and still exist in such an
ideologically pure community? Could we purge ourselves of racism by loving Black women but
not Black men? Dee sold her things and moved to Florida in late 1984; I lost touch with Sandy the next
year. We were drifting apart. Later analyses of this moment would describe it like Caren Kaplan does here: "Racism and
homophobia in the US women's movement brought such painful splits between women that white
feminists were forced to turn their attention away from assertions of similarity and homogeneity
to examinations of difference."[ 12] To us, however, it felt like the world was coming apart; we were not only losing our
friends, we were losing the basis of our political existence as well.
Ignoring intersecctionality is badleads to essentialism and marginalization
particularly true in the context of feminism
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of women's studies at Duke University, lived in a Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL
FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM, AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191. 33)//kyan
I look through my bookshelves now and easily pull down a dozen titles written between 1981 and 1990 on race or ethnicity and
radical feminism. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color; Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology; Nice
Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology; Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About; Making Face, Making SoulHaciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color; Companeras: Latina Lesbians; Piece of My Heart: A Lesbian
of Colour Anthology; Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by Asian American Women--these and other titles swirled through
our lives, producing and recounting experiences of difference at a dizzying rate.[ 13] As Biddy Martin suggests, " the writings of

Moraga, Anzaldua, and others attend to the irreducibly complex intersections of race, gender,
and sexuality in ways that contest any assumption that there are no differences within the
`lesbian self' and that lesbian authors, autobiographical subjects, readers, and critics can be conflated and
marginalized as self-identical and separable from questions of race, class, sexuality, and
ethnicity." The writings of these women demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the special attributes we
had associated with womanness actually described only the womanness of whites.
They also demonstrated that the lesbian communities we were building on essentialist ideology were
unstable , perhaps even unviable. As Martin argued in 1987, "the feminist dream of a new world of women
simply reproduces the demand that women of color (and women more generally) abandon their
histories, the histories of their communities, their complex locations and selves, in the name of a unity that
barely masks its white, middle-class cultural
Standpoint epistemology for lesbian separatism is uniquely badits essentializing
and forces people to leave part of their identity behindthis is proven by not only
the Black Lesbian but also feminists who want to do things deemd not okay by
these communities
Rudy 01 (Rudy, Kathy; Professor of women's studies at Duke University, lived in a Lesbian Separtist community, RADICAL
FEMINISM, LESBIAN SEPARATISM, AND QUEER THEORY. Feminist Studies. Spring2001, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p191. 33)//kyan
Deconstructionists suggested, in short, that human

beings did not necessarily remain within the confines of one

identity. Systems of knowledge compete for our attention and allegiance, they suggested. We may
grow up in one of the rather unified worlds of, say, democratic liberalism, radical feminism, or, for
that matter, fundamentalist Christianity, orthodox Judaism; but if we circulate in other
communities, we run the risk of being infected or fortified by different systems of language,
structures which at times might render our language of origin unintelligible. These systems of
knowledge and power compete on the site of the human subject, and they divide the abstract idea of
"the human being" into fractured, ontological increments. These theories also accounted for the
experiential realities of many lesbians of color. Black lesbians, for example, often lived a dual or
triple kind of identification, seeing themselves as Black on certain issues, female on others, and

gay on still others. Theirs was often a fragmented existence; forcing them to take up the unified subjectivity
associated with radical feminism seemed, from this new perspective, like asking them to leave part of
themselves behind . Moreover, this conversation about multiple and fragmented identities helped to
further clarify dissatisfactions with the ideology of the radical feminist community. For me, it
wasn't only the fact that our politics were based solely on essentialized womanhood that was
troubling. It was also the related fact that by the mid-1980s my community had become dangerous in its
narrowness and policing. The role of a radical feminist was scripted in such a way that many of
my own pleasures were denied. Watching detective shows on TV, going to church, eating meat, wearing
polyester or high heels, shopping, feeling feminine--these and many other activities had to be hidden from the
larger group in order to maintain membership in good standing in the lesbian community. Theorists such as
Elspeth Probyn and Diana Fuss, to name just a few, articulated a model of subjectivity where pleasure could not and
should not be boxed in along the lines of any one single identity . According to them, the very desire
that produced an interest in sexual pleasure with other women was being stifled and repressed in the box
of lesbian identity. Rather than evacuating radical politics, these theorists saw the unfixing of our identities as leading to a
richer mode of political action based on the principles of identification, pleasure, and desire. Probyn writes, "[ D]esire is
productive; it is what oils the social; it produces the pleats and the folds which constitute the
social surface we live on. It is through and with desire that we figure relations of proximity to others and other forms of
sociality. It is what remakes the social as a dynamic proposition, for if we live within a grid or
network of different points, we live through the desire to make them connect differently."
Throughout her work, Probyn argues that the kind of identity I took up in the radical feminist community in
Durham was unviable. She argues that we cannot live our lives within the boundaries of such
categories; the specificities of our identifications and desires spill over the boundaries of any
category. As she states it, her goal is to "turn identity inside out so that instead of capturing us under
its regime of difference as a negative measure, the desire of belonging becomes a force that proffers
new modes of individuation and being."[ 20] Thus, rather than the dosed, policed lesbian communities
many of us created in the early 1980s, Probyn would have us open these worlds, widening ourselves to
include anyone who experiences--even temporarily or only imaginatively--lesbian desire . By
acknowledging such instances of lesbian desire as part of a wider community, a political effectiveness could be
enjoyed that would never have been possible in a closed, smaller community. The lesbian
"community" thus would no longer consist of a small number of militant people who are completely identified as lesbian but,
rather, would include a wide, decentered, and imaginary circle of people (both women and men) who
experience these desires and act on them at various levels.
reference/referent."[ 14]

***Community K

1NC Shell
A. The aff relies upon a fundamental notion of community and being that is flawed. Even
though they question how we constitute communities, this logic relies on the belief that there IS
a community that can be defined and traced. There is no betrayal of our community because
THERE IS NO COMMUNITY. There is only a myth of community uphold by their assumptions.
This causes the violence and exclusion they attempt to solve
Ridler et al. 9 (Law and Critique Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Editors Introduction: The Politics of the Border/The Borders of the Political Ben
Golder1 , Victoria Ridler2 and Illan Rua Wall3 (1) Faculty of Law, University of
New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia (2) School of Law, Birkbeck
College, University of London, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK (3)
Department of Law, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Hill, Oxford, OX3
0BP, UK Published online: 31 March 2009
Contemporary discourses of national security and border protection are directed
not simply at the exclusion of the unwanted other but also towards the production
and regulation of political subjectivity within the polity. The border allows us to
project a limit to the community and to create an us. Jean-Luc Nancy tells us that
this process of the creation of a community of unity (what he calls communion) is
a form of mythic thought. Myth is that to which a political community appeals in
order to found its existence as such and to perpetuate that existence as the
intimate sharing of an identity or essence. The passage from the political to the
sphere of politics occurs, then in myth, insofar as it is in myth that the existence of
lived community is founded and perpetuated (James 2006, p. 196). Nancy rejects
this attempt to enclose the community, claiming that the community exceeds any
possible representation of it. If this is the case then the border, as that which
attempts to define a unity of community, is to be resisted. Kafkas short story, The Great
Wall of China, presents us with an interruption of the mythic thought of communitys unity. As Peter Hutchings
will later discuss, the story relates the building of the Great Wall of China through the eyes of one of its engineers.
However, what begins as a simple tale quickly becomes something much more complex. We begin to see how the
wall is in fact a technology of community. Because each of the very many engineers is periodically rotated around
the country, the sense of the struggle for the wall creates the very sense of the community in unity. The wall
operates in this order to enclose the community, much like in Benedict Andersons analysis newspapers allowed
for the creation of a sense of nation by involving the readership in imagining all the other readers (Anderson
1991). However, this nation-building does not end there, because Kafka goes on to overturn or deconstruct this
sense of an operative unity of the community. His short story ends with a number of allegorical tales. The one that
matches our purpose here is that of the monarch. The size of the country implies that no province knows the
name of the current Emperor: Thus, then do our people deal with departed emperors, but the living ruler they
confuse among the dead. If once, only once in a mans lifetime, an imperial official on his tour of the provinces
should arrive by chance at our village, make certain announcements in the name of the government, scrutinize
the tax lists [when he mentions the name of the ruler] then a smile flits over every face. Why, they think to
themselves, hes speaking of a dead man as if he were alive, this Emperor of his died long ago, the dynasty is
blotted out, the good official is having his joke with us. If from such appearances any one should draw the
conclusion that in reality we have no Emperor, he would not be far from the truth (Kafka 1973, pp. 7879).
Kafkas community, despite the projected unity that the wall brings, is ungovernable. The imagined unity of the
mythic thought is exceeded in every moment by the community itself. Thus, the question of the territorial unity
given by the projected space of the border is to be rejected. Community always exceeds its mythic

representations. This use of the border is an excuse to create an oppressive

unifying notion of communion. As we can see, the politics of the border are not
only reducible to the exclusionary and governmental functions of managing and
dividing populations, of casting out and rejecting, but also of shoring up and
stabilising that which remains within the border. Beyond the question of the borders
inclusion/exclusion, we might also ask of the borders of the political. We are reminded of Jacques Rancire, who
speaks to the centrality of borders to the concept of the political: To speak of the boundaries of the political realm
would seem to evoke no precise or current reality. Yet legend invariably has the political begin at one boundary,
be it the Tiber or the Neva, and end up at another, be it Syracuse or the Kilyma: riverbanks of foundation, island
shores of refoundation, abysses of horror or ruin. There must surely be something of the essence in this

landscape for politics to be so stubbornly represented within it. And we know that philosophy has played a signal
part in this stubbornness. Its claims in respect of politics can be readily summed up as an imperative: to shield
politics from the perils that are immanent to it, it has to be hauled on to dry land, set down on terra firma
(Rancire 2007, p. 1). Politics begins and ends with a border because it is, at base, the problem of foundation.
Rancire details the Platonic project as an anti-maritime polemic; that is, a move away from the sea in order to
provide the solid ground of foundation. In Rancires idiolect this solid foundation, which Plato finds a distance
of 80 stadia from the sea, is none other than the distribution of the sensible of the police order. For Rancire,
the police is not a social function but a symbolic constitution of the social. The essence of the police is neither
repression nor even control over the living. Its essence is a certain manner of partitioning the sensible (Rancire
2001, pp. 67). The everyday politics of the police order is a process of counting, of

managing who and what counts, and the manner in which they count . In the
international realm this can literally be seen with the strategic and legitimatory fixation of the West on the
horrors of Halabja, and the incessant counting of those murdered there. This is then to be put beside the refusal
to count the Iraqi deaths since the beginning of the invasion and occupation, and more recently the deaths due to
Turkish incursions in Northern Iraq. In this the very same citizens are counted or not counted by the very order
of everyday politics. Against this police order, politics does not occur in the everyday micro-politics of
Westminster or Washington; rather it is the very disruption of the everyday course of things. This interruption is
rare and revolutionary in its outlookan event. Thus, the event itself is a border, it is a limit which cannot be
explained by the order that it ends or indeed by the new that it begins. To talk of the borders of the political is not
simply to propose that we divide up, in a disciplinary sense, the political from its others. Nor is it simply to pose
the question of the boundaries of the state. Rather, it is to pose the possibility of a political event which ruptures
the givenness of existing relations. Antonio Negri articulates such a possibility as constituent power, and
characterises it as the very essence of the political. Constituent power is the definition of any possible paradigm
of the political. The political has no definition unless it takes its point of departure from the concept of constituent
power (Negri 1999, p. 333). Such a formulation would attempt to reverse the Platonic move towards the solidity
of the political fundament with the motley crew (Linebaugh and Rediker 2002) of the multitude. While we may
not be certain about Hardt and Negris concept of the multitude, we can see the utility of posing the question of
the political especially in the context of the radical questioning of the current state of the situation. Now, more
than ever, is the time to question the borders of the political, to reassert its openness.

B. The 1ac says that women are excluded from the debate space and that they quote change the
community we participate in-- This language assumes a unified community.This neutralizes
difference by assuming our reactions were all the same- this upholds the myth of community
and ensures exclusion
Morin 6 (Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006) Putting Community Under Erasure:
Derrida and Nancy on the Plurality of Singularities Marie-Eve Morin Department
of Philosophy. 3-45 Assiniboia Hall. University of Alberta.
First, communities tend to neutralise differences by treating all members as
brothers, that is, as the same. The other belongs to my community only insofar as
he is like me, and the 'us' -- the group of those who belong together -- appears as a
homogeneous group. It is because of this tendency to homogenise that fraternity
can include apparent non-brothers (such as women) and that the fraternal
community can present itself as universal. The woman gets included in fraternity when she
becomes a brother for humanity, that is, when she is not (completely) woman anymore. Because 'man' is the
archetype of humanity and 'brother' the archetype of the relation between siblings, the woman can become
human or sibling only insofar as she resembles the archetypes of 'man' or 'brother'. Fraternity as a

process of universalisation is a process of inclusion, but here 'to include' means to

neutralise difference. Second, communities are inscribed in a field of opposition ;
they define themselves in an oppositional logic, by excluding 'them ,' that is, those
who do not belong, those who are not 'brothers,' not 'the same' . If I can identify my
brothers, then by using the same criterion, I can also identify those who are not my
brothers. All groups function in the same way: they define a criterion which
functions as a wall erected around the group, a wall filled with certain type of
openings that let only the right elements in. Of course, some criteria of
appurtenance are more inclusive than others because they are shared by more
people. But no matter how inclusive a group is, it is always possible to find

elements that are excluded.

C. Reject the aff- Rejection is the only way to deconstruct the myth of the community
Morin 6 (Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006) Putting Community Under Erasure:
Derrida and Nancy on the Plurality of Singularities Marie-Eve Morin Department
of Philosophy. 3-45 Assiniboia Hall. University of Alberta.
Thus the community of human beings excludes animals, and the community of beings in general excludes ghosts.
To escape this double violence, it is necessary, according to Derrida, to cut the bond that

binds me to, or excludes me from, a group. Only then will there be an experience of
the other, or a relation to the other, which will respect and do justice to its
otherness, its difference. Though Nancy does not criticise fraternity directly, his discussion of the
interruption of myth serves the same purpose. The myth presents the community to the
community itself; it is the identificatory mechanism of a community . Lacoue-Labarthe
and Nancy explain: A myth is a fiction in the strong, active sense of shaping or moulding, or as Plato himself says,
of 'plasticity': it is a fictionning, whose role is to propose, if not to impose, models and
types, -- types by whose imitation an individual ' or a city, or a whole people ' can
grasp and identify itself. (Lacoue-Labarthe & Nancy, 1991: 34) The interruption of myth
means that it becomes impossible for us to represent our common origin. Because the genealogical
relation rests on a phantasmatic commonality of origin, the loss of common origin
means the impossibility of recognising each other as brother. In their having been
interrupted, myths do not disappear, but they no longer function as the ground of
communal belonging: it becomes impossible for us to gather around the narration
of our common origin. The interruption does not build a community, it un-works
it, that is, it lets a space open in the identification of the community with itself.
This un-working is the active incompleteness of community: it prevents the
community from effecting itself as work.

2NC Overview

2NC Pre-requisite
Ontological questioning of community must come first- it informs our actions and changes
framing and thought
Panelli 7 (Questioning community as a collective antidote to fear: Jean-Luc Nancys singularity
and being singular plural Richard V Welch* and Ruth Panelli** *Department of Geography,
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Email: rvw@geography.otago.ac.nz **Department
of Geography, University College London, London WC1E 8RG Revised manuscript received 30
March 2007
In lay, popular and policy terms, community

continues to be invoked as a hope , a vehicle and a

responsibility, via which numerous social and political challenges might be overcome. Indeed,
despite the political suspicion levelled at attempts to claim commonality, and its more extreme renditions that emerge in
fundamentalism, nationalism and totalitarianism (Nancy 1991 2000; Secomb 2000; Donovan 2002), community, understood as
some achievement of common-being, 1 continues to appeal and be strategically mobilised (Staeheli and Thompson 1997; Rodriguez
1999; Mackenzie and Dalby 2003). An intriguing issue is why this should be so. As we have suggested elsewhere (Panelli and Welch
2005), deeply felt experiences of the finitude of singularity (Nancy 1991) motivate social constructions of community as collectives
of would-be commonbeings. We outlined how Nancy shows that the challenges of singularity (as the singular experience of finite
existence) result in attempts to assuage this condition via the construction of common-beingbased notions of community, even
when these constructions are demonstrably mythical and politically suspect (Nancy 1991). But the drive to imagine/ create collective
frames of experience or connection, such as community, appears undiminished, notwithstanding the twentieth-century critique and
dissolution of God, sovereign, and the hopes of socialism and communism, and the more recent demand that we are capable of
saying we (Nancy 2000, 412). How can we account for this disjuncture between the ontological

position developed by Nancy, which rejects common-being, immanent community as a fiction,

and repeated empirical examples of groups endeavouring to construct such communities ? And
what are the implications of this disjuncture for research in human geography? In this paper we first outline Nancys theorising of
the conditions of singularity and being singular plural, and their ramifications for community. We then consider ways in which
beings appear to step back from the senselessness of singular finitude (Luszczynska 2005) to engage with collectives that promise to
assuage fear by positioning Others. Finally, we suggest a reading of Nancys theorising that allows new geographies of singularity
and collectives to be imagined. Philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy holds key concerns about the excesses of community, national
sovereignty, identity politics and war. 2 In The Inoperative Community (1991), Nancy engages debates surrounding community.

He critiques constructions of community, and contends that community can never be the
idealised fantasy of common-being, nor a unity of experience or perspective . Instead, he
proposes community as an imprecise collective of beings who have in common the experience of
singular finitude; singular beings who variously understand the exigencies of living as beings-incommon (Panelli and Welch 2005). Each being more-or-less explicitly experiences existential challenge (awareness of the
senseless meaning of death) in the contexts in which they live. In this sense, a community of beings-incommon is always a shifting
and incompletely worked phenomenon that remains porous and malleable (Soriel 2004, 219), and inevitably remains inoperative
(Nancy 1991; Rose 1997a; Secomb 2000). 3 While Nancys thinking, to this point, emphasises some reasons for on-going human
engagement with collectives such as communities, it does not detail where and how finite existence is experienced, nor the
significance of space and place for the inoperative community (Panelli and Welch 2005). We suggest it is necessary to engage some
of Nancys deeper theorising, specifically the ideas developed in his Being Singular Plural (2000), to gain a clearer picture. Key to

understanding Nancys theoretical position with respect to community is his conception of

Being. He proposes to reverse the order of ontological exposition (2000, 31) that is, to
reverse how we might understand the world and our being in it. He challenges past proposals
that Being precedes the possibility of being-with-others, philosophically dissolving the
contention that there is ever a single, substantial essence of Being itself (2000, 12, 29). Instead, he
emphasises (the experience of) Being as a co-existence; always a case of being-with, where the with is not subordinate to the
notion of Being. Indeed: it is not the case that the with is an addition to some prior Being; instead, the with is at the heart of
Being . . . if Being is being-with, then it is . . . the with that constitutes Being; the with is not simply an addition. (2000, 30) Thus
Being involves beingwith -others, and the singular-plural constitutes the essence of Being (Nancy 2000, 29). Being in this
simultaneously singular and plural form involves continual crossreferencing between self and the non-self other not as binary
poles but as a continuous condition of co-constitution. Extending from his exposition of Being, Nancy argues that self and other
are more closely entwined than is acknowledged in binary constructions that promote the self and demonise the other. According
to Nancy, Self, as a singular plural being, occurs only in conjunction with. That is, Self is experienced as being-with (i.e. a coexisting with a plurality of singularities). The distance and spacing of with frame the recognition of others within the totality of
being-with; self and other are each essential components of the singular plural . How might others be recognised? According to
Nancy, the plurality of singularity means that, beyond a particular singular being, the others implied in being-with are some
distance across a void. The with is: a mark drawn out over the void, which crosses over it and underlines it at the same time,
thereby constituting the drawing apart [ traction ] and the drawing together [ tension ] of the void. (2000, 62; original/translators
insertions) This coincident drawing apart, and drawing together, enables an ontological framing of

an other; a way to think, not just about the condition of being, but also about the existence of
other beings. The identification and ostracism of an Other is also related. Nancys (2000, 1011, 20) discussion of accessing
the origin 4 and his related contention about distinguishing between other and Other, concludes that the former is a core
component of being, ontologically, whereas the latter is a social construction designed to ameliorate frustrations at not fully
comprehending our collective state of being. In Being, beings navigate the existence of singular plurality as well as plural singularity
in ontological ways, i.e. that shape how we might think about the condition of existence (including what we experience in the social
world). But this co-existence does not infer a collective of singulars in some unified society or common-being community. Rather,
being singular plural posits connection as opposed to sameness; a togetherness insofar as it spaces them [that is the togetherness
spaces the plurality of singulars]; they are linked . . . [but] they are not unified (Nancy 2000, 33). Thus, while with gestures to the
possibility of connection and between, as conceptualised by Nancy (2000, 5), these are complex notions in that they expose , as
well as bridge , the distances, differences and spaces separating singular (plural) selves. For Nancy, the potency of connection and
between exists in a conception of community as a connection of beings-in-common that distances at the very moment that it
appears to bind: The between is the stretching out . . . and the distance opened by the singular as such . . . There is proximity, but
only to the extent that extreme closeness emphasizes the distancing it opens up. (Nancy 2000, 5) This perspective

contrasts with previous uncritical senses of with and connection in myths of community
constructed as common-being. Indeed, Nancys ontological position challenges much existing
academic theorising about being and community by suggesting that community cannot be a
construction but is the event-of-being-with, or that which constitutes being. As such, Nancy requires us to
question our own ontological position and to delve into the ways that we know we are.

2NC Alt Solves Case

The alternative succeeds from a different angle- avoids exclusionary binaries while pursuing an
ethic of solidarity
Watkin 7 (A Different Alterity: Jean-Luc Nancy's 'Singular Plural' Watkin,
Christopher. Paragraph, Volume 30, Number 2, July 2007, pp. 50-64 (Article)
Published by Edinburgh University Press
Nancys (re)thinking of being-with draws fire from some quarters, for it is
suspected of dangerously minimizing the importance of alterity . For Simon Critchley
Nancys conception of being-with risks reducing intersubjectivity to a relation of reciprocity, equality and
symmetry, where I rub shoulders or stand shoulder to shoulder with the other, but where I do not face him. The
face-to-face risks effacing itself in the reciprocity of the with.33 Robert Bernasconi for his part suggests that
Nancy refuses radical alterity and the Other. In a discussion of Nancy and Levinas, Bernasconi suggests that
Levinass priority of the Other becomes in Nancy a priority of the inoperative community,34 that is of nonessentialized being-in-common. For Nancy the relation with the face is not primordial, Bernasconi complains,
drawing attention to Nancys comment that he cannot understand the relation with the face as other than
secondary and constituted.35 From a Levinasian point of view, Bernasconi argues, making the face-to-face
secondary obliterates alterity and ties Nancys account of alterity to just the philosophy of immanence he sets out
to avoid. In reply to the concern that [t]he face-to-face risks effacing itself in the

reciprocity of the with, there are two main points to be made. First, surely this is
precisely what Nancys being-in-common is avoiding . There is no reciprocity of
the with, and the notion that singularities stand shoulder to shoulder evokes
just the sort of essentializing community, just the sort of common cause or
common identity that it is Nancys whole labour to avoid . As for the charge that
Nancys with is reciprocal, surely his tautological, stuttering ontology is premised
fundamentally and irrecoverably on the difference between reciprocity and
mutuality, on the possibility of a mutual sharing of being-in-common that does not
resolve to a reciprocal tally of debt and credit. Being-in-common is not a space of
reciprocal transaction, but of mutual sharing. Secondly, arguments such as those
made by Critchley and Bernasconi forget the difference between alikeness ( le
semblable) and sameness (le pareil), as they try to plot Nancys together
(ensemble) as precisely the sort of closed identity he again and again stresses it is
not. Nancy is not neglecting the priority of the other, but rather labouring to
elaborate a thought more fundamental than the same/other dichotomy . The
problem with both Bernasconis and Critchleys readings ofNancy is that they
persist in trying to understand the singular plural in terms of the same-other
binary, whereas Nancy is emphatic that what is at stake is no longer thinking:
beginning from one, or from the other,beginning from their togetherness,
understood now as the One, now as the Other (BSP, 34). Instead, we must think
from the irreducible primordiality of being-with, difficult as that may be. To the
clamour that this opens the door to ethical violence and totalization, Nancy replies
that if self does not become same to begin withwhich, as we have shown above, in
the regime of singular plurality it does notthen there is no need for a Levinasian
Other to underwrite the ethical relation (BSP, 77). Ian James is right when he argues that [t]he
ethical relation is not passed over in Nancy, it is simply thought of differently as a relation of being side-by-side
rather than an otherwise than being of transcendence in the face-to-face. 36 For Nancy togetherness

is otherness. Does this compromise Nancean ethics, reduce responsibility for

others, re-install the self as an absolute or original subject ? Far from it. The ethics
of mutuality is a potent solidarity, where the suffering of any one, of each one, is a
suffering which I share and, concretely, for which I have responsibility . Why? Because
I am not in relation; I am singular plural relation, an irreducibly open ecotechnical singularity that cannot
sequester itself from the web of singular plurality without which it is not. And this mutuality does

not
threaten to become an exclusive coterie that persecutes those outside its bounds, a

cosy mutual club. Why not? Because the basis of this mutuality is not a shared value or
essence, or even a reciprocal pact to look out for each other, but simply this: that
its participants have nothing in common; they are in-common. It is therefore not
necessary to invoke the guilt of debt in an economy of reciprocity, as do Levinas
and Derrida, in order to sustain Nancys ethical position . Shared finitude, the
mutual exposure of bodies and incommensurability-in-common certainly furnish
a different ethical framework to the Levinasian absolute Other, but providing they
are understood in their own terms and not as a minor variation on the Levinasian
theme, Nancean ethics are just as uncompromising in their insistence on ethical
responsibility as the Levinasian alternative. Important though these observations are for a
proper understanding of the uniqueness of Nancys contribution to the current rethinking of the ethical, there is
much more at stake here than a disputed reading of Nancys philosophy. If we take on board (i)

Nancys analysis of the collapse of the primordial we into (anonymous) one and
(integrating) I, (ii) the link he draws between this dyad and the problems of
globalization and fundamentalism, and (iii) the argument he makes that
fundamentalism and globalization (and therefore a fortiori the same/other dyad
and the (in)difference by which Derrida attempts to think ethically within its
absolute and incalculable aporia) are mutually compounding and inextricably
linked, we have a pressing case that continuing to think ethics under the allpervasive rubric of same and other is not only unnecessary but could also be
responsible for blinding Continental thought to what is at stake in the most
important philosophical and political problems facing it, and us, today .

2NC AT: Framework

Their very notion of a debate community that reasons and discusses issues is flawed from the
start. They assume that there is a particular way to discuss issues, and that only those in this
community can do that. This upholds a myth in agreement and communication which collapses
back into sameness.
Secomb 2K (Fractured Community Linnell Secomb Special Issue: Going Australian:
Reconfiguring Feminism and Philosophy Volume 15, Issue 2, pages 133150, May
2000
Despite these deficiencies within liberal Enlightenment universalism, Benhabib

argues that a postEnlightenment universalism is still viable. This, she suggests, would be "interactive not legislative,
cognizant of gender difference not gender blind, contextually sensitive and not situation indifferent" (1992, 3).
Benhabib proposes a universalist theory of community which attempts to overcome the problems of
Enlightenment thinking. This vision of community involves a "a discursive, communicative concept of
rationality"; "the recognition that the subjects of reason are finite, embodied and fragile creatures, and not
disembodied cogitos or abstract unities of transcendental apperception"; and "a shift from legislative to
interactive rationality" (1992, 56). This reformulated universalist model of community

would be founded on "a moral conversation in which the capacity to reverse

perspectives, that is, the willingness to reason from the others' point of view, and the
sensitivity to hear their voice is paramount" (1992, 8). Benhabib argues that this model does not assume that
consensus can be reached but that a "reasonable agreement" can be achieved. This formulation of community on
the basis of a conversation in which perspectives can be reversed, also implies a new understanding of identity
and alterity. Instead of the generalized other, Benhabib argues that ethics, politics, and

community must engage with the concrete or particular other. A theory that only engages
with the generalized other sees the other as a replica of the self. In order to overcome this reductive assimilation
of alterity, Benhabib formulates a univetsalist community which recognizes the concrete other and which allows
us to view others as unique individuals (1992, 10). Benhabib's critique of universalist liberal

theory and her formulation of an alternative conversational model of community

are useful and illuminating. However, I suggest that her vision still assumes the
desirability of commonality and agreement, which, I argue, ultimately destroy
difference. Her vision of a community of conversing alterities assumes sufficient
similarity between alterities so that each can adopt the point of view of the other
and, through this means, reach a "reasonable agreement." She assumes the
necessity of a common goal for the community that would be the outcome of the
"reasonable agreement." Benhabib's community, then, while attempting to enable
difference and diversity, continues to assume a commonality of purpose within
community and implies a subjectivity that would ultimately collapse back into
sameness. Moreover, Benhabib's formulation of community, while rejecting the
fantasy of consensus, nevertheless privileges communication, conversation, and
agreement. This privileging of communication assumes that all can participate in
the rational conversation irrespective of difference . Yet this assumes rational
interlocutors, and rationality has tended, both in theory and practice, to exclude
many groups and individuals, including: women, who are deemed emotional and
corporeal rather than rational; non-liberal cultures and individuals who are seen
as intolerant and irrational; and minoritarian groups who do not adopt the
authoritative discourses necessary for rational exchanges . In addition, this ideal of
communication fails to acknowledge the indeterminacy and multiplicity of
meaning in all speech and writing. It assumes a singular, coherent, and transparent
content.

2NC Turns Case

The aff says Trauma is the realization that the community to which we belong is founded on a
lie. The re-telling of our foundation story reinforces the myth of community and impedes true
thinking of community
Glowacka 6 (Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006) Community and the Work of Death:
Thanato-Ontology in Hannah Arendt and Jean-Luc Nancy, Dorota Glowacka
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HUMANITIES; ADJUNCT PROFESSOR
MA(Wroclaw), PhD(SUNY)
Why is the idea of community so powerful that it is possible for its members to
willingly die for such limited imaginings ?' (Anderson, 1983: 7) The
anthropologist's answer is that the Western conception of community has been
founded on the mythical bond of death between its members, who identify
themselves as subjects through the apology of the dead heroes. Yet is not this
endless recitation of prosopopeia, which serves as the self-identificatory apparatus
par excellence, also the most deadly mechanism of exclusion? Whose voices have
been foreclosed in the self-addressed movement of the epitaph? Indeed, who, in
turn, will have to suffer a death that is absolute, whose negativity will not be
sublated into the good of communal belonging, so that community can perpetuate
itself? 'Two different deaths': it is the 'they' who will perish, without memory and
without a remainder, so that the 'we' can be endlessly resurrected and blood can
continue to flow in the veins of the communal body , the veins now distended by the
pathos of this recitation. The question I would like to ask in this paper is whether
there can be the thinking of community that interrupts this sanguinary logic. A
collectivity that projects itself as unified presence has been the predominant figure
of community in the West. Such community reveals itself in the splendor of full
presence, 'presence to self, without flaw and without any outside' (Nancy, 2001:15;
2003a: 24), through the re-telling of its foundational myth. By infinitely
(self)communicating the story of its inauguration, community ensures its own
transcendence and immortality. For Jean-Luc Nancy, this immanent figure of
community has impeded the 'true' thinking of community as being-together of
humans. Twelve years after writing his seminal essay 'The Inoperative
Community', Nancy contends that 'this earth is anything but a sharing of humanity
-- it is a world lacking in world' (2000: xiii). In Being Singular Plural (1996), Nancy
returns to Heidegger's discussion of Mitsein (Being-with) in Being and Time, in
order to articulate an ontological foundation of being-together or being-incommon and thus to move away from the homogenizing idiom of community.
Departing from Heidegger's habit of separating the political and the philosophical,
however, Nancy situates his analysis in the context of global ethnic conflicts, the
list of which he enumerates in the 'Preface',3 and to which he returns, toward the
end of the book, in 'Eulogy for the Mle (for Sarajevo, March 1993)'. The fact that
Nancy has extended his reflection on the modes of being-together to include
different global areas of conflict indicates that he is now seeking to re-think
'community' in a perspective that is no longer confined to the problematic of
specifically Western subjectivity. This allows me to add to Nancy's 'necessarily
incomplete' list the name of another community-in-conflict: the Polish-Jewish
community, and to consider, very briefly, the tragic fact of the disappearance of
that community during the events of the Holocaust and in its aftermath.

No matter what the aff changes, selection inclusion ensures exclusion

Mitropoulos 6 (Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006) Home About Log In Register Search
Current Archives Reviews InterZone CSeARCH Cutting Democracy's Knot Angela
Mitropoulos
Therefore, alongside

the democracy of the market--and in relation to European

premonitions of a globally extended constitution and citizenship--there is the
democracy of the border. It is well known that the border, no matter how
constantly it recomposes itself, entails processes of selective inclusion as well as
exclusion. But, contrary to recent insistences that the border constitutes (according to Etienne Balibar, among
others) the 'non-democratic' element of the demos, democracy no less than the market is the democratic element
par excellence in the foundation of citizenship and politics. This is to say, there can be no democracy without the
border. Even if that border is imagined as coextensive with the circumference of the

planet itself, the border as a technology of inclusion-exclusion can still function ,

whether as the internal demarcation between 'passive' and 'active' forms of
citizenship (which can be traced in the historically parallel trajectories of the
granting of citizenship to more people alongside increasing stratifications within
citizenship), or in the recourse to the revocation of citizenship itself, whose
criteria and rulings have by no means disappeared but, today, proliferate . This is
merely to note the formal operations of citizenship laws, without having touched
on the casual operations of border technologies, as they are articulated through,
say, the police checkpoints in the banlieues no less than in the demands that
migrants (whether this status as a migrant is legal or semantic) must continually
prove their belonging. In any case, without the border, there is neither demos nor kratos. This is why
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri can call, in the final chapters of Empire (2000), for a global citizenship under
the sign of 'absolute democracy'. Yet, the diplomacy that might seemingly favour the proposition of democracy as
an empty placeholder for the question of 'constituent power' fails to confront the politics of the demos and the
kratos that invocations of democracy set to work, not least because diplomacy is already a technique of statecraft
and a form of address that distinguishes and fuses kratos and demos.

AT: Plan Makes Community Better

The notions of community they rely on are so irretrievably flawed as to warrant rejection. Only
the alternative can move past the affirmatives flawed thinking of community
Strysick 97 (The End of Community and the Politics of Grammar Author(s): Michael
Strysick Source: Cultural Critique, No. 36 (Spring, 1997), pp. 195-215 Published by:
University of Minnesota Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1354504
Change" has been one of the most consistent buzzwords of the current cultural, political, and social moment.
With the recent shifts in the executive and legislative branches of our federal government, the battle over who
defines that term is once again being waged, and only time will tell what connotative sense this word will assume.
As this period unfolds, however, part of our attention must be directed toward concentrating more intently on
what structural forces change confronts. We face the real possibility that we are once more

headed in the direction of fulfilling the adage that the more things change, the
more they stay the same. The so-called postmodern era, the broader theoretical term assumed by some
for the present moment, is concerned with changing the predominance of metanarratives through attention to
narrativity, and its critique informs some of the issues we face in defeating this adage. As we have come to realize,
the forms of our discourse demand critical attention equal to that given to the contents of such discourse.
Fundamental to these discussions is thinking about the very ordering of our relations with one another, which I
will call community, and the ways in which we talk about and communicate that being-together. Indeed, the very
grammatical or foundational character that underlies the structure of our narratives is in greatest need of our
critical attention. Nietzsche's attention to "grammar," a trope for the way in which we construct and negotiate
structures-discursive, moral, narratival, religious, societal, and others-is fundamental in thinking not only about
the death of God and humanity, but also about the death or end of community as we attempt to change and
transform community. Jean-Francois Lyotard's assessment of narrative, what he calls phrasing, and the
discursive practices of narrative that he characterizes by the "differend" naturally extend Nietzsche's point. I
would assert that much of the recent attention to alterity and otherness-a direct result of our historical
inattention to difference-can be understood through Lyotard's differend; that is, by his insistence that discursive
practice operates from the bias of a single grammatical structure. This, in turn, informs how people respond,
necessarily determining, even predetermining, the structure of their responses, as well as the very forms of our
community. However, community, with its implicit sense of the common, is often conceived in terms of those
things that are merely common among people; or more specifically, through the presence of what is presumably
mutual. In the process, a philosophy of community emerges which runs the risk of

operating on the basis of convenient oppositions between same and Other in which
the bias of homogeneity is predominant. If, however, the common within community is reconceived on the basis
of an absence of what is shared-our difference-then such convenient oppositions are seriously challenged;
individuals must be conceived in terms of their potentially unregulatable differences. Put simply, community is
traditionally defined by what is common among individuals; I am concerned with the negative way in which

exclusion functions in community despite a community's declared goals of

inclusion. While it may seem paradoxical to begin by invoking an end, I will do so by employing "end" in both
its telic and final sense; that is, by thinking about how the traditional structure and goals of community might be
changed. Lyotard's battle cry in The Postmodern Condition, "Let us wage a war on

totality" (82), has its greatest application here, calling as it does for the end of a
pretension to speak for all that eradicates difference. He engages this battle
through a task of incredulity, in which "the nostalgia of the whole and the one" is
challenged, exactly because "[t]he nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given
us as much terror as we can take" (81). I address such a task by examining several recent texts that
work to expose this tendency, especially the manner in which totality and nostalgic wholeness fail to express the
complexity and potential incommensurability within community. Does the auspicious declaration "the end of
community" require explanation? Our century alone continues to witness the terror Lyotard

speaks of through countless events that exhibit an inability to enact and ensure our
being-together irrespective of our differences. These events bear recognizable
names: Auschwitz, Bosnia, Buchenwald, Chechnya, Hiroshima; apartheid, gay
bashing, hate crimes, rape.... In saying so, I cannot help remembering those
painful words spoken by Max von Sydow in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her
Sisters. In one scene, von Sydow comments on a talk show in which participants
discussed the Holocaust, puzzled at the occurrence of such an atrocity. Why does it
not happen more often, von Sydow asks. But then again, doesn't it? One might
argue that the end has been approaching for some time now, that recent events

have merely been the manifestation of structural forces-long in the making-pushed to their
limits. Change confronts structures whose very foundations, and the cornerstones of those foundations, have
been firmly established centuries earlier. Over time, these foundations have settled in, whole cities and
communities have been built over them, and we are left to consider our plan of alteration. Do we simply remodel
the existing structures above the foundations? Do we raze the structures, rebuilding from the foundations? Or do
we tear up, literally exhume, these foundations by building new ones from new blueprints? Like the Max von
Sydow character, we ask: why is the impossible continuing to occur on both small and large scales? This is where
the question of community must begin, as well as a community of the question. Maurice Blanchot engages this
question by insisting that the ethical formulations underlying our social structures have been figured from the
bias of homogeneity, what he calls in The Unavowable Communit"yt he affirmation of the Same" (41). Since he
views ethics as a constant relationship with the Other, he calls for moving away from thinking of ethics as a
prescriptive Law.2 "An ethics is possible," he says, "only when.... responsibility or

obligation towards the Other.... does not come from the Law," primarily because
the relationship to the Other "cannot be enounced in any already formulated
language. "This notion of an "already formulated language" is essential; community traditionally speaks
predominantly from a sense of the already formulated, presuming that all can be spoken for. In its place,
Blanchot offers a daunting ethical formulation: "an infinite attention to the Other" (43). It is this type of critical
attention that informs Giorgio Agamben's pronouncement on ethics in The Coming Community":T he fact that
must constitute the point of departure for any discourse on ethics is that there is no essence, no historical or
spiritual vocation, no biological destiny that humans must enact or realize." Essentially, nothing is already
formulated. "This is the only reason why something like an ethics can exist," he continues, "because it is clear that
if humans were or had to be this or that substance, this or that destiny, no ethical experience would be possiblethere would be only tasks to be done" (42). Agamben's point about ethics, when expanded, bears on the issue of
community. For him, ethics exist in the very vacuum of prescribed actions, of already formulated actions. We
might well ask: are our relations with one another already formulated as well? If so, we are all automatons of
some sort, Agamben would suggest, merely performing prescribed and already formulated tasks. If they are not
already formulated, then we are each charged with responsibility to that void, required to act in the absence of
prescription. The ethical responsibility demanded by this experience is based on a completely different notion of
community. In Totality and Infinity, Emmanuel Levinas criticizes Western thought as marked by an optical
imperative that believes it is able to see everything and achieve complete understanding. It is this imperative that
fuels totality and its emphasis upon homogeneity. Yet it achieves totalization and homogeneity through a
neutralization of difference-reducing all relations to that of same and Other, with the same preeminent in this
hierarchy. Levinas calls for relations of alterity-recognition and respect for difference-marked by what he calls an
attention to the "visaged 'Autrui,"th e face of the Other. It is crucial, however, to recognize that this attention
involves a very real staring straight in the face of heterogeneity, and that this heterogeneity is not regulatable by
the same, the common, or the strictures of traditional community exactly because attention to the Other radically
alters the construction of being and existence. In other words, "[t]he ethical exigency to be responsible for the
other undermines the ontological primacy of the meaning of being," Levinas writes, because "it unsettles the
natural and political positions we have taken up in the world and predisposes us to a meaning that is other than
being, that is otherwise than being (autremenqtu 'etre)"(2 3). Jean-Luc Nancy, in The Inoperativ Community,
takes the ethical relation further by referring to the political element involved in questions of community. In the
preface of his text, he addresses the very time line in which we exist in such a community of the question,
inferring that community is wandering toward the meaning of its death. He states that "if we do not

face up to such questions, the political will soon desert us completely , if it has not
already done so. It will abandon us to political and technological communities, if it
has not already done so. And this will be the end of our communities, if this has
not yet come about" (xli). The last sentence raises several important questions: (1) Has this end come
about? (2) If it has, how would it be recognized? and (3) Is this end necessarily good or bad? Ultimately, it seems
clear in the texts mentioned here that the prevailing end of community contains an inherent slow death, largely
because of its manifest 199 inattention to issues of difference prominent within its very grammar. The End of
Politics In The Postmodern explained, Lyotard is careful to point out that the term "postmodern" was first used in
an architectural context, denoting a transition from one way of defining space to another (75-80).3 Such a remark
invites us to extend the word "architecture" beyond its traditional association with buildings to a broader realm
of structures and the ways in which they inform human interaction. Our lives are characterized by the structures
within which we circulate, and these structures are maintained by ominous edifices, architectural in their own
way, of power and control. The play of these forces contributes to the political element of societal relations,
political defined here not in the ordinary sense of politics (as ideology, governments, etc.), but as "the political," a
distinction that the French language allows through the definite articles of la and le. In The Inoperative
Community, Nancy makes this distinction by defining "the political" (le politique) as "[t]he place where
community as such is brought into play" (xxxvii).4 To pursue the architectural metaphor, politics (la politique)
may be understood as involving the very construction and maintenance of buildings and edifices, whereas the
political (le politique) is concerned with critical attention to the effects of structural forces themselves. The latter
attends to "the politics of" these relations to the extent that they bear on human interaction. For Lyotard, the
political is seen as inextricably tied to our discursive practices, taking on a new significance through the
differend. "As distinguished from a litigation," he writes, "a differend [differendw] ould be a case of conflict,
between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgment applicable to both
arguments" (Differendx i). A new politics must operate outside of a presumed universal rule by recognizing

painful silences: not everyone can speak for himself or herself. What Lyotard then offers is a manner of thinking
that markedly refuses the pretension of speaking for others, or promoting any one authority or solution. In its
most terrifying sense, Hitler's "final solution" earlier in this century describes the limits to which such pretension
can extend. This extreme marks the germ and grammar of all totalizing discourse. Once the grammar is in place,
all utterances are susceptible to its ordering principles, consciously or unconsciously, forcibly or at will. The final
solution-and all final solutions before it and those yet to come-did not and will not exhibit the success of a politics
that speaks for all but rather the failure of such a system. Unfortunately, that failure is repeatedly enacted in
countless areas of community, each further exhibiting its underlying grammar. For Lyotard, at the end are all
political programs-Left, Right, or Center-that presume to redeem us from previous prescriptions for community.
In fact, the recent publication of Lyotard's Political Writings provides, says Bill Readings in his foreword "The
End of Politics,"" a useful empirical corrective to charges that poststructuralism is an evasion of politics, or that
Lyotard's account of the postmodern condition is the product of blissful ignorance of the postcolonial question"
(xiii). Furthermore, Readings adds, "Lyotard's writings.... promulgate.... not so much the heroic militancy of a
refusal to submit as a refusal to think that politics will come to an end. The time of 'big politics,' the idea of the
political as the site where humanity struggles to define its destiny and realize its meaning, may well have passed."
In its place, Readings continues, politics becomes "the attempt to handle conflicts that admit of no resolutions, to
think justice in relation to conflict and difference" (xxiv). Such conflicts are, of course, differends in Lyotard's
vocabulary. What is necessitated is a new understanding of politics as "not just one sphere among others," says
Lyotard, "but the sphere in which all the spheres are represented and in which social activity is distributed among
them" (Political 61). This new notion of the political becomes so important precisely because these pretensions
play themselves out in community and involve our very being-together. In "Of Being-in-common" in Community
at Loose Ends, Nancy addresses the politics of community by distinguishing between

types of communal orientation. For him, community should be thought outside the
bias of homogeneity and be based on what he calls "being-in-common," which
forms the basis of a question. "We are in common, with one another," Nancy writes, but "[w]hat does
this 'in' and this 'with' mean? (Or, to put it another way, what does 'we' mean, what is the meaning of this pronoun
which, in one way or another, must be inscribed in any discourse?)" (6). In other words, he continues, "Being, or
existence, is what we share.... But being is not a thing we could possess in common.... We shall say then that being
is not common in the sense of a common property, but that it is in common. Being is in common" (1).
Commonality, in other words, should not be understood here as singularity but instead as radical plurality. If
singular, the tendency is toward totality and universality-what he calls immanentism. Nancy makes this clear in
his preface to The Inoperative Community here he provides a poignant example of how this in and with should
not be conceived: "The community that becomes a single thing (body, mind, fatherland, Leader.... ) necessarily
loses the in of the beingincommon. Or, it loses the with or the together that defines it. It yields its being-

together to a being of togetherness. The truths of community, on the contrary,

reside in the retreat of such a being." Nancy then gives an example of an in which is
lost by saying, "Nothing indicates more clearly what the logic of this being of
togetherness can imply than the role of Gemeinschaft, of community, in Nazi
ideology"( Inoperativxex xix). This is the logic of totality that Levinas fears is bred by
homogeneity and that Agamben warns results from prescribed formulations. Even
more, this prescribed totality is the grammar that Nietzsche diagnoses as imprisoning us. Community and the
Postmodern Condition But how do we speak to metanarratival inscription? In answering this question, it is
necessary to remember that what is discredited in the postmodern condition is not just narrative itself but rather
narrative that assumes the idealistic continuity of beginning, middle, and end; idealistic not only because of this
assumed continuity, with implications of linear progression and progress in general, but also because of the
assumed comprehensiveness of the story as the story and its ability to completely exclude all other stories. In The
Differend, Lyotard addresses how phrases, ways of speaking and linking thoughts one to another, are in dispute.
Recognizing the state of the differend would be, ultimately, to accept several conditions: that the rules or
regimens structuring a specific way of speaking (phrasing) are by necessity unique and exclusive; that no one
phrase or phrase regimen can assume hegemony over all others; and that the genres that generally distinguish
phrases from one another themselves cannot assume total hegemony. For Lyotard, a genre is always in quest of
its own rules. Lyotard suggests a move away from grand narratives, comprehensive and complete, to small
narratives. These petits recits appear by the time of The Differend to achieve the status of the phrase.5According
to Lyotard, as things and events happen, we engage, no matter what our response, in a process of
enchainemenot,f linking, which requires an accountability of the storytellers in us, as mythmakers, as linkers.
The act of phrasing is necessary because things happen. However, the phrase, as a necessary, all-encompassing
link, is no longer credible, nor is the work, the story. The postmodern condition, thus, becomes summed up
succinctly as incredulity through the strongest link in Lyotard's book: "To link is necessary, but a particular
linkage is not" (80); which is to say, we must say and/or do something (we must answer a phrase with a phrase),
but we cannot prescribe a form in which that link must necessarily occur. This condition orients new ways of
thinking both of community and what it means to be political. Fundamentally, Lyotard's critique of
metanarratives addresses its incredulity toward the pretense of completion and finality, which occurs only by
reducing the complexity of individuals and their competing interests to a single story. What must be undone,
according to Lyotard, is the belief in "a universal rule of judgment between heterogeneous genres" (Differendx i).
At the root of such thinking is the failure to recognize the incommensurability of relations and situations (genres,
for Lyotard), followed by the assumption that a universal rule is applicable. Our condition now involves a sifting
through the debris of community after the failures of modernity's metanarratives and community's attempt to

satisfy all desires and affinities. Rather than resurrect past metanarratives or attempt to assemble any new
unifying voice or panopticon, another possibility arises: act on the assumption that narrative will still exist, but
with the understanding that narratives are irreducible to each other. Achieving the dissolution of a

Manichean ordering of relations is predicated upon our ability not only to re-think
but un-think traditional community. A viable alternative is suggested by the two adjectives used in
French by Nancy and Blanchot in their important texts to modify the sense of la communaute (community)desoeuvree and inavouable, respectively. The term de'soeuvrede oes not simply mean to be idle or inoperative, as
it is often translated,6 but rather actively "unworking" or undoing the traditional structure of the work, the
oeuvre.7 The privative in- or un- neutralizes avouable or avowable. Avow has feudal connotations deriving from
avouer, to call to or to call on, especially to call on as a defender or patron, derived from the Latin advocare. The
noun avoue refers to this patron and defender as advocate; the verb to avow is, thus, a call in which one is
protected by this avoue. Individual sovereignty is lost as authority is transferred to the avoue, with individual
identity sacrificed to an immanent totality in a vassal-lord relationship. Blanchot's sense of the unavowable
community as "evasively consecrated to the always uncertain end inscribed within community itself" clearly
distinguishes itself from avowable communities (Unavowable 56). The unavowable would be more attentive to
loss since all is valued, language I employ to suggest the metanarrative character of the avowable structure. I see
the avowable as a storywith an already formulated beginning, middle, and end-that the avoue' demands others to
defend and vow allegiance to. Yet, avowability is even more, for historically people have been forced to confess to
ends very specifically inscribed within their narrative. In an immanent, avowable structure, the ends are always
certain, with individuals merely ends themselves and understood as means of profit (as support) of this end.
However, the distinction between avowable and unavowable requires some further explanation, and this can be
best achieved by reference to an earlier writer who is key to the French debate. Bataille: Traditional and Elective
Communities Blanchot's The Unavowable Community and Nancy's The Inoperative Community are concerned
primarily with the work of Georges Bataille. Blanchot and Bataille did not meet until 1941, but on viewing
Bataille's work before that time, Blanchot asserts, "It is clear that (approximately) between 1930 and 1940, the
word 'community' imposed itself on his research more than during the following periods." (Unavowable 4). The
group Acephale was one of Bataille's last communitarian endeavors, moving away from an overt politics (la
politique) to an interest in the political (le politique). It was Acephale, which insisted its members be ferociously
religious, that marked the beginning of the end for Bataille, receding from an essentially exterior engagement in
community toward one much more meditative and interior. The claim of religious ferocity was followed in a
companion Acephale text, "Sacred Conspiracy," by this equally provocative statement: "to the extent that our
existence is the condemnation of everything that is recognized today, an inner exigency demands that we be
equally imperious. What we are starting is a war" (Visions 178). This is undoubtedly the same war that Lyotard
joins in some forty-five years later with his declaration against totality in The PostmodernC ondition. Initiated in
1936, Acephale led to the founding of a College of Sociology a year later, in many ways an extension of Acephale.
In the initial College lecture, "Sacred Sociology," Bataille offers an important distinction between what he calls
traditional and elective communities, one that resonates with the difference between the avowable and the
unavowable. Stated simply, these two types of community differ on the basis of what unites them: facts or
affinities. What I would like to do is to excerpt these few comments and expand them, precisely because I find this
distinction fundamental to the current discussions on community. As noted, Bataille's distinction between types
of communities is a small part of this larger essay. What little he does have to say amounts to this: "[T]he
development of new communities is such that the primary formation itself, when all is said and done, takes on a
value equivalent to that of the secondary formations." Both types of communal formations are necessary, though
radically different. He continues: "From then on it [the primary formation] can be regarded as one of the
communities forming society and take the name of traditional community, differing from the new communities,
the most important of which are the elective communities" ("Sacred" 81). At this moment, Bataille offers an
important footnote that bears quoting in its entirety: The College refuses to belong to de facto communities. The
elective communities that it opposes to them, communities of persons brought together by elective affinities,
could be defined as communities of value. What value? Precisely that of community as such: a community of those
for whom the community is a value and not a fact. One's country is only a fact: it would be stupid to deny it[;] it is
morally inadmissible to limit oneself to it. (Hollier, College4 07n 13) This sense of delimiting oneself touches on
an element of individual insufficiency and incompletion that calls for the Other as well as community. These
insufficiencies and incompletions are, as Blanchot points out, defined by birth and death, our ultimate limits;
traditional community is "imposed on us without our having the liberty of choice in the matter: it is de facto
sociality" (Unavowable 46). Bataille emphasizes that elective communities choose to utilize energy "to break,
partially or fatally, the bonds that unite us with society" ("Sacred" 81). Although elective communities are
secondary, they are of "a form of secondary organization that possesses constant characteristics and to which
recourse is always possible when the primary organization of society can no longer satisfy all the desires that
arise" (Hollier, College 149). In short, Bataille is not convinced that traditional community fully appreciates the
complexity and diversity of human experience-precisely because it assumes being is common and not shared.
Bataille extends this complexity: "The tendency to dissociation does not simply oppose individuals to group; it
opposes, even within the same whole, several parts that can be composed of the same elements for that matter"
("Sacred" 81). In other words, there can be countless forms of elective communities, in addition to elective
communities embedded within elective communities. However, it is vital to realize that there can be no single
form of elective community; associations by affinity preclude any homogenizing as they epitomize heterogeneity.
Admittedly, traditional community seeks to reduce elective community to its grammar The End of Community
and the Politics of Grammar 207 (that of an economy of the same), but'the elective should not be seen as equally
reductive. By differing grammars, I suggest that elective communities exist as ends in themselves; they presume
to speak only for those involved, by those involved. Traditional communities, on the other hand, attempt to exist
as an end for all. To use the language employed above in the discussion of ethics, elective community has as its

goal the alteration of traditional community, reformulating what was presumed already formulated. In the end,
while society is never exclusively one type of community or another, society's communifying movement is
predominantly based on a type of unity much more traditional than elective and always for limited benefit. We

create problems by privileging the few facts that unite us , and we have been duped
into discounting the affinities that might better unite us. Furthermore, more often than not
it is characteristics of facts that are hierarchized and then imposed as supposedly traditional; that is, gender or
race is a fact, but community traditionally privileges or prefers one type of gender or race. I presume that these
characteristics imposed as facts are historically nothing less than the play of force and power, dubious of the fact
that certain members of society on the basis of their culture, economic class, ethnicity, gender, politics, race,
religion, or sexual orientation-are necessarily more factual than others. Elective communities necessarily expand
the appreciation of these so-called facts. While we must recognize the intractability of traditional communityBataille admits it is the primary formation-we need not be reduced to it; we must simultaneously realize the
extent to which it can be altered and subverted by elective communities oriented by virtue of affinities and not
facts. Bataille and the Elective Community of Friendship Eventually, Bataille began addressing questions of
community through a new elective formulation. "Friendship,"8h is first published text after the end of his various
communities, helps define this turn. This essay reinforced that insufficiency is at the root of unintelligibility and
itself demands community. Bataille describes this as a discovery: "la seul achevement possible de la connaissance
a lieu si j'affirme de l'existence humaine qu'elle est un commencement qui ne sera jamais acheve" [the only
possible completion of knowledge takes place if I assert that human existence is a beginning that can never be
completed] ("L'Amitie"29 4). Let me pursue the issue of incompletion before getting to friendship, specifically
because of how it bears on the importance Bataille came to place on communication. In a section entitled "The
Principle of Incompleteness," Blanchot asks: "I repeat, for Bataille, the question: Why 'community'? The answer
he gives is rather clear: 'There exists a principle of insufficiency at the root of each being.... ' (the principle of
incompleteness)"( Unavowabl5e ). For Bataille, insufficiency calls for the Other, and the call is answered through
communication; yet the connection this engenders is never intended to render the insufficiency obsolete. Here,
the term "unavowable"is abundantly meaningful. It describes an indefensible state-that is, a state that is not
oriented by prescribed or predefined statutes-because there is no central grand narrative, no traditional
community that one vows to uphold. For Bataille, sharing, ecstasy, and communication are the experience of
incompletion, but not its overcoming. The idea that informed much of Bataille's thinking was a striking passage
by Nietzsche in The Gay Science: "I love the unknowability of the future." 9 Bataille appreciates this quote because
of the sense of deferral it implies. The future is omnipresent, and the passage of time never really moves one
closer to the future; however, one still moves in its direction. Likewise, the move toward completion for Bataille is
just that: movement alone, never an expectation that it will be reached. Nancy develops this idea in The
Inoperative Community, acknowledging, "Of course, to not reach an end was one of the exigencies of Bataille's
endeavor, and this went hand in hand with the refusal of project to which a thinking of community seems
inexorably linked" (21). But how are we to understand all this in terms of friendship, which exemplifies elective
community for Bataille in the forties? I think this makes sense by reference to Montaigne's "Of Friendship." Here,
Michel de Montaigne is concerned with stating explicit differences between true friendship and common or
ordinary relationships-best understood through Bataille's distinction between elective and traditional
communities or Blanchot's distinction between the unavowable and avowable. Indeed, at the outset, Montaigne
states very clearly that there are no friends in "all associations that are forged and nourished by pleasure and
profit, by public or private needs," in that they "are the less beautiful and noble, and the less friendships, in so far
as they mix into friendship another cause and object and reward than friendship itself" (Complete Works 136).
Refusing to structure relationships based on imperatives of pleasure and profit allows the possibility of reaching
friendship. Friendship is most opposed to what Nancy has called immanentist (totalitarian) community, and to
what Blanchot calls the avowable, specifically because it operates from a grammar that transcends totality: that
is, an open, unlimited, infinite orientation without irreducibility,w hat Blanchot calls the unavowable. Friendship
is, in short, a self-referential relation particular to its members alone, according to Montaigne: "friendship has no
other model than itself, and can be compared only with itself" (Complete Works 139). Present in this selfreferential relation is loss, occurring in a seamless suturing. "In the friendship I speak of," Montaigne writes,
referring to the ideal relation unmarred by an imperative of pleasure or profit, "our souls mingle and blend with
each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them, and cannot find it again." Montaigne
describes this ideal in terms of his friendship with Etienne de La Boetie. "I know not what quintessence of all this
mixture," he writes, "which having seized my whole will, led it to plunge and lose itself in his." He continues by
noting the reciprocity of this relation, as Boetie's will would "lose itself in mine, with equal hunger, equal rivalry.
I say lose, in truth, for neither of us reserved anything for himself, nor was anything either his or mine" (139). The
avowable is explicitly and exclusively oriented toward profit, the unavowable toward loss. The unavowable
character of friendship, in Montaigne's terms, would "hate and banish from between them these words of
separation and distinction: benefit, obligation, gratitude, request, thanks, and the like" (141). Obligation is
replaced by necessity because of the responsibility demanded by the friend-this Other-in terms of response. I
think this is exactly what Lyotard means when he says, in The Differend, "It is necessary to link, but the mode of
linkage is never necessary" (29), or 210 MichaeSl trysick "To link is necessary, but a particular linkage is not"
(80). The necessity of linking-responding to a phrase-approximates one's infinite attention to the Other who
enunciates the phrase, with the phrase judged in large part by its attention to how the character of the differend
may bear on the phrase and its links. The response, as link, will be based on one of two structures, each infinite in
variety: profit or loss, avowable or unavowable, traditional or elective. The unavowable response in its
responsibility is structured by an infinite attention in which the friend, as Other, is not treated as commodity
from whom profit is to be gained or exacted. A profit-oriented structure is not defended or authorized when
affinity is present, and the influence of the avoue or advocate is excised from the relation. Profit is at work in the
avowable relation, with the achievement of profit as its vow. The immanent is this work's logic and grammar;

profit is its theos and what is to be gained by the largesse of its totality is authority and power. The unavowable
performs, in its intimacy and elective affinities, the unworking of such an imperative. The unavowable
community, friendship, is an unworking community: not a utopia to be achieved, nor an ideal to be strived for,
but merely an attention to the Other within the debris of the crisis of finite inattention. Incredulity Toward the
Grammar of Community Levinas sought to overcome metaphysics by speaking, as one of his titles suggests,
Autrement qu'etre (that is, otherwise than being); it is vital that we begin to speak otherwise in terms of
community, to hear, listen, see, and think otherwise as well. This is the conclusion at which Nancy arrives: "It
should be possible to think otherwise.... according to another articulation both of love and of community" ("Of
Being-in-common" 38). Such a task is not simply to be enacted as a single response but as a continuous
responding. Community, with the sense of the common seemingly implicit, has been thought for so long from a
vertical standpoint, that is, top down. Perhaps the oldest term used to describe this verticalizing of community is
"empire," what I believe Nancy means when he uses The End of Community and the Politics of Grammar 211 the
term "immanentism." An emperor ruled from the pinnacle of the community, and the rest of the world was
compartmentalized beneath him. Imperial grammar manifested itself so thoroughly, resulting in the creation of
many empires, each smaller (but no less powerful) in nature and size. Community gains nothing from

attempting to build and rebuild immanent, avowable empires. Violence is at the

root of the immanent mentality; its manifest destiny razes what it will, creating
endless trails of tears. Incredulity confronts the immanent with itself, mirroring it in order to undo
power, not usurp it. But this entails a change in foundation, in what Nietzsche refers to as grammar. Unless
foundations change, what arises from them will not change demonstrably . Rather,
we must engage a task to expose totalizing gestures within community . This is the
approach that community's altered politics (la politique), by virtue of a new
orientation of the political (le politique), must engage . And this approach marks not merely
incredulity to metanarratives, but more importantly, incredulity toward the lingering shadow of the grammar of
metanarratives. How will this grammar be broken? The importance of undoing this mentality arises not out of
any search for truth, any metaphysical quest, or any religious pilgrimage; rather, it arises from the need for
justice as manifest equality. Unavowability itself defines a horizontal community. In the process, difference-on
which avowability and inequality has for so long been based-is not erased but rather becomes the greatest
challenge. Thus, it requires a radical shift, an overturning of a prevailing mentality

that prefers the one to the many, or even the many as mediated through the one.
The challenge is to work to understand the many in terms of the many, mediated only by itself. But how could
such radical changes take place? Who would take charge of this? Again, even asking the question in this manner
belies the point to which empire is embedded in our very thinking, specifically if we seek to answer it through the
concept of leaders and followers. Community need not shrink the world to a handful but enlarge it to the many.

Rather than scheming about and theorizing on how to achieve such a horizontal
structure, it is best to simply undo those vertical elements when they appear .
Rather than describing an end point to be reached, with a specific program to that
end, we can describe a point from which we wish to flee. Community has endured codes,

laws, and plans promising paradise, redemption, and salvation; now, we must conceive of practical ways to move
further away from self-created states of emergency. Such a notion of community will not be achieved by some
revisionist undoing of past documents but by a real undoing of past practices incredulity in its strongest form.
After all, we cannot change the past, but we need not be anchored in its mistakes nor chained to its insensitivities.
We need go no further in thinking about undoing the grammar of community than Lyotard's first word in
defining postmodernism: incredulity. Lyotard's term describes not merely a lack of belief, but even more, a lack
of faith: an inability to invest trust in those past creeds and faiths that have preferred the homogeneous and total
at the expense of difference and our shared elective affinities. Now, we must be motivated to create new myths in
order to reinvest the notion of credibility. The relationship to the past is characterized purely by the necessity of
rethinking and restating what has been said. But the post, while commenting on the past by naming a "post" -also
relates to the future, saying not only that we have lost faith in the past but also its modus operandi. At once, all
three tenses are brought into play: at present, in large part because of the past, we do not know what to do in the
future, into which we are forever propelled. Of course, progress is called into question in the process-Walter
Benjamin states this so eloquently in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Despite the passage of

time we are no better equipped to avoid the so-called state of emergency in which
we persist nor to repair it nor to quell the storm blowing us further away from
paradise. The continued proliferation of voices and visions in society, and concomitant ways of hearing and
seeing those imaginings, have engaged the slow death of community by challenging its grammar. New endsstressing the plural over and against the singular, the total- are emerging, though
perhaps very slowly. The degree to which they succeed will depend on the ability to
undo totality and its grammar such that our differences alone are held in common, affinities are as
important as facts, and our discourse marks this alterity. An altered grammar, thus, directs itself toward nothing
less than an expression of the inability to speak for all, an acknowledgment of the unspeakable manner in which
we have tried to form and enforce such totalizing narratives, and an awareness of the ultimate demand that we

speak and think otherwise. Change can occur but only to the degree that community begins to mark its end as not
simply recognizing and allowing "other" voices to speak,10 and at the point when the grammar of the same and
the bias of homogeneity is broken. This will only occur at the moment when we begin to realize that all are "other"
and none are the same.

2NC AT: Perm

The permutation fails- it reinforces notions of community and agreement that erase difference
Secomb 2K (Fractured Community Linnell Secomb Special Issue: Going Australian:
Reconfiguring Feminism and Philosophy Volume 15, Issue 2, pages 133150, May
2000
Despite these deficiencies within liberal Enlightenment universalism, Benhabib

argues that a post-

Enlightenment universalism is still viable. This, she suggests, would be "interactive not legislative,
cognizant of gender difference not gender blind, contextually sensitive and not situation indifferent" (1992, 3).
Benhabib proposes a universalist theory of community which attempts to overcome the problems of
Enlightenment thinking. This vision of community involves a "a discursive, communicative concept of
rationality"; "the recognition that the subjects of reason are finite, embodied and fragile creatures, and not
disembodied cogitos or abstract unities of transcendental apperception"; and "a shift from legislative to
interactive rationality" (1992, 56). This reformulated universalist model of community

would be founded on "a moral conversation in which the capacity to reverse

perspectives, that is, the willingness to reason from the others' point of view, and the
sensitivity to hear their voice is paramount" (1992, 8). Benhabib argues that this model does not assume that
consensus can be reached but that a "reasonable agreement" can be achieved. This formulation of community on
the basis of a conversation in which perspectives can be reversed, also implies a new understanding of identity
and alterity. Instead of the generalized other, Benhabib argues that ethics, politics, and

community must engage with the concrete or particular other. A theory that only engages
with the generalized other sees the other as a replica of the self. In order to overcome this reductive assimilation
of alterity, Benhabib formulates a univetsalist community which recognizes the concrete other and which allows
us to view others as unique individuals (1992, 10). Benhabib's critique of universalist liberal

theory and her formulation of an alternative conversational model of community

are useful and illuminating. However, I suggest that her vision still assumes the
desirability of commonality and agreement, which, I argue, ultimately destroy
difference. Her vision of a community of conversing alterities assumes sufficient
similarity between alterities so that each can adopt the point of view of the other
and, through this means, reach a "reasonable agreement." She assumes the
necessity of a common goal for the community that would be the outcome of the
"reasonable agreement." Benhabib's community, then, while attempting to enable
difference and diversity, continues to assume a commonality of purpose within
community and implies a subjectivity that would ultimately collapse back into
sameness. Moreover, Benhabib's formulation of community, while rejecting the
fantasy of consensus, nevertheless privileges communication, conversation, and
agreement. This privileging of communication assumes that all can participate in
the rational conversation irrespective of difference . Yet this assumes rational
interlocutors, and rationality has tended, both in theory and practice, to exclude
many groups and individuals, including: women, who are deemed emotional and
corporeal rather than rational; non-liberal cultures and individuals who are seen
as intolerant and irrational; and minoritarian groups who do not adopt the
authoritative discourses necessary for rational exchanges . In addition, this ideal of
communication fails to acknowledge the indeterminacy and multiplicity of
meaning in all speech and writing. It assumes a singular, coherent, and transparent
content. Yet, as Gayatri Spivak writes: "the verbal text is constituted by concealment as much as revelation.
[T]he concealment is itself a revelation and visa versa" (Spivak 1976, xlvi). For Spivak, Jacques Derrida, and other
deconstructionists, all communication involves conttadiction, inconsistency, and heterogeneity. Derrida's
concept of diffrance indicates the inevitable deferral and displacement of any final coherent meaning. The
apparently rigorous and irreducible oppositions that structure language, Derrida contends, are a fiction. These
mutually exclusive dichotomies turn out to be interrelated and interdependent: their meanings and associations,
multiple and ambiguous (Derrida 1973, 1976). While Benhabib's objective is clearly to allow all groups within a
community to participate in this rational conversation, her formulation fails to recognize either that language

is as much structured by miscommunication as by communication, or that many

groups are silenced or speak in different discourses that are unintelligible to the

majority. Minority groups and discourses are frequently ignored or excluded from
political discussion and decisionmaking because they do not adopt the dominant
modes of authoritative and rational conversation that assume homogeneity and
transparency. The feminist critiques of community have usefully revealed the
exclusion of difference and the abstraction from the specificity of corporeal
existence which characterize the dominant philosophical models of community .
Many feminist theorists, however, continue to endorse the apparent necessity of a final
agreement or a unifying solidarity within community . While some, like Young, propose an
alternative politics "conceived as a relationship of Strangers" (Young 1992, 234), there continues, even in this
endorsement of heterogeneity, to be an assumption that these diverse strangers would share a common goal and
that this would be the basis for the polity. The goal for Young is a radical, egalitarian democratic politics (24856)
which enables the differentiation, variety, eroticism, and publicity of city life (23641). While Young overcomes
the liberal and communitarian imperative of unity and fusion of identity she continues to endorse a commonality
in the goal and purpose of community. I suggest, however, that this risks the re-creation of

an affinity between the strangers of the city which would once again undermine
their difference through a fusion of common political projects and goals which
would create a merging of alterity into an identity founded on common purpose . In
order to overcome the unifying and totalizing tendency of community it is necessary both to emphasize the
specificity of citizens, as Benhabib has done, and the radical differences of strangers within the polity which is the
basis of Young's formulation of city life. However, in order to avoid a final conflation into

sameness through the creation of a common goal it is also necessary to envisage a

community without common ends and projects. Jean-Luc Nancy's work on
community develops this possibility by describing community as an "unworking"
without common purpose. UNWORKING COMMUNITY Nancy's thinking on community
marks a radical departure from the universalist conceptions of both community
and subjectivity. Nancy's vision of community and singularity, formulated in the light of Heidegger's Dasein
and Mitsein, puts in question accepted ideas about human existence and society (Heidegger 1992). For Nancy, as
for Heidegger, the human existence is not an individual, subject, or citizen, but, in Heidegger's terms, a "beingthere," or in Nancy's, a "singularity." For Nancy, the human existence is a singularity that is from the outset an
inclining towards others and a sharing with and exposure to others.

2NC Genocide Impact

Upholding the idea of community destroys being and ensures mass genocide
Glowacka 6 (Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006) Community and the Work of Death:
Thanato-Ontology in Hannah Arendt and Jean-Luc Nancy, Dorota Glowacka
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HUMANITIES; ADJUNCT PROFESSOR
MA(Wroclaw), PhD(SUNY)
Why is the idea of community so powerful that it is possible for its members to
willingly die for such limited imaginings ?' (Anderson, 1983: 7) The anthropologist's answer is that
the Western conception of community has been founded on the mythical bond of death between its members, who
identify themselves as subjects through the apology of the dead heroes. Yet is not this endless recitation of
prosopopeia, which serves as the self-identificatory apparatus par excellence, also the most deadly mechanism of
exclusion? Whose voices have been foreclosed in the self-addressed movement of the epitaph? Indeed, who, in
turn, will have to suffer a death that is absolute, whose negativity will not be sublated into the good of communal
belonging, so that community can perpetuate itself? 'Two different deaths': it is the 'they' who

will perish, without memory and without a remainder, so that the 'we' can be
endlessly resurrected and blood can continue to flow in the veins of the communal
body, the veins now distended by the pathos of this recitation. The question I would like to ask in this paper is
whether there can be the thinking of community that interrupts this sanguinary logic. A collectivity that projects
itself as unified presence has been the predominant figure of community in the West. Such community

reveals itself in the splendor of full presence, 'presence to self, without flaw and
without any outside' (Nancy, 2001:15; 2003a: 24), through the re-telling of its foundational
myth. By infinitely (self)communicating the story of its inauguration, community
ensures its own transcendence and immortality. For Jean-Luc Nancy, this
immanent figure of community has impeded the 'true' thinking of community as
being-together of humans. Twelve years after writing his seminal essay 'The Inoperative Community',
Nancy contends that 'this earth is anything but a sharing of humanity -- it is a
world lacking in world' (2000: xiii). In Being Singular Plural (1996), Nancy returns to Heidegger's
discussion of Mitsein (Being-with) in Being and Time, in order to articulate an ontological
foundation of being-together or being-in-common and thus to move away from the
homogenizing idiom of community. Departing from Heidegger's habit of separating the political and
the philosophical, however, Nancy situates his analysis in the context of global ethnic
conflicts, the list of which he enumerates in the 'Preface',3 and to which he returns, toward the
end of the book, in 'Eulogy for the Mle (for Sarajevo, March 1993)'. The fact that Nancy has
extended his reflection on the modes of being-together to include different global
areas of conflict indicates that he is now seeking to re-think 'community' in a
perspective that is no longer confined to the problematic of specifically Western subjectivity. This allows me
to add to Nancy's 'necessarily incomplete' list the name of another community-inconflict: the Polish-Jewish community, and to consider, very briefly, the tragic fact
of the disappearance of that community during the events of the Holocaust and in
its aftermath. Within a Nancean problematic, it is possible to argue that the history
of this community in Poland, which has been disastrous to the extent that it is now
virtually extinct, is related, as in Sarajevo, to a failure of thinking community as
Being-with. What I would like to bring out of Nancy's discussion, drawing on the Polish example in
particular, is that rethinking community as being-in-common necessitates the interruption of the myth of
communal death by death understood as what I would refer to, contra Heidegger, as 'dying-with' or 'Being-incommon-towards-death'. Although Nancy himself is reluctant to step outside the ontological horizon as
delineated by Dasein's encounter with death and would thus refrain from such formulations, it is when he reflects
on death (in the closing section of his essay 'Of Being Singular Plural' in Being Singular Plural), as well as in his
analysis of the 'forbidden' representations of Holocaust death in Au fond des images (2003b), that he finds
Heidegger's project to be lacking (en sufferance). This leads me to a hypothesis, partly inspired by Maurice
Blanchot's response to Nancy in The Unavowable Community (1983), that the failure of experiencing the meaning
of death as 'dying-with' is tantamount to the impossibility of 'Being-with' . In the past and in the

present, this failure has culminated in acts of murderous, genocidal hatred, that is,

in attempts to erase a collectivity's proper name, and it is significant that many of

the proper names on Nancy's list fall under the 1948 United Nations' definition of
the genocide as 'acts committed with intent to destroy , in whole or in part, a
national, ethnic, racial or religious group' .4 The Polish national narrative has been
forcefully structured by communal identification in terms of the work of death ,
resulting in a mythical construction from which the death of those who are perceived as other must be excluded.
It is important to underscore that the history of Polish-Jewish relations has never been marred by violence of
genocidal proportions on the part of the ethnic Poles. I will argue nevertheless that what this history discloses is a
fundamental failure to produce modes of co-habitation grounded in ontological being-in-common. As became

tragically apparent during the Holocaust and in its aftermath, Poles'

disidentification with their Jewish neighbors led to an overall posture of
indifference toward (and in some cases direct complicity in) their murder . Again, I
will contend that this failure of 'Being-with' in turn reveals a foreclosure of 'dying-with' in the Polish mode of
communal belonging, that is, a violent expropriation of the Jewish death. At this fraught historical juncture of
ontology and politics, I find it fruitful to engage Nancy's forays into the thinking of death and the community with
Hannah Arendt's reflection on the political and social space. In 'The Nazi Myth' (1989), which Nancy co-authored
with Lacoue-Labarthe, Arendt's definition of ideology as a self-fulfilling logic 'by which a movement of history is
explained as one consistent process' (The Origins of Totalitarianism, qtd in Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, 1989:
293) is the starting point for the analysis of the myth. Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe elaborate Aredn't
analysis in order to argue that the

will to mythical identification, which saw its perverse

culmination in the extermination of European Jews during the Nazi era, is
inextricable from the general problematic of the Western metaphysical subject .

The affs upholding of a myth of community is what creates violence and genocide
Norris 2K (Jean-Luc Nancy and the Myth of the Common Andrew Norris
Constellations Volume 7, No 2, 2000.
Nancy, however, is deeply suspicious of this understanding of community. On his
account, the move from the individual to the community will do us no good if the
community is understood as being a subject of the same sort as the individual . In
the end this will only produce a politics of identity in which different identities and
interests are defined in opposition to one another . Though this is an implication of the
communitarian argument that Sandel and Taylor do not emphasize, it is clearly recognized by Hegel, who argues
that war is a fundamental possibility of political life , one that is not entirely regrettable. It is a

fundamental possibility because the state is, vis--vis other states, an individual ,
and individuality essentially implies negation. Hence even if a number of states
make themselves into a family, this group as an individual must engender an
opposite and create an enemy.10 And it is not an absolute evil because war allows
for the display of martial courage, in which the citizen transcends his limited
position and becomes one with the universal in the form of the state .11 External
conflict and its possible glorification is not the only or even the most pressing
danger Nancy would associate with the politics of communal identity. He argues
that conceiving of the community or the state as a subject entails that we
understand the community to have an identity that is immanent to it, and that
needs to be brought out, and put to work. In Nancys terminology, the community
as subject necessarily implies the community as subject-work. If ones true or higher
or more universal self is found in ones shared communal identity, it becomes the work of politics to
acknowledge and bring forth that immanent communal identity. This will entail not merely conflict

with other political identities, but the purification of ones own community. To
realize their political identity, Serbians must unite so as to become more truly
Serbian; doing so requires that they slough off what is not truly Serbian. Put more
bluntly, it requires that they cleanse their community of foreigners, and rid

themselves of the influence of such. In Nancys terms, people like Milosevic seek to
put community to work.

2NC Extinction Impact

Their flawed notion of relating to the other through community results in extinction
Raffoul 7 (Francois Raffoul and David Pettigrew The Creation of the World Or
Globalization, pages 1-5, 2007
The thinking of the world developed in The Creation of the World Or Globalization unfolds in a play between two
terms that are apparently synonymous, or used interchangeably, namely, globalization and mondialisation.
Nancy addresses, in his prefatory note to the English edition of the text, this linguistic particularity found in the
French language, which possesses two terms for designating the phenomenon known in English simply as
"globalization"; these terms globalization and mondialisation, are rendered here as globalization and worldforming, respectively. As a matter of fact, the term globalization, as Nancy notes, "has already established itself in
the areas of the world that use English for contemporary information exchange" (CW, 27), whereas
mondialisation " does not allow itself to be translated as easily and would even be, according to Nancy,
untranslatable. If the two terms seem, at first glance, to be indistinguishable, converging in the designation of the
same phenomenon, that is, the unification of all parts of the world, in fact they reveal two quite distinct, if not
opposite, meanings. At stake in this distinction is nothing less than two possible

destinies of our humanity, of our time. On the one hand, there is the uniformity
produced by a global economical and technological logic- Nancy specifies, "a global
injustice against the background of general equivalence " (CW, 54)-leading toward the
opposite of an inhabitable world, to "the un-world" [immonde]. And, on the other
hand, there is the possibility of an authentic world-forming , that is, of a making of
the world and of a making sense that Nancy will call, for reasons we will clarify
later, a "creation" of the world. This creation of the world means, as he makes clear, "immediately,
without delay, reopening each possible struggle for a world, that is, for what must form the contrary" of globality
(ibid). It is this contrast in meaning that Nancy endeavors to reveal in order to open the possibility of a world.
From the beginning, he emphasizes that the global or globality is a phenomenon that is more abstract than the
worldly or world-forrning; he refers to globality as a "totality grasped as a whole," an "indistinct totality," while
the world, the worldly, world-forming calls to mind rather a "process in expansion," in reference to the world of
humans, of culture, and of nations in a differentiated set. In the final analysis, what interests Nancy, in this
distinction between "world-forming" and "globalization," is that world-forming maintains a crucial reference to
the world's horizon, as a space of human relations, as a space of meaning held in common, a space of
significations or of possible significance. On the other hand, globalization is a process that indicates an
"enclosure in the undifferentiated sphere of a unitotality" (CW, 28) that is perfectly accessible and transparent
for a mastery without remainder. Therefore, it is not insignificant that the term mondialisation remains
untranslatable, while globalization tends to the integral translatability of all meanings and all phenomena. Nancy
will therefore have a tendency to oppose these two terms, to mark their contrast, going as far as to suggest that
globalization, far from being a becoming world, would lead, rather, to a proliferation of the un-world. At the
beginning of the book, Nancy questions whether the phenomenon of globalization leads to the giving birth of a
world or to its contrary. Further, within the essay" Urbi et orbi" he

discusses globalization as "the

suppression of all world-forming of the world," as "an unprecedented geopolitical,
economic, and ecological catastrophe" (CW, 50). The question, henceforth, becomes the following:
"How are we to conceive of, precisely, a world where we only find a globe, an astral universe, or an earth without
sky ... ?" (CW, 47). Nancy begins with the following fact: the world destroys itself. Here it

is not a matter, he clarifies, of hyperbole, fear, or anxiety, or something catastrophic; or of a

hypothesis for reflection. No, it is, according to Nancy, a fact, indeed the fact from which
his reflection originates. "The fact that the world is destroying itself is not a
hypothesis: it is, in a sense, the fact from which any thinking of the world follows "
(CW, 35). The thought of the world, of the being-world of the world, is thus rendered possible, paradoxically,
when the world destroys itself or is in the process of destroying itself. In effect, it is "thanks to" the event of
globalization-for Nancy, the suppression of the world-that the world is in the position to appear as such.
Globalization destroys the world and thus makes possible the emergence of the question relating to its being. This
is why Nancy begins his thought of the world with an analysis of globalization, that is, the destruction of the
world. Noting briefly the features of this destruction, Nancy highlights the shift in meaning of the papal
formulation "urbi et orbi," which has come to mean, in ordinary language, "everywhere and anywhere." This
"everywhere and anywhere" consecrates the disintegration of the world, because it is no longer possible, since
this disintegration, to form an orb of the world. The orb of the world dissolves in the non-place of global
multiplicity. This is an extension that leads to the indistinctness of the parts of the world, as for instance, the
urban in relation to the rural. Nancy calls this hyperbolic accumulation "agglomeration," in the sense of the
conglomerate, of the piling up, of which the "bad infinite" (CW, 47) dismantles the world:3 This network

cast upon the planet-and already around it, in the orbital band of satellites along
with their debris--deforms the orbis as much as the urbs. The agglomeration
invades and erodes what used to be thought of as globe and which is nothing more
now than its double, glomus. In such a glomus, we see the conjunction of an
indefinite growth of techno-science, of a correlative exponential growth of
populations, of a worsening of inequalities of all sorts within these populationseconomic, biological and cultural-and of a dissipation of the certainties, images
and identities of what the world was with its parts and humanity with its
characteristics. (CW, 33--34) The accumulation of globalization is a concentration of
wealth that never occurs without the exclusion of a margin that is rejected into
misery. Nancy thus notes the correlation of the process of technological and
economic planetary domination with the disintegration of the world, that is, the
disintegration of the "convergence of knowledge, ethics, and social well-being " (CW,
34). Everything happens as if accessing the planetary, the covering of the world in all its totality, made the world
at the same time disappear, as the meaning of the totalizing movement also disappears. The access to totality, in
the sense of the global and of the planetary, is at the same time the disappearing of the world. It is also, Nancy
emphasizes, the end of the orientation and of the sense (of the world). Globality does not open a path ,

a way, or a direction, a possibility; rather, it furiously turns on itself and

exacerbates itself as the blind technological and economical exploitation , on its
absence of perspective and orientation. In short, "The world has lost its capacity to
form a world [faire monde]" (ibid.). The profound nihilism of the logic of
globalization is here revealed for, as Nancy concludes, " everything takes place as if
the world affected and permeated itself with a death drive that soon would have
nothing else to destroy than the world itself" (ibid.).

i On how Irigarays early thought arises from, and against, Lacanian psychoanalysis, see
Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigaray.
ii On this, see Jacqueline Rose, Introduction II to Jacques Lacan, Feminine Sexuality, ed.
Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York: Norton, 1982), esp. p. 28: Sexual difference
is constructed at a price and it involves subjection to a law which exceeds any natural
or biological division.
iii In defence of this point, see chapter three, section IV.
iv Both weaker and stronger variants of essentialism can be found in Aristotles concept
of form. He regards form as that in any thing which makes it a member of a given
species. But also, more strongly, he holds that form exists within any entity as a striving
towards full realisation. See Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 28, 35-6.
v My arguments in this book could be redescribed based on a broader philosophical
definition of essentialism. As currently described, I criticise Irigarays essentialism,
arguing that individual women (and men) have diverse capacities and forces such that
they are never constituted merely as women (or men). In proposing that these diverse
capacities and forces exist and should be expressed and developed, I am, in intrafeminist terms, advocating a synthesis of essentialism and anti-essentialism. If
redescribed in broader philosophical terms, though, my position that all individuals have
not only sexed but also diverse, non-sexed, forces and capacities would remain
essentialist. In this, I follow Andrew Sayers principle that if social science [or
philosophy] is to be critical of oppression, it must be essentialist insofar as it has to
invoke extra-discursive human capacities for suffering or flourishing (Realism and
Social Science (London: Sage, 2000), p. 99).
vi Despite Irigarays influence on feminism, she herself avoids the label, instead
professing support for movements of liberation of women (Womens Exile, trans. Couze
Venn, in Ideology and Consciousness 1 (1977), p. 67). I take this to reflect not a
substantial rejection of feminism but her desire to mark that her feminism takes an
original and unusual form.
vii Margrit Shildrick, Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and
(Bio)ethics (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 227. Even Penelope Deutschers sustained
examination of Irigarays later thought in A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later
Work of Luce Irigaray (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002) is premised on the view that
her recourse to natural reality is prima facie problematic; for discussion of Deutschers
reading, see chapter one, note 33.
viii Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation (California:
University of California Press, 1999), pp. 5, 7. Olkowski is not explicitly discussing
Irigarays later position here but a (comparable) position which she calls naturalism.

ix Irigaray herself periodises her work into an early phase, criticising the monosexuate
character of western culture, a middle phase, creating the conditions for female
subjectivity, and a later phase, encouraging dialogic relations between the sexes (JLI, 9697; DBT, 121-41). As chapter one will explain, I think that it is in her middle phase that
Irigaray introduces the idea that sexual difference is natural, which persists in her selfproclaimed later phase. Thus, when I refer to Irigarays later thought, I take this to
encompass both her self-proclaimed middle and later phases.
x As Judith Butler (not, herself, a sexual difference feminist) explains, gender is
opposed in the name of sexual difference precisely because gender endorses a socially
constructivist view of masculinity and femininity, displacing or devaluing the symbolic
status of sexual difference (UG, 185).
xi Irigarays earlier form of sexual difference feminism is distinct from the kinds of
difference feminism better known in Anglo-American contexts. These aim to recognise
and revalue feminine character traits and abilities which have traditionally been
disparaged or neglected. For example, Carol Gilligan recognises and revalues the caring,
contextualist, ethical standpoint of women, which influential taxonomies of moral
development had ranked as mere immaturity; see Gilligan, In a Different Voice
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982). Whereas approaches like Gilligans
presume that a sex or gender difference already exists in some domain (for example, in
moral reasoning), Irigaray holds that traditional symbolic structures deny sexual
difference by regarding the female as merely an inferior approximation of the male. She
therefore seeks recognition of an as yet non-existent female identity, seeing herself as
pursuing a transformation of cultures basic symbolism.
xii See Genevieve Lloyd, Introduction to Feminism and History of Philosophy, ed. Lloyd
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), esp. pp. 7-9.
xiii Stacy Keltner, The Ethics of Air: Technology and the Question of Sexual Difference, in
Philosophy Today Suppl. Vol. (2001), p. 60.
xiv As Sally Haslanger argues, it does not follow from the fact that our epistemic relation
to the world is mediated (by language, by concepts, by our sensory system, etc.) that we
cannot refer to things independent of us Intermediaries do not necessarily block
access (Feminism in Metaphysics: Negotiating the Natural, in The Cambridge
Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, edited by Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 121). For example, spectacles and
telephones are intermediaries that enable us to know about things that really,
independently, exist.