Tournament: SFSU | Round:  | Opponent:  | Judge:
Caffrey-Casiano / Barton:   K Aff

• • The “advocacy” is the top of Contention 1.

Contention One: We must rethink our relation to energy and the grid that produces it

There is a central question stemming from the Resolution.  It is a question that should ground our understandings of the topic and topicality as well as the framework and the work of enframing of the debate.

The question is:  How can we be so narrow-minded about energy production and how we generate the energy we need, when at the same time we utilize an electricity grid and a transportation network that goes unquestioned in terms of its structure, importance, and total contribution to all of our daily lives? 

For example, we know that electricity is taken for granted most of the time, it’s a utility bill and a question of conservation, but many of us are not regularly reflecting on the age and efficiency of the grid and the sources of power that are combined to supply the demand imposed on the grid by human consumption.  Those relations—the grid we all inhabit—are at the core of the resolution and compel a substantial reduction in the limitations on energy production here in the U.S. and beyond.  We must release ourselves from the grids we subject ourselves to by participating in discourse about energy sources, power, and the available contributions to the supply of the grid specified in the topic. 

It is our intervention in this particular debate that constitutes a shock in the biopolitical norms that generate and sustain certain subjectivities ensnared by “gridded life” alongside the actual national infrastructure built on certain primary sources of power fueling the massive production and consumption of energy in the United States.
More directly, rolling blackouts and power outages are forcing us to rethink our relationship to energy as well as the grid that produces it. 

Todd and Wood, ‘06 (Ann Marie, Doctorate in Philosophy, Masters in Communication Studies from USC, Professor at San Jose State,  Andrew Wood is a professor of Communication Studies at San José State University. “Flex Your Power:” Energy Crises and the Shifting Rhetoric of the Grid”, ATLANTIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, 14(4), 211–228)

On August 14, 2003, the largest electrical…. our relation to energy and the grid that produces it. 

Rethink the Grid. The Grid is not a mathematical ordering of disparate points into a coherent system; rather it is a socially constructed system of social ordering and classification that favors individuals who are constrained and think and act within a tightly structured system. 

Todd and Wood, ‘06 (Ann Marie, Doctorate in Philosophy, Masters in Communication Studies from USC, Professor at San Jose State,  Andrew Wood is a professor of Communication Studies at San José State University. “Flex Your Power:” Energy Crises and the Shifting Rhetoric of the Grid”, ATLANTIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, 14(4), 211–228)

Initially, we might be tempted to view the grid, ….. of the intricate topography of modernist experience. (p. 88)

Contention 2: Explore the Rhetoric of the Grid

We concur with a Foucauldian reading of power distribution as a discursive practice in our evaluation of the rhetoric of the grid. Discourse is not inexhaustible or preserved indefinitely. Power discourse surrounding the relationship between humans and nature is constructed! 

Todd and Wood, ‘06 (Ann Marie, Doctorate in Philosophy, Masters in Communication Studies from USC, Professor at San Jose State,  Andrew Wood is a professor of Communication Studies at San José State University. “Flex Your Power:” Energy Crises and the Shifting Rhetoric of the Grid”, ATLANTIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, 14(4), 211–228)

Despite its appearance in exemplars such as Times Square….. administrative responses to power crises and challenges. 

In our exploration of the rhetoric of the grid we investigate contradictory modalities to keep in mind as part of our critical pedagogy:

Todd and Wood, ‘06 (Ann Marie, Doctorate in Philosophy, Masters in Communication Studies from USC, Professor at San Jose State,  Andrew Wood is a professor of Communication Studies at San José State University. “Flex Your Power:” Energy Crises and the Shifting Rhetoric of the Grid”, ATLANTIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, 14(4), 211–228)

First, we investigate California’s multimedia ….. regionalism and growing globalization.

The grid’s normalizing authority is the instantiation of control and oppressive forms of governmentality.  The implications could not be bigger and this is the way we will outweigh all their arguments.  This type of governmentality—THE SAME TYPE THAT WILL ANIMATE THEIR 1NC ARGUMENTS—is the logic of exclusion, the authorization of extermination.

Mitchell Dean 01, Professor, Sociology, Macquarie University, STATES OF IMAGINATION: ETHNOGRAPHIC EXPLORATIONS OF THE POSTCOLONIAL STATE, ed. T.B. Hansen and F. Stepputat, 2001, p. 53-54.

Consider again the contrastive terms….. more notice: “massacres become vital.

Contention Three: We can unhook, unplug, reduce our restrictions that have boxed us into our own grid.

Their perspective will not offer that alternative path if they insist on a reactionary strategy of topicality and framework.  To foist the apparatus of capture upon us that is the United States Federal Government is to replicate the patterns of slavery and control over production that associate clean and reliable energy with whiteness and wealth.  It’s time to rethink our politics.

Wadiwel, 2 (Dinesh Joseph, doctorate at the University of Western Sydney, “Cows and Sovereignty: Biopower and Animal Life,” Borderlands E-Journal, volume 1, number 2, www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol1no2_2002/wadiwel_cows.html)

But such a political program has far …..economy are imagined. 

PLUG IN BY PLUGGING OUT.  Disconnect from the grid in order to make the grid visible.  A network of power relations is more enabling that a grid of control.

Practices of ecology in the context of the modern nation-state establish new regimes of biopolitics and governmentality. By constituting both the object of government, the environment, and the means of governing, scientific rationality, eco-biopolitics develops new techniques for the management not just of the environment, but of whole populations.

Rutherford 99 Paul, professor of environmental politics in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the University of Sydney, Australia, 1999, Discourses of the Environment, p. 37-38

Modern thinking about the natural environment….termed ‘ecological governmentality’.

It is imperative that we begin to think outside the grid for any conception on energy production.   Environmental policy merges ecology and biopolitics into a police state of green governmentality that employs coercive power-knowledge regimes to enforce the new normative code of ecology

Luke 99 Timothy W. University Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Chair, Department of Political Science. Professor Luke's areas of research include environmental politics and cultural studies, as well as comparative politics, international political economy, and modern critical social and political theory. ,1999, Discourses of the Environment, p. 149-151.

Foucault is correct about the modern state…..integral element of this order’s regime of normalization.

Caffrey-Casiano / Barton:   K Aff

• • The “advocacy” is the top of Contention 1.

Contention One: We must rethink our relation to energy and the grid that produces it

There is a central question stemming from the Resolution.  It is a question that should ground our understandings of the topic and topicality as well as the framework and the work of enframing of the debate.

The question is:  How can we be so narrow-minded about energy production and how we generate the energy we need, when at the same time we utilize an electricity grid and a transportation network that goes unquestioned in terms of its structure, importance, and total contribution to all of our daily lives? 

For example, we know that electricity is taken for granted most of the time, it’s a utility bill and a question of conservation, but many of us are not regularly reflecting on the age and efficiency of the grid and the sources of power that are combined to supply the demand imposed on the grid by human consumption.  Those relations—the grid we all inhabit—are at the core of the resolution and compel a substantial reduction in the limitations on energy production here in the U.S. and beyond.  We must release ourselves from the grids we subject ourselves to by participating in discourse about energy sources, power, and the available contributions to the supply of the grid specified in the topic. 

It is our intervention in this particular debate that constitutes a shock in the biopolitical norms that generate and sustain certain subjectivities ensnared by “gridded life” alongside the actual national infrastructure built on certain primary sources of power fueling the massive production and consumption of energy in the United States.
More directly, rolling blackouts and power outages are forcing us to rethink our relationship to energy as well as the grid that produces it. 

Todd and Wood, ‘06 (Ann Marie, Doctorate in Philosophy, Masters in Communication Studies from USC, Professor at San Jose State,  Andrew Wood is a professor of Communication Studies at San José State University. “Flex Your Power:” Energy Crises and the Shifting Rhetoric of the Grid”, ATLANTIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, 14(4), 211–228)

On August 14, 2003, the largest electrical…. our relation to energy and the grid that produces it. 

Rethink the Grid. The Grid is not a mathematical ordering of disparate points into a coherent system; rather it is a socially constructed system of social ordering and classification that favors individuals who are constrained and think and act within a tightly structured system. 

Todd and Wood, ‘06 (Ann Marie, Doctorate in Philosophy, Masters in Communication Studies from USC, Professor at San Jose State,  Andrew Wood is a professor of Communication Studies at San José State University. “Flex Your Power:” Energy Crises and the Shifting Rhetoric of the Grid”, ATLANTIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, 14(4), 211–228)

Initially, we might be tempted to view the grid, ….. of the intricate topography of modernist experience. (p. 88)

Contention 2: Explore the Rhetoric of the Grid

We concur with a Foucauldian reading of power distribution as a discursive practice in our evaluation of the rhetoric of the grid. Discourse is not inexhaustible or preserved indefinitely. Power discourse surrounding the relationship between humans and nature is constructed! 

Todd and Wood, ‘06 (Ann Marie, Doctorate in Philosophy, Masters in Communication Studies from USC, Professor at San Jose State,  Andrew Wood is a professor of Communication Studies at San José State University. “Flex Your Power:” Energy Crises and the Shifting Rhetoric of the Grid”, ATLANTIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, 14(4), 211–228)

Despite its appearance in exemplars such as Times Square….. administrative responses to power crises and challenges. 

In our exploration of the rhetoric of the grid we investigate contradictory modalities to keep in mind as part of our critical pedagogy:

Todd and Wood, ‘06 (Ann Marie, Doctorate in Philosophy, Masters in Communication Studies from USC, Professor at San Jose State,  Andrew Wood is a professor of Communication Studies at San José State University. “Flex Your Power:” Energy Crises and the Shifting Rhetoric of the Grid”, ATLANTIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, 14(4), 211–228)

First, we investigate California’s multimedia ….. regionalism and growing globalization.

The grid’s normalizing authority is the instantiation of control and oppressive forms of governmentality.  The implications could not be bigger and this is the way we will outweigh all their arguments.  This type of governmentality—THE SAME TYPE THAT WILL ANIMATE THEIR 1NC ARGUMENTS—is the logic of exclusion, the authorization of extermination.

Mitchell Dean 01, Professor, Sociology, Macquarie University, STATES OF IMAGINATION: ETHNOGRAPHIC EXPLORATIONS OF THE POSTCOLONIAL STATE, ed. T.B. Hansen and F. Stepputat, 2001, p. 53-54.

Consider again the contrastive terms….. more notice: “massacres become vital.

Contention Three: We can unhook, unplug, reduce our restrictions that have boxed us into our own grid.

Their perspective will not offer that alternative path if they insist on a reactionary strategy of topicality and framework.  To foist the apparatus of capture upon us that is the United States Federal Government is to replicate the patterns of slavery and control over production that associate clean and reliable energy with whiteness and wealth.  It’s time to rethink our politics.

Wadiwel, 2 (Dinesh Joseph, doctorate at the University of Western Sydney, “Cows and Sovereignty: Biopower and Animal Life,” Borderlands E-Journal, volume 1, number 2, www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol1no2_2002/wadiwel_cows.html)

But such a political program has far …..economy are imagined. 

PLUG IN BY PLUGGING OUT.  Disconnect from the grid in order to make the grid visible.  A network of power relations is more enabling that a grid of control.

Practices of ecology in the context of the modern nation-state establish new regimes of biopolitics and governmentality. By constituting both the object of government, the environment, and the means of governing, scientific rationality, eco-biopolitics develops new techniques for the management not just of the environment, but of whole populations.

Rutherford 99 [Paul, professor of environmental politics in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the University of Sydney, Australia, 1999, Discourses of the Environment, p. 37-38]

Modern thinking about the natural environment….termed ‘ecological governmentality’.

It is imperative that we begin to think outside the grid for any conception on energy production.   Environmental policy merges ecology and biopolitics into a police state of green governmentality that employs coercive power-knowledge regimes to enforce the new normative code of ecology

Luke 99 [Timothy W. University Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Chair, Department of Political Science. Professor Luke's areas of research include environmental politics and cultural studies, as well as comparative politics, international political economy, and modern critical social and political theory. ,1999, Discourses of the Environment, p. 149-151].

Foucault is correct about the modern state…..integral element of this order’s regime of normalization.