Tournament: berkeley | Round: 6 | Opponent: canyon crest RP | Judge: olivia panchal
survivors of sexual assault seek protection from colleges- yet they are left with gag orders- issues of silence that will result in punishment if broken.
Kingkade ‘15, Tyler, 7/22/15, Huffington Post Breaking the Silence, http:www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sexual-assault-victims-punishment_us_55ada33de4b0caf721b3b61c/
A neighbor overheard Vanessa and her boyfriend shouting and the sound of something — her body, it turns out — hitting the dorm room wall one night in May 2014. The neighbor reported the fight to a residential assistant, who then reported it to Columbia University officials. ¶ As a result, Vanessa, who asked to use a pseudonym for privacy reasons, was called into a meeting the following week with a university official overseeing sexual violence cases at Columbia.¶ The university wanted to investigate the incident, but Vanessa did not want to make a report. She was not ready to admit that she was in a violent relationship. “I kept holding off on the investigation, waiting for him to get his shit together, and that never happened,” Vanessa said.¶ Despite Vanessa’s unwillingness to participate in an investigation, the university imposed a no-contact order between Vanessa her and her boyfriend. Columbia officials told her that the university would consider punishing her if she broke the no-contact order, according to emails obtained by The Huffington Post — even though she was the one suspected to be in an abusive relationship. The punishment, officials said, could be as severe as suspension.¶ Vanessa and her boyfriend were still dating, so neither abided by the directive. But that meant that when Vanessa finally was ready to have her boyfriend’s behavior investigated, she couldn’t bring her case to the university, because that would have meant admitting that she had violated the order. ¶ Colleges issue no-contact orders as a tool to protect victims from their alleged assailants, and apply confidentiality rules to prevent students from airing the school’s dirty laundry. Several students told HuffPost they were threatened with possible suspension if they violated what they consider to be gag orders.¶ Indeed, in a number of cases, colleges issued veiled threats of punishment to survivors of reported sexual assaults, often telling them to keep their cases hush-hush in phrasing that some experts believe may violate federal law. ¶ “Even if they never carry out the threat, the fact is that it’s chilling the speech of a lot of victims,” said Adam Goldstein, an attorney at the Student Press Law Center, an independent watchdog group that has long been concerned with college-imposed gag orders.¶ These threats have prevented sexual violence victims from getting protection from their universities or from police, made it difficult to get emotional support from friends and to discuss their experiences in public, shielded the colleges from outside scrutiny and, in some cases, simply made victims feel like they were the ones on trial. In Vanessa’s case, she says the threat of punishment for breaking the no-contact order pushed her even further into her boyfriend’s arms, since the rule prevented him from getting checked in to visit her at her dorm. Instead, Vanessa spent more time off-campus with him, which she now admits was “dangerous” because the university couldn’t protect her there. ¶ One student at Pace University complained last year that the no-contact order she and her alleged assailant were issued made her feel even more victimized. The directives stipulated that they could not talk about the case to friends on campus, which she felt was effectively a gag order.¶ “In a sense, it was blackmailing me to keep quiet,” the Pace student said.¶ Colby Bruno, senior legal counsel at the Victim Rights Law Center in Boston, says the way colleges are applying no-contact orders, placing an equal onus on both students, is misguided.¶ “They think if we don’t do this to both people, then we are in violation of our obligations under Title IX to be equitable,” he said. “That’s not the case.”¶ At Pomona College in California, alleged victims are told they cannot share the name of the accused person, what their sanctions are or what came up in the investigation.¶ Yenli Wong, a recent Pomona graduate, said that during her senior year she had wanted to write a blog piece for HuffPost about being sexually assaulted, but didn’t want to get in trouble for breaking the school’s confidentiality rules about the investigation that had taken place. Wong had no intention of revealing her assailant’s name — she just wanted to tell her story. But the school had previously told her that breaking the gag order would open her up to disciplinary charges.¶ In an email, Pomona Dean Miriam Feldblum told Wong that her blog post could “refer to specific relevant policy sections in the Handbook, such as ‘non-consensual sexual contact,’” but could not disclose details from the “alleged policy violation statement.”¶ Wong says Feldblum’s response was nonsensical to her, because it didn’t explain whether the blog post would be considered a violation of the gag order.¶ “I felt very trapped and was extremely worried that the college might punish me if I spoke out about what happened to me,” Wong said.
Gag orders exist out of misapplication of ferpa. They create a culture of silence on college campuses and hide sexual assault under the rug.
Kristen Lombardi, 12-1-2009, "Russell Case Russell," Center for Public Integrity, https://www.publicintegrity.org/news/Russell-Case250ARussell
The school later defended its mandatory confidentiality policy before the U.S. Department of Education even while softening the language. Relating the gag order back in the room, Sisson, Russell says, provided a strong incentive to keep quiet: If you talk of the verdict, you’ll face disciplinary charges. At the time, the exchange didn’t faze Russell, who says she did as told in an effort to get justice. But five years later, she’s come to see the school’s old confidentiality policy as emblematic of just how far colleges and universities will go to keep secret cases of alleged sexual assault. And a recent ruling by the Education Department against UVA for a policy “inconsistent with the letter and spirit” of the law has resulted in significant changes there. But an array of practices at UVA and college campuses elsewhere continues to shroud the college judicial system in controversy. Indeed, a nine-month investigation by the Center for Public Integrity has found that a thick blanket of secrecy still envelops cases involving allegations of sexual assault on campus. One national study reports that roughly one in five women who attend college will become the victim of a rape or an attempted rape by the time she graduates. But while the vast majority of students who are sexually assaulted remain silent — just over 95 percent, according to a study funded by the research arm of the U.S. Justice Department — those who come forward can encounter mystifying disciplinary proceedings, secretive school administrations, and off-the-record negotiations. At times, policies lead to dropped complaints and, in cases like Russell’s, gag orders later found to be illegal. Many college administrators believe the existing processes provide a fair and effective way to deal with ultra-sensitive allegations, but alleged victims say these processes leave them feeling like victims a second time. The Center has interviewed 48 experts familiar with the disciplinary process — student affairs administrators, conduct hearing officers, assault services directors, victim advocates — as well as 33 female students who have reported being raped by other students. The inquiry has included a review of records in select cases, and examinations of 10 years worth of complaints filed against institutions with the U.S. Education Department under Title IX and the Clery Act — two laws requiring schools to respond to assault claims and to offer key rights to alleged victims. The Center has also surveyed 152 crisis-services programs and clinics on or near college campuses nationwide over the past year. Just over half the students interviewed by the Center have reported they unsuccessfully sought criminal charges and instead had to seek justice in closed, school-run administrative proceedings that led either to academic penalties or no punishment at all for their alleged assailants, leaving them feeling betrayed by a process they say has little transparency or accountability. Some of those students, including Russell, said they were ordered to keep quiet about the proceedings and threatened with punishment if they did not. Still other students said administrators discouraged them from pursuing rape complaints. Survey respondents indicated similar problems with the closed procedures on campuses. Undoubtedly, another law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, complicates the issue. FERPA forbids schools from divulging students’ educational records, including disciplinary records. Administrators believe it binds them to silence on case details, but others aren’t so sure. Under FERPA, colleges can release names of students found “responsible” for committing violent acts. But “we don’t,” concedes Rick Olshak, associate dean of students at Illinois State University, “and I don’t know anyone who does, frankly.” Victim advocates contend that colleges use the law as a smokescreen to cover up campus crimes. “Most institutions have a strong interest in keeping sexual assaults as quiet as possible,” says David Lisak, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts- Boston, who has trained college administrators on combating sexual violence. Typically, Lisak notes, administrators view campus sexual assault as “a very negative piece of publicity,” tarnishing institutional reputations, and heightening fears among tuition-paying parents and students for whom colleges are aggressively competing. College administrators bristle at the idea they’re shielding rapes. But they admit they’ve wrestled with confidentiality in campus assault proceedings because of FERPA and the Clery Act. Confusion over the laws has reinforced what critics see as a culture of silence that casts doubt on the credibility of the process. “People will think we’re running star chambers,” says Don Gehring, founder of the Association for Student Conduct Administration, referring to secret, arbitrary courts in old England. “And that’s what’s happening now.” Kathryn Russell’s Allegations Russell first approached the UVA administration in February 2004. UVA is required by Title IX regulations to respond “promptly and equitably” when a student alleges sexual assault — investigating the claim and taking action to eliminate harm. Most institutions, including UVA, list “sexual assault” or “sexual misconduct” as prohibited acts in their official standards of conduct — allegations of which automatically trigger internal disciplinary processes. A petite, perky student who counted herself “a nerd,” Russell reported that she had been raped on February 13 by a fellow junior whom she’d gotten to know through a class and a club the year before. On a campus prone to what UVA assault-services director Claire Kaplan calls “a culture of silence around sexual assault,” administrators say they have strived to encourage reporting. “We try to make it clear that UVA … has zero tolerance for sexual offenders,” says Patricia Lampkin, vice president for student affairs, “and that students need to report all assaults.” In 2004, Russell became one of eight to recount an alleged rape in a UVA dorm. Eight days after filing an incident report; after telling UVA police she had “unwanted sexual contact”; after informing UVA doctors of “worsening pain” from allegedly forced sex , Russell found herself repeating the story to Penny Rue, then dean of students. The dean gave Russell a 12-page document, entitled “UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PROCEDURES FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT CASES,” which outlined options for adjudicating complaints. It included this language: Confidentiality of the hearings process is of great importance to all involved. Identity of the reporting or accused student and any formal discipline resulting from the hearing may not be publicly disclosed…. Rue didn’t dwell on the policy at first. Instead, Russell remembers the dean doing what many victim advocates say is common: discouraging her from pursuing a hearing. Rue, Russell charges, recommended mediation — an equally shrouded process in which, according to the UVA procedures, “all verbal statements … must remain confidential,” including “offers of apologies and concessions.” “I didn’t want to talk to him,” recalls Russell, of her alleged assailant, so mediation seemed out of the question. She would later initiate her complaint in a March 19 e-mail to Rue. In ensuing days, the dean would informally “confront” Russell’s alleged assailant, who claimed he’d had consensual sex with Russell. In his March 30, 2004, statement to UVA administrators, the accused student portrayed Russell as a willing flirt at a bar who turned sexual aggressor in her dorm, and who repeatedly “grabbed my genitals and wanted me not to leave.” The individual in question did not respond to multiple calls, e-mails, and letters from the Center seeking comment. Rue now works as vice chancellor of student affairs at the University of California, San Diego. In an August 2005 letter addressed to UVA’s associate general counsel, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, Rue confirmed meeting Russell and handing her the school’s written procedures. The dean said she’d been careful to lay out all the options. “I let her know that it was her decision whether to pursue charges,” Rue wrote in the letter, “and that the University would support her either way.” Rue declined to discuss Russell’s case with the Center, as did other former and current UVA officials familiar with it, despite a waiver from Russell granting permission for them to do so. Informal Proceedings Common Days before filing her complaint, Russell learned that the local district attorney wouldn’t press criminal charges — a typical outcome. Experts say the reasons are simple: Most cases involving campus rape allegations come down to he-said-she-said accounts of sexual acts that clearly occurred; they lack independent corroboration like physical evidence or eyewitness testimony. At times, alcohol and drugs play such a central role, students can’t remember details. Given all this, says Gary Pavela, who ran judicial programs at the University of Maryland, College Park, “A prosecutor says, ‘I’m not going to take this to a jury.’” Often, the only venues in which to resolve these cases are on campus. Internal disciplinary panels, like the UVA Sexual Assault Board, exist in various forms on most campuses. But they’re not the only way schools handle rape allegations. For decades, informal proceedings run by an administrator have represented the most common method to adjudicate disciplinary matters. Typically, an administrator meets with both students, separately, in an attempt to resolve a complaint. Occasionally, they “mediate” the incident. Officials find such adjudication appealing in uncontested situations. If a dean elicits a confession, says Olshak, of Illinois State, who headed the student conduct association in 2001, “We’ll be able to resolve the complaint quickly, easily, and without the confrontation of a judicial hearing.” Resolution, as in formal hearings, can mean expulsion, suspension, probation, or another academic penalty, like an assigned research paper. By all accounts, informal processes take place almost as frequently as formal ones ; at UVA, for example, the administration has held 16 hearings since 1998, as compared to 10 informal meetings. And these proceedings can turn out positively for student victims. In January 2005, Carrie Ressler, then a junior at Concordia University, near Chicago, reported being raped by a football player after attending a party in his dorm. On January 19, within hours of the alleged assault, the police arrested the student athlete; by October, he’d pled guilty to battery for “knowingly making physical contact of an insulting nature,” court records show. At Concordia, Ressler’s report landed on the desk of Dean of Students Jeffrey Hynes. The morning of the arrest, the dean summoned her to his office. “He told me he’d be telling the perpetrator he needed to leave by choice,” she remembers Hynes saying. “If not, he’d be expelled.” Within days, the athlete had left Concordia. Hynes declined to comment on Ressler’s case. “The dean acted in my interests,” Ressler says. She recognizes, though, that the informal adjudication served the university’s interests, too. “I got the sense from the dean that the school wanted to keep this case hush-hush.” Many victim advocates share Ressler’s opinion on this. Often, these victim advocates charge, informal proceedings serve to sweep campus assaults under the rug. Both the Justice Department and the Education Department explicitly say in guidance documents that schools should not encourage mediation in sexual assault cases. Yet Katherine Lawson, an attorney at the Victim Rights Law Center, in Boston, says she’s heard one local administrator boast they haven’t held a full sexual assault hearing in years. “This meant to us that they had managed to pressure students to drop a complaint, mediate, or take some lesser administrative route,” she explains, which kept cases quiet. At times, these proceedings even leave the victim advocates in the dark. Says one crisis-services coordinator at a Massachusetts university, “I don’t have any idea what goes on in those little deans’ meetings.” College Hearings: Little Transparency More formal proceedings are sometimes no less shrouded. College disciplinary hearings, unlike courts, lack the trappings of transparency — campus spectators. Advocates can’t attend unless serving as “advisers” to students. Only integral participants like board members or administrators have any clue when a hearing occurs. “They’re secret because they’re closed,” says S. Daniel Carter, of Security on Campus Inc., a watchdog group. Administrators see it differently, arguing that there are important distinctions between “secrecy” and “privacy.” They can’t open up internal proceedings — formal or informal — because that would amount to granting access to private educational records, which FERPA prohibits, they say. But that doesn’t mean they’re operating in secret. “Not providing private information to the rest of the world is respecting confidentiality and respecting FERPA as a law,” says Mary Beth Mackin, assistant dean of student life at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. And while proceedings remain hidden to outsiders, administrators maintain they’re conducted so students feel they’re as open as possible.
Thus the plan: Public colleges and universities in the United States ought not issue gag orders
Gag orders aren’t constitutional restrictions on speech.
LeBouef 15, Trisha LeBouef, 6/16/15http:www.splc.org/blog/splc/2015/06/colleges-cannot-enforce-gag-orders-on-sexual-assault-victims
The U.S. Department of Education, the agency charged with enforcing FERPA, has ruled multiple times that sexual assault victims who speak about their cases do not violate FERPA, and that colleges cannot enforce gag orders on victims.¶ Congress amended FERPA in the 1990 Student Right-to-Know Act specifically to provides that the outcomes of sexual assault cases are not protected by FERPA when shared with the victim. And federal Clery Act regulations -- regulations that implement the federal campus crime awareness statute -- require that the outcome of a disciplinary case involving a sex offense be disclosed to both accuser and accused.¶ In a 2008 ruling involving the University of Virginia, the Department of Education stated that a university “cannot require an accuser to agree to abide by its non-disclosure policy, in writing or otherwise, as a precondition to accessing judicial proceeding outcomes and sanction information under the Clery Act.” That means colleges that threaten students with discipline for talking about their own sexual assault cases are in violation of federal law.¶ FERPA applies to education records that are maintained by an agency or institution. Student speech, however, is not an education record, so speech between student journalists and sexual assault victims by definition cannot violate FERPA. In the same way, any student newspaper that quotes sexual assault victims as part of its reporting does not violate FERPA.
Standard is resolving structural violence, Being able to share one’s story and having support groups is to recuperate from trauma that survivors go through
Birdsell 14, Bonnie (2014) "Reevaluating Gag Orders and Rape Shield Laws in the Internet Age: How Can We Better Protect Victims?," Seton Hall Legislative Journal: Vol. 38: Iss. 1, Article 4. Available at: http:scholarship.shu.edu/shlj/vol38/iss1/4
Prohibiting a victim from telling his or her story, or even from discussing the details of a court case, is detrimental not only from a constitutional perspective but from a psychological one.122 The process of sharing the details of such a traumatic event and the legal proceedings surrounding it often helps victims to address the violence they have suffered and thus, help them to heal.123 The mental and physical effects of rape, and the lingering after-effects of rape, often go much deeper than the act itself.124 Rape, and the apprehension and memory thereof, manifests in the mind as frequent sense of dread, nagging, and anxiety, which instills in many women a necessary mindset of constant vigilance.125 The stories that victims share with their loved ones, the media, or other victims can give these individuals the chance to define the event for themselves.126 In a sense, it is a method of taking control over an event the victim actually had no control over.127 This kind of self-definition is important for victims in general, but it is especially important for victims of rape and sexual assault, who have historically been shamed and silenced by the rest of society. Allowing victims to have a voice and to use that voice is crucial to the positive progression of society.129 It is essential to make legislators aware of victims’ discontent with the laws governing this area so that they in their capacity as lawmakers may fully understand the suitability or unsuitability of their laws in a real-world context.130 In fact, it is absolutely central to the legal system to recognize its shortcomings in order for there to be a possibility of propelling it forward.131 It is critical for both victims and legislators that victims tell their stories, and that their stories are heard by people in a position to provide assistance.1
External impact is that Discussion stymies rape culture and exposes prevalent sexual assault on campuses.
Dockterman 14, Eliana, 3/14/14, Rape Victims Talk About Why They Tweeted Their Stories, TIME,
http://time.com/25150/rape-victims-talk-about-tweeting-their-experiences-publicly/
A spontaneous conversation about sexual assault on social media sparks a debate over whether public sharing helps victims heal or hurts them.¶ JoAnne Cusick was wearing a pink floral sundress and jelly sandals when she was sexually assaulted at the age of eight by a group of neighborhood boys. Believing that she was to blame, she kept the secret for nine years until she told a priest about the attack during confession. He assured her that she was innocent in the eyes of God, and the eyes of the world.¶ Twenty-eight years later, Cusick, now a 37-year-old nurse living in Colorado, shared that secret on social media joining hundreds of other victims who tweeted their stories of assault. These women (and a number of men) were responding to a simple question that went viral on Twitter Wednesday night asking victims what they were wearing when they were assaulted. Within hours, a long list of outfits—ranging from sweatshirts to pajamas to bathing suits—accompanied by stories of rape and assault filled Twitter feeds, replacing the normal news items and GIFs.¶ The huge response ignited a conversation on social media and blogs among victims and health professionals as to whether sharing stories on highly public, semi-anonymous social media forums could be a healthy step in the recovery process—a way to make those who’ve been assaulted feel less alone, less stigmatized and shamed. Or does sharing leave survivors open to online shaming and undermine a more traditional route of coping, like therapy?¶ The debate started when Christine Fox, a young woman who tweets under the handle @steenfox, got into an argument on Twitter with someone a follower who insisted that women who wear revealing outfits are at fault if they are sexually assaulted. Fox invited those on the social media network who had been victims of rape or sexual assault to tweet the outfits they wore at the time of the attack in hopes of convincing this man not to victim blame.¶ “I was trying to make him understand that it absolutely does not make a difference, and that the responsibility does not lie on women,” she told The Root. Over the next several hours, Fox received hundreds of replies. With the users’ permission, she retweeted stories as she received them.¶ The campaign of sorts took on another life when Adrienne Simpson from Philadelphia, who has never been a victim of sexual assault, saw the conversation on Twitter and thought that it could take on a new visual format. “I am a marketer, so I think in campaigns and imagery,” she tells TIME. “I was thinking they need pictures with this because that’s what’s going to drive home the idea that you can have on corduroy pants and a camouflage shirt—there’s nothing remotely sexual about that—and this can still happen to you.”¶ She created five images from the texts of five tweets that caught her attention: the camouflage shirt and cords a 15-year-old had been wearing; a school uniform (buttoned-up polo, knee-length khaki shorts) worn by a 13-year-old; a sundress a 19-year-old was wearing to Church on Sunday when she was raped by her 50-year-old minister; jeans and a hoodie for a 22-year-old girl who was acting as a designated driver at a party and whose soda was roofied; and—the one that got the most retweets all night—the Barney pajamas worn by a seven-year-old when she was raped.¶ She added a hashtag: #RapeHasNoUniform. “I think as a victim, when you speak out, you want it to matter. The bigger this gets, the more it matters. I think it should be an organized, public campaign.”¶ But without expecting attention or publicity, many just tweeted in the hopes of helping others. “The assault had nothing to do with anything I did. And I think hearing one survivor being able to say that is a good for people who may still be blaming themselves,” Cusick tells TIME. She has shared her story with friends before, and says she felt comfortable opening up on Twitter.¶ Sarah Webster said she tweeted with a similar motive. Webster has tweeted about her assault in the past and says that nothing is too private for her to share on her account, which is focused on sex and body image. During the course of the Twitter conversation, the question of whether most assailants are strangers or not arose, and Webster decided it was important to share her story. Webster says she was raped by someone she was very close to and hoped her experience would show others that even those you trust can be perpetrators. “I was sexually assaulted by someone I knew, and at the time I wasn’t wearing anything at all. It was in my home by someone who was never supposed to do that to me,” she says. “I wanted to contribute another side of the story.”¶ Scott Berkowitz, the President and Founder of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) was not surprised that seeing so many people share the same experience on Twitter motivated people to share their stories for the first time. “Having this whole community of other people who have been through something similar can be really empowering for people,” he says. “I think there’s safety in numbers. We see that in a lot of scenarios with sexual assault survivors. When there’s allegations, say, against a particular priest that becomes public, suddenly many other people who were abused by that person are okay with coming forward.”¶ Those who posted compared the spontaneous movements to Take Back the Night and Slut Walk—two organized campaigns that have aimed to create safe environments for rape victims to share their stories, debunk the notion of victim blaming and restore safety to campuses and neighborhoods. The popularity of such projects proves that large groups of victims speaking out can bolster other survivors’ confidence. But unlike past movements, this one took place on social media, which can be simultaneously both anonymous and extremely public.¶
Contention 2 is framework
Omission isn’t exclusion
Rorty ‘2 Richard, Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford; “Hope and the Future”; Peace Review; V. 14; N. 2; p. 152-3 shree
I have no quarrel with Cornell’s and Spivak’s claim that “what is missing in a literary text or historical narrative leaves its mark through the traces of its expulsion.” For that seems simply to say that any text will presuppose the existence of people, things, and institutions that it hardly mentions. So the readers of a literary text will always be able to ask themselves questions such as: “Who prepared the sumptuous dinner the lovers enjoyed?” “How did they get the money to afford that meal?” The reader of a historical narrative will always be able to wonder about where the money to . nance the war came from and about who got to decide whether the war would take place.
“Expulsion,” however, seems too pejorative a term for the fact that no text can answer all possible questions about its own background and its own presuppositions. Consider Captain Birch, the agent of the East Indian Company charged with persuading the Rani of Sirmur not to commit suicide. Spivak is not exactly “expelling” Captain Birch from her narrative by zeroing in on the Rani, even though she does not try to . nd out much about Birch’s early days as a subaltern, nor about the feelings of pride or shame or exasperation he may have experienced in the course of his conversations with the Rani. In the case of Birch, Spivak does not try to “gently blow precarious ashes into their ghostly shape,” nor does she speculate about the possible sublimity of his career.
Nor should she. Spivak has her own . sh to fry and her own witness to bear, just as Kipling had his when he spun tales of the humiliations to which newly arrived subalterns were subjected in the regimental messes of the Raj. So do all authors of literary texts and historical narratives, and such texts and narratives should not always be read as disingenuous exercises in repression. They should be read as one version of a story that could have been told, and should be told, in many other ways.
Representations of suffering are good, silence is comparatively worse
Kleinman and Kleinman 96
(Arthur and Joan. “The appeal of experience; the dismay of images: Cultural appropriations of suffering in our times,” Daedalus. Winter 1996. Vol.125, Iss. 1; pg. 1-24 pgs)
It is necessary to balance the account of the globalization of commercial and professional images with a vastly different and even more dangerous cultural process of appropriation: the totalitarian state's erasure of social experiences of suffering through the suppression of images. Here the possibility of moral appeal through images of human misery is prevented, and it is their absence that is the source of existential dismay. Such is the case with the massive starvation in China from 1959 to 1961. This story was not reported at the time even though more than thirty million Chinese died in the aftermath of the ruinous policies of the Great Leap Forward, the perverse effect of Mao's impossible dream of forcing immediate industrialization on peasants. Accounts of this, the world's most devastating famine, were totally suppressed; no stories or pictures of the starving or the dead were published. An internal report on the famine was made by an investigating team for the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It was based on a detailed survey of an extremely poor region of Anwei Province that was particularly brutally affected. The report includes this numbing statement by Wei Wu-ji, a local peasant leader from Anwei: Originally there were 5,000 people in our commune, now only 3,200 remain. When the Japanese invaded we did not lose this many: we at least could save ourselves by running away! This year there's no escape. We die shut up in our own houses. Of my 6 family members, 5 are already dead, and I am left to starve, and I'll not be able to stave off death for long.(30) Wei Wu-ji continued: Wang Jia-feng from West Springs County reported that cases of eating human meat were discovered. Zhang Sheng-jiu said, "Only an evil man could do such a thing!" Wang Jia-feng said, "In 1960, there were 20 in our household, ten of them died last year. My son told his mother 'I'll die of hunger in a few days.'" And indeed he did.(31) The report also includes a graphic image by Li Qin-ming, from Wudian County, Shanwang Brigade: In 1959, we were prescheduled to deliver 58,000 jin of grain to the State, but only 35,000 jin were harvested, hence we only turned over 33,000 jin, which left 2,000 jin for the commune. We really have nothing to eat. The peasants eat hemp leaves, anything they can possibly eat. In my last report after I wrote, "We have nothing to eat," the Party told me they wanted to remove my name from the Party Roster. Out of a population of 280, 170 died. In our family of five, four of us have died leaving only myself. Should I say that I'm not broken hearted?(32) Chen Zhang-yu, from Guanyu County, offered the investigators this terrible 
Last spring the phenomenon of cannibalism appeared. Since Comrade Chao Wu-chu could not come up with any good ways of prohibiting it, he put out the order to secretly imprison those who seemed to be at death's door to combat the rumors. He secretly imprisoned 63 people from the entire country. Thirty-three died in prison.(33) The official report is thorough and detailed. It is classified neibu, restricted use only. To distribute it is to reveal state secrets. Presented publicly it would have been, especially if it had been published in the 1960s, a fundamental critique of the Great Leap, and a moral and political delegitimation of the Chinese Communist Party's claim to have improved the life of poor peasants. Even today the authorities regard it as dangerous. The official silence is another form of appropriation. It prevents public witnessing. It forges a secret history, an act of political resistance through keeping alive the memory of things denied.34 The totalitarian state rules by collective forgetting, by denying the collective experience of suffering, and thus creates a culture of terror. The absent image is also a form of political appropriation; public silence is perhaps more terrifying than being overwhelmed by public images of atrocity. Taken together the two modes of appropriation delimit the extremes in this cultural process.(35) Our critique of appropriations of suffering that do harm does not mean that no appropriations are valid. To conclude that would be to undermine any attempt to respond to human misery. It would be much more destructive than the problem we have identified; it would paralyze social action. We must draw upon the images of human suffering in order to identify human needs and to craft humane responses.
Treating contigent grounds as transcendental or arbituary leads to eruptions of violence- oppression isn’t natural or inevitable, it is the result of specific policy decisions that can be reversed given institutional analysis
Wingenbach, Notre Dame Government and international studies PhD, 2011
(Ed, Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy, pg 4-12)
This contingency does not render the standard capricious: a kilogram is a kilogram everywhere, even given the minor indeterminacy of the current standard, and one cannot simply assert one's own definition and expect to be understood. Recognition of the historically conditioned emergence of the particular definition of the mass of the kilogram removes none of its power, importance, or centrality to the way contemporary humans make sense of reality. The kilogram is necessary, whether in its current form as a human artifact or a future form as a numeric standard anchored in natural constants. It is, to use Butler's (1992) term, a "contingent foundation." That the kilogram is arbitrary does not make it false. Without the kilogram the metric system would be inexplicable. A standardized kilogram permits us to understand the natural world and communicate that understanding to one another. The habits and practices of billions of people testify to its reality. The foundational character of the kilogram dominates its contingent status, to the point that its contingency seems irrelevant to anyone not engaged in the problem of its measurement. To ask if its value is "true" is to ask a nonsensical question. To argue that the absence of a transcendent anchor for the kilogram would produce a chaos of relativism in global measurement is to assert an absurdity. Much debate in contemporary political theory engages arguments analogous to the attempt to measure the kilogram, absent the awareness of the necessary contingency of the principles debated. Political theories in the dominant mode postulate, stipulate, investigate, and deduce first principles upon which to erect justifications for political institutions and practices. Or they articulate the telos toward which human beings tend, toward which societies are directed, and under which human flourishing might be increased. Political theorists argue about whether or not these principles or claims are true, where true does not merely reference wide-spread social agreement but access to normative reality. Often these arguments recognize explicitly the pragmatic character of political behavior and institutions while implicitly introducing a quasi-transcendent standard to buttress the conclusions reached; variously, these implicit foundations include concepts like reason, human nature, the popular will, the categorical imperative, the market, human capacities, religious scripture, neurological discoveries, and so on. The post-foundational approach to political theory asserts that any normative justification for a set of coherent political claims will have at its core a kilogram. At some point a theory of politics must assert the centrality of a claim that cannot be further defended, a claim that when queried from outside the system in which it makes sense and to which it provides coherence is exposed as a contingent assertion of social will. From the post-foundational perspective all political systems are similarly dependent upon contingent foundations, whether theorized or not. To understand the development of agonistic democratic theory it is important to distinguish post-foundationalism from anti-foundationalism. Both share a range of philosophical assumptions and draw from overlapping intellectual lineages reaching back at least to Rorty (1979), who identified "anti¬foundationalism as a slogan for a complex cluster of ideas previously lacking resonant expression" (Simpson 1987: 1-2, quoted in Seery 1999: 467). These hared presumptions are described by Fish: Anti-foundationalism teaches that questions of fact, truth, correctness, validity, and clarity can neither be posed nor answered in reference to some extracontextual, ahistorical, nonsituational reality, or rule, or law, or value; rather, anti-foundationalism asserts, all of these matters are intelligible and debatable only within the precincts of the contexts or situations or paradigms or communities that give them their local and changeable shape (1989, 344). As anti-foundational work in political theory became more sophisticated, a divergence emerged between thinkers focused on exposing the limits of foundationalism as the key step in making emancipation possible and those emphasizing that recognition of the inevitability of founding narratives is a condition offurther work to reform them (For a detailed discussion, see Marchart 2007). The two dispositions differ significantly in how they understand the status of contingent foundations and their political implications. With the caveat that all such classifications are overbroad and reductive for specific thinkers, I suggest the central distinctions between post- and anti- foundationalism lie in their disparate analyses of the necessity of foundations and their different aspirations for human emancipation. These two distinctions are rooted in a third: their understanding of the status of "truth." Both positions recognize that the contingent foundations upon which political systems depend produce and sustain relations of power. The "givens" that ground any social order delineate the terms of social identity, determine the characteristics that will be systematically rewarded or define the terms of universality against which deviance will emerge, provide the range of acceptable values against which action will be conceptualized, and establish the appropriate domain of political questions. All of these outcomes, which shift across cultures and time as social foundations differ, shape the allocation of resources, privilege, and cultural advantages that translate into political power. Both post- and anti-foundational theorists recognize that the distribution of power emerging from a particular set of foundations also tends to render these foundations invisible, as the anchor to any system of meaning will, from within, appear inevitable. Anti-foundationalism describes a constellation of approaches found in philosophy, literary theory, anthropology, sociology, legal theory, cultural studies, and political theory.1 Anti-foundationalist political theories suggest the narratives that impose and sustain social relations are inherently oppressive because of the necessary exclusions of difference required to maintain the illusion of totality and coherence. Foundational narratives are, on this account, always a threat to otherness, always a danger to particularity and individuality, and always reflect hegemonic power. They further assert that all such narratives must be resisted in order to open up the possibility of human emancipation. Otherness and difference can only emerge in the space created by critical resistance to hegemony and meta-narrative. Bevir describes this tendency quite well: Anti-foundationalists stress the ineluctability of differences and hence the failings of any notion of totality or unity. Differences generate meaning in language; it prevents any meta-theory from covering the diversity of what we know; and it disrupts the romantic dream of harmony in nature and society. A Among others, Fish lists the following as notable practitioners of anti-foundational theorizing: Hilary Putnam, W.V. Quine, Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, Hayden White, Thomas Kuhn, Michael Fried, Sanford Levinson, Barbara Hermstein Smith, Jonathan Culler, Frank Lentricchia, Jane Tompkins, Stanley Fish, Martin Heidegger, Hans Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and the "entire tradition of the sociology of knowledge" (1989, 345). While this list includes thinkers that would be described as post- rather than anti-foundational in my analysis, it does illuminate the wide and deep influence of this intellectual disposition. Within the more narrowly circumscribed realm of political theory with which this argument is concerned, the most prominent purveyors of anti-foundationalism as I understand it are Rorty, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and (some interpretations of) Foucault, all of whom can be read to encourage an unceasing resistance to naturalism, meta-narrative, and power as the route to emancipatory politics related concern to defend the otherness of the individual against an invidious social power dominates post-modem political theories (2007: 48). While the diagnosis of the danger varies amongst different thinkers, all assert some version of the claim that emancipation can only occur in resistance to foundational claims, even if such claims will always reassert themselves in some way. Identifying the failings of narratives creates space for freedom and individual creativity to emerge. By contrast, foundational claims are always hostile to difference and thus always incompatible with emancipation. The anti-foundationalist "hostility to all unities or totalities - what I would call a sort of positive aesthetic dandyism - leads them to denounce community as inimical to difference" (Bevir 2007: 48). For the anti-foundationalist, then, the role of political theory is to expose the artifice of narratives in order to permit the emergence of resistance and creativity. All foundations are problematic, because all foundations produce relations of power and meaning that undermine the emancipatory potential of human creativity, while imultaneously producing excluded and oppressed subjectivities. This description would be true even for radically democratic foundations. Little (2008: 176), drawing upon Zizek and others, argues that the "issue, then, is partly about the extent to which democracy is inclusive or exclusive but, more fundamentally, it is also about the way in which all democracies are exclusive and antagonistic to their Others, to some extent, in order to regulate the behaviour of and conduct between those who are included." For an anti-foundationalist emancipation demands neither the improvement of narratives nor the creation of more inclusive, still imperfect, foundations, as all foundations are oppressive. The post-foundational position shares the diagnosis of the exclusive and oppressive character of foundational narratives but rejects the conclusion that emancipation primarily demands resistance. This rejection arises not from an embrace of totality or dismissal of the emancipatory ideal but the recognition that ocial foundations are unavoidable. While it is accurate to assert that meaning, identity, power, and other core aspects of political life emerge contingently within the play of language and the developments of history, it is not accurate to assert that these foundations can be escaped or weakened so dramatically as to lose their hold on subjects. As social creatures without access to transcendent truths or unmediated ontological knowledge, meaning will always depend upon some constellation of assumptions shared by the community within which politics takes place. In practice, human beings rely upon foundations, regardless of their ultimate status. It is simply not possible to escape them completely, or even to relativize them so utterly that their impact is of minor consequence. We require some sort of ontology, even if only shallowly held, to render social order possible. White's (2000) concept of weak ontology provides a useful framework to understand post-foundational claims. We experience our own histories as both contingent and fundamental. We find ourselves inhabiting a set of "ontological - gures" that emerge from our situatedness in a particular history, culture, and language. We can recognize that these figures shape our subjectivity in ways that are both not optional to our identity and not fully accessible to choice or reason, while also understanding that these fundamental elements of our personal and communal identities are not "true" in any sense that exceeds our own practices and history. White's summary of weak ontology expresses the commitment of post-foundationalism (though he uses the term non-foundationalism) succinctly: "first, it holds that one's most basic commitments regarding self, other, and the beyond human are taken to be both fundamental and contestable; and, second, it holds that this contestability extends as well to one's assessments of the strong ontologies of others" (2009: 815). The necessary condition of social life is some sort of shared horizon of meaning, some sort of ground upon which politics takes place. It is important to post-foundational politics that the contingent status of this ground be made visible. It is important that pretension to universality be exposed. But it is not desirable to liberate subjects from the foundational narratives within which they unavoidably live. Moreover, the post-foundationalist assertion of the necessity of contingently held ground allows it to evaluate the normative status of various foundational claims. For anti-foundationalism all foundations are obstacles to emancipatory politics, and all should be resisted. Post-foundationalism, by contrast, can offer judgments about the relative virtues and dangers of various ontologies and work to move any particular ontology closer to a more contingent understanding. Marchart articulates this difference when he asserts: what came to be called post-foundationalism should not be confused with anti¬foundationalism. What distinguishes the former from the latter is that it does not assume the absence of any ground; what it assumes is the absence of an ultimate ground, since it is only on the basis of such absence that grounds, in the plural, are possible. The problem is therefore posed not in terms of no foundations (the logic of all-or-nothing), but in terms of contingent foundations. Hence post-foundational ism does not stop after having assumed the absence of final ground and so it does not tum into anti-foundationalist nihilism, existentialism or pluralism, all of which would assume the absence of any ground and would result in complete meaninglessness, absolute freedom or total autonomy. Nor does it tum into a sort of post-modem pluralism for which all meta-narratives have equally melted into air, for what is still accepted by post-foundationalism in the necessity for some ground (2007: 14). Marchart's passage articulates the distinction between the aspiration to escape or destroy foundations, which he rightfully asserts would lead to incoherent politics and individualist anomie, and the aspiration to actively embrace the contingent necessity of already existing foundations in order to foster in those grounds a greater opportunity for democratic politics. Some foundations are better, some are worse, and all are necessary; the task of post-foundational political thought is to highlight the weakness of our social grounds, the costs they impose on otherness, and the resources available within them to develop an emancipatory politics. Why, if they generally agree about the deleterious impact of universalized or insufficiently decentered foundations, do the two approaches differ so dramatically in their prescriptions for political action? I assert that anti-foundationalism presumes a liberatory narrative ofresistance to certainty and rule. An implicit assumption of an anti-foundational politics is that once the non-universal status of foundations becomes apparent and foundations are deprived of universal pretensions, subjects will be able to free themselves of violence, oppression, inequality, etc. The most common version of this supposition is found in post-modernist visions of politics ( often derived from the work of Lyotard or Baudrillard), in which the erosion of foundations permits the free play of difference and recognition of the local and particular status of all political claims. Absent competition for central status in the system of signs, there is no need for conflict and violence. Such a politics involves practices of repetition, creative re-appropriation, linguistic inventiveness, and constant negotiations of difference without the need to resort to violence. Ermarth describes the outcome thusly: "The shift of emphasis engages us in the play of systems in which all definition is differential and internal to a system, and thus no basis for truth claims beyond local negotiations and outcomes. That shift of emphasis forecloses on the endless wars over possession of Truth that modern rationalism sponsors" (2007: 15). Sometimes this optimism is linked explicitly to a progressive account of history in which the overcoming of metaphysics leads to a higher stage of truth. White (2009) identifies this tendency in the work of Vattimo (2004), rejecting his confidence that because foundations are violent in their essence, overcoming of foundations will lead to a "higher stage of truth" and the dissolution of violence. Marchart (2007: 159) aptly names this tendency "emancipatory apriorism." Theorists who posit emancipatory apriorism presume that once politics is adequately theorized emancipatory and/or egalitarian results will follow. Ranciere's account of democratic politics as "a rupture in the logic of arche" (2001: 14) perhaps best illustrates this ethos of anti-foundationalism: an emancipatory politics only emerges in the contestation of the grounding principles that shape the dominant order. Politics does not occur within foundational orders but instead "exists as a deviation from this normal order of things" (2001: 18). Politics thus names a resistance to or disturbance of the "symbolic constitution of the social," understood in Ranciere's thought as "the police" (2001: 20); any foundation that establishes itself as uncontested ( even if recognizably contingent) imperils the possibility of democratic politics. In the case of anti-foundational emancipatory apriorism, the most common claim is that once difference is liberated from the artificial tyranny of universality, only democratic politics can follow, as only democratic politics can accommodate the absence of common ground envisioned. Alternatively, some accounts imply a "natural" tendency toward emancipatory politics, a tendency that is currently obscured by the totalizing and exclusivist narratives that dominate politics. Neither position is compelling. Why must an emancipatory or democratic politics follow from the destruction of foundations? Neither theory nor empirical observation dictates such an outcome. To assert a tendency toward freedom in the absence of totalizing narratives is to assert another universal narrative; to claim that particular political structures will emerge in response to an ontological revelation requires one to ignore the gap between politics and the political, ontic and ontological, practice and theoretical understanding. Regardless of its source, emancipatory apriorism is incompatible with any political theory that takes seriously the insights of post-structuralism, post-modernism, or post¬foundationalism. Which is not to say an emancipatory outcome cannot follow from the destabilization of foundations, but rather that such results are merely one possibility among many. Which is also to say that emancipatory outcomes require further work on foundations. A post-foundational approach to politics avoids emancipatory apriorism. Recognizing the persistence of foundations reveals that any progress toward any type of emancipatory ideal will require the generation of grounds to support practices consistent with the goal. The practices of politics are shaped by and occur within the context of meaning provided by the political. This distinction, broadly accepted in contemporary political thought, identifies the difference between the everyday practices of politics, generally directed instrumentally toward practical ends, and the theoretical, cultural, and apparently self-evident conceptions of the world within which daily politics takes place. The political describes the grounds upon which politics takes place, and it demarcates the possibilities and limits of everyday practice. The political, for the most part, constitutes politics. Shifts in the political shift the parameters of thinkable politics and define the bounds of what can be recognized as specifically political interventions. It is not implausible to describe politics as the ontic expression of a political ontology. This conceptualization of politics leads contemporary thinkers to focus on the constitutive elements of political life over the practical: changing the political leads to enduring changes in politics, while shifts in politics are likely to either reinscribe the basis of the political or revert to the mean of the foundational order. The political should be understood as a foundation for politics, though a foundation always susceptible to transformation. Foundational theorists hope to get the political "right," by bringing culture, institutions, mores, and values into alignment with the truth of reason or human nature or whichever other absolute they champion. Anti-foundationalist thinkers wish to liberate subjects from the imposition of the political, which is viewed as a font of power to be resisted. In fact, for some post-modernists the emphasis on play, negotiation, and re-appropriation seems to emphasize a politics liberated as much as possible from the political. Ermarth asserts the post-modem political rests entirely on the specific practices enacted by all persons who, combining their languages half aware, using inadvertent repetitions, half-baked memories, conscious choice and trained instinct, all make more creative or less creative use of the various languages and grammars available to them, always positioned and conditioned by the particular grammar but always specifying them in ways potentially new (2007: 14). On this account the danger of politics would be that subjects accept the pretension to universality or consensus that the political potentially privileges. Since the post-modem political emphasizes the unfettered play of grammars and discourses, the proper object of political theory is the displacement or destruction of the political as foundation in order to make space for the political as merely politics. Post-foundationalism accepts neither alternative, instead recognizing the essential necessity of foundational claims while working to highlight the contingency of these grounds. Marchart explains this position well: What occurs within the moment of the political, and what can be excavated out of the work of many post-foundational political theorists as an "underlying logic," is the following double-folded movement. On the one hand, the political, as the instituting moment of society, functions as a supplementary ground to the groundless stature of society, yet on the other hand this supplementary ground withdraws in the very "moment" in which it institutes the social. As a result, society will always be in search for an ultimate ground, while the maximum that can be achieved will be a fleeting and contingent grounding by way of politics - a plurality of partial grounds (2007: 8). Marchart describes the constitutive gap between grounds and action that permits the institution of political society while also always undermining the stability of the social. The antic experience of politics takes place against a background experienced as stable and real; politics cannot take place without the social and society cannot persist without a foundation of meaning. At the same time this foundation, the political, is itself unstable and contingent. Thus post-foundational theorists recognize both the necessity of foundations and the inadequacy of those foundations as a justificatory (rather than authorizing) ground for political actions. Politics becomes dangerous when it insists on treating contingent grounds as either transcendental or arbitrary. The former turns the inevitable but essentially malleable exclusions of a particular foundation into naturalized oppressions that may be unrecognized and uncontested. The latter offers the false hope that once arbitrary traditions are overturned an emancipated agent will emerge within the freedom of unmoored and fragmentary narratives. The post-foundational position embraces the necessity of foundations while committing to continuous interrogation and contestation of these contingently-formed grounds. For the post-foundationalist, then, the route to an emancipatory politics requires an engagement with existing foundations in order to highlight their contestability. Ideally, a grounding narrative that incorporates into its assumptions the contingency of its status would produce a politics attuned to the incompleteness and possibilities inherent in any social order. Like the gap between ideal and real, principle and practice, the gap between the political and politics means that foundations always fail to fully ground the social upon which they depend. If this failure can be made visible without demanding an escape from incompleteness, it becomes possible to envision a politics that both accepts and interrogates its authorizing narratives, a politics that creates the conditions for human beings to begin to exert intentional influence upon the ground of the social without lapsing into totalitarian or atomistic practices. White's notion of weak ontology provides one model of this sort of politics, in which subjects recognize their situated and constitutive relationship to a particular ontology while also accepting that their ontological commitments are not themselves attached to any transcendent or natural anchor. Such subjects accept that their ontological commitments are not optional, while also accepting that the contingent status of their commitments renders them particular, local, and non-universalizable. Butler offers a similar analysis in her account of the manner in which all theory posits foundations "constituted through exclusions which, taken into account, expose the foundational premise as a contingent and contestable presumption" (1992: 7). Any attempt to elucidate coherently the operations of politics will begin to expose the inadequacy of all attempts to provide a full and final grounding for social life. It is thus the task of theory "to interrogate what the theoretical move that establishes foundations authorizes, and what precisely it excludes or forecloses" (Butler 1992: 7). The task of post-foundational political theory is not to destroy foundations but to make their contingency visible so that politics can incorporate into its regular practice the ongoing interrogation, contestation, and re-formation of the necessary but always necessarily incomplete and inadequate grounds of social and political life.
Political engagement is an empowering process which is in itself revolutionary—the alternative is right wing takeover—politics goes on without you
Mouffe 9, Professor of Political Theory at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, Chantal, 2009, “The Importance of Engaging the State,” What is Radical Politics Today? Edited by Jonathan Pugh, 230-231, 234-237
The way we envisage social criticism has very important consequences for radical politics. Radical politics today is often characterised in terms of desertion, exodus and refusal to engage with existing institutions. Whereas I believe that radical politics should instead be concerned with building political engagement, through developing competing, antagonistic political claims. My aim here is to highlight the main differences between these two characterisations. The first could roughly be described as ‘critique as withdrawal’; the second as ‘critique as engagement’. I will argue that, ultimately, the problem with the form of radical politics advocated by ‘critique as withdrawal’ is that it has a flawed understanding of the very nature of ‘the political’ itself. Critique as withdrawal The model of social criticism and radical politics put forward by Michel Hardt and Antonio Negri in their books Empire (2000) and Multitude (2004) is a good illustration of ‘critique as withdrawal’. Empire is often referred to as the Communist manifesto for the twenty-first century in academic and activist conferences. In this book, the authors call for a total break with modernity and the elaboration of a postmodern approach. In their view such a break is required because of the crucial transformations of globalisation and the subsequent workers’ struggle experienced by our society during the last decades of the twentieth century. According to Hardt and Negri, these transformations can be broadly summarised in the following way: 1. Sovereignty has taken a new form: there is a new global sovereignty, which Hardt and Negri call ‘Empire’. They argue that this Empire is a new imperialism that replaces the attempt by nation states to extend their own sovereignty beyond their borders. In contrast to old-style imperialism, the current Empire has no territorial centre of power and no fixed boundaries; it is decentred and deterritorialised, progressively incorporating the entire global realm with open, expanding frontiers.
Mouffe continues …
Critique as engagement I will now turn to presenting the way I envisage the form of social criticism best suited to radical politics today. I agree with Hardt and Negri that it is important to understand the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. But I consider that the dynamics of this transition is better apprehended within the framework of the approach outlined in the book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001). What I want to stress is that many factors have contributed to this transition from Fordism to post-Fordism, and that it is necessary to recognise its complex nature. My problem with Hardt and Negri’s view is that, by putting so much emphasis on the workers’ struggles, they tend to see this transition as if it was driven by one single logic: the workers’ resistance to the forces of capitalism in the post-Fordist era. They put too much emphasis upon immaterial labour. In their view, capitalism can only be reactive and they refuse to accept the creative role played both by capital and by labour. To put it another way, they deny the positive role of political struggle. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics we use the word ‘hegemony’ to describe the way in which meaning is given to institutions or practices: for example, the way in which a given institution or practice is defined as ‘oppressive to women’, ‘racist’ or ‘environmentally destructive’. We also point out that every hegemonic order is therefore susceptible to being challenged by counter-hegemonic practices – feminist, anti-racist, environmentalist, for example. This is illustrated by the plethora of new social movements which presently exist in radical politics today (Christian, anti-war, counter-globalisation, Muslim, and so on). Clearly not all of these are workers’ struggles. In their various ways they have nevertheless attempted to influence and have influenced a new hegemonic order. This means that when we talk about ‘the political’, we do not lose sight of the ever present possibility of heterogeneity and antagonism within society. There are many different ways of being antagonistic to a dominant order in a heterogeneous society – it need not only refer to the workers’ struggles. I submit that it is necessary to introduce this hegemonic dimension when one envisages the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. This means abandoning the view that a single logic (workers’ struggles) is at work in the evolution of the work process; as well as acknowledging the pro-active role played by capital. In order to do this we can find interesting insights in the work of Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello who, in their book The New Spirit of Capitalism (2005), bring to light the way in which capitalists manage to use the demands for autonomy of the new movements that developed in the 1960s, harnessing them in the development of the post-Fordist networked economy and transforming them into new forms of control. They use the term ‘artistic critique’ to refer to how the strategies of the counter-culture (the search for authenticity, the ideal of selfmanagement and the anti-hierarchical exigency) were used to promote the conditions required by the new mode of capitalist regulation, replacing the disciplinary framework characteristic of the Fordist period. From my point of view, what is interesting in this approach is that it shows how an important dimension of the transition from Fordism to post- Fordism involves rearticulating existing discourses and practices in new ways. It allows us to visualise the transition from Fordism to post- Fordism in terms of a hegemonic intervention. To be sure, Boltanski and Chiapello never use this vocabulary, but their analysis is a clear example of what Gramsci called ‘hegemony through neutralisation’ or ‘passive revolution’. This refers to a situation where demands which challenge the hegemonic order are recuperated by the existing system, which is achieved by satisfying them in a way that neutralises their subversive potential. When we apprehend the transition from Fordism to post- Fordism within such a framework, we can understand it as a hegemonic move by capital to re-establish its leading role and restore its challenged legitimacy. We did not witness a revolution, in Marx’s sense of the term. Rather, there have been many different interventions, challenging dominant hegemonic practices. It is clear that, once we envisage social reality in terms of ‘hegemonic’ and ‘counter-hegemonic’ practices, radical politics is not about withdrawing completely from existing institutions. Rather, we have no other choice but to engage with hegemonic practices, in order to challenge them. This is crucial; otherwise we will be faced with a chaotic situation. Moreover, if we do not engage with and challenge the existing order, if we instead choose to simply escape the state completely, we leave the door open for others to take control of systems of authority and regulation. Indeed there are many historical (and not so historical) examples of this. When the Left shows little interest, Right-wing and authoritarian groups are only too happy to take over the state. The strategy of exodus could be seen as the reformulation of the idea of communism, as it was found in Marx. There are many points in common between the two perspectives. To be sure, for Hardt and Negri it is no longer the proletariat, but the Multitude which is the privileged political subject. But in both cases the state is seen as a monolithic apparatus of domination that cannot be transformed. It has to ‘wither away’ in order to leave room for a reconciled society beyond law, power and sovereignty. In reality, as I’ve already noted, others are often perfectly willing to take control. If my approach – supporting new social movements and counterhegemonic practices – has been called ‘post-Marxist’ by many, it is precisely because I have challenged the very possibility of such a reconciled society. To acknowledge the ever present possibility of antagonism to the existing order implies recognising that heterogeneity cannot be eliminated. As far as politics is concerned, this means the need to envisage it in terms of a hegemonic struggle between conflicting hegemonic projects attempting to incarnate the universal and to define the symbolic parameters of social life. A successful hegemony fixes the meaning of institutions and social practices and defines the ‘common sense’ through which a given conception of reality is established. However, such a result is always contingent, precarious and susceptible to being challenged by counter-hegemonic interventions. Politics always takes place in a field criss-crossed by antagonisms. A properly political intervention is always one that engages with a certain aspect of the existing hegemony. It can never be merely oppositional or conceived as desertion, because it aims to challenge the existing order, so that it may reidentify and feel more comfortable with that order. Another important aspect of a hegemonic politics lies in establishing linkages between various demands (such as environmentalists, feminists, anti-racist groups), so as to transform them into claims that will challenge the existing structure of power relations. This is a further reason why critique involves engagement, rather than disengagement. It is clear that the different demands that exist in our societies are often in conflict with each other. This is why they need to be articulated politically, which obviously involves the creation of a collective will, a ‘we’. This, in turn, requires the determination of a ‘them’. This obvious and simple point is missed by the various advocates of the Multitude. For they seem to believe that the Multitude possesses a natural unity which does not need political articulation. Hardt and Negri see ‘the People’ as homogeneous and expressed in a unitary general will, rather than divided by different political conflicts. Counter-hegemonic practices, by contrast, do not eliminate differences. Rather, they are what could be called an ‘ensemble of differences’, all coming together, only at a given moment, against a common adversary. Such as when different groups from many backgrounds come together to protest against a war perpetuated by a state, or when environmentalists, feminists, anti-racists and others come together to challenge dominant models of development and progress. In these cases, the adversary cannot be defined in broad general terms like ‘Empire’, or for that matter ‘Capitalism’. It is instead contingent upon the particular circumstances in question – the specific states, international institutions or governmental practices that are to be challenged. Put another way, the construction of political demands is dependent upon the specific relations of power that need to be targeted and transformed, in order to create the conditions for a new hegemony. This is clearly not an exodus from politics. It is not ‘critique as withdrawal’, but ‘critique as engagement’. It is a ‘war of position’ that needs to be launched, often across a range of sites, involving the coming together of a range of interests. This can only be done by establishing links between social movements, political parties and trade unions, for example. The aim is to create a common bond and collective will, engaging with a wide range of sites, and often institutions, with the aim of transforming them. This, in my view, is how we should conceive the nature of radical politics.
Underview
1.Counterinterpretation: Any is a determiner and it refers to some.
Google, No Date, https://www.google.com/search?q=define+anyandoq=define+anyandaqs=chrome..69i57j69i60j69i65j69i59.1255j0j7andsourceid=chromeandie=UTF-8
determiner and pronoun determiner: any; pronoun: any 1. used to refer to one or some of a thing or number of things, no matter how much or many. "I don't have any choice" anyone. "they are unlikely to be known by name to any but specialists" synonyms: anyone, anybody, any individual/person; any group "we no longer give to any, unless they represent one of our top five charities" 2. whichever of a specified class might be chosen. "these constellations are visible at any hour of the night" adverb adverb: any 1. (used for emphasis) at all; in some degree. "he wasn't any good at basketball" synonyms: at all, in the least, to any extent, in/to any degree "is your father any better?" USinformal used alone, not qualifying another word. "I didn't hurt you any"
SCOTUS ruled that “any” implies limitations on the object they refer to. Von Eintel 11
Kai Von Fintel, 7-6-2011, "Justice Breyer, Professor Austin, and the Meaning of 'Any'," Language Log, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3248 MG
In a recent interview, Supreme Court Justice Breyer lists the five books that have influenced his thinking the most. Among them: J.L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words. Breyer says: JL Austin was an ordinary language philosopher. When I studied in Oxford, I went to one of his classes and I read his books. How to Do Things with Words teaches us a lot about how ordinary language works. It is useful to me as a judge, because it helps me avoid the traps that linguistic imprecision can set. If I had to pick a single thing that I draw from Austin's work it would be that context matters. It enables us to understand, when someone makes a statement, what that statement refers to and what that person meant. When I see the word "any" in a statute, I immediately know it's unlikely to mean "anything" in the universe. "Any" will have a limitation on it, depending on the context. When my wife says, "there isn't any butter," I understand that she's talking about what is in our refrigerator, not worldwide. We look at context over and over, in life and in law. Austin suggests that there is good reason to look beyond text to context. Context is very important when you examine a statement or law. A statement made by Congress, under certain formal conditions, becomes a law. Context helps us interpret language, including the language of a statute. Purpose is often an important part of context. So Austin probably encourages me to put more weight on purpose. It is very interesting that Breyer should choose the word "any" as an example of why context matters. A few years back, there was in fact a Supreme Court decision (Small v. United States) that hinged on the meaning of "any" (pdf of the decision here). And as it turns out, Justice Breyer wrote the decision for the majority (made up of Breyer, Stevens, O'Connor, Souter, and Ginsburg; ah the good old days). The background: Petitioner Small was convicted in a Japanese Court of trying to smuggle firearms and ammunition into that country. He served five years in prison and then returned to the United States, where he bought a gun. Federal authorities subsequently charged Small under 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(1), which forbids "any person … convicted in any court … of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year … to … possess … any firearm." Small subsequently argued that any court was not meant to encompass foreign courts, only domestic ones. The Supreme Court agreed. The arguments in the decision are a good case study of semantics/pragmatics in the real (well, legal) world. Here are some excerpts: The question before us is whether the statutory reference "convicted in any court" includes a conviction entered in a foreign court. The word "any" considered alone cannot answer this question. In ordinary life, a speaker who says, "I'll see any film," may or may not mean to include films shown in another city. In law, a legislature that uses the statutory phrase " 'any person' " may or may not mean to include " 'persons' " outside "the jurisdiction of the state." See, e.g., United States v. Palmer, 3 Wheat. 610, 631 (1818) (Marshall, C. J.) ("General words," such as the word "'any,' " must "be limited" in their application "to those objects to which the legislature intended to apply them"); Nixon v. Missouri Municipal League, 541 U. S. 125, 132 (2004) (" 'any' " means "different things depending upon the setting"); United States v. Alvarez-Sanchez, 511 U. S. 350, 357 (1994) ("Respondent errs in placing dispositive weight on the broad statutory reference to 'any' law enforcement officer or agency without considering the rest of the statute"); Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v. National Sea Clammers Assn., 453 U. S. 1, 15-16 (1981) (it is doubtful that the phrase " 'any statute' " includes the very statute in which the words appear); Flora v. United States, 362 U. S. 145, 149 (1960) ("Any sum," while a "catchall" phase, does not "define what it catches"). Thus, even though the word "any" demands a broad interpretation, see, e.g., United States v. Gonzales, 520 U. S. 1, 5 (1997), we must look beyond that word itself.
