Northwood Arnold Aff
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JanFeb PseudoProgress KTournament: Any | Round: Finals | Opponent: Any | Judge: Any Granted, social activists do "win" occasional “battles” in these adversarial arenas, but the root causes of their concerns largely remain unaddressed and the larger "wars" arguably are not going well. Consider the case of environmental activism. Countless environmental protests, lobbies, and lawsuits mounted in recent generations throughout the Western world. Many small victories have been won. Yet environmental degradation continues to accelerate at a rate that far outpaces the highly circumscribed advances made in these limited battles the most committed environmentalists acknowledge things are not going well. In addition, adversarial strategies of social change embody assumptions that have internal consequences for social movements, such as internal factionalization. For instance, virtually all of the social projects of the "left” throughout the 20th century have suffered from recurrent internal factionalization. The opening decades of the century were marked by political infighting among vanguard communist revolutionaries. The middle decades of the century were marked by theoretical disputes among leftist intellectuals. The century's closing decades have been marked by the fracturing of the a new left under the centrifugal pressures of identity politics. Underlying this pattern of infighting and factionalization is the tendency to interpret differences—of class, race, gender, perspective, or strategy—as sources of antagonism and conflict. In this regard, the political "left" and "right" both define themselves in terms at a common adversary—the "other"—defined by political differences. Not surprisingly, advocates of both the left and right frequently invoke the need for internal unity in order to prevail over their adversaries on the other side of the alleged political spectrum. However, because the terms left and right axe both artificial and reified categories that do not reflect the complexity of actual social relations, values, or beliefs, there is no way to achieve lasting unity within either camp because there are no actual boundaries between them. In reality, social relations, values, and beliefs are infinitely complex and variable. Yet once an adversarial posture is adopted by assuming that differences are sources at conflict, initial distinctions between the left and the right inevitably are followed by subsequent distinctions within the left and the right. Once this centrifugal process is set in motion, it is difficult, if not impossible, to restrain. For all of these reasons, adversarial strategies have reached a point of diminishing returns even if such strategies were necessary and viable in the past when human populations were less socially and ecologically interdependent those conditions no longer exist. Our reproductive and technological success as a species has led to conditions of unprecedented interdependence, and no group on the planet is isolated any longer. Under these new conditions, new strategies not only are possible but are essential. Humanity has become a single interdependent social body. In order to meet the complex social and environmental challenges now facing us, we must learn to coordinate our collective actions. Yet a body cannot coordinate its actions as long as its "left" and is "right," or its "north" and its "south," or its "east" and its "west" are locked in adversarial relationships. This proscription of power to the ballot; a tool of the oppressing majority, is a form of charity which forever indebts the affirmative team to the judge and only serves to reinforce the empowerment of the oppressor. Williams 2000 Reciprocation on your part is impossible. Even if one day you are able to return our monetary favor twofold, we will always know that it was us who first hosted you; extended to and entrusted in you an opportunity given your time of need. As the initiators of such a charity, we are always in a position of power, and you are always indebted to us. This is where the notion of egoism or conceit assumes a hegemonic role. By giving to you, a supposed act of generosity in the name of furthering your cause, we have not empowered you. Rather, we have empowered ourselves. We have less than subtlely let you know that we have more than you. We have so much more, in fact, that we can afford to give you some. Our giving becomes, not an act of beneficence, but a show of power, that is, narcissistic hegemony! Thus, we see that the majority gift is a ruse: a simulacrum of movement toward aporetic equality and a simulation of democratic justice. By relying on the legislature (representing the majority) when economic and social opportunities are availed to minority or underrepresented collectives, the process takes on exactly the form of Derrida’s gift. The majority controls the political, economic, legal, and social arenas; that is, it is (and always has been) in control of such communities as the employment sector and the educational system. The mandated opportunities that under- or nonrepresented citizens receive as a result of this falsely eudemonic endeavor are gifts and, thus, ultimately constitute an effort to make minority populations feel better. There is a sense of movement toward equality in the name of democratic justice, albeit falsely manufactured. 18 In return for this effort, the majority shows off its long-standing authority (this provides a stark realization to minority groups that power elites are the forces that critically form society as a community), forever indebts under- and nonrepresented classes to the generosity of the majority (after all, minorities groups now have, presumably, a real chance to attain happiness), and, in a more general sense, furthers the narcissism of the majority (its representatives have displayed power and have been generous). Thus, the ruse of the majority gift assumes the form and has the hegemonical effect of empowering the empowered, relegitimating the privileged, and fueling the voracious conceit of the advantaged. Voting aff is a simulation of real change- it produces change no more than liking a progressive post on Facebook. It created no tangible results when we walk out of the round and frames the ballot to be no more than pseudo-progress. Williams 2k The impediments to establishing democratic justice in contemporary American society have caused a national paralysis; one that has recklessly spawned an aporetic1 existence for minorities. The entrenched ideological complexities afflicting under- and nonrepresented groups (e.g., poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, crime) at the hands of political, legal, cultural, and economic power elites have produced counterfeit, perhaps even fraudulent, efforts at reform: Discrimination and inequality in opportunity prevail (e.g., Lynch and Patterson, 1996). The misguided and futile initiatives of the state, in pursuit of transcending this public affairs crisis, have fostered a reification, that is, a reinforcement of divisiveness. This time, however, minority groups compete with one another for recognition, affirmation, and identity in the national collective psyche (Rosenfeld, 1993). What ensues by way of state effort, though, is a contemporaneous sense of equality for all and a near imperceptible endorsement of inequality; a silent conviction that the majority still retains power. The “gift” of equality, procured through state legislative enactments as an emblem of democratic justice, embodies true (legitimated) power that remains nervously secure in the hands of the majority. The ostensible empowerment of minority groups is a facade; it is the ruse of the majority gift. What exists, in fact, is a simulacrum (Baudrillard, 1981, 1983) of equality (and by extension, democratic justice): a pseudo-sign image (a hypertext or simulation) of real sociopolitical progress. Thus the Alt is to vote neg as a way of not voting aff. Their plea for change through wining the ballot only serves to reproducing the very evil that they critique. Atchison and Panetta 09 The larger problem with locating the “debate as activism” perspective within the competitive framework is that it overlooks the communal nature of the community problem. If each individual debate is a decision about how the debate community should approach a problem, then the losing debaters become collateral damage in the activist strategy dedicated toward creating community change. One frustrating example of this type of argument might include a judge voting for an activist team in an effort to help them reach elimination rounds to generate a community discussion about the problem. Under this scenario, the losing team serves as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of community change. Downplaying the important role of competition and treating opponents as scapegoats for the failures of the community may increase the profile of the winning team and the community problem, but it does little to generate the critical coalitions necessary to address the community problem, because the competitive focus encourages teams to concentrate on how to beat the strategy with little regard for addressing the community problem. There is no role for competition when a judge decides that it is important to accentuate the publicity of a community problem. An extreme example might include a team arguing that their opponents’ academic institution had a legacy of civil rights abuses and that the judge should not vote for them because that would be a community endorsement of a problematic institution. This scenario is a bit more outlandish but not unreasonable if one assumes that each debate should be about what is best for promoting solutions to diversity problems in the debate community. If the debate community is serious about generating community change, then it is more likely to occur outside a traditional competitive debate. When a team loses a debate because the judge decides that it is better for the community for the other team to win, then they have sacrificed two potential advocates for change within the community. Creating change through wins generates backlash through losses. Some proponents are comfortable with generating backlash and argue that the reaction is evidence that the issue is being discussed. From our perspective, the discussion that results from these hostile situations is not a productive one where participants seek to work together for a common goal. Instead of giving up on hope for change and agitating for wins regardless of who is left behind, it seems more reasonable that the debate community should try the method of public argument that we teach in an effort to generate a discussion of necessary community changes. Simply put, debate competitions do not represent the best environment for community change because it is a competition for a win and only one team can win any given debate, whereas addressing systemic century-long community problems requires a tremendous effort by a great number of people. | 1/27/17 |
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