Foucault K Policy Debate
Foucault K Policy Debate
Foucault K Policy Debate
2NC Overview
The aff is an excuse for the government to increase the
legitimacy and reach of its power while appearing to take
progressive political action this justifies violent
governmental action like invasions and policing to protect
the populace you dont ask the prison guards to be in
charge of deciding what prison reforms are best.
You cant trust the aff will be implemented after the War
on Terror, the government ignores any law that curbs its
power
Strm, 11 Masters in Political Science from Politihgskolen (Kari Milner,
TERRORISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE APOCALYPTIC NARRATIVE, 2011,
Masters Thesis,
http://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/174775/terrorism
%20democracy.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)
The question of whether we can trust politics informed by GWOT is highly
relevant. Arguing the case against Wikileaks in a television debate Carl W. Ford, Assistant Secretary of
State for Intelligence and Research (INR) during the Bush era, listed the elaborate procedures set up to
oversee the executive, concluding that existing checks and balances are sufficient (BBC 5 February 2011a).
we at regular
intervals are informed that governments and politicians are unaware of illegal
surveillance activities and counter-terrorism operations taking place on their
watch, as it were. The regularity of breaches of public trust therefore points to another
conclusion than that drawn by Ford, suggesting instead that existing democratic checks and
balances are both insufficient and inefficient. As far as US policy in the area of
terrorism is concerned Crenshaw notes that American counterterrorism policy is not
just a response to the threat of terrorism, whether at home or abroad, but a
reflection of the domestic political process. Perceptions of the threat of
terrorism and determination and implementation of policy occur in the
context of a policy debate involving government institutions, the media,
interest groups, and the elite and mass publics . The issue of terrorism tends to appear
Telling a different story, albeit not limited to the post-9/11 era, is the fact that
prominently on the national policy agenda as a result of highly visible and symbolic attacks on Americans
or American property. However, the threat is interpreted through a political lens created by the diffused
structure of power within the American government. (2006b: 183).
AT: Perm
The link is about surveillance reform so the permutation
either severs or it doesnt solve
a. Complacency Any inclusion of these reforms makes
the government appear legitimate, undermining
resistance [read movements DA if youd like]
b. Centralization the aff places the trust in
governmental agents to regulate governmental
practices without altering the underlying logics that
create violent state action in the first place
maintains the governments ability to determine
when these reforms go too far
c. Normalization aligning the alt with the affirmatives
political action serves to intervene in and water
down the critical effectiveness of the alternatives
individual resistance.
Hubert L. Dreyfus, professor of philosophy at UC Berkeley, Being and
Power Revisited, Foucault and Heidegger: Critical Encounters, 2003, p. 4244
Foucault felt he had to expose this sinister repression and liberate the repressed. Later, however, he
realized that repression, calling for liberation, was not the problem. He rejected the idea that underneath
power with its acts of violence and its artifice we should be able to recuperate things themselves in their
primitive vivacity: behind the asylum walls, the spontaneity of madness; through the penal system, the
generous fever of delinquence; under the sexual interdiction, the freshness of desire.44 For Foucault,
methods of power whose operation is not ensured by right but by technique, not by law but by
normalization, not by punishment but by control. 1141 Normalization is, of course, more than socialization
into norms. Socialization into norms is the universal way the understanding of being or power governs the
actions of the members of any society. In the new arrangement that has emerged more and more clearly
since the classical age, however,
the main
characteristic of our political rationality is the fact that this integration of the
individuals in a community or in a totality results from a constant correlation
between an increasing individualization and the reinforcement of this
totality.48 In Discipline and Punish, Foucault explains the way postmodern power is something entirely
after discussing the way pastoral power takes care of each individual, says: I think that
new. Unlike monarchical power, whose exercise was top down, centralized, intermittent, highly visible,
possibility ... must not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique source of
Power is
everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it
comes from everywhere.49
sovereignty from which secondary and descendent forms would emanate....
2NC Framework
Your decision should be based on affirming the better
method for ethical subject creation, the aff or the alt
who we are predetermines what we do, and our links
prove the act of supporting the aff makes us into people
who are complacent to biopower.
This is a more productive strategy than the affs hubristic
attempts to change the world only our framework
produces an ethical self that can create productive
micropolitics
Chandler 13 prof of IR @ Westminster
(The World of Attachment? The Post-humanist Challenge to Freedom and Necessity,
Millenium: Journal of International Studies, 41(3), 516 534)
The world of becoming thereby is an ontologically flat world without the traditional hierarchies of existence
and a more shared conception of agency. For Bennett, therefore, to begin to experience the relationship
between persons and other materialities more horizontally, is to take a step toward a more ecological
sensibility.78 Here there is room for human agency but this agency involves a deeper understanding of
As Connolly states: To embrace without deep resentment a world of becoming is to work to become who
Becoming
who you are involves the microtactics of the self, and work on the self can
then extend into micropolitics of more conscious and reflective
choices and decisions and lifestyle choices leading to potentially
higher levels of ethical self-reflectivity and responsibility. Bennett argues
you are, so that the word become now modifies are more than the other way around.
that against the narcissism of anthropomorphic understandings of domination of the external world, we
Rather than
hubristically imagining that we can shape the world we live in , Bennett
argues that: Perhaps the ethical responsibility of an individual human now
resides in ones response to the assemblages in which one finds
oneself participating. Such ethical tactics include reflecting more on our relationship to what
need some tactics for cultivating the experience of our selves as vibrant matter.
we eat and considering the agentic powers of what we consume and enter into an assemblage with. In
doing so, if an image of inert matter helps animate our current practice of aggressively wasteful and
planet-endangering consumption, then a materiality experienced as a lively force with agentic capacity
the object to be
changed or transformed is the human the human mindset. By changing the
way we think about the world and the way we relate to it by including broader, more
non-human or inorganic matter in our considerations, we will have overcome our modernist
attachment disorders and have more ethically aware approaches to our
planet. In cultivating these new ethical sensibilities, the human can be
remade with a new self and a new self-interest.
could animate a more ecologically sustainable public. For new materialists,
brings forward a new radical subject, identified by Foucault in the figure of the barbarian: 'the one who does not obey'
the one who does not obey an historical or dialectical destiny but rather affirms herself in the haphazard character of
The one who does not obey a Truth but rather discovers herself looking
through the deceptions of domination and the lies of peace; who strips down
the mask of the "fearful savage" and re-emerges from the Leviathan's
intestines holding in her gaze the contingent truth of her body signed,
bruised, written by power. The one who does not obey the Law, against whose pretence to universality
deploys the weapon of her scarred body, the contingency of her truth. And, especially, who does not
obey the totalizing power of a biopolitical state obsessed with life, to which
she opposes an openness to the radical difference of living and the
haphazard contingency of her own death. It is in this simple act of exposure that the event reveals
itself. Every time we reclaim the streets with the scream of our bodies, every
time we refuse the pastoral gaze of a CCTV camera and the medical
injunction of the state, every time we flee the sanitized walls of the polis to
encounter the unsaid in the streets of transgression, every time we compel
what has never happened and make appear what is unseen; every time,
these essential acts of recognition, these moments of exceptional
crisis, force us to glimpse, amidst the flames, the secret texture of
the sovereign's palace, the intensity of the struggle that keeps it
erected and that constantly escapes it. Biopolitics is nothing but the
oblivion of war. It must always remove from sight the irreducibility of struggle and negate the systemic violence
struggle.
that sustains its working: the contingent deaths in the bloody battle to erect and maintain contemporary institutions.
While violence is projected on the background of an imagined peace, normality is reduced to a harmonic stasis,
resistance exist, always at once, but can only be seen from below:
"only the fact of being on one side makes it possible to interpret the
truth, to denounce the illusions and errors that are being used to
make you believe we are in a world in which order and peace have
been restored"55. It is this Foucault that talks through us, when we read out loud: "The bullet that pierced
Alexis' heart was not a random bullet, shot from a mad cop's gun to the body of an indocile kid. It was the usual working
of the state, violently imposing submission and order to the multitude of milieus and movements that continue to resist its
arrangement"56.
the emergence of
a government over life in the eighteenth century does mark a rupture in
forms of rule, which the search for an originary structure of sovereignty cannot capture. For Foucault, the nature
powers over bare life to the point at which they become indistinguishable. In this formulation,
of this rupture is the displacement, articulation or re-inscription of sovereignty within a peculiarly modern form of politics,
bio-politics. However, this capture of the government of the state by bio-powers is already present in the structure of
sovereignty. It would be a mistake, in this sense, to view Agambens quest for the structure of sovereignty, with its
multiple thresholds, as ahistorical, that is, as insensitive to temporal thresholds. His thesis offers a kind of history of
While such views may appear to lead to a kind of radical condemnation of many instances of bio-politics, such as the
attempt to develop humane processing procedures for asylum seekers, the idea of mapping zones of indistinction would
We have
become used to a style of criticism in which liberal notions of the individual
citizen have been revealed to be constituted through a series of exclusions (of
seem to locate arenas of analysis and spheres of contestation rather than a site of dogmatic rejection.
women, the disabled, prisoners, the insane, the poor, the indigene, the refugee, etc). Note that Contretemps 5, December
2004 28 bio-power today holds the promise of extraordinary solutions to disability, criminality and insanity. The inclusion
of women through their state of exclusion, also, would appear to raise interesting questions concerning sovereign violence
given womens historic biological relationship to the reproduction and care of human life. This relationship, itself excepted
under the universality of law, is thus produced as bare life; and women are required to take responsibility for sovereign
achievement of inclusion in the name of universal human rights, all human life is stripped naked and becomes sacred.
Perhaps in a very real sense we are all homo sacer. Perhaps what we have been in danger of missing is the way in which
the sovereign violence that constitutes the exception of bare lifethat which
can be killed without committing homicideis today entering into the very
core of modern politics, ethics, and systems of justice.
2NC Movements DA
Reforming the surveillance state fractures the left into
single-issue movements and pacifies more radical revision
Giroux 14 (Henry, Totalitarian Paranoia in the Post-Orwellian Surveillance
State, 10 February 2014, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21656totalitarian-paranoia-in-the-post-orwellian-surveillance-state)
If the first task of resistance is to make dominant power clear by addressing critically and
meaningfully the abuses perpetrated by the corporate surveillance state and how such transgressions
is to move from
understanding and critique to the hard work of building popular movements
that integrate rather than get stuck and fixated in single-issue politics.
The left has been fragmented for too long, and the time has come to build
national and international movements capable of dismantling the political,
economic and cultural architecture put in place by the new authoritarianism
and its post-Orwellian surveillance industries . This is not a call to reject identity and
affect the daily lives of people in different ways, the second step
special-issue politics as much as it is a call to build broad-based alliances and movements, especially
among workers, labor unions, educators, youth groups, artists, intellectuals, students, the unemployed and
others relegated, marginalized and harassed by the political and financial elite. At best, such groups should
form a vigorous and broad-based third party for the defense of public goods and the establishment of a
radical democracy. This is not a call for a party based on traditional hierarchical structures but a party
consisting of a set of alliances among different groups that would democratically decide its tactics and
strategies. Modern history is replete with such struggles, and the arch of that history has to be carried
forward before it is too late. In a time of tyranny, thoughtful and organized resistance is not a choice; it is a
fighting: to end bulk collection of information; demand Congressional oversight; indict executive-branch
officials when they commit perjury; give Congress the capacity to genuinely oversee executive agency;
provide strong whistle-blower protection; and restructure the present system of classification.84 These are
struggle. He writes: "Democracy expresses itself in continuous and relentless critique of institutions;
democracy is an anarchic, disruptive element inside the political system; essential, as a force of dissent
and change. One can best recognize a democratic society by its constant complaints that it is not
democratic enough."85 What cannot be emphasized enough is that only through collective struggles can
There is
an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead, it is a new form
of international player, constituted by the will of the people in a global
social movement. The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower
is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up
of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social
development, environmentalism, health, and human rights. This movement
has a surprisingly agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify their
might of the European nations is barely a match for the current power of the United States.
interests with world society as a wholeand who recognize that at a fundamental level we are all one.
These are people who are attempting to take into account the needs and dreams of all 6.3 billion people in
Sans Frontieres.
While some of the leaders have become highly visible, what is perhaps most interesting
this global movement is that it is not really directed by visible leaders, but, as
we will see, by the collective, emergent action of its millions of participants. Surveys
about
suggest that at least 30 million people in the United States identify themselves this wayapproximately
The global
membership in Asia, South America, Africa and India, while much lower in percentage of the total
population, is growing quickly with the spread of the Internet. What makes these
10% of the US population. The percentage in Europe is undoubtedly higher.
numbers important is the new cyberspace- enabled interconnection among the members. This body has a
which specializes in rapid response campaigns, has an email list of more than two million members. During
the 2002 elections, Moveon.org raised more than $700,000 in a few days for a candidates campaign for
the US senate. It has raised thousands of dollars for media ads for peaceand it is now amassing a
worldwide network of media activists dedicated to keeping the mass media honest by identifying bias and
confronting local broadcasters.
invented continuously. Slashdot and other news sites present high quality peer- reviewed
commentary by involving large numbers of members of the web community in recommending and rating
items. Text messaging on mobile phones, or texting, is now the medium of choice for communicating with
thousands of demonstrators simultaneously during mass protests. Instant messaging turns out to be one of
the most popular methods for staying connected in the developing world, because it requires only a bit of
bandwidth, and provides an intimate sense of connection across time and space. The current enthusiasm
for blogging is changing the way that people relate to publication, as it allows real-time dialogue about
world events as bloggers log in daily to share their insights. Meta-blogging sites crawl across thousands of
blogs, identifying popular links, noting emergent topics, and providing an instantaneous summary of the
global consciousness of the second superpower. The Internet and other interactive media continue to
penetrate more and more deeply all world society, and provide a means for instantaneous personal
Where political participation in the United States is exercised mainly through rare exercises of voting,
participation in the second superpower movement occurs continuously through participation in a variety of
web-enabled initiatives. And where deliberation in the first superpower is done primarily by a few elected
the first superpower feels remote to most citizens, the emergent democracy of the second superpower is
alive with touching and being touched by each other, as the community works to create wisdom and to
How does the second superpower take action? Not from the top,
but from the bottom. That is, it is the strength of the US government that it can centrally
take action.
collect taxes, and then spend, for example, $1.2 billion on 1,200 cruise missiles in the first day of the war
against Iraq. By contrast, it is the strength of the second superpower that it could mobilize hundreds of
small groups of activists to shut down city centers across the United States on that same first day of the
war. And that millions of citizens worldwide would take to their streets to rally. The symbol of the first
superpower is the eaglean awesome predator that rules from the skies, preying on mice and small
animals. Perhaps the best symbol for the second superpower would be a community of ants. Ants rule from
below. And while I may be awed seeing eagles in flight, when ants invade my kitchen they command my
years of legislation, adjudicating, and precedent. The realpolitik of decision making in the first superpower
government systems. The Internet, in combination with traditional press and television and radio media,
creates a kind of media space of global dialogue. Ideas arise in the global media space. Some of them
catch hold and are disseminated widely. Their dissemination, like the beat of dance music spreading across
a sea of dancers, becomes a pattern across the community. Some members of the community study these
patterns, and write about some of them. This has the effect of both amplifying the patterns and facilitating
community reflection on the topics highlighted. A new form of deliberation happens. A variety of what we
might call action agents sits figuratively astride the community, with mechanisms designed to turn a
given social movement into specific kinds of action in the world. For example, fundraisers send out mass
appeals, with direct mail or the Internet, and if they are tapping into a live issue, they can raise money
very quickly. This money in turn can be used to support activities consistent with an emerging mission.
repeatedly pointed out that the power of the economy was vested on a prior economics of power since
Foucault hoped to complement and enlarge Marxs critique of political economy with a critique of political
anatomy. 6 In his studies on governmenta lity and his courses at the Collge de France on neoliberal
reason, Foucault takes this form of analysis one step further, combining the microphysics of power with
the macropolitical question of the state. Again, he does not limit the field of power relations to the
government of the state; on the contrary, what Foucault is interested in is the question how power
relations historically could concentrate in the form of the state without ever being reducible to it. Following
Foucault sees the state as nothing more that the mobile effect
of a regime of multiple governmentality . . . It is necessary to address from an
exterior point of view the question of the state, it is necessary to analyse the
problem of the state by referring to the practices of governmen t (1984, 21). When
this line of inquiry,
Foucault speaks of the governmentalization of the state (1991a, 103), he does not assume that
government is a technique that could be applied or used by state authorities or apparatus; instead he
comprehends the state itself as a tactics of government, as a dynamic form and historic stabilization of
can only be understood in its survival and its limits on the basis of the
general tactics of governmentality (103). Foucault s discussion of neoliberal
governmentality shows that the so-called retreat of the state is in fact a
prolongation of government: neoliberalism is not the end but a
transformation of politics that restructures the power relations in
society. What we observe today is not a diminishment or reduction of
state sovereignty and planning capacities but a displacement from formal to
informal techniques of government and the appearance of new
actors on the scene of government (e.g., nongovernmental organizations) that
indicate fundamental transformations in statehood and a new relation
between state and civil society actors . This encompasses, on the one hand, the
displacement of forms of practices that were formerly defined in terms of
nation-state to supranational levels and, on the other hand, the development of
forms of subpolitics beneath politics in its traditional meaning . In other words,
the difference between state and society, politics and economy does not
function as a foundation or a borderline but as element and effect of
specific neoliberal technologies of government.
2NC Politics DA
2NC Terrorism DA
extend our stimons that says the freedom act is key to sotp
terrorism, we concede to the terro DA, there is no offense
on this flow, so we are kicking it .