Tournament: Michigan | Round: 1 | Opponent: GBS OS | Judge: Eric Oddo
On a clear evening in December, as the sun was setting over the Texas
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is considerable. Unlike the Police Department, it operates its own drones.
Crandall 11 (Jordan, Associate Professor at University of California, San Diego, "Ontologies of the Wayward Drone: A Salvage Operation," 11/2/2011, www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=693, slim_)
The U.S.-Mexico border is a liminal zone between origin and destination, a geographical demarcation shaped by decades of violent conquest and a prevailing historical narrative rooted in ideologies of Western dominance. Today, lofty rhetoric of "global cooperation," "interdependence," and "renewed diplomatic partnerships" mask the border region’s grim reality – our physical connection with Mexico is a military dystopia, a technologically-reinforced barrier designed to control, exclude, and kill.
Border securitization transforms the region into a homogenized security-scape, stripped of distinctions as control apparatuses efface all identity in relentless pursuit of perfect preemption. No longer only geographical, the border is a space of exception, a battleground of unfettered ontological and military warfare that homogenizes populations into static identities
Wall and Monahan 11 (Tyler, Assistant Professor in School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, Ph.D. in Justice Studies from Arizona State University; and Torin, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Surveillance and violence from afar: The politics of drones and liminal security-scapes," Theoretical Criminology 15(3), pp. 239-254, slim_)
As surveillance and military devices, drones offer a prism for theorizing the technological politics
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between ’us’ and ’them’, or ’civilization’ and ’barbarism’.
The border is constituted as a state of exception – negative territoriality creates the preconditions for bare life. Absent critical engagement with the border’s geopolitical configuration, border populations are reduced to homo sacer, always already outside the law
Acosta 12 (Abraham, Assistant Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Arizona, Ph.D. from University of Michigan, "Hinging on Exclusion and Exception: Bare Life, the US/Mexico Border, and Los que nunca llegarán," Social Text 30 (4): 103-23, slim_)
Therefore, in the tracing of the partition that both binds and separates the US
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and lays bare, a topological zone of sheer abandonment from the law.
Conflicts of territory and ownership are dynamic and intrinsically biopolitical – notions of borders, defense, and resource extraction unite governmentalities under a sovereign power that creates the right to let die
Elden 13 (Stuart, Ph.D. in Political Theory from Brunel University, Professor of Geography at Durham University, "How Should We Do the History of Territory?", Territory, Politics, Governance, 1:1, 5-20, 24 January 2013, slim_)
Territory then should not be understood as the static backdrop or container of political actions
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(after 2004b, p. 79, 2008, p. 77)
This strategy is doomed to serial failure – when the maximization of security becomes the sole criterion for political action, politics become murderous – the only logical conclusion is the extermination of all life
Duarte 5 (Duarte, nofessor of Philosophy at Universidade Federal do Paraná, 05 André," Biopolitics and the dissemination of violence: the Arendtian critique of the present." http://hannaharendt.net/research/biopolitics.html-http://hannaharendt.net/research/biopolitics.html)
These historic transformations have not only brought more violence to the core of the political
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the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population. 29)
Preemptive risk management is born of a state that covets control of the unknown – the state channels unpredictability into forms it can manage, doing whatever we can to prolong our stasis. Violence is internal to liberal society; disasters are not isolated, but carefully constructed in order to institutionalize anxiety
Neocleous 12 (Mark Neocleous, Professor of Politics and History at Brunel University in the UK, July 26 2012, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol.37, No. 3, "’’Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared’’ : Trauma-Anxiety-Resilience," sagepub)
In this regard, we might pay heed to Franz Neumann’s comment on the role
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, and the permanence of the security preparations carried out in its name.
The U.S.-Mexico border is our shared domain, the physical and literal manifestation of our interactions. Our definition of the border shapes the definition of relations. Current U.S. policies seek to maximize control of the uncontrollable, espousing a metaphysical narrative of imperialist domination. The endless rhetoric of national security glosses over the ways these policies fail – accidents are inevitable and security measures are inherently fallible.
Critical interrogation is key to expose instances where power falters. Our affirmative unmasks the fissures in a monolithic regime of control – just as the wayward drone shattered the stasis of the border, revealing fractures in dominant security discourse creates room for dissent
Burke 2 (Anthony, Int’l Studies @ U of New South Wales, "Aporias of Security," in Alternatives 27, p. 18-23)
Refusing Security It is perhaps easy to become despondent, but as countless struggles for
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is a world after security, and what its shimmering possibilities might be.
Status quo relations with Mexico are overdetermined by security. Current economic engagement is discursively militarized through a sole and overbearing focus on preemption, control, and xenophobia – we need trade because it decreases the risk of war; we need energy cooperation to deescalate would-be regional explosions. The resolution is a call to increase economic engagement, but through our current relationship, all engagement is always already military. In recognition of this prevailing narrative, Sarah and I affirm the direction of the resolution through a deconstruction of the securitization imbuing our relationship with Mexico.
Our analysis of the violence surrounding the border’s geohistorical origins is a prerequisite to the topic. Engagement can never be meaningful without a prior understanding of the representations shaping our relationship with Mexico
Slater 97 (David, Ph.D from London School of Economics and Professor Emeritus of Geography at Loughborough University, "Geopolitical imaginations across the North-South divide: issues of difference, development and power," Political Geography Vol. 16 Issue 8, November 1997, pp. 631-653, Muse, slim_)
The US-Mexican War of 1846-1848 provides a particularly pertinent example of
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expression of a will to understand and rethink the patterns of interactive representation.
Our critique is both the essence of, and a prerequisite to, the resolution. Static, securitized statecraft regulating the borderland can never fully reconcile with meaningful economic engagement. By highlighting the fissures in the dominant interpretation of the topic, we undermine prevailing systems of knowledge and allow for a better form of politics that accounts for uncertainty, accidents, and the unique circumstances of the border region
Coleman 5 (Matthew, Ph.D, UCLA Department of Geography, "U.S. statecraft and the U.S.–Mexico border as security/economy nexus," Political Geography 24 185-209, 2005, slim_)
Post-September 11 border policing measures are certainly part and parcel of an intensified
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than as a coherent sovereign ’’script’’ (O´ Tuathail, 2002).
Deemphasizing the static, militarized approach to the resolution is the only way to shift the discursive framing of our interactions with Mexico. Vote affirmative to resonate with our interpretation of the resolution that understands the distinction between economic and military – align yourself with our dissent – signing the ballot adds momentum to the force of resistance
Holloway 10 (John, Professor in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla in Mexico, Crack Capitalism, 17-20)
Imagine a sheet of ice covering a dark lake of possibility. We scream ’NO’
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. This is surely the only subject matter of theory that is left.
