Tournament: ASU | Round:  | Opponent:  | Judge:
And John and I will adopt the all of the above approach to meet America’s great energy challenges. Yes (app) . Those hundreds of billions of dollars being recirculated here in America, that means harnessing alternative sources like the wind, and the solar, and the biomass, and the geothermal, and the ethanol, and we’ll develop clean coal technology, and we’ll drill for the billions of barrels of oil that we have right now, warehoused underground including our resources offshore. We will drill here and drill now, and now is when you chant drill baby drill. Yes. (chant) Drill baby drill (chant). Drill baby drill.. (chant). Drill baby drill and mine baby mine, it is for the sake of our nation’s security, and of course our economic prosperity. We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers. (cheer) Yes…yes (cheer)

(Sarah Palin, 10/25/08, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iolgiIvfV-0)

You know, last month Joe Biden, he told a voter, he said, and I quote: we’re not supporting clean coal. He’s called environmentally friendly offshore drilling ‘raping the outer continental shelf. Both Joe Biden and Barak Obama have opposed offshore drilling. Of course they’ve flip-flopped recently in debates, and in statements that they’ve made, but, and that goes to someone’s judgment also in trying to figure out where are they on some of those issues, just straight talk. Tell Americans what you feel what you believe in, what you stand for. Straight talk!.
(Cheer)

 (Sarah Palin, 10/15/08, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQbm35g_s20)

This Affirmative is an exploration of two questions. First, what meaning is packaged into the ideological constellation ‘Drill baby drill’? And second, what are the ties between this ideological constellation and the resolution we’ve been asked to endorse?
Urban Dictionary offers the following definition of drilling:
“To penetrate a woman in a fast ‘n’ furious style,” as in the sentence, ‘seriously mate, I drilled her last night.’
This differs slightly from the Dictionary.com definition of “to pierce or bore a hole in something.”…but only slightly. The connotation in both cases represents the relationship between an active subject (that which drills), and a passive recipient object (that which is penetrated).

The trick with Palin’s slogan is that it’s not entirely clear which of the two meanings is being articulated. Nature is simultaneously cast as an inanimate object, a thing to be penetrated and violently transformed, and also as a feminized subject who desires her own penetration, who desperately wants the ‘untapped reserves warehoused’ deep within her to be extracted through the will of science and the grit of American ingenuity. Of course the metaphor of rape is ridiculous – Nature clearly wants it, for the sake of our national security and economic growth.

The sexualization of nature at work here is mirrored by a narcissistic Western political subject, one that sees itself as objective, rational, and Enlightened, and thus entitled to mastery over nature. This model of subjectivity excludes all those it doesn’t see as identical to itself – women, people of color, queers, and indigenous peoples, to name but a few – and is instrumental to the colonization of the geopolitical and natural worlds.

(J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspective on Achieving Global Security, 1992, http://library.northsouth.edu/Upload/Gender%20in%20IR.pdf)

It is here worth noting the origins of our fine topic. Ana Nikolic, who submitted the topic paper, works in the Policy Resolution Group of Bracewell and Giuliani, a law firm that makes its money representing transnational oil companies in multibillion dollar deals. Let’s be clear – they are not the ones drilling for oil. But like Sarah they are right there on the sidelines, chanting drill baby drill. The question of affirming this topic is a question of whether or not we’re willing to chant it too.

And before you say something about solar and wind energy, please give us a fucking break. There’s a reason they were included in the topic, and here’s a hint: it’s not because wind or solar pose a realistic alternative to fossil fuels, or to the control of transnational corporations over energy production. The topic is an endorsement of the status quo. Hell, even Sarah Palin’s ‘all-of-the-above approach’ takes a more open-minded stance on energy than the topic we’ve been called to affirm. It’s time to face the facts – the debate community this year purposefully excluded the discussion of alternative energies.  There were TWO resolutions that included alternative energies in the discussion and WE DID NOT VOTE FOR THEM, because hell—they don’t fucking mesh well with the hegemony and nuclear war impacts that debaters have been running for years and will continue to run for years.  Instead, our community has bought into this exclusionary topic to ensure that we all serve the same interests as Palin and Bracewell and Giuliani, so we can run the same big impact arguments that for some reason keep winning debate rounds.  
What interests are those exactly? Well I’d say the ex-governor laid it out pretty well. It is for the sake of our national security and of course our economic prosperity. These two reigning goals of policy discourse find their roots in colonialism. The way of relating to Nature expressed through drill baby drill, expressed through this year’s topic, is highly compatible with a way of relating to the Foreign and the Other in terms of domination and competition. The sexualization of the Other is a frequent factor in its subordination to the hegemonic model of subjectivity. The kind of knowledge produced through topical discussion thus feeds into endless cycles of colonial violence. 

Gaard 1997 (Greta, “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism,” Hypatia, Volume 12, Issue 1, http://www.google.com/url?sa=tandrct=jandq=andesrc=sandsource=webandcd=1andved=0CCEQFjAAandurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lespantheresroses.org%2Ftextes%2Fecology_toward_a_queer_ecofeminism.pdfandei=HX-LULyVGOKi2wWvuIHoDgandusg=AFQjCNGQdIsjinIfasYcaZzkpcEyioG7ig
)

So you probably could have guessed by now that we’re not going to defend topical action. We could play like other performance Affs and claim an ironic reading of Sarah Palin is T, or that our critical discussion is T…but we’re not going to do that either. You know it’s bullshit anyway. This Aff is a critique of the topic. It’s not topical. However it is intimately related to this year’s resolution, arguably moreso than the Affs that just want to read the same heg impacts and politics links year after year. This is a concept we call being topic-ish, and it’s the standard we hold ourselves to as the Affirmative. We don’t think an Aff team should be able to get up and just say anything – however, so long as an Aff team is presenting an argument relevant to the topic, the negative should be able to find something to say.

We as a community must do away with the notion that a single approach to the topic, or to affirmation, is necessary, or even desirable. Framework and topicality are rooted in a desire to affirm a common, unified vision of debate. Such a unified vision inevitably reflects the values of hegemonic power.

(Moira Gatens, Professor of Philosophy at Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, Corporeal Representations in/and the Body Politic, Writing on the body: female embodiment and feminist theory, 1997, p. 85-87)

This nomadic form of feminism seeks to restructure our relationship to the Other and to difference in a way that is not doomed to recreate violence.  It requires critique at every level, from the content of the topic to the rules of the discursive game.

(Rosi Braidotti, Director of Center for the Humanities at Utrecht, Mothers, Monsters, and Machines, Writing on the body: female embodiment and feminist theory, Pg 75-76)