Anti-blackness is not an ontological antagonism---conflict is inevitable in politics, but does not have to be demarcated around whiteness and blackness---the alt’s ontological fatalism recreates colonial violence Peter Hudson 13, Political Studies Department, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg , South Africa, has been on the editorial board of the Africa Perspective: The South African Journal of Sociology and Theoria: A Journal of Political and Social Theory and Transformation, and is a member of the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, The state and the colonial unconscious, Social Dynamics: A journal of African studies, 2013Thus the self-same/other distinction is necessary for the possibility of identity itself. There always has to exist an outside, which is also inside, to the extent it is designated as the impossibility from which the possibility of the existence of the subject derives its rule (Badiou 2009,

220). But although the excluded place which isn’t excluded insofar as it is necessary for the very possibility of inclusion and identity may be universal

(may be considered “ontological”), its content (what fills it) – as well as the mode of this filling and its reproduction – are contingent. In other words, the meaning of the signifier of exclusion is not determined once and for all: the place of the place of exclusion, of death is itself over-determined , i.e. the very framework for deciding the other and the same, exclusion and inclusion, is nowhere engraved in ontological stone but is political and never terminally settled. Put differently, the “curvature of intersubjective space” (Critchley 2007, 61) and thus, the specific modes of the

“othering” of “otherness” are nowhere decided in advance (as a certain ontological fatalism might have it) (see Wilderson 2008). The social does not have to be divided into white and black , and the meaning of these signifiers is never necessary – because they are signifiers . To be sure, colonialism institutes a n ontological division , in that whites exist in a way barred to blacks – who are not. But this ontological relation is really on the side of the ontic – that is, of all contingently constructed identities, rather than the ontology of the social which refers to the ultimate unfixity , the indeterminacy or lack of the social. In this sense, then, the white man doesn’t exist, the black man doesn’t exist (Fanon 1968, 165); and neither does the colonial symbolic itself, including its most intimate structuring relations –

division is constitutive of the social, not the colonial division. “Whiteness” may well be very deeply sediment in modernity itself, but respect for the “ontological difference” (see

Heidegger 1962, 26; Watts 2011, 279) shows up its ontological status as ontic. It may be so deeply sedimented that it becomes difficult even to identify the very possibility of the separation of whiteness from the very possibility of order, but from this it does not follow that the “void” of “black being” functions as the ultimate substance, the transcendental signified on which all possible forms of sociality are said to rest . What gets lost here, then, is the specificity of colonialism , of its constitutive axis, its “ ontological” differential. A crucial feature of the colonial symbolic is that the real is not screened off by the imaginary in the way it is under

capitalism. At the place of the colonised, the symbolic and the imaginary give way because non- identity (the real of the social) is immediately inscribed in the “lived experience” (vécu) of the colonised subject. The colonised is “traversing the fantasy” (Zizek 2006a, 40–60) all the time; the void of the verb “to

be” is the very content of his interpellation. The colonised is, in other words, the subject of anxiety for whom the symbolic and the imaginary never work, who is left stranded by his very interpellation.4

“Fixed” into “non-fixity,” he is eternally suspended between “element” and “moment”5 – he is where the colonial symbolic falters in the production of meaning and is thus the point of entry of the real into the texture itself of

colonialism. Be this as it may, whiteness and blackness are (sustained by) determinate and contingent practices of signification; the “structuring relation” of colonialism

thus itself comprises a knot of significations which , no matter how tight, can always be undone. Anti-colonial – i.e., anti-“white” – modes of struggle are not (just)

“psychic” 6 but involve the “ reactivation ” (or “de-sedimentation”)7 of colonial objectivity itself. No matter how sedimented (or global), colonial objectivity is not ontologically immune to antagonism. Differentiality, as Zizek insists (see Zizek 2012, chapter 11, 771 n48), immanently entails antagonism in that differentiality both makes possible the existence of any identity whatsoever and at the same time – because it is the presence of one object in another – undermines any identity ever being (fully) itself. Each element in a differential relation is the condition of possibility and the condition of impossibility of each other. It is this dimension of antagonism that the Master Signifier covers over transforming its outside (Other) into an element of itself, reducing it to a condition of its

possibility.8 All symbolisation produces an ineradicable excess over itself, something it can’t totalise or make sense of, where its production of meaning falters. This is its

internal limit point, its real:9 an errant “object” that has no place of its own, isn’t recognised in the categories of the system but is produced by it – its “part of no part” or “object small a.”10 Correlative to this object “a” is the subject “stricto sensu” – i.e., as the empty subject of the signifier

without an identity that pins it down.11 That is the subject of antagonism in confrontation with the real of the social, as distinct from “subject” position based on a determinate identity.

Openess to everything is openness to nothing---clear limits are necessary to practical contestation Ruth Lessl Shively 2k, associate professor of political science at Texas A&M, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 181-2To put this point another way, it turns out that to be open to all things is, in effect, to be open to nothing. While the ambiguists have commendable reasons for wanting to avoid closure—to avoid specifying what is not allowed or celebrated in their political vision—

they need to say "no" to some things in order to be open to things in general.

They need to say "no" to certain forms of contest , if only to protect contest in general. For if one is to be open to the principles of democracy, for example, one must be dogmatically closed to the principles of fascism. If one would embrace tolerance, one must rigidly reject intolerance. If one would support openness in political speech and action, one must ban the acts of political intimidation, violence or recrimination that

squelch that openness. If one would expand deliberation and disruption, one must set up strict legal protections around such activities. And if one would ensure that citizens have reason to engage in political contest—that it has practical meaning and import for them —one must establish and maintain the rules and regulations and laws that protect democracy. In short, openness requires certain clear limits, rules, closure. And to make matters more complex, these structures of openness cannot simply be put into place and forgotten. They need to be taught to new generations of citizens, to be retaught and reenforced among the old, and as the political

world changes, to be shored up, rethought, adapted, and applied to new problems and new situations. It will not do , then, to simply assume that these structures are permanently viable and

secure without significant work or justification on our part; nor will it do to talk about resisting or subverting them . Indeed, they are such valuable and yet vulnerable goods that they require the most unflagging and firm support that we can give them . 'Thus far, I have argued that if the ambiguists mean to be subversive about anything, they need to be conservative about some things. They need to be steadfast supporters of the structures of

openness and democracy: willing to say "no" to certain forms of contest; willing to set up certain clear limitations about acceptable behavior. To this, finally, I would add that if

the ambiguists mean to stretch the boundaries of behavior—if they want to be revolutionary and disruptive in their skepticism and iconoclasm—they need first to be firm believers in something. Which is to say,

again, they need to set clear limits about what they will and will not support,

what they do and do not believe to be best. As G. K. Chesterton observed, the true revolutionary has always willed something "definite and limited." For example, "The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would not rebel against..." He "desired the freedoms of democracy." He "wished to have votes and not to have titles . . ." But "because the new rebel is a skeptic"—because he cannot bring himself to will something definite and limited— "he cannot be a revolutionary." For "the fact that he wants to doubt everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything" (Chesterton

1959,41). Thus, the most radical skepticism ends in the most radical conservatism . In other words, a refusal to judge among ideas and activities is , in the end, an endorsement of the status quo . To embrace everything is to be unable to embrace a particular plan of action, for to embrace a particular plan of action is to reject all others, at least for that moment. Moreover, as observed in our

discussion of openness, to embrace everything is to embrace self-contradiction: to hold to both one's purposes and to that which defeats one's purposes—to tolerance and intolerance, open-mindedness and close-

mindedness, democracy and tyranny. In the same manner, then, the ambiguists' refusals to will something "definite and limited" undermines their revolutionary impulses . In

their refusal to say what they will not celebrate and what they will not rebel against, they deny themselves (and everyone else in their political world) a particular plan or ground to work from. By refusing to deny incivility, they deny themselves a civil public space from which to speak. They cannot say "no" to the terrorist who would silence dissent. They cannot turn their backs on the bullying of the white supremacist. And, as such, in refusing to bar the tactics of the anti-democrat, they refuse to support the tactics of the

democrat. In short, then, to be a true ambiguist, there must be some limit to what is ambiguous. To fully support political contest, one must fully support some uncontested rules and reasons. To generally reject the silencing or exclusion of others, one must sometimes silence or exclude those who reject civility and democracy.

Role of ballot is to decide the best methodology from which to analyze and organize resistance against oppression

Only adopting a position of analytical nuance can create productive debates that move beyond either-or choices of social justice and move towards deciding between competing research methods---if the conceptual basis of the affirmative’s arguments are either unclear or nonexistent in terms of how they enable productive formulations of anti-racial politics, you should vote neg Adolph Reed 12, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the interim national council of the Labor Party. RACE, CLASS, CRISIS: THE DISCOURSE OF RACIAL DISPARITY AND ITS ANALYTICAL DISCONTENTS, http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~merlinc/ReedChowkwanyunSR.pdfResearch precisely specifying racial disparities in the distribution of advantages and disadvantages, well-being and suffering has become common enough to have generated a distinctive , pro forma narrative structure. Quantitative data, usually culled from large aggregate data sets, is parsed to generate accounts of the many facets of apparent disparity along racial lines with respect to barometers of inequality such as wealth ,

income and economic security, incarceration , employment, access to medical care, and health and education al outcomes . However, as The Onion parody suggests, they tend not to add up to much beyond fleshing out the contours of the disproportionate relations, which are predictable by common sense understanding. Explanations of the sources of disparities tend to dribble into vague and often sanctimonious calls to recognize the role of race, and on the left, the flailing around of phrases like ‘institutional racism’ that on closer examination add up to little more than signifying one’s radical credentials on race issues. So what, then, do researchers assume they are doing in rehearsing versions of the same narrative with slightly different variations on the punch line? What are its conceptual foundations and premises ? How should we assess the strengths, limits and significance of its perspectives on race , class and inequality and their connections , especially to understand American capitalism’s social and ideological reproduction in the current period ?This essay is an initial attempt to answer those questions and, through doing so, to assess the deeper significance of the discourse of racial disparity that has taken shape in American social science and policy research during the last decade and a half. We consider what the findings of disparate impact at the level of gross racial groups mean and do not mean and examine ambiguities within this literature concerning race as a significant element in the reproduction of durable inequalities. In doing so, we identify several interpretive pathologies.Among those pathologies are a schematic juxtaposition of race and class that frequently devolves into unproductive either-or debates ; the dilution of class into a cultural and behavioural category or a static (usually quantitative) index of economic attainment that fails to capture power relations; sweeping characterizations of white Americans’ racial animus and collective psyche ; ahistorical declarations that posit a long and unbroken arc of American racism and that sidestep careful dissection of how racism and, for that matter, race have evolved and transformed ; and a tendency to shoehorn the U nited States’ racial history into a rhetorically powerful but analytically crude story of ‘two societies’, monolithic and monochromatic. Our overall concern is the extent to which particular inequalities that appear statistically as ‘racial’ disparities are in fact embedded in multiple social relations and how the dominant modes of approaching this topic impede the understanding of this larger picture. We believe that too much writing, including that on the crisis of 2008, is laced with generic, a priori assumptions about the role of racial categorization that then straitjackets research and tempts researchers , in Ian Shapiro’s words, to ‘ load the dice in favor of one type of description’, in this case, characterizing disparities in outcome as strictly ‘racial’ and thus resulting in the ho-hum and one-dimensional research conclusions we have mentioned.2

Research methodology means starting points and analytical frames are crucial---only our framework effectuates the tools with which to analyze oppression Adolph Reed 12, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the interim national council of the Labor Party. RACE, CLASS, CRISIS: THE DISCOURSE OF RACIAL DISPARITY AND ITS ANALYTICAL DISCONTENTS, http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~merlinc/ReedChowkwanyunSR.pdfOur call to transcend this stifling frame is absolutely not a call to ignore racial exclusion or to declare in abstract terms, as Ellen Wood has, that race is not ‘constitutive of capitalism’ the way class is .66 Rather, we advocate that in analyzing the current situation and how it fits into historical context, left analysts ought to conduct what Ian Shapiro has labelled ‘problem-driven’ research, in his words, ‘to endeavor to give the most plausible possible account of the phenomenon that stands in need of explanation’ , in this case racially disparate impacts,

instead of forcing it into a stifling, ready made narrative.67 Doing so will break away from analytical sloth and widen strategic options . Doing so also requires jettisoning the hoary, mechanistic race/class debate entirely. We believe that our critique here demonstrates the virtues of a dynamic historical materialist perspective in which race and class are relatively distinct – sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes incoherently related or even interchangeable – inflections within a unitary system of capitalist social hierarchy, without any of the moralizing, formalist ontological

baggage about priority of oppression that undergirds the debate. From this perspective insistence that race, or any other category of ascriptive differentiation, is somehow sui generis and

transcendent of particular regimes of capitalist social relations appears to be, as we have suggested here, itself reflective of a class position tied programmatically to the articulation of a metric of social justice compatible with neoliberalism . That is a view that both obscures useful ways to understand the forces that are intensifying inequality and undermines the capacity to challenge them.

Clash and in-depth deliberation create more effective decision making and advocacy skills---ensures that the aff’s advocacy is improved and more effectively carried outRyan Galloway 7, Samford Comm prof, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol. 28, 2007 In addition to the basic equity norm, dismissing the idea that debaters defend the affirmative side of the topic encourages advocates to falsely value affirmative speech acts in the absence of a negative response . There may be several detrimental consequences that go unrealized in a debate where the affirmative case and plan are not topical . Without ground, debaters may fall prey to a siren’s call, a belief that certain critical ideals and concepts are axiological , existing beyond doubt without scrutiny . Bakhtin

contends that in dialogical exchanges “ the greater the number and weight” of counter-words , the deeper and more substantial our understanding will be (Bakhtin, 1990). The matching of the word to the counter-word should be embraced by proponents of critical activism in the activity, because these dialogical exchanges allow for improvements and modifications in critical arguments . Muir argues that “debate puts students into greater contact with the real world by forcing them to read a great deal of information” (1993, p.

285). He continues, “[t]he constant consumption of material…is significantly constitutive. The information grounds the issues under discussion, and the process shapes the relationship of the citizen to the public arena” (p. 285). Through the process of compreh

ensive understanding, debate serves both as a laboratory and a constitutive arena. Ideas find and lose

adherents. Ideas that were once considered beneficial are modified, changed, researched again, and sometimes discarded altogether. A central argument for open deliberation is that it encourages

a superior consensus to situations where one side is silenced. Christopher Peters contends, “The theory holds that antithesis ultimately produces a better consensus , that the clash of differing, even opposing interests and ideas in the process of decision making… creates decisions that are better for having been subjected to this trial by fire ” (1997, p. 336). The combination of a competitive format and the necessity to take points of view that one does not already agree with combines to create a unique educational experience for all participants. Those that eschew the value of such experience by an axiological position short-circuit the benefits of the educational exchange for themselves, their opponents, as well

as the judges and observers of such debates.

DEBATE roleplay specifically activates agencyHanghoj 8http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf Thorkild Hanghøj, Copenhagen, 2008 Since this PhD project began in 2004, the present author has been affiliated with DREAM (DanishResearch Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials), which is located at the Institute ofLiterature, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. Research visits havetaken place at the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), theInstitute of Education at the University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning LabDenmark at the School of Education, University of Aarhus, where I currently work as an assistantprofessor.

Thus, debate games require teachers to balance the centripetal/centrifugal forces of gaming and teaching, to be able to reconfigure their discursive authority, and to orchestrate the multiple voices of a dialogical game space in relation to particular goals. These Bakhtinian perspectives provide a valuable analytical framework for describing the discursive interplay between different practices and knowledge aspects when enacting (debate) game scenarios. In addition to this, Bakhtin’s dialogical philosophy also offers an explanation of why debate games (and other game types) may be valuable within an educational context. One of the central features of multi-player games is that players are expected to experience a simultaneously real and imagined scenario both in relation to an insider’s (participant) perspective and to an outsider’s (co-participant) perspective. According to Bakhtin, the outsider’s perspective reflects a fundamental aspect of human understanding: In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her

creative understanding – in time, in space, in culture. For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space, and because they are others (Bakhtin, 1986: 7). As the quote suggests, every person is influenced by others in an inescapably intertwined way, and consequently no voice can be said to be isolated. Thus, it is in the interaction with other voices that individuals are able to reach understanding and f ind their own voice . Bakhtin also refers to the ontological process of finding a voice as “ideological becoming”, which represents “the process of selectively assimilating the words of others” (Bakhtin, 1981: 341). Thus, by teaching and playing debate scenarios, it is possible to support students in their process of becoming not only themselves, but also in becoming articulate and responsive citizens in a democratic society.

Analysis of policy is particularly empowering, even if we’re not the USFGShulock 99 Nancy, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY --- professor of Public Policy and Administration and director of the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy (IHELP) at Sacramento State University, The Paradox of Policy Analysis: If It Is Not Used, Why Do We Produce So Much of It?, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 18, No. 2, 226–244 (1999)

In my view, none of these radical changes is necessary. As interesting as our politics might be with the kinds of changes outlined by proponents of participatory and critical policy analysis, we do not need these changes to justify our investment in policy analysis . Policy analysis already involves discourse, introduces ideas into politics, and affects policy outcomes. The problem is not that policymakers refuse to understand the value of traditional policy analysis or that policy analysts have not learned to be properly interactive with stakeholders and reflective of multiple and nontechnocratic perspectives. The problem, in my view, is only that policy analysts, policymakers, and observers alike do not recognize policy analysis for what it is.

Policy analysis has changed, right along with the policy process, to become the provider of ideas and frames, to help sustain the discourse that shapes citizen preferences, and to provide the appearance of rationality in an increasingly complex political environment. Regardless of what the textbooks say, there does not need to be a client in order for ideas from policy analysis to resonate through the policy environment.10¶ Certainly there is room to make our politics more inclusive. But

those critics who see policy analysis as a tool of the power elite might be less concerned if they understood that analysts are only adding to the debate—they are unlikely to be handing ready-made policy solutions to elite decisionmakers for implementation. Analysts themselves might be more contented if they started appreciating the appropriation of their ideas by the whole gamut of policy participants and stopped

counting the number of times their clients acted upon their proposed solutions. And the cynics disdainful of the purported objectivism of analysis might relax if analysts themselves would acknowledge that they are seeking not truth, but to elevate the level of debate with a compelling, evidence-based presentation of their perspectives. Whereas critics call, unrealistically in my view, for analysts to present competing perspectives on an

issue or to “design a discourse among multiple perspectives,” I see no reason why an individual analyst must do this when multiple perspectives are already in abundance, brought by multiple analysts. If we would acknowledge that policy analysis

does not occur under a private, contractual process whereby hired hands advise only their clients, we

would not worry that clients get only one perspective.¶ Policy analysis is used , far more extensively than is commonly believed . Its use could be appreciated and expanded if policymakers, citizens, and analysts themselves began to present it more accurately, not as a comprehensive,

problem-solving, scientific enterprise, but as a contributor to informed discourse. For years Lindblom [1965, 1968, 1979, 1986, 1990] has argued that we should understand policy analysis for the limited tool that it is—just one of several routes to social problem solving, and an inferior route at that. Although I have learned much from Lindblom on this odyssey from traditional to interpretive policy analysis, my point is different. Lindblom sees analysis as having a very limited impact on policy change due to its ill-conceived reliance on science and its deluded attempts to impose comprehensive rationality on an incremental policy process. I, with the benefit of recent

insights of Baumgartner, Jones, and others into the dynamics of policy change, see that even with these limitations , policy analysis can have a major impact on policy. Ideas , aided by institutions and embraced by citizens, can reshape the policy landscape . Policy analysis can supply the ideas.

Liberal reformism is the only way to avoid reductive theories that collapse into totalitarianism---making the system live up to its empty promises of equality is better than discarding equality Jefferey Pyle 99, Boston College Law School, J.D., magna cum laude, Race, Equality and the Rule of Law: Critical Race Theory's Attack on the Promises of Liberalism, 40 B.C.L. Rev. 787Liberal principles are therefore "indeterminate" to the extent that they are not mechanically determinative of every controversy.224 Indeed, as Samuel Huntington has pointed out, Americans hold potentially conflicting ideals (such as individualism and democracy, liberty and equality) simultaneously, without trying to resolve the conflicts between them once and for

1111.2" Rather, they have set up processes and institutions to resolve conflicts pragmatically, case-by-case, issue-byissue, problem-by-problem .

226 Liberals, unlike radical legal theorists , assume that there are no universal solvents, that values are not easily ranked"' and that reasoning by analogy is usually more helpful (and more persuasive) than deductions from the abstract theories of philosopher-kings. 228 Liberal politics, like the common-law courts on which

it relies, requires perpetual re-examination of both the major and minor premises of

most legal syllogisms . It allows for both continuity and change, stability and flexibility, tradition and innovation. 52•

The liberal system's celebrated capacity for social change rests in the ability of

aggrieved citizens to confront power-holders , such as legislators, judges or voters, with their failures to live up to the promises of the "American Creed ."23" In doing so, the aggrieved can argue with sonic force that they are seeking justice, not revolution, when in fact they

may be seeking both."' The Voting Rights Act of 1965, for example, was not a radical measure, yet it started a revolution in Southern politics.232 It purported to secure a right already enshrined in the Fifteenth Amendment,233 and thus fulfill fundamental notions of equality that most Americans could not easily deny.231 The Act would probably not have passed, however, if it had been presented as a benefit to one group to the detriment of another in a zero-sum power game.Second, liberal politics is about morality as well as interests. It is about holding public officials morally and politically responsible for meeting unfulfilled promises.235 By casting victims of discrimination as legitimate claimants to the promise of equality in the American Creed, liberal politics gives victims the higher moral ground, without fully separating them from the people whose oppressive behavior they seek to change.2"" The Reverend Martin Luther King exemplified this promissory politics best on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, when he said:In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check: When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a

promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was the promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note. ... America has given Negro people a had check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of this nation. And so we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom, and the security of justice. 2"7

Through this metaphor, King brilliantly articulated the promises and realities that animated the civil rights revolution in America. 238 He reminded Americans of their founding principles, assumed the

fundamental equality of the bargainers, and placed the power structure on the delensive.239 King did not paint whites as irredeemably racist ; he simply insisted that they live up to their obligations .")To Derrick Bell, in contrast, the coffers of justice in America have always been empty. To him, the promises of liberalism are just "bogus freedom checks" which "the Man" will never honor.24 ' Bell, like other race-crits, attacks American liberalism from a European political orientation, which conceives of politics as a zero-sum struggle between entrenched classes or groups.242 In this

view, all politics is power politics, and law serves merely as an instrument or oppression by the group that happens to be in power.2'3 No common principles exist which might persuade whites to he more inclusive. 241

The race-crits, like other class theorists, do not attempt to prove that African Americans are permanently disadvantaged; they simply assert it. Nor do they acknowledge that black Americans have made considerable (although Far from satisfactory) progress since de jure segregation was ended ."' C ritical r ace t heory, like Marxism before it, clings to group "domination" as the single cause of

disadvantage.2' 7 It takes one unifying idea —racial domination —and tries to fit all facts and law into it . 248

Liberalism, on the other hand, distrusts grand unifying theories , preferring to emphasize process over ends . 24' As a result, liberalism frustrates anyone, Left

or Right, who would have governments embrace their ideologies.25° Because of the value liberals place on liberty, they tend to he wary of the sort of power concentrations that could

mandate changes quickly."' They prefer a more incremental approach to political change that depends on the consent of the governed, even when the governed are often ignorant, misguided and even bigoted. 252 Liberalism is never utopian, by anyone's definition, but always

procedural, because it presupposes a society of people who profoundly disagree with each other and whose interests, goals, stakes and stands, cannot easily, if ever, be fully reconciled.'" Because of these differences , liberals know there is no such thing

as a "benevolent despot," and that utopias almost invariably turn out to be dystopias . 254

Race-crits, on the other hand, are profoundly utopian and sometimes totalitarian.25' In their view, the law should ferret out and eliminate white racism at any costa''' Richard Delgado, for example, complains that "[n]othing in the law requires any [white] to lend a helping hand, to try to help blacks find jobs, befriend them, speak to them, make eye contact with them, help them fix a flat when they arc stranded on the highway, help them feel like 11111 persons. ... How can a system like that change anything?"257

The race- crits, in their preoccupation with power , forget that the power to persuade remains the principal way of achieving lasting change in a democratic political culture.258 A beneficial but controversial measure is much more likely to survive changes of the party in power if it can be said to

carry out the will of "the people," from whom all power in the United States is said to derive.

25" For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, controversial as it was,'" has remained a bulwark of civil rights protection for thirty-six years because of its democratic and

constitutional legitimacy. 2"1 On the other hand, if Malcolm X or the Black Panthers had

attempted to set up a separate black state on American soil in the tradition of John Brown,

their efforts would have been crushed immediately .

Reforms are the best approach---it avoids a mobilization of politics around maintaining identity rather than articulating a future of social justice for society—working within the government is key. Bhambra 10—U Warwick—AND—Victoria Margree—School of Humanities, U Brighton (Identity Politics and the Need for a ‘Tomorrow’, http://www.academia.edu/471824/Identity_Politics_and_the_Need_for_a_Tomorrow_)Political mobilisation around suffering engenders solidarities between those who are suffering and those who afford recognition of (and then action around) that suffering. Those who suffergenerally claim their common

humanity with others in asking forpeople to look beyond the specific circumstances of their suffer-ing, and in doing so, the request is to address those specific circumstances on the basis of a humanity not bound to the circumstances. The mistake of some forms of identity politics , then, is to associate identity with suffering . While a recognition of historical (and contemporary) suffering is an important aspect of the political process of seeking redress for the conditions of suffering, it does not constitute identity singularly . ¶ “Wounded attachments”, we would argue, do not

representthe general condition of politicised identities, but rather, are prob-lematic constructions of identities which fail to recognise (oraccept) the processes of change associated with movements. The accumulation of different sorts of challenges around similar issues generally leads to the gradual amelioration of the condi-tions which generated the identity (and the associated move-ment) in the first instance. If the emphasis in the movement is on identity then successful reform (even partial reform )

reduces the injury and thus diminishes the power of the identity claim based upon that injury . This is because reform is necessarily uneven in terms of the impact it has.

This then poses a problem for those within the movement who would wish the reforms to go further and who see in the reforms a weakening of the identity that they believe is a necessary prerequisite for political action. As they can no longer mobilise the injured identity – and the associated suffering – as common to all (and thus requiring address becauseof its generalised effect), there is often, then, a perceived need to privilege that suffering as particular and to institute a politics of guilt with regard to addressing it – truly the politics of ressentiment. ¶ The problems arise by insisting on the necessity of political action being constituted through pre-existing identities

and soli-darities (for example, those of being a woman). If, instead, it was recognised that equality for women is not separable from (or achievable separated from) wider issues of justice and equality within society then reforms could be seen as steps towards equality . A movement concerned with issues of social justice (of whichgender

justice is an integral aspect) would allow for provisional reforms to prevailing conditions of injustice without calling into question the basis for the movement – for there would always be more to be achieved . 8 Each achievement would itself necessitate further revision of what equality would look like. And it would also necessitate revision of the particular aims that constitute the “identity” afforded by participating in that movement. In this way, identity becomes more appropriately

understood as being, in part at least, about participating in a series of dialogues about what is desired for the future in terms of understandings of social justice . ¶ Focusing on the future, on how we would like things to be tomorrow, based on an understanding of where we are today , would allow for partial reforms to be seen as gains and not threats. It is only

if one believes that political action can only occur in the context of identification of past injustices as opposed to future justice that one has a problem with (partial) reforms in the present. Political identity which exists only through an enunciation of its injury and does not seek to dissolve itself as an identity can lead to the ossification of injured relations . The “wounded attachment” occurs when the politicised identity can see no future without the injury also constituting an aspect of that future. Developing on the work of Brown, we would argue that not only does a “reformed” identity

politics need to be based upon desire for the future, but that that desire should actually be a desire for the dissolution (in the future) of the identity claim. The complete success of the femi-nist movement, for instance, would mean that feminists no longerexisted, as the conditions that caused people to become feministhad been addressed. Similarly, with the dalit movement, its success would be measured by the dissolution of the identity of “dalit” as asalient political category. There would be no loss here, only a gain.¶ As we have argued, following Mohanty ([1993] 2000) andNelson (1993), it is participation in the processing of one’s ownand other’s experiences into knowledge about the world, in thecontext of communities that negotiate epistemological

premises, which confers a notion of politicised identity. Since it is an under-standing of “tomorrow” (what that would be, and

how it is to beachieved) that establishes one as, for example, a feminist, such an identity claim does not exclude others from participation , and it does not solicit the reification of identity around the fact of historical or contemporary suffering . By removing these obstacles to progress, the “tomorrow” that is the goal, is more readily achievable. Identity politics , then,

“needs a tomorrow” in this sense: that the raison d’être of any politicised identity is the bringing about of a tomorrow in which the social injustices of the present have been overcome . But identity politics also needs that tomorrow – today – in the sense that politicised identities need to inscribe that tomorrow into their self-definition in the present , in order to avoid consolidating activity around the maintenance of the identity rather than the overcoming of the conditions that generated it . That the tomorrow to be inscribed – today – in the self-definition of one’s political identity, is one in which that identity will no longer be required, is not a situation to be regretted, since it is rather the promise of success for any movement for justice.