Tournament: Iowa Caucus | Round: 2 | Opponent: Homewood-Flossmore | Judge:
1AC
Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.
Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.
And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden, before their children and before
history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the “protectors
of peace.”
This poem comes from Jumah al Dossari, a thirty-three-year-old Bahraini who has been held at Guantánamo Bay for more than ?ve years. He has been in solitary confinement since the end of 2003 and, according to the U.S. military, has tried to kill himself twelve times while in custody.
(http://www.uiowapress.org/books/2007-fall/falpoefro.html)
-Contention 1: Passive Subjects-
We live in a world of an ongoing “War on Terror” and we don’t know when it will end. The Status quo is not democracy – a true democracy is based on identification with the People without voices. Exclusion of these voices creates a police order of inequality.
Ranciere 1 (Jacques, Prof. Phil @ European Graduate School, “Ten Theses on Politics,” Theory and Event 5:3 Muse Online)
The detainees are not considered as human subjects, with the government going so far as to call the poems “asymmetrical warfare”
Harlow 11( Barbara Harlow,¶ professor of comparative literature at the University of Texas-Austin, ‘Extraordinary renditions’: ¶ ¶ tales of Guantánamo, ¶ ¶ a review article, http://rac.sagepub.com/content/52/4/1.full.pdf+html)
The prisoners have become militarized and depoliticized objects of the government.
Feldman 4 (Allen, associate professor of culture and communication at the New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, “Deterritorialized Wars of Public Safety,” http://www.jstor.org/stable/23178836)
The government has depoliticized the detainees through the manipulation of psychological techniques that term them “madmen.”
Howell 7 (Allison, Postdoctoral fellow at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, Victims or Madmen? The Diagnostic¶ Competition over ‘‘Terrorist’’ Detainees at Guantanamo Bay,” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1749-5687.2007.00003.x/asset/j.1749-5687.2007.00003.x.pdf?v=1andt=hikvyye7ands=fe33cf5f5f93832b52109736baf89c0649ad40c6)
This depoliticization and dehumanization leads to abhorrent treatment – You have an ethical obligation to reject this.
Ahmad 09 (Muneer L. Ahmad - Clinical Professor of Law, Yale Law School, 2009, “RESISTING GUANTÁNAMO: RIGHTS AT THE BRINK OF DEHUMANIZATION”, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/v103/n4/1683/LR103n4Ahmad.pdf) edited for grammar
-Contention 2: Our aesthetic-
Thus, we advocate a reading of our poetry as amorphous exchange of glorious creativity. Traditional debates are anti-intellectual discussions which our government promotes to avoid dissidents – only our dramatic action solves.
Barsky 8 (Robert F., professor of English, French, and comparative literature at Vanderbilt University, “Safe Spaces in an Era of
Our reading of the poem forms a short circuit. We allow for a break, to fully comprehend those who are oppressed not only as politicized subjects, but as real people, those who can actually engage in art.
Fragopoulos 11 (George, professor at CUNY Queens College in NY. http://quarterlyconversation.com/poems-from-guantnamo-the-detainees-speak-edited-by-marc-falkoff)
Our short circuit breaks with the idea of the detainee as a solely politicized subject.
Zizek 0 (Slavoj Zizek, A Slovene philosopher and cultural critic. He is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a professor of philosophy and psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School. “The Politics of Aesthetics”) edited for gendered language
Societies aesthetics determines who can be considered part of the community.
Rancière 0 (Jacques, a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris, “The Politics of Aesthetics”, 2000)
-Contention 3: Aesthetics of this debate-
Aesthetics come before all other calculations—a presupposition of equality looks to aesthetics regimes which breaks down the logic of domination.
Dikec 13 (Mustafa, Prof. Geography at University of London, “Immigrants, Banlieues, and Dangerous Things: Ideology as an Aesthetic Affair”)
Traditional impact calculus is aesthetically incomplete. It becomes a mindless process taking a safe middle road. This kills the creative aesthetic of the 1AC that is key to challenge the “formal subject” of the aesthetic of the grid.
Schlag 02 (Pierre Schlag, The Byron R. White Professor and Chair of the Byron White Center. “The Aesthetics of American Law”, 2002)
Thus, we ask you to “weigh” the aesthetic of this debate. All arguments are inherently aesthetic, and considering them this way influences law itself.
Schlag 02 (Pierre Schlag, The Byron R. White Professor and Chair of the Byron White Center. “The Aesthetics of American Law”, 2002)