Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
1AC
Note: Passages (not) cards have been edited for length, which have been
marked by ellipses (). The original passages can be found by following the
footnotes.
Carcosa
Alongtheshorethecloudwavesbreak,
Thetwinsunssinkbeneaththelake,
Theshadowslengthen
InCarcosa.
Strangeisthenightwhereblackstarsrise,
Andstrangemoonscirclethroughtheskies
Butstrangerstillis
LostCarcosa.
SongsthattheHyadesshallsing,
WhereflapthetattersoftheKing,
Mustdieunheardin
DimCarcosa.
Songofmysoul,myvoiceisdead;
Diethou,unsung,astearsunshed
Shalldryanddiein
LostCarcosa.
Filledwiththesereflections,Iwasforsometimeheedlessofthesequenceofmyown
experiences,butsoonIthought,HowcameIhither?Amomentsreflectionseemedtomake
thisallclearandexplainatthesametime,thoughinadisquietingway,thesingularcharacter
withwhichmyfancyhadinvestedallthatIsaworheard.Iwasill.IrememberednowthatIhad
beenprostratedbyasuddenfeverNowIhadhadwanderedhithertotowhere?Icouldnot
conjecture.ClearlyIwasataconsiderabledistancefromthecitywhereIdwelttheancientand
famouscityofCarcosa.
Amomentlateramansheadappearedtoriseoutofthegroundashortdistanceaway.
Hewasascendingthefartherslopeofalowhillwhosecrestwashardlytobedistinguishedfrom
thegenerallevelHewalkedslowlyandwithcaution,asifhefearedfallingintosomeopen
graveconcealedbythetallgrass.Thisstrangeapparitionsurprisedbutdidnotalarm,andtaking
suchacourseastointercepthimImethimalmostfacetoface,accostinghimwiththefamiliar
salutation,Godkeepyou.
Hegavenoheed,nordidhearresthispace.
Iseatedmyselfattherootofagreattree,seriouslytoconsiderwhatitwerebesttodo
AgreatrootofthegianttreeagainstwhosetrunkIleanedasIsatheldinclosedinitsgraspaslab
ofstone,apartofwhichprotrudedintoarecessformedbyanotherrootAsuddenwindpushed
somedryleavesandtwigsfromtheuppermostfaceofthestone;Isawthelowrelieflettersofan
inscriptionandbenttoreadit.GodinHeaven!mynameinfull!thedateofmybirth!thedate
ofmydeath!
AlevelshaftoflightilluminatedthewholesideofthetreeasIsprangtomyfeetin
terror.Thesunwasrisingintherosyeast.Istoodbetweenthetreeandhisbroadreddiskno
shadowdarkenedthetrunk!
Achorusofhowlingwolvessalutedthedawn.Isawthemsittingontheirhaunches,
singlyandingroups,onthesummitsofirregularmoundsandtumulifillingahalfofmydesert
prospectandextendingtothehorizon.AndthenIknewthatthesewereruinsoftheancientand
famouscityofCarcosa.1
rather than to get well: Mourning is thus no longer a necessary period on which society imposes respect. It has become a morbid state that
needs to be nurtured, abridged, and erased.3
Nearerandneareritcame,thedullcrunchingofwheels,nearerandyetnearer,andnow,
outsidebeforethedooritceased,andIdraggedmyselftothewindowandsawablackplumed
hearse.Thegatebelowopenedandshut,andIcreptshakingtomydoorandboltedit,butIknew
nobolts,nolocks,couldkeepthatcreatureoutwhowascomingfortheYellowSign.AndnowI
heardhimmovingverysoftlyalongthehall.Nowhewasatthedoor,andtheboltsrottedathis
touch.Nowhehadentered.WitheyesstartingfrommyheadIpeeredintothedarkness,butwhen
hecameintotheroomIdidnotseehim.ItwasonlywhenIfelthimenvelopemeinhiscoldsoft
graspthatIcriedoutandstruggledwithdeadlyfury,butmyhandswereuselessandhetorethe
onyxclaspfrommycoatandstruckmefullintheface. 2
emergence of this peculiarly modern interdiction of death specifically to the postbellum era, which bore witness to the birth of the death
industry.4 During the Civil War, a doctor by the name of Thomas Holmes claimed to have embalmed thousands of fallen soldiers. Because
most Civil War battles were fought on Southern land, the practice of embalming allowed for the preservation and repatriation of the bodies of
fallen Union soldiers. Following the wartime emergence of embalming, Abraham Lincoln became the first U.S. president to have his body
embalmed. Lincolns body, as is well known, was paraded before thousands of mourning citizens on a long, cross-country journey from
Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois. As Laderman notes, the parading of Lincolns body ensured that embalmingan unacceptable
funeral industry, The American Way of Death (1963), the undertaker put[s] on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death . . .
play[s] no part whatsoever. . . . He and his team. . . score an upset victory over death.5 While this study accords with the claim that American
culture disavows mortality, I do not argue for any simple reversal of this interdiction with an aim toward affirming finitude per se. If death is
beyond our experience (as Heidegger among others has observed), if I am ultimately absent from my own death, then strictly speaking
there is nothing for me to recognize or avow. Yet dying is something that I do every day. Indeed, it might be more accurate to say that
the disavowal of
dying often has violent political and social consequences. Noting the
wartime imperative to limit our casualties, for instance, Bauman remarks that the
price of that limiting is multiplying the dead on the other side of the
battleline (34). Drawing from Freuds claim that, at bottom no one believes in his own death, Bauman argues that death
is socially managed by securing the immortality of the few
through the mortalization of others (35, his emphasis).8 The belief in my selfto taking medications to prevent or treat illness, evidences this disavowal. For Bauman, however,
That Americanist literary criticism on the subject of mortality remains implicated in the larger
cultural disavowal of dying suggests that we ought to reassess our critical
energies, particularly as these powers are enlisted to address how American
political ideology produces the death of racial and sexual others.
Indeed, I would argue that such criticism remains investeddespite all claims to the
contraryin an American exceptionalist project.13 American
exceptionalism names, in part, a fetishization of novelty and futurity that initially
defined America against an ostensibly decaying and moribund Europe. As David Noble has argued, the
doctrine of exceptionalism excluded America from the human experience of birth, death, and rebirth by figuring Europe in terms of time and
America in terms of timeless space.14 If, as George Berkeley put it, America is times noblest offspring, history gives birth to its final
norm among humans, durability may be attained only as an exception (67, his emphasis).
The thesis, however, also reveals how this logic of legal fictions might seem odd: why would the law not simply allow practices of assisted
dying in order to preserve the immune society per se? It presents a certain paradox: on the one hand the neoliberal rationality might be better
served if it were to allow the subject, framed as a dependent and burden on other immune persons and immune society (i.e. on the
immunization of other subjects, and on the immunization of the totality) to die; after all, these subjects are said to interfere with the operation
of neoliberalism that demands all subjects are individualized and do not impose on the freedom of other individual subjects. On the other hand
neoliberal rationality seems committed to maintaining the unit of the individual and
closing off this individual from the intrusion and interference of
others, so the act of assisted death becomes impossible. I argue that, to date, a neoliberal
the
political rationality has dealt with this problem as best it can by drawing on or creating concepts that allow some forms of assisted death
(passive euthanasia, palliative sedation) only if they can be framed in a way that comports with its logic: these acts are rationalized through
the use of concepts that feed the legal fiction of the immune person. For instance, the law will draw on the concept of inviolability to create the
fiction of the immune person that will license passive euthanasia as an omission and as a form of letting die that comports with the
neoliberal norm of non-interference. Arguably the law has yet to find a way to sustain the fiction of the immune person and immune society
that would allow the acts of assisted death that current appellants have aimed for; this, however, might not be impossible. The intent of the
particular emphasis on the legal decisions and the arguments put forth from appellants to
is not one that affirms assisted dying per se: it does not support outright a liberal call for a reversal of the current legal decisions in favor of
problem of assisted dying as a problem of an individualistic and closed-off political ethos, it also frames an affirmative politics as a prospect for
a more communal and open political ethos. Speaking of assisted dying as a prospect for community in the affirmative sense does not mean
imposing another, albeit different, dogmatic politics, this time replacing a neoliberal individualism with a form of communitarianism. Rather, it
in state legislatures and in repeated, particularized litigation. Although it is possible to refract all of these opinions through this single lens, to
view all of the concurrences as if they reflected the calm rhetoric that Justice Souter displayed, this measured reading would miss something
dissonant that. can be detected in all of these opinions, Souter's included.
of the Justices' opinions-the incoherence of Stevens' assertion that the statutes were not challenged as applied and
his correspondingly puzzling effort to present his dissent as a concurrence; the blatant factual errors about
legal barriers to pain palliation in O'Connor's opinion, which Breyer virtually acknowledged as he joined with
her; the muffled, cryptic character of Ginsburg's short concurrence "substantially" agreeing with O'Connor, but not enough to join her opinion
or follow her in joining Rehnquist; the misleading designation of Rehnquist's opinion as speaking for a Court majority though O'Connor's fifth
something equally disordered about the isolation of each of them from one another, about their inability or unwillingness to find a common
approach or vocabulary. This incoherence was demonstrated most graphically by Chief Justice Rehnquist's appendage of his final footnotes
claiming that constitutional issues remained open notwithstanding the patent intent in the text of his opinion to close off every conceivable
have arisen from the Justices' conception of the conventional imperatives of the judicial role, that judges are supposed to decide controversies
by reflecting on the close similarities between the assisted suicide cases and the behavior of the Justices in the death penalty cases beginning
in the 1970s. Especially in the initial death penalty cases, there is an erratic and almost willfully incoherent quality to the Justices' conduct,
terms with it in ways that offer some suggestive predictions for the future developments in the jurisprudence of assisted suicide.
Thetimehadcome,thepeopleshouldknowthesonofHastur,andthewholeworldbowtothe
blackstarswhichhangintheskyoverCarcosa. 3
NowIamcalm,buttrulythereisnomoretotell:theincidentendswhereitbeganin
darknessandindoubt.
Yes,Iamagainincontrolofmyself:thecaptainofmysoul.Butthatisnotrespite;itis
anotherstageandphaseofexpiation.Mypenance,constantindegree,ismutableinkind:oneof
itsvariantsistranquillity.Afterall,itisonlyalifesentence.ToHellforlifethatisafoolish
penalty:theculpritchoosesthedurationofhispunishment.Todaymytermexpires.
Toeachandall,thepeacethatwasnotmine. 4
(Charles et al, A Model State Act to Authorize and Regulate Physician-Assisted Suicide, Boston College
Law School Faculty Papers, 12-1-96, Accessed May 6, 2015)//AD
Laws that deprive persons of access to physician-assisted sui-cide have been challenged
recently on constitutional grounds in federal and state courts in several jurisdictions.24 We feel that a preferable way to
establish a right to physician-assisted suicide is to make this option
available to persons through explicit statutory authorization. Even if
laws restricting assisted suicide are struck down, laws or regulations
will be necessary to provide oversight and protection against abuse.25
Our statutory approach permits the careful development of procedures
necessary to limit abuse. A statute also more clearly requires and
establishes the public support that should exist for the practice
before it is made legally available. Commentators have argued that
there is no need for legislation in states where assisted suicide is
not specifically outlawed by statute, because physicians in those
states may legally provide patients with means of suicide or, in any
event, need not fear prosecution for doing so.26 Others have
maintained that to legal-ize physician-assisted suicide would make
suicide "too easy," opening the option to patients whose conditions do not warrant such an extreme measure and risking that it would be urged
on patients who do not want it.27 Some contend that legislation would impose onerous
regulations on the conduct of a procedure that already takes place when, in the judgment of the physician, the situation warrants
it.28 On the contrary, for the following reasons, we believe that society
and the medical profession would be better served by a statute that
expressly permits physician-assisted suicide under certain well-defined circumstances, rather
than by no law at all: First, in states that do not explicitly prohibit any form
of assisted suicide, the law's silence leaves physicians in serious
doubt concerning the legality of providing means of suicide to a patient,29 while in states that
do outlaw assisted suicide, phy-sicians must risk prosecution for a
felony in order to assist in a patient's suicide.3 As a result, patients
who seek means of dying are often denied assistance,3' and success in
finding a physician who will help may be a result of luck more than
of need. Second, physicians who now provide assistance in suicide
may be compelled by fear of prosecution to do so in secret,32 without
the opportunity to discuss the case fully and freely with col-leagues
or other professionals. In contrast, physicians have ac- cess to a variety of professional consultations, often including review by ethics
committees or consultants, in connection with other profoundly serious medical-ethical decisions.33 Third, physicians who now
provide assistance in suicide do so without any form of
accountability, procedures, requirements, or guidelines to assure
that the patient's request for assistance is competent, fully informed,
voluntary, and enduring and that the diagnosis and treatment options have
been confirmed and fully explained to the patient.
A fully informed request within the meaning of section 3(a)(3)(B) means that the patient
understands the medical options available and their consequences.
Section 4 requires the physician to discuss all medical treatments that
might improve the patient's condition or prognosis that are
practicably available, including treatment for pain, and their benefits and burdens; to offer the
patient the opportunity to consult with social workers about social
services that may improve his or her condition; and to advise the patient of
the options for ending his or her life and their benefits and burdens .
For a request to be fully informed, the patient must understand all of this information and make a reasoned decision to seek suicide. Section
3(a)(3)(B) is intended to ensure active decisionmaking by the patient; passive acquies-cence in the recommendations of others would not
patient's request be
voluntary, meaning that it is made independently, free from coercion
or undue influence. The patient may consider the suggestions and
recommendations of others, including the responsible physician, but the
patient's choice must be his or her own decision." Finally, section 3(a)(3)(D) requires that the patient's request be
enduring. Ideally, the patient will have discussed physician-assisted suicide with a number of individuals on multiple occa-sions. At a
minimum, however, the request must be stated to the responsible physician on
at least two occasions that are at least two weeks apart, without self-contradiction
constitute a fully informed and reasoned decision. Section 3(a)(3)(C) requires that the
during that interval. The two-week period is an attempt to balance the prevention of hasty decisionmaking against the prolonging of
unbearable suf-fering.
[Argument being refuted] Medicine would be transformed for the worse if doctors
public would become distrustful,
or if they would stop
striving as soon as it became inconvenient.
could legally help patients end their lives. The
Doubtless there are physicians who, by want of training or some psychological or moral defect,
lack the compassionate sensitivity to hear a demand for aid in dying and act on it with reluctance,
only after thorough investigation of the patients situation. Such physicians should not be
empowered to assist patients to die. I would propose that this power be
restricted to physicians whose primary training and profession is in
pain management and palliation: they are best equipped to ensure that reasonable alternatives
to euthanasia and suicide are exhausted. Further, patients appeals for assisted suicide should be scrutinized by the same
institutional ethics committees that already review requests for the suspension of life-sustaining technology as a
protection against patient confusion and relatives greed.
contain strong
safeguards and precise procedural requirements. Such de-tailed
To govern the practice in accordance with these principles, it is necessary that the statute
requirements will counter a common objection to making physicianassisted suicide legally permissible: the so-called "slippery slope"
argument.42 While it is not possible to guarantee that abuse and unjustified extension of the practice cannot or will not take place, we believe
extensive safeguards
protect the integrity of the medical profession and help ensure
that public trust in that integrity remains warranted.45 If the public is
to ask the medical profession to participate in physician-assisted
suicide, then strong safeguards are a reasonable cost for the public and patients to
ments that, when followed, offer the physician legal protection. Moreover, we concluded that
would both
bear. It would be a mistake, however, to think that procedural safe-guards do not come at a significant cost to the patient and to the physicianpatient relationship. At what will typically be an emo-tionally difficult time for the patient and family, unfamiliar third-party consultants,
evaluators, and witnesses must intrude into the physician-patient relationship. Patients and their families will often quite reasonably view the
procedures as a profound invasive.
while the move from the living body to the precarious body
begins to address the problem of finitude so largely absent from Butlers earlier work, her
tendency to reduce finitude to the problem of external threat and
violence does not awaken to the originary mourning that haunts all
bodies. Avowing mortality and mourning might not only forestall the
violent response to 9/11, but could also challenge the reduction of
Americas internal racial and sexual others to the liminal status of
social death. The construction of the Muslim other as always already
Hence,
Drawing attention to the concepts that emerge in legal cases on assisted dying and
how these concepts feed legal fictions to enunciate a neoliberal
ethos allows one to note how the law might operate differently. This thesis
had indicated how legal fictions, as fictions, are not immutable truths; they
are instead reflective of wider power-knowledge relations. Law
operates as a particular discourse and technology in which these
power-knowledge relations are realized. I also noted that one of the earlier scholars on legal
fictions, Bentham, had said that we ought to demystify laws fictions . I have claimed that as a
discourse and political technology, law does not simply create fictions independent of social norms: these are not simply laws fictions, but
perpetually seek ways of how not to be governed thus. One might suggest that one ought not blame law for its passivity. Why should one
expect law to deconstruct social norms? At least at present one might argue that
on the basis of this rationality: it unwittingly (i.e. by effect)
concepts and legal fictions. In short, law is not divorced from the social norms it brings into effect (Golder &
Fitzpatrick, 2009). Despite the current passivity of law, this does not mean
that law cannot take on a more critical role: law might indeed be a
conduit of a political rationality, but law can also become a space for
critique (Golder & Fitzpatrick, 2009). Law, and especially case law that is judge-made and spends time covering various positions on
subject matter from witness statements, so-called experts, and even scholarly work on the topic, can provide a productive space to hold
2009). This then forms the first part of my affirmative politics: case law must become a practice of critique that plays an active role in
deconstructing the social norms that bring appeals to bear and currently frame legal discussions and decisions. Cases would not make
decisions on the basis of a ratio decidendi but rather would consider appeals within the context of power-knowledge relations. For instance,
on board. The last chapter of this thesis most readily emphasized laws ignorance to social norms that underpin assisted dying cases. I argued
that the principle problem underpinning the question of assisted dying was the neoliberal ethos that perpetuated a social norm of
reinforced these norms when it did not challenge their basic assumptions about what life was worth living and what life was not worth living
but simply confirmed the fact that some lives are dependent and hopeless, while others have the prospect of being independent and
therefore not hopeless.
fight for improved autonomy for disabled people only when it relates to their ability to die. For a person with a disability, something as simple as being able to live outside
takes human interaction into account, does not assume the lone
rights-bearer as the ideal human, and emphasizes the mutual
vulnerability of embodied individuals. Scholarship from feminist
bioethics can be particularly helpful here. Suggesting the
inadequacy of traditional moral philosophy to describe human
interactions has been one of the major projects in feminist bioethics. Each of these three proposals
challenges the legitimacy of rights-based thinking as the basis for
ethical decision making in the context of disability. Attention to context has been an important
component of feminist bioethics for some time. As Susan Sherwin points out, in addition to its usefulness surrounding issues of disability, feminist ethics attention to
context is well suited to many problems in medical ethics where, because of the individualized nature of clinical practice, context is vitally important to ethical reasoning
(Sherwin 1989). A fundamental part of contextualizing all human lives is an attention to the importance of human relationships. Carol Gilligans canonical work outlining an
The ideal of the lone rightsbearer similarly makes possible ethical arguments that seem
outlandish when placed in the context of human relationships. One bioethicists recent book, which compares the moral status of congenitally severely
ethics of care points to the importance of relationships in ethical decision making (Gilligan 1984).
mentally retarded people to that of animals, is an example (McMahan 2002). In her rigorous and moving rebuttal, Kittay points out that, for all his meticulous
argumentation, the author pays little attention to the empirical realities of day-to-day life for those living with profound mental retardation (Kittay 2008, 137). Through her
personal experience as mother to a child with profound mental retardation, Kittay has a profound realization about the relative importance of her childs cognitive
capabilities and her relationship to her daughter, Sesha, as a parent: Sesha would never live a normal life. . . . The worst fear was that her handicap involved her
intellectual faculties. . . . Yet . . . it never even occurred to me to . . . think of her in any other terms than my own beloved child. She was my daughter. I was her mother.
That was fundamental. . . . We didnt yet realize how much she would teach us, but we already knew that we had learned something. That which we believed we valued,
what weIthought was at the center of humanity, the capacity for thought, for reason, was not it, not it at all. (Ibid., 138) Kittays realization that the capacity for reason
was not, as she previously believed at the center of humanity, is rigorously argued in her work, and her empirical descriptions based in her relational experience as a
beings is to listen to the voices of those who suffer. . . . These voices bespeak conditions of our own embodiment that most of us would rather forget our own vulnerability
Listening to that suffering with empathy, without objectification, and without turning away is a
fundamental part of the human experience. As Frank sees it, it is a moral imperative that can greatly
to (Frank 1997, 25).
enrich both those who tell and those who listen. He calls for a mutuality of listening, and writes, I hope to show that in listening for the other, we listen for ourselves.
makes the act of witnessing so powerful and so important for both listener and teller.