If you listen close to the affirmative you can hear reverberations of Barrack Obama and Samuel Webster, a man who fought for American independence in the revolutionary war. Spanos writes:
SPANOS 2008
[William V, Professor at Binghamton, American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam, SUNY Press 2008, 207-209]
Daniel Webster's Bunker Hill orations are, of
AND
pioneers of the Battle of Bunker Hill accomplished.
We find ourselves in the interregnum, the “No-more of the Gods who have fled and the Not-yet of the god who is coming.” After the end of the Cold War, America declared that history itself had ended, and the world was now safe for democracy. The liberal-capitalist-democratic ideal as the only game in town, to be heralded for the world. Of course, things didn't work quite so smoothly. With the fulfillment of democracy as a global system, we see it reversing upon and consuming itself. As the recent protests demonstrate, the path to democracy is a violent one, and this American vision of global democracy can only be realized by the destruction of democracy.
Spanos 2011
[William V. the exceptionalist state and the state of exception Pg 149-50]
In calling his reluctant American readers’ attention to
AND
of modernity’’ becomes a black ‘‘visionary’’ possibility.
The benign intentions of the affirmative should not be taken at face value. Spanos turns his eye to the policies of the Obama administration and delineates democracy assistance in the name of social justice, from intervention in the name of securing American exceptionalism. The affirmative, with it's appeals to oil shocks, securing ourselves against terrorism, and so on, lies firmly in the camp of exceptionalism. However, even the most benign democracy assistance hides a malignant underside and lies on an indissoluble relay with imperialism and genocide.
Spanos 2008
[William V, Professor at Binghamton, American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam, SUNY Press 2008, 207-209]
Having, in what precedes, retrieved the
AND
, to suggest its likely horrific "end."
Today we see the Arab world revolting against this benign gesture of assistance, having born the cost of US democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, in US support for dictators, in Western exploitation of oil, and in the general deprivation of the Arab World. Yet the western media ventriloquizes these events as in support of the US, effacing any expression of those individuals. Arab protesters are just like us, only brown and a bit more exotic.
El-Mahdi '11. Rabab El-Mahdi. “Orientalizing the Egyptian Uprising”. April 11, 2011. Jadaliyya. Accessed from: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1214/orientalising-the-egyptian-uprising – M.E.
“Since the beginning of the Egyptian uprising
AND
“othering”...2) romanticization and exotization”.
“both academics and the media (international
AND
romanticization, while casting universalist-Eurocentic judgments.”
“the recent uprising is constructed as a
AND
line in rural areas and slum-areas.
Alongside the icon of the homogenous … is
AND
should be and are excluded from the picture.
The active agents of this narration are not
AND
fringe of the fringe”- are being outcast.”
Spanos agrees, writing:
[William V. Arab Spring, 2011: A Symptomatic Reading of the Revolution]
“Since the only language available for the
AND
, by the “neutral” military establishment.
Disregarding its patently singular aspects, in other
AND
expense of the patent multiplicity of resisting perspectives.
Thus, we prefer not to be accomplices to the affirmative's framing of the Arab protests which serves onto to quell dissent and rewrites everything into the banalized language of American-capitalist-democracy. Rather than transform these diverse events into the latest cause for American intervention, we affirm the singularity of the Arab protests.
When read only in terms of the potential for liberal, capitalist, American-style democracy, we reduce the Arab protests into an object of intervention that can be easily known and grasped by Western bureaucrats. This synecdochal naming was precisely the mode of colonization after World War 1, where the West names the diverse cultures of the world “Egypt,” “Saudi Arabia,” “Palestine,” “Syria,” and so on, and then organized the territory to fit this synecdochal map. The affirmative busy re-enacting this process today on the “Arab protests.” We instead affirm the singularity of this event. We – as western intellectuals – affirm their democracy in the only way we can while allowing it to remain their democracy and not our own, which can only be through an unnaming of the revolts in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. Thus, we take our cue from Spanos, who writes:
[William V. Arab Spring, 2011: A Symptomatic Reading of the Revolution]
“The Revolution that ignited spontaneously in Tunisia
AND
gives in the following passage (and elsewhere):
We might say that since a situation is composed by the knowledges circulating within it, the event names the void inasmuch as it names the not-known of the situation.”
“To reiterate, it is not a
AND
not incidentally, the directives of Hannah Arendt).”
This requires that we take an interested approach to debate. That is interested in the original Greek sense of inter-esse, or being in the midst. Rather than assuming a top-down vision as if we were Gods imagining how to reconfigure US policy to best serve our ends, we should instead recognize our place – in a debate round before a room of students – and how we can uniquely act within this space.
Spanos and Spurlock ‘11 [William V., highly acclaimed author, World War II Veteran, POW at Dresden, distinguished professor of English and Comparative Literature at the SUNY Binghamton, Chris; total asshat. www.kdebate.com/spanos.html]
C.S.: I would love to
AND
, II become II a neighborhood of zero."
