***Oceans Aff

*Top Shelf*

1AC “It was such a strange day. The sun was shining and it was warm. Then the tsunami came and destroyed everything. Afterwards when I looked out across the wasteland, I

couldn’t help thinking that it was strange that the sun was still shining”

– Mezubar, tsunami survivor and volunteer worker from Banda, Aceh

On December 26th, 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami crashed onto the shores of eastern Sri Lanka, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. In the midst of a civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the undersea earthquake which created the tsunami displayed the unfathomable power the oceans have on the daily lives of local populations close to the shore. In the wake of the disaster caused by the tsunami’s force, both those populations affected and those who only came to know of the destruction from hearing about it were forced to confront our collectivity. While the Sri Lankan government used the tsunami as a means to displace local Tamil populations during the armed conflict, international relief efforts exposed the disproportionate value placed on white tourist’s lives as opposed to brown and black local populations. Jessia Lehmen explains in 2010,

<Department of Geography, Environment and Society, University of Minnesota <Jessica. “Relating to the sea: enlivening the ocean as an actor in¶ Eastern Sri Lanka” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2013 (article written December 2010), volume 31, pages 485-501>

The disaster of the 2004 tsunami is likely the most obvious example of the ocean’s agency¶ on Sri Lanka’s east coast. Yet, many authors contend that the tsunami, and so-called ‘natural’¶ disasters more generally, are socially formed, and are predicated on the ‘political’ [Clark¶ (2007; 2010) for arguments

about the political character of ‘natural’ disasters, see Bakker¶ (2005), Brun (2009), Comfort et al (1999), Le Billon and Waizenegger (2007)]. The social¶ construction of ‘natural’ disaster has two meanings: such events would not

be considered¶ disastrous were it not for the humans affected; and social relations cause the negative effects ¶ of the disasters to be unevenly distributed and perhaps more harmful than necessary . Both of¶ these implications carry great weight in Sri Lanka and much scholarship

has been published¶ on these matters. For example, Hyndman (2007) has illustrated the extent to which the¶ Sri Lankan government used the tsunami and related fears to further displace and consolidate ¶ Tamil populations as a strategy in the armed conflict . Second, Korf and colleagues (Korf,¶ 2005; 2006; 2007; Hasbullah and Korf, 2009) have written about the aftermath of the tsunami¶ and the ways it was instrumentalized by various groups, both within and

outside of Sri Lanka.¶ The effects of the record amounts of aid that came in after the tsunami have gained widespread¶ scholarly attention (Clark, 2007; Korf, 2007; Korf et al, 2009; Nanthikesan, 2005; Stirrat,¶ 2006). Korf draws attention to what he terms the “antinomies of aid”, which not only fail¶ to acknowledge the agency of Sri Lankans in recovery processes but reinstate a world order¶ in which South Asian countries must bow down in gratitude to

the West (Korf, 2007; Korf¶ et al, 2009). Several commentators also question why local examples of generosity went¶ uncelebrated and why this disaster generated such an unprecedented outpouring

of aid. They¶ expose the relative value placed on the lives and deaths of white tourists as opposed to brown

and black victims of the tsunami and other catastrophes, as well as the political jockeying by ¶ NGOs and national governments that often played a significant role in aid allocation (Clark,¶ 2007; Nanthikesan, 2005; Olds et al, 2005).¶

What most scholarship on the 2004 tsunami has left unaddressed is the materiality of¶ the disaster—what it means that the ocean unexpectedly arose to destroy property, homes,¶ and lives. Clark (2007; 2010) cautions that, while important, arguments for understanding¶ natural disaster as political ignore the power of disaster and of nonhuman actors to transform¶ our understandings of the world. Clark advocates positioning disaster and vulnerability¶ “upstream”, as the conception of subjects rather than as forces that act upon them, and¶ proposes the extension of this perspective not only to researchers but also to ways of thinking¶ (2007, page 12). In doing so,

Clark believes that it is possible to see the ways that nonhuman¶ agency causes human beings, even those not

directly affected, to confront our collectivity , to reimagine the centrality of our inherent

vulnerability, and to glimpse infinitude . My¶ observations support Clark’s arguments, while also showing that engaging materially with ¶

disaster can illuminate a nonhuman agency that both precedes and extends beyond the event itself. ¶ The

already powerful material and cultural associations with the sea on Sri Lanka’s east¶ coast caused the tsunami to manifest even more strongly. This is not to say that the ocean¶ played an asocial role. Rather, I point this out because it is worth considering the ways that¶ the materiality of the tsunami acted in particular social and political ways, changing how¶ coastal residents think about the sea. Here the sea can be seen not only as actively shaping¶ the social and political configurations that are currently playing out, but also as relationally¶ influencing the ways these communities will address potential future disasters or long-term¶ 496 J S Lehman¶ environmental

changes. The tsunami is an instance of the ocean acting nonreflexively, with “a¶ capacity to engender affective and emotional responses from the humans who dwell amongst¶ them—to contribute to the haunting of place via exchanges between the visible present and¶ the starkly absent in the multiple and incomplete becoming of agency” (Jones and Cloke,¶ 2008, page 81).¶ The materiality of the tsunami was certainly not lost on the people who experienced¶ it. Fisherfolk , living in proximity to the sea, were the most heavily affected by the tsunami¶

(Thurnheer, 2009); nearly everyone in Batticaloa I spoke with had lost a loved one. Here¶ I turn my focus to the intimate, to what people reported of this most trying of

times. It is¶ important to understand these reactions to the tsunami not as occurring only at a ‘local’ scale,¶ but rather as confounding scale by showing the ways that local and global scales inflect,

reflect, and complicate each other through embodied experiences (Mountz and Hyndman,¶ 2006). Furthermore, Latour (2005) reminds us that

scale is the achievement of the actor;¶ fisherfolk can make weighty contributions, which matter to the reality of the tsunami’s¶ aftermath. Additionally, it is crucial to make a note on the recounting of these stories, and on¶ preceeding accounts of the conflict.¶ Much has been written on the politics and pitfalls of testimony and witnessing, particularly¶ when this occurs internationally (Pratt, 2009; Wright, 2009). I did not intend to extract stories¶ of personal loss due to the tsunami or the war, yet these accounts came up frequently. My¶ impression was not, however, that people were desperate to have these stories heard; rather,¶ people believed I expected them to tell these stories, to offer up the counts of the dead and¶ damaged. This is likely what they were asked to do by the barrage of NGOs and media¶ organizations that came to the country after the tsunami; indeed, it was probably an important¶ way to access necessary aid resources. Interestingly, these accounts of loss and suffering came¶ up less frequently when it came to discussions that I initiated about the conflict. This could¶ indicate the potentially serious political implications of discussing the war in depth. It could¶ also be that the comparative lack of international and NGO attention that has historically¶ been given to refugees of the armed conflict makes the recounting of these stories to visitors¶ less valuable or necessary. In the discussions that elicited these stories of personal loss due¶ to the tsunami, I found myself being hustled down the discursive paths of aid workers and¶ academics who had gone before me. Hence, I proceed with caution, and with the awareness¶ that there is nothing innocent and all sorts of risk in (mis)representing these stories (Pratt,¶ 2009).¶ Residents’ retellings of what happened just before and during the tsunami centrally¶ feature material elements of the sea as acting in particularly meaningful ways. A few¶ participants mentioned that jellyfish and snakes filled the lagoon and gathered near the¶ bridge that spans the distance between the main town of Batticaloa and Kallady, the ‘suburb’¶ across the lagoon. Cupples (2012) notes that animal reactions to (or predictions of) imminent¶ disaster constitute a more-than-human, alternative form of knowledge and agency. The ocean¶ provided additional clues, even if their import was not comprehended at the time; one man¶ recalled that five days before the tsunami, the sea had been quite rough (not unusual in the¶ month of December) but then three days before it had become calm. Another recounted that¶ a month before the tsunami, a large cloud had appeared in the sky, engendering a common¶ belief that a major cyclone was imminent. As the water withdrew before the first big wave,¶ the fisherfolk reported being able to walk on the ground that would normally be underwater.¶ During the tsunami, those at sea were unharmed, but they heard a loud sound: in the words¶ of one participant, ‘the sea broke’. After the first wave, some fishermen fled from the sea,¶ but others got caught in the inundation. One man recounted being in the lagoon at 8:45am;¶ he heard screaming and shouting, saw big waves and climbed a tree. The details recounted¶ Relating to the sea 497¶ in these observations are remarkable, as nearly five years had passed since the tsunami at the¶ time of this research. These memories herald the beginning of a time when the sea could not be expected to behave as it had previously. Although the source and cause of the tsunami are now common knowledge, I asked the research participants what they initially believed to be the cause of the tsunami. Their¶ responses illustrate the capacity for the ocean to act as an intermediary for global political¶ relations. The most common answer was that Western nations, and the US in particular, had¶ detonated a nuclear weapon. That they believed this to be a stronger possibility than the¶ SLAF trying to assert an upper hand in the civil war attests to the power of the ocean to be a¶ conduit for the political

anxieties of the coastal residents about the global world order. Here¶ the ocean operates both as pure space, capable of being instantly transcended by hegemonic¶ military forces, and as place, where it might be possible to carry out certain kinds of weapons¶ testing with particular material consequences (Steinberg, 2001).¶ Fisherfolk and people living on the coast also

observed material changes in the sea¶ after the tsunami. These include damage to the lagoons due to an influx of water, sand, and¶ debris; the destruction of corals; more snakes in the sea; and the presence of debris in the¶ ocean, which damaged fishing nets. They also became aware of changes in the currents and¶ climate, which they attributed to the effects of the tsunami. These changes include alterations¶ in annual precipitation, temperature, and wind patterns as well as changes in marine species¶ richness and abundance. While many of these changes are consistent with the predicted¶ effects of climate change, the fisherfolk’s attribution of them to the tsunami,

along with the¶ significant losses of life and property that they incurred, means that the disaster has an ongoing¶ and daily presence in their lives (Lehman, in press). These intense material experiences with ¶ the stuff of the sea, combined with the sea’s centrality and usual dependability make its¶ material agency vital in understanding the experience of people living on the coast, at the ¶

intersections of conflict, disaster, and daily life. The ocean is instrumental in knitting together daily

experience and underlying threats of violence and disaster.

In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, local acts of kindness and solidarity pervaded Sri Lanka. Despite ethnic, religious, and physical boundaries, Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims alike helped one another by sharing limited resources and providing shelter to one another. After some delay, foreign aid arrived but not in the same selfless light. Giving became competitive, and those populations deemed more valuable or marketable to foreign aid companies were prioritized over other communities. The United States and Western countries’ exploration of the Indian Ocean tsunami was driven by a commodified incentive instead of the compassion-driven approach by local populations. Korf, Hasbullah, Hollenbach and Klem explain in 2009,

<Korf B, Hasbullah S, Hollenbach P, Klem B, 2009, “The gift of disaster: the commodification of¶ good intentions in post-tsunami Sri Lanka” Disasters. 34: S60–S77>

When the tsunami hit Sri Lanka’s coastline, Maruthamunai, a Muslim town on the ¶ war-affected southeast coast, suffered major devastation. Approximately one-tenth of its population died because of

the tsunami . As the Muslim community received less attention in national debates on aid delivery , foreign aid agencies reached the¶ Muslim- and Tamil-inhabited southeast coast only after some delays.¶ Relief and rescue efforts immediately after the event involved many acts of local solidarity

and pure kindness, often transcending ethnic boundaries (Harris, 2005).¶ In Maruthamunai and its neighbouring

settlements, Tamils and Muslims shared¶ relief items and assisted each other with rescue and cleaning activities. They received¶ local donations from people throughout Sri Lanka—from Sinhalese, Tamils, and¶ Muslims. On several occasions, people told us stories like the following:¶ the Tamil village of Kalaru,

situated north of Periyaneelavanai and Maruthamunai, was¶ cut off from the land route . Consequently, Muslims from Maruthamunai shared their own ¶ relief items with Tamils in Kalaru , transporting them by boat . ¶ Such narratives of kindness and solidarity indicate a ‘kind of give without take,¶ generosity without expectation of any return’ (Clark, 2005, p. 385), borne out of the¶ magnitude of the event, the scope of suffering—a type of pure gift. Indeed, the kindness appeared as a significant rupture with the

widespread patronage and ethnic antagonism in the district’s politics—a disjuncture of ‘politics’ . ¶ The mosque became a natural place of refuge for many displaced people who¶ sought material and spiritual support. The mosque federation (palibail samasam)—a¶ coalition of leaders from various mosques in Maruthamunai—organised the distribution¶ of relief items, the burial of corpses, and the provision of temporary shelter (in¶ mosques, schools, and other public buildings). It received food gifts from local donors¶ within the community and from neighbouring communities, and it implemented¶ a system of relief distribution that distinguished three categories of affectedness and¶ defined the specific entitlements of each group. These strict rules were designed to¶ institute transparency and accountability to the distribution of scarce relief items.¶ The mosque leaders explained to us that they wanted to avoid falling into the trap of politics, favouritism, and patronage—practices common within the trappings of¶ Sri Lanka’s welfare state and developmental aid. Gift giving was seen as a religious act¶ of generosity that needed to be kept clean, ‘purified’, left free of the ‘dirty’, mundane¶ procedures of politics. And the mosque was the place to guarantee this purification.¶ Immediately following the tsunami, relief items were in short supply. A few weeks ¶ later, Sri Lankan and foreign aid agencies and volunteers brought more relief items¶ and aid money . As a result, the nature of gift giving and its handling changed: giving became competitive as the different aid agencies had to

find the most viable and¶ marketable (photogenic) projects on which they could spend their funds visibly (Korf,¶ 2007; Stirrat, 2006).¶ The change in the gift economy did not happen suddenly, but was rather a gradual¶ process. In the beginning, the state authorities and the few non-governmental organisations¶ (NGOs) already present in the area continued to coordinate their work through¶

the mosque federation. However, a rising number of new, foreign, and often inexperienced¶ agencies largely bypassed the federation and distributed their relief directly¶ to ‘suffering people’—frequently in conjunction with the media, which reported¶ these gifts back to the public in the donor countries. These agencies operated in an¶ increasingly competitive aid market and felt pressure to offer an attractive package to¶ beneficiaries in order to gain ‘clients’. This competitive

humanitarianism aggravated a lot of social tension, discontent, and jealousy among the recipients of

the gifts. ¶ Aid dynamics were further complicated by the government’s buffer zone policy,¶ announced in January 2005, which required the relocation of all inhabitants who¶ had formerly lived within a specified area along the coastline.4 All families that had¶ had their houses in this buffer zone were eligible for a new house in a relocation¶ S66 Benedikt Korf, Shahul Habullah, Pia Hollenbach and Bart Klem¶ site (see, for example, Hyndman, 2007). Because of this policy, large-scale relocation¶ and house reconstruction activities commenced, including in Maruthamunai.¶ With the start of these programmes, the gift became part of the system of patronage¶ and mutual obligations in the fragmented Muslim polity of the area, as these¶ relocation schemes provided ample resources for the patronage system of exchange¶ relations between politicians and voters.¶ The electorate expected their members of parliament (MPs) ‘to deliver’. The pressure¶ on Ferial Ashraff, a local MP and the national Minister for Housing, was particularly¶ high. Locals believed that as ‘the minister’ she should ensure that funding and land¶ were available to her home electorate. Ashraff, though, was not alone in tapping¶ into the gift market. Another local Muslim MP offered land in his native town of¶ Sammanthurai to relocate displaced families from Maruthamunai—Sammanthurai¶ had hosted these families immediately after the tsunami. This proposal created concern¶ and resentment among local politicians in Maruthamunai who belonged to¶ another political party. The latter thought that the MP from Sammanthurai had¶ offered this land to expand his electoral bloc as voting for different Muslim political¶ parties is largely place-based. Politicians from Maruthamunai did not want to¶ lose votes and thus discouraged the families to accept the MP’s offer. Ashraff made¶ paddy land available to end the stalemate, but this land had to be filled and elevated¶ to be suitable for housing—a very expensive option, but one that allowed the families¶ to be located near Maruthamunai (Hasbullah and Korf,

2009).¶ The case of Maruthamunai indicates three realms of the biography of the tsunami¶ gift: its religious, economic and political dimensions. Immediately after the event,¶ the mosque attempted to create a space of anti-politics—the gift was considered as¶ a religious practice, and it was to be kept pure, free from ‘economy’ and ‘politics’.¶ The inflow of foreign money and agencies changed dynamics and incentives in the¶ gift economy and replaced practices and discourses of pure kindness and local solidarity . ¶ The gift became competitive in the evolving aid market. This commodification¶ of the gift also saw the entrance of new kinds of brokers: consultants, foreign volunteers,¶ and project managers with their own rationales and procedures that were¶ largely shaped by actors from outside of Sri Lanka —private donors in the North¶ expected to be shown the effect of their gift . When the housing relocation programmes¶ started, the foreign gift was appropriated as a patronage resource within¶ Muslim politics.

While the aid provided by foreign countries provided helpful aid to communities in need, the selection and commodification of aid and attention were determined not by a desire to give to those communities most heavily affected by the tsunami but rather a prioritization of white bodies over black and brown bodies.

On January 1st, 2005, the Economist published its own exploration of the relative media attention facilitated by the oceanic disaster - <The Economist 2005, ``Asia's devastation'', 1 January, page 9>

` What is special about this tsunami is the geographical extent of the devastation ... . ¶ But let not everything

about this terrible event feel bad. For in that very geographical challenge lies also an opportunity ... . [T]he involvement in the disaster¶ of so many resorts favored by tourists from rich countries in the West and

the¶ richer parts of north-east Asia has given it even more prominence in those countries than the sheer horror

of the fatalities would have produced . Such selfish ¶ distortions are regrettable in theory, who

noticed while millions were dying in Congo's wars? But in practice they might as well be exploited.''

The economist’s account of the tsunami reflects more than just an acknowledgement of the privileging of certain “disasters” over others. It also exploits the collective forgetting of those lives lost in the Congo’s wars, those “civilian casualties” lost in the U.S.-led War on Terror, those tortured in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and those brown and black bodies that have always been sidelined as unimportant in the wake of “white death.” Distancing and disembodiment have been the cause of millions of deaths we have had the privilege of turning our attention away from. Olds, Sparke, and Sidaway explain in 2005,<Kris Olds, University of Wisconsin-Madison James D Sidaway, National University of Singapore (now at Loughborough University) Matthew Sparke, University of Washington. “Guest editorial: White Death” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2005, volume 23, pages 475-479>

``What is special about this tsunami is the geographical extent of the devastation... .¶ But let not everything about this terrible event feel bad. For in that very geo-¶ graphical challenge lies also an opportunity ... . [T]he involvement in the disaster¶ of so many resorts favored by tourists from rich countries in the West and the¶ richer parts of north-east Asia has given it even more prominence in those countries than the sheer horror of the fatalities would have produced. Such selfish¶ distortions are regrettable in theory, who noticed while millions were dying in¶ Congo's wars? But in practice they might as well be exploited.'' The Economist's calculating assessment of an `opportunity' inherent in the global ¶ geography of the devastation unleashed by the 26 December undersea earthquake off ¶ the coast of Indonesia represented more than just another unabashed

acknowledgement of class privilege by a business-orientated magazine . Here the awful economy of ¶

regrettable but exploitable' was also being attached to another admission : namely,¶ that, because white Westerners had also died in considerable numbers in luxury Thai¶ resorts, the tragic aftermath of the Asian tsunami was gaining more prominence in the¶ media than ever had the deaths of millions of Congolese, and more prominence, too,¶ than it might have had itself if only Indonesians, Thais,

Indians, Sri Lankans, and¶ Africans had perished when the terrible waves rushed ashore. White life ,

The Economist¶ was effectively acknowledging , is valued more, and white death would thus also seem to ¶ count

for more in the calculus of interest, concern, and grief represented by the¶ Western media. Other more

egregious illustrations of this uneven raciological valuing of¶ life and death come all too easily to mind. We think immediately of the thousands of Iraqi conscripts who were consigned by the US military to so-called `kill boxes' as US troops¶ closed on Baghdad. We think of the thousands more Iraqi civilians who died in earlier ¶ allied bombings, in the attack phase of the recent war, and now in the ongoing period¶ of anti-insurgency (a period that seems destined to go on for years partly because of the disregard for Iraqi life that underpinned Pentagon planning and lack thereof in the first place). We think of how, as in previous US overseas interventions, many¶ of the US foot soldiers who have died in action have been working-class African-¶ Americans and Latinos, often pursuing career and learning opportunities via the ¶ army that are all too rarely on offer at home.(1) We think of the Afghan noncombatants¶ who became casualities of the war against the Taliban.We think of the individuals tortured¶ in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib . And, like Derek Gregory (2004), who has already¶ highlighted many such racist double standards with his critique of our colonial present,¶ we think of how the fleeting attention paid to all such disembodied nonwhite death contrasts with the

intimate, enduring, and often personalized attention to the deaths of white people, especially white businessmen, on September 11, 2001.

In contrast to the distanced, disembodied, approach that many Western countries took, local acts of kindness amidst the ‘throwntogetherness’ caused by the 2004 tsunami showed an approach to the disaster caused by the oceans where communities crossed ethnic and religious boundaries to help one another. In this way, the tsunami created the conditions for two different types of exploration of the oceans; disembodied aid practices as well as communal acts of kindness that we’re created by a forced confrontation with our collectivity. Nigel Clark explains in 2007,<Clark N, 2007 “Living through the tsunami: vulnerability and generosity on a volatile earth”Geoforum 38 1127–1139>

Shaky video images narrated in quivering voices record¶ the moment on the morning of December 26 when this¶ economy burst apart. The fabric of shared assumptions¶ about what could be recovered and what could be requested,¶ where and when it should be supplied, and what its value¶ should be unravelled abruptly. What was expected of a host¶ and what was expected of a guest ceased to be apparent.¶ And yet, in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami , perhaps ¶ even in its midst, as one set of relationships disintegrated, there were glimpses of another kind of being-with-others. ¶ A kind of ‘ throwntogetherness’ amongst all the tearing apart , to borrow a term from Massey (2005, chapter¶ 13).¶

Many tourists , if they were lucky enough to be¶ unscathed, joined the emergency relief effort . They may not¶ have known

exactly what to do, or even dressed appropriately¶ while they were trying to do it, but they held out helping¶ hands (Rigg et al., 2005). Some volunteered at hospitals ¶ and in morgues. Others handed over money, clothes and ¶ medicines at the hotels where they were staying (The¶ Hindu, 2005). Or took up collections on return home, like¶ the British tourist in Sri Lanka, carried several miles inland¶ by surging waters, who set about fundraising for the people¶ of the village where he finally came to ground (The¶

Observer, 2005).¶ At the same time, people in the affected regions reached ¶ out to each other, across many kinds of barriers. Journalist¶ Varma (2005), who travelled through the state of Tamil¶ Nadu in the days and weeks following the tsunami,

posted¶ a story on his weblog about a wedding in the Muslim village¶ of Parangipetta i, a ceremony which was postponed¶ after the waves struck nearby Hindu villages. Mobilising¶ under the Jamaat – their local organisation, villagers set out¶ to help their neighbours. ¶ They took all the veg biryani that had been prepared ¶ for the wedding feast, and went and fed it to the¶ affected people . From that day until the day we met¶ them, a week after the tsunami, they fed breakfast and¶ lunch to the affected people, making either lemon rice¶ or veg biryani. They mobilised their funds superbly,¶ and were well networked through mobile phones. If¶ any village ran short of food, one phone call was all it¶ would take to bring a volunteer rushing over with¶ more food. Interestingly, even after the government¶ set up its own operation, a few days late, the local¶ people still requested the Jamaat to keep feeding¶ them, and the Jamaat agreed (unpag).¶ In Malaysia, Nah and Bunnell (2005) report, news of the¶ devastation across the strait triggered a new rapport in the¶ previously fraught relationship between Malaysian nationals¶ and displaced people from Aceh province. Many Malaysians ¶ approached Acehnese refugees to offer consolation ¶ over the tsunami, and to discuss their more general predicament,¶ while local Islamic groups worked with refugee community¶ leaders to organise disaster relief . More generally,¶ evidence and anecdote suggests that

throughout the¶ afflicted region, before organised relief arrived and sometimes ¶ well after the official relief effort was underway, it was ¶ neighbours and untrained local volunteers who provided ¶ vital assistance . As an Indian respondent reported in a¶ review of the eVectiveness of aid directly after the tsunami¶ “All kinds of cooked food reached us and it was in excess”,¶ (cited in Thomas and Ramalingam, 2005, p. 46).¶ Then there were the donations from the rest of the¶ world, which UN emergency co-ordinators conWrm were¶ unprecedented in scale. Enough money was pledged by¶ members of the public and by governments to cover the¶ relief eVort. More than enough, in some cases. Without¶ even launching an appeal, the medical aid organization¶ Medecins Sans Frontieres received so much money in the¶ days following the tsunami that it had to stop accepting¶ donations. When donors were asked if their oVerings could¶ be diverted to other humanitarian crises, over 99% agreed.¶ From a total of around $110 million received, this enabled¶ some $85 million to go to other sites of need, including¶ Niger, Darfur and the Kashmir earthquake (Batha, 2005).¶ But perhaps the most remarkable stories are those of the¶ hospitality extended by local people to their seasonal visitors.¶ Returning travellers reported that amidst the collapse¶ of the tourist infrastructure they were well looked after , or¶ were

treated even better than paying guests (BBC News,¶ 2005). Many had been driven great distances by local people ¶ so they could reach airports to make their way home.¶ And there were stories of locals who helped their visitors in¶ the search to locate families and friends, even before they ¶ sought out their own loved ones. Warmth and light, it¶ might be said, no longer traded but given freely between¶ bodies.

This year’s topic asks us to debate the non-military exploration and development of the Earth’s oceans. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was a manifestation of the ocean’s natural power to create a ‘throwntogetherness’ that forces communities and debaters alike to confront their collectivity. Before we ask ourselves what oceanic resources the United States federal government should develop, we must first ask ourselves who is privileged enough to have access to those resources in the first place and why. The ocean’s natural disasters uniquely facilitate this discussion.

Therefore, [name] and I advocate a critical exploration of the Earth’s oceans.

The 1AC is an act of critical interrogation of the “collective amnesia” that privileges white bodies over brown and black ones and that values the marketability of foreign aid instead of the people it is intended to help – our methodology is one that questions the notion that we are only tied to those communities that are like our own as a necessary starting point for preventing future acts of violence and erasure. The same way local acts of kindness functioned as a “disjuncture of politics” to the disembodied practices of foreign aid, voting affirmative endorses an interruption into status quo, disembodied debate practice.Olds et al in 5 <Kris Olds, University of Wisconsin-Madison James D Sidaway, National University of Singapore (now at Loughborough University) Matthew Sparke, University of Washington. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2005, Volume 23, pages 475-479>

Such a list of raciologically differentiated valuations of life and death may make us¶ sound overly outraged. We do not want to apologize for our

outrage. We feel it is necessary for critical geographers to sustain a vocabulary of critique that refuses to ¶

reduce domination, oppression, exploitation, and injustice to the more comfy codes of complexity, multiplicity, and performativity in the abstract . In this regard, geographers¶ can usefully learn from and contribute to the

work of other critics attuned to the long¶ histories and global interlinkages of particular forms of asymmetrical power relations.¶ In the case of the raciological privileging of white death that we are highlighting here , ¶ Paul Gilroy's attention to the enduring normative power of race thinking is an important starting place. ``We have seen'' , he argues,

``that on their journey away from modernity's inaugural catastrophes, raciological ways of organizing and classifying¶ the world have retained a special baggage of perspectival inclinations, perceptual ¶

habits and scalar assumptions'' (2000, page 48). How might we examine such normalized perspectival inclinations, perceptual habits, and scalar assumptions vis-a-vis a¶ particular geographical context? We would like to suggest that further attention to¶ some Indonesian events prior to the recent tsunami indicates a few of the ways in¶ which the raciological privileging of white death can be denormalized by examining how¶ the scalar ordering of perspective and of perception is itself ordered by a geopolitical¶ partitioning of memory and amnesia. Aceh, which bore the brunt of the Tsunami, also¶ provides ample examples in this respect. After all, since 2003, renewed conflict between¶ the Indonesian armed forces and the insurgent Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh¶ Movement) had seen thousands killed, whilst the outside world largely turned a blind¶

eye . Yet, if we turn eastwards across the Indonesian archipelago away from Aceh, a still¶ more obvious example of

raciological double standards comes into view.¶ It is now more than two years ago, but the shock of the bombings at and around¶ the Sari nightclub (on Saturday 12 October 2002) in Bali still reverberates there¶ and beyond . Bali's tourist economy has not recovered despite heavy discounting and¶ marketing. The Bali bombings shape Australian politics (and its variant of the `war on¶ terror') where concerns about security and danger entered the October 2004 election¶ campaign and where, like the United States a month later, the incumbent John Howard¶ was returned to office with these concerns widely regarded as part of the basis for¶ electoral victory. Moreover, repeated warnings have been aired about the potential¶ for new attacks on `Western targets' in Indonesia (and in southeast Asia more widely).¶ In mid-December 2004, for example, Australians were advised to ``defer non-essential¶ travel to Indonesia'' (http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/Advice/Indonesia). More¶ immediately, the eyewitness stories from the

Bali bombing retain all their sense of¶ trauma, sudden dramatic loss, and lingering pain. A moment on the Internet will¶ return dozens of accounts of the night when over 200 people were killed and hundreds¶ more injured (see, for example, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in depth/asia pacific/2002/¶ bali/default.stm). Yet something that struck us at the time of the bombing was the ¶ peculiar narration of the event as a singular, unprecedented act of terror. Two days¶ afterwards, for example, The Washington Post described the Bali bombing as ``the most¶ significant case of terrorism in Indonesia's history'' (Sip and Nakashima, 2002). There¶ were also many media accounts along the lines of a happy, peaceful island being¶ shattered by

these deaths. Shattering they were. But violent deaths in Bali are certainly¶ not unprecedented. Accompanying the (US-backed) 1965 66 seizure of power by ¶ General Suharto, at least half a million people (up to 20% of these in Bali, where class¶ and ideological struggle was especially evident and where anticommunist purges were¶

particularly bloody) were killed by the Indonesian state and associated militia (for a¶ summary see Elson, 2001). These events `secured' Indonesia for the West at a time of¶ intensifying Cold War polarization and deepening US involvement in Southeast Asia.¶ The relative silence over what took place in Indonesia (and Western complicity therein)¶ has been mentioned by others. In Simon Philpott's (2000, page xviii) critical account of¶ authoritarianism and identity in Indonesia he notes how:¶ ``Suharto became president of Indonesia in the wake of one of the twentieth century's¶ least known political bloodbaths in which members, supporters and suspected¶ sympathizers of a hitherto legal political party, the Indonesian Communist Party,¶ were slaughtered and imprisoned on a massive scale. That so many knowledgeable¶ people know so little about this event compared to, for example, the exploits of Pol¶ Pot's Khmer Rouge or the suffering caused by Mao's cultural revolution is partly¶ indicative of the silences imposed by particular political discourses. Defeat of the¶ `communist threat' was central to American Cold War popular and scholarly¶ discourses and the extra-judicial murder of perhaps 500,000 Indonesian `commu-¶ nists' does not provoke the same governmental and popular outrage as similar acts¶ perpetrated by the `communists' themselves.''¶ A decade later, in 1975 , President Gerald R Ford and Secretary of State Henry A¶ Kissinger gave the green light for the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, leading to ¶ the deaths of 200 000 people since (see the documents released by the US National¶ Security archive in 2001, http://www2.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/). Yet¶ there is virtually no discussion of this form of state terrorism in the post-9/11

context.¶ This is clearly selective amnesia ; a selective amnesia facilitated by a geopolitical ¶ context dominated by the same government that so coldly kills in Iraq, just as it¶ sanctioned killings in Indonesia 30 ^ 40 years ago. In the consignment of all this¶ nonwhite death to a space of amnesia: a space of exception exempted from concern¶ and critique we see the raciological ways of organizing and

classifying the world ¶ described by Gilroy being operationalized geopolitically. Two very differently scaled ¶

geopolitical scripts personally remembered white tourists dying as `innocents' in Bali ¶ versus collectively forgotten abstract populations that might have `gone communist' work thus to banish nonwhite death to a field of chronic neglect and abjection . Such¶ geopolitical orderings of memory and amnesia are by no means unique to Indonesia.¶ In Afghanistan and Iraq the relatively willing acceptance of nonwhite deaths is striking,¶ and horrifyingly repetitive. But imagine, if you can, a newspaper article about the¶ management of `collateral damage' and the assassinations of military officers being¶ applied to the United States or Canada or Britain or Australia. How would these¶ societies react to being categorised, surveyed, and killed in this way? How would the¶ Western media construct articles about such topics? Such questions are effectively ¶ unspeakable, and, insofar as they remind us about the silencing and invisibility that ¶ normally obscures nonwhite death , they highlight what Allan Pred usefully calls the ¶ `counterpart geographies of the unspeakable'' (2004,

page 147). `` Every local and wider ¶ geography of human activity has its counterpart geographies of the unspeakable'',¶ argues Pred, in his recent book on the endurance of racial stereotypes. ``Every conjunction of situated practice, circulating discourses, and power relations is one with the¶ reproduction of the unspeakable. The unspeakable is, in short: ``A constant presence that¶ in one way or another bespeaks an absence, a silence, an invisibility'' (page 147).¶ The counterpart geographies of the unspeakable speak in turn to the issue of white¶ subjectivity itself . What Steven Farough (2004) terms the

`sovereign individuality' of whiteness referring to the privileged senses of individuality and identity

that white folk routinely experience is clearly in evidence here . The rage and disorientation of white¶ men who find

their privilege challenged repeatedly find resonance in US popular¶ culture: from the confederate veteran played by John Wayne in John Ford's (1956)¶ classic western The Searchers via Robert De Niro as the Vietnam veteran who is the¶ protagonist in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) to Michael Douglas in Falling Down¶ (1993) and the real-life terrorism of Timothy McVeigh, who has now been executed for¶ killing 167 Americans in Oklahoma City, but who had earlier won a bronze star for his¶ contribution to the killing of Iraqi conscripts in the first Gulf War (Sparke, 1998).¶ Guest editorial 477¶ Beyond the destructive aspects of white selfhood in white supremacist culture, the geopolitical cover-up of the terror and death suffered by nonwhite people represents yet

one further loss: the loss of critical lessons in how to respond to terror and mass death with justice

and humanity . In his most recent book Cornel West (2004) argues that the¶ dominant response of African-Americans to terror and death

in the United States¶ provides just such lessons because it has generally taken the form of calls for justice,¶ not calls for revenge. From slavery to lynching to the murder of black leaders such as¶ Martin Luther King to ongoing campaigns for expedited executions of death row¶ inmates today, the record of black death under white terror has been long and unrelenting. But, rather than respond with vengeful calls for retaliation, West highlights¶ democratic responses involving repeated calls for justice, truth, and reconciliation. As¶ Nikhil Singh (2004) elaborates further in his compelling history of African-American¶ intellectual thought in the 20th century, these democratic responses have also often been¶ notably internationalist as well. All too aware of how blacks were historically excepted¶ from the empire of liberty inside the United States, intellectuals such as W E B Du Bois¶ were also attuned to how the international expansion of the empire of US exception-¶ alism remained suspect for its raciological double standards. As a new project for a new¶ American century confronts the planet again with the recycled appeals to US exceptionalism repeated yet once more in George Bush's second inaugural speech there are lessons for us all in these

earlier internationalist critiques and connections . All this is ¶ not to deny the very real tragedy of white death; it is rather to recognize that `selfish¶ distortions' are themselves a form of violence, that they involve discriminatory amnesia and geopolitical cover-up as well as geographically selective memory, and that as critical geographers we should therefore seek to remember and reconnect the

spaces, places, homes, and, indeed, graves (Mbembe, 2003; Meier, 2005) that have been thereby¶ forgotten with those that are repeatedly remembered. For, in the words of the Indonesian¶ anthropologist, journalist, and political activist Degung Santikarma (2005, page 322):¶ ``remembering violence does not require an elaborate tomb, a guarded gravesite or a¶ lavish ceremony, much less a monument.

What is needed is a space to speak and communicate freely and without fear, and a language that

can encompass both those who would speak and those who would listen for wisdom. What is needed¶ is a way to live together or at least survive side by side with what can never be ¶ forgotten, with losses that can never be restored.''

Alternative Method

Our advocacy is one that questions not only the historical amnesia created to privilege certain bodies over others but also the way in which our daily acts constitutes moments of resistance and complacency in of themselves – voting affirmative rejects the notion of bodies and events “out there” as a form of violent disembodiment that create the conditions for a “natural disaster” to affect and disadvantage populations discriminatorily. Nigel Clark explains in 2007,<Clark N, 2007 “Living through the tsunami: vulnerability and generosity on a volatile earth”Geoforum 38 1127–1139>

In an increasingly globalised world, this disposition¶ towards justice more often than not takes the form of¶ pointing to the connections through which some people, in¶ some places do things which impact on other people in¶ other places (Barnett and Land, 2007). In relation to the¶ tsunami and other disasters, as Philo observes: ‘ the vulnerabilities ¶ endured by certain peoples and places are almost¶ always caused in one way or another by the acts, malign or ¶ unthinking, of others in other

sites’ (author’s italics, 2005,¶ p. 450). And this indeed seems to be where critical geographers¶ are in basic agreement with the various left-liberal¶ commentators I cited above – each of whom seems to be¶ suggesting that a great many of us are implicated in the¶ Indian Ocean tragedy, whether it is as tourists, as consumers¶ of shrimps or the products of the South Asian information¶ revolution, as stakeholders in the arms trade, or as the¶ beneficiaries of any other sector of the global neo-liberal¶ economy.¶ Neither intent nor any particular resourcefulness,

it¶ appears, is required to purvey harm. As Barnett (forthcoming)¶ observes, it is largely taken for granted amongst the¶

intellectual left that ‘ordinary people’ engaged in everyday¶ activities are complicit with major power

holders in the¶ propagation of inequity and injustice. This too might be¶ viewed as a ‘default assumption’, and it is one for which¶ geographers tend to profess a special affinity, given their¶ disciplinary aptitude for tracing connection and causality¶ across distance (see Barnett, 2005; Barnett and Land, 2007).¶ In this regard the critical geographical narrating of the tsunami¶ tends to be one in which the event is an occasion for¶ unmasking and disclosing a pre-existing nexus of less-

than desirable¶ social and spatial interdependencies . A set of relationships , ¶ it is inferred , that can

and should be changed – so that geographies of neglect or ‘wounding’ give way to geographies ¶ of

solidarity and responsibility . The idea that the duty of critical intellectual activity is to ¶ reveal otherwise occluded chains of blame and complicity,¶ as Barnett and Land (2007) would have it, carries with it ¶ the implication that most people, most of the time, are ¶ inadequately informed of the broader repercussions of their daily deeds . Not aware enough, that is, to feel any obligation ¶ to take

appropriate remedial actions . Likewise, there is ¶ an insinuation that ‘we’ who are ‘here,’ habitually

disregard ¶ the wellbeing of ‘others’ who are ‘there’ ; an inference that ¶ commitment to caring drops

away precipitously as it moves ¶ offshore or away from home.

However, the 1AC is not just about the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Just as the tsunami created the social conditions that was able to bring some communities together and pit others against each other, the debate topic forces a type of confrontation where we are given a choice about who and what to talk about. While we would never liken the death caused by the tsunami to experiences within the debate community, our criticism functions a form of self interrogation to acknowledge that we are not separate from the discursive violence or community building that the debate community confronts us with. Darnall Moore explains that…(Darnell L. Moore 2011, writer and activist whose work is informed by anti-racist, feminist, queer of color, and anti-colonial thought and advocacy. Darnell's essays, social commentary, poetry, and interviews have appeared in various national and international media venues, including the Feminist Wire, Ebony magazine, and The Huffington Post, "On Location: The “I” in the Intersection," http://thefeministwire.com/2011/12/on-location-the-i-in-the-intersection/)The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular ask the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As black women we see black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face. -The Combahee River Collective in A Black Feminist Statement Many radical movement builders are well-versed in the theory of intersectionality. Feminists, queer theorists and activists, critical race scholars, progressive activists, and the like owe much to our Black feminist sisters, like The Combahee River Collective, who introduced us to the reality of simultaneity–as a framework for assessing the multitude of interlocking oppressions that impact the lives of women of color–in A Black Feminist Statement (1978). Their voices and politics presaged Kimberlé Crenshaw’s very useful theoretical contribution of “intersectionality” to the feminist toolkit of political interventions in 1989. Since its inception, many have referenced the term—sometimes without attribution to the black feminist intellectual genealogy from which it emerged—as a form of en vogue progressive parlance. In fact, it seems to be the case that it is often referenced in progressive circles as a counterfeit license (as in, “I understand the ways that race, sexuality, class, and gender coalesce. I get it. I really do.”) to enter resistance work even if the person who declares to have a deep “understanding” of the connectedness of systemic matrices of oppression, themselves, have yet to discern and address their own complicity in the maintenance of the very oppressions they seek to name and demolish. I am certain that I am not the only person who has heard a person use language embedded with race, class, gender, or ability privilege

follow-up with a reference to “intersectionality.” My concern, then, has everything to do with the way that the fashioning of intersectionality as a political framework can lead toward the good work of analyzing ideological and material systems of oppression—as they function “out there ”—and away from the great work of critical analyses of the ways in which we , ourselves , can function as

actants in the narratives of counter-resistance that we rehearse . In other words, we might be missing the

opportunity to read our complicities, our privileges, our accesses, our excesses, our excuses , our modes of oppressing—

located “in here”—as they occupy each of us . Crenshaw’s theorization has provided us with a useful lens to assess the problematics of the interrelated, interlocking apparatuses of power and privilege

and their resulting epiphenomena of powerlessness and subjugation. Many have focused on the external dimensions of oppression and their material results manifested in the lives of the marginalized, but might our times be asking of us to deeply consider our own “stuff” that might instigate such oppressions? What if we extended Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality by invoking what we might name “intralocality”? Borrowing from sociologists, the term “social location,” which broadly speaks to one’s context, highlights one’s standpoint(s)—the social spaces where s/he is positioned (i.e. race, class, gender, geographical, etc.). Intralocality, then, is concerned with the social locations that foreground our knowing and experiencing of our world and our relationships to the systems and people within our world. Intralocality is a call to theorize the self in relation to power and privilege, powerlessness and subjugation. It is work that requires the locating of the “I” in the intersection. And while it could be argued that such work is highly individualistic, I contend that it is at the very level of self-in-relation-to-community where communal transformation is made possible. Might it be time to travel into the deep of our contexts? Might it be time for us—theorists/activists—to do the work of intersectionality (macro/system-analysis) in concert with the intra-local (micro/self-focused analysis)? Intersectionality as an

analysis, rightly, asks of us to examine systemic oppressions, but in these times of radical and spontaneous insurgencies—times when we should reflect on our

need to unoccupy those sites of privilege (where they exist) in our own lives even as we occupy some other sites of

domination — work must be done at the level of the self-in-community. We cannot —as a progressive community—rally around notions of “progression” and, yet, be complicit in the very homo/transphobias, racisms, sexisms, ableisms, etc.

that violently terrorize the lives of so many others. If a more loving and just community is to be imagined

and advanced , it seems to me that we would need to start at a different location than we might’ve

expected: self.

*Answers To*

Case

A2 Images of Suffering BadFirst, the 1AC doesn’t portray acts of victimization, while we think it is necessary to do what the media and common representation of the 2004 tsunami fails to do by exploiting the disproportionate effects the tsunami and aid had on brown and black bodies as opposed to white ones, the aff is a necessary confrontation with how we are a part of those structures

Second, the 1AC is necessary to provide a counterhegemonic perspective on the tsunami – understanding the historical instance of social violence is necessary to confront distancing from communities “out there” as well as understand our own privileges in this space – we are a necessary starting point for resistance Clark in 7 <Clark N, 2007 “Living through the tsunami: vulnerability and generosity on a volatile earth”Geoforum 38 1127–1139>

In the process of excavating overlooked convergences of¶ physical and social forces, Davis (2001) also opens a window¶ on human suffering of almost unspeakable scales and¶ intensities. Suffering we might say, that can and should be ¶ made more visible , but which nonetheless defies comprehension.¶ And it is in this regard that, without necessarily ¶ returning to a deterministic or transparent model of the¶ social, we might revisit the notion of a generative but enigmatic¶ opening of selves : one that happens ‘upstream’ of the ¶ emergence of discernible socio- cultural identities and structures.¶ Levinas’s English translator, Alphonso Lingis, an¶ innovative theorist of corporeal existence in his own right,¶ has sought to merge the idea a constitutive vulnerability¶ and receptivity to other beings with an ontology of carnal¶ openness to an excessive materiality. In a fertile fusion of¶ ideas from Levinas and Bataille, Lingis has human beings¶ acquiring their sensibilities and dispositions not only from¶ other people and other life-forms but also from their ¶

encounters with a geophysical otherness . ‘Emotions’, he¶ muses (2000, p. 18): ‘get their force from the outside, from¶ the swirling winds over the rotating planet, the troubled¶ ocean currents, the clouds hovering over depths of empty¶ outer space, the continental plates shifting and creakingƒ’¶ EVectively, Lingis sheds the residual religious overtones¶ from Levinas’s epiphany of the ‘shimmer of infinity’¶ glimpsed in the face of the other, in favour of more earthy ¶ excesses. ‘We face each other ’, he announces, ‘ as condensations ¶ of earth, light, air, and warmth’ 1 (1994, p. 122). His is¶ a vision of

geomorphological processes, elemental reactions¶ and cosmic energies not as the arche or substrate of identity¶ but as active, ongoing forces of differentiation: a perspective¶ which appears to be less a smuggling back in of environmental¶ determinism than an abyssal opening of alterity ¶ into a groundless materiality (see Kearnes, 2003). Or what¶ we might see as Derrida’s (1981, pp. 333–334) sense of the:¶ ‘bottomless, endless connections andƒthe indeWnitely¶ articulated regress of the beginning’ pushed to its logical¶ outcome. And just as the generosities of intercorporeality¶ keep their secrets, their ‘incalculable remainder, so too¶ would it seem that the ‘gifts’ of materiality retain their¶ enigma, their ‘elemental obscurity’ (Diprose, 2002, p. 54;¶ Iyer, 2002, p. 10).¶ Taking our cues from Lingis, then, it might be said that¶ when a ‘you’ and an ‘I’ face each over the insuperable¶ divide of the tsunami – or any other disaster, large or small ¶ – we not only enact something entirely novel, we also each¶ bring with us the residue of our past calamities. We are the ¶

storms we have weathered, the quaking of the earth we¶ have ridden out, the infections we have stomached. We are¶ an immensity of small sedimentary changes, punctuated by¶ episodes of upheaval. And we are also the bodying forth of¶ all the guidance and help that has allowed us to live ¶ through the tsunami, droughts, fires and hurricanes of our¶ past, generosities that may have enabled some of us to live ¶ on at the

expense of others.¶ It is not simply that these traces may be too deeply buried¶ to unearth, too snarled to tease out and untangle. It

is¶ also that they are as much about what is not there, what¶ will never be, as they are about truths hidden within. Who ¶ we are, what we have become, the relations that have¶ shaped us, are haunted by absences, by the non-relation

we¶ have with all those others who could not be-together with ¶ us: the ones who did not survive or never had a chance to¶ be born, the communities that were extinguished, the evolutionary¶ lineages that Xickered out. This is the past that was¶ never present: ‘the past (that) once was its future possibles,¶ not those that can be realized but those that could have¶ been realized’ (Wyschogrod, 1998, p. 173).

Ext - Critical Interrogation GoodThe 1AC is a necessary interrogation of the social factors which caused the violence of the 2004 tsunami – it is our job both as intellectuals and individuals to question the forces that caused different bodies to be discriminated againstClark in 7 <Clark N, 2007 “Living through the tsunami: vulnerability and generosity on a volatile earth”Geoforum 38 1127–1139>

As Sidaway and Teo so aptly put it, the tsunami was ‘an¶ astounding lesson in interconnected physical and human¶ geographies’ . But perhaps our task is not only to unpick ¶ geographies of the event, but to recognize where our own¶ geographies get unpicked, dispossessed, disorientated by ¶ events . To acknowledge where nets unravel, fractures open¶ and silences yawn . In a prominent strain of moralising the¶ geographical imagination, I have been suggesting, the¶ differential force of volatile earth processes, while routinely¶ acknowledged, are effectively ‘neutralised’ on account of¶ their resistance to a certain kind of political and ethical¶ purchase. More empiricist approaches to disaster study, on¶ the other hand, are more likely to highlight the hybrid ¶ physical and social causation of naturally-triggered disaster:¶ a hybridity which is construed as messy and complex ¶

but ultimately conducive to understanding through an integrative¶ analysis . Such integration depends on the assumption¶ that each of the strands it engages with can end its own¶ means of being ‘brought to light’; that each constitutive element¶ of the disaster can be made to submit to translation¶ and expression at the hands of its requisite disciplinary or¶ sub-disciplinary specialism.¶ In the shadows of a ‘radically passive’ take on disaster¶ and suffering, I want to explore another kind of ‘integration’¶ between human and physical geography, one which¶ hinges less on the possibility of a shared knowing than on¶ the condition of a common unknowability. A common¶ fracturing. ‘We happen as the opening itself, the dangerous¶ fault-line of a rupture’ writes Nancy (2000, p. xii) in a characteristic¶ expression of a ‘radically passive’ notion of the¶ self. The perviousness of any self or body to the disruptive¶ forces around it is often evoked in such geomorphological¶ terms: in figures of fault and fissure, upheaval and seismic ¶

shift, rift, chasm, fracture and abyss. There will undoubtedly¶ be other explanations for this wordplay, but I prefer¶ the simple

one. Forces which destroy and dis-member on a¶ grand scale get re-membered, they get written into collective¶ memory . In this way they form a reservoir of images to¶ express whatever disturbs and disorientates. And this¶ includes expressing themselves – for of course, earth-shattering¶ disturbances remain with us.¶ I want to come back to bodies. To what happens not¶ only when bodies meet other bodies, but when they face¶ other physical forces; when flesh encounters rock or water¶ or wind. Levinas, as Harrison would have it, is not simply¶ or even primarily a philosopher of ethics, so much as a philosopher¶ of corporeal existence (forthcoming, cf. Shildrick,¶ 2002, p. 101). He philosophizes about what bodies can do¶ and how they become what they are. If each of us becomes¶

who we are through our liaison with other bodies, an idea¶ of Levinas’s developed in depth by Rosalyn Diprose, then¶

the embodied selves we are at any moment are indebted to¶ the bodies around us, and to those who have come before¶ us . What Diprose refers to as ‘corporeal generosity’ is a¶ writing in blood that says this body carries a trace of the¶ other ’ (2002, p. 195). This debt, all that we have borrowed,¶ absorbed, appropriated from others, is too diffuse and too ¶ deeply secreted to ever be subjected to calculation (Diprose,¶ 2002, p. 54; Butler, 2004, p. 46; Chalier, 2002, pp. 118–119).¶ The past, conceived of in terms of an abundance of encounters¶ with alterity is destined to remain ‘immemorial, unrepresentable,¶ invisible’ (Levinas, 1998, p. 11).

Ext – Historical Analysis Good“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” is an understatement. Historical narratives that silence suffering guarantee escalating form of material violence. Schwab, ‘6 [Gabriele, “Writing against memory and forgetting” Literature and Medicine 25.1 (2006) 95-121]Human beings have always silenced violent histories . Some histories , collective and personal, are so violent we would not be able to live our daily lives if we did not at least temporarily silence them. A certain

amount of splitting is conducive to survival. Too much silence, however, becomes haunting. Abraham and Torok link the formation of the crypt with silencing, secrecy, and the phantomatic return of the past. While the secret is intrapsychic and indicates an internal psychic splitting, it can be collectively deployed and shared by a people or a nation. The collective or communal silencing of violent histories leads to the transgenerational transmission of trauma and the specter of an involuntary repetition of cycles of violence . We know this from history, from literature, and from trauma studies. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, for example, Hannah Arendt writes about the "phantom world of the dark continent."5 Referring to the adventurers, gamblers, and criminals who came as luck hunters to South Africa during the gold rush, Arendt describes them as "an inevitable residue of the capitalist system and even the representatives of an economy that relentlessly produced a superfluity of men and capital" (189). "They were not individuals like the old adventurers," she continues, drawing on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, "they were the shadows of events with which they had nothing to do" (189). They found the full realization of their "phantomlike-existence" in the destruction of native life: "Native life lent these ghostlike events a seeming guarantee against all consequences because anyhow it looked to these men like a 'mere play of shadows. A play of shadows, the dominant race could walk through unaffected and disregarded in the pursuit of incomprehensible aims and needs'" (190). When European men massacred these indigenous peoples , Arendt argues, they did so without allowing themselves to become aware of the fact that they had committed murder . Like Conrad's

character [End Page 100] Kurtz, many of these adventurers went insane. They had buried and silenced their guilt ; they had buried and silenced their humanity . But their deeds came back to haunt them in a vicious cycle of repetition. Arendt identifies two main political devices for imperialist rule: race and bureaucracy. "Race . . . ," she writes, "was an escape into an irresponsibility where nothing human could any longer exist, and bureaucracy was the result of a responsibility that no man can bear for his fellow-man and no people for another people" (207). While the genocide of indigenous peoples under colonial and imperial rule was silenced in a defensive discourse of progressing civilization , it returned with a vengeance. Race and bureaucracy were the two main devices used under fascism during the haunting return to the heart of Europe of the violence against other humans developed under colonial and imperial rule. The ghosts of colonial and imperial violence propelled the Jewish holocaust, Arendt shows. In a similar vein, in Discourse on Colonialism, Aime Cesaire talks about the rise of Nazism in Europe as a "terrific boomerang effect."6 He argues that before the people in Europe became the victims of Nazism, they were its accomplices, that "they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it [had] been applied only to non-European peoples" (36). Cesaire continues, "Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon" (36, Cesaire's italics). This is as close as we can come to the argument that, until they face the ghosts of their own history and take responsibility for all the histories of violence committed under their rule, Europeans encrypt the ghost of Hitler in their psychic life. Cesaire's statement also contains an argument about what Ashis Nandy calls "isomorphic oppressions," that is, about the fact that histories of violence create psychic deformations not only in the victims but also in the perpetrators.7 No one colonizes innocently, Cesaire asserts, and no one colonizes with impunity either. One of the psychic deformations of the perpetrator is that he turns himself into the very thing that he projects onto and tries to destroy in the other: "[T]he colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal. It is this result, this boomerang effect of colonization that I wanted to point [End Page 101] out"

(41, Cesaire's italics).8 What Cesaire calls the "boomerang effect " emerges from a dialectics of isomorphic

oppression that as a rule remains largely unacknowledged and relegated to the cultural unconscious .

Together with the ghost effect that emerges from the silencing of traumatic memories, this boomerang effect increases the danger of the repetition and ghostly return of violent histories. What do we have to offset such a vicious circle of violent returns? Many victims emphasize testimony, witnessing, mourning, and reparation. Many theories, including psychoanalysis, concur with this assumption.

Our subject position is necessarily produced by its historical position – the placement of the aff in history and how it is informed by dominant narratives necessarily shapes actionFoucault 84 <Michele. "What is Enlightenment?” in Rabinow (P.), éd., The Foucault Reader, New York, Pantheon Books, 1984, pp. 32-50.>CS

This leads to the study of what could be called 'practical systems.' Here we are taking as a homogeneous domain of reference not the representations that men give of themselves, not the conditions that determine them without their knowledge, but rather what they do and the way they do it. That is, the forms of rationality that organize their ways of doing things (this might be called the technological aspect) and the freedom with which they act within these practical systems , reacting to what others do, modifying the rules of the game, up to a

certain point (this might be called the strategic side of these practices). The homogeneity of these historico-critical analyses is thus ensured by this realm of practices, with their technological side and their strategic side. These practical systems stem from three broad areas: relations of control over things, relations of action upon others, relations with oneself . This does not mean that each of these three areas is completely foreign to the others. It is well known that control over things is mediated by relations with others; and relations with others in turn always entail relations with oneself, and vice versa. But we have three axes whose specificity and whose interconnections have to be analyzed: the axis of knowledge, the axis of power, the axis of ethics. In other terms, the historical ontology of ourselves has to answer an open series of questions ; it has to make an indefinite number of inquiries which may be multiplied and specified as much as we like, but which will all address the questions systematized as follows: How are we constituted as subjects of our own knowledge ? How are we constituted as subjects who exercise or submit to power relations ? How are we constituted as moral subjects of our own actions ? Finally, these historico-critical investigations are quite specific in the sense that they always bear upon a material , an epoch, a body of determined practices and discourses. And yet, at least at the level of the Western societies from which we derive, they have their generality, in the sense that they have continued to recur up to our time : for example, the problem of the relationship between sanity and insanity, or sickness and health, or crime and the law; the problem of the role of sexual relations; and so on. But by evoking this generality, I do not mean to suggest that it has to be retraced in its metahistorical continuity over time, nor that its variations have to be pursued. What must be grasped is the extent to which what we know of it, the forms of power that are exercised in it, and the experience that we have in it of ourselves constitute nothing but determined historical figures, through a certain form of problematization that defines objects, rules of action, modes of relation to oneself. The study of modes of problematization (that is, of what is

neither an anthropological constant nor a chronological variation) is thus the way to analyze questions of general import in their historically unique form. A brief summary, to conclude and to come back to Kant. I do not know whether we will ever reach mature adulthood. Many things in our experience convince us that the historical event of the Enlightenment did not make us mature adults, and we have not reached that stage yet. However, it seems to me that a meaning can be attributed to that critical interrogation on the present and on ourselves which Kant formulated by reflecting on the Enlightenment. It seems to me that Kant's reflection is even a way of philosophizing that has not been without its importance or effectiveness during the last two centuries. The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent

body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time with the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them. This philosophical attitude has to be translated into the labor of diverse inquiries.

Ext – Daily Life and DisasterDisasters create the conditions where we are forced to confront our collectivity – interrogating the underlying forces that allowed certain populations to be disadvantaged and others to be unscathed as well as its effect on the daily lives of others is keyClark in 2005 <Nigel. “Disaster and Generosity” The Geographical Journal 171 (Dec 2005): 384-386.>

In this light, the disaster and the ethical response to someone who has suffered a disaster have a kind of mutual affinity or resonance . To experience a disaster is to feel your world fracturing or tearing . But to

respond to someone in need is also a kind of rending or opening of your world. And of someone else's world to you. Disasters and unconditional generosity , then, are both ways of being thrown off course , of being wrenched out of the circuit of your usual movements and activities. And though it might be said that you don't choose to be caught up in a disaster, there is also a sense in which unconditional acts of giving or kindness are not really a matter of choice either. You can 'fall' into such acts as you might fall asleep, fall ill or fall in love; not so much out of intention, but because something comes over you, takes hold of you, won't let you go.¶ Disasters, then, tear lives apart. But they also throw lives together . This is, of course, a very simple,

perhaps even naïve way to view the disaster and the acts of generosity it prompts. But in this rather basic way, I want to argue, both the

event of the disaster and the event of responding to someone estranged by the disaster offer a

profound challenge to social thought . Or to any kind of thought. But at the same time, disasters and their

responses might also tell us something about how or why we think in the first place . There's an old term - a

bit out of favour these days - for what scientists, philosophers, any sort of thinker or researcher has to offer, and that's 'enlightenment'. 'Enlightenment' has that sense of illuminating things, offering a guiding light, a clear path, a sense of direction. In other words, what it provides is pretty much what the disaster takes away.¶ So we might think of enlightenment not just as the orderly and objective process it has often imagined itself to be, but also as a kind of ethical response, an answer to a call. And perhaps, in this way, view it as imbued with generosity: a not-quite rational dimension that it would probably rather keep quiet from funding bodies, journal editors and other gatekeepers of reason. The other side of this, however, is to view the disaster as the great threat to enlightenment. It's the insistent reminder that the guiding lights or clear paths on offer can suddenly get swept away, a reminder of the limits of thought or writing or words; their fragility, their capacity to be overrun or undermined. In a very literal sense, we might think of the seismologists who first registered the earthquake far away in Hawai'i trying to get their message across to the people for whom it mattered - their words of warning overtaken by the speed of events. But think also of the sheer disorder in the wake of the waves: the loss of 'inscriptions' of every kind, the obliteration of every means of making sense of the world - from fences to footprints, photo albums to property records, ledgers to love letters.¶ ¶ What thought, writing and research - all the things we might still want to call 'enlightenment' have to offer are new signposts, guardrails, the promise of a return to order. Research into the physical causes and effects of the tsunamis, the analysis of their social and economic impacts, the science lessons which help school children in afflicted areas make sense of the giant waves, assistance given to survivors to write their own stories, the ongoing task of documenting the needs and requirements of those rebuilding their lives these are ways of understanding the forces that came together to produce the disaster and of helping others understand these forces, respond to them, work through them . This is what makes generosity effective, what turns it from an impulse into a project, what might start to set lives and worlds back in their usual orbit. But at the same time, doing this too well, too efficiently, can also disavow the very shock that the disaster offers.¶ So perhaps the challenge of responding to the disaster is to do everything that can be done to help restore order, to rebuild the guardrails and relight the pathways, but at the same time, to try and hold open the moment of disturbance or shock, to feel the disaster also as a disaster of thought, something which fractures and

fissures the ground we stand on, work on, think from . What I think of as a 'generous geography', rather than just a

geography of generosity, is a way of looking at the world that tries to be true to the events or the encounters that throw us off course or draw us down strange pathways. And of course, not only disasters do this; so too can pleasurable or productive events. These are the openings that

don't simply happen in space or time, but that actually generate spaces and temporalities. Somewhere in the midst of a disaster as vast as the Indian Ocean tsunami, we might think of many small things going on , at once ordinary and extraordinary, just as there are in any event. These are the things that make new worlds, and in this sense they are gifts for geography, as much as they are problems or challenges that invite our attention.

Ext - Compassion GoodAffirming this ethic of compassion is an ethical necessity – only by privileging compassion can we stop otherization which causes violencePorter 06(Elisabeth, head of the School of International Studies at the University of South Australia, “Can Politics Practice Compassion?” hypatia 21:4, project muse)

I am defending the position that it is possible to be politically compassionate and just and that such a claim should be disentangled from notions of gender.12 I dispute the essentialist claim that women are naturally compassionate. However, because of women's traditional association with caring and their role as primary parent, many women are experienced in caring and tend to respond readily with compassion. As others also argue (Philips 1993, 70; Sevenhuijsen 1998, 13), I am emphasizing the interplay between the particularity of compassion and the universality of justice. Undoubtedly, the dichotomy of public justice associated with masculinity and private care associated with femininity narrowed moral parameters, harmfully cementing restrictive gendered stereotypes. Rather, the relationship between compassion and justice is rich. Compassion "helps us recognize our justice obligations to those distant from us" (Clement 1996, 85). Examples of justice obligations include welfare programs;

foreign aid; famine and disaster relief; humane immigration policies; and relieving the suffering of families who are affected by terrorism in Bali, Iraq, Israel, London, Morocco, Northern Ireland, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, the

United States, and elsewhere. A choice between justice and compassion is false; considerations of justice "arise in and about the practice of care" (Bubeck 1995a, 189). Thus, a defense of the need for compassion is as much a defense for the rights of justice. Anticipating this defense was Elizabeth Bartlett's (1992) interpretation of Albert Camus' concept of rebellion in the novel The Plague. She made three points that resonate with my argument on the relationship between justice and care. First, justice originates from care. In Camus' ethic of rebellion, the passionate demand for justice and rights comes from compassionately witnessing and being outraged by such aggressive acts as battering, abuse , or police brutality, such incomprehensible injustices as innocent children suffering from malnutrition, and various forms of others' oppression . As Bartlett remarked, "It is these moments of compassionate recognition of human dignity, not a dispassionate calculation of rights, which give rise to the demand for justice" (1992, 84). Second, both justice and care imply community. In The Plague, rebellion is a rejection of all forms of oppression. Acts of compassion are choices to "suffer with" others in order to build solidarity.13 Third, care defines justice. For Camus, "only those actions which retain the impulse and commitment to care serve

justice" through compassionate responses (Bartlett 1992, 86). This strong notion of compassionate justice in politics is necessary if we are to respond meaningfully to peoples' pain. The defense of compassionate justice is prominent in feminist literature because of women's historical experience of injustice and because of women's traditional association of caring. It is also prominent in postcolonial and development discourse where there are attempts to redress political injustice with the practical, compassionate development of human well-being. Responsibility for Connections The third potential barrier to realizing political compassion lies in the controversy as to who and what we are responsible for. I have argued elsewhere that responsibilities are based on the principles of connection (1991, 159). We carry out responsibilities through moral engagement with others. The question, "how can I (we) best meet my (our) caring responsibilities?" (Tronto 1993, 137) is central to, but not exclusive to feminist ethics. Jean-Marc Coicaud and Daniel Warner, in expanding the relational dimension of ethics, argue that "somehow, we owe something to others and that our ability to handle what we owe to others decides in some sense who we are" (2001, 2). Yet this is not easy in practice. In our socially embodied moral world, our identities, relationships, and values differentially define our responsibilities. Practices of responsibility are situated culturally and many need changing. For example, in a materialist , technocratic age dominated by self- interest, compassionate impulses toward those who are suffering are dismissed readily as time- consuming, or consciences are salved by a quick donation to charity while complaining of "compassion fatigue." Yet after the anguish of 9/11, people in many nations reassessed their priorities and lifestyles, reaching out to loved ones and strangers in affirming ways.14 Some feminists see the particularity of responsibility as an obstacle to realizing political compassion. For example, Susan Mendus argues that "identity and morality are constituted by actual relationships of care between particular people," thus the concept of care does not translate readily to the wider political problems of hunger, poverty, refugee status, and war that require solutions for people we do not know (2000, 106). As I am arguing, it is not care alone or a particular relationship of care that enables compassionate responsibility, but a merging of a compassionate drive with a search for justice, equality, and rights. Caring for someone necessarily encompasses a concern for his or her equality and rights. I am supporting a strong notion of

compassionate justice that accepts responsibilities toward "particular others" who can include "actual starving

children in Africa with whom one feels empathy" (Held 1987, 118). If we take seriously the idea of global interdependence, then regardless of our specific nationalities and races, we have "duties" to people who are distant from us and belong to other communities (Midgley 1999, 161). Amartya Sen also believes we have a "multiplicity of loyalties" (1996, 113) to humanity, our nation, city, community, family, and friends. Simone Weil's notion of "justice as compassion" also is one in which mutual respect for all humans grounds our obligations to prevent suffering and harm. She believes that we have an unconditional obligation not to let a single human suffer "when one has the chance of coming to his assistance" (quoted

in R. Bell 1998, 114).15 This qualifier is important. We cannot assume responsibility for all suffering, to do so is naïve. We can assume, however, some responsibility to try to alleviate suffering whenever we can. Yet, as intimated earlier, in order to move beyond empathy, we must also address claims for justice and equality. Again, I suggest that without the compassionate drive that is prompted by visualizing the pain of injustice, we will not feel peoples' anguish, or bother to consider what they need. As individuals, we have responsibilities beyond our personal connections to assist whenever it is within our capacities and resources to do so. I do not want to give the impression that our entire lives should be devoted to attending to others' needs. To do so would return women to exclusive nurturance at the expense of self-development and public citizenship. It is, rather, a matter of acting with compassion when it is possible to do so, and the possibility of course is debatable and requires priorities, which differ with us all. Politically, this means that politicians, nations, and international organizations have a similar responsibility to alleviate the suffering that results when peoples' basic needs are not met. There is a heavy responsibility on wealthy nations where the extent of poverty and misery is not as conspicuous as elsewhere to assist less wealthy nations.16 State responsibility is acute when suffering is caused by harsh economic policies, careless sales of arms and military weapons, severe immigration rules, and obscene responses to terrorism by further acts of violence. With the majority of these massive global issues, most of us can only demonstrate the first stage of co-suffering, and perhaps

move to the second and debate the merit of options that might meet peoples' needs, and alleviate suffering. This vocal civic debate can provoke the third process of political responses that actually lead to political compassion. Given nations' moral failures of compassion and such conspicuous evidence of oppression, exploitation, brutality, and indifference, we need to be observant, and understand the implications of a failure to practice compassion. To summarize this section, the conceptual barriers that prevent the practice of political compassion are significant but

surmountable. Compassion is not too personal for politics. Rather, it can be the emotion that helps prompt a critical scrutiny of institutional structures; it is the driving force toward the practice of compassionate justice ; and, as an emotion and response, it broadens political responsibilities. Political Compassion I now argue that political compassion is linked to the political goals of a good society and is achievable politically.17 This argument contrasts with that of Hannah Arendt, who wrote that compassion abolishes the distance between citizens and thus is "politically speaking, irrelevant and without consequence" (1973, 86). Arendt's belief is that whereas the public arena is a site for deliberation, dissent, and argument, compassion requires a direct response that talking distorts. Certainly, too much abstract discussion on poverty, asylum seekers, detention camps, or the effects of war delays actual decisions for change. However, later, I argue that dialogue is a crucial way for all concerned groups to ascertain the best way to respond to peoples' feelings of vulnerability. Particularly in the current global climate of heightened vulnerability to terrorist attacks, the need for protection is powerful. Within liberal democracies, we are more accustomed to emphases on autonomy and self-sufficiency than the need for protection. While care ethics recognizes that we all are vulnerable in the sense that fortune and fate are "morally arbitrary" (Porter 1995, 181) and this is why it is important that we care about each other, most care ethics literature refers to the vulnerable either as children or as those requiring [End Page 109] welfare, disability rights, or health care. In the present international context, we often lose sight of personal powerlessness and politically equate vulnerability with minimizing the possibility of terrorist threats. Considerations of national security thus dominate over human security. Certainly, terrorist threats must be dealt

with appropriately, but the means of national protection should not be at the expense of the emotional safety of such vulnerable groups as asylum seekers. States need to maximize security, but "there are broader understandings of human security that encompass social well-being and the security of political, civil, social, cultural, and economic rights" (Porter 2003b, 9). The defense of human security can adopt an attitude toward the vulnerable of protective "holding," which minimizes harmful risk and reconciles differences (Ruddick 1990, 78–79). How democratic nations deal with the vilification or reconciliation of cultural and religious differences is central to the practice of political compassion. For example, asylum seekers rightfully seek refuge, safety, and security, under United Nations conventions. These rights include the right to seek asylum and the right to request assistance to secure safety in their own countries. Those seeking such rights increasingly are facing governments with tightened borders. In multicultural states, tolerance, trust, and openness are essential for positive civic relationships. Since 9/11, there has been a movement away from open tolerance to closed dichotomies based on an "othering," a stereotyping of groups considered different from "us." These dichotomies are not harmless opposites; they "mask the power of one side of the binary to control the other " (D. Bell 2002, 433), like us/them, citizen/foreigner, friends/enemies, and good/evil. Absolutist dichotomies are blind to nuances, middle-ground positions, particular contexts, and connections, all

the considerations of judgment needed for wise, compassionate decisions . Importantly, absolutist dichotomies are oblivious to the pain of those who are excluded, those most in need of protection. They make people feel "at risk" simply for looking different or having a different faith. Those with absolutist views see "illegal immigrants" and "queue jumpers" rather than desperate, fearful people seeking legitimate asylum. A classic example of this binary control is President George W. Bush's ultimatum, "If you're not with us, you're against us." A simplistic with us/against us , free world/axis of evil analysis cements an inclusion/exclusion that fails to comprehend the pain of those who are excluded .

--A2 Justifies InterventionWe do not moralize – acknowledging others despair is not wallowing in one’s own glory – it is necessary to mobilize positive social change to prevent structural violencePorter 2006(Elisabeth, head of the School of International Studies at the University of South Australia, “Can Politics Practice Compassion?” hypatia 21:4, project muse)

First, attentiveness to suffering is needed because as fragile, vulnerable humans, we all suffer sometimes. The suffering I refer to here is that which has political implications. "How we engage with the suffering humanity around us affects and mirrors the health of our souls and the health of society" (Spelman 1997a, 12). Feeling compassion is a moral prompt to encourage a response to those we know are suffering. Nussbaum suggests that compassion rests on

three beliefs about the nature of suffering.20 First, that the suffering is serious, not trivial. Second, "that the suffering was not caused primarily by the person's own culpable actions" (1996, 31).21 For example, suffering is caused by mercenaries or armies who murder all men in a village as "soft targets"; "smart bombs" that "surgically" destroy independent media networks and family homes; "friendly fire" that accidentally kills allies; and missiles on "probing missions" that kill civilians in war as "collateral damage." The Australian government's mandatory policy

of detaining asylum seekers causes suffering. Third, "the pitier's own possibilities are similar to those of the sufferer" (31). Compassion acknowledges vulnerability, an admittance of one's own weakness , without which arrogant harshness prevails. For this reason, those who have suffered great hardship, pain, or loss are often are the most compassionate. Yet, we do not wish suffering on anyone simply to teach what is required for compassion. Cornelio Sommaruga, who headed the International Committee of the Red Cross for ten years, has reflected that it was his "daily realization that the more one is confronted with the suffering caused by war, the less one becomes accustomed to it" (1998, ix). Just as Weil used the term "discernment" (quoted in R. Bell 1998), Nussbaum suggests that " judgment" that does not utilize the "intelligence of compassion in coming to grips with the significance of human suffering is blind and incomplete " (1996, 49). This judgment is crucial for understanding the conditions that give rise to injury and thus to the wise responses that might address such harms. When the experience of, for example, being in a detention camp in a remote desert area seems to crush the morale of asylum seekers, attentiveness to their plight in the form of gifts, letters, and practical or legal help affirms their humanity. We see this dignity explained in Seyla Benhabib's concept of the "generalized other," which treats people as having equal rights and duties including the right to seek asylum when one has been persecuted, and the "concrete other," which "requires us to view each and every rational being as an individual with a concrete history, identity, and affective-emotional constitution" (1987, 164). Ethical politics is about trying to cultivate decent politics that affirms human dignity. Such politics acknowledges the uniqueness of citizens, and affirms "our humanity in making others part of our lives while recognizing their right to be different" (Coicaud and Warner 2001, 13). It is by no means simple to humanize the experience of the other when that experience is horrific, such as in torture, war-rape, sexual trafficking, or existing in detention camps . The " humanizing" comes in recognizing the intensity of pain , feeling some of the anguish, and realizing human vulnerability to the point of appreciating that in different situations, we too might be tortured, raped, forced into prostitution, or seeking asylum. Yet there are competing interpretations of the nature of pain and its causes, consequences, and

moral, religious, and social significance. Debating pain and suffering places it in a political space. A compassionate society that values people must value different people with different interpretations of what is needed to ease suffering. It is hypocritical for states to mouth the rhetoric of compassion and respect of obligations to others, but in practice to ignore suffering . For example, mandatory detention of asylum seekers in Australia can last for many years.22 Isolation, uncertainty, separation from families, and memories of past traumas in one's country of origin often lead to mental breakdown or prolonged anguish. Yet the Australian government claims to respect the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. I have explained what constitutes suffering and that attentiveness affirms dignity. I clarify further the nature of attentiveness. If morality is about our concerned responsiveness, attention is the prerequisite to intense regard. Iris Murdoch borrowed the concept of "attention" from Simone Weil "to express the idea of a just and loving gaze" (1985, 34) on the reality of particular persons. Part of the moral task is, as Murdoch reiterated, to see the world in its reality—to see people struggling

in pain and despair. Weil, too, gave "attention" a prominent place, grounded in concrete matters of exploitation, economic injustice, and oppression.23 Her emphases were pragmatic in struggling against the debilitating nature of life—how "it humiliates, crushes, politicizes, demoralizes, and generally destroys the human spirit" (quoted in R. Bell 1998, 16)—and idealistic in striving to put ideals into practice. Too readily, we think about suffering in the height of media accounts of famine, suicide bombings, terrorist attacks, refugee camps, and war's destructive impact, and retreat quickly into our small world of self-pity. As Margaret Little explains, Murdoch's point was that "the seeing itself is a task—the task of being attentive to one's surroundings" (1995, 121). We need to "see" reality in order to imagine what it might be like for others, even when this includes horrific images from war violence .24 Yet despite the presence of embedded

journalists, media reporting of such events as the invasion of Iraq has remained entirely typical in that "the experience of the people on the receiving end of this violence remains closed to us" (Manderson 2003, 4).

Without political imagination, we will not have compassionate nations. "Without being tragic spectators, we will not have the insight required if we are to make life somewhat less tragic for those who . . . are hungry, and oppressed, and in pain " (Nussbaum 1996, 88). In order for political leaders to demonstrate compassion, they should display the ability to imagine the lives led by members of the diverse groups that they themselves lead. Otherwise, dispassionate detachment predominates and acts like the 2003 invasion of Iraq lead to talk of freedom without seeing fear, assume liberation without replacing the losses, and abuse power without addressing people's pain. "The difference, for instance, between someone who discerns the painfulness of torture and someone who sees the evil of it is that the latter person has come to see the painfulness as a reason not to torture" (Little 1995, 126). Attentive ethics in international relations is about priorities and choices.

Framework

2AC FrameworkThe negative has made it so that debate is NOT about who has a better vision of debate but who gets to participate in the first place – their decision to attach a voter for fairness and education to framework is to say the 1AC should have never happened. This replicates the discursive violence in our Olds evidence – selectively picking what ideas are worth talking about is the same logic that leads us to value white death over the death of brown/black bodies – they should not be able to kick out of framework – hold them accountable for what they say in this space.

The 1AC acts as a criticism to the disembodied practices we as individuals choose when confronted with the choice – just as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami created the conditions for both local acts of kindness and racial discrimination, debate creates the conditions for disembodied practices as well as embodied ones – the 1NC framework forces a rigorous method of argumentation that recreates the discursive amnesia and violence our aff criticizesLehmen in 10 - Department of Geography, Environment and Society, University of Minnesota <Jessica. “Relating to the sea: enlivening the ocean as an actor in¶ Eastern Sri Lanka” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2013 (article written December 2010), volume 31, pages 485-501>

The ocean , both the open sea and lagoons, has played an important role in Sri Lanka’s ¶ protracted history of armed conflict , used as a battleground but also altering the ways that ¶ these clashes played out. The naval division of the LTTE, the Sea Tigers, has been one of the¶ most powerful elements of the movement, and several key battles have been fought at sea,¶ with the LTTE often emerging victorious (Ganguly, 2004; see also Asian

Tribune 2006; BBC¶ News 2006). Additionally, some of the deadliest and most protracted battles in the thirty-year¶

civil conflict were fought in the coastal regions of the North and the East, which comprise¶ two thirds of the country’s

coastline (Suryanarayn, 2005).¶ The centrality of the ocean and coastal areas in Sri Lanka’s armed conflict may come as¶ little surprise; the sea is often aligned with uncertainty, conflict, and chaos in academic and¶ popular literature (Connery, 2006). In addition

to feeling a sense of antagonism between the¶ land and the sea, we have long understood the ocean as the archetypical site of the sublime,¶ defined as the convergence of horror and wonder at the vastness of nature (Edmonds-¶ Dobrijevich, 2010; Westerdahl et al, 2005). The ocean, as Connery (2006) notes, is never¶ fully conquered; it has the potential to become again an undifferentiated, ungoverned mass.¶ In Batticaloa the ocean was tied to shifting regimes of power and force, always with the¶ potential for alternative political outcomes . In this

way, the ocean can be seen as having ¶ heterotopic tendencies, as a site that exists in reality yet contains the opportunity for differing¶ rules of governance; a place where “all the other real sites

that can be found within the¶ culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted ” (Foucault and Miskoweic,¶ 1986, page 24).¶ Both the LTTE and and the Sri Lankan Armed Forces (SLAF) displaced Tamil and¶ Muslim civilians to and from increasingly marginal coastal territory. As Bohle and Fünfgeld¶ state: “All along the coastal strip of Batticaloa District, violent events have become part¶ of the social memory of the villagers and defining events in their individual life histories¶ and collective memories” (2007, page 675). In 1990, near Batticaloa in the town of Eravur,¶ the LTTE massacred 173 Muslims, marking the start of a concerted effort in the district to¶ “ethnically cleanse Muslims from Tiger-controlled territory, or at a minimum displace them¶ from their homes to shanty villages along the beach, between lagoon and sea” (Hyndman,¶ 2007, page 364). Just as people have been displaced to coastal zones, they also have been displaced within these areas . In Batticaloa district, a narrow coastal strip was one of two

main¶ 494 J S Lehman¶ theaters of ongoing conflict and erratically shifting regimes of power between the LTTE and¶ government forces.¶ The ocean was not only a site of conflict and displacement; it also acted in determining¶ techniques of war and governance and influenced the outcomes both of battles and of more everyday practices of

repression and subversion . The lagoons in particular were often¶ enlisted to demarcate the line of control and to allow each side

their own governance system¶ (Bohle and Fünfgeld, 2007; Trawick, 2007). The lagoons were also a threat to the SLAF, who¶ believed their dense vegetation provided cover for LTTE combatants and vessels. Accordingly,¶ the SLAF destroyed most of the mangroves and greatly altered the lagoon ecology, to the¶ detriment of fish populations (Bohle and Fünfgeld, 2007). The ocean and lagoons alternately ¶

challenged the various armed forces and enabled certain strategies of warfare or governance . ¶

Undoubtedly, they acted on the character and outcome of the war in the East. ¶ The thirty-year civil war was especially hard on the Tamil and Muslim fisherfolk of¶ Batticaloa; repeated bombings, lack of access to new technologies, and restrictions on¶ their mobility and fishing activities have caused them to be among the most detrimentally¶ affected by the conflict (Suryanarayn, 2005). Even during my research, several years after¶ the East had ceased to be a main theater of combat, my conversations, especially with¶ key informants, were haunted by rumors of disappearances, emerging armed groups, and¶ discriminatory and violent acts against Tamil and Muslim civilians perpetrated by the many¶ SLAF forces that remained in the area. While some of these events happened in proximity¶ to the army checkpoints along the roads, many occurred in more remote locations, close to¶ the shore. Further, though physical markers of war were rapidly disappearing from the town¶ of Batticaloa, along the coast minefields and the rubble of bombed-out buildings were much¶ more common sights.¶ During the war and since, constraints on fishing have played various roles in the lives¶ of fishermen in Batticaloa. During the years that the LTTE had political control in the area,¶ they imposed certain laws and restrictions , but no one I spoke with complained about them ;¶ as one NGO officer explained, people were accustomed to the LTTE’s regulations. However,¶ restrictions imposed by the SLAF seemed stricter and more arbitrary.

The mobility provided by¶ the sea , even to civilians, was a serious threat to the army, which used control over movement¶ as a key tactic of governance and securitization (Hyndman and de Alwis, 2004). The SLAF¶ was also afraid that Tamil fisherfolk, under the guise of innocent civilians, would provide the¶ LTTE with information or resources. Participants in my research study, both fisherfolk and¶ NGO officers, repeatedly discussed restrictions on when and where fishing could occur¶ and what technologies could be used (for example, no GPS was allowed and motor size was¶ restricted). Some reported that the restrictions had been lifted after the government’s military¶ victory in May 2009, about a month before my study began, while others said they were still¶ in effect. One group of fisherfolk reported that they had made special agreements with the¶ army, which allowed them fewer restrictions, although the army had later turned on them,¶ breaking into their FCS building and stealing all their supplies.¶ Walker (2010) attests to the ways that violence permeated (and continues to permeate) ¶ everyday life in eastern Sri Lanka; the ocean can be seen as forcibly enlisted to this end¶ in Batticaloa . Yet, the ocean also actively subverted or complicated various governance¶ attempts, as well as providing an arena in which Tamil and Muslim fisherfolk negotiated¶ daily acts of persistence and even resistance . Restrictions and related punishments were not¶

evenly applied but rather the ocean became a focal point around and through which the SLAF¶ and Tamil civilians negotiated forms of securitization and mobility, power and subversion.¶ Furthermore, the materiality of the sea, with its scrubby and tangled mangroves, reserves¶ of fish, potential for buoyant mobility, and watery inhospitability to human life, acted on¶ Relating to the sea 495 ¶ the practices and outcomes of the conflict. The ocean functioned in ways that represented, ¶ contested, and inverted the rules of governance applied by the conflicting forces of the LTTE,¶ the SLAF, and civilian demands.

The impact is destruction of the activity - instead of a participatory activity open to multiple kinds of ideas and people, framework systematically eliminates anything that doesn’t fall within their vision of what it means to debate. Secomb 2k (Linnell, a lecturer in Gender Studies at the University of Sydney, “Fractured Community,” Hypatia – Volume 15, Number 2, Spring, p. 133-134)

The desire for a community founded on communion and union is evident in both everyday discourses and in philosophical debates. In the media, on the streets and in café discussions there is talk of the destruction of neighborly relations and communal sharing s a result of the encroachment of industrialization, modernity, and

postmodernity. Community , it is said, has been shattered or consumed by the metropolis, by the mass exterminations of world war, death camps, and colonization, and by the isolation engendered by advanced transport, communication,

media, and entertainment systems. Everywhere there are attempts to resurrect old structures of commonality or new formations of world, national, and sub-cultural communities. This concern about the loss of, and need to create, congenial community is also evident in recent philosophical reflections on the political. The ideal community founded on unity is evoked, debated, and reformulated in a diversity of configurations from G.W. F. Hegel’s Sittlichkeit to liberal social contract theories and communitarian communalism. Despite the numerous differences

between these formations, they all conceive of community as an attempt to achieve agreement and unity. Community is understood, in these philosophical approaches, as a unified political body founded on consensus and commonality. Against these formulations of unified community, I propose in

this paper an interpretation of community as an expression of difference and diversity that is made manifest through disagreement and disunity. While disagreement is generally conceived as a threat to community and as a sign of the imminent collapse of community, I will argue instead that

disagreement disrupts the formation of a totalizing identity , or commonality. The creation of a totalizing unity is the movement of totalitarianism and unfreedom. Disagreement, on the other hand, holds a space open for diversity and for freedom. It is not disagreement, resistance, and agitation that destroy community. It is rather the repression or suppression of difference and disagreement in the name of unity and consensus which destroys the engagement and interrelation of community . I argue that the conception of a unified community of

commonality destroys freedom, alterity, and heterogeneity . It is only within a community that acknowledges disagreement and fracture that difference and freedom flourish . This interpretation of community as productive disagreement is supported by the experience of Australian community, and in particular the relation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. For over two hundred years Aboriginal people have resisted the dominant legal lie of terra nullius (which created the legal friction that Australia was uninhabited country before its English occupation and that therefore there was no need to recognize the rights of the Aboriginal people). It was, in part, a persistent disagreement and fracture

within the Australian community that allowed this legal myth to be challenged and recently, finally, revoked. It is this disagreement and fracture which enables community and not, as is usually assumed, agreement, commonality, and unity . This ideal of an agreeable community defaces alterity, extinguishes freedom, and imposes a conformity and identity that annihilates the heterogeneity, surprise, and generosity of social relation.

They don’t solve their own offense – unpredictability is non-unique, the standard for the TOC and NDT are to break new affs every round with small lit bases and obscure mechanisms – no way their interpretation prevents this

We have a better internal link to education – their interpretation leads to the same stale debates over process CPs and politics DAs – having different approaches to the topic forces debaters to think on the spot

The negative forces us to have the wrong starting point – our job as intellectuals in this space should be to understand and resist the daily forces that caused people to be placed in discriminatory and violent situations in the first place – band-aid policy solutions only mask further injusticeYoung, 1 (Iris Marion, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy”, Political Theory, Vol. 29, No. 5 (Oct., 2001), pp. 670-690)The deliberative democrat finds such refusal and protest action uncooper- ative and counterproductive. Surely it is better to work out the most just form of implementation of legislation than to distract lawmakers and

obstruct the routines of overworked case workers. The activist replies that it is wrong to cooperate with policies and

processes that presume unjust institutional con- straints. The problem is not that policy makers and citizen deliberations fail to make arguments but that their starting premises are unacceptable. It seems to me that

advocates of deliberative democracy who believe that deliberative processes are the best way to conduct policies even under the conditions of structural inequality that characterize democracies today have no satisfactory response to this criticism. Many advocates of deliberative pro- cedures seem to find no problem with structures and institutional constraints that limit policy alternatives in actual democracies, advocating reflective political reasoning within them to counter irrational tendencies to reduce issues to sound bites and decisions to aggregate preferences. In their detailed discussion of the terms of welfare reform in Democracy and Disagreement, for example, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson appear to accept as given that policy action to respond to the needs of poor people must come in the form of poor support rather than changes in tax policy, the relation of private and public investment, public works employment, and other more structural ways of undermining deprivation and income inequality.8 James Fishkin's innovative citizens' forum deliberating national issues in connection with the 1996 political campaign, to take another example, seemed to presume as given all the fiscal, power, and institutional constraints on policy alternatives that the U.S. Congress and mainstream press assumed. To the extent that such constraints assume existing patterns of class inequality, residential segrega- tion, and gender division of labor as given, the activist's claim is plausible that there is little difference among the alternatives debated, and he suggests that the responsible citizen should not consent to these assumptions but instead agitate for deeper criticism and change. The ongoing business of legislation and policy implementation will assume existing institutions and their priorities as given unless massive con- certed action works to shift priorities and goals. Most of the time, then, poli- tics will operate under the constrained alternatives that are produced by and support

structural inequalities. If the deliberative democrat tries to insert practices of deliberation into existing public policy discussions, she is forced to accept the range of alternatives that existing structural constraints allow. While two decades ago in the United States, there were few opportunities for theorists of deliberative democracy to try to influence the design and process of public discussion, today things have changed. Some public officials and private foundations have become persuaded that inclusive, reasoned exten- sive deliberation is good for democracy and wish to implement these ideals in the policy formation process. To the extent that such implementation must presuppose constrained alternatives that cannot question existing institu-

tional priorities and social structures, deliberation is as likely to reinforce injustice as to undermine it. I think that the deliberative democrat has no adequate response to this challenge other than to accept the activist's suspicion of implementing delib- erative processes within institutions that seriously constrain policy alterna- tives in ways that, for example, make it nearly impossible for the structurally disadvantaged to propose solutions to

social problems that might alter the structural positions in which they stand. Only if the theory and practice of deliberative democracy are willing to withdraw from the immediacy of the already given policy trajectory can they respond to this activist challenge. The deliberative democracy should help create inclusive deliberative settings in which basic social and economic structures can be examined; such settings for the most part must be outside

of and opposed to ongoing settings of offi-cial policy discussion.

Our counterinterpretation is the aff must defend an exploration and/or development of the Earth’s oceans. This preserves predictable, topic-specific debate and avoids our USfg bad offense.

Their interpretation creates short term solutions masking larger destructive social relations—only our strategy can create break down these normative structures – there is no policy solution for sexual violence or everyday discrimination against people of color, but the distancing their interpretation forces means these everyday acts of violence will go unchecked and uncriticizedEckersley 02

Robyn, Environmental Pragmatism, ecocentrism and deliberative democracy: between problem-solving and fundamental critique, http://eprints.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00001950/02/Envpragchap5.pdf Professor in the School of Politics, Sociology and Criminology, University of Melbourne (MI)From the point of view of those who advocate change on behalf of the “environmentally disempowered”, such a methodological focus is too narrowly conceived. Approaching environmental problems and conflicts with the open-minded, respectful and practical disposition suggested by pragmatists can be positively foolhardy when there are more powerful forces arrayed around the negotiating table , and especially when their arguments resonate with dominant economic discourses. Indeed, maintaining a narrow problem-solving focus runs the risk of perpetuating structural injustices by, for example, ameliorating environmental side-effects for particular local communities and making the structural injustices a little easier to live with. This problem is generally recognized by new social movements and radical democratic theorists and requires difficult and ongoing practical judgments about whether to cooperate in policy dialogues or adopt more confrontational strategies, which may extend to civil disobedience in those cases where the relevant legal and policy regimes are believed to be manifestly unjust. Boycotting the processes of negotiation in order to highlight more systemic injustices may be more politically and strategically beneficial than participating in negotiations, even when such negotiations may carry the promise of producing compromises and incremental policy shifts in favor of

such groups in particular cases. That such tactics are regularly employed by environmental justice and wilderness advocates is testimony to, among other things, the political frustration experienced by those with limited resources and limited control over agenda setting. Of course, a cynic might suggest that refusing to continue a formal dialogue because it is not “free enough” is really just a code for saying that the dialogue is not running in the direction that the environmental advocate might wish. While this accusation is necessarily true (and therefore frequently made) in real-world liberal democracies, it also trivializes or fails to acknowledge the systemic injustices and associated discourses that constrain the parameters of policy deliberations in such democracies. When differences in communicative power distort democratic communication, both justice and democracy are more likely to be served by persisting with critical advocacy rather than “submitting” to mediation and narrow problem- solving.

There is no topical version of the aff – the 1AC is a criticism of disembodied approaches to natural disasters – saying the federal government should be responsible for violence overseas is a form of distancing the aff criticizes

Reform through the state will reinscribe injustice – their form of deliberative politics only masks the reproduction of violence because it creates normative discourse about institutions that legitimize them instead of providing necessary space for resistanceYoung, 1 (Iris Marion, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy”, Political Theory, Vol. 29, No. 5 (Oct., 2001), pp. 670-690)The deliberative democrat responds to this activist challenge, then, by proposing to create deliberative fora removed from the immediacy of the given economic imperatives and power structures, where representatives of diverse social sectors might critically discuss those imperatives and struc- tures, with an eye to reforming the

institutional context . Even at this point, however, the activist remains suspicious of deliberative practices, for

still another reason traceable to structural inequality. He worries that the majority of participants in such a reflective deliberative setting will be influenced by a common discourse that itself is a complex product of structural inequality. By a "discourse," I mean a system of stories and expert knowledge diffused through the society, which convey the widely accepted generalizations about how society operates that are theorized in

these terms, as well as the social norms and cultural values to which most of the people appeal when discuss- ing

their social and political problems and proposed solutions. In a society with longstanding and multiple structural inequalities, some

such discourses are, in the terms derived from Gramsci, " hegemonic": most of the people in the society think about their social

relations in these terms, whatever their location in the structural inequalities. When such discursive systems frame a deliberative process, people may come to an agreement that is nevertheless at least partly conditioned by

unjust power relations and for that reason should not be considered a genuinely free consent. In some

of his earlier work, Habermas theorized such false consensus as "systematically distorted com- munication."9 When such hegemonic discourse operates, parties to delibera- tion may agree on premises, they may accept a theory of their situation and

give reasons for proposals that the others accept, but yet the premises and terms of the account mask the reproduction of

power and injustice. Deliberative democrats focus on the need for agreement to give policies legitimacy , and they theorize the conditions for achieving such agreement, but the idea of false or distorted agreement seems outside the theory. In open- ing the possibility that some consensus is false and some communication sys- tematically distorted by power , I am not referring to consensus arrived at by

excluding some affected people or that is extorted by means of threat and coercion. The phenomenon of hegemony or

systematically distorted commu- nication is more subtle than this. It refers to how the conceptual and norma-

tive framework of the members of a society is deeply influenced by premises and terms of discourse that

make it difficult to think critically about aspects of their social relations or alternative possibilities of institutionalization and action . The theory and practice of deliberative democracy have no tools for raising the possibility that deliberations may be closed and distorted in this way. It lacks a theory of, shall we call it, ideology, as well as an account of the genealogy of discourses and their manner of helping to constitute the way individuals see themselves and their social world. For most deliberative dem- ocrats, discourse seems to be more "innocent."

You are not a policy-maker—pretending you are absolves individual responsibility for violence—ensures the aff’s impacts are inevitable. Kappeler, 1995 (Susanne, The Will to Violence, p. 10-11)

We are the war' does not mean that the responsibility for a war is shared collectively and diffusely by an entire society which would be equivalent to exonerating warlords and politicians and profiteers or, as Ulrich Beck says, upholding the notion of `collective irresponsibility', where people are no longer held responsible for their actions, and where the conception of universal responsibility becomes the equivalent of a universal acquittal.' On the contrary, the object is precisely to analyse the specific and differential responsibility of everyone in their diverse situations. Decisions to unleash a war are indeed taken at particular levels of power by those in a position to make them and to command such collective action. We need to hold them clearly responsible for their decisions and

actions without lessening theirs by any collective `assumption' of responsibility. Yet our habit of focusing on the stage where the major dramas of power take place tends to obscure our sight in relation to our own sphere of competence, our own power and our own responsibility leading to the well-known illusion of our apparent ` powerlessness’ and its accompanying phenomenon, our so-called political disillusionment. Single citizens even more so those of other nations have come to feel secure in their obvious non-responsibility for such

large-scale political events as, say, the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina or Somalia since the decisions for such events are always made elsewhere . Yet our insight that indeed we are not responsible for the decisions of a Serbian general or a Croatian president tends to mislead us into thinking that therefore we have no responsibility at all, not even for forming our own

judgement, and thus into underrating the responsibility we do have within our own sphere of action. In particular, it seems to absolve us from having to try to see any relation between our own actions and those events, or to recognize the connections between those political decisions and our own personal decisions . It not only shows that we participate in what Beck calls `organized irresponsibility', upholding the apparent lack of connection between bureaucratically, institutionally, nationally and also individually organized separate competences. It also proves the phenomenal and

unquestioned alliance of our personal thinking with the thinking of the major powermongers: For we tend to think that we cannot `do' anything , say, about a war , because we deem ourselves to be in the wrong situation; because we are not where the major decisions are made . Which is why many of those not yet entirely disillusioned with politics tend to engage in a form of mental deputy politics, in the style of `What would I do if I were the general, the prime minister, the president, the foreign minister or the minister of defence?' Since we seem to regard their mega spheres of action as the only worthwhile and truly effective ones, and since our political analyses

tend to dwell there first of all, any question of what I would do if I were indeed myself tends to peter out in the comparative insignificance of having what is perceived as `virtually no possibilities': what I could do seems petty and futile. For my own action I obviously desire the range of action of a general, a prime minister, or a General Secretary of the UN finding expression in ever more prevalent formulations like `I want to stop this war', `I want military intervention', `I

want to stop this backlash', or `I want a moral revolution." 'We are this war', however, e ven if we do not command the troops or participate in so-called peace talks, namely as Drakulic says, in our `non-comprehension’: our willed refusal to feel responsible for our own thinking and for working out our own understanding, preferring innocently to drift along the ideological current of prefabricated arguments or less than innocently taking advantage of the advantages these offer. And we `are' the war in our `unconscious cruelty towards you', our tolerance of the `fact that you have a yellow form for refugees and I don't' our readiness, in other words, to build identities, one for ourselves and one for refugees, one of our own

and one for the `others'. We share in the responsibility for this war and its violence in the way we let them grow inside us, that is, in the way we shape `our feelings, our relationships, our values' according to the structures and the values of war and violence. “ destining” of revealing insofar as it “pushes” us in a certain direction. Heidegger does not regard destining as determination (he says it is not a “fate

which compels”), but rather as the implicit project within the field of modern practices to subject all aspects of reality to the principles of order and efficiency, and to pursue reality down to the finest detail.

Thus, insofar as modern technology aims to order and render calculable, the objectification of reality tends to take the form of an increasing classification, differentiation, and fragmentation of reality. The possibilities for how things appear are increasingly reduced to those that enhance calculative activities. Heidegger perceives the real danger in the modern age to be that human beings will continue to regard technology as a mere instrument and fail to inquire into its essence. He fears that all revealing will become calculative and all relations technical, that the unthought horizon of revealing,

namely the “concealed” background practices that make technological thinking possible, will be forgotten. He remarks: The

coming to presence of technology threatens revealing, threatens it with the possibility that all revealing will be consumed in ordering and that everything will present itself only in the unconcealedness of standing-reserve. (QT, 33) 10 Therefore, it is not technology, or science, but rather the essence of technology as a way of revealing that constitutes the danger; for the essence of technology is existential ,

not technological. 11 It is a matter of how human being s are fundamentally oriented to ward their world vis a vis their practices, skills, habits, customs, and so forth. Humanism contributes to this danger insofar as it fosters the illusion that technology is the result of a collective human choice and therefore subject to human control. 12

A2 Predictability ImpactNo such thing as predictability - there is no objective or fixed meaning to any of the words in the resolution – framework is a language game surrounding the use of a word – their only value is in reappropriation to explore the meaning of the topic.Davidson and Smith in 99 (Joyce N and Mick; Wittgenstein and Irigaray: Gender and Philosophy in a Language (Game) of Difference; Hypatia Vol 14 No2; MUSE)

The concept of a   “language-game” links a particular employment of language with the “actions into which it is woven ”  (Wittgenstein 1988, 7). Just as there are innumerable activities in which we employ language, so there are countless kinds of uses of language , and these do not stay the same. They are not “fixed , given once and for all; but   new types of language, new language games , as we may say, come into existence and others become obsolete   and forgotten” (1988, 23). Wittgenstein lists a few of the many possible language games, including “making up a story . . . play acting— . . . making a joke;telling it— . . . translating . . . asking, thinking, cursing, greeting, praying” (1988, 23). What is more, the meaning of the words   we employ will   often change as we put them to different uses   in different language- games. Wittgenstein suggests that to know the meaning of a word is not a matter of being able to define it, to fix its meaning, but of knowing how to use it, that is, to have made the appropriate connections between concept and language-game. It is only possible to demonstrate that we have understood a word’s meaning by being able to apply it. For example, consider what there might be in common between “deep sorrow, a deep sound, a deep well” (Wittgenstein 1964, 137), when to answer “depth” is obviously tautological.

A2 Switch Side Debate ImpactSwitch Side Debate ruins any productive deliberation. No one believes what we say no matter the predictable research or fair limits. This is why education is prior to all other standards.Greene and Hicks 2005 (Ronald Walter and Darrin; debate legends, LOST CONVICTIONSDebating both sides and the ethical self-fashioning of liberal citizens, Cultural Studies Vol. 19, No. 1 January 2005) Murphy’s case against the ethics of debating both sides rested on what he thought to be a simple and irrefutable rhetorical principle: A

public utterance is a public commitment. In Murphy’s opinion, debate was best imagined as a species of public speaking akin to public advocacy on the affairs of the day. If debate is a form of public speaking, Murphy reasoned, and a public utterance entails a public commitment, then   speakers have an ethical obligation to   study the question, discuss it with others until they know their position,   take a stand   and then / and only then / engage in public advocacy in   favour   of their viewpoint .   Murphy had no doubt that intercollegiate debate was a form of public advocacy and was, hence, rhetorical, although this point would be severely attacked by proponents of switch-side debating. Modern debating, Murphy claimed, ‘is geared to the public platform and to rhetorical, rather than dialectical principles’ (p. 7). Intercollegiate debate was rhetorical, not dialectical, because its

propositions were specific and timely rather than speculative and universal. Debaters evidenced their claims by appeals to authority and opinion rather than formal logic, and debaters appealed to an audience, even if that audience was a single person sitting in the back of a room at a relatively isolated debate tournament. As such,   debate   as a species of public argument should be held to the ethics of the platform . We would surely hold in contempt any public actor who spoke with equal force, and without genuine conviction, for both sides of a public policy question. Why, asked Murphy, would we exempt students from the same ethical obligation?   Murphy’s master ethic / that a public utterance entails a public commitment / rested on a classical rhetorical theory that refuses the modern distinctions between cognitive claims of truth (referring to the objective world), normative claims of right (referring to the intersubjective world), and expressive claims of sincerity (referring to the subjective state of the speaker), although this distinction, and Murphy’s refusal to make it, would surface as a major point of contention in the 1960s for the proponents of debating both sides.7 Murphy is avoiding the idea that the words spoken by a debater can be divorced from what the speaker actually believes to

be true, right, or good (expressive claims of sincerity). For Murphy, to stand and publicly proclaim that one affirmed the resolution entailed both a claim that the policy being advocated was indeed the best possible choice, given extant social conditions, and that one sincerely believed that her or his arguments were true and right. In other words, a judge should not make a distinction between the merits of the case presented and the sincerity of the advocates presenting it; rather, the reasons supporting a policy and the ethos of the speakers are mutually constitutive forms of proof. The interdependency of logos and ethos was not only a matter of rhetorical principle for Murphy but also a foundational premise of public reason in a democratic society. Although he never explicitly states why this is true, most likely because he assumed it to be self-evident, a charitable interpretation of Murphy’s position, certainly a more generous interpretation than his detractors were willing to give, would show that

his axiom rests on the following argument: If public reason is to have any legitimate force, auditors must believe that advocates are arguing from conviction   and not from greed, desire or naked self- interest.   If auditors believe that advocates are insincere, they will not afford legitimacy to their claims   and will opt to settle disputes through force or some seemingly neutral modus vivendi such as voting or arbitration. Hence,   sincerity is   a necessary element of public reason and, therefore, a   necessary condition of critical deliberation in a democratic society .  For Murphy, the assumption of sincerity is intimately articulated to the notion of ethical argumentation in a democratic

political culture. If a speaker were to repudiate this assumption by advocating contradictory positions in a public forum, it would completely undermine her or his ethos   and result in the loss of the means of identification with an audience. The real danger of undermining the assumption of sincerity was not that individual speakers would be rendered ineffective / although this certainly did make training students to debate both sides

bad rhetorical pedagogy. The   ultimate   danger of switch-side debati ng   was tha t it would engender a distrust of public advocates.   The public would come to see the debaters who would   come to   occupy public offices as ‘public liars’ more interested in politics as vocation than as a calling. Debate would be seen as a game of power rather than the method of democracy .

Ext - State/Reform/Roleplaying BadAttempts to combine activism with policy deliberation kills the potential to create any change, the activism will always be co-opted and incorporated into current strategies of dominance employed within the public.Young, 1 (Iris Marion, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy”, Political Theory, Vol. 29, No. 5 (Oct., 2001), pp. 670-690)Let us suppose that by some combination of activist agitation and deliber- ative persuasion, some deliberative settings emerge that approximately rep- resent all those affected by the outcome of certain policy decisions. Given the world of structural inequality as we know it, the activist believes such a cir- cumstance will be rare at best but is willing to entertain the possibility for the sake of this argument. The activist remains suspicious of the deliberative democrat's exhortation to engage in reasoned and critical discussion with people he disagrees with, even on the supposition that the public where he engages in such discussion really includes the diversity of interests and per- spectives potentially affected by policies. That is because he perceives that existing social and economic structures have set unacceptable constraints on the terms of

deliberation and its agenda. Problems and disagreements in the real world of democratic politics appear

and are addressed against the background of a given history and sedi- mentation of unjust structural inequality, says the activist, which helps set agenda priorities and constrains the alternatives that political actors

may con- sider in their deliberations . When this is so, both the deliberative agenda and the institutional

constraints it mirrors should themselves be subject to criti- cism, protest, and resistance . 7 Going to the table to meet with representatives of those interests typically served by existing institutional relations, to discuss how to deal most justly with issues that presuppose those institutional rela- tions, gives both those institutions and deliberative process too much legiti- macy . It co-opts the energy of citizens committed to justice, leaving little time for mobilizing people to bash the institutional constraints and decision- making process from the outside. Thus, the responsible citizen ought to with- draw from implicit acceptance of structural and institutional constraints by refusing to deliberate about policies within them. Let me give some examples. A local anti-poverty advocacy group engaged in many forms of agitation and protest in the years leading up to passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act by the U.S. Congress in the spring of 1996. This legislation fundamentally changed the terms of welfare policy in the United States. It abolished entitlements to public assistance for the first time in sixty years, allowing states to deny benefits when funds have run out. It requires recipients of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families to work at jobs after a certain period and allows states to vary significantly in their pro- grams. Since passage of the legislation, the anti-poverty advocacy group has organized recipients and others who care about welfare justice to protest and lobby the state house to increase welfare funding and to count serving as a welfare rights advocate in local welfare offices as a "work activity."

Role playing as policymakers creates a regime of ‘truth’ that supports the existing division of resources and power structures, excluding opposing viewpoints. This turns their role playing good claims, their view of the world is biased to favor the system.Smith, 1997 (Steve, University of Wales, Professor and Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University, University of Wales, Aberystwyth “Power and Truth, A Reply to William Wallace,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Oct., 1997), p. 513, NAP)Those academics who do get involved in talking truth to power must accept that in so doing they must adopt the agenda of those to whom they are talking. They will be involved in problem-

solving, and thereby must accept the 'givens' of the policy debate. Policy-makers see   certain   things as givens ; therefore   if you write about them in order to influence the policy debate, you tend to have to write as if they are given as well .   For academics such 'givens' are rarely seen as such. This has extremely important political and intellectual consequences since it questions the very notion of talking 'truth' to power. It is more a case of accepting the policy agenda of those to whom one is talking and then giving them a series of alternative ways of proceeding. I see no connection between this and speaking 'truth to power'. I can also admit the tendency to make what one says acceptable to those 'listening', so as to ensure that one is indeed 'listened to'. But more importantly, why should academics take the policy agenda of governments as the starting point? Why do we privilege that starting point rather than the needs and wants of the have-nots in our society or in the global political system?   Indeed, maybespeaking 'truth to power' is   itself a very   political   act , albeit in the name of academic neutrality, an act that supports the existing division of resources in the world. This situation is made all the worse once the possibility arises of getting funding from policy-making bodies, however much the individual academic wants to maintain the independence of his or her research. In my view, academics need a critical distance from which to look at the activities of governments.   Perhaps the greatest form of isolation and self-righteousness is to accept the policy-makers' view of the world as the starting point, so that the academic sees the world as the policy-maker sees it. Where would questions of

gender, famine, and racism fit into that world-view? Yet aren't these every bit as 'political' and 'international' as the traditional agenda? This seems to me to take us very far indeed from the idea of 'speaking truth to power'; the danger must be of telling the powerful what they want to hear and of working within their world-view.   Of course, academics spend much time trying to avoid these dangers, and Wallace himself cannot be accused of simply adopting the agenda of the powerful, but surely he would admit that these dangers are profound and very difficult to avoid, especially if one wants to have influence and prestige within the policy-making community. My objection is   really  to those who pretend that any of this has anything to do with truth and academic objectivity.

Policy failure - fiated strategies result in the most pragmatic of approaches like commodified aid and hand-outs. Their thought experiment is consistent with the failure of sovereignty-based band-aid solutions to natural disasters instead of asking what placed disadvantaged populations in the face of danger in the first place. We are not anti-political; we are necessary for political correctives. Foucault, 80. (Michel, French Theorist, "Question of Method," Published in Michel Foucault: Power ed. James D, Faubion, p.235-236)But paralysis isn't the same thing as anesthesia-i-on the contrary, It's in so far as there's been an awakening to a whole series of

problems that the difficulty of doing anything comes to be felt. Not that this effect is an end in itself. But it seems tome that 'what is to be done' ought not to be determined from above by reformers, ~prophetic or legislative, but by a long work of comings and goings, of exchanges, reflections, trials, different analyses . If the social workers you are talking about don't know which way to turn, this just goes to show that they're looking, and hence are not anaesthetized or sterilized at all - on the contrary. And it's because of the need not to tie them down or immobilize them that there can be no question for me of trying to tell 'what is to be done'. If the questions posed by the social workers you spoke of are going to assume their full amplitude, the most important thing is not to bury them under the weight of prescriptive, prophetic discourse, The necessity of reform mustn't be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: 'Don't criticize, since you’re not

capable of carrying out a reform.' That's ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn't have to be the premise of a deduction which concludes: this

then is what needs to be done, It should be an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is . Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn't have to lay down the law for the law. It isn't a stage in a programming, It is a challenge directed to what is. The problem, you see, is one for the subject who acts-the subject of action through which the real is transformed, If prisons and punitive mechanisms are transformed , it won't be because a plan of reform has found its way into the heads of the social workers; it will be when those who have to deal with that penal reality, all those people, have come into collision with each other and with themselves, run into dead-ends, problems and impossibilities, been through conflicts and confrontations; when critique has been played out in the real, not when reformers have realized their ideas.

The negative forces us to have the wrong starting point – our job as intellectuals in this space should be to understand and resist the daily forces that caused people to be placed in discriminatory and violent situations in the first place – band-aid policy solutions only mask further injusticeYoung, 1 (Iris Marion, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy”, Political Theory, Vol. 29, No. 5 (Oct., 2001), pp. 670-690)The deliberative democrat finds such refusal and protest action uncooper- ative and counterproductive. Surely it is better to work out the most just form of implementation of legislation than to distract lawmakers and

obstruct the routines of overworked case workers. The activist replies that it is wrong to cooperate with policies and processes that presume unjust institutional con- straints. The problem is not that policy makers and citizen deliberations fail to make arguments but that their starting premises are unacceptable. It seems to me that

advocates of deliberative democracy who believe that deliberative processes are the best way to conduct policies even under the conditions of structural inequality that characterize democracies today have no satisfactory response to this criticism. Many advocates of deliberative pro- cedures seem to find no problem with structures and institutional constraints that limit policy alternatives in actual democracies, advocating reflective political reasoning within them to counter irrational tendencies to reduce issues to sound bites and decisions to aggregate preferences. In their detailed discussion of the terms of welfare reform in Democracy and Disagreement, for example, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson appear to accept as given that policy action to respond to the needs of poor people must come in the form of poor support rather than changes in tax policy, the relation of private and public investment, public works employment, and other more structural ways of undermining deprivation and income inequality.8 James Fishkin's innovative citizens' forum deliberating national issues in connection with the 1996 political campaign, to take another example, seemed to presume as given all the fiscal, power, and institutional constraints on policy alternatives that the U.S. Congress and mainstream press assumed. To the extent that such constraints assume existing patterns of class inequality, residential segrega- tion, and gender division of labor as given, the activist's claim is plausible that there is little difference among the alternatives debated, and he suggests that the responsible citizen should not consent to these assumptions but instead agitate for deeper criticism and change. The ongoing business of legislation and policy implementation will assume existing institutions and their priorities as given unless massive con- certed action works to shift priorities and goals. Most of the time, then, poli- tics will operate under the constrained alternatives that are produced by and support

structural inequalities. If the deliberative democrat tries to insert practices of deliberation into existing public policy discussions, she is forced to accept the range of alternatives that existing structural constraints allow. While two decades ago in the United States, there were few opportunities for theorists of deliberative democracy to try to influence the design and process of public discussion, today things have changed. Some public officials and private foundations have become persuaded that inclusive, reasoned exten- sive deliberation is good for democracy and wish to implement these ideals in the policy formation process. To the extent that such implementation must presuppose constrained alternatives that cannot question existing institu-

tional priorities and social structures, deliberation is as likely to reinforce injustice as to undermine it. I think that the deliberative democrat has no adequate response to this challenge other than to accept the activist's suspicion of implementing delib- erative processes within institutions that seriously constrain policy alterna- tives in ways that, for example, make it nearly impossible for the structurally disadvantaged to propose solutions to

social problems that might alter the structural positions in which they stand. Only if the theory and practice of deliberative democracy are willing to withdraw from the immediacy of the already given policy trajectory can they

respond to this activist challenge. The deliberative democracy should help create inclusive deliberative settings in which basic social and economic structures can be examined; such settings for the most part must be outside

of and opposed to ongoing settings of offi-cial policy discussion.

Reform through the state will reinscribe injustice – their form of deliberative politics only masks the reproduction of violence because it creates normative discourse about institutions that legitimize them instead of providing necessary space for resistanceYoung, 1 (Iris Marion, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy”, Political Theory, Vol. 29, No. 5 (Oct., 2001), pp. 670-690)The deliberative democrat responds to this activist challenge, then, by proposing to create deliberative fora removed from the immediacy of the given economic imperatives and power structures, where representatives of diverse social sectors might critically discuss those imperatives and struc- tures, with an eye to reforming the

institutional context . Even at this point, however, the activist remains suspicious of deliberative practices, for

still another reason traceable to structural inequality. He worries that the majority of participants in such a reflective deliberative setting will be influenced by a common discourse that itself is a complex product of structural inequality. By a "discourse," I mean a system of stories and expert knowledge diffused through the society, which convey the widely accepted generalizations about how society operates that are theorized in

these terms, as well as the social norms and cultural values to which most of the people appeal when discuss- ing

their social and political problems and proposed solutions. In a society with longstanding and multiple structural inequalities, some

such discourses are, in the terms derived from Gramsci, " hegemonic": most of the people in the society think about their social

relations in these terms, whatever their location in the structural inequalities. When such discursive systems frame a deliberative process, people may come to an agreement that is nevertheless at least partly conditioned by

unjust power relations and for that reason should not be considered a genuinely free consent. In some

of his earlier work, Habermas theorized such false consensus as "systematically distorted com- munication."9 When such hegemonic discourse operates, parties to delibera- tion may agree on premises, they may accept a theory of their situation and

give reasons for proposals that the others accept, but yet the premises and terms of the account mask the reproduction of

power and injustice. Deliberative democrats focus on the need for agreement to give policies legitimacy , and they theorize the conditions for achieving such agreement, but the idea of false or distorted agreement seems outside the theory. In open- ing the possibility that some consensus is false and some communication sys- tematically distorted by power , I am not referring to consensus arrived at by

excluding some affected people or that is extorted by means of threat and coercion. The phenomenon of hegemony or

systematically distorted commu- nication is more subtle than this. It refers to how the conceptual and norma-

tive framework of the members of a society is deeply influenced by premises and terms of discourse that

make it difficult to think critically about aspects of their social relations or alternative possibilities of institutionalization and action . The theory and practice of deliberative democracy have no tools for raising the possibility that deliberations may be closed and distorted in this way. It lacks a theory of, shall we call it, ideology, as well as an account of the genealogy of discourses and their manner of helping to constitute the way individuals see themselves and their social world. For most deliberative dem- ocrats, discourse seems to be more "innocent."

PICs

A2 Word Pics GeneralPERM do the plan and denounce the connotations associated with the use of <insert word/term> - the 1AC criticism is the positive potential for redeployment – we have the ability to clarify how the words in our aff are interpretedStychin ‘94 (Carl F. is a lecturer at Department of Law, University of Keele, Staffordshire (UK); B.A. 1985, University of Alberta, Canada, 1988, Identities, Sexualities, and the Postmodern Subject: An Analysis of Artistic Funding by the National Endowment for the Arts) The capacity for resistance can be linked to a political agenda that focuses on the formation of identities denied by the universal discourse of subjecthood. The destabilization of the universal subject position through practices of resistance opens up a realm of cultural space for the establishment of identities that have been silenced. Thus, attempts to problematize the norm become a precondition for articulating difference. Moreover, by operating within the dominant discourse, subjects that have been historically denied participation can appropriate and redeploy the terms of the dominant discourse. It is this cultural phenomenon of discursive appropriation – a parasitic redeployment of the excess of discursive meaning – that amounts to the cultural practice of postmodern theory.

Scriptocentrism is bad –

1 - Stops active politicsConquergood ‘02[The Drama Review 46, 2 (T174), Summer 2002. Copyright 2002 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Performance Studies Interventions and Radical Research pp 147. Dwight Conquergood was a professor of anthropology and performance studies at Northwestern University]

In even stronger terms, Raymond Williams challenged the class-based arrogance of scriptocentrism, pointing to the “error” and “delusion” of “highly educated” people who are “ so driven in on their reading” that “they fail to notice that there are other forms of skilled, intelligent, creative activity” such as “theatre” and “active politics .” This error “resembles that of the narrow reformer who supposes that farm labourers and village craftsmen were once uneducated, merely because they could not read .” He argued that

“ the contempt” for performance and practical activity , “which is always latent in the highly literate, is a mark of the observer’s limits , not those of the activities themselves ” ([1958] 1983:309).Williams critiqued scholars for

limiting their sources to written materials; I agree with Burke that scholarship is so skewed toward texts that even when researchers do attend to extralinguistic human action and embodied events they construe them as texts to be read. According to de Certeau, this scriptocentrism is a hallmark of Western imperialism . Posted above the gates of modernity, this sign: “‘ Here only what is written is understood.’ Such is the internal law of that which has constituted itself as ‘Western’ [and ‘white’]”

2 – Is a means of co-opting the affBenford '93[Robert “Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement.” Accessed via JSTOR, August 23, 2009]

Intramovement disputes, if they occur front stage or are otherwise publicized, reveal a movement's weaknesses and thereby provide opponents with a blueprint for launching attacks. A movement comprised of opposing factions is particularly vulnerable to "divide and conquer" tactics. In some cases, agent

provocateurs infiltrate a movement and seek to exacerbate existing tensions or instigate internal conflict and encourage schisms (Marx 1974; 1979). Although I found no evidence that such countervailing tactics were employed

against the Austin disarmament movement, on several occasions activists speculated that one or two participants, who frequently initiated verbal skirmishes, were perhaps "right wing plants" or "government agents" deployed to sabotage the movement.

A2 “Aid” PICNo link – the 1AC is a criticism of international aid politics – we don’t endorse the notion that Western countries have power over those hit by natural disasters rather we critique the notion that Western countries deserve anything in return

The focus on the language of “aid” is a trap that distracts us from realizing that just because we change language doesn’t mean we’re changing material conditionsGlennie ‘11Jonathan Glennie, 27 July 2011, “Development co-operation: aid by any other name”, http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jul/27/aid-and-development-coordination

But while the direction of travel of the international community is broadly to be welcomed, and is in fact inevitable, there are a couple of traps that come with the package. The first is the danger of believing that because there is more talk of co-operation and mutuality, that there is in fact more co-operation and mutuality. There may or may not be. Rich countries (old and new) will still make decisions based on a mix of interest, ideology and altruism, just as

they always have; it will take more than a progressive declaration to change the power mechanisms inherent in international relations. ¶ The second trap is linked. Although the Paris declaration claimed to be about aid effectiveness, it actually had very little to say about effectiveness per se, ie whether aid is actually making a

difference for poverty reduction and development. In fact, it focuses mainly on efficiency issues, such as reducing transaction

costs, improving financial management techniques and encouraging donor co-ordination.¶ Complex political debates of development were sidelined to achieve consensus for an essentially technocratic agenda. This is not a bad thing in itself. Most of the principles in the Paris declaration are worth adhering to, and the bureaucracy surrounding the process has forced some minor gains in these areas.¶ But the technocratic agenda, while useful in itself, is a threat to development if people begin to confuse genuine aid effectiveness with technocratic improvements, and if time and effort are spent engaging in areas marginal to real development progress. Paris colonised what was meant by aid effectiveness, and has confused the development sector ever since.¶ The danger in Busan is that this time it is not aid concepts that are colonised and techno-fied, but the broader development agenda. The Paris declaration on aid effectiveness will be transformed later this year, according to the working title of the Busan outcome document, into the Busan partnership for development effectiveness.¶ Language can be an important precursor to changes in reality, especially if it gives power to the hand of reformers in developing countries to insist on more accountability and honesty in analysing complex relationships.¶ In that sense, the Busan meeting could turn out to be more era-defining than Paris, where no paradigms were challenged, only generally accepted OECD norms bureaucratised.¶ However, we should not confuse one particular process that seeks limited consensus on some technical issues for a sufficient state-of-the-art analysis of development effectiveness in the 21st century. If we do, we risk setting back the political struggle and debates that are crucial to poverty reduction.

A2 Quote PICBy putting it in quotes we merely mean to call the term to question - the part of our plan that says we may clarify intent means we get to define the quotations

Piety 1 (Tamara R. Piety, Professor Stanford Law School, 2001 22 Cardozo L. Rev. 947 "DENIAL AND ITS DISCONTENTS: A CRITIQUE OF ADJUDICATION: FIN DE SIECLE: CONFESSIONWITHOUT AVOIDANCE")

Obviously, though, I do like the technique, since I use a lot of "sneer" and "scare" quotes too. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! For me it is meant to represent a lack of commitment to the content of the word. That is, if I say "truth," I mean to call into question whether it really is the truth, the difficulty in determining what truth is and so forth. I don't mean to sneer or to scare but merely to raise a rhetorical eyebrow.

A2 Natural Disaster PICRecognizing the ocean as an actor in the 2004 tsunami as outside of simply a social construct is necessary to a holistic understanding of how to respond to it and it is not mutually exclusive with acknowledging the construction of man-made parts of the disaster as a social constructLehmen in 10 - Department of Geography, Environment and Society, University of Minnesota <Jessica. “Relating to the sea: enlivening the ocean as an actor in¶ Eastern Sri Lanka” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2013 (article written December 2010), volume 31, pages 485-501>

The significance of the ocean has long been evident in Eastern Sri Lanka , where it has both ¶ brought about destruction and provided sustenance, playing key roles in material–discursive ¶ relations constituting the negotiation of power and resistance, resilience and survival . Yet,¶ most work on Sri Lanka’s

natures echoes dominant viewpoints in geographic and other social¶ theory; the options for social life seem to stop at the shore. In this paper I articulate the¶ importance of understanding the sea as an actor with agency that shapes reality through its ¶

myriad relationships with others. It locates the ocean as the variable site of anxiety, security,¶ disaster, (im)mobility, and risk. However, the ocean is not an empty stage for human drama ; it ¶ acts as well, concealing, transforming, rebelling, cooperating, and behaving in myriad ways¶ that are highly influential and not entirely predictable.¶ Enlivening the ocean provides a particularly productive means of understanding otherwise¶ often baffling intersections of different expressions of political and so-called

natural forces ¶ in Eastern Sri Lanka. In an area battered by three decades of civil war and one of the worst¶

natural disasters of recent times, displacement, violence, marginalization, and poverty are¶ so rampant as to become senseless. Additionally, an analysis that hopes to understand the¶ effects of one frame (such as the tsunami, or war) risks missing coconstitutive links with¶ other forces . In this paper, I argue for an understanding of the ocean as an actor that crosscuts¶ frames of natural and political power, not with a claim to better understand the essence of war¶ or disaster, but to trace their heterogeneous and shifting effects. In doing so, I hope to both¶ widen the definition of who or what might act politically in such circumstances, and explore¶ the ways in which political power is sustained, subverted, complicated, and elaborated in and¶ as networks of relations. ¶ Further, working with and through the ocean provides a strategically oblique way of¶ elucidating the

experiences and political voices of those occupying the spaces closest to¶ these intersections. If we recognize the ocean as an

actor, space is opened to consider others¶ as actors, who might previously have been labeled simply

victims, or not recognized at all . ¶ This constitutes an effort to be vigilant about who is included in and excluded from political¶ life, both by governance forces and by scholars, and thereby to expand the definition of the¶ political (Braun, 2004; Hobson, 2007). In this paper I have argued for an acknowledgement¶ of the sea as an actor, to better understand heterogeneous and shifting networks of relations¶ on Sri Lanka’s east coast, and to open space for the recognition of other liminal or marginal¶ actors.

Their criticism oversimplifies the affirmative and falsly assumes the ocean as a purely controllable, social force. Acknowledging “natural disasters” as having a component that is outside the realm of the political doesn’t mean we can’t respond to injustices wrapped up with themClark in 7 <Clark N, 2007 “Living through the tsunami: vulnerability and generosity on a volatile earth”Geoforum 38: 1127–1139>

I take inspiration from a very early response to the tsunami¶ by US writer and activist Rebecca Solnit. Solnit¶ rehearses much of the standard critical framing of the tragedy¶ in the context of the structural conditioning of vulnerability,¶ comparative expenditures and corresponding¶ injustices. But then she steps away, and begins to question¶ the appositeness of discourses of blame and accusation in a¶ time of great loss, before moving on to test the limits of a¶ certain kind of politically-committed critique. In her words¶ (2005, unpag):¶ The relief will be very political , in who gives how ¶ much and to whom it is given, but the event itself¶ transcends

politics, the realm of things we cause and¶ can work to prevent . We cannot wish that human¶ beings were not subject to the forces of nature, including¶ the mortality that is so central a part of our own¶ nature. We cannot wish that the seas dry up, that the¶ waves grow still, that the tectonic plates cease to exist,¶ that nature ceases to be beyond our abilities to predict¶ and control. But the terms of that nature include such¶ catastrophe and such suffering, which leaves us with ¶ sorrow not as problem to be solved but a fact . ¶ Solnit has ventured here into the very terrain that so many¶ geographers would willingly

evacuate in the coming¶ months and years. She has acknowledged the existence of¶ forces which cannot be subsumed into the predominating¶ model of social critique and the moral geography it imagines. ¶ In

short, Solnit has identified a kind of excess, a¶ remainder to the moral economy that equates the identification¶ of causal connections with ethical obligation. ¶ Such excess , as Rosalyn Diprose would have it, is not¶ incidental. Rather , it haunts any mode of critical thought¶ and practice which dreams of ‘equal

and harmonious¶ forces’ . Justice, conceived in this way, ‘exists by marking¶ itself of from an outside to which it is hostile (Diprose,¶

2002, p. 33). In the case of morally and politically motivated¶ social inquiry, the disavowed exterior is that which is not¶ amenable to change, that which resists critical purchase . ¶ Such modes of inquiry tend to be too wary of the pathologies¶ of ‘othering’ to commit themselves to outright exclusion,¶ preferring to appear hospitable to that which it does¶ not wish to assimilate. As a result, what could be most challenging¶ or most perturbing is passed lightly over, while that¶ which is seen to be conducive to critique and transformation¶ assumes the full weight of attention.¶ What I have in mind as the object of critical thought’s¶

subtle disavowal is the contingency of events , especially ¶ those events which rock people’s worlds to such an extent¶ that they find it difficult to speak of them. It is those experiences, ¶ such as pain and suffering, which seem to resist being¶ compared or catalogued or reduced to a calculus (see¶ Wyschogrod, 1998, pp. 14, 45–46; Levinas, 1987, p. 69). And¶ it is a vulnerability which, as Solnit noted, may be reduced¶ or deferred, but is never overcome:

a susceptibility that is¶ not simply a failing, a structural fault, or a surmountable ¶ hurdle, but is a part

of our all-too-humanness . What is¶ being passed over, or too hastily absorbed and processed, I¶ want to argue, is not simply

‘nature’ – which is often well¶ understood and deeply assimilated into political struggles.¶ But it does include some of the things that natural forces¶ can do: what they can do, in particular, to soft and fragile¶ bodies. And it includes something of how we respond; how¶ the demands of others who have suffered unspeakable¶ events come to ‘get under our skin’ (Diprose, 2002, p. 132).¶ In the following section, I return to the question of what¶ is disastrous about the disaster, and what it means to be a¶ vulnerable being. The disaster , I suggest, has a remainder,¶ something which exceeds the calculus of justice and the ¶ moral economy of critical social thought . Or rather, the ¶ disaster is this remainder. And this has repercussions, not ¶ simply for the way we think about disasters or about vulnerability,¶ but for how and why we think at all.

Kritiks

A2 Anthro/Specieism KPerm do both- “reflexive” anthropocentrism solves your impact and is more viable than pure rejection.Barry 99 (John politics lecturer Keele University, RETHINKING GREEN POLITICS, 1999, p. 7-8)

Ecological stewardship, unlike ecocentrism, seeks to emphasize that a self-reflexive, long-term anthropocentrism , as opposed to an 'arrogant' or 'strong' anthropocentrism can secure many of the policy objectives of ecocentrism , in terms of environmental preservation and conservation. As argued in Chapter 3, a reformed, reflexive anthropocentrism is premised on critically evaluating human uses of the non-human world , and distinguishing 'permissible' from 'impermissible' uses. That is, an 'ethics of use', though anthropocentric and rooted in human interests, seeks to regulate human interaction with the environment by distinguishing legitimate 'use' from unjustified 'abuse'. The premise for this defence of anthropocentric moral reasoning is that an immanent critique of 'arrogant humanism' is a much more defensible and effective way to express mere moral concerns than rejecting anthropocentrism and developing a 'new ecocentric ethic'. As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, ecocentric demands are premised on an over-hasty dismissal of anthropocentrism which precludes recognition of the positive resources within anthropocentrism for developing an appropriate and practicable moral idiom to cover social- environmental interaction.

Alt impossible- Humans can’t view the world through a non-human lens.Gillespie ’98 (Alexander, “International Environmental Law, Policy, and Ethics”)

An anthropocentric environmental ethic grants moral standing exclusively to human beings and considers nonhuman natural entities

and nature as a whole to be only a means for human ends. In one sense, any human outlook is necessarily anthropocentric, since we can apprehend the world only through our own senses and conceptual categories. Accordingly, some advocates of anthropocentric environmental ethics have tried to preempt further

debate by arguing that a non-anthropocentric environmental ethic is therefore an oxymoron. But the question at issue is not, “Can we apprehend nature from a nonhuman point of view?” Of course we cannot. The question is, rather, “Should we extend moral consideration to nonhuman natural entities or nature as a whole?” And that question, of course, is entirely open.

We can approach multiple struggles simultaneously – stopping violence against human and nonhuman animals is not mutually exclusive. Failing to act on suffering when we are capable insures the worst forms of violenceKETELS – 96 Violet B. – prof English Temple, former director Intellectual Heritage Program – 548 Annals 45 (lexis)]

The deadly consequences of linguistic abuse and skepticism, including their insidious seduction to silence, passivity, and nihilism, were vividly prefigured more than a century earlier by Georg Buchner in his plays and in his private correspondence. In Danton's Death, Robespierre and his followers mouth "empty and impersonal and formalistic oratory and rhetoric," not to enlighten but to delude citizens into accepting absolute state control without protest. The shouting of idealists and intellectuals had come to seem like idle foolishness to Buchner, as he reveals in a letter to his parents: "They write, but no one reads them; they shout, but no one hears them; they act, but no one helps them." n58 Driven by his obsessive conviction that all attempts to break the impenetrable barriers isolating people from each other were doomed, Buchner cries out in a letter to his fiancee: I am alone as though in the grave; when will your words waken me? My friends desert me, we scream in each other's ears like deaf men; I wish we were dumb, then we could only look at one another--nowadays I can hardly look at anyone without tears coming to my eyes. n59 In another letter he confides, "I am afraid of my voice

and--of my mirror. . . . This silence is my damnation." n60 The central figure in Danton's Death cannot believe in the existence of a God who would not stop the ceaseless pain and suffering man is heir to. Woyzeck's statement in the play bearing his name, "When God goes, everything goes," anticipates the prescient Nietzsche, whose madman officially announces the death of God and accuses us: "We have

killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers." n61 Unluckily, the French deconstructionist Jacques Derrida seized on the linguistic implications of that death to announce a radical crisis of the Word . Michel Foucault wrote the

epitaph: "The death of God profoundly influenced our language; the silence that replaced its source remains impenetrable." n62 Such untested pronouncements signaled a linguistic relativism as profligately spawned by scholars as by scoundrels . It has cast such a blight upon words like "love," "friendship," "truth," "goodness," and "responsibility" that we mumble in selfdepreciation when we use them, lest [*60] someone think we

honor still the values they once called to mind. Curiously, the values attached to their opposites, words like "hate," "enmity," "lies," "corruption," and "venality," remain credible in our moral vocabularies. We seem to have no trouble comprehending the evil that people do or tolerating excuses that confirm our misanthropy. We are embarrassed by virtue. Stalin and Hitler debased and manipulated language as a terroristic strategy to make citizens easier prey to a corruption of values that proved hospitable to catastrophe of monumental scale. So, too, in the killing fields of Yugoslavia, where we became so used to slaughter sanitized as "ethnic cleansing" that rescuing the helpless from carnage seemed outside our tidy moral categories , shielded by definition from the combined might and will of the United Nations. The world watched, dumbly passive, as before, in the Holocaust against Jews.

Perm – do both. Struggles against racism and speceism should not be viewed in oppositionTrumpeter ‘91“Non-Anthropocentrism in a Thoroughly Anthropocentrized World” Anthony Weston Trumpeter, ISSN: 0832-6193 http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/content/v8.3/weston.html

By taking the restructuring of human communities as an illustration I do not mean to exclude other obviously vital activities , such as preserving the wilderness. Certainly the wild places that remain to us should be protected. For some

places and some species even the near-total exclusion of humans may be necessary. Nonetheless, the project of developing a non-anthropocentric ethic , now conceived as making a space for the co- evolution of a less anthropocentric ethic within a less anthropocentrized world, does redirect our main focus toward the points of interaction , encounter, rather than separation . Certainly the aim is not to push humans out of the picture entirely, but rather to open up the possibility of relation between humans and the rest of Nature . We need to pay much more attention to places where humans and other creatures, honoured in their wildness and potential relatedness, can come together, perhaps warily but at least openly.

The perm solves your root cause args – there isn’t one and combining struggles solvesBrian Martin, Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Wollongong, 1990[Uprooting War, http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw13.html] Rein

In this chapter and in the six preceding chapters I have examined a number of structures and factors which have some connection with the war system. There is much more that could be said

about any one of these structures, and other factors which could be examined. Here I wish to note one important point: attention should not be focussed on one single factor to the exclusion of others . This is often done for example by some Marxists who look only at capitalism as a root of war and other social problems, and by some feminists who attribute most problems to patriarchy. The danger of monocausal explanations is that they may lead to an inadequate political practice . The 'rev olution' may be followed by the persistence or even expansion of many problems which were not addressed by the single-factor perspective. The one connecting feature which I perceive in the structures underlying war is an unequal distribution of power. This unequal distribution is socially organised in many different ways, such as in the large-scale structures for state administration, in

capitalist ownership, in male domination within families and elsewhere, in control over knowledge by experts, and in the use of force by the military. Furthermore, these different systems of power are interconnected. They often support each other , and sometimes conflict. This means that the struggle against war can and must be undertaken at many different levels . It ranges from struggles to undermine state power to struggles to undermine racism, sexism and other forms of domination at the level of the individual and the local community. Furthermore, the different struggles need to be linked together . That is the motivation for analysing the roots of war and developing strategies for grassroots movements to uproot them .

There is no alternative system of values divorced from anthropocentrism. We should develop an unselfish anthropocentric viewpoint instead of blindly rejecting human nature.Grey 93 [William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1993 (“Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71, Number 4, Available Online at http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html, Accessed 07-27-2011)]

The attempt to provide a genuinely non-anthropocentric set of values , or preferences seems to be a hopeless quest. Once we eschew all human values , interests and preferences we are confronted with just too many alternatives , as we can see when we consider biological history over a billion year time scale. The problem with the various non-anthropocentric bases for value which have been proposed is that they permit too many different possibilities, not all of which are at all congenial to us. And that matters. We should be concerned to promote a rich, diverse and vibrant biosphere. Human flourishing may certainly be included as a legitimate part of such a flourishing. The preoccupations of deep ecology arise as a result of human activities which impoverish and degrade the quality of the planet's living systems. But these judgements are possible only if we assume a set of values (that is, preference rankings), based on human preferences. We need to reject not anthropocentrism, but a particularly short term and narrow conception of human interests and concerns. What's wrong with shallow views is not their concern about the well-being of humans, but that they do not really consider enough in what that well-being consists. We need to develop an enriched , fortified anthropocentric notion of human interest to replace the dominant short-term , sectional and self-regarding conception . Our sort of world, with our sort of fellow occupants is an interesting and engaging place. There is every reason for us to try to keep it, and ourselves, going for a few more cosmic seconds [10].

A2 CapitalismPerm do both – if their claim is correct a complete, holistic struggle against capitalism is key then their approach must be intersectional – only combining struggles allows for effective movements and antiracist alternatives to capitalismWest 88WEST Honorary chair of the Democratic Socialist of America 1988Cornell-prof @Princeton University, DSA National Politicall Committee and a member of its African American Commission; “Toward a Socialist Theory of Racism”; RACE & ETHNICITY ESERV; http://race.eserver.org/toward-a-theory-of-racism.html (year of publication found on Dr. West’s website: http://www.pragmatism.org/library/west/) Socialism and Antiracism: Two Inseparable Yet Not Identical Goals

It should be apparent that racist practices directed against black, brown, yellow, and red people are an integral element of U. S. history, including present day American culture and society. This means not simply that Americans have inherited racist attitudes and prejudices, but, more importantly, that institutional forms of racism are embedded in American society in both visible and invisible ways . These institutional forms exist not only in remnants of de jure job, housing, and educational discrimination and political gerrymandering. They also manifest themselves in a de facto labor market segmentation, produced by the exclusion of large numbers of peoples of color from the socioeconomic mainstream. (This exclusion results from limited

educational opportunities, devastated families, a disproportionate presence in the prison population, and widespread police brutality. ) It also should be evident that past Marxist conceptions of racism have often prevented U. S. socialist movements from engaging in antiracist activity in a serious and consistent manner. In addition, black suspicion of white- dominated political movements ( no matter how progressive ) as well as the distance between these movements and the daily experiences of peoples of color have made it even more difficult to fight racism effectively. Furthermore, the disproportionate white middle-class composition of contemporary democratic socialist organizations creates cultural barriers to the participation by peoples of color . Yet this very participation is a vital precondition for greater white sensitivity to antiracist struggle and to white acknowledgment of just how crucial antiracist struggle is to the U. S. socialist movement. Progressive organizations often find themselves going around in a vicious circle. Even when they have a great interest in antiracist struggle, they are unable to attract a critical mass of people of color because of their current predominately white racial and cultural composition. These organizations are then stereotyped as lily white, and significant numbers of people of color refuse to join. The only effective way the contemporary democratic socialist movement can break out of this circle (and it is possible because the bulk of democratic socialists are among the least racist of Americans) is to be sensitized to the critical importance of antiracist struggles. This conscientization cannot take place either by reinforcing agonized white

consciences by means of guilt, nor by presenting another grand theoretical analysis with no practical implications.

The former breeds psychological paralysis among white progressives, which is unproductive for all of us; the latter yields important

discussions but often at the expense of concrete political engagement. Rather what is needed is more widespread participation by predominantly white democratic socialist organizations in antiracist struggles --whether those struggles be for the political, economic, and cultural empowerment of Latinos, blacks, Asians, and Native Americans or antiimperialist struggles against U.S. support for oppressive regimes in South Africa, Chile, the Philippines, and the occupied West Bank. A major focus on antiracist coalition work will not only lead democratic socialists to act upon their belief in genuine individuality and radical democracy for people around the world; it also will put socialists in daily contact with peoples of color in common struggle. Bonds of trust can be created only within concrete contexts of struggle. This interracial interaction guarantees neither love nor friendship. Yet it can yield more understanding and the realization of two overlapping goals-- democratic socialism and antiracism. While engaging in antiracist struggles, democratic socialists can also enter into a dialogue on the power relationships and misconceptions that often emerge in multiracial movements for social justice in a racist society. Honest and trusting coalition work can help socialists unlearn Eurocentrism

in a self-critical manner and can also demystify the motivations of white progressives in the movement for social justice . We must frankly acknowledge that a democratic socialist society will not necessarily eradicate racism. Yet a democratic socialist society is the best hope for alleviating and minimizing racism, particularly institutional forms of racism. This conclusion depends on a candid evaluation that guards against utopian self-deception. But it also acknowledges the deep moral commitment on the part of democratic socialists of all races to the dignity of all individuals and peoples--a commitment that impels us to fight for a more libertarian and

egalitarian society. Therefore concrete antiracist struggle is both an ethical imperative and political necessity for democratic socialists. It is even more urgent as once again racist policies and Third World intervention become more acceptable to many Americans. A more effective democratic socialist movement engaged in antiracist and antiimperialist struggle can help turn the tide. It depends on how well we understand the past and present, how courageously we act, and how true we remain to our democratic socialist ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy.

Rejecting the aff on the basis of difference means the alt movement will be militant and necessary violent – this is both self-limiting and creates the basis for discriminationJones 9Van, president of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, in Oakland, California (ellabakercenter.org) and a National Apollo Alliance steering committee member. interviewed by the Public Rhetorics and Permanent War research collective(Mirpuri, A., Feldman, K. P. and Roberts, G. M., Antiracism and Environmental Justice in an Age of Neoliberalism: An Interview with Van Jones. Antipode, 41: 401–415 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00680.x/asset/j.1467-8330.2009.00680.x.pdf?v=1&t=h9db4rfu&s=4eb93e106487916d817d5ed955a183bd99085437)

This is the way Progressives need to be thinking, not whether it’s neoliberal or not. Jeez, I had that conversation in 1997. I can guarantee you that every single action or proposal that comes across the transom , there will be some very clever Leftist who will be sitting there waving his hand in the back of the room saying, “I know how to critique this one. I know how to critique this one.” That’s become the slogan on the Left. “I know how to critique this one.” As if what this country’s missing, and the reason that we’re all miserable is because we haven’t figured out the best critique of our situation. It’s a highly idealistic mode of politics and I think that the outcome is very clear. The campuses actually used to produce usable activists and organizers who could come into an organization, run the photocopier, get a clipboard, walk out into the community, knock on the door, and within a few weeks be reasonably decent community change-agents. You now have to spend with these people coming off the campuses about two years just getting them to speak plain English and not attack everybody. There’s something happening on the campuses where deconstruction is everything and reconstruction is off the table, outside of some sort of socialism on the moon. That’s what the campuses are producing. I think that it’s extremely dangerous. You need those folks to be idealistic and militant, and a little bit unreasonable, but primarily aimed at changing the balance of forces in the country. What’s happening now is that you have people who are certainly militant in a kind of sardonic way, too-clever-by-half kind of militants, who are very good at explaining what’s wrong with everything and have a very hard time finding anything to be joyful about, or anything to be hopeful about. That kind of dressed-up cynicism , a cynicism adorned with polysyllables and a certain pose, will not move the country, will not move working-class people, will not actually change the course of history. And yet it’s a well-defended pose. There’s a lot of conversation that keeps it in place, but what’s happened is we’ve not produced a political movement. The Left is producing a political subculture , and a subculture is very different than a movement. A subculture vigorously polices its own ideas, identity, and boundaries. It’s very concerned with who’s in and who’s out, who’s cool and who’s not. It’s a self-limiting thing. Whereas a political movement is constantly trying to figure out how to get bigger and bigger sections of society on its side.

Anti-capitalist movements that were not racially conscious have historically been fractured and unable to form strong coalitions for resistance – proves our args about the perm Kelley 99Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA.[1][2] From 2006 to 2011, he was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California (USC),[3] and from 2003 to 2006 he was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical

Studies at Columbia University. From 1994 to 2003, he was a professor of history andAfricana Studies at New York University as well the chairman of NYU's history department(Robin, “BUILDING BRIDGES: THE CHALLENGE OF ORGANIZED LABOR IN COMMUNITIES OF COLOR”, New Labor Forum #5, Fall-Winter 1999. Pg 42-58)The failure to build a strong multiracial labor movement , in other words, had more to do with ¶ white racism than reluctance or distrust on the part of workers of color. Ironically, one could argue that the ¶ (white) labor movement in this period was partly forged because of racism, which in the long run ¶ substantially weakened the movement while providing a basis for solidarity. Throughout this period we ¶ witness tremendous nativism and anti-immigration sentiment rooted in white workers' fears of competition ¶ from Chinese immigrants for jobs. Labor organizations, including the American Federation of Labor under ¶ Samuel Gompers' leadership, actively lobbied for extending the Chinese Exclusion Act, originally passed in ¶ 1882, when it came up for congressional renewal in 1892.19 In general, however, sentiment for ¶ immigration restriction was at least as widespread among employers as in labor unions in these years. ¶ Though industrialists sought a cheap and steady labor supply, their desires were more than counterbalanced ¶ by their belief that immigrants were a source of labor strife, violence, and radicalism.¶ In the face of racism, nativism, and an increase in lynching and various terrorist activities directed ¶ at African Americans, Chinese, and Mexican workers in the Southwest, opportunities for interracial labor ¶ organizing were few and far between. Workers of color tended to participate in race and ethnic based ¶ institutions, often turning to self-help strategies to survive and build community. While most labor unions ¶ limited their membership to whites only, there were a few exceptions. The Knights of Labor, founded in ¶ 1869, vowed not to discriminate on the basis of race (though they did exclude Chinese workers). At its ¶ height in 1886, it claimed nearly one million members, of which 60,000 were black. Black members of the ¶ Knights, particularly in the South, focused more of their energies on community building and economic ¶ independence than on improving workplace conditions. For example, they took the lead in establishing ¶ cooperative stores and cooperative cotton gins, and some chapters of the Knights (particularly in ¶ Richmond) organized massive resistance to segregation and disfranchisement. 20¶ The American Federation of Labor, founded in 1881 under the leadership of Samuel Gompers, ¶ initially planned to organize industrial workers. Knowing that any serious effort to organize unskilled and semi-skilled labor depended on bringing in black and immigrant workers, the AFL initially refused to ¶ charter discriminatory locals. However, by 1893 the AFL backtracked on the "race" question, choosing to ¶ charter racist locals and focus its energies on skilled craft unions which tended to be primarily if not ¶ exclusively white. Indeed, the AFL’s brand of "bread and butter" unionism not only discriminated against ¶ black workers but narrowed its field of vision to workplace concerns to the detriment of community ¶ struggles . The AFL’s tolerance for whites-only locals and segregated unions further pushed black,

Latino, ¶ and Asian workers out of the house of labor and into the role as strike breakers and “scabs”.21 This ¶ position (one many workers of

color resisted) contributed to the increased scapegoating of black and brown ¶ laborers, who were often represented in the mainstream labor press as inherently anti-labor. Meanwhile, the ¶ Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), founded in 1905, was not buying the idea that unskilled, nonwhite workers were unorganizable. On the contrary, they emerged out of the radical Western Federation of ¶ Miners, whose members included Native American and Mexican mine workers, to challenge the ¶ increasingly conservative leadership of Samuel L. Gompers and the AFL. The "Wobblies," as they were ¶ called, sought to organize the lowly worker of every kind and location, into a movement which set out to ¶ build a new, egalitarian society within the shell of the old one. Despite the attraction the Wobblies held for ¶ African-Americans and immigrants, the IWW had little luck organizing African Americans, and when¶ they succeeded their efforts were concentrated in Southern agriculture, primarily the lumber and sugar cane ¶ industry, and along the docks of Philadelphia.22 The IWW affiliated Marine Transport Workers Union was ¶ a predominantly black union led by one of the most talented African-American labor leaders of the 20th ¶ century, Benjamin Fletcher. Although 5,000 members of the 8,700 member union were black, it is ¶ significant that the bulk of his white support came from Jewish and Polish workers. Nevertheless, by 1923 ¶ Fletcher's experience with racist white workers overwhelmed his enthusiasm for "One Big Union ." Even ¶ his own beloved Wobblies never paid special attention to the specific situation of African-Americans and ¶ they sought, too simply, to rise above the racism and ethnocentricity of the working class and its capitalist ¶ masters. To solve the class question, they argued, was to solve the race question. They also failed to ¶ recognize that the most downtrodden European immigrants had opportunities , over generations if not in ¶ their own lives, to become "white"- opportunities neither African-Americans, Asians, and in some

cases, ¶ Latinos did not enjoy. Anti-Semitism certainly didn't die, but assimilated Jews, Italians and Slavs had a much better chance than assimilated Negroes. Indeed, over a decade before DuBois published his magnum ¶ opus, Black Reconstruction Fletcher clearly understood the tragedy of white identity politics: “Organized ¶ labor, for the most part be it

radical or conservative, thinks and acts, in the terms of the White Race.”23¶ Black workers, then, were also compelled to think in terms of "the race," but that did not mean ¶ supporting the status quo. Nor did defending "the race" necessarily mean excluding others or organizing ¶ exclusively around black

causes , for as Benjamin Fletcher and many others like him demonstrated, building ¶ interracial movements to protect working-class interests is a way of defending black people from racism ¶ and class exploitation.

Moreover, the concern about protecting black interests reflected the dialectic of ¶ work and community. While scholars have established in no uncertain terms the degree to which ¶ occupations and, in some cases, work spaces were segregated by race,24 only recently has scholarship ¶ begun to move beyond staid discussions of labor market segmentation and racial (and more recently, ¶ gender) inequality to an analysis of what these distinctions at work and home mean for black

(not to ¶ mention, Latino, Asian-American, Native American) working-class politics and for collective action. 25¶ All-black trade unions, like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, constitute the most obvious ¶ examples of labor organizing in defense of "the race." The BSCP, under the leadership of A. Philip ¶ Randolph, had a presence on the railways as well as in black communities. BSCP organizers like Randolph, ¶ Milton P. Webster, E.D. Nixon, to name a few, emerged as black community leaders well beyond their ¶ union activities. Members of the union earned a level of respect within black communities that enabled ¶ them to claim middle class status and respectability. And the formation of a strong and active women's ¶ auxiliary meant that the political and social activities of the Brotherhood would extend far¶ beyond the workplace. Melinda Chatuvert's important new book, Marching Together: Women of the ¶ Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters portrays a community-oriented union that not only maintained a ¶ powerful political presence in the black world but served as a platform for African American women's ¶ struggles for equality and democracy for themselves and their communities. Moreover, she demonstrates ¶ that the success of the union depended on community support, and that was obtained primarily through the ¶ organizing work of women. On the other hand, the BSCP was never an exclusionary organization. They ¶ were formed as a result of the Jim Crow policies of both the employers (who only hired black workers as ¶ sleeping car porters) and the railway unions. In fact, Randolph, a leading Socialist and magazine editor when he took over as head of the BSCP, spent a good deal of his life lobbying the AFL to recognize the¶ union. 26¶ A lesser known and more local example of independent black trade unionism can be found in Earl ¶ Lewis's In Their Own Interests: Race, Class and Power in Twentieth Century Norfolk. During World War I, ¶ the all-black Transport Workers Association of Norfolk began organizing African-American waterfront ¶ workers irrespective of skill. Soon thereafter, its leaders turned their attention to the ambitious task of ¶ organizing all black workers, most notably cigar stemmers, oyster shuckers, and domestics. The TWA's ¶ Wobbly sensibility and racial politics combined to create One Big Negro Union. What is important about ¶ the Norfolk story is the startling success of the TWA's efforts, particularly among workers that had been ¶ dismissed as unorganizable. Lewis is not satisfied with simplistic explanations like the power of ¶ charismatic leadership or the primacy of race over class to account for the mass support for the TWA; ¶ rather, he makes it quite clear that the labor process, work spaces, intra-class power relations, communities ¶ and neighborhoods--indeed, class struggle itself--are all racialized. The result, therefore, is a "racialized" ¶ class consciousness shaped by the social locations of work and home . Lewis

writes, ¶ In the world in which these workers lived nearly everyone was black, except for a supervisor or ¶ employer. Even white workers who may have shared a similar class position enjoyed a superior ¶ social position because of their race. Thus, although it appears that some black workers manifested ¶ a semblance of worker consciousness , that consciousness was so imbedded in the perspective of ¶ race that neither blacks nor whites saw themselves as equal partners in the same labor movement.

A2 SFO/ChowThe 1AC is necessary to provide a counterhegemonic perspective on the tsunami – understanding the historical instance of social violence is necessary to confront distancing from communities “out there” as well as understand our own privileges in this space – we are a necessary starting point for resistance Clark in 7 <Clark N, 2007 “Living through the tsunami: vulnerability and generosity on a volatile earth”Geoforum 38 1127–1139>

In the process of excavating overlooked convergences of¶ physical and social forces, Davis (2001) also opens a window¶ on human suffering of almost unspeakable scales and¶ intensities. Suffering we might say, that can and should be ¶ made more visible , but which nonetheless defies comprehension.¶ And it is in this regard that, without necessarily ¶ returning to a deterministic or transparent model of the¶ social, we might revisit the notion of a generative but enigmatic¶ opening of selves : one that happens ‘upstream’ of the ¶ emergence of discernible socio- cultural identities and structures.¶ Levinas’s English translator, Alphonso Lingis, an¶ innovative theorist of corporeal existence in his own right,¶ has sought to merge the idea a constitutive vulnerability¶ and receptivity to other beings with an ontology of carnal¶ openness to an excessive materiality. In a fertile fusion of¶ ideas from Levinas and Bataille, Lingis has human beings¶ acquiring their sensibilities and dispositions not only from¶ other people and other life-forms but also from their ¶

encounters with a geophysical otherness . ‘Emotions’, he¶ muses (2000, p. 18): ‘get their force from the outside, from¶ the swirling winds over the rotating planet, the troubled¶ ocean currents, the clouds hovering over depths of empty¶ outer space, the continental plates shifting and creakingƒ’¶ EVectively, Lingis sheds the residual religious overtones¶ from Levinas’s epiphany of the ‘shimmer of infinity’¶ glimpsed in the face of the other, in favour of more earthy ¶ excesses. ‘We face each other ’, he announces, ‘ as condensations ¶ of earth, light, air, and warmth’ 1 (1994, p. 122). His is¶ a vision of

geomorphological processes, elemental reactions¶ and cosmic energies not as the arche or substrate of identity¶ but as active, ongoing forces of differentiation: a perspective¶ which appears to be less a smuggling back in of environmental¶ determinism than an abyssal opening of alterity ¶ into a groundless materiality (see Kearnes, 2003). Or what¶ we might see as Derrida’s (1981, pp. 333–334) sense of the:¶ ‘bottomless, endless connections andƒthe indeWnitely¶ articulated regress of the beginning’ pushed to its logical¶ outcome. And just as the generosities of intercorporeality¶ keep their secrets, their ‘incalculable remainder, so too¶ would it seem that the ‘gifts’ of materiality retain their¶ enigma, their ‘elemental obscurity’ (Diprose, 2002, p. 54;¶ Iyer, 2002, p. 10).¶ Taking our cues from Lingis, then, it might be said that¶ when a ‘you’ and an ‘I’ face each over the insuperable¶ divide of the tsunami – or any other disaster, large or small ¶ – we not only enact something entirely novel, we also each¶ bring with us the residue of our past calamities. We are the ¶

storms we have weathered, the quaking of the earth we¶ have ridden out, the infections we have stomached. We are¶ an immensity of small sedimentary changes, punctuated by¶ episodes of upheaval. And we are also the bodying forth of¶ all the guidance and help that has allowed us to live ¶ through the tsunami, droughts, fires and hurricanes of our¶ past, generosities that may have enabled some of us to live ¶ on at the

expense of others.¶ It is not simply that these traces may be too deeply buried¶ to unearth, too snarled to tease out and untangle. It

is¶ also that they are as much about what is not there, what¶ will never be, as they are about truths hidden within. Who ¶ we are, what we have become, the relations that have¶ shaped us, are haunted by absences, by the non-relation we¶ have with all those others who could not be-together with ¶ us: the ones who did not survive or never had a chance to¶ be born, the communities that were extinguished, the evolutionary¶ lineages that Xickered out. This is the past that was¶ never present: ‘the past (that) once was its future possibles,¶ not those that can be realized but those that could have¶ been realized’ (Wyschogrod, 1998, p. 173).

Our advocacy is one that questions not only the historical amnesia created to privilege certain bodies over others but also the way in which our daily acts constitutes moments of resistance and complacency in of themselves – voting affirmative rejects the notion of bodies and events “out there” as a form of violent disembodiment that create the conditions for a “natural disaster” to affect and disadvantage populations discriminatorily. The aff is not about “saving the poor helpless Sri Lankans overseas” but understanding how we had our own hand in the creation of the disaster in the first place. Nigel Clark explains in 2007,<Clark N, 2007 “Living through the tsunami: vulnerability and generosity on a volatile earth”Geoforum 38 1127–1139>

In an increasingly globalised world, this disposition¶ towards justice more often than not takes the form of¶ pointing to the connections through which some people, in¶ some places do things which impact on other people in¶ other places (Barnett and Land, 2007). In relation to the¶ tsunami and other disasters, as Philo observes: ‘ the vulnerabilities ¶ endured by certain peoples and places are almost¶ always caused in one way or another by the acts, malign or ¶ unthinking, of others in other

sites’ (author’s italics, 2005,¶ p. 450). And this indeed seems to be where critical geographers¶ are in basic agreement with the various left-

liberal¶ commentators I cited above – each of whom seems to be¶ suggesting that a great many of us are implicated in the¶ Indian Ocean tragedy, whether it is as tourists, as consumers¶ of shrimps or the products of the South Asian information¶ revolution, as stakeholders in the arms trade, or as the¶ beneficiaries of any other sector of the global neo-liberal¶ economy.¶ Neither intent nor any particular resourcefulness,

it¶ appears, is required to purvey harm. As Barnett (forthcoming)¶ observes, it is largely taken for granted amongst the¶

intellectual left that ‘ordinary people’ engaged in everyday¶ activities are complicit with major power

holders in the¶ propagation of inequity and injustice. This too might be¶ viewed as a ‘default assumption’, and it is one

for which¶ geographers tend to profess a special affinity, given their¶ disciplinary aptitude for tracing connection and causality¶ across distance (see Barnett, 2005; Barnett and Land, 2007).¶ In this regard the critical geographical narrating of the tsunami¶ tends to be one in which the event is an occasion for¶ unmasking and disclosing a pre-existing nexus of less-

than desirable¶ social and spatial interdependencies . A set of relationships , ¶ it is inferred , that can

and should be changed – so that geographies of neglect or ‘wounding’ give way to geographies ¶ of

solidarity and responsibility . The idea that the duty of critical intellectual activity is to ¶ reveal otherwise occluded chains of blame and complicity,¶ as Barnett and Land (2007) would have it, carries with it ¶ the implication that most people, most of the time, are ¶ inadequately informed of the broader repercussions of their daily deeds . Not aware enough, that is, to feel any obligation ¶ to take

appropriate remedial actions . Likewise, there is ¶ an insinuation that ‘we’ who are ‘here,’ habitually

disregard ¶ the wellbeing of ‘others’ who are ‘there’ ; an inference that ¶ commitment to caring drops

away precipitously as it moves ¶ offshore or away from home.

Reading and responding to particular stories to engender a sense of compassion avoiding paternalism and making long-term effective policies.Porter 2006(Elisabeth, head of the School of International Studies at the University of South Australia, “Can Politics Practice Compassion?” hypatia 21:4, project muse)

Second, to be attentive requires a careful, sensitive listening to sufferers' voices in order to discern their needs. Listening assumes a willingness to accept that others' stories affect one's life. In our rapid-paced world, the art of listening ,

hearing, and attending to each other has diminished; i t is an art that needs to be restored. We should never assume we know people's needs without listening to their stories . Arendt wrote strongly, "Compassion speaks only to the extent that it has to reply directly to the sheer expressionist sound and gestures through which suffering becomes audible and visible" (1973, 86). However, she suggested that the cry of suffering requires swift, direct action, so political processes of persuasion, negotiation, and compromises are inappropriate. I disagree with Arendt here. All those working in refugee rights, whether in advocacy

groups, political parties, law reform, NGOs, or the United Nations, adopt political processes of debate and persuasion in order to respond perceptively to peoples' stories about their needs. Listening involves a willingness to be attentive. It does not presuppose empathy, but it does require us to be open to "the possibility that what we hear will require change from us" (Bickford 1996, 149). Truth is often hard to digest. In conflict societies, "the importance of sharing stories about pain and fear is a crucial starting point to building trust between adversaries as 'both sides' come to realize that there is common ground in the shared nature of pain and suffering and the desire for reconciliation" (Porter 2003a, 262). Those who commit acts of terror, or, as asylum seekers, put themselves at the mercy of unseaworthy vessels, or self-harm as detainees, often despair deeply of being heard without resorting to desperate measures or horrific acts. Within multicultural democracies, there is a responsibility to listen and to respond. The duty to listen includes being exposed to "unsavoury views like religious beliefs we disagree with, cultural practices we do not understand, and stories of torture and suffering that are painful to absorb. The duty to respond includes replies to uncomfortable findings like the Amnesty International Human Rights' criticism of Australia's detention, particularly of children" (Porter 2003b, 14).28 Refugee advocacy groups have ongoing contact with asylum seekers and engage in regular dialogue with government departments. These groups demonstrate capacities for empathy, listening, and tolerance, which facilitate democratic persuasion.29 Without compassionate listening there can be little understanding of others' needs . I include here the indirect " listening" that o ccurs when we are trying to understand the plight of those with whom we do not have personal contact, but about whom we read books and articles, scour the internet for information, network in coalitions and at conferences, and exchange emails in order to hear different voices. Many women's coalitions and peace builders rely on this compassionate listening in order to build trust. Thinking concretely about peoples' differing needs and questioning how they may be met introduces questions of value into the broad international context. "Questioning who is and who is not cared for in the world will force us to explore the role of social relations and structural constraints in determining who can and cannot lead a dignified and fulfilled life" (Robinson 1999, 31). Thus dialogue with sufferers , or, where access is denied, their representatives or advocates, is crucial in order to decide , given our many differences, what a compassionate response might be, and, perhaps more important, how to procure the necessary resources to respond adequately. For example, a central issue in international ethics is humanitarian intervention and the question of when the UN Security Council should authorize overriding a state's sovereignty in order to assist the plight of people suffering from a dictatorship, political tyranny, genocide, or "ethnic cleansing." As Robinson (1999) also argues, to think compassionately, the international community should not wait until emergencies eventuate as with Rwanda in 1994, but listen to early warning cries . Being prepared to listen depends on the nature of relationships within the international community, as well as the background context and the reasons for contemplating intervention. The means of intervention has degrees of morality, where "clearly persuasion is preferable to coercion, positive sanctions to negative ones, diplomatic pressure to embargoes and blockades, economic sanctions to war, warning shots, or attacks on criminal leaders to indiscriminate bombing on their population" (Hassner 1998, 24). Attentive listening to discern what sufferers themselves believe they need affirms their agency and should lead to compassionate, wise responses. Compassionate, Wise Responses Third, in addition to attentiveness and listening,

compassionate responses should be part of political practices. While clearly there are limits on the extent to which we really can identify with others' suffering, the politically compassionate react with feelings whenever we hear of suffering and with practical responses whenever possible. Admittedly, we prioritize instances of those who are closest to us or instances that, for various reasons, move us emotionally. Political care is the hallmark of a decent society that accepts the moral responsibility to protect the dignity of all citizens and persons within its borders. Political care is the demonstration of compassionate decency by committed citizens, political representatives, and political leaders who collectively strive for an inclusive polity that is responsive to peoples' needs. While this perspective strives to improve the well-being of all people, not only women, it is distinctively feminist in stressing the relational aspects of politics and in building on women's traditional experience of compassionate care. For example, despite the awful situation in detention camps in Australia, the suggestion by men and women to accommodate people in community housing while their claims are processed is ignored, yet clearly is a viable compassionate alternative. Those with power to make decisions have a responsibility to examine how they contribute to political structures that exclude, marginalize, and cause suffering. The capacity for feeling pain at the distress of others and imaginatively

responding draws us together in communities. Yet we often avoid being emotionally outraged at injustice because if we are moved by compassion it compels us to act. We cannot always act; we all have limited

resources. However, as Naomi Klein argues, we should "refuse to engage in a calculus of suffering" (Klein 2002, 148). Klein is responding to claims from the Left that the post-9/11 outpouring of compassion was disproportionate and, given the atrocities happening elsewhere in the world, racist. Her response is valid. Anyone who claims to be compassionate and abhors injustice and suffering should not be miserly in their compassion. "Surely the challenge is to attempt to increase the global reserves of compassion rather than parsimoniously police them" (Klein 2002, 148). Kathleen Barry (2002) also

argues for the importance of "non-selective compassion." By this, she means that the lesson we should learn from 9/11 is attentiveness to the plight of all who are victims through no fault of their own. For people living in occupied territories, areas of armed conflict, or violently divided societies, everyday life is full of terror, fear, violence, shootings, and bombings. For asylum seekers living in detention camps, everyday life also is miserable. Whenever we feel some of their pain, we empathetically imagine a little of what it might be like to be a sufferer because of political harshness, and we have begun the process of compassion. Whenever governments, states, and international organizations resist revenge attacks, preemptive strikes, and state-sponsored terrorism, or refuse to sell arms, they move closer to some understanding of what minimizing suffering entails. A humane yet rigorous asylum policy can balance state security and the need to protect borders, with human security and the need to protect refugee conventions.

--Victimization NecessaryRecognizing individuals as both victims and more than victims can transcend the dilemma of victimhoodLevit 1996 (Nancy, Associate Professor at UMKC Law, April, 43 UCLA L. Rev. 1037, lexis)The purpose of examining the various ways in which legal doctrines and the legal system disadvantage men is not to thrust men into victimhood. n75 Professor Martha Minow has cautioned about the dilemma of victimhood: On the one hand , failure to acknowledge victimization "countenances oppression." On the other hand, speaking in terms of victimization may promote passivity, helplessness, and blaming behavior on the part of victims. n76 As a partial resolution of the dilemma, Minow suggests " treating all participants as more than mere victims and more than mere perpetrators, recognizing the capacity of the most victimized for choice, redressing the structures of constraint, and treating responsibility not as blame but as the ability to respond ...." n77

Our aff is key to invite moral responses to suffering while supporting a greater sense of solidarity who have suffered in similar waysMinow 1993 (Martha, Prof of Law @ Harvard, August, 40 UCLA L. Rev. 1411, lexis)It seems odd that anyone would emphasize their victimhood, yet there are many attractions to victim status. n5 Prime among them is sympathy. As one commentator put it: " There is an elemental moral requirement to respond to innocent suffering. If we were not to respond to it and its claim upon us, we would be without conscience, and in some basic sense, not completely human ." n6 Seeing oneself as a victim can also relieve a burdensome sense of responsi [*1414] bility or self-blame. n7 Victim status can support a sense of solidarity with others who have suffered in similar ways. n8 Victimhood mobilizes action through a sense of recognition and solidarity while also confirming the very humanity of persons involved Minow 93 (Martha, Prof of Law @ Harvard, August, 40 UCLA L. Rev. 1411, lexis) Telling personal stories of pain can be therapeutic; personal stories can also help mobilize people with similar experiences through a sense of recognition and solidarity. n107 Telling stories of victimhood can also be essential for confirming the very humanity of those involved, and for persuading perpetrators and bystanders to acknowledge harms and to act differently. Individualized stories are essential to avoid the dehumanizing abstractions that allow people to forget or trivialize the suffering of others . n108 Zora Neale Hurston wrote, "There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you." n109 Surely that agony is most intense when the story is about you and your own pain. Yet there is a risk that emphasizing individual stories and stressing feelings can undermine critical evaluation and analysis of contradictory claims. N110