The resolution’s call for political action in the topically designated areas engages in the same failure that the US continually commits—we claim to understand the status of democracy there, but fail to realize that the “revolution” takes place merely in assemblies and speeches—in reality, violence always continues.

Jean Baudrillard, professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School. Baudrillard Live – Selected interviews. Interviewed by Mike Gane. London: Routledge, 1993. p. 207.

All this is part… can’t say that I am very hopeful.

Some debaters try to rouse the indifferent masses of the debate space into frenzied activity by invoking a panoply of survival issues—ecology, terrorism, and nuclear weapons—because they place value in an obsessive desire to survive.

Baudrillard 89 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at European Graduate School, America, p 42-4//shree)

Everywhere survival has become… of the utmost importance.

The demarcation between life and death is constructed—the exclusion of death is the ultimate exclusion that takes life hostage and condemns it to degradation

Baudrillard 93 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, The Symbolic Exchange and Death, p 126-7//shree)

Foucault's analysis, amongst the masterpieces… than a survival determined by death.

Orienting ourselves as enlightened liberal subjects is the flip side of the same coin.  Their metaphysical blackmail portrays the strategy of the object as Evil while glorifying the strategy of the subject of knowledge that tries to intervene in the politics surrounding democracy assistance.  But, it isn’t the subject that wills the world into existence but rather the object that seduces it—privileging the subject fails and fuels self-hatred through repression.

Baudrillard 90 (Jean, Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School, Fatal Strategies, p. 111-13//shree)

“Only the subject desires… desire has become myth.

Subjective illusions like agency and responsibility are invoked to persuade us to break free of spectatorship.  But this turns liberation into a duty—when we are answerable only to ourselves we lose the symbolic freedom provided by the voluntary servitude of gaming.

           
Baudrillard 5 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, Intelligence of Evil, p 50-5//shree)

Freedom?  A Dream!  Everyone aspires… everyone is both the master and slave of the game.

The subjects’ drive to purify us of Evil by making us answerable only to ourselves breeds ressentiment because we confine ourselves to a victim economy and wallow in misfortune

Baudrillard ‘5 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, Intelligence of Evil, p 151-4//shree)

A victim economy, a political economy of… excuses.  Never explain, never complain.

The liberal expectation that people should be answerable for every aspect of their current situation is one that mirrors the way in which the US makes countries answerable for “undemocratic” regimes.  This forces the liquidation of radical alterity—this is self-servitude par excellance

Baudrillard 93 (Jean, Prof of Phil at EGS, The Transparency of Evil, p 165//shree)

We live in a culture which… truly unheard of servitude

This replaces difference with images of the same and results in annihilation

Baudrillard 96 (Jean, Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School, The Perfect Crime, p. 112-4//shree)

In German, there are two apparently… the finality of that mastery, have disappeared.

We affirm—

Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its democracy assistance for one or more of the following: Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen.

Instrumental affirmation is impossible—even if meaning is fixed in the short-term, in the long-term it is oversaturated with meanings and can’t have a particular trajectory

Baudrillard 81 (Jean, Professor of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School, Simulacra and Simulation, p. 16-17)

Watergate was thus nothing but… It traverses all discourses without them wanting it to.

The rule of symbolic exchange is to return the world and language as we received it: enigmatic and aphoristic.  Instead of imposing truths upon the resolution as subjects, we affirm as objects seduced by the resolution.  Our affirmation of the resolution is meaningless and participates in the very form and intelligence of evil

Baudrillard 5 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, Intelligence of Evil, p 207-13//shree)

It is probable that we have all… between the image and the gaze.

Subjectivity and power relations aren’t inevitable—neither are real power until you concede to the truth claims that give them power

Baudrillard 90 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, Seduction, p 48-9//shree)

In the last instance, behind the apparent… reviving the illusion of power.

Evaluate arguments by determining the mode of existence that serves as their principle for debaters in a discursive activity.  Instead of falling back on transcendental values that attempt to resuscitate the political in the activity, endorse the strategy of the object as a joyous gesture.
  

Baudrillard 90 (Jean, Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the EGS, Fatal Strategies, p. 98-99//shree)

The masses know that they… finally ironic, joyous and seductive.

No risk of co-option—our discourse can’t be mobilized because we are de-linked from the social

Baudrillard 83 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, In the Shadow of Silent Majorities, p 26-8//shree)

Basically, what goes for… fluctuating around this imperceptible nucleus.

Aff: Columbia SM

Round #7 Tournament: Shirley

vs: UNT CC

Judge: Ali Na

Plan Text

Resolution

1ac Advantages

Agamben

2ac Offense

Traditional debate framework bad

Happiness DA to Mann

Naturalizing language bad

1ar Strategy

Traditional debate framework bad

Happiness DA to Mann

2ar Strategy

Happiness DA to Mann

Aff: Columbia SM

Round # 2  Tournament:

vs: Georgetown CJ

Judge: Sarah Spring

Plan Text

The resolution

1ac Advantages

advantages – on the wiki – strategy of the object, no political trajections

2ac Offense

impact turn traditional policy debate

1ar Strategy

same

2ar Strategy

same

Chapter 1:  The Sacred

US democracy assistance imposes a static, neoliberal notion of democracy onto other countries to bring them into the fold of the Western tradition. This international policing forms the basis of biopolitical management through sacred, social scripts defined by the West.

Alison J. Ayers, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University. “Imperial Liberties: Democratisation and Governance in the ‘New’ Imperial Order”, Political Studies, Vol. 57, Issue 1. March 2009.

US democracy assistance

Transformation in the three ‘spheres’… Chile, Guatemala and Nicaragua (Slater, 2002).

The ideology of biopolitical management found in the neoliberal democratic regime is also reflected within policy debate.  Debate has evolved from an exclusive forum for future policymakers to a paradoxical community that is ungrounded and constantly shifting.  For example, what it means to be resolved has undergone scrutiny—K affs interrogated what it means to be the subject of the resolution, and the proliferation of these perspectives show how there is no single, universal way to affirm.  Yet, to maintain policy debate’s location as the intersection between competition and education, some participants engage in sacred rituals to produce absolute, prima facie issues that determine what is and isn’t productive debate.  The maintenance of the sacred requires ritual acts of sacrifice in the name of linguistic commonality—debaters are forced to disclose their arguments in a manner intelligible to the majority, which mandates the destruction of alterity.

Secomb 2K (Linnell, a lecturer in Gender Studies at the University of Sydney, “Fractured Community,” Hypatia – volume 15, Number 2, Spring 2000, pp. 138-9//shree)

This reformulated universalist model of community… conversation that assume homogeneity and transparency.

The systematic exclusion of the unintelligible from pedagogy is biopolitics par excellance—it requires the extermination of the Other to ascertain the health of debate.  Even liberal forms become totalitarian as they become concerned with the administration of life in the name of everyone—this makes unconditional violence inevitable.

Hoffmann 7 (Kasper, International Development Studies at Roskilde University, May, Militarised Bodies and Spirits of Resistance, http://diggy.ruc.dk:8080/handle/1800/2766 //shree)

In modern forms of government, concepts… fundamental feature of modern processes of government.

Biopolitical violence is not exclusive to molar apparatuses of the state—the most dangerous forms of fascism are the molecular microfascisms we sustain in forums like debate.

Deleuze and Guattari 80 (Gilles and Felix, Profs of Phil, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 214-5//shree)

Doubtless, fascism invented the… molecules both personal and collective.

The biopolitical determination of the threshold beyond which life ceases to have juridical value creates the category of a “life devoid of value” which spills over to the biological body of every living being and nullifies value to death

Agamben 98 (Giorgio, professor of philosophy at university of Verona, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, pg. 139-140//shree)

It is not our intention here to… biological body of every living being.

To force ourselves to maintain the sacredness of social scripts in debate is one that breeds alienation and suicidal nihilism—we can only find solace in the death of the debate community.

Giorgio Agamben, professor of aesthetics at the University of Verona. The Coming Community. 1993, pp. 64-6//shree

But the absurdity of individual… the political task of our generation.

Columbia MS affirms –

Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its democracy assistance for one or more of the following: Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen.

Chapter 2:  The Profane

In an attempt to uphold the sacred altar of fairness in debate, many members of our community voted for a resolution that condemns the topic of democratic movements solely to a discussion of US “democracy assistance,” which eliminates core questions that do not lie within the bounds of what the community thinks is predictable.  But, the resolution can’t be reduced to the brief verbal portrait shaped by its anonymous framers and discourses of power—our affirmation is a gesture of belonging-to-impropriety that reveals the central emptiness of the resolution and simultaneously makes reading it possible while exceeding its sacred intent.
 Giorgio Agamben professor of aesthetics at the University of Verona. Profanations. 2007,  pp. 63-72//evidence under erasure, shree

In this division between the author-subject… anything like an ethical subject, a form of life. 

The resolution doesn’t inherently contain sacred content—discourses of power only crystallize when they become normalized through ritualized practices.  We profane the sacred and free the resolution from its obligatory task by affirming it without its sacred intent—this short-circuits the naturalization of power relations that makes violence possible.

Durantaye 8 (Leland de la, Assoc Prof of English @ Harvard, Homos Profanus:  Giorgio Agamben’s Profane Philosophy, Boundary 2 35:3, Duke University Press, p 28-40 //shree)

The central chapter of Profanations is… one of Agamben’s favorite terms, “inoperative.”

Setting up policy debate as a training ground for productive future citizens will be mobilized toward violence—our affirmation is a form of play that liberates debate from rigid rules and detaches humanity from the sacred.

Dragona 8 (Daphne, Independent News Media Arts Curator, WhoDaresToDe-sacralizeTodaySPlay, http://www.personalcinema.org/warport/index.php?n=Main.WhoDaresToDe-sacraliseTodaySPlay? //shree)

The risk of play being exploited… so and wait and see…

There is no historical task or biological destiny that awaits us—to affirm the profane is not a facile attempt at inclusion but calls for the development of a form of life which can make free use of its potentiality and is not constrained to sanctified criteria               

Durantaye 8 (Leland de la, Assoc Prof of English @ Harvard, Homos Profanus:  Giorgio Agamben’s Profane Philosophy, Boundary 2 35:3, Duke University Press, p 57-62 //shree)

In the closing pages of Homo Sacer, Agamben… that is every day”