What is the Arab spring? Who is it? How is it? These are the wrong questions to ask.
The affirmative’s attempt to speak the Truth about what is taking place in Yemen is a violent attempt to fit ahistorical events into the standard framework of liberal governmentality that ONLY reduces their significance, the events taking place on the ground, and our capacity to effectively respond to them. This liberal whitewashing ensures unending ethnocentric racism that makes wars bloodier.
Coffield and Reid 2k11. Kevin Coffield, phD student in political science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Julian Reid, Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College in London, “Interview: Julian Reid,” http://fracturedpolitics.com/2011/06/07/interview-julian-reid.aspx, June 7, 2011
Q: In your first book, …-as-information.
extinction—in authorizing the liberal planetary mission, they justify destruction with no end in site—even of liberalism itself.
Bell and Evans 2k10. Colleen Bell, lecturer in international politics and relations at the University of London, and Brad Evans, professor of politics and international studies at the University of Leeds, “Terrorism to Insurgency: Mapping the Post-Intervention Security Terrain” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a931253621&fulltext=713240928, December 2010
This furtive logic is remarkable … of the liberal peace.
US hegemony is an attempt to organize the space of the world into an American sphere – we force democratic governments, we force specific economic policies – all in the name of creating stability and regional security – this results in an endless war against those who oppose American power, results in extinction
Peet Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, 2k5 (Richard, “From Eurocentrism to Americentrism” Blackwell Synergy)
All centrisms see the world … compelling critique of Americentrism.
Refuse the affirmative’s attempt to fit the Arab Spring revolts into preconceived boxes and liberal theories. Instead, encounter them as a mechanism to upset previous ideas about the world. Our criticism makes possible understanding that power produces consent without engaging in the liberal reductionism of the 1ac.
Barnett 2k11. Clive Barnett, professor of geography at Open University in the UK, “Theory in the Streets,” https://clivebarnett.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/theory-in-the-streets/, February 19, 2011
A feature of much of … requires no attention at all to the hard work of political action.
The role of the scholar should be to interrogate systems of knowledge- the 1AC representations are tainted by orientalist modes of thought which renders them suspect. Interrogation of representations outweighs policy making
Anand 07—Reader, IR, U Westminster. PhD, politics, Bristol (Dibyesh, Western Colonial Representations of the Other, http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ecsda/DAnandNPSArticleMar07.pdf)
Note – epiphenomenal = a secondary question/phenomenon
Within the context of … and idealization of some.
2NC
AT: Framework
3.) Policy failure: academics studying the Arab world should reflect on their assumptions—such analysis must precede political actions and predictions or risk serial policy failure.
Gause 2k11. F. Gregory Gause III, PhD in Political Science, Harvard University, Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, “Why the Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring,” Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67932/f-gregory-gause-iii/why-middle-east-studies-missed-the-arab-spring , July/August 2011
Academic specialists on … to shape its future. That is best left to Arabs themselves.
AT: Empiricism Good
Questioning framing of pre-existing social order is a priori—current empiricist formulas mask their dubious political intentions in the name of objective truth
Smith, Vice-Chancellor Univ of Exeter, Sept 2004
[Steve, Singing Our World Into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11th, http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/maxpages/faculty/gmbonham/ISA_Presidential_Address.doc]
This raises the question of what kind of social science … into, international relations.
AT: Predictions Good
They cannot predict international relations—changing variables, lack of a linear relationship, and the failure of decades of theoretical efforts prove.
Bernstein et al 2k. Steven Bernstein, Richard Ned Lebow, Janice Gross Stein and Steven Weber, University of Toronto, The Ohio State University, University of Toronto and University of California at Berkeley. “God Gave Physics the Easy Problems” European Journal of International Relations 2000; 6; 43
A deep irony is embedded in the … in past or future time.5
Bahrain Turns Case
Liberal interventionism explains Bahrain violence, not sectarianism
Sadeghi, 11 - Middle East specialist with an emphasis on Iran, Pakistan and the Gulf countries (Shirin, “The fabrication of Bahrain’s Shiite-Sunni divide,” 3/16, http://criticalppp.com/archives/42877)
Colonialism, Not Sectarianism …determination, to get their voices heard.
2nc Perm
The perm appropriates critique and distorts it for the purpose of mobilization—it manufactures consent for violence.
Chaulia 2k9. Sreeram Chaulia, professor of World Politics at Jindal Global Law School, 2009, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward: The United States Institute of Peace,” International Journal of Peace Studies, Vol. 14 No. 1
Hegemonic power structures, be they … to the hegemonic regulatory complex known as “extended state.”
AT: Liberalism/Democracy Checks
Liberalism does nothing to remedy the structural crisis of biopolitical power—instead, it is just another, more subtle way of managing the population.
Dean 2k1. Mitchell Dean, professor of sociology at Macquarie University in Australia, 2001, “Sovereignty and Biopolitics in Nonliberal Rule,” States of Imagination edited by Thomas Hansen and Finn Stepputat, pg. 41-64
Accoridng to Foucault, … biopolitical regulation but a way of managing it.
Democracy places no limit on biopolitics—it just makes power relations more subtle.
Dean 2k1. Mitchell Dean, professor of sociology at Macquarie University in Australia, 2001, “Sovereignty and Biopolitics in Nonliberal Rule,” States of Imagination edited by Thomas Hansen and Finn Stepputat, pg. 41-64
Liberal government is a particular form of articulation of the shepherd-flock game and the city-citizen game. It assembles a pastoral … good despot” (cited in Valverde 1996: 361).
AT: Cede the Political
Their arg brackets oppositional politics into ineffective strategies—we should embrace disunity and use it to the left’s advantage.
Butler 98. Judith Butler, Chairperson of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric at UC Berkeley, 1998, “Marxism and the Merely Cultural” The New Left Review, January-February, pg. 37
This resurgence of left orthodoxy calls for .. the pressure of each other without therefore exactly becoming each other.
No uniqueness – left has already ceded the political
Castenada 9 [Concha, “Letter to Joe Bagent about Smokers and Fat People”, Concha’s Cauldron Political Analysis website, http://conchacastaneda.blogspot.com/2009/11/letter-to-joe-bagent-about-smokers-and.html, November 17, 2009] khirn
There are a million ways to be smug … from the toothy maw of ideology. As the Red Brigades in China showed us, ideology is the big grinder, baby.
Critical theory has never killed a progressive movement.
Brown, 05 (Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics, Wendy, Professor of Poli Sci, UC Berkeley)
On the one hand, critical theory cannot … conscience, at best it renews their imaginative reach and vigor.
It’s try or die—tying their aid policy to liberal governmentality ensures policy failure.
Duffield 2k2. Mark Duffield, professor of Development Studies at Bristol University, “Social Reconstruction and the Radicalization of Development: Aid as a Relation of Global Liberal Governance,” Development and Change 33(5): 1049–1071 (2002)
While promising … modernities that the North now encounters are more robust in this respect.
AT: Util
Util is self-defeating—the hysterical attempt to preserve life results only in its eventual total destruction.
Kouros 97. George Kouros, Lawyer, Yale Law Graduate, B.A. in Philosophy from Emory, “Become What You Are,” 1997
Although the … the possibility of a "happier human being," maintains the conditions for a eugenic nightmare.
