1ac

1ac UMKC
Institutionalization never ended, it only shifted to more diffuse and harder to resist
locales failure to challenge this dooms broader decarceration and perpetuates
oppression of disabled bodies
Ben-Moshe 11 (Liat, Disabling Incarceration: Connecting Disability to Divergent Confinements in the USA Critical Sociology 39(3)
385 403Critical Sociology 39(3) 385 403, )
The need to combine the discussion on current levels of imprisonment with discussion and data about institutionalization, hospitalization and
disablement is imperative for practical, empirical and theoretical reasons. The most pressing is the need to expand on notions of what comes
to be classified as incarceration . This article suggests the merits of conceptualizing incarceration as including institutionalization in a wide
variety of enclosed settings, including prisons, jails, detention centers, institutions for the intellectually disabled, treatment centers, and
psychiatric hospitals. Such formulations conceptualize incarceration as a continuum and a multi-faceted phenomenon. This analysis is
especially pressing because of the immense growth of the prison machine in the USA. For the first time in US history, in 2008, more than one
in 100 American adults was behind bars. In 2009 the adult incarcerated population in prisons and jails in the USA had reached 2,284,900
according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS, 2010). The USA incarcerates a greater share of its population, 737 per 100,000 residents, than
any other country on the planet (Pew Center, 2008). Another whopping 5,018,900 people are under community corrections, which include
parole and probation (BJS, 2010). Race, gender and disability play a significant role in incarceration rates. In 2006, Caucasians/whites were
imprisoned at a rate of 409 per 100,000 residents; Latinos at 1038 per 100,000 and African-Americans at 2468 per 100,000. The rate for women
was 134 per 100,000 residents and for men, 1384 per 100,000. In 2005 more than half of all prison and jail inmates were reported as having a
mental health problem. Nearly a quarter of both state prisoners and jail inmates who had a mental health problem, compared to a fifth of
those without, had served three or more prior incarcerations (Prison Policy Initiative, 2008). The number of carceral edifices in the USA had
grown as well. From 2000 to 2005, the number of state and federal correctional facilities increased by 9 percent, from 1668 to 1821 (BJS, 2008).
In contrast to the constant expansion of prisons, deinstitutionalization and institution closure have been a major policy trend in most US
states in the past few decades. Deinstitutionalizationof people who were labeled as mentally ill began in the 1950s. The deinstitutionalization
in the field of mental retardation gained prominence in the 1970s, although this of course varied by state. The population of people with
intellectual disabilities living in large public institutions peaked at 194,650 in 1967. By 2004, this number had declined to 41,653 (Prouty et al.,
2005).The trend in deinstitutionalization for people with intellectual disabilities was accompanied by institutional closures across most states.
By 2009, the District of Columbia, Alaska, Hawaii,Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia had closed
allof their public institutions for people with developmental disabilities (Lakin et al., 2010). In con-trast, 13 states have not closed any such
public institutions (Braddock, 2002). An accompanying shift occurred in the field of mental health with the establishment of the community
mental health centers in the 1960s and the closure of large state mental hospitals in most major cities. In 1955, the state mental health
population was 559,000, nearly as large on a per capita basis as the prison population today. By 2000, it had fallen to below 100,000, a drop of
more than 90 percent (Gottschalk, 2010; Harcourt, 2011). Deinstitutionalization in the field of developmental disabilities occurred about 12
years after the deinstitutionalization of public mentalhospitals, and the rate of reduction of use of these facilities was also significantly different
between the two processes. In the first 10 years of deinstitutionalization for traditional institutionsfor those labeled as mentally retarded, the
institutionalized population was reduced by 30 percentand then averaged about 11 percent a year during the 1970s. At its height, between
1955 and1965, the deinstitutionalization in psychiatric hospitals reduced the populations by 15 percentonly (Lerman, 1985).Over the years,
some of the figures given for deinstitutionalization of public institutions have been misleading , as significant proportions of people were
transferred to other types of institutions including nursing homes. In 2009, for instance, 12,475 people with developmental disabilities lived
in state operated community residential settings with 15 or fewer residents. In addition, between 1977 and 2009, the total number of
residential settings in which people with developmen-tal disabilities received residential services grew from 11,008 to an estimated 173,042, an
increaseof 1500 percent (Lakin et al., 2010). Because most of these newer settings are much smaller than the massive institutions of previous
decades, they are not typically counted as institutional placements , but due to their daily routines and other aspects of life in these
settings, many people with disabilities, family members, and advocates consider them to be mini-institutions within the community (Center
on Human Policy, 2004).From this critical intersection, it may not be surprising to also learn that physically, many institutions for those
labeled as psychiatrically or developmentally disabled that closed down during the 1980s actually re-opened a few years later as prisons .
Alabama turned three-quartersof its closed institutions (which closed in 2003) into correctional facilities (the fourth quartersuse is
undetermined). Illinois closed seven institutions, two of which became correctional facili-ties and a third a womens prison. New York State
had the absolute largest number of institutionsin the USA, seventeen of which closed between 1970 and 2010. Most of them were left as
is,with future usage undetermined, but at least two became correctional facilities (Braddock et al.,2008). These figures, although not
comprehensive by any means, serve to highlight the cyclical nature of social control and the persistent nature of incarceration as a strategy
to categorize and keep out undesirable populations . I want to be clear here, that proposing a more thoroughly intersectional history is
distinct from proposing that ableism and racism, or asylums and prisons, are the same . It is the similarities and the distinctions that are
important to attend to, in terms of rationalizations, in terms of practices associated with them, and also in terms of the effects on the people
who are incarcerated in diversesites of confinement. For example, the criminal justice system seems to offer certain protections to the
accused and the prisoner, such as due process during the trial and sentencing procedures, a sentence of a specified duration. However,
medical institutions allow the compulsory admittance of patients against their will based only on a medical diagnosis, an indefinite time of
commitment, and treatments that are both painful and harmful, such as extended periods of isolation, physical restraints, and electric
shock therapy . In addition, the government and the public assume medical treatment is in the best interests of both the patient and
society, and great autonomy is given to physicians to determine the best course of treatment (Conrad and Schneider, 1992; Goffman,
1961;Snyder and Mitchell, 2006). Incarceration in prisons, however, seems to be operating more under the discourses of punishment and
retribution, rather than rehabilitation. This framework has its own lethal effects on the lives of those incarcerated and formerly
incarcerated , but it does not nec-essarily operate under the same processes as medicalized settings, although both settings havemany
similarities (Chapman et al., forthcoming).
The communitys failure to focus our analysis on this deeper template for
incarceration leaves our debates unable to scratch the surface of mass incarceration
and confinement
Ben-Moshe 11 (Liat, Disabling Incarceration: Connecting Disability to Divergent Confinements in the USA Critical Sociology 39(3)
385 403Critical Sociology 39(3) 385 403,
Imprisonment in prisons and in institutions are not only related in a theoretical or historicalrealm. On an empirical level, Harcourt (2006)
emphasizes that using an aggregated incarceration rate, which includes data from hospitalization and imprisonment combined, yields very
different results and implications for research and policy. Harcourt (2006) laments that none of the above literature, which connected
prisons and institutions (for example the work of Foucault and otherhistorians of asylums, the work of Goffman on total institutions, etc),
made its way to social scientific research, especially to its empirical/quantitative dimension (with the exception of studies thatlook into the
phenomenon of trans-incarceration, discussed later). In other words, none of the stud-ies that include confinement as an independent variable
includes institutionalization in its measureand definition of confinement/incarceration. In social science research, including criminology,
theconvention is to think of confinement in terms of placement in jails and prisons, therefore reinforc-ing a skewed interpretation of the rise in
incarceration in the USA. Under this interpretation, the first half of the 20th century is conceived as an era of relative stability in terms of
incarceration, with an explosion in this area in the 1980s onward, in the form of immense growth in the capacity of prisons and jails.
However, as Harcourt (2006) suggests, if the data on mental hospitalization and institutionalization were also covered in such studies under
the prism of incarceration, then the rise in incarceration would have reached its peak in 1955, when mental hospitals reached their
highest capacity . Put differently, the incarceration rates in prisons and jails today (although appallingly high by any standards) barely
scrape the levels of incarceration during the early part of the 20th century because of the then massive confinement in hospitals .
Therefore, Harcourt (2006) argues for the use of aggregated incarceration rates, by using figuresfor imprisonment and institutionalization
combined, for all future research that examines the rela-tion of confinement to other factors such as homicide, employment, education, crime,
etc. Not to do so is to look at only a partial picture of both confinement and incapacitation and also not to take seriously the theoretical
and historical perspectives that conceptualize incarceration more expansively . What needs to be empirically assessed, then, is not the rise
in incarceration but the systemic and lingering effects of the continuity of confinement in modern times . What such arguments high-light is
the need to reconceptualize institutionalization and imprisonment as not merely analogues but as in fact interconnected, in their logic,
historical enactment and social effects. The theoretical and policy implications of such interconnectedness will also necessitate bringing in
disability(psychiatric, developmental, physical, etc.) as a focus in studies on incarceration , as well as working out questions of criminality
and danger in studies of institutionalization and disablement.
Instead, must view incarceration as a continuum of carceral edifices with disability at
its core this forges a holistic understanding of oppression by better coming to terms
with peoples lived realities
Ben-Moshe 11 (Liat, Disabling Incarceration: Connecting Disability to Divergent Confinements in the USA Critical Sociology 39(3)
385 403Critical Sociology 39(3) 385 403, )
Conclusion: The Incarceration Matrix and the SociologicalImagination
This article was intended as a beginning to an overdue conversation between the growing scholar-ship on incarceration and research in the
critical field of disability studies, by conceptualizing dis-ability and incarceration very broadly. Incorporating a variety of forms of disablement
withindisability studies (in relation to psychiatrization, labeling of those with intellectual disabilitiesand institutionalization) will hopefully
generate more nuanced accounts of what gets codified asdisability as well as what gets to be labeled, and researched, as incarceration.
Broadening the scopeof research on incarceration to include a variety of confinements (such as psychiatric hospitals,nursing homes, institutions
for those labeled as intellectually and developmentally disabled) willtake into account the work of scholars who have already theorized the
carceral along these lines(such as Foucault, Goffman, Scull and others) and can also generate new work in this vein. It will also account for the
lived reality of prisoners with disabilities who are caught in the webs of the institution- and prison-industrial complexes. Under this
formulation, incarceration is understood as a continuum of carceral edifices, or as an institutional matrix in which disability is a core
component, not simply an added category of analysis. This call for connecting analysis of incarceration with disability is also a call to pay
attention to the lives of mostly poor people of color who are still incarcerated worldwide in nursing homes, institutions for those with
labels of mental illness and/or intellectual disability and prisons, and bring their perspective to bear on what Chris Bell characterized as
White disability studies (2006).My main argument here is that the history of disability is the history of incarceration . Following this
argument will lead us back to the original premise of the sociological imagination. As Mills explains, The sociological imagination enables us
to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise. (1959: 6). Therefore,
sociologists who study incarceration and those who are interested in the lived experience of people with a variety of dis-ability labels would
fare well with a more expansive view of both disability and incarceration.
Only our analysis that foregrounds the interconnectivity of how medical and judicial
discourses of normalcy construct criminality through the medical-prison-industrial-
complexs foundational threats of social danger
Ben-Moshe 11 (Liat, Disabling Incarceration: Connecting Disability to Divergent Confinements in the USA Critical Sociology 39(3)
385 403Critical Sociology 39(3) 385 403, )
On a theoretical level, the imperative to understand incarceration through both the prism of the prison but also that of the institution, as
this article suggests, is crucial to understanding the underlying relations that legitimate confinement in a variety of settings. Such analysis
also underscores the relation between penal and medical notions of danger, as they relate to both criminalization and medicalization and
labeling . Historically, the connection between imprisonment and definitions of abnormality seems to have arisen out of a new
configuration of notions of danger. From the 19th century the webs of the medical and the judicial start to intertwine with the rise of a hybrid
discourse, according to Foucault (2003). Its hybridity lies not just in the sense of amalgamation of several discourses (legal, medical) but also
in the creation of a new power/knowledge structure in which doctors laying claim to judicial power and judges laying claim to medical
power (2003: 39) lay down an intertwined system of surveillance, which includes psychiatric progress reports on the incarcerated,
examination in court of the accused, and surveillance of at risk groups. According to Foucault (2003), this medico-judicial discourse does not
originate from medicine or law or in between, but from another external discourse that of abnormality. The power of normalization is
cloaked by medical notions of illness and legal notions of recidivism. The history of treatment and categorization of those labeled as
feebleminded, and later mentally retarded, is also paved with cobblestones of notions of social danger, as prominent eugenicists tried to
scientifically establish that those whom they characterized as feebleminded had a tendency to commit violent crimes. In the late 19th
century, as the eugenics movement gained momentum, it was declared that all feebleminded people were potential criminals (Rafter, 1997;
Trent, 1995). Spaces of confinement themselves, such as psychiatric hospitals, poorhouses, prisons and institutions for those labeled as
mentally retarded, could also be perceived as operating on similar logic, from a variety of perspectives. Foucault analyzes their discursive
formations and effects as docile making and producing techniques of governance and social control (1995). The remarkable continuity of
confinement (Harcourt, 2006) is also discussed as part of a revisionist social history of places of confinement, offered by Rothman (1971),
Grob (1972, 1983), Scull (1979, 1989) and Foucault (1965, 1987, 1995) and amended by feminist historians and criminologists such as Rafter
(2004) and Kurshan (1996). The revisionist narrative marked a shift from perspectives that saw asylums and prisons as reforming and
benevolent, to more nuanced accounts that critiqued both the consequences and intentions of reform efforts that ended in mass
incarceration. Interestingly, this neo-historiography of the institution and prison was written, and battled, by historians and other
intellectuals at a time when these institutions started to lose their legitimacy. Most of these accounts were produced in the 1960s and 1970s
when larger exposes, lawsuits, novels, movies and ethnographies came out to reveal the decrepit conditions of asylums, hospitals and prisons.
These included Erving Goffmans Asylums(1961), the novel made into a Hollywood film One flew Over the Cuckoos Nest(Kesey, 1962),
Burton Blatts expos Christmas in Purgatory(Blatt and Kaplan, 1974), the riots in Attica prison, and lawsuits on behalf of prisoners and
inmates in state institutions. Therefore, the debates over the reasons and usefulness of asylums in the past should be read as directly tied
to debates over decarceration and re-institutionalization at present. The premise that all these writings share is an understanding of
incarceration as a continuum and not an isolated phenomenon that can be understood by engaging with only one locale.
This is emblematic of ableist normalcys exclusionary praxis which makes ongoing
eugenics and extermination inevitable its devaluation of disabled people creates
treacherous terrain for all who are othered by Western society
Brown 11, Artist Initiative Grantee at Minnesota State Arts Board Senior Academic Adviser for the College of Education and Human Development at University of Minnesota Steering Committee at Education Abroad
Network at University of Minnesota Volunteer Coordinator for Social Inclusion and Bullying Prevention at Marcy Open School see less Past 2012-2013 Buckman Fellow at Buckman Fellowship Travel and Study Grantee at Jerome
Foundation Loft Mentor Series Award Winner for Poetry at The Loft Literary Center Institute on Community Integration Post-graduate Certificate Graduate Student at University of Minnesota University of Minnesota College of
Education and Human Development/University Honors Program Liaison at University of Minnesota University Honors Program Academic Advisor at University of Minnesota University of Minnesota Learning Abroad
Center/University Honors Program Liaison at University of Minnesota Foreign Lecturer--English Studies, Cultural Awareness, Humanities at Hokkaido University of Education Educational Technologies post-grad certificate program
at University of British Columbia, Vancouver Adjunct Lecturer--Japanese Language at Wayne County Community College Adjunct Lecturer--English Composition at Wayne State University Foriegn Lecturer--English Studies, Creative
Writing, English Literature at Sophia University--Tokyo, Japan Screw normal: Resisting the myth of normal by questioning medias depiction of people with autism and their families,
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/gara0030/iggds/Screw%20Normal_FINAL_Dosch%20Brown.pdf
The one societal need in our society that is often unacknowledged, silenced, and left unexamined is that humans have, as Michalko quoted
Cornel West, the deep, visceral need to belong (Michalko, 2002, p. 81) all of us struggle with full acceptance of ourselves and our desire
to be seen as acceptable or welcome in a society that loves to label people. The media creates walls between its ideals and the people it
views as Others , such as when the media views people with autism as abnormal mysteries. We are being taught that differences occurring
from autism are wrong, and sadly too many families depicted in the media perpetuate this negative view of their own children. When
thinking of normal henceforth, lets consider what Michalko wrote about society and his blindness. He explained that, although society might
have found ways technologically for him to participate (he is a professor), he is still seen as strange because he is blind. He said the difference
in his blindness must be grappled with inside his being in a space between nature and culture and normal and abnormal (2002, p. 83),
and it is within this confusing, unmarked space where he has had to build his own identity. By moving through the world with his body of
blindness, Michalko has projected himself into the social space, just as my son must project his own self, by moving through the social
space with his mind of difference; thus, society reacts to people who have disabilities who cannot live up to the mythical norms with
help, pity, ridicule, unease, and curiosity (2002, p. 88), and it results in an unequal power structure that creates treacherous
terrain for all of us who have been Othered. Michalko (2002) noted that mainstream Western society views all disabilities as abnormal, and
it thus approaches people with disability as tragic people who live lives not worth living; they are seen as the Other, as objects of pity,
both vulnerable and fragile (p.68). The complexity, diversity, and range of differences of all human beings in this world are erased, denied,
and ignored under a banner of sameness or normalcyand those who cannot or will not conform are silenced and lumped into the
category of Other, and dealt with suspicion for not conforming to social construction of what is acceptable in appearance, behavior, and
experience. Eugenics, the academic Phil Smith (2008) has concluded, is still very much present in societal attitudes toward disability. Eugenics
formalized the Normal, a cultural landscape outlined in order to support the hegemony of its inhabitants, a liberalist bourgeois class of
white, able-bodied men (P. Smith, p. 419). By silencing those with perceived disabilities (or those with a particular perceived race,
ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation , etc.) and deeming them as lesser than normal humanssociety is able to continue to deny that
being normal is actually a socially constructed myth (Michalko, 2002, p. 69). Phil Smith further pointed out that not so long ago those who
committed the war crimes by killing or sterilizing people they had deemed of inferior intelligence in the Nazis T-4 project were consistently
given less severe convictions and higher acquittal rates (P. Smith, 2008, p. 421)revealing, indeed, that as a society we devalue the lost
lives of those considered too different from the mythical norm, which we will demonstrate later is a devaluation of human life very much
alive in media depiction of autism. Society rarely has ears for the voices or rooms reserved for those with differences who think otherwise,
and it rarely realizes that indeed people with differences also have value and critical roles to play in society. The media maintains this gaping
silence as well. Society, Michalko has argued, either expects those deemed abnormal will get through their differences by adapting
to the dominant rules, so as to be less noticed, or it expects them to get out by removing themselves from view, by being silent and
isolated (Michalko, 2002, p. 75); and some experts, doctors, educators, and therapists make a sizable income from attempting to enforce
these societal expectations on families.
Ableisms constitutional divide forms the blueprint for modernity this culminates in
genocidal violence and targeting of marginalized bodies this violence can only
maintain power through our silence
Campbell 8, Fiona Kumari is a Senior Lecturer in Disability Studies at the School of Human Services & Social Work Griffith University
(Brisbane) and Adjunct Professor in Disability Studies, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, Refusing Able(ness): A Preliminary
Conversation about Ableism, http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/46
II. Ableist Relations
Central to regimes of ableism are two core elements that feature irrespective of its localised enactment, namely the notion of the normative
(and normate individual) and the enforcement of a constitutional divide between perfected naturalized humanity and the aberrant, the
unthinkable, quasi-human hybrid and therefore non-human. This constitution provides the layout, the blueprint for the scaling and marking
of bodies and the ordering of their terms of relation. It is not possible to have a concept of difference without Ableism. Lets take each of
these two elements separately and explore them more closely. The Able/Not-Able Divide It is necessary to establish and enforce a
constitutional divide . The divide is at the levels of ontology, materiality and sentiency. I wish to focus on the constitutionality of that divide
between the normal and the pathological and mechanisms of ordering. This analysis is influenced by the proposals advanced by Bruno Latour in
We Have Never been Modern. Latour speaks of the practices of translation and purification: translation, creates mixtures between entirely
new types of being, hybrids of nature and culture. The second, by purification: creates two entirely distinct ontological zones: that of
human beings on the one hand; that of nonhumans on the other (10 - 11). The devices of translation and purification can assist us to grapple
with that which seems unholdable and elusive; the uncontainability of the disabled body. Translation is based on the notion that structures
or networks are not obvious or self-contained. Latour uses the example of a chain flowing from the upper atmosphere, industrial strategies
and onto the concerns of government and greenies. Purification in contrast, engages in the creation of divides of ontological distinctions,
which espouse a foundational (almost first cause) self-evidence. Here, Latour cites that partition between nature (as self contained),
nonhumans and culture (created and driven by humans). This modern critical stance, as Latour calls it, acts as the ethos or template of
modernity. In the context of ableism, Latours schema proves helpful. The processes and practices of translation cannot be separated from
the creation of that ordering category termed disability. For many people deemed disabled, in the world of technoscience their relationship
with non-human actants has been profoundly cyborgical and hybridisable (for example the use of communication and adaptive devices,
implants and transplants). As such the networks of association between human non human (sentient beings and machines) have always been
and increasingly are pushing the boundaries of the practices of purification. The disabled body induces a fear as being a body out of control
because of its appearance of uncontainability. The practices of purification insist on this being the case. Ableisms constitutional divide
posits two distinct and entirely clear ontological zones: disabled and abled (normate). Latour explains without the first set, the practices
of purification would be fruitless or pointless . Without the second, the work of translation would be slowed down, limited, or even ruled
out. So long as we consider these two practices of translation and purification separately, we are truly modern that is willingly subscribe
to the critical project, even though that project is developed only through the proliferation of hybrids down below. As soon as we direct our
attention simultaneously to the work of purification and the work of hybridization [translation], we immediately stop being wholly
modern, and our future begins to change. (11) The challenge then is to look beyond social context, at the interactivity between the
processes and techniques of purification and translation, in particular to investigate what this interactivity clarifies and obfuscates. Even
though Latour claims that purification is not an ideology in disguise, I would assert that the existence of processes of purification creates a
simulation if you like, of the conditions of naturalism. Latours discussion of whether relations are conscious and unconscious, or are illusion
and reality is an important one. He concludes that moderns are not unaware of what they do; rather it is the holding steadfast to
dichotomies, the divides, which makes possible the processes of translation. We can by analogy, argue that matters of intentionality or
discourse and so forth, are not critical to the emerging technologies of ableism, but rather it is the act of holding stoically to the distinction
between ableness and disabledness. In contemporary developments in high-tech and biotechnologies, it is occasionally possible to witness
the glitches in the purview of purification, whether that is in the debates over transhumanism, xenotransplantation or the emergent of new
life in the form of artificial intelligences (A.Is). The confusion about where human life begins and ends harks back to the Enlightenment era
where philosophers like Locke inquired What is It? in trying to make sense of the humanness of changelings (Campbell; Locke,). The fortunes
of techno-science continue to disrupt the fixity of defining disability and normalcy especially within the arenas of law and bioethics. Whilst
anomalous bodies are undecidable in being open to endless and differing interpretations, an essentialised disabled body is subjected to
constant deferral standing in reserve, awaiting and escaping able(edness) through morphing technologies and as such exists in an
ontologically tentative or provisional state. Latour points out the ultimate paradox of this modern constitutional divide is that whilst the
proliferation of hybrids is allowed for, at the same time this constitution continues to deny the very existence of hybrid entities within its
formulation (Latour). Contemporary conditions suggest that it is not the event of denial that is operational; rather it is the place or
significance given to such ambiguous entities that disrupt the rather neat demarcation zones. Practices of purification continue to rein in
(successfully or otherwise) the chaos created by increasing grey zones along the continuum of human/nonhuman difference. In the
governing of prostitution, Razack points to the creation of anomalous zone to contain and tolerate the deviance. In dealing with political
prisoners, the despised, those interned in concentration camps and institutions , Agamben indicates the manufacturing of states of
exception that exist beyond the law and spatiality to enable treatments of those existing in the realm of a bare life. The significance of the
enforcement of a constitutional divide, for the practices of ableism, is that such orderings are not just repressive but they are ultimately
productive; they tell us stories, they contain narratives as to who we are and how we should be. In the closing pages of We Have Never
been Modern, Latour argues that as science creates new definitions of being human, these new formations do not displace the older versions
rather humanism is redistributed. I am not entirely convinced of this emergent multiplicity and expansion of ontologies of humanness. Contra
Latour, Hayles argues that should sentiency be conceptualised on the basis of informationalcy this new rendering would amount to a profound
shift in the theoretical markers used to categorise all life (or what is life). In this moment there is a rallying of networks scurrying to squeeze
new ontological formations of dis/ability into old systems of ordering and thus attempt to avoid re-cognising an abundance of (post marginal,
post peripheral) morphisms. Anthropomorphism becomes the catch cry of ableism. As Latour rejoices: Morphism is the place where
technomorpisms, zoomorphisms, phusimorphisms,ideomorphisms,theomorphisms, sociomorphisms, psyomorphisms, all come together. These
alliances and their exchanges, taken together, are what define the anthropos. A weaver of morphisms - isnt that enough of a definition? (137)
What Normate Ableist Normativity? Georges Canguilhem (69) states every generality is the sign of an essence, and every perfection the
realization of the essence a common characteristic, the value of an ideal type. If this is the case, what then is the essence of normative
abled(ness)? Such a question poses significant conceptual challenges including the dangers of bifurcation. It is reasonably easy to speculate
about the knowingness of life forms deemed disabled in spite of the neologism of disabilitys catachresis orientation. In contrast able-
bodied, corporeal perfectedness has an elusive core (other than being posed as transparently average or normal). Charting a criterion of
Abled to gain definitional clarity can result in a game of circular reductionism saying what it is in relation to what it isnt, that which falls
away. Disability performances are invoked to mean any body capable of being narrated as outside the norm (Mitchell 17). Such as analysis
belies the issue whether at their core womens, black and queer bodies are ultimately ontologically and materially disabled? Inscribing certain
bodies in terms of deficiency and essential inadequacy privileges a particular understanding of normalcy that is commensurate with the
interests of dominant groups (and the assumed interests of subordinated groups). Indeed, the formation of ableist relations requires the
normate individual to depend upon the self of disabled bodies being rendered beyond the realm of civility, thus becoming an unthinkable
object of apprehension. The unruly, uncivil, disabled body is necessary for the reiteration of the truth of the real/essential human self
who is endowed with masculinist attributes of certainty, mastery and autonomy. The discursive practices that mark out bodies of
preferability are vindicated by abject life forms that populate the constitutive outside of the thinkable (that which can be imagined and re-
presented) and those forms of existence that are unimaginable and therefore unspeakable. The emptying (kenosis) of normalcy occurs
through the purging of those beings that confuse, are misrecognizable or as Mitchell (17) describes as recalcitrant corporeal matter into a
bare life (see Agamben) residing in zone of exceptionality. This foreclosure depends on necessary unspeakability to maintain the continued
operation of hegemonic power (c.f. Butler). For every outside there is an inside that demands differentiation and consolidation as a unity.
To borrow from Heidegger in every aletheia (unveiling or revealedness) of representation there lies a concealedness. The visibility of the
ableist project is therefore only possible through the interrogation of the revealedness of disability/not-health and abled(ness). Marcel
Detienne summarizes this system of thought aptly: *Such a+ system is founded on a series of acts of partition whose ambiguity, here as
elsewhere, is to open up the terrain of their transgression at the very moment when they mark off a limit. To discover the complete horizon
of a societys symbolic values, it is also necessary to map out its transgressions, its deviants ( ix). Viewing the disabled body as simply matter out of place that needs to dispensed with or at
least cleaned up is erroneous. The disabled body has a place, a place in liminality to secure the performative enactment of the normal. Detiennes summation points to what we may call the double bind of ableism when performed within western neo-liberal polities. The double bind folds
in on itself for whilst claiming inclusion, ableismsimultaneously always restates and enshrines itself. On the one hand, discourses of equality promote inclusion by way of promoting positive attitudes (sometimes legislated in mission statements, marketing campaigns, equal
opportunity protections) and yet on the other hand, ableist discourses proclaimquite emphatically that disability is inherently negative, ontologically intolerable and in the end a dispensable remnant. This casting results in an ontological foreclosure wherein positive signification of
disability becomes unspeakable. Disability cant be thought of/spoken about on any other basis than the negative, to do so, to invoke oppositional discourses, is to run the risk of further pathologisation. An example of this are attempts at desiring or celebrating disability which are
reduced to a fetish or facticity disorder. So to explicate ourselves out of this double bind we need to persistently and continually return to the matter of disability as negative ontology, as a malignancy, that is, as the property of a body constituted by what Michael Oliver refers to as, the
personal tragedy theory of disability. (32) Returning to the matter of definitional clarity around Abled(ness). Robert McRuer is one of the few scholars to journey i nto ableisms non-axiomatic life. He argues that ableism (McRuer refers to compulsory abled-bodiedness) emanates from
everywhere and nowhere, and can only be deduced by crafty reductionisms. Contra the assertions about the uncontainability of disabled bodi es which are (re)contained by the hyper prescription and enumeration, the abled body mediated through its assumption of compulsion is absent
in its presence it just is but resists being fully deducible. Drawing on Butlers work, McRuer writes everyone is virtually disabled, both in the sense that able-bodied norms are intrinsically impossible to embody fully and in the sense that able-bodied status is always temporary,
disability being the one identity category that all people will embody if they live long enough. What we might call a critically disability position, however, would differ from such a virtually disabled position [to engagements that have] resisted the demands of compulsory able-bodiedness
(9596) My argument is that insofar as this conception of disability is assumed within discourses of ableism, the presence of disability upsets the modernist craving for ontological security. The conundrum disability is not a mere fear of the unknown, nor an apprehensiveness towards
that which is foreign or strange. Rather, disability and disabled bodies are effectively positioned in the nether regions of unthought. For the ongoing stability of ableism, a diffuse network of thought depends upon the capacity of that network to shut away, to exteriori se, and unthink
disability and its resemblance to the essential (ableist) human self. This unthought has been given much consideration through the systematisation and classification of knowledges about pathology, aberration and deviance. That which is thought about (the Abled norm) rather ironically in
its delimitation becomes vacuous and elusive. In order for the notion of ableness to exist and to transmogrify into the sovereign subject, the normate individual of liberalism, it must have a constitutive outside that is, it must participate in a logic of supplementarity. When looking at
relations of disability and ableismwe can expand on this idea of symbiosis, an unavoidable duality by putting forward another metaphor, that of the mirror. Here I argue that people deemed disabled take on the performative act of mirroring in the lives of normative subjects: To be a
Mirror is different frombeing a Face that looks back with a range of expression and responsiveness that are responses of a Subject-in-Its-Own-Right. To be positioned as a Mirror is to be Put Out of Countenance, to Lose Face. (Narayan 141) In this respect, we can speak in ontological
terms of the history of disability as a history of that which is unthought, to be put out of countenance; this figuring shoul d not be confused with erasure that occurs due to mere absence or exclusion. On the contrary, disability is always present (despite its seeming absence) in the ableist
talk of normalcy, normalization, and humanness (cf. Overboe ) on the idea of normative shadows). Disabilitys truth-claims are dependent upon discourses of ableismfor their very legitimization. III. Disabi lity Imaginaries Reconceptualising the Human? Phenomenological studies have
long recognized the importance of focusing on the experience of the animated living body (der Leib), in recognition that we dwell in our bodies and live so fundamentally through them. This intensity is captured by Kalekin-Fishman: Before every action, there is
a pause ... and a beginning again. The pause is for description, for mulling over the requirements of balance, for comparing the proposed action
with movements that are familiar, and for explaining to myself why I can or cannot do what is at hand ... In the course of daily living, the
thinking is not observable; the behavior just happens, part of what this person does naturally. The physiology of a slight limp is part of the
unmediated expression of what my I is ... (136) In short, we cannot know existence without being rooted to our bodies. To this extent, it is
problematic to speak of bodies in their materiality in a way that distinguishes between emotions and cognition. This generative body is
shaped by relations of power, complex histories and interpreted through a bricolage of complex interwoven subjectivities. This approach to
perceiving the body in terms of geist or animation can be applied to re-thinking peripheral bodies deemed disabled. It is this body that
infuses the discourses and animates representations. Refusing Able(ness) necessitates a letting go of the strategy of using the sameness for
equality arguments as the basis of liberal freedom. Instead of wasting time on the violence of normalization, theoretical and cultural
producers could more meaningfully concentrate on developing a semiotics of exchange, an ontological decoder to recover and apprehend
the lifeworlds of humans living peripherally. Ontological differences, be that on the basis of problematical signifiers of race, sex, sexuality
and dis/ability, need to be unhinged from evaluative ranking and be re-cognised in their various nuances and complexities without being re-
presented in fixed absolute terms. It is only then , in this release that we can find possibilities in ambiguity and resistance in marginality (cf.
de Beauvoir; hooks). Instead of asking how do you manage not being like (the non-stated) us? (the negation argument), disability imaginaries
think/speak/gesture and feel different landscapes not just for being in-the-world, but on the conduction of perception, mobilities and
temporalities. Linton points out that the kinaesthetic, proprioceptive, sensory and cognitive experiences of disabled people as they go about
their daily life has received limited attention. Nancy Mairs notes a disability gaze is imbricated in every aspect of action, perception, occurrence
and knowing. In order to return bodies back to differencein-the-human, a re-conceptualization of knowing (episteme) is paramount . Only
this knowledge is of a carnal kind, where thinking, sensing and understanding mutually enfold. Whilst ever present in ableist normalising
dialogue, disabilitys veracity is undeniably contingent upon conversations of ableism, its production and performance, to confer validity.
This exposition is crucially important disability is the foundational justification for
inequality the referent of disability as a justification for inequality under-grids all
other oppressions
Baynton 1, Douglas Baynton is a Prof of American Cultural History and Disability at U of Iowa, Disability and the Justification of Inequality
in American History, http://rs1.uua.org/documents/bayntondouglas/justification_inequality.pdf
Since the social and political revolutions of the eighteenth century, the trend in western political thought has been to refuse to take for
granted inequalities between persons or groups. Differential and unequal treatment has continued, of course, but it has been considered
incumbent on modern societies to produce a rational explanation for such treatment. In recent decades, historians and other scholars in the
humanities have studied intensely and often challenged the ostensibly rational explanations for inequalities based on identityin particular,
gender, race, and ethnicity. Disability, however, one of the most prevalent justifications for inequality, has rarely been the subject of
historical inquiry . Disability has functioned historically to justify inequality for disabled people themselves, but it has also done so for
women and minority groups . That is, not only has it been considered justifiable to treat disabled people unequally , but the concept of
disability has been used to justify discrimination against other groups by attributing disability to them . Disability was a significant factor in
the three great citizenship debates of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: womens suffrage , African American freedom and civil
rights , and the restriction of immigration . When categories of citizenship were questioned , challenged , and disrupted , disability was
called on to clarify and define who deserved, and who was deservedly excluded from, citizenship . Opponents of political and social equality
for women cited their supposed physical, intellectual, and psychological flaws, deficits, and deviations from the male norm. These flaws
irrationality, excessive emotionality, physical weaknessare in essence mental, emotional, and physical disabilities, although they are
rarely discussed or examined as such . Arguments for racial inequality and immigration restrictions invoked supposed tendencies to feeble-
mindedness, mental illness, deafness, blindness, and other disabilities in particular races and ethnic groups. Furthermore, disability figured
prominently not just in arguments for the inequality of women and minorities but also in arguments against those inequalities . Such
arguments took the form of vigorous denials that the groups in question actually had these disabilities; they were not disabled, the
argument went, and therefore were not proper subjects for discrimination . Rarely have oppressed groups denied that disability is an
adequate justification for social and political inequality. Thus, while disabled people can be considered one of the minority groups historically
assigned inferior status and subjected to discrimination, disability has functioned for all such groups as a sign of and justification for
inferiority . It is this use of disability as a marker of hierarchical relations that historians of disability must demonstrate in order to bring
disability into the mainstream of historical study . Over a decade ago, Joan Scott made a similar argument about the difficulty of persuading historians to take gender seriously. Scott noted that
despite a substantial number of works on womens history, the topic remained marginal in the discipline as a whole. A typical response to womens history was Women had a history separate from mens, therefore let feminists do
womens history, which need not concern us, or My understanding of the French Revolution is not changed by knowing that women participated in it. Scott argued that research on the role of women in history was necessary
but not sufficient to change the paradigms of the profession. To change the way in which most historians went about their work, feminists had to demonstrate not just that women participated in the making of history but that
gender is a constitutive element of social relationships and a primary way of signifying relationships of power.1 To demonstrate the ubiquity of gender in social thought, Scott focused on political history, a field in which
historians were especially apt to argue that gender was unimportant, and where most historians today would imagine disability to be equally so. She chose as an example Edmund Burkes attack on the French Revolution, noting
that it was built around a contrast between ugly, murderous sans-culottes hags (the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women) and the soft femininity of Marie-Antoinette. The contrast Scott highlights calls on
not only gender but also notions of beauty, disfigurement, and misshapen bodies that would be amenable to an analysis informed by disability. Even more striking, however, is that in addi- tion to the rhetoric of gender, Burkes
argument rested just as fundamentally on a rhetorical contrast between the natural constitution of the body politic and the monstrous deformity that the revolution had brought forth. Burke repeatedly referred to public
measures . . . deformed into monsters, monstrous democratic assemblies, this monster of a constitution, unnatural and monstrous activity, and the like (as well as evoking blind prejudice, actions taken blindly, blind
followers, and blind obedience and alluding to the madness, imbecility, and idiocy of the revolutionary leaders). This rhetoric of mo nstrosity was by no means peculiar to the conservative cause. Tom Paine, in his response to
Burke, also found the monster metaphor an apt and useful one but turned it around: Exterminate the monster aristocracy, he wrote.2 The metaphor of the natural versus the monstrous was a fundamental way of constructing
social reality in Burkes time. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, the concept of the natural was to a great extent displaced or subsumed by the concept of normality.3 Since then, normality has been
deployed in all aspects of modern life as a means of measuring, categorizing, and managing populations (and resisting such management). Normality is a complex concept, with an etiology that
includes the rise of the social sciences, the science of statistics, and industrialization with its need for interchangeable parts and
interchangeable workers. It has been used in a remarkable range of contexts and with a bewildering variety of connotations. The natural and
the normal both are ways of establishing the universal, unquestionable good and right . Both are also ways of establishing social
hierarchies that justify the denial of legitimacy and certain rights to individuals or groups . Both are constituted in large part by being set in
opposition to culturally variable notions of disability just as the natural was meaningful in relation to the monstrous and the deformed,
so are the cultural meanings of the normal produced in tandem with disability .4 The concept of normality in its modern sense arose in the
midnineteenth century in the context of a pervasive belief in progress. It became a culturally powerful idea with the advent of evolutionary
theory. The ideal of the natural had been a static concept for what was seen as an essentially unchanging world, dominant at a time when the
book of nature was represented as the guidebook of God. The natural was good and right because it conformed to the intent or design of
Nature or the Creator of nature. Normality, in contrast, was an empirical and dynamic concept for a changing and progressing world, the
premise of which was that one could discern in human behavior the direction of human evolution and progress and use that as a guide. The
ascendance of normality signaled a shift in the locus of faith from a God-centered to a human-centered world, from a culture that looked within
to a core and backward to lost Edenic origins toward one that looked outward to behavior and forward to a perfected future.
Last, in the face of the specter of the ghost of incarceration yet to come we must
bring this analysis to light to create cultures of resistance critique fuels uncertainty
the hanging question of what to do implores us to undertake constant
problematization that shatters the logic of normalizing incarceration
Ben-Moshe 11, Liat Ben-Moshe Syracuse University, Genealogies of Resistance to Incarceration: Abolition Politics within
Deinstitutionalization and Anti-Prison Activism in the U.S., http://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1070&context=soc_etd
***Gender modified --- MW
What haunts McRuers work is not the fear of impairment or even disablement, but the tyranny of normalization . Compulsory
normativity (or able-bodiedness) is always lurking, and with it the promise of unity by segregation. Closure of large institutions has not
led to freedom for all disabled people nor has it resulted in the radical acceptance of the fact of difference amongst us. Institutional life,
whether in a prison, hospital, mental institution, nursing home, group home, or segregated school, has been the constant , not the
exception, for disabled people throughout North American history. Harriet McBryde Johnson (2003) describes her experiences and fear of
the disability gulag - the warehouse for disabled people that is often called the institution . As she describes in her narrative, many
people with significant disabilities fear that one day they will be sent there and lose their independence, if they are not living there already.
Intersecting Johnson with McRuer, we can conceptualize the institution yet to come as a looming presence in the lives of all people with
disabilities, even those who do not reside in them - and even for people who do not (yet) identify with any disability or debility. The ghost
of forced confinement haunts us all, but does so much more materially and immediately for marginalized populations, especially poor
people, people of color, and disabled people or a combination of these. It is my hope, as an activist/scholar that this work brings to light
the ghost of the incarceration yet to come but also highlights abolition as praxis to resist it . As Gordon (2004) explicated, the aim of the
politically engaged intellectual is to nourish cultures of resistance and to aid in the fulfillment of the human potential of all. In addition, and
in response to critique that claimed that his work in Discipline and Punish is not practical but only theoretical in nature, Foucault explained that
his role as an intellectual (or scholar/activist) is not to prescribe solutions, but to open up conversations . He remarked that it is true that
certain people, such as those who work in the institutional setting of the prison are not likely to find instructions in my book that tell them
what is to be done. But my project is precisely to bring it about that they no longer know what to do , so that the acts, gestures,
discourses that up until then had seemed to go without saying become problematic, difficult, dangerous and that it seems to be that
what is to be done ought not to be determined from above by reformers, be they prophetic or legislative, but by a long work of comings
and goings, of exchanges, reflections, trials and different analyses (Foucault 1994: 256). Critique, according to Foucault, is sometimes the
goal and sometimes the means to a goal, often one which is not yet conceived but is used in a process of trial and error. Foucault asserts
that critique should be an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is . Its use should be in processes of conflict
and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesnt have to lay down the law for the law. It isnt a stage in programming. It is a challenge directed
to what is (Foucault 1994: 236). I contend that this challenge towards what is is the work of abolition today, and for the future of a non-
carceral society. Even for those of us who find deinstitutionalization, anti- psychiatry and prison abolition movements to be too radical or
problematic for whatever reason, I believe activists and scholars could benefit greatly from connecting them to each other and paying
attention to the path of abolition of oppressive institutions. People or ideas, which are perceived as radical are often characterized as
dangerous, and sometimes crazy, and these are exactly the populations we still hold behind bars and locked doors. But in terms of
abolition, people who called for the abolition of slavery were also called dangerous and some lost their lives in the struggle, but you would
be hard pressed to find people who advocate for slavery today. One can hope that this will be the case in relation to prisons and institutions
in the imminent future. As Sebastian Scheerer (1987: 7) comments: the great victories of abolitionism are slowly passing into oblivion, and
with them goes the experience that there has never been a major social transformation in the history of (wominkind) mankind that had
not been looked upon as unrealistic, idiotic or utopian by the large majority of experts even a few years before the unthinkable became
reality . This research attempts to ensure that abolition of the carceral in the form of deinstitutionalization, prison abolition and anti-
psychiatry do not pass into oblivion and are not only preserved but built upon in a shared horizon combating the incarceration yet to
come.
2ac
2ac AT: New Affs Bad
Making the ballot an evaluation of peoples subject position results in violent
confessionals and dooms effective political strategies
Andrea Smith, Ph.D., co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, UC Riverside Associate Professor, 2013, Geographies of
Privilege, Unsettling the Privilege of Self-Reflexivity, Kindle
In my experience working with a multitude of anti-racist organizing projects over the years, I frequently found
myself participating in various workshops in which participants were asked to reflect on their
gender/race/sexuality/class/etc. privilege. These workshops had a bit of a self-help orientation to them: I am so
and so, and I have x privilege. It was never quite clear what the point of these confessions were. It was not as if
other participants did not know the confessor in question had her/his proclaimed privilege. It did not appear
that these individual confessions actually led to any political projects to dismantle the structures of
domination that enabled their privilege. Rather, the confessions became the political project themselves. The
benefits of these confessions seemed to be ephemeral. For the instant the confession took place, those who do not
have that privilege in daily life would have a temporary position of power as the hearer of the confession
who could grant absolution and forgiveness. The sayer of the confession could then be granted temporary
forgiveness for her/his abuses of power and relief from white/male/heterosexual/etc guilt. Because of the perceived benefits of this ritual,
there was generally little critique of the fact that in the end, it primarily served to reinstantiate the structures of
domination it was supposed to resist. One of the reasons there was little critique of this practice is that it bestowed cultural
capital to those who seemed to be the most oppressed. Those who had little privilege did not have to confess and were in
the position to be the judge of those who did have privilege. Consequently, people aspired to be oppressed. Inevitably,
those with more privilege would develop new heretofore unknown forms of oppression from which they
suffered. I may be white, but my best friend was a person of color, which caused me to be oppressed when we
played together. Consequently, the goal became not to actually end oppression but to be as oppressed as
possible. These rituals often substituted confession for political movement-building. And despite the cultural capital
that was, at least temporarily, bestowed to those who seemed to be the most oppressed, these rituals ultimately reinstantiated
the white majority subject as the subject capable of self-reflexivity and the colonized/racialized
subject as the occasion for self-reflexivity. These rituals around self-reflexivity in the academy and in activist circles are not
without merit. They are informed by key insights into how the logics of domination that structure the world also constitute who we are as
subjects. Political projects of transformation necessarily involve a fundamental reconstitution of ourselves as well. However, for this
process to work, individual transformation must occur concurrently with social and political
transformation. That is, the undoing of privilege occurs not by individuals confessing their privileges or trying to
think themselves into a new subject position, but through the creation of collective structures that dismantle the
systems that enable these privileges. The activist genealogies that produced this response to racism and settler colonialism were not
initially focused on racism as a problem of individual prejudice. Rather, the purpose was for individuals to recognize how they were shaped by
structural forms of oppression. However, the response to structural racism became an individual one individual
confession at the expense of collective action. Thus the question becomes, how would one collectivize
individual transformation? Many organizing projects attempt and have attempted to do precisely this, such Sisters in Action for
Power, Sista II Sista, Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, and Communities Against Rape and Abuse, among many others. Rather than
focus simply on ones individual privilege, they address privilege on an organizational level. For instance, they might assess is everyone who is
invited to speak a college graduate? Are certain peoples always in the limelight? Based on this assessment, they develop structures to address
how privilege is exercised collectively. For instance, anytime a person with a college degree is invited to speak, they bring with them a co-
speaker who does not have that education level. They might develop mentoring and skills-sharing programs within the group. To quote one of
my activist mentors, Judy Vaughn, You dont think your way into a different way of acting; you act your way into a different way of thinking.
Essentially, the current social structure conditions us to exercise what privileges we may have. If we want
to undermine those privileges, we must change the structures within which we live so that we become
different peoples in the process.
Dismantling normalcy is a prerequisite it under-grids all oppression and fuels a
divide-and-conquer mentality
Cohen-Rottenberg 14, Rachel is a graduate student and social justice advocate, On Normalcy and Identity Politics,
http://www.disabilityandrepresentation.com/2014/03/24/on-normalcy-and-identity-politics/
Part of the reason for my general disillusionment with identity politics is that Ive come to feel that the
overriding category that governs all others is not race, not class, not ability, not gender, and not
sexuality, but Normalcy . As Lennard Davis points out, the concept of Normalcy only entered the cultural
imagination in the mid-nineteenth century as a statistical average of human qualities that became the
image of a non-existent average man (Davis 1995, 26). From there, European and American society
embraced the notion that average was synonymous with normal, and that anyone who did not fit
the demands of Normalcy was deviant and dangerous (Davis 1995, 29). Disabled people became associated
with others who had abnormal traits, such as criminals and the poor, and their bodies were said to
threaten the health of the body politic (Davis 1995, 35-36).
Today, under Normalcy, anyone who is not cis-gendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, white, and middle
class is abnormal a word that is often code for disabled and criminal. People who are criminal are almost always seen
as disabled, and disabled people are routinely portrayed at the extremes of human experience: morally pure or criminally dangerous, asexual or
sexually deviant, bitter crips who are a burden to all or super crips who need nothing from anyone. Historically, many different classes
of people have been thrown into the category of abnormal, usually with reference to disability.
People of color have been marked as unintelligent, queer and trans* people as pathologically ill, and
women as weak and unstable.
Normal is what most people strive to be, and this striving accounts for why people in different
marginalized groups are so willing to throw one another under the bus and why so much of
respectability politics has to do with normalization. Its why you see ableism, misogyny, racism,
classism, fatphobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, transantagonism, and homoantagonism rearing
their ugly heads even among people who labor under oppression. Most people flee anything that
doesnt look normal, even as they know that they can never meet the strictures of Normalcy. Because
it is nothing more than a statistical fiction, Normalcy is the ultimate unattainable ideal, but there are
powerful internalized forces at work that keep it in place. These internalized forces fulfill the purpose
of herding people into a very narrow idea of what it means to be human.
The goal of attaining Normalcy does not drive these forces for the greater good. If we want to
dismantle racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and every other form of systemic hatred , we
must begin by dismantling the notion of Normalcy. Only then can we free ourselves from the
limitations of a construct that cannot possibly reflect human experience in all of its diversity.
2ac AT: Stasis
Engaging this discussion better supports their cause disability studies informs the
study of other oppressions
Knoll 12, Kristine Knoll studies Gender and Womens studies at the University of Washington, Feminist Disability Studies: Theoretical
Debates, Activism, Identity Politics, & Coalition Building,
https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/20505/Knoll_washington_0250E_10341.pdf.txt?sequence=2
Alison Kafer also noted how disability studies gave more depth to her cultural analyses of bodie s, even
beyond disability to additional bodily experiences such as queerness: I do think that disability studies has
pushed me to think of the specificities of Bodies maybe in ways I dont know if I would have
otherwise. I mean feminist studies and feminist theories are very much interested in bodies. And there are feminists who dont do
disability who talk about embodiment and embodied experience, but I think disability studies helped me see that more. It
actually made me think about bodies in their particularity , about the different cultural weights different
kinds of bodies bear, and about bodies in terms of feminist, queer, or crip resistance.31 Disability
studies provides new layers of analyses for bodily experiences from the intersectional influences of
sexism and ableism on feminism to the influences of compulsory heterosexuality and able-
bodiedness on queerness.
Conservatism DA- their attemps to claim an a priori space for framework enevitable
always reproduces the desires of the established elite at the expense of the
oppressed.
Meszaros 89 (Istvan, likes Marx not Adam Smith. The Power of Ideology, p 232-234)

Nowhere is the myth of ideological neutrality the self-proclaimed Wertfreiheit or value neutrality of so-called rigorous social science
stronger than in the field of methodology. Indeed, we are often presented with the claim that the adoption of the
advocated methodological framework would automatically exempt one from all controversy about values,
since they are adequate method itself, thereby saving one from unnecessary complications and securing the
desired objectivity and uncontestable outcome.
Claims and procedures of this kind are, of course, extremely problematical. For they circularly assume that their enthusiasm
for the virtues of methodological neutrality is bound to yield value neutral solutions with regard to
highly contested issues, without first examining the all-important question as to the conditions of possibility or otherwise of the
postulated systematic neutrality at the plans of methodology itself. The unchallengeable validity of the recommended
procedure is supposed to be self-evident on account of its purely methodological character.
In reality, of course, this approach to methodology is heavily loaded with a conservative ideological
substance. Since, however, the plane of methodology (and meta-theory) is said to be in principle separated from
that of the substantive issues, the methodological circle can be conveniently closed. Whereupon the mere
insistence on the purely methodological character of the criteria laid down is supposed to establish the claim according to which the approach
in question is neutral because everybody can adopt it as the common frame of reference of rational discourse.
Yet, curiously enough, the proposed methodological tenets are so defined that vast areas of vital social concern are a priori excluded from
their rational discourse metaphysical, ideological, etc. The effect of circumscribing in this way the scope of the one
and only admissible approach is that it automatically disqualifies in the name of methodology itself, all
those who do not fit into the stipulated framework of discourse. As a result, the propounders of the right method are
spared the difficulties that go with acknowledging the real divisions and incompatibilities as they necessarily arise from the contending social
interests at the roots of alternative approaches and the rival sets of values associated with them.
This is where we can see more clearly the social orientation implicit in the whole procedure. For far from offering an adequate
scope for critical enquiry the advocated general adoption of the allegedly neutral methodological
framework is equivalent, in fact, to consenting not even to raise the issues that really matter. Instead, the
stipulated common methodological procedure succeeds in transforming the enterprise of rational discourse into the dubious practice of
producing methodology for the sake of methodology: a tendency more pronounced in the twentieth century than ever before. This practice
consists in sharpening the recommended methodological knife until nothing but the bare handle is left, at which point the new knife is
adopted for the same purpose. For the ideal methodological knife is not meant for cutting, only for sharpening, thereby interposing itself
between the critical intent and the real objects of criticism which it can obliterate for as long as the pseudo-critical activity of knife-
sharpening for tits own sake continues to be pursued. And that happens to be precisely its inherent ideological purpose.
Naturally, to speak of a common methodological framework in which one can resolve the problems of a society torn by irreconcilable
social interests and pursuing antagonistic confrontations is delusory, at best, notwithstanding all talk about ideal
communication communities. But to define the methodological tenets of all rational discourse by way of transubstantiating into
ideal types (or by putting into methodological brackets) the discussion of contending social values reveals
the ideological colour as well as the extreme fallaciousness of the claimed rationality. For such treatment of
the major areas of conflict, under a great variety of forms from the Viennese version of logical positivism to Wittgensteins famous ladder
that must be thrown away at the point of confronting the question of values, and from the advocacy of the Popperian principle of little by
little in the emotivist theory of value inevitably always favours the established order. And it does so by declaring
the fundamental structural parameters of the given society of of bounds to the potential contestants, in the
authority of the ideally common methodology.
However, even on a cursory inspection of the issues at stake it out to be fairly obvious that to consent not to question the
fundamental structural framework of the established order is radically different according to whether one
does so as the beneficiary of the order or from the standpoint of those who find themselves at the receiving
end, exploited and oppressed by the overall determinations (and not just by some limited and more or less easily
corrigible detail) of that order. Consequently, to establish the common identity of the two, opposed sides of a structurally safeguarded
hierarchical order by means of the reduction of the people belong to the contending social forces into fictitious rational interlocutors,
extracted from their divided real world and transplanted into a beneficially shared universe of ideal discourse would be nothing sort of
methodological miracle.
Contrary to the wishful thinking hypostatized as a timeless and socially unspecified rational community, the elementary condition of
a truly rational discourse would be to acknowledge the legitimacy of contesting the given order of society
in substantive terms. This would imply the articulation of the relevant problems not on the plane of self-referential
articulation of the relevant problems not on the plane of self-referential theory and methodology, but as inherently practical issues
whose conditions of solution point towards the necessity of radical structural changes. In other words, it would
require the explicit rejection of all fiction of methodological and meta-theoretical neutrality. But, of course,
this would be far too much to expect precisely because the society in which we live is a deeply divided society. This is why through the
dichotomies of fact and value, theory and practice, formal and substantive rationality, etc. The conflict-transcending methodological
miracle is constantly stipulated as the necessary regulative framework of the ruling ideology.
What makes this approach particularly difficult to challenge is that its value-commitments are mediated by methodological precepts to such a
degree that it is virtually impossible to bring them into the focus of discussion without openly contesting the framework as a whole. For the
conservative sets of values at the roots of such orientation remain several steps removed from the ostensible subject of dispute as defined in
logico/methodological, formal/structural, and semantic/analytical terms. And who would suspect of ideological bias the
impeccable methodologically sanctioned credentials of procedural rules, models and paradigms?
Once, though, such rules and paradigms are adopted as the common frame of reference of what may or may
not be allowed to considered the legitimate subject of debate, everything that enters into the accepted
parameters is necessarily constrained not only by the scope of the overall framework, but simultaneously
also by the inexplicit ideological assumptions upon the basis of which the methodological principles
themselves were in the first place constitution. This why the allegedly non-ideological ideologies which so
successfully conceal and exercise their apologetic function in the guise of neutral methodology are doubly
mystifying.
Twentieth-century currents of thought are dominated by approaches that lend to articulate the social interests and values of the ruling order
through complicated at times completely bewildering mediations, on the methodological plane. Thus, more than ever before, the task of
ideological demystification is inseparable from the investigation of the complex dialectical relationship between methods and values which
no social theory or philosophy can escape.

2ac AT: Law K
Ani uses gendered language their insidious form of gendered language reinforces a
system in which men are privileged over women discourse can either uphold the
flawed status quo or open the possibility of a new reality vote for a new, inclusive
language
Kleinman 2007 - teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill (March 12, Sherryl, Why Sexist Language Matters
http://www.alternet.org/story/48856/?page=entire)

I'm not referring to such words as "bitch," "whore" and "slut." What I focus on instead are words
that students consider just fine: male (so-called) generics. Some of these words refer to persons
occupying a position: postman, chairman, freshman, congressman, fireman. Other words refer
to the entire universe of human beings: "mankind" or "he." Then we've got manpower,
manmade lakes and "Oh, man, where did I leave my keys?" There's "manning" the tables in a
country where children learn that "all men are created equal." The most insidious, from my
observations, is the popular expression "you guys." Please don't tell me it's a regional term. I've
heard it in the Triangle, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Montreal. I've seen it in print in
national magazines, newsletters and books. And even if it were regional, that doesn't make it
right. I'll bet we can all think of a lot of practices in our home regions that we'd like to get rid of.
I sound defensive. I know. But that's because I've so often heard (and not only from students) ...
What's the big deal? Why does all this "man-ning" and "guys-ing" deserve a place in my list of
items of gender inequality and justify taking up inches of space in the newsletter of a rape crisis
center?
Because male-based generics are another indicator -- and more importantly, a reinforcer -- of a
system in which "man" in the abstract and men in the flesh are privileged over women. Some say
that language merely reflects reality and so we should ignore our words and work on changing
the unequal gender arrangements that are reflected in our language. Well, yes, in part.
It's no accident that "man" is the anchor in our language and "woman" is not. And of course we
should make social change all over the place. But the words we use can also reinforce current
realities when they are sexist (or racist or heterosexist). Words are tools of thought. We can use
words to maintain the status quo or to think in new ways -- which in turn creates the possibility
of a new reality. It makes a difference if I think of myself as a "girl" or a "woman"; it makes a
difference if we talk about "Negroes" or "African-Americans." Do we want a truly inclusive
language or one that just pretends?

critical disability studies starts with disability but never ends with it
Kincaid 13, Towards a Critical Global Disability Studies: A Case Study of the African Youth with Disabilities Network Dissertation for the
degree of MSc International Development University of Bath Kelly Kincaid
As Goodley (2012) describes, CDS starts with disability but never ends with it: disability is the space from
which to think through a host of political, theoretical and practical issues that are relevant to all. CDS
have offered challenges to universalizing frameworks, and particularly to the social model (Goodley, 2012); these critiques
have not been universally appreciated (see Oliver and Barnes, 2012). For Corker and Shakespeare, however, addressing the
theoretical deficit of the social model is an effort to: contribute to the emancipation of people with
disabilities whoever they are, and whatever they decide that emancipation means, and to the
development of inclusive societiesthinking globally and acting locally at the same time (Corker and
Shakespeare, 2002: 15) 1 Goodley (2012) further asserts a global CDS can provide a lifted-out space in which
activism and theory are intertwined, in concert with contemporary lives, the complexities of
alienation and the rich hopes of resistance (Lash, 2011 in Goodley, 2012: 11).19 In Disability and the majority world a neo-
colonial approach, Grech (2012: 52) coins and describes a Critical Global Disability Studies (CGDS) project that reflects a critical
disability studies that is open, situated around prioritising, engaging with and learning about the
Global South in its full complexity. This project engages with bodies positioned at the anxious
intersection of the global and the local (ibid: 54), examining disability across cultures, circumstances and
contexts, in which the meaning of disability is constantly changing. The CGDS project moves disability beyond
oppression, calling for an exploration of family relations. The body in disability is accentuated. CGDS is grounded in and conversant with local
contexts, socio-economics, micro-politics, cultures, issues of poverty and global dimensions of power (Grech, 2011: 98).
1ar
1ar Coalitions Good
Coalitional politics are necessary in this instance to rupture criminalization it
facilitates holistic understandings
Ben-Moshe 11 (Liat, Disabling Incarceration: Connecting Disability to Divergent Confinements in the USA Critical Sociology 39(3)
385 403Critical Sociology 39(3) 385 403,
However, this process also allows for the creation of powerful new coalitions that have the potential to
implode or resist these categorizations from within. All these counter-hegemonic discourses resist the
impetus of normalization (Davis, 2002), medicalization and the authority of medical experts (Foucault,
1965; Zola, 1991) and especially labeling for diagnostic and pre-scriptive use on the bodies and minds of disabled people. They resist the
trumping of narratives of cure, and insist on access , social justice and rights instead (or in some formulations- in
addition).Most importantly, these discourses and scholarly fields break the dichotomy between normal and
pathological and leave bio-diversity as a continuum of ways of living in the world, and nota binary
with hierarchies attached. I thus argue that disability studies could benefit immensely by actively taking up
the theoriza-tions and lived experiences in the field of developmental disability and mad studies. In
relation to the sociological study of incarceration, what such expansive formulations achieve is an
understanding of incarceration in its broadest sense in relation to hospitalization, institutionaliza-
tion and imprisonment and a fuller understanding of the forces that construct medicalization and
criminalization.