Theory

Disclosing the aff preround is key to having an educational

round. By not disclosing and not being on the wiki, the neg is
forced to be unprepared and this allows the debate to resort to
nothing more than the aff reading some crazy aff that the neg
cannot prepare for. Thats an independent voter
 t
Engagement is exclusively bilateral between governments
Kane, 8 US Marine Corps Major, thesis SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF OPERATIONAL STUDIES for
the USMC School of Advanced Warfighting (Brian, Comprehensive Engagement: A
Winning Strategy http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA504901) NSS =
National Security Strategy
Engagement strategies are not new. Since the end of the Cold War, engagement strategy has been called
comprehensive containment, conditional containment, conditional engagement, limited engagement, quid pro quo
engagement, congagement, unconditional engagement, and comprehensive engagement.8 As a result,
the Clinton
engagement strategy represents a conceptual fog in todays environment.9 However,
Administration attempted to dissipate this fog with the first post-Cold War, multi-
faceted definition proposed in its NSS, which stated that engagement strategy is: (1)
a broad based grand strategic orientation; (2) a specific approach to managing bilateral relations
with a target state through the unconditional provision of continuous concessions to
that state; (3) a bilateral policy characterized by the conditional provision of
concessions to a state; (4) a bilateral policy characterized by the broadening of
contacts in areas of mutual interest with a target state; and (5) a bilateral policy
characterized by the provision of technical assistance to facilitate economic and
political liberalization in a target state.10 This definition of engagement has
been the most successful historically.11

Violation the aff isnt bilateral because it operates in and

includes the African government which is trilateral cooperation

Standards
Limits They allow the inclusion of other institutions and could have the US and CH
cooperate in literally any country
Extra T At best, theyre extra T because they include African government. This
destroys limits because the US and CH could cooperate in literally any nation in the
world

T is an apriori voter for fairness, education, and jurisdiction

 --k
lo lng yu

xin sh tin

ju y shi

yu ln yun

l jng b

Western normative selective awareness on which the
international legal system is based causes imposition of
unwanted foreign aid and models onto the Others and
results in societal disruption and creates a framework in which
Western rule of law dominates the Orientworking within the
existing legal framework means endorsing a system whose
purpose is to ensure Western hegemony and to normalize
China through transplanting Western law
Nader 6 (Laura, award-winning anthropologist and in legal studies, PhD, prof of
anthropology at UC Berkeley, Promise or Plunder? A Past and Future Look at Law
and Development, The World Bank Legal Review: Law, Equity, and Development,
Volume 2, p. 87-113, 2006) KC
**edited for ableist language
In order to assess the promise of any modern law and development program, it is imperative that the foundational
ideas of development policies be clarified, no matter how distasteful it may be to practitioners. In other words, the
lens through which we view development must come under scrutiny, in particular, the use of law in the historical
expansion of Euro-American influence. Failure to scrutinize these foundational ideas dooms us to repeat the
mistakes of past centuries. The world is smaller now than it was during the first waves of colonialism, and rhetoric
and practice of law and development are now better known to its objects of attention. Similarly, failure to scrutinize
the object of development in the third and fourth worlds means that change is planned and implemented as if in a
vacuum. As this article will make clear, non-western legal systems are not of one color , nor are
they necessarily ideal. Prior to the appearance of centralized state judicial systems, local systems were in place that
allowed relatively easy access to forums for justice. If one traces the evolution of the plaintiff worldwide, however, it
becomes obvious that when state law is introduced, the state assumes the plaintiff role in criminal cases and the
real plaintiff becomes the victim. It is thus critical to understand how legal relations have changed with respect to
the development of modern nation states, especially with respect to legal change agents. The concept of
positional superiority put forth by Edward Said 1 to illuminate how European
scholars constructed an imagined East is useful here. In addition to the
ethnocentrism that characterized numerous Oriental scholars, there were power
differentials between Europe and the Orient . At the time, Europe was more powerful culturally, as
well as in every other way, than other cultures. It was, in a word, exceptional. European Orientalists
accordingly perceived their own societies as exceptional and, using binary logic,
deduced that non-western societies lacked what it took to follow the path towards a
more advanced, and assumedly just, level of development. Notions of positional
superiority or cultural superiority were coupled with eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century ideas about social evolution and progres s, with a strict linear
progression from savagery to barbarism to civilization. European statusseen as
the most evolvedwas expressed as the white mans burden to remake the world in
his own image.2 Both conceptspositional superiority and social evolutionstill
guide law and development efforts today, resulting in what international
law scholar Richard Falk has labeled normative blindness selective
awareness, the inability to understand that what we observe is a cultural
construct, not a given.3 A model, in which progress is linear and progressive, gives rise to the idea that
certain legal systems lack elements of better system s. This theory of lack and its implicit
comparison posits western cultural values as the desired norm and engenders the ideological
construction of a developing world where western rule of law is a key
ingredient for betterment. The historical story of this theory of lack is fairly straightforward,
especially if one examines recent law and development projects. It is a continual (now cyclical)
process in which the need for progress drives the need to improve others who
lack the key social characteristics of western culture. Legal missionaries, as James Gardner
called them,4 were thus sent to Asia and Africa in the 1950s and to Latin America in the 1960s. Ostensibly their
purpose was to encourage development along capitalist, liberal-democratic lines and forestall possible communist
infiltration. The persistence of a self-validating ideologyThe essential ideological belief of the legal
missionary effort was that introduction of the rule of law would facilitate democratic
reforms, economic development, and nation building. Of course, human rightssimultaneously
defined as universal, yet historically specific to the Westalso needed to be protected. Moreover, what other
cultures lacked in law, the West would provide through conscious transfer via culturally
unencumbered legal engineers. These engineers ascribed to a culturally unspecific vision of law as an instrument
Modern American legal models,
of development policies. There was little doubt or humility in this vision.
for example, would bring democracy to authoritarian states, regardless of their
dissonance with the legal models already in place . This a-cultural vision spawned an empirically
unassailable optimism among the legal missionaries. It was considered irrelevant that they often could not speak
the language and knew little else of the peoples and places to which they were sent: American legal models were
autonomous. Gardners critique cut to the core of the perceived altruism of these legal missionaries.5 He depicted
American legal assistance as a product of disconnect because the movement did not carry abroad the most
enduring and basic political foundations of American law and democracy: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Instead, modern economic law, including bankruptcy and contract doctrines, became the most common transplant.
The consequences were frequently unanticipated: some recipients were technicians of regressive change, others,
Concessions by
technicians of repressive change (i.e., apologists for one or another military dictatorship).
the countries that received legal assistance were, moreover, perceived as exhibiting
their faith in an inevitable, linear social evolution underpinned by law . The negative
consequences of this trajectory affected all parties concerned . The application of a theory of lack
was not only humiliating to people in other lands, but also had the effect of making
the West believe that it did not lack anything . One anthropologist has referred to this phenomenon
as false comparison: comparing the ideal here with the realities there. 6 Legal ethnocentrism has
recently even been classified as a form of legal orientalism. 7 Thus, the historic claim
made by many western observers that China lacks an indigenous tradition of law
displays western ignorance. After all, China boasts dynastic legal codes going back to
the Tang Dynasty (AD 618907), which were predominantly (and ironically) based on notions of legal
authoritarianism. Yet, despite vigorous efforts to debunk the idea that China is lacking in
law, scholars such as Thomas Stephens8 continue to argue that Chinese law is not
even worthy of the phrase jurisprudence . Idealization and the implicit lack of others Several
historical examples will be cited in this article to provide evidence of the continued use of an a-cultural notion of
lack grounded in false idealizations of non-western legal cultures. Weber was the first sociologist to develop an
explicit taxonomy of law that exemplified the character of Chinese and Islamic legal systems.9 Of special relevance
to the present, Weber claimed that Islam lacked rational law and rejected the possibility of Islamic jurisprudence.
Kadi (judge) opinions might be authoritative, but they varied from person to person, and were pronounced without
any statement of rational reasons. As Jedidiah Kroncke points out in his article, The Flexible Orientalism of Islamic
Law,10 Webers analysis has since been called intoquestion by numerous scholars,11 yet his characterization of
Islamic law remains relatively undisturbeda stagnation in scholarship that has serious consequences.12
Kroncke notes that an idealized western law becomes the evaluative standard
oblivious to peoples who have been radically impacted by colonialism, all of which plays into the hands of those
uncritical thinkers planning U.S. foreign policy in these Eastern lands, people who only hear irrationality,
illegitimate, unchanging, immorality.13 While idealizations have been operating for as long as other peoples have
been observed, it is always easier to create identity through opposition, especially from a perspective of relative
ignorance. Law stereotypes, however, are an impediment to understanding how law works, indeed, what law is.
Judith Shklar has observed that legal scholars tend to be so captivated by the ideal purposes of law that they think
about law only as it ought to be and not as it actually is.14 While the debate over the impact and utility of legal
realism continues in American law schools, this debate has had little lasting effect in the international arena.
Needless to say, nowhere are the issues of legal idealization more salient than in colonial or imperial conditions of
social and cultural disruption. normative
blindness selective awareness has
consequences. Societies are commonly disrupted as a result of
international aid. Resistance to this disruption sometimes evolves into violent
conflict, as in the period of African or Indian independence from colonialism,
because of the imposition of foreign law. Customs thought to be barbarous by the international
community may increase in incidence when the civilizing posture of foreigners is perceived as disrespectful. Such a
phenomenon could be seen in the treatment of sati (or suttee) in British India, where stigmatization of a marginal
Disbelief or cynicism about the
ritual caused the proliferation of its practice as a symbol of resistance.15
promises of international aid organizations arises from increasingly accessible
knowledge of the divergence between western social ideals and western realities , for
example, the increasing disparities in income in the United States, despite its modernized and developed
institutions. The single most important difference between the Euro-American colonial period and the present is
that the world is shrinking. Others can evaluate our promises by looking at real performance in the United States.
The basis of international lawespecially in the modern form
of human free trade, third world development, human rights,
environmental protectionis the exercise of Western
hegemony and draws a distinction between the Orient and the
West. Projecting western standards of international law is
aimed at normalizing China while ensuring Western
dominance.
Koskenniemi 11 (Martti, an international lawyer and a former Finnish diplomat.
Currently he is professor of International Law in the University of Helsinki and
Director of the Erik Castrn Institute of International Law and Human Rights, as well
as Centennial Professor at the Law Department of the London School of Economics,
Histories of International Law: Dealing with Eurocentrism, Treaty of the Utrecht
Chair, Universiteit Utreacht, aculteit Geesteswetenschappen,
http://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/219007) KC
When did this begin? Professional international law started in the 1860s as part of liberal entrenchment in
Europe as the clouds of nationalism, racism and socialism were rising. It began as a project of practical men,
aimed at
lawyers active in politics and government, and not out of philosophical contemplation. What they
was to civilize the behaviour of their nations, including in the colonies. They
included the Belgian professor Ernest Nys (1851-1920) who eventually became the first historian of the
new profession. Nys had taught legal history and jurisprudence at the Universit Libre de Brussel from 1885
to 6 1898 and was thereupon appointed to professorship in international law at that same university. In the opening
recounted the history of
chapters of his Le droit international, les principes, les thories, les faits, Nys
international law as part of the expansion of European civilization over the world. By
1904 there were forty-six states in the international community he wrote, of which 22 were European and 21
Nys accepted
American. The remaining three were Japan, Liberia and the Independent State of the Congo.
the division of humankind into civilized, barbarian and savage peoples and read the 1885
Act of Berlin as a powerful illustration of the will of the European powers to protect Africans and to advance their
material and spiritual well-being.3 In due course, he would vigorously defend the practices of his king, Lopold II of
the Belgians, in the Congo, against the accusations he attributed to commercially motivated interests in Britain .
Nys found the origins of international law in the European renaissance and its crystallization in
the Peace of Westphalia. Three great ideas had dominated history, he argued progress, with freedom
and the idea of humanity.5 With progress, Nys meant European modernity as he
saw it around himself, with freedom, liberation from the Catholic Church (he was a staunch
Protestant like most of the men of the new profession) and with humanity the view of all human
societies being linked in a universal community resembling todays Europe.
International law grew up from Christian debates on the just war, he wrote, and from inter-sovereign activities in
commerce, arbitration, and diplomacy. Hugo Grotius founded the science of international law by joining
humanism and secularism with definite abandonment of universal empire. 6 Nys confessed himself an admirer of
Englands liberties that for him meant civilization, secularism, humanism and the universal freedom of trade.
Together with the balance of power, these would form the basis of international order. 7 Later historians have
extended this narrative to the present. The long entries on the history of international law in the 1962 Wrterbuch
des Vlkerrechts prepared by the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg use the Peace of Westphalia as the definitive
break between the ancient origins and the time of European international law (1648-1815).8 The 19th century
then became that of the widening of European international 7 law.9 In the standard account, European hegemony
was broken only in the international institutions of the late 20th century, above all the United Nations.10 In
the 1960s, international law began to expand in the different humanitarian ,
economic and technical fields.11 This, we now read, has led from the political form of
statehood into some kind of universal existence , perhaps globalization, perhaps, as Wilhelm
Grewe, the author of the leading history of the field put it in 2000, into an uncertain oscillation
between international community and the hegemony of a single
superpower. 12 This familiar account of global modernity was first recounted among late-19th century
European elites. Today we meet it at institutions of higher learning everywhere; its point is to inculcate in
the members of the professional classes a certain manner of reflecting on the world
and on ones historical place in it. Cultural markers such as antiquity, the Renaissance or globalization
are as much part or it as are technical terms such as cannon-shot rule, Concert of Europe, or humanitarian
intervention. Though all such notions bear the marks of their European origin , they enable
lawyers from all over the world to communicate with each other by invoking widely shared historical associations
and a teleology in which an idealized Europe, coded as nationhood, capitalism,
modernity or rule of law, marks the horizon of its imagination. 13 II Nys
formalised the practice of writing the history of international law as an account of
Europes expansion to world dominance. The nonEuropean world appeared
occasionally in the form of infidel Turks or the Saracens, enemies at war or trade partners to Christian
Europe, or as the enigmatic world of China that refused to yield its secrets to European
diplomats. Late-19th jurists were not uncritical admirers of Europes colonial past. As Protestant liberals, they
attacked religious and imperial justifications for Europes expansion. But they were enthralled by what
they called civilization and sought to capture it within a narrative of
secularization, state-formation and economic modernity they witnessed at home .14
Despite attempts, however, they never succeeded in developing a working standard of civilization. Yet 8 they
used the language of civilization in order to mark out a cultural difference that seemed
palpable but did not lend itself to a detailed articulation. It allowed Europeans to make the
distinctions they needed without having to explain too much. After the Great War,
however, that somewhat discredited language was replaced by progressive sociology, modernization and
economic and technological development. In the 1960s, these languages were integrated into international law
itself.Now international law became a project of free trade, third world
development, human rights, environmental protection, fight against
impunity, and setting up international authority to protect vulnerable
populations. In the 21st century nternational law found its way home in a universal teleology of progressive
humanitarianism. European legal thought was always intensely teleological. Immanuel Kants 1784 Idea
for a Universal history with a Cosmopolitan Purpose not only sketches the future of humanity in terms
of a cosmopolitan existence under a world law, but assumes that to reach this goal
Europe will probably legislate eventually for all other continents .15 With political
economy, Kant contemporary Adam Smith canvassed a four-stage history of human societies that led from hunters
Europe would be
and shepherds to agriculturalists and finally to commerce.16 Whatever the starting-point,
international laws telos. 20th century lawyers have been more embarrassed to articulate the
normative goal of international law. The expression civilized nations appears still in the
Statute of the International Court of Justice where it was put in 1920 by the Belgian Baron Descamps one of the
defenders of King Lopolds practices in the Congo. But that reference is routinely exorcised as an anachronism.
now appears as a modernising project, a state-building project, a
International law
project for economic and technological development, for human rights protection,
for conserving natural resources and seeing to global security. 17 All of this now appears
factual, functional and scientific, as if without any cultural bias at all. For example, the historical section at the
beginning of Antonio Casseses recent textbook notes the while international law rules and principles [of the 19th
century] were the product of Western civilization and bore the imprint of Eurocentrism , the composition of the
world community has now changed radically: 9 ...at least at the normative level the international community is
becoming more integrated and what is even more important such values as human rights and the need to
promote development are increasingly permeating various sectors of international law that previously seemed
impervious to them.18 This view remains as much a teleological narrative as any it is a view that originates in
Europe but is ubiquitous in todays international law and institutions. This narrative depicts progress in terms of the
a unified international community emerging from functional differentiation and technical professionalism. It uses
languages whose native speakers come from universities, think-tanks and civil society institutions in Europe and the
United States. Viewing the shifts of vocabulary from the 16th century Spanish scholastics to good governance and
the war on terror, Tony Anghie concluded that whatever the contrasts and transitions imperialism is constant.19
In writing this, he was making the old point aboutEurope always imagining its values as universal
and its knowledge and science as not only valid for itself but for all. Whatever
generosity may be involved, the point is never only about good intentions. When Western speech
becomes universal, its native speakers the West will be running the show .20

Western imperialist and Orientalist discourse justify Western

interventionism, racism and colonialismThe Orient operates
uncannily, simultaneously fetishized and demonized to
advance the purposes of Western hegemony and exploitation
Zaidi-Jivraj 14 (Afroze, founder of the Lifting the Veil project, and masters in
religious studies at Univ of Birmingham, writes for Huffington Post, The Racist
Ideology of Orientalism and its Implications, The Lifting the Veil Project, 4/18/2014)
KC
In 1978, the publication of Edward Saids Orientalism resulted in a systematic dismantling of the academic
discipline bearing the same name. Since then, anyone who has read Saids seminal work will attest to the fact that
it causes a shift in perspective which is irrevocable, and so pervasive is the influence of Saids work that even those
who havent read it may have, at some point, used the word orientalist in the meaning intended by him. In the
academic context, Orientalism as a discipline was originally the study of Eastern, Islamic, or Arab nations and
cultures, and to some extent later morphed into what is now known as Area Studies; it is indeed where the
Oriental in the London School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) finds its origin. What made Saids
Orientalism, applying the theory of philosopher Michel Foucault to British and
contribution invaluable is that in
French colonial literature, Said demonstrated how discourse, i.e. the communicated word, played a
central role in the exercise of Western imperial power and colonial exploitation .
Examining works of British and French writers from c.17th to 20th Century CE, Said described how the need for
the West to negotiate the Orient was thus expressed in the literary representations
of all colonised/colonisable peoples and cultures . As an expression of the Western
imperialist mindset, these representations were inevitably misrepresentations,
depicting non-Western groups and cultures in a manner that was
inferiorised, mystified and exotified, thus providing moral and intellectual
justification for their subjugation. At the heart of Orientalism is a Eurocentrism
that allows judgment of everything non-Western from a Western perspectiv e, so that
the value of every foreign cultural practice, social norm, religious belief etc. is judged solely
from the position of the West and its presumed superiority over all else. Orientalism explains,
for instance, the continued demonisation of Eastern men who allegedly force their women to veil, and
simultaneously also explains the Western fascination with belly-dancing over all other expressions of Arab culture.
in the Orientalist imagination, the male is
These two phenomena are by no means unrelated
always violent, regressive, and opposed to Enlightened reasoning; the female is an
object of desire whose allure forever lies in her uncovering . Both are reductive
images which reflect not so much the reality of Oriental men and women as they do the Orientalists
need to place himself in a position of control over the Orient . Once we become aware of the
Orientalist perspective, its manifestations are not particularly difficult to identify, and they appear
everywhere. Jack Shaheens Reel Bad Arabs, and the film of the same name which was based on Shaheens
work, both explore the (Orientalist) depiction of Eastern/Arab males as morally redundant
sociopaths. This image continues in discussions and depictions of real-life individuals such as Abu
Hamza as well as fictional characters such as Homelands Abu Nazir. It is also glaringly obvious in films such as Zero
Dark Thirty, where the courageous white woman persists in her relentless pursuit of the evil bearded terrorist. The
Orientalist portrayal of women from Arab cultures also remains exotified and
unrealistic, whether we consider the bare midriff and harem pants worn by Disneys Jasmine, or the same
combined with token head covering for Jeannie in the 60s comedy I Dream of Jeannie. In the film Body of Lies the
character of Ayesha, first veiled and then unveiled, speaks again to the Orientalist fascination with Arab women.
This appropriation and misrepresentation is not limited to Arab culture either,
for the mechanism of control that is Orientalism merges in its racist imagination
Eastern cultures which are often distinct and diverse, combining all of
them into a monolithic amalgam conveniently referred to as the Orient . It
explains therefore not just stereotypical portrayals of Arab cultures and people, but those of Persian and South
Asian origin as well; take, for instance, the morally repugnant Persian king in 300, the controlling, backward
character of George in East is East or the curious, violent rituals in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. However,
while the representation of Eastern cultures remains problematic, when Said later reflected on the observations
made in his book of 1978 he made it clear that one of his primary concerns with modern-day
Orientalism was the way in which it continues to be deployed to provide
justification for Western imperialism. Centuries later, not much has changed. The
depiction of Palestinian youth as rocket-launching terrorists continues to be used to
justify Israeli occupation. The depiction of Saddam Hussain and Moammar Gaddafi as
crazed despots, and their nations as being incapable of implementing democracy
without Western assistance, is used to justify Western military intervention .The
depiction of the Taliban as backward fundamentalists continues to be used to justify
Western military presence in Afghanistan and Western interference in Afghani politics. Therefore
while Orientalism as a discipline may have been dismantled , the Orientalist approach to
controlling the Orient through skewed, exaggerated and racist
representations of it carries on to this day. The remedy for Orientalism, or rather the
inoculation against it, lies only in all free-thinking people becoming aware of its functions in everyday contexts, and
subsequently beginning to recognise Orientalism, as well as all aspects of the Orient, for what they truly are.

The alternative is a Asian American poetic of alterity the

reading of our poetic deconstructs western conceptions of
binarism that perpetuations violence and exclusion our
performance is one that risk not only our consciousness but
our bodies to eliminate otherness
Zhou 2006 (Xiaojing, Director of Ethnic Studies at the University of the Pacific,
"The Ethics & Poetics of Alterity in Asian American Poetry", University of Iowa Press
Iowa City, BEN)
The relationship between self and other entails both ethics and politics , as shown in the
work of seven contemporary Asian American poets. In their investigations of the ethical and political questions of
otherness, these poets demonstrate an intricate relationship among aesthetics, poetics, and politics, which is
embedded in a Levinasian ethics. Levinasian politics is the enactment of plurality, of multiplicity, states Simon
By enacting a political plurality
Critchley in arguing for a Levinasian politics of ethical difference (225).
and multiplicity through an ethics and poetics of alterity, contemporary Asian
American poets confront the relationship between American poetry and American
democracy. Whitman passionately asserted this relationship in Leaves of Grass in the midnineteenth century. At
the beginning of the twenty-first century, Robert Pinsky reemphasizes the same in his book Democracy, Culture and
the Voice of Poetry (2002). Refusing to regard the lyrical and the social as mutually
exclusive, Pinsky contends: Lyric poetry has been defined by the unity and concentration
of a solitary voice. . . . But the vocality of poetry, involving the minds energy as it
moves toward speech, and toward incantation, also involves the creation of something like
indeed, precisely like a social presence. The solitude of lyric, almost by the nature of
human solitude and the human voice, invokes a social presence (18). While emphasizing
the presence of the other(s) in terms of the lyric speakers audience, Pinsky adds something new to the
conventional definition of lyric poetry: Poetry, then, has roots in the moment when a voice
makes us alert to the presence of another or others. It has affinities with
all the ways a solitary voice, actual or virtual, imitates the presence of
others. Yet as a form of art it is deeply embedded in the single human
voice, in the solitary state that hears the other and sometimes recreates
that other (39). In developing a poetics of alterity that insists on confronting social injustice against the other
and exploring the ethics and aesthetics of otherness, Asian American poets demonstrate that their
transformation and displacement of the lyric I engage with broader issues than merely the poetic. Their poetry
and poetics call critical attention to the philosophical foundation of
binarized concepts of self and other, which underlie racism, sexism,
colonialism, and Orientalism. At the same time, by locating questions of otherness in language,
discourse, popular culture, and our everyday experience of encounters with the other(s), Asian American poets help
advance critical studies in race, gender, and culture, as well as in poetry. In discourses of feminism, cultural studies,
and postcolonial studies, the term otherness has been used, more often than not, in a negative sense, while
difference has taken on a positive connotation, even though otherness and difference are also used alternately.
Barbara Christian critiques forcefully the positioning of people of color as the historical other of the West (337).
Luce Irigaray in An Ethics of Sexual Difference points out that, the Other often stands in our tradition for product of
a hatred for the other. Not intended to be open to interpretation (112). Keenly aware of the fact that women have
been defined as the lesser other of men, the East has been represented as the inferior other of the West, and
people of color have been positioned as the subordinate other of whites, feminists of color and scholars of cultural
studies and postcolonial studies propose alternative ways for rearticulating otherness in terms of difference outside
binary schemes. Audre Lorde cautions against the erasure of differences among womens experience of oppression,
and argues for a new concept of differences as forces for change and as sources of womens strength and
creativity, rather than as causes for separation and suspicion (99). On a similar note, Gloria Anzalda offers an
alternative concept of difference which rejects binarism and embraces hybridity, ambivalence, and contradictions of
a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer, which is a consciousness of Borderlands (Borderlands
77). This new borderlands consciousness, Anzalda contends, seeks to break down the subject-object duality
that keeps her a prisoner (80). Like Lorde and Anzalda, Trinh T. Minh-ha points out the dangers of erasing
differences: Hegemony works at leveling out differences. . . . Uncovering this leveling of differences is, therefore,
resisting that very notion of difference which defined in the masters terms often resorts to the simplicity of
essence. Hence Trinh asserts the necessity for a reconceptualization of difference. Many of us still hold on to the
concept of difference not as a tool of creativity to question multiple forms of repression and dominance, but as a
tool of segregation, to exert power on the basis of racial and sexual essences. The apartheid type of difference
(Not You/Like You 372). Addressing difference from the critical perspectives of cultural studies, Rey Chow also
points out the persistence of binarism in maintaining a racialized power structure and hierarchy of culture. In her
book, Ethics After Idealism: Theory Culture Ethnicity Reading, Chow emphasizes the absolute necessity for
cultural difference to retain its critical and political impetus in the current intellectual climate of multiculturalism
which is intent on promoting a liberalist politics of recognition, one that is still largely a one-way street in the
form, for instance, of white culture recognizing non-white cultures only (13, 11). To break down binaries as such
and to dissolve their familiar coordinates, Homi Bhabha contends that the transformation of the objectified other
into a subject must entail a conceptual shift from cultural diversity as an epistemological object to cultural
difference as a process of signi- fication. This shift, Bhabha adds, opens up possibilities for other times of
cultural meaning . . . and other narrative spaces so that objectified others may be turned into subjects of their
history and experience. With this shift, the objectified others can also escape the fixity of binarism and occupy the
ambivalent Third Space of enunciations, which Bhabha considers the precondition for the articulation of cultural
Asian American poets mobilize more than the critical impetus of
difference (34, 178, 38).
cultural difference or the difference of race, gender, class, and sexuality. By
transforming the lyric I and the lyric voice, by challenging representation, and
denaturalizing language through a poetics of alterity, these poets compel a
rethinking of the politics and ethics of otherness, while turning difference into a
source of creativity and a form of resistance and critical intervention . Apart from the
particular differences of experience, identity, ideology, and aesthetics, Asian American poets insist on addressing
the Levinasian ethics of otherness or alterity in relation to subjectivity, language, knowledge, and representation.
Hencetheir poems radically reconceptualize not only the other, but also the
self outside binarized hierarchies of identities, and beyond Western
metaphysics. In addition, Asian American poets insistence on confronting the difference of race, gender,
class, ethnicity, and sexuality in their critical and creative engagement with feminist and poststructuralist theories
poses the kind of significant threat to the literary establishment which Chow speaks of with regard to cultural
studies: Cultural studies, by its dogged turns toward the other not only within language and text but also outside
language and text, in effect forces poststructuralist theory to confront the significance of race and with it the
histories of racial discrimination and racial exploitation that is repressed in poststructuralist theorys claim to
subversiveness and radicalism. By so doing, cultural studies challenges poststructuralist theorys own position as
the other of Europe, as the other within the European tradition. And this, I think, is cultural studies most
By
significant threat to the once avant-garde theorists who, like [Harold] Bloom, must literally junk it. (5)
refusing to elide social power relations in language and poetics, Asian American
poets disrupt the circular knowledge of the other, break the silence of the other, and
force literary criticism to confront the tendency of socially detached postmodern
poetics and poststructuralist discourses to continue the repression of the other by
replacing the autonomy of the Cartesian subject with the autonomy of the text. Most
importantly, in reconceptualizing the lyric I and rearticulating the other and its relation
to the self, Asian American poets pose a challenge to the disembodied and self-
sufficient lyric I a challenge that shakes the autonomous subject to its roots.
Conceived in terms of the Western metaphysical tradition, Levinas contends, the self cannot allow the otherness of
the other to challenge its sameness. Traditional Western philosophy is characterized by the thought of
beingthe thought of that which is meaningful, affirming itself against impression. This mode of a self-affirming
being, Levinas contends, is selfcentered and self-enclosed: One affirms the fact of remaining in oneself, returning
to oneself, positing oneself as a oneself, as the sense of the world, as the sense of life, as spirit. As if the meaningful
or the reasonable always came back to the event of the perseverance in existence, which finds its full expression in
the apparition of an I understood at the same time as an in-itself and a for-itself (Vocation of the Other IIRTB
105). Embedded in this primacy of being and concept of the self resides a potential threat, or animosity, with
regard to the other. Levinas asks: But within this priority of being, this insistence on the oneself, isnt there
something like a threat against all others, a war inherent in this affirmation of oneself? An atom which is closed unto
itself and which, after fission, physicists call confinement: hardness, cruelty, materiality in the physical sense of
the term shock and pure pressure in the guise of an exteriorization which would be the negation and
misrecognition of all alterity? (IIRTB 105). In contrast to this ontology of being-for-itself, Levinas proposes to posit
the priority of an irreducible alterity as the first principle of philosophical reflections on humanity. For him, the
question of the other seemed . . . to be anterior to the problem of ontology (IIRTB 106). In seeking to situate the
question of the other at least on the same level as the famous question of being, and insisting on the primordial
intellectual role of alterity (IIRTB 105) in the constitution of the self as subject and in the production of knowledge,
culture, and literature, Levinas also indirectly poses the question of the other in the formation of communities,
nations, and empires. Most important and most provocatively, Levinas relates the philosophical, aesthetic, and
ethical questions of the other to questions of social justice, and to the horror of the Holocaust. In his dedication of
one of his major works, Otherwise Than Being: Or Beyond Essence, Levinas writes in both English and Hebrew: To
the memory of those who were closest among the six million assassinated by the National Socialists, and of the
millions on millions of all confessions and all nations, victims of the same hatred of the other man, the same
antisemitism. While confronting the genocide of Jews, Levinass ethics of alterity enables us to think in terms
broader than the historical contexts of Hitlers regime by directing our attention to the social and cultural
The significance of Asian American poets
environment that made the Holocaust possible.
development of an ethics and poetics of alterity concerns much more than the
celebrated enrichment and wider creative possibilities of difference. Insisting on
speaking as the other, allowing the voices of the other and others to be heard, and
taking into account the alterity of the other in their poems, Asian American poets
such as Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, David Mura, Kimiko Hahn, Timothy Liu, John Yau, and Myung Mi Kim, among
re-frame the question of otherness raised by feminists, poststructuralists, and
others,
theorists of cultural studies and postcolonial studies, with its historical weight and
current exigency. Their exploration of otherness is not unrelated to Jewish writers investigation of Jews as the
other in Western culture. Edmond Jabss statements about what it means to insist on being the other will further
illuminate the significant ramifications of the ethics and poetics of alterity in Asian American poetry: To want to be
even at the risk of ones life the other, isnt that, priori, an unreasonable provocation? All the more so since
this other could hardly be integrated, or accepted as such directly. However, if the Jew persists in wanting to be
recognized in his difference that is to say as the other he does so first because he sees it as fundamental
progress and not only for himself as a victory over the selfs total intolerance. . . . It is a question of getting
For Asian American
the other accepted in his strangeness, in the sovereignty of his difference. (6263)
poets, then, to accept the others alterity as irreducible, and to insist on
being recognized as the other even at the risk of alienation, exclusion, or
marginalization, is an ethical and political act in poetry. As Jabs says of the necessity and
responsibility of poetry for humanity: To Adornos statement that after Auschwitz one can no longer write poetry,
inviting a global questioning of our culture, Im tempted to answer: yes, one can. And, furthermore, one has to.
One has to write out of that break, out of that unceasingly revived wound
(62). Poetry written out of that unceasingly revived wound has to take into account what Levinas calls the ethical
inviolability of the Other (TI195). It is by practicing the poetic as the ethical and political, without equating the
Asian American poets enact their social
poetic with the ethical or the political, that
responsibility and explore their artistic creativity . Their work suggests that insisting on
practicing an ethics and poetics of alterity is in some ways an effort to work
toward what Jabs has called a fundamental progress for humanity.

Only incorporation of representations can make sense of

political reality
Jourde 6 Ph.D., Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.A., Political
Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, B.Sc., Political Science, Universit de
Montral (Cedric, 2006, 1995 Hegemony or Empire?: The redefinition of US Power
under George W Bush, Ed. David and Grondin p. 182-3)
Relations between states are, at least in part, constructed upon representations.
Representations are interpretative prisms through which decision-makers make
sense of a political reality, through which they define and assign a subjective
value to the other states and non-state actors of the international system, and
through which they determine what are significant international political issues.2
For instance, officials of a given state will represent other states as 'allies', 'rivals', or simply 'insignificant', thus
assigning a subjective value to these states. Such subjective categorizations often derive from representations of
these states' domestic politics, which can for instance be perceived as 'unstable*, 'prosperous', or 'ethnically
divided'.It must be clear that representations are not objective or truthful depictions
of reality; rather they are subjective and political ways of seeing the world, making
certain things 'seen' by and significant for an actor while making other things
'unseen' and 'insignificant'.3 In other words, they are founded on each actor's and group of
actors' cognitive, cultural-social, and emotional standpoints . Being
fundamentally political, representations are the object of tense struggles and
tensions, as some actors or groups of actors can impose on others their own
representations of the world, of what they consider to be appropriate political orders, or appropriate
economic relations, while others may in turn accept, subvert or contest these representations.
Representations of a foreign political reality influence how decision-making actors
will act upon that reality. In other words, as subjective and politically infused
interpretations of reality, representations constrain and enable the policies that
decision-makers will adopt vis-a-vis other states; they limit the courses of action that
are politically thinkable and imaginable, making certain policies conceivable while
relegating other policies to the realm of the unthinkable .4 Accordingly, identifying how
a state represents another state or non-state actor helps to understand how and why
certain foreign policies have been adopted while other policies have been
excluded. To take a now famous example, if a transnational organization is represented as a group of 'freedom
fighters', such as the multi-national mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, then military cooperation is
conceivable with that organization; if on the other hand the same organization is represented as a 'terrorist
network', such as Al-Qaida, then military cooperation as a policy is simply not an option. In sum .
the way in
which one sees, interprets and imagines the 'other* delineates the course of action
one will adopt in order to deal with this 'other'.

Critique must come before policymaking

Korous 97, George Korous, Philosophy at Emory, 1997, Become What You Are, pp
22-25
The thought that inhabits critique is not bent on achieving quick and efficient
solutions. Nor is critique simply a means for some eventual action; for Foucault,
the distinction between theory and practice is shallow, as thought is a practice,
and practice is always informed by thought. Yet despite the close relationship between
thought and action, the practice of critique operates according to a mode of thought
quite different from the calculative thinking that drives technological practices. This other mode of
thinking is what Heidegger would call "meditative thought." Meditative thought is characterized by its
disengagement from the technological imperative to react. 14 This is not to say
that meditative thought does not result in action, but rather, thought is not
reducible to action, as if its only function were to usher in a solution : "thinking
does not become action only because some effect issues from it or
because it is applied" (LH 217). Thought has value in and of itself. It allows us to
take stock of our ontological situation. As Foucault explains, Thought is not what inhabits
a certain conduct and gives it its meaning; rather it is what allows one to step
back away from this way of acting or reacting, to present it to oneself as
an object of thought and question it as to its meaning, its conditions, its
goals. Thought is freedom in relation to what one does, the motion by which one
detaches oneself from it, and establishes it as an object, and reflects on it as a
problem. (PPP 388)15 Heidegger echoes these sentiments when he writes, "Reflection is the courage
to make the truth of our own presuppositions and the realm of our own goals into
the things that most deserve to be called into question. ,16 The calculative mode of
engaging the world is forever asking, "What should I do?"; it is bent on
producing immediate and practical solutions. Problems take on an urgency
that demand quick action, and calculative thought eschews the task of thinking as a
luxury that cannot be afforded. But as Heidegger points out, "All attempts to reckon
existing reality morphologically, psychologically, in terms of decline and loss, in
terms of fate, catastrophe and destruction, are merely technological behavior.
That behavior operates through the device of the enumerating of symptoms whose
standing-reserve can be increased to infinity and always varied anew " (T
48).The call for action already operates with the understanding that the
world is an ordered whole that can be manipulated as necessary to avoid
immanent danger. As long as reality is problematized as one crisis after the other,
action will always beat out thought as the preferred mode of engagement. For
Heidegger and Foucault both, this knee jerk sense of action is systemically destined to
produce nothing but more of the same. By failing to engage problems at the
level of thought, that is, the level at which the problem is understood as a
problem for thought, the imperative to act merely operates on superficial features
of reality, applying band-aids to wounds when the real injury is festering way
beneath the surface. The first step in overcoming the calculative understanding of reality is to
recognize that it is only one understanding among many. This is much more difficult than it might sound. First of all,
the calculative mode of revealing the world, Enframing, is something that conceals itself in the process of revealing
the world (QT 27). The mode of revealing is so pervasive that it is invisible to us, unless we reflect on it. When we
are mired in the concerns of the everyday, Enframing is not encountered, it is only lived. That is, as someone
thinking technologically, reality reveals itself to me as a series of objects. I am attuned to that objectness when I am
engaging with the world. Precisely because Enframing is not an object, but a mode of revealing, it itself will not
show up within my observational field. In order for me to confront technological thought for what it is, a way of
momentarily suspend my calculative mode of
revealing, I have to be prepared to
thinking and pursue ontological questions. Second, the continued successes of
technological thought blinds us to the fact that it is only an interpretation of reality
and not reality in itself. As Heidegger warns, "The approaching tide of technological
revolution in the atomic age could so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile
man that calculative thinking may someday come to be accepted and
practiced as the only way of thinking (DT 56). For every time that a scientific theory pans out,
or technological planning achieves desired ends, we are less capable of viewing technology as only one of many
different ways to reveal the world. Heidegger is not arguing that science is false or useless. In fact, he recognizes
that technological representations of reality often do allow us to make correct determinations about the world:"In a
similar way the unconcealment in accordance with which nature presents itself as a ceculable complex of the
effects of forces can indeed permit correct determinations; but precisely through these successes the danger can
remain that in the midst of all that is correct the true will withdraw" (QT 26).While it might be the case that a river
that can yield a calculable amount of hydropower, this does not mean that the river is, in its essence, a source of
energy. But for every power plant built on a river it becomes increasingly more difficult to appreciate that rivers are
not primarily stockpiles of potential energy waiting to be unleashed.
--case
 Relations
Turn-Trying to enforce a plan with the only reason being to
stop China US war is ultimately the root cause of those wars.
The problems with relations is how the US trying to know and
control China. Trying to solve relations without recognizing
China as different from the US cannot solve anything.

Relations disputes never escalate.

Gurtov 14 (Mel Gurtov is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State
University, also Editor-in-Chief of Asian Perspective, China-US Focus, March 10,
2014, "Back to the Cold War? The US-China Military Competition",
http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/back-to-the-cold-war-the-us-china-
military-competition/)
Nevertheless,the military side of US-China relations is not worry-free . Eminent PRC
and US security experts recently characterized the relationship as one of strategic
distrust. Mutual assurances, a multitude (around 90) of Track 1 dialogue groups, and a high level of
economic interdependence have not been sufficient to offset suspicions. Some of the
language used by influential people in both countries resembles Cold War rhetoric. Even those Chinese
specialists who value the relationship with the United States and say conflict would be disastrous also
believe the United States is the one country that stands in the way of Chinas full
rise to major-power status. Meantime, US leaders regularly assure China that they wish
it peace and prosperity, but feed Chinese anxieties by rebalancing forces in ways that
raise the specter of containment and by conditioning acceptance of China as a responsible stakeholder on
support of US policy preferences. Nationalism is fanning the fires in both countries :
China is determined to assert itself as a responsible great power on territorial and strategic issues, while the US is
equally determined to maintain its paramount position in the Pacific.These are not the ingredients for
confidence building. And confidence building is what is badly needed now. One piece of good news,
revealed at a US Naval Institute conference earlier this year, is that US-China military
engagement on security issues will increase 20 percent this year, and that
China will attend the RIMPAC exercises for the first time in 2014. This is occurring
despite concern among the navy brass about a China-Japan war, which might
trigger US involvement under its security treaty with Japan. More such military-to-military ties, both bilateral and
multilateral (with Japan and South Korea), are essential, in particular if they lead to a PRC-US code of conduct to
At the height of the US-
guard against further incidents at sea that might result in an exchange of fire.
USSR Cold War, both countries took steps to ensure that the competition
never again reached the stage of a nuclear showdown such as occurred over Cuba.
Today, US-China relations are far more developed at every level Tracks I, II, and
IIIthan was ever the case between Washington and Moscow. Nor have US-
China relations reached the stage of an expensive and dangerous arms race such as
bankrupted the USSR and permanently unbalanced the US budget. Both countries leaders need to stay
focused on the importance of the relationship while opportunities still exist to sustain deep cooperation on common
interests, such as restraining North Koreas and Irans nuclear ambitions, keeping the South China and East China
Seas disputes from turning violent, working together on peacekeeping missions and humanitarian assistance, and
agreeing to meaningful targets on carbon emissions before climate change becomes irreversible.
 Africa
Multilateral institutions serve as instruments of US neocolonial
power to impose Western rule-of-law on the lawless Orient
Ruskola 13 (Teemu, Professor of Law: Affiliated Faculty Member in Comparative
Literature; East Asian Studies; History; and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies,
Legal Orientalism : China, the United States, and Modern Law, Harvard University
Press, p. 203 207) | js
Having sketched the broad outlines of Chinese laws twentieth-century trajectory, let us turn to that of U.S. law,
especially in terms of Sino-U.S. relations. Given the unfortunate history of U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction in China,
how did American legal thought become an object of such admiration and
emulation? World War II was followed not only by the decolonization of formal empires but also by
the final disappearance of consular jurisdiction of the Oriental kind . The United States
surrendered its extraterritorial jurisdiction in China in 1943. (It held onto the last vestiges of its Barbary Treaties
until 1956, when it finally gave up extraterritorial privileges in Tangier, Morocco.) However, emerging from World
the United States could easily afford to see old forms of imperial
War II as a global superpower,
power vanish. In their place it built a new kind of international order that recognized
American hegemony without the considerable administrative and ideological costs
associated with formal territorial imperialism. As Kal Raustiala sums up the nature of Americas
leadership in the postWar world, It was predicated not on territorial control but on extraterritorial power and
presence. From this perspective, the century of U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction in China, together
with the Open Door policy of which it was an integral part, is better understood not simply as an institutional
relic of early modern European Ottoman relations that somehow found its way into the Far East and survived there
as a precursor of modern even postmodernforms
into the twentieth century. Rather, it becomes visible
of neocolonial power, predicated on legally protected freedom of trade without
formal territorial control. precisely the desire to extract economic profit from other
lands assuming administrative responsibility for them that underlay the notion of
free trade imperialism in the mid-Victorian era, which sought to realize the vision announced by Thomas
Babington Macauley in British India: To trade with civilised men is infinitely more profitable than to govern
in no way does trades freedom imply substantive equality among
savages. For
those trading. As Bertrand Russell observed in 1922, at the conclusion of his Chinese lecture tour, It is
quite possible to dominate China without infringing the principle of the Open Door. This
principle merely ensures that the domination everywhere shall be American, because America is the strongest
Raustiala identifies
Power financially and commercially. In his analysis of Americas post-War role,
three contemporary forms of extraterritorial power: the establishment of a global
network of military bases in other countries, the selective application of U.S. laws
extraterritorially, and the creation of a system of multilateral institutions that extend
American influence globally. It is illuminating to consider each in turn. In order to protect members of the
military stationed at U.S. bases overseas as well as military contractors and accompanying civilians, so-called
Status of Force Agreements (SOFAs) provide them with extraterritorial immunity. Collectively these agreements
represent a major extension of American law abroad, covering U.S. bases all around the globe; in 2007, the U.S.
military operated 823 facilities in thirty-nine countries. The SOFAs constitute the closest modern analogue to the
Unequal Treaties of old, as they provide a blanket exemption from local law civil and criminalto those under
the United States has extended the extraterritorial reach of its
their protection. At the same time
domestic legislation unilaterally, without even formal consent provided by treaties.
Claiming jurisdiction based on the extraterritorial effects of a persons actions (rather than merely the territorial
the United States has begun to regulate
location of the It was without British in turn person acting),
increasingly aggressively activities that take place outside the nations borders . The
extraterritorial enforcement of American law has been especially notable in securities regulation,
antitrust law, environmental law, anti-corruption legislation, and criminal lawforeign
 the most important means of extending the reach of
protests notwithstanding. Yet by far
American power has been the establishment of a set of multinational institutions
whose charters collectively make up the constitution of the world as we know it today: the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, and the United Nations. Under American leadership, these institutions ,
together with the World Trade Organization (WTO)the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Tradehave sought to reconstruct the world essentially in the image of the U nited States:
a global community of liberal-democratic states committed to free trade. (Importantly,
the promotion of democracy globally does not mean the promotion of global
democracy : the United States continues to insist on its exceptional status as an
international leader.) These post-War institutions have been so effective in harmonizing legal regimes across
the world that in many areas, especially ones pertaining to the economy, it would be largely redundant for the
the earlier regime of U.S. extraterritoriality
United States to assert its laws extraterritorially. Indeed,
in China, together with the U.S.-brokered Open Door policy, was in important ways
functionally similar to the WTO with the critical difference that Chinas participation in the WTO is
consensual. (China was neither consulted about nor did it consent to the Open Door, which was an
understanding by others regarding China, not a policy by China.) Both regimes are premised on respect for Chinas
as part of the Open
territorial integrity, with open and equal access to Chinese markets. As we have seen,
Door the United States and other Treaty Powers insisted on extraterritorial jurisdiction until
China modernized its legal system. Modernization, in turn, was shorthand for
adopting a legal system based on the Euro-American model that would in turn make
Western rights of extraterritoriality superfluous. In this regard, the WTO regime is even bolder,
insisting on obtaining directly what the Open Door sought only indirectly. As part of the price of
admission into the WTO in the first place, China had to agree to alter its legal institutions to
conform to North Atlantic standards. As the ideology of rule-of-law has become a key
component in the globalization of norms of free trade and liberal democracy , the World
Bank and the WTO count among its most dedicated adherents today. Yet the rule-of-law discourse today
remains one of contradictions, as before. When China entered the WTO in 2001, its
accession protocol was of record length and filled with unprecedented ad hoc
directives for the reorganization of Chinas economic and legal systems. Collectively,
these directives exceeded both quantitatively and qualitatively what had been
demanded of any other member of the WTO, including oth er so-called transition
economies. Ironically, in order to ensure that China comply with the requirements of
rule-of-law

, the WTO ignored its own constitutional rulesmuch as the U nited States suspended
the operation of the U.S. Constitution in excluding Chinese immigration in the nineteenth
century. While WTO rules are based on market economy assumptions, they do not legally require that member
states structure their political economies in a particular way. Chinas accession protocol, however, makes it an
international legal obligation for the PRC to convert to a market economy an extraordinary surrender of Chinas
singling out of China creates
freedom to structure its political economy. As Julia Ya Qin points out, the
different classes among the member-states of the organization and thus violates the WTOs
fundamental principle of nondiscrimination , while also contravening the organizations
overall commitment to a rule-based trading system. No doubt the sheer size of
Chinas economy was one major cause of Western anxiety about its WTO
membership, but equally importantly, now as before, China continues to be defined by
not-having-law, and as before, this means that China must be made lawful. As a goal, lawfulness is
surely defensible, but its defense still needs to be articulated. It is not simply selfevident, and it must take into
 What does it mean for the
account the historical and logical contradictions that it necessarily entails.
WTO and others to demand , possibly even impose, a regime of rule-of-law, even as
they suspend their own rules in dealing with China ? As an ideal, rule-of-law is far more attractive
than forcing China to open its markets for opium, yet that fact alone does not relieve its advocates from the burden
China
of a history where demands for law were often window dressings for other agendas. Indeed,
continues to occupy an unstable position in teleological schemas of U.S.-led legal
development. The Chinese economic and legal systems are today said to be in
transition, much in the same way as the post- Socialist states of Eastern Europe have been described by the
ever-growing academic subfield of transitologists. As Chapter 1 suggested, the unstated implication
of the seemingly innocuous notion of transition is that whatever distinctive forms China may
have adopted for now, those forms are ultimately not authentic. Until it has fully modernized,
China will remain in transit. Moreover, to the extent that we are not in transition, by implication we
have arrived at the ultimate destination: a (highly idealized) U.S.-style market
economy. Even if the nave evangelism of the Law and Development movement of the 1970s has receded, at
least in its overt form, it has been replaced with the ostensibly more generous assumption that China and the rest
of the world will, one day, simply catch up with the West ( ). Benign as this sounds, this developmental
model is only one recent example of neoHegelian evolutionary schemes in which China always furnishes a
the relationship
beginning to be improved on, in Haun Saussys phrase. It should be evident that
between the Chinese legal tradition and modernity cannot be simply a one-sided
affair, with the West providing the blueprint for a modern legal order and China
merely executing it.

Pandemic control on Africa, as said in the Liang 13 card, is literally

just the US attempt to control and colonize Africa. Liang says that
Disease is an issue and we can help but the that is literally just
the Wests way of trying to enforce their power and control.
The US involvement in Africa in the past has never been out of
good will, it has always been the US way to control and require
something out of Africa. Turns case, getting the US more involved
in Africa will worsen all other issues through the US trying to
control Africa through the excuse of healthcare.

Affirmatives use of the developmental discourse of

international law separates the West from the Orient and
draws lines between the developed and undeveloped
worlderases explanations not based off of Western
conception of the world and binarizes the world such that all
that is undesirable becomes characteristic of the Orient.
Beard 7 (Jennifer L., PhD, member of the Migration Review Tribunal and the
Refugee Review Tribunal from 2009 to 2014, prof of intl law at Univ of British
Columbia law, the Political Economy of Desire: International Law, Development and
the nation state, Glasshouse Books, 3/12/2007) KC
Public international law and socio-economic development both rest on the belief that individuals, and more
belatedly, peoples, are meant to live in circumstances that grant them certain rights and freedoms fundamental to
their humanity. To this end, international law seeks to provide peace and security, mechanisms of good
has
governance and the protection of human rights and freedoms. Likewise, the United Nations General Assembly
defined `development' as the 'multi-dimensional undertaking to achieve a higher
quality of life for all people' in the contexts of peace, the economy, environ-mental
protection, social justice and democracy. ' The nation state, another modern
concept, has established itself as an instrumental conduit of both international law
and development. Yet, while international law, development and the nation state may be
understood as instrumental to the process of improving human life, t he con-cept of development is
also used to describe the end state of that process. In this sense, the concept of development provides
modernity with a space of transcendence in these 'godless' times as well as a certain objectivity to inter-national
The concept of development sets out the objectives of
law and the nation state.
international law and the nation state by signifying the kind of world development
practitioners are working to achieve. In consequence, whatever 'development' means will
determine the ends of international law and the nation state and thus define
the roles of law and the state at the national or international level , as well as the
regulation of other subjects (usually defined by law) such as organisations, corporations or individuals.
The concept of development can be understood as transcendental in so far as its meaning extends beyond the
limits of ordinary experience. The transcendental element within the meaning of development concerns both a
material yearning for a higher quality of life by means of technical and economic progress as well as a non-material
and arguably numinous yearning for the fulfilment of an historical end. The transcendental element of devel-
opment is infinitely distant from the reality of the so-called 'developed' world, yet is essential to it. It is essential
the transcendental element of development is the central idea around which
because
an entire discourse of devel-opment takes place a discourse that identifies and
gives meaning to the `developed' world as such. In this respect, one might say that development is
represented only in its absence but functions as the origin of an entire dis-course and its effects.' One might argue
that development as transcendence is the beginning and the end of a development discourse but it is never
present, or conceivable except as an infinite series of continuous interpretations of, and effects on, human
Development as process, therefore, is neither natural nor
becoming that ultimately elusive definition.
self-fulfilling except perhaps as an industry of professionals: the lawyers, economists, politicians, bankers, activ-
ists, missionaries and the bureaucrats of international economic institutions, who act as conveyors of its discourse.
With these thoughts in mind, this book is written not in an attempt to find the meaning of development but to find
development is necessary as a concept
out how the discourse of develop-ment came to be, to find out why
in the act of dividing the world into one part said to be
and what logic is implicit
complete and authoritative and another said to be incomplete and flawe d.
In doing so, the book does not examine development as a particular set of economic and social practices but rather
as a metaphysical concept that pro-duces these practices within a particularly Christian dynamic dating
back to early and medieval times. It is suggested in this book that development is not only a metaphysical concept
Development names the peoples of 'the West' and thereby
but also a proper name.
separates them from 'most of the world'.3 To assign the concept of development to history
that is, to abandon or renounce the concept and what it represents would strip the West of its current identity
qua develop-ment and cause a break in a long chain of binary differences to which it is linked:
namely Christian/pagan, modern/primitive, civilised/barbaric, First World/Third World, North/South
and western/oriental. These binary differ-ences are each invested with the meanings of all the others in
the chain. As a consequence, this book is as much concerned with the notion of 'western' identity
as it is with the concept of development itself . The abandonment of concepts or identity is
always taking place, and although abandonment can be a mutual operation in the sense that a new identity must
always emerge from any confrontation with another identity (the Other), the abandonment of an identity is
nonetheless an extremely threatening and emotionally and/or physically violent process of change. Think, for
example, of the transformation taking place within nation states as their 'national identity' takes up the
multicultural immigration of people who challenge and eventually change that identity as well as the identity of its
`nationals'. These changes are extremely complex and strike at the heart of ethical debates about what is right and
wrong in human society. Since this book suggests that the definition of development (everything that gives it
distinctness, delineation, meaning) ought to be opened to the point that it can no longer be identified to the
extent that the West ought no longer call itself `developed' many readers will find this book confronta-tional. It is
important to keep in mind that the confrontation comes from understanding the arguments being made about
development; it does not come from the style in which the arguments are being put although readers not familiar
with critical philosophies will find some of the terminology new, unfamiliar or out of context. Those readers who are
able to acknowledge and consider what is being said, however, may rest assured in the knowledge that
confrontation is an invitation to transformation and, in that sense, development remains
comprehensible. In this book, it is argued that western identity is a relation of binaries that are
'thought and lived as if they expressed the true order of things '.4 If, indeed, western
identity has its own discursive expression of power , know-ledge and meaning that is
constituted around these binaries, then one must pursue this space as its own discourse in order to
understand how the dis-course of development erupted onto modernity's centre stage.' Development
discourse exists, arguably, as a frame that makes possible a resilient conti-
nuation of a western identity that trips along as 'a god who is dead [but] continues to resonate'.6
The developed nations merely stand in for an infinitely distant reality that will always exceed `men's imprisonment
to the earth'.? The point, put simply, is that western identity reverberates, is symbolised by, and made
manifest in, the more powerful element of particular binaries 'Christianity', 'civilisation', 'the West' to which the
binary of 'development' has been recently admitted. As each binary is threatened or faces deconstruc-tion, so too is
western identity threatened with the symbolic disintegration and fear-inducing meaninglessness that has been
discussed in relation to the abandonment of identity. This book is a study of these crises. The argument made in
this book is that the developed world that calls itself the West has positioned itself into a
space of transcendence at the global level since the discovery of the New World in the fifteenth
century. Yet, the developed world, like any idol, is an inadequate representation of tran-scendence itself. Once
named, the developed world merely reduces the concept of development to
predicative discourse in such a way that the idea remains always infinitely active
and unattainable; at once imaginable and yet unfathomable. The discourses of development that emerge
from develop-ment's predication are, at worst, a false eschatology, and at best, they offer humanity an instance of
the inadequacy of representation. Here lies the paradox. The idea of development as 'a bereaved
apprehen-sion' does not threaten the identity of the developed world it creates the identity.' The
incommensurability of development's transcendence plays an essential function by introducing the very element of
loss. This sense of loss, namely the inability to properly know and represent what development is, is transferred
from the concept of development itself into its 'weaker' oppo-sition: underdevelopment. Underdevelopment thus
fills the lack, appearing at development's very origin. In other words, we cannot represent development without the
binary of underdevelopment both concepts emerge from the other.The people with faith in the
discourses of development are thus allowed both to represent and dream of a
potential state of fulfilment, which is being kept from them by the i ncompetence of, and
lack (of prudence, technology, industry, law, etc.) in the peoples of the underdeveloped world.
Whatever the binary nature of development discourse chooses to locate in its
`weaker' side of underdevelopment is thus possessed of the causes of poverty,
exploitation and unequal redistribution of resources . The developed world, on the other hand,
possesses elements of global fulfilment, which is due to all people when the lack of the underdeveloped world is
fulfilled. In short, humanity is left with faith in development, and, ipso facto, faith in the developed world. The term
'faith' here is used deliberately to evoke the sense of a people seeking to erase the torture of crisis brought on by
the loss of, and alienation from, 'mere being' with a 'certain community of meaning'.9 Development discourse
assigns the unfathomable a name, and puts an end to angst-inducing uncertainty.' This then is what is gained by
placing the quality of life of all people into a developmental framework that exceeds and resists language: the
capacity of the developed world to imagine itself and its place in human history through its continued encounter
with an underdeveloped world from which it has, figuratively speaking, emerged. It should be clear to the reader
that the argument here is not merely that development is used as a convenient name for a particular socio-
economic status. Rather,
the concern is with how development makes sense of the lives of
`most of the world'," and thus erases other explanations that are perhaps not based
on current conceptions of progress, temporality, geography, space, religion, gender
or race, etc. Needless to say, development discourse repre-sents a very real and
effective form of imperial power that is concerned with the maintenance of a particular
(western) version of subjectivity through its appropriation of history by means of a continuous and
`hazardous play of dominations' that have hardened the discourse of development into 'an unalterable form in the
long baking process of history'." It is not being suggested that the reality of the present as it is would cease to be if
development were not to exist as a concept. And yet,
if the concept of development were to be
taken from our lexicon, our conception and use of terms such as 'the North', 'the First World', 'the
industrialised nations' or `the West' might be fundamentally different. All of these terms are closely
associated with particular social and economic divisions in and of the world. Importantly, it is the developed world
that claims for itself that space, which exists only as transcendence but functions as meaning. In other words,
coun-tries claim to be `developed' even if the concept is beyond definition (that is transcendent)
because it is a concept that is relied upon by international society in order
to regulate and legitimise (that is, give meaning to) social actions. In order to explore the
premise that there exists such a thing as western identity, and here 'identity' means the conversion of difference
into a belittled Otherness through the construction of binaries, the book relies on a wide range of sources from
different cultures, historical periods and disciplines. In doing so, this book cannot assume the scholarship of many
critical post-colonial theorists working in the area of law and development, or in development studies more
generally, who think of the `underdeveloped' and/ or the `developed' worlds as an outcome of the Imperial era."
The story of development is part of a much older struggle by Christian peoples of western Europe that has any one
of many possible origins 'numberless beginnings, whose faint traces and hints of colour are readily seen by the
historical eye'." This book does not recite a history of a 'western' identity or its 'develop-ment', which tells the
reader about the improvement of human life through technical and economic progress that begins in a heart of
darkness and ends in some Hegelian civil society. That kind of history is merely a narrative told within development
discourse, an 'error we call truth'." The chapters of this book are to be read as representative of what Ernesto
Laclau refers to as theoretical 'interventions', 'which shed mutual light on each other, not in terms of the
progression of an argument, but of what we could call the reiteration of the latter in different discursive contexts'.'
In this book, each chapter is a reiteration of a discontinuity in the history of 'the West' that has significance for the
emergence of a development discourse in the twentieth century. The purpose of identifying these discontinuities is
to articulate cer-tain contingent social constructions that attempt to fill the loss of meaning created when there is a
loss of faith in the symbolic reality of a particular identification of the West 'as it was' so to speak, and the effect
this has on emergent western identities. These identities include both the 'West' as a body and the individuals
within it. Both bodies are 'totally imprinted by history'." The bodies of particular interest are national and individual
in nature. The national is interesting in so far as the nation state is the subject of develop-ment's discourse as well
as the instrument meant to bring development to the individual. The individual, in turn, is interesting because it has
emerged in the West in formation with nation and national development.