Tournament: DeMougeot Debates | Round: 4 | Opponent: Houston MT | Judge: Diamond, Kevin
Expanding Our Collective Conceptual Horizon Masahide T. Kato is a Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Hawai'i system. We are excited to have his input after his recent publication From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution, and Popular Culture (State Univ. of New York Press, 2007).

CS Some people say that this argument is out-dated and does not matter anymore .......the USFG is simply an effect of the biopolitical network that coordinates seemingly unrelated flows of capital, goods, information, services, labor, waste, etc for the profit maximization of transitional conglomerates? 

The affirmative’s depictions of a final, apocalyptic and imaginary “Nuclear War” are the means through which the First World justifies an ongoing extermination waged against indigenous peoples and the fourth world under the pretense of “nuclear testing”

Kato 93 (Masahide, “Nuclear Globalism: Traversing Rockets, Satellites, and Nuclear War via the Strategic Gaze”, Alternatives, 18:3 1993:Summer, pg. 347-349, IWren/JT)

Let us recall our earlier discussion about the critical historical conjuncture where the notion of "strategy" .....has established the unshakable authority of the imagery of nuclear catastrophe over the real nuclear catastrophe happening in the Fourth World and Indigenous Nations almost on a daily basis.

Any discussion of nuclear weapons must begin with an examination of collective identities. The State and all its policy makers institutionalize practices of nuclear discourse while often ignoring identity. Only an understanding of identity within the nuclear framework can allow eventual removal of the nuclear apparatus that is dooming survival and makes possible a system whereby the nuclear option will no longer be reproduced or deployed.

Nick Ritchie
Dr Nick Ritchie is a lecturer in international security at the University of York. His latest book is A Nuclear Weapons-Free World? Britain, Trident, and the Challenges Ahead, published by Palgrave in 2012 http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/International20Affairs/2010/86_2richie.pdf
International Affairs 86: 2, 2010

Intrinsic to this analytical framework is a critical examination of the core collective identites...........they are no longer percieved to require production and deployment of nuclear weapons.

Tournament: Augustana | Round: 3 | Opponent: UNI ES | Judge: Girouard, Mike
Laura Sells informs us of the negative consequences inextricably linked to ignoring how our own social  location is already implicated in the location of others. We must reject this false ontological configuration of politics  in order to begin successfully building coalitions

Laura Sells (Writer) “On Feminist Civility” 1997  http://www.voxygen.net/soapbox/femciv.htm

The second form of public speaking that threatens the feminist public forum is the practice of “not speaking for others........
collective action and coalition necessitate speaking for others.

Examination of our social location requires more than a simple disclaimer – this alienates others and reinforces the speakers position of privilege

Alcoff, 1992 Linda, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” Cultural Critique, 5-32.
We must also interrogate the bearing of our location..........may feel even more authorized to speak and be accorded more authority by his peers. 

Fiona Cambell explains that a person in a privileged speaking position have an ethical obligation to interrogate how that privilege functions within their method and what their relation to disadvantaged people are; a failure to do so is a flagrant denial of that privilege and is an act of complicity to systematically mislead, , Open Lecture Certificate IV in Community Services,Melton Campus, Victoria University of Technology Thursday November 4th 1997
So who am I - to speak, to be listened to? And why is it important to identify my speaking position?..........African American activist and academic Bell hooks asks us to decide where we ‘stand in the struggle’:

Tournament: Wichita | Round: Finals | Opponent: JCCC SW | Judge: Sternhagen, Fred Vardah, Scott Bunas, Shae
?Shanara Reid-Brinkley, Rhetoric PhD and Prof @ Pitt (THE HARSH REALITIES OF “ACTING BLACK”: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND STYLE, pg. 126)

Mitchell observes that the stance of the policymaker in debate comes with a “sense of detachment associated with the spectator posture.”.........perform themselves in debate, violating the more “objective” stance of the “policymaker” and require their opponents to do the same. 

Mainstream conceptions of fiat instill political apathy and rob students of their agency, creating a politically regressive dynamic. The same dynamic that runs our government and allows for structural violence to go unnoticed and ignored.
Mitchell, Gordon. 1995. (portion taken from essay: Reflexive Fiat: Incorporating the Outward Activist Turn Into Contest Strategy, pages 1-2.)
Most mainstream conceptions of fiat contain a common structural feature,.........this view of advocacy introduces a politically regressive dynamic into the academic debate process.