IRONY BAD 1NC

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FORGET IRONY
A. GROUCHO OR KARL? A BUDDHIST MONK WALKS UP TO A HOTDOG VENDER AND SAYS MAKE ME ONE WITH EVERYTHING. LET
ME EXPLAIN: THE IDEA OF

BUDDHISM

IS TO BE IN TOTAL UNISON WITH THE WHOLE OF EXISTENCE , AND THE HOTDOG

VENDER IS SUPPOSED TO CAUSE A BRIEF SENSATION OF BEFUDDLEMENT IN YOU BEFORE YOU GET THE JOKE AND THEN LAUGH AT IT, OR ROLL YOUR EYES, OR WHATEVER. WITH MUSTARD AND SAUERKRAUT.

ALSO,

ITS KIND OF FUNNY TO IMAGINE EXISTENCE SLATHERED

SEE, THE

JOKE ISNT FUNNY ANY MORE ONCE WE TAKE THE TIME TO EXPLAIN IT.

DISINGENUOUS, OR AT LEAST COWARDLY AN INEFFECTIVE. A JOKE.

SIMILARLY, THE AFFIRMATIVES IRONY IS A REAL IRONIC CRITICISM WOULD NOT EXPOSE ITSELF AS

THERE ARE TWO IMPLICATIONS HERE.

1. THE 1AC ITSELF BEARS WITNESS TO THE VERY REAL RISK THAT AN IRONIC PRESENTATION WILL BE MISUNDERSTOOD. PEOPLE WILL PERHAPS TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY AND READ THEIR RELATIONS DAS AND THEY WILL LOSE. THIS PROVES THAT IRONY IS AN INEFFECTIVE STRATEGY OF POLITICAL RESISTANCE , ESPECIALLY IN THE CONTEXT OF A COMPETITIVE DEBATE. 2. THEIR
METHODOLOGICAL COMPARISON IS A NEGATIVE ARGUMENT.

TO

REVEAL AN IRONIC

1AC

AS IRONIC IS TO RE -

INSERT THE IRONY INTO AN ALREADY EXISTING AND QUITE POPULAR TECHNIQUE OF RHETORICAL CRITICISM. WOULD DO WELL TO TAKE A LESSON IN EFFECTIVE SATIRE AND WATCH EPISODES FROM FROM SEASONS TO DEBUNK .

THE AFF

THE SIMPSONS, SPECIFICALLY

THROUGH

5. OTHERWISE,

THEY MERELY PROVIDE NORMATIVE POLITICAL AND CRITICAL THOUGHT

WITH MORE TERRAIN, DOMESTICATING RADICAL CRITIQUE AND STRENGTHENING THE VERY PROBLEMS THEY ATTEMPT

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FORGET IRONY
B. ALL
OF THIS MEANS THAT THE

1AC

IS NOT GENUINELY IRONIC, BUT THAT THE AFF IS INSTEAD SIMPLY INSERTING AN

IRONIC DISTANCE BETWEEN THEMSELVES AND THE VERY IDEOLOGIES THAT THEY THRIVE UPON FOR THEIR MILDLY

THIS DISTANCE IS NOT EFFECTIVE CRITICISM, BUT IS INSTEAD EXACTLY WHAT IDEOLOGY NEEDS IN ORDER TO CONTINUE TO FUNCTION EFFECTIVELY . IEK, INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH IN LJUBLJANA, 1998 [SLAVOJ, WHY DOES THE LAW NEED AN OBSCENE SUPPLEMENT? IN LAW AND THE POSTMODERN MIND, PAGES 83-85]

AMUSING CRITICISMS.

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C. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? THE AFFIRMATIVE MUST PROVIDE AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE HUMAN BEING THAT VALIDATES THE CLAIMS THEYVE MADE IN THIS DEBATE. THE 1AC ASSUMES THAT THE ACTORS INVOLVED IN THE DRAMA THAT IS THEIR ADVANTAGE CLAIMS, THE POTENTIAL LISTENERS TO THE NORMATIVE STATEMENT OF THE PLAN, AND THOSE WHO LISTEN TO THEIR CASE RESPOND AS AUTONOMUS, RATIONAL LIBERAL SUBJECTS. THE RATIONAL SUBJECT IS A MYTH, A MASTER SIGNIFIER USED TO AVOID ADMITTING A SIMPLE TRUTH. IN FACT, THIS WAY OF SPEAKING ABOUT THE WORLD ACTIVELY DEMANDS THAT WE BECOME RATIONAL SUBJECTS WHICH IS TO SAY, THE PERFECT COGS FOR BUREAUCRATIC MANAGEMENT OF LIFE. SCHLAG, PROFESSOR OF LAW UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, 1991 [TEXAS LR 69 1627]
Now, I think it is precisely because the reigning configuration of legal thought is embedded in regions and processes that are obscured from the critical reaches of that same legal thought that this rhetoric has been so resilient. The rhetoric has been structured as a kind of forgetting of the forgetting, a repression of the repression. The rhetoric has been inscribed in the legal subject--and that is what has been put off-scene, out of reach, beyond inquiry. In the same way, the problem of the subject has been obscured in virtue of the legal thinkers' construction as a conscious sovereign individual subject, who does not even recognize that the subject is a problem. C. The Subject as Problem But the subject is a problem. We have already seen how the subject becomes a problem for various kinds of contemporary legal thought and their projects. The problem arises as each school recognizes that its own intellectual architecture, its own normative ambitions rest upon the presupposition of a subject -- a subject whose epistemic, ontological, and normative status is now very much in question. Now this is not simply an intellectual problem; it has political implications. The political implications are easy to describe. The constitution of legal thinkers and others as conscious sovereign individual subjects produces a politics that works perfectly -- assuming that we do indeed [*1739] have conscious sovereign individual subjects situated to control the levers of the social machinery. n425 Once articulated, however, that vision fast becomes implausible. In the legal academy, this vision of social life is maintained by an elite of legal thinkers who systematically confirm themselves in this vision by relentlessly rehearsing its aesthetic. They seem to be either incapable or unwilling to recognize that this conventional aesthetic of social life is fast becoming unbelievable. Now, the resistance of legal academics to a reconsideration of the conventional aesthetic of the liberal subject is easy to understand. If the liberal subject disappears from the scene, a number of very troublesome questions immediately surface: who (or what) is controlling the levers running the social machinery? n426 And if there's no one operating the levers, then what has been the effect of all that good, admirable, serious, normative legal thought? n427 As legal thinkers, we like to think we are doing good, normative legal work--advancing noble causes and the like -- but if the liberal subject is no longer operating the levers, our work product can take on a different character. We may simply be rehearsing and reproducing the instrumentalist logic of bureaucratic practices. n428 Indeed, the main significance of noble normative work is in the rehearsal of a false aesthetic of social life--one which falsely represents instrumentalist strategies as within the control of individual subjects the unfolding of bureaucratic logic as the choices of individuals the discursive mechanisms of coercion as normative dialogue. Now, there is nothing wrong with instrumental control in and of [*1740] itself. Indeed, instrumental control is often valued--it bears names like efficiency, effectiveness, and wisdom. But the supposition that instrumental control is desirable presupposes that there is an epistemically and normatively competent subject at the levers. And that is precisely what is being thrown in question: if the subject is constituted by its discourses and its context, who or what is in charge? n42

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HARVARD 2012

FORGET IRONY
THIS
ISNT MERELY A LINK OF OMISSION

AFFS LACANIAN UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR.

THE

CLAIMS RELY ON A VISION OF THE PERSON RENDERED FALSE BY A

CAUDILL, PROFESSOR OF LAW WASHINGTON AND LEE SCHOOL OF LAW, 2003 [CARDOZO LAW REVIEW 24 2331]
Lacan credits Descartes for the emergence of the subject of science, "the Cartesian subject," n37 which desires certainty n38 "through the [*2338] exercise of his own reason." n39 Even in his famous method of doubt, Descartes confirmed his thinking existence, and Lacan analogizes this "annihilation of knowledge" to the fading subject of psychoanalysis n40 - fading in the sense that the fleeting certainty of cogito ergo sum requires constant repetition of that "mantra." n41 Moreover, Descartes' supposed suspension of confidence in all of his knowledge is too quickly "cured" by his confidence in a non-deceiving God, the guarantor not only of his initial knowledge of his existence, but of his knowledge of Nature as well. n42 Lacan sees two more analogies in Descartes' expansive method: (1) like the subject in psychoanalysis, Descartes' exercise of reason to acquire knowledge is sustained by his faith in a subject-supposed-to-know (e.g., God for Descartes, or an analyst); and (2) like the modern subject of science, Descartes believed the truth of his knowledge "is guaranteed by something/someone outside" the subject, like "science itself." n43 The split between knowledge and truth (represented by Descartes' doubt that what he knew was true) is "sutured" in modern science to reduce truth to knowledge. God is allegedly replaced by "a real guarantee - one that is rooted in either empirical facts, or a rationalist logic or mathematics." n44 Whereas the Cartesian subject is fundamentally divided between a certainty of thinking (knowledge) and an uncertainty of truth which can only be lifted through the introduction of a non-deceitful God, modern science has endeavored to solve the issue of truth by advancing it as the inherent quality of proper scientific knowledge. n45 While modern scientific practices proceed "from the conviction that the [*2339]rational processes which organize all things worldly will ultimately reveal themselves to the conscious human mind," n46 Lacan (following Freud) emphasizes the subject of the unconscious - the subject who does not know, who is not in control . The notion that the determinative unconscious is structured like a language has implications both for the question of the scientificity of psychoanalysis - since the object of inquiry is structured - and for the critique of science as a discourse that is forgetful, that misrecognizes its status as a discourse. Lacan's call for a return to subjectivity in modern science likewise has two meanings: first, a scientific psychoanalysis will be a science of subjectivity - a science that accounts for the operations of the unconscious in the subject; second, Lacan's critique of science is that it "forecloses that which makes itself possible, for its own condition is the subject that writes and speaks, that enunciates and forgets ... ." n47

And, Irony is a decoy that devoids us from real activism Goerlandt, 06 (Iannis, Professor at Ghent University, Put the Book Down and Slowly Walk Away: Irony and David Foster
Wallaces Infinite Jest, Volume 47, Issue 3, Spring, Proquest) Hutcheon also spots the possibility of complacency in irony: irony

becomes a kind of surrogate for actual resistance and opposition. Ironists have been accused of smugness before, [. . .] but this time it is the interpreter too who is not being let off the hook. Even worse, irony is seen by some to have become a clich of contemporary culture, a "convention for establishing complicity," a "screen for bad faith" [. . .]. What was once an "avenue of dissent" is now seen as "a commodity in its own right" [. . .]. This position is usually
articulated in terms of contrast: the "authentic" or "sincere" past versus the ironic present of the "total" ironist [. . .] whose use of what is interpreted as a mode of "monadic relativism" [. . .] prevents taking any stand on any issue. (28)9

IRONY BAD 1NC

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FORGET IRONY
D. NEW WORLD ODOR (IMPACTS) FIRST, THE
ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.

THE

AFFS RECUPERATION OF A SOVEREIGN, KNOWING

SUBJECT MERELY RESUSCITATES AN ANCIENT EPISTEMOLOGY OF CONQUEST. VIOLENCE CONTAINED THEREIN

THE

CONSEQUENCE OF THIS ORDERED

SUBJECTIVITY IS THE PERPETUAL CONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF GLOBAL ORDERING AND THE GENOCIDAL

NAYAR, PROFESSOR OF LAW UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK, 1999 [TRANSNATIONAL LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS 9 599]
[*606] Distinguishing these two meanings of "order" provides us with radically opposed directions of analysis and orientations for future imagings of social relations. Although the rhetoric of world-order would focus on visions of some projected "world" that provides the aspiration for collective endeavors, "order" does not come to be without necessary "ordering;" the "world" of "world-order" has not come to be without the necessary ordering of many worlds. The ordering and the ordered, the world of order and the ordered world, all are inextricable parts of the past and the present of "civilization." Despite the vision of world-order founded on a notion of a universal society of humankind aspiring toward a universal common good, (first given meaning within a conceptual political-legal framework through the birth of the so-called "Westphalian" state system n14 ), the materialities of "ordering" were of a different complexion altogether. Contrary to the disembodied rhetoric of world-order as bloodless evolution, the new images of the world and languages of "globality" did not evolve out of a sense of "hospitality" n15 to the "other," the "stranger." Rather, the history of the creation of the post-Westphalian "world" as one world, can be seen to be most intimately connected with the rise of an expansionist and colonizing world-view and practice. Voyages of "discovery" provided the necessary reconnaissance to image this "new world." Bit by bit, piece by piece, the jigsaw of the globe was completed. With the advance of the "discoverer," the "colonizer," the "invader," the "new" territories were given meaning within the hermeneutic construct that was the new "world." [*607] The significance of this evolution of the world does not, however, lie merely in its acquiring meaning. It is not simply the "idea" of the world that was brought to prominence through acts of colonization. The construction of the "stage" of the world has also occurred, albeit amid the performance of a violent drama upon it. The idea of a single world in need of order was followed by a succession of chained and brutalized bodies of the "other." The embodied world that has been in creation from the "colonial" times to the present could not, and does not, accommodate plurality. The very idea of "one world" contains the necessary impetus for the absorption, assimilation, if not destruction, of existing worlds and the genocide of existing socialities. This violence of "order-ing" within the historical epoch of colonialism is now plainly visible.

Next, Irony is an endless game of illusions that promotes tyrannical ideas of inaction like a genocidal state Wallace, 97 (David Foster, Professor of Creative Writing and English at Pomona College, A Supposedly Fun Thing Ill Never Do
again, pgs 66-68)

how have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today's avant-garde tries to write about? One clue's to be found in the fact that irony is still around , bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It's not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As Hyde (whom I pretty obviously like) puts it, "Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage:'32 This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It's critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony's singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks . This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I've had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300-page novel full of nothing but trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow . . . oppressed. Think , for a moment, of Third World rebels and coups. Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebelSo then

IRONY BAD 1NC HARVARD 2012 skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves in other words, they just become better tyrants. And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don't really mean what I'm saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it's impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it's too bad it's impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today's irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean." Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.

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FORGET IRONY 1NC

OUR ALTERNATIVE IS THAT YOU SHOULD ASSUME THE ROLE OF THE ANALYST: PSYCHOANALYSIS DOES NOT FORSAKE ETHICAL REFLECTION OR CONCERTED ACTION, BUT IT DEBUNKS THE POWERFUL GRIP OF THE GOOD OVER THE DESIRING SUBJECT. OUR CRITICISM ASKS PRIOR QUESTIONS AND REFUSES TO GIVE IN TO THE AFFS HYSTERICAL PROVOCATION TOWARD IRONIC SOCIAL CRITIQUE , THEREBY RECENTERING ETHICAL INTERROGATION TOWARD THE INHERENT INSTABILITY OF THE HUMAN SUBJECT. YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR OUR DIAGNOSIS OF THE 1AC AND REJECT THE AFFIRMATIVES BORDERLINE PSYCHOSIS CAUDILL, PROFESSOR OF LAW WASHINGTON AND LEE SCHOOL OF LAW, 1995 [CARDOZO LAW REVEW 16 793]
In briefest terms, the Seminar is a sustained critique of any ethical theorizing that begins with an attempt to define the good, or the sovereign or supreme good. n29 For Lacan, the appropriate starting point for ethical reflection is the desire of the subject, n30 thus his critique of various notions of the good is constructive. Several times in the Seminar, Lacan refers to the good as a barrier to desire. n31 If that sounds commonplace, insofar as ethics is often viewed as a corrective to desire, I should confirm that Lacan's view is quite to the contrary. There are at least four less obvious senses in which the barrier metaphor is employed, and by describing each I hope to highlight one theme of the Seminar of interest to legal theorists. First, the notion of the good, whether described in terms of a natural order or in terms of pleasure or happiness or wealth, is a [*798] barrier to theoretical discourse because it functions to support ethical reflection that does not attend to a preliminary or foundational matter: to give an account of desire. n32 Of course, Lacan does not say that any old account of desire will do - he is critical of both the view that desire is bad and must be controlled in the name of law, and the view that desire must be liberated in the name of pleasure. The first view fails to recognize the mutual bond between desire and law, that is, the manner in which law makes transgression possible as well as the manner in which the law of desire is prior to and beyond morality. n33 The second view, toward liberation, fails historically: the more the theory, the more social criticism, and the more duties we can imagine with which to burden the liberated subject. n34 Freud's pleasure principle, at least, revealed a system that tends toward deception, toward a hallucinating satisfaction that requires a reality principle to correct and restrain the instincts. n35 The second sense in which the good is a barrier to desire is in the analytic situation - against the view that psychoanalysis is a moralizing discourse, Lacan confirms that the analyst does not deliver virtue, but rather clears pathways and then, perhaps, hopes for virtue. n36 Surely an ethical judgment is in play here, but the goal is to reveal or to let the subject reveal his or her desire, not to help [*799] the subject colonize his or her lack with mirages of other happy people, or with his or her "own good," or even society's good. n37 The "cure," if that's the right word, is to know and experience the absolute disarray into which our desire leads us, to know the human condition. n38 If that sounds pessimistic, Lacan anticipates the criticism of a gathering of leftist intellectuals. Calling upon the images of the fool and the scoundrel in Elizabethan drama, Lacan concedes that right-wing intellectuals are scoundrels in their appeal to the reality of the human condition, but he also notes that a gathering of right-wing intellectuals leads to collective foolery. n39 Leftist intellectuals, on the other hand, are innocent fools in their optimism, but gathered together, they trick each other into believing that progress does not require enormous costs. n40 The third sense given to the good as a barrier to desire is not so different from the first two senses (that the good is misleading in (1) theoretical and (2) analytical discourse), and it is the third sense that allows the editor to promise that the Seminar clarifies many of Lacan's key concepts: the good is a signifying construction, and is structured by, rather than giving structure to, the symbolic order. n41 Just as psychical functions are revealed (after some effort) in symbolic processes, the desire of the subject is revealed, though never completely, in the subject's relationship with language. n42 Moral law is an after-effect, a trace or oversimplification, of desire. n43 [*800] The fourth and final sense in which the good is a barrier to desire is as a description of the structure or law of the desiring subject. Lacan remarks that the "sphere of the good erects a strong wall across the path of our desire," and then suggests that the field of ethics is beyond, rather than exemplified by, that wall. n44