Butler Link Cards to Fem Affs

Calls to help women or advance feminist notions are

self-defeating. By eliminating the fluidity of identity and
sex the affirmative locks the individual into a power
structure produced by juridical formation of language and
politics. This makes the identity a part of gender as a
stable structure re-enforcing heternormative thought and
disempowering movements it seeks to help.
Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and
Comparative Literature at Berkeley, 99 [Butler, Judith. Gender
Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity pp. 3-5]
For the most part, feminist theory has assumed that there is some existing
identity, understood through the category of women , who not only initiates feminist
interests and goals within discourse, but consti- tutes the subject for whom political representation is
pursued. But pol- itics and representation are controversial terms. On the one hand, representation serves
as the operative term within a political process that seeks to extend visibility and legitimacy to women as
political subjects; on the other hand, representation is the normative function of a language which is said

For feminist
theory, the development of a language that fully or adequately represents
women has seemed necessary to foster the political visibility of women. This
has seemed obviously important considering the perva- sive cultural
condition in which womens lives were either misrepre- sented or not
represented at all. Recently, this prevailing conception of the relation between
femi- nist theory and politics has come under challenge from within feminist
discourse. The very subject of women is no longer understood in stable or
abiding terms. There is a great deal of material that not only ques- tions the viability of the subject
either to reveal or to distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women.

as the ultimate candidate for repre- sentation or, indeed, liberation, but there is very little agreement after

The domains of
political and linguistic representation set out in advance the criterion by
which subjects themselves are formed, with the result that representation is
extended only to what can be acknowledged as a subject . In other words, the
qualifications for being a subject must first be met before representation can
be extended. Foucault points out that juridical systems of power produce the sub- jects they
all on what it is that constitutes, or ought to constitute, the category of women.

subsequently come to represent.1 Juridical notions of power appear to regulate political life in purely
negative termsthat is, through the limitation, prohibition, regulation, control, and even pro- tection of
individuals related to that political structure through the contingent and retractable operation of choice.
But the subjects regu- lated by such structures are, by virtue of being subjected to them, formed, defined,

the
juridical formation of language and politics that represents women as the
subject of fem- inism is itself a discursive formation and effect of a given
version of representational politics. And the feminist subject turns out to be dis- cursively
and reproduced in accordance with the requirements of those structures. If this analysis is right, then

constituted by the very political system that is supposed to facilitate its emancipation. This becomes
politically problematic if that system can be shown to produce gendered subjects along a differential axis
of domination or to produce subjects who are presumed to be masculine. In such cases, an uncritical

The question
of the subject is crucial for politics, and for feminist politics in particular,
appeal to such a system for the emancipation of women will be clearly self-defeating.

because juridical subjects are invariably produced through certain

exclusionary practices that do not show once the juridical structure of
politics has been established. In other words, the political construction of the
subject proceeds with certain legitimating and exclusionary aims , and these
political operations are effectively concealed and naturalized by a political analysis that takes juridical

Juridical power inevitably produces what it claims

merely to represent; hence, politics must be concerned with this dual function
of power: the juridical and the productive. In effect, the law produces and
then conceals the notion of a subject before the law 2 in order to invoke that
structures as their foundation.

discursive formation as a natu- ralized foundational premise that subsequently legitimates that laws own

It is not enough to inquire into how women might become

more fully represented in language and politics. Feminist critique ought also
to understand how the category of women, the subject of feminism, is
produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which
emancipation is sought. Indeed, the question of women as the subject of feminism raises the
regulatory hegemony.

possibility that there may not be a subject who stands before the law, awaiting representation in or by
the law. Perhaps the subject, as well as the invocation of a temporal before, is constituted by the law as

The prevailing assumption of the

ontological integrity of the subject before the law might be understood as the
contemporary trace of the state of nature hypothesis, that foundationalist
fable constitutive of the juridical struc- tures of classical liberalism. The
performative invocation of a nonhis- torical before becomes the
foundational premise that guarantees a presocial ontology of persons who
freely consent to be governed and, thereby, constitute the legitimacy of the
social contract.
the fictive foundation of its own claim to legitimacy.

Their assumption that gender is universal and all women

experience patriarchy the same is flawed, exclusionary,
and turns case.
Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and
Comparative Literature at Berkeley, 99 [Butler, Judith. Gender
Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity pp. 6-8] Edited for
ableism
Apart from the foundationalist fictions that support the notion of the subject, however ,

there is the
political problem that feminism encounters in the assumption that the term
women denotes a common identity. Rather than a stable signifier that
commands the assent of those whom it purports to describe and represent,
women, even in the plural, has become a troublesome term, a site of contest,
a cause for [fear] anxiety. As Denise Rileys title suggests, Am I That Name? is a question
produced by the very possibility of the names multiple significations.3 If one is a woman, that is surely
not all one is; the term fails to be exhaustive, not because a pregendered person transcends the specific

gender is not always constituted coherently or

consistently in different historical contexts, and because gender inter- sects
with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discur- sively
constituted identities. As a result, it becomes impossible to separate out
gender from the political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably
produced and maintained. The political assumption that there must be a
paraphernalia of its gender, but because

universal basis for feminism, one which must be found in an identity assumed
to exist cross-culturally, often accompanies the notion that the oppression of
women has some singular form discernible in the universal or hege- monic
structure of patriarchy or masculine domination. The notion of a universal patriarchy has
been widely criticized in recent years for its failure to account for the workings of gender oppression in the
con- crete cultural contexts in which it exists. Where those various contexts have been consulted within
such theories, it has been to find exam- ples or illustrations of a universal principle that is assumed
from the start. That form of feminist theorizing has come under criticism for its efforts to colonize and
appropriate non-Western cultures to support highly Western notions of oppression, but because they tend
as well to construct a Third World or even an Orient in which gender oppres- sion is subtly explained as

The urgency of feminism to establish a

universal status for patriarchy in order to strengthen the appearance of
feminisms own claims to be representative has occasionally motivated the
shortcut to a categorial or fictive universality of the structure of domination,
held to produce womens common subjugated experience. Although the claim of
symptomatic of an essential, non-Western barbarism.

universal patriarchy no longer enjoys the kind of credibility it once did, the notion of a generally shared
concep- tion of women, the corollary to that framework, has been much more difficult to displace.
Certainly, there have been plenty of debates: Is there some commonality among women that preexists
their oppres- sion, or do women have a bond by virtue of their oppression alone? Is there a specificity to
womens cultures that is independent of their sub- ordination by hegemonic, masculinist cultures? Are the
specificity and integrity of womens cultural or linguistic practices always specified against and, hence,
within the terms of some more dominant cultural formation? If there is a region of the specifically
feminine, one that is both differentiated from the masculine as such and recognizable in its difference by
an unmarked and, hence, presumed universality of women? The masculine/feminine binary constitutes
not only the exclusive framework in which that specificity can be recognized, but in every other way the
specificity of the feminine is once again fully decontextualized and separated off analytically and
politically from the constitution of class, race, ethnicity, and other axes of power rela- tions that both

the
presumed universality and unity of the subject of feminism is effectively
undermined by the constraints of the representational discourse in which it
functions. Indeed, the premature insistence on a stable subject of feminism,
understood as a seamless cat- egory of women, inevitably generates multiple
refusals to accept the category. These domains of exclusion reveal the
coercive and regulatory consequences of that construction, even when the
construction has been elaborated for emancipatory purposes. Indeed, the
constitute identity and make the singular notion of identity a misnomer.4 My suggestion is that

fragmentation within feminism and the paradoxical opposition to feminism from women whom feminism
claims to represent suggest the necessary limits of identity politics. The suggestion that feminism can seek
wider representation for a subject that it itself constructs has the ironic conse- quence that feminist goals
risk failure by refusing to take account of the constitutive powers of their own representational claims. This
problem is not ameliorated through an appeal to the category of women for merely strategic purposes,
for strategies always have meanings that exceed the purposes for which they are intended. In this case,

By conforming to a
requirement of representational politics that feminism articulate a stable
subject, feminism thus opens itself to charges of gross misrepresentation.
exclusion itself might qualify as such an unintended yet consequential meaning.

Punctuation Plan Flaw

a. Plan Flaw: The Affirmative's plan text does not end with a period.
b. Voting Issue:
1. Punctuation Is Independently Key to Real-World Communication
Skills.

Partridge 2005: (You Have A Point There: A Guide To Punctuation And Its
Allies. Eric Partridge, New Zealand Based Lexicographer of The English
Language. Originally Published In 1953, eBook Edition 2005.)
Punctuation is not something apart from style, which , after all, means no more
than the way in which a person writes, whether badly or well; punctuation does form part of
English in its practical aspects, a part far more important than most of us realize. The ability to write
at least a letter is extremely important; and if you think that you can write an
even passable letter without knowing how to use one and preferably two
other stops (comma and semicolon), you are making a grave mistake. To go further:
if you think you can write a good business report or an essay or an article,
without knowing also how to employ at least two of the remaining stopsthe
colon, the dash, and parenthesesthen you are probably over-estimating
your own abilities as a writer and the intelligence of your readers .
Punctuation is not something that, like a best suit of clothes, you put on for
special occasions. Punctuation is not something you add to writing, even the humblest: it forms an
inescapable part of writing. To change the metaphor, punctuation might be compared to the
railway line along which the train (composition, style, writing) must travel if it isnt to
run away with its driver (the writer of even a note to the butcher). To revert to the period
or full stop. It ends a sentence, i.e. a statement, i.e. the expression of a selfcontained or complete thought. So, of course, does a question mark or an
exclamation mark. To avoid illogical anticipation, however, this implication of a period being
somehow contained in either of those two supplementary marks will be treated in Chapter 9.

2. No solvency; they've had months to write the plan text, and it isn't
even a real sentence. Proves the plan is incomprehensible nonsense
that no one would understand. Vote Negative on presumption.

China Says No - Climate Coop

Policies
China will say no: they already said they wouldnt stop
their island building activities when asked by the US
DNA, world report website and quotes the spokesperson of China, 5-312015, "China hits back at US over South China Sea remark," dna,
http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-china-hits-back-at-us-over-south-chinasea-remark-2090966
Day after the United States called for an 'immediate and lasting halt' to
China's land reclamation activities in the disputed areas of South China Sea,
Beijing has denied that its actions were 'out of step' with international rules
and issued a six-point response. Resorting to history to back China's sovereignty in the South China Sea,

spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that the nation did not require land
reclamation as justification. She also said that the construction work being
carried out on the Spratly islands was well within the Chinese sovereignty and
did not target any country, reported Xinhua. Instead, Chunying described China's actions
as being aimed at better serving regional countries in sailing, disaster relief and fishing in the area. Noting
that the code of conduct in the South China Sea should be negotiated between China and Association of

Beijing reminded the US that it had nothing to do

with the matter. The spokeswomen urged Washington to stick to its promise
of not taking sides in territorial disputes and stop making remarks that
hampered regional peace and stability and US-China relations.
South East Asian Nations (ASEAN),

AT: Predictable
Limits/Predictability
Mummification DA: Call for fairness and predictability
leads to slave morality and the destruction of creative
thoughtthis turns framework
Grimm 77 (Ruediger Hermann, art historian and Goethe scholar,
Nietzsche's Theory of Knowledge, ed. M. Montinari, W. Miiller-Lauter & H.
Wenzel, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pg. 30-33, Gender modified
Western logic and metaphysics have been traditionally founded upon a handful of principles
which were regarded as being self-evidently true , and therefore neither requiring nor admitting of any further proof40 One of
these principles we have already dealt with at some length, the notion that truth must be unchanging. Rather than further belabor the whole question of truth, we shall

reality (the will to power)

exists is an ever-changing chaos of power-quanta, continually
struggling with one another for hegemony. Nothing remains the same from
one instant to the next. Consequently there are no stable objects, no "identical
cases," no facts, and no order. Whatever order we see in the world, we
ourselves have projected into it. By itself, the world has no order : there is no intrinsically stable
"world order," no "nature." Yet metaphysics, logic, and language indeed, our whole
conceptual scheme is grounded in the assumption that there is such a stable order . Why? . .
now turn to Nietzsche's analysis of why it is that truth should be regarded as necessarily unchanging in the first place. Nietzsche's view of
is such that all that

die Annahme des seienden ist nothig, um denken und schliessen zu konnen : die Logik handhabt our Formeln fiir Gleichbleibendes deshalb ware diese Annahme noch ohne
Beweiskraft fiir die Reali tat : ,,das Seiende" gehort zu unserer Optik48 This can perhaps be best clarified by anticipating our discussion of Nietzsche's perspectivism. Even
if reality is a chaos of power-quanta, about which any statement is already an interpretation and "falsification," we nevertheless must assume some sort of order and

We
ourselves, as will to power, gain control over our environment by
"interpreting" it, by simplifying and adapting it to our requirements. Life itself is an ongoing process of
interpretation, a process of imposing a superficial order upon a chaotic reality.
continuity in order to function at all. But the assumption of order and continuity even if it is a necessary assumption is certainly not any sort of proof.

In Wahrheit ist Interpretation ein Mittel selbst, um Herr iiber etwas zu werden. (Der organische Prozess setzt fortwahrendes /nterpretieren voraus42 Thus we create for
ourselves a world in which we can live and function and further enhance and increase our will to power. Even

our perceptual apparatus is

not geared to gleaning "truth" from the objects of our experience. Rather, it arranges, structures, and interprets these objects so that
we can gain control over them and utilize them for our own ends. The "truth" about things is something we
ourselves have projected onto them purely for the purpose of furthering our
own power. Thus Nietzsche can say Wahrheit ist die Art von Irrthum, ohne welche eine bestimmte Art von lebendigen Wesen nicht leben konnte. Der Werth fiir
das Leben entscheidet zuletzt43. Thus the "truth" about reality is simply a variety of error, a convenient fiction which is nevertheless necessary for our maintenance . In
the last analysis it is not a question of "truth" at all, but rather, a matter of
which "fiction," which interpretation of reality best enables me to survive and
increase my power. In an absolute sense, the traditional standard of unchanging truth is no more true or false than Nietzsche's own. But on the
basis of Nietzsche's criterion for truth we can make a vital distinction. All statements about the truth or falsity of our
experiential world are functions of the will to power , and in this sense, all equally true (or false). The difference lies in the degree to
which any particular interpretation increases or decreases our power. The notion that truth is unchanging is the
interpretation of a comparatively weak will to power, which demands
that the world be simple, reliable, predictable, i. e. "true." Constant change,
ambiguity, contradiction, paradox, etc. are much more difficult to cope with, and
require a comparatively high degree of will to power to be organized (i. e. interpreted)
into a manageable environment. The ambiguous and contradictory the unknown is frightening and threatening. Therefore we have
constructed for ourselves a model of reality which is eminently "knowable,"
and consequently subject to our control. Pain and suffering have traditionally been held to stem from "ignorance" about

the way the world "really" is : the more predictable and reliable the world is, the less our chances are of suffering through error, of being unpleasantly surprised. However,

The demand that reality and truth

be stable, reliable, predictable, and conveniently at our disposal is a symptom of weakness. The
glossing over of the chaotic, contradictory, changing aspect of reality is the
sign of a will to power which must reduce the conflict and competition in the world to
a minimum. Yet resistance and competition are the very factors which enable any particular power-constellation to express itself and grow in power. As we
saw earlier, the will to power can only express itself by meeting resistance, and any
interpretation of reality which attempts to minimize these factors is profoundly
anti-life (since life is will to power). Furthermore, a person embodying a strong and vigorous will to
power will "interpret" the "threatening" aspect of the world the chaos, ambiguity,
contradiction, danger, etc. as stimuli, which continually offer [them] a high
degree of resistance which [they] must meet and overcome if [they are] to
survive and grow. Rather than negate change and make the world
predictable, a "strong" person would, according to Nietzsche, welcome the threat and
challenge of a constantly changing world. Referring to those who require a world as changeless as possible in order to
" darin driickt sich eine gedriickte Seele aus, voller MIBtrauen und schlimmer Erfahrung . . . 44."

survive, Nietzsche says . . . (eine umgekehrte Art Mensch wiirde diesen Wechsel zum Reiz rechnen) Eine mit Kraft iiberladene und spielende Art W esen wiirde gerade die
Aff ekte, die Unvernunft und den Wechsel in eudamonistischem Sinne gutheissen, sammt ihren Consequenzen, Gefahr, Contrast, Zu-Grunde-gehn usw-45. A large part of

intellectual energy of the West has been spent in trying to discover "facts," "laws of nature," etc.,
all of which are conceived to be "truths" and which, therefore, do not change.
For Nietzsche, this conceptualization of our experience is tantamount to a
"mummification" : when an experience is conceptualized, it is wrenched from
the everchanging stream of becoming which is the world. By turning our
experiences into facts, concepts, truths, statistics, etc. we "kill" them, rob them of their
immediacy and vitality and embalm them, thus transforming them into the
convenient bits of knowledge which furnish our comfortable, predictable,
smug existences46 Der Mensch sucht ,,die Wahrheit" : eine Welt, die nicht sich widerspricht, nicht tiiuscht, nicht wechselt, eine wahre Welt, eine Welt,
in der man nicht leidet : Widerspruch, Tauschung, Wechsel Ursachen des Leidens l47 For Nietzsche, this whole tendency to negate change which is
so intimately connected with the presupposition that "truth" always means "unchanging, eternal truth," is a symptom of decadence, a
symptom of the weakening and disruption of the will to power . This outlook
says, in effect, "This far shall you go, and this much shall you learn, but no more
than this . . . . " In the absence of any fixed and ultimate standard for truth, of course, this outlook is no more true or false than Nietzsche's own. Yet it is
not a question here of rightness or wrongness, but a question of power. More specifically, it is
a matter of vital power. "Der Werth fur das Leben entscheidet zuletzt48." Nietzsche's conclusion is that this static world
interpretation has a negative, depressing effect on a person's vital energies
(will to power). It constricts growth, it sets limits and hampers the self-assertion of
the will to power. The strong individual, whom Nietzsche so much admires, flourishes only in an
environment of change, ambiguity, contradiction, and danger . The chaotic and
threatening aspect of the world is a stimulus for such individuals , demanding that they
constantly grow and increase their power, or perish49 It demands that they constantly exceed their
previous limits, realize their creative potential and surpass it, become more
than they were. In the absence of any stability in the world, the strong
individual who can flourish in such an environment is radically free from any
constraint, radically free to create. It need scarcely be said that this world-interpretation is
immeasurably more conducive to the growth and enhancement of the will to
power than the static worldview. And the increase of will to power is Nietzsche's only criterion : Alles Geschehen, alle Bewegung,
the

alles Werden als ein Feststellen von Gradund Kraftverhaltnissen, als ein Kampf . . .0 0

China Econ K2 Global Econ

Chinas key to global GDP growth it prevents collapse
Stephen S. Roach, Project Syndicate, 16 - (Stephen S. Roach,
former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm's chief economist, is a
senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and a
senior lecturer at Yale's School of Management, 8-29-2016, "Global Growth
Still Made in China", https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/chinastill-global-growth-engine-by-stephen-s--roach-2016-08, DOA: 8-29-2016)
//Snowball
Despite all the hand-wringing over the vaunted China slowdown, the
Chinese economy remains the single largest contributor to world GDP growth.
For a global economy limping along at stall speed and most likely unable to
withstand a significant shock without toppling into renewed recession that
contribution is all the more important. A few numbers bear this out. If Chinese GDP growth
reaches 6.7% in 2016 in line with the governments official target and only slightly above the
International Monetary Funds latest prediction (6.6%) China would account for 1.2
percentage points of world GDP growth. With the IMF currently expecting only 3.1%
global growth this year, China would contribute nearly 39% of the total. That
share dwarfs the contribution of other major economies. For example, while the United States
is widely praised for a solid recovery, its GDP is expected to grow by just 2.2% in 2016 enough to
contribute just 0.3 percentage points to overall world GDP growth, or only about one-fourth of
the contribution made by China. A sclerotic European economy is expected to add a mere 0.2
percentage points to world growth, and Japan not even 0.1 percentage point. Chinas contribution
to global growth is, in fact, 50% larger than the combined 0.8-percentage-point
contribution likely to be made by all of the so-called advanced economies.
NEW HAVEN

Moreover, no developing economy comes close to Chinas contribution to global growth. Indias GDP is
expected to grow by 7.4% this year, or 0.8 percentage points faster than China. But the Chinese economy
accounts for fully 18% of world output (measured on a purchasing-power-parity basis) more than double
Indias 7.6% share. That means Indias contribution to global GDP growth is likely to be just 0.6 percentage
points this year only half the 1.2-percentage-point boost expected from China. More broadly, China is
expected to account for fully 73% of total growth of the so-called BRICS grouping of large developing
economies. The gains in India (7.4%) and South Africa (0.1%) are offset by ongoing recessions in Russia (1.2%) and Brazil (-3.3%). Excluding China, BRICS GDP growth is expected to be an anemic 3.2% in 2016.
So, no matter how you slice it, China remains the worlds major growth engine .
Yes, the Chinese economy has slowed significantly from the 10% average annual growth recorded during

even after transitioning from the old normal to what the

Chinese leadership has dubbed the new normal, global economic growth
remains heavily dependent on China. There are three key implications of a
persistent China-centric global growth dynamic. First, and most obvious, continued
deceleration of Chinese growth would have a much greater impact on an
otherwise weak global economy than would be the case if the world were growing at
the 1980-2011 period. But

something closer to its longer-term trend of 3.6%. Excluding China, world GDP growth would be about 1.9%

The second
implication, related to the first, is that the widely feared economic hard landing for
China would have a devastating global impact. Every one-percentage-point decline in Chinese GDP
in 2016 well below the 2.5% threshold commonly associated with global recessions.

growth knocks close to 0.2 percentage points directly off world GDP; including the spillover effects of
foreign trade, the total global growth impact would be around 0.3 percentage points.

Defining a

Chinese hard landing as a halving of the current 6.7% growth rate, the combined
direct and indirect effects of such an outcome would consequently knock about one
percentage point off overall global growth. In such a scenario, there is no way the world
could avoid another full-blown recession. Finally (and more likely in my view), there are the
global impacts of a successful rebalancing of the Chinese economy. The world
stands to benefit greatly if the components of Chinas GDP continue to shift
from manufacturing-led exports and investment to services and household
consumption. Under those circumstances, Chinese domestic demand has the potential to become an
increasingly important source of export-led growth for Chinas major trading partners provided, of course,

A
successful Chinese rebalancing scenario has the potential to jump-start
global demand with a new and important source of aggregate demand a
that other countries are granted free and open access to rapidly expanding Chinese markets.

powerful antidote to an otherwise sluggish world. That possibility should not be ignored, as political
pressures bear down on the global trade debate. All in all, despite all the focus on the US, Europe, or Japan,

China continues to hold the trump card in todays weakened global economy .
While a Chinese hard landing would be disastrous, a successful rebalancing would be an unqualified boon.

That could well make the prognosis for China the decisive factor for the global
economic outlook.

TPP Good
TPP is crucial to U.S. primacy and economic stability in
the Asia-Pacific
Daniel J. Ikenson, Cato Institute, 16 - (Daniel J. Ikenson, irector of
Catos Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, where he coordinates
and conducts research on all manner of international trade and investment
policy, 7-14-2016, "The Trans-Pacific Partnership Is Essential to Regional
Peace and Global Prosperity",
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/the-trans-pacific-partnership-isessential-to-regional-peace, DOA: 7-29-2016) //Snowball
the greatest threat to
U.S. commercial and strategic interests in the Asia-Pacific region? Wrong. Even in
What world-changing behemoth that begins with the letter C presents

the wake of this weeks potentially provocative tribunal ruling against Beijings territorial claims in the

remains Congress, not China. The alarmingly likely

failure of Congress to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership this year would do more to
subvert U.S. regional and global interests than anything China is capable of
South China Sea, the greatest threat

doing. The TPP is a comprehensive trade and investment agreement between the United States and 11

Its
value as an agreement to create greater wealth and higher living standards
by more closely integrating 12 economies accounting for 40 percent of global
GDP is indisputable. But there is also an even bigger picture to consider. The
TPP is the first step in the process of reestablishing the primacy of nondiscrimination and other tenets of the US-led, post-WWII liberal economic order. It is a
blueprint for securing U.S. geoeconomic and geopolitical interests now and into
the future by refreshing the rules of international trade law and accommodating
those institutions to a multi-polar, 21st century global economy . As an agreement
including countries on four continents, the TPP is the only vehicle that can plausibly fill
the void created by the once successful, but now dysfunctional, multilateral
negotiating round approach to global trade liberalization, which served the world
other Pacific-Rim nations, which reduces tariffs and other impediments to trade and investment.

well for a half century. Unlike most other trade agreements, the TPP permits new members to join, if they
meet the standards established and the conditions set by existing members. The fact that TPP has
achieved critical mass allows its terms to be offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Just as larger bodies
floating in space have significant gravitational pull on smaller, surrounding objects, the TPP by virtue of
its heft would pull other countries on other continents into its orbit because the costs of remaining on
the outside will increase with each new accession.

Baudrillard Sux
Baudrillard is cissexist
Nelson 15. Maggie, writer, The Argonauts, 2015, p. 80-81 edited for
ableist language
[Single or lesbian motherhood] can be seen as [one] of the most violent forms taken by the rejection of
the symbolic as well as one of the most fervent divinizations of maternal powerall of which cannot
help but trouble an entire legal and moral order without, however, proposing an alternative to it. Given
that one-third of American families are currently headed by single mothers (the census doesnt even ask
about two mothers or any other forms of kinshipif there is anyone in the house called mother and no
father, then your household counts as single mother), youd think the symbolic order would be showing a

For a more disorienting take

on the topic, I recommend Jean Baudrillards The Final Solution, in which
Baudrillard argues that assisted forms of reproduction (donor insemination, surrogacy,
IVF, etc.), along with the use of contraception, herald the suicide of our species,
insofar as they detach reproduction from sex, thus turning us from mortal,
sexed beings into clone-like messengers of an impossible immortality. Socalled artificial insemination, Baudrillard argues, is linked with the abolition
of everything within us that is human, all too human: our desires, our
deficiencies, our neuroses, our dreams, our disabilities, our viruses, our
lunacies, our unconscious and even our sexualityall the features which
make us specific living beings. Honestly I find it more embarrassing than
enraging to read Baudrillard, iek, Badiou, and other revered philosophers
of the day pontificating on how we might save ourselves from the
humanity-annihilating threat of the turkey baster (which no one uses, by the
way; the preferred tool is an oral syringe) in order to protect the fate of this
endangered sexed being. And by sexed, make no mistake: they
mean one of two options. Heres iek, describing the type of sexuality
that would fit an evil world: In December 2006 the New York City authorities declared that
few more dents by now. But Kristeva is not alone in her hyperbole.

the right to chose ones gender (and so, if necessary, to have the sex change operation performed) is one
of the inalienable human rights the

ultimate Difference, the transcendental

difference that grounds the very human identity, thus turns into something
open to manipulation. Masturbathon is the ideal form of the sex activity of this trans-gendered
subject. Fatally estranged from the transcendental difference that grounds
human identity, the transgendered subject is barely human,
condemned forever to idiotic masturbatory enjoyment in lieu of
the true love that renders us human. For, as iek holdsin homage to
Badiouit is love, the encounter of the Two, which transubstantiates the
idiotic masturbatory enjoyment into an event proper. These are the voices
that pass for radicality in our times. Let us leave them to their love, their
event proper.

Baudrillard essentializes trans bodies by interpolating

metaphorical interpretations of gender and sex into his
framework of bodies fails to account for the inherent
instability of gender and the rupture of transness from
the symbolic
Sares 14
(James Sares is a writer for The Crimson. He completed his AB degree from Harvard University
in 2012. Transgender Studies Quarterly, Volume 1, Numbers 12
http://tsq.dukejournals.org/content/1/1-2/61.full.pdf cVs)

For Jean Baudrillard, transsexuality symbolizes alienating postmodern

transformations across economics, aesthetics, and politics. We are all
transsexuals symbolically, he argues, as the body is reduced to a mere canvas
on which the traffic of gendered signs is grafted or torn in antipolitical play
(2009: 23). Baudrillard understands the postmodern body as the extended site of
integration into networks and circuits of superficial political action and
cybernetic capitalist complicity. Similarly to Fredric Jameson, he employs the spatial
metaphors of depthlessness and flattening to emphasize the subjects reduction
to artifice. These metaphors reveal postmodern cultural production as
underpinned by the disruption of mere appearance from identity or inner
desire. The disruptive element of postmodern aesthetics underlies the
denaturalization of sign from referent, such that the technologies of gendered
and sexed transformation reveal the symbolic systems through which
categories of gender and sex gain meaning. Thus the modernist aesthetic is
put into crisis when the body, moving through time and space, is no longer
the site of a stable, natural, and objective referential truth of gender or sex,
despite the search for new relationalities constructed out of that very
ontological denaturalization (Stryker 1999: 17071). Baudrillards analysis falls into
unsubstantiated fatalism because he emphasizes meanings liquidation, while
postmodern aesthetics shifts the grounds for understanding meaning through
subjective rupture itself. The technologies and discourses of transsexuality
reveal the tensions of transforming the body and its adornments across ,
between, or outside the policed confines of a gender/sex binary while also being
reinscribed into multiple discourses of fractured referentiality. Some discourses
appeal to an unchanging sense of gender identity and relocate a truth of
gender to be revealed from within the body, while others emphasize dialectical movements of identity
and embodiment or otherwise challenge the ontologized terms of gender identity and desire. Tensions
among these multiple narratives are salient in the uneven ethical-material
topographies of corporeal transformation across which conflicts of late
capitalist modernity play out, including state and medical apparatuses and
other trans community spaces. In these spaces, the boundaries of authentic
transness are often policed by appeals to deep relationality between
materiality and inner desire or identity , regardless of its stasis or dynamism, against merely
superficial drag or the unfettered play of gendered signs. Yet all of these references to corporeal mutability
emerge from particular conceptual constellations that reveal sex/gender as regimes of coding and

The
postmodern aesthetic must be itself denaturalized as a particular regime of
producing bodies. These possibilities appear with the production of the subject as a form of rupture.

meaning-production rather than as meanings mere liquidation or as the

revelation of meanings true form. The multiple articulations of subjective
rupture become myth when concepts are ontologically essentialized rather
than revealed as historical and social productions and abstractions that
mediate each other. The denaturalization of both sex and gender as social
constructions offers possibilities to refigure embodiment, but the conceptual
disjunctures between materiality and symbolism , being and thinking, or body and desire
threaten to ontologize and reinscribe authenticity through rupture itself. The conceptual
mediation and latent unfolding of such categories denaturalizes rupture as a
tenuously policed construction between concepts: sexs referent as body
meets the bodys materiality as symbolic, aesthetic, and interpersonal;
genders referent as social action, role, or symbolism meets the materiality of
these processes produced out of and on to the body; identitys referent as
inner desire or mind meets these terms as interpersonal and corporeal. Appeals
to trans authenticity through statically constructed bounds of sex, gender identity, and gender
performance thus encounter the body as site and product of deep relationality and that relationalitys own
latent unraveling. The deployments and subversions of these ontological layerings reveal tensions in
ascribing through them authenticity of corporeality and embodiment. The production and unraveling of this
relationality constitutes the dialectic between nonconceptual materiality and its signification into concepts.

Baudrillards reduction of transsexuality to the symbolic realm presumes

appearance as domineering the essence of the subject, such that the subject
is hollowed of authentic content. Yet Baudrillard produces the very meaninglessness he
critiques by hypostatizing the concept of the subject as form of rupture without reflexive critique of its

He thus ignores, as Theodor Adorno emphasizes throughout

the inadequacy of concepts in fully capturing the
nonconceptual experiences and materiality to which they refer. The referents of
historical and social construction.
Negative Dialectics,

concepts are irreducible to their conceptual signification, as concepts are abstracted moments of the

the very concepts of concept and

nonconceptual materiality pass into each other rather than reduce to each
other. Thus rather than being objective descriptions or symbolic reflections of
reality, concepts of gender, sex, and subjective rupture are deployed as
power-laced abstractions constituted through various discourses and
technologies. The struggle to produce meaning in the face of meanings own conceptual inadequacy
dialectic of meaning-production; in selfcritique,

and consequent mediated liquidation engenders political confrontation around life as somatic/technological

the deep political

questions about meaning thrive through these tensions: What is the very
nature of being gendered/sexed? Should sex and gender remain categories
through which to classify and produce bodies? How do uneven conditions of
structure and life as ethical question. Contrary to Baudrillards lamentations,

meaningproduction open possibilities for resistance, change, or integration into various political and
economic apparatuses? In imagining queered forms of labor, value, and materiality ,

it is necessary
to confront spatial metaphors of superficiality that continue to haunt analyses
of postmodernism. Thus far critical queer responses to the projects of Jameson and Baudrillard have
left these metaphors unchallenged, perhaps in fear of slipping back into modernist aesthetics of
authenticity based on the mimetic reproduction for subjectivity of a stable, material objectivity that lies

The tension between critique and appropriation

of postmodernism synthesizes, in Jack Halberstams work, as the reclamation of
superficiality, which he claims may not be a symptom of a diseased political
culture but a marvelously flat and uninhibited repudiation of the normativity
inherent in deep political projects (Halberstam 2005: 124). Halberstam explores twooutside the subject (Stryker 1999: 164).

dimensional transgender art as anticapitalist resistance but, in assuming the unidirectional gaze of the

surgeon or the artist, flattens the body to a mere mimetic canvas on which technologies operate. He thus
objectifies and alienates representations of the body from the shifting acts of embodiment and
performance that catalyze conflict over the very terms and alignments of identity, aesthetics, and politics.

it is necessary to reveal the competing metaphysics of

desire, ontological layering, and appeals to authenticity that enable dynamic
conflict over trans subjectivities. Moving forward, we do not need to
reclaim superficiality from such analysis as much as recognize that depth
has never left these struggles in the first place, manifesting instead in the
debate over superficiality itself.
Against such static analysis,