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)
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)
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)
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)
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
But the absurdity of individual… the political task of our generation.
Rochester 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
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)
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?)
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)
In the closing pages of Homo Sacer, Agamben… that is every day”
