Ivory Tower K - an example of a LD K file PDF

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1NC Ivory Tower The Affirmative is located in the ivory tower: their abstract discussions of the world that could be deflects attention from actually making real-world changes: Nayar 1999 [Jayan, Ph.D from the University of Cambridge, Fall, School of Law, University of Warwick Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems “Orders of Inhumanity”] Located within a site of privilege, and charged to reflect upon the grand questions of worldorder and the human condition as the third Christian Millennium dawns, we are tempted to turn the mind to the task of abstract imaginings of "what could be" of our "world," and "how should we organize" our "humanity." Perhaps such contemplations are a necessary antidote to cynicism and skepticism regarding any possibility of human betterment, a necessary revitalization of critical and creative energies to check the complacencies of the state of things as they are. n1 However, imagining [*601] possibilities of abstractions--"world-order," "international society," "the global village," "the family of humankind," etc.--does carry with it a risk. The "total" view that is the take-off point for discourses on preferred "world-order" futures risks deflection as the abstracted projections it provokes might entail little consequence for the faces and the names of the humanity on whose behalf we might speak. So, what do we do?

Link: the discussion of the plan in the ivory tower creates an illusion of reality that diverts attention from practical solutions to problems Baudrillard 1995 [Jean, April 19, "Radical Thought", http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx? id=67] All this defines the insoluble relationship between thought and the real. A certain type of thought is an accomplice of the real. It starts with the hypothesis that there is a real reference to an idea and that there is a possible "ideation" of reality. This is no doubt a comforting perspective, one which is based on meaning and deciphering. This is also a polarity, similar to that used by ready-made dialectical and philosophical solutions. The other thought, on the contrary, is ex-centric from the real. It is an "ex-centering"2 of the real world and, consequently, it is alien to a dialectic which always plays on adversarial poles. It is even alien to critical thought which always refers to an ideal of the real. To some extent, this thought is not even a denial of the concept of reality. It is an illusion, that is to say a "game"3 played with desire (which this thought puts "into play"), just like metaphor is a "game" played with truth. This radical thought comes neither from a philosophical doubt nor from a utopian transference4 (which always supposes an ideal transformation of the real). Nor does it stem from an ideal transcendence. It is the "putting into play"5 of this world, the material and immanent illusion of this so-called "real" world - it is a non-critical, non-dialectical thought. So, this thought appears to be coming from somewhere else. In any case, there is an incompatibility between thought and the real. Between thought and the real, there is no necessary or natural transition . Not an "alternation,"6 not an alternative either: only an "alterity"7 keeps them under pressure8. Only fracture, distance and alienation safeguard the singularity of this thought, the singularity of being a singular event, similar in a sense to the singularity of the world through which it is made into an event. Things probably did not always happen this way. One may dream of a happy conjunction of idea and reality, in the shadow of the Enlightenment and of modernity, in the heroic ages of critical thought. But that thought, which operated against a form of illusion superstitious, religious, or ideological - is substantially over. And even if that thought had survived its catastrophic secularization in all the political systems of the 20th century, the ideal and almost necessary relationship between concept and reality would in any case have been destroyed today. That thought disappeared under the pressure of a gigantic simulation, a technical and mental one, under the pressure of a precession of models to the benefit of an autonomy of the virtual, from now on liberated from the real, and of a simultaneous autonomy of the real that today functions for and by itself - motu propio - in a delirious perspective, infinitely self-referential. Expelled, so to speak, from its own frame, from its own principle, pushed toward its extraneity, the real has become an extreme phenomenon. So, we no longer can think of it as real. But we can think of it as "ex-orbitated," as if it was seen from another world - as an illusion then. Let's ponder over what could be a stupefying experience: the discovery of another real world, different from ours. Ours, one day, was discovered. The objectivity of this world was discovered, just like America was discovered, more or less at the same period. But what was discovered can never be created again. That's how reality was discovered, and is still created (or the alternate version: this is how reality was created, which is still being discovered). Why wouldn't there be as many real worlds as there are imaginary ones? Why would there be only one real world? Why such a mode of exception? In reality, the notion of a real world existing among all other possible worlds is unimaginable. It is unthinkable, except perhaps as a dangerous superstition. We must stay away from that, just as critical

thought once stayed away (in the name of the real!) from religious superstition. Thinkers, give it another try!

The Alternative is to take pragmatic actions in the real world: only this solves the harms the affirmative identifies while ignoring their intellectual blinders Baudrillard 1994 (Jean, French Cultural Theorist, sociologist and philosopher, "No Reprieve For Sarejevo" September 28)

The problem lies indeed in the nature of our reality. We have got only one, and it must be preserved. Even if it is by the use of the most heinous of all paroles: " One must do something. One cannot remain idle." Yet, to do something for the sole reason that one cannot do nothing never has been a valid principle for action, nor for liberty. At the most it is an excuse for one's own powerlessness and a token of self-pity. The people of Sarajevo are not bothered by such questions. Being where they are, they are in the absolute need to do what they do, to do the right thing. They harbour no illusion about the outcome and do not indulge in self-pity. This is what it means to be really existing, to exist within reality. And this reality has nothing to do with the so-called objective reality of their plight, which should not exist, and which we do so much deplore. This reality exits as such - it is the stark reality of action and destiny. This is why they are alive, while we are dead. This is why we feel the need to salvage the reality of war in our own eyes and to impose this reality (to be pitiable) upon those who suffer from it, but do not really believe in it, despite the fact they are in the midst of war and utter distress. Susan Sontag herself confesses in her diaries that the Bosnians do not really believe in the suffering which surrounds them. They end up finding the whole situation unreal, senseless, and unexplainable. It is hell, but hell of what may be termed a hyperreal kind, made even more hyperreal by the harassment of the media and the humanitarian agencies, because it renders the attitude of the world towards them even less unfathomable. Thus, they live in a kind of ghost-like war - which is fortunate, because otherwise, they would never have been able to stand up to it. These are not my words, by the way: they say it so. But then Susan Sontag, hailing herself from New York, must know better than them what reality is, since she has chosen them to incarnate it. Or maybe it is simply because reality is what she, and with her all the Western world, is lacking the most. To reconstitute reality, one needs to head to where blood flows. All these "corridors", opened by us to funnel our foodstuffs and our "culture" are in fact our lifelines along which we suck their moral strength and the energy of their distress. Yet another unequal exchange. And to those who have found in a radical delusion of reality (and this includes the belief in political rationality, which supposedly rules us, and which very much constitutes the principle of European reality) a kind of alternative courage, that is to survive a senseless situation, to these people Susan Sontag comes to convince them of the "reality" of their suffering, by making something cultural and something theatrical out of it, so that it can be useful as a referent within the theatre of western values, including "solidarity". But Susan Sontag herself is not the issue. She is merely a societal instance of what has become the general situation whereby toothless intellectuals swap their distress with the misery of the poor, both of them sustaining each other, both of them locked in a perverse agreement.

Neg Block

Overview

The Affirmative remains trapped in an illusion—extend our Nayar evidence: they identify problems in a round of debate instead of engaging them in the real world. Our two pieces of Baudrillard evidence says this deflects attention from real world solutions, causing us to remain trapped in the ivory tower. Our alternative engages in pragmatic solutions in the real world without remaining trapped by the blinders of the Affirmative advocacy. A couple of arguments at the top:

A)

FIAT is an illusion: They have no evidence that their plan actually

happens, nor that the type of policy analysis they engage in makes it more likely we will engage in such actions—this is a 100% solvency takeout for the Affirmative, and means only we have a risk of offense. If their advocacy risks trapping us in a world of moral blinders, you can vote Negative.

B)

They are the “toothless intellectuals” that Baudrillard attacks:

they discuss problems in the ivory tower but don’t take real world activity to solve them—meaning the harms they outline are perpetuated on a grand scale. Only shattering the illusion with the alternative has any chance of actually solving the harms they outline—that’s our second Baudrillard card. Now, the line-by-line…

Links

Health Care Links The affirmative acts as an Ivory Tower intellectual, reducing us to a seminarroom warrior instead of engaging in actual solutions to health care. Farmer and Gastineau 2002 (Paul and Nicole, “LEGAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS INTERVENTION FOR HEALTH: Rethinking Health and Human Rights: Time for a Paradigm Shift” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics Winter ln)

A few years ago, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his colleagues pulled together a compendium of testimonies from those the French term "the excluded" in order to bring into relief la misere du monde. Bourdieu and colleagues qualified their claims for the role of scholarship in addressing this misery: "To subject to scrutiny the mechanisms which render life painful, even untenable, is not to neutralize them; to bring to light contradictions is not to resolve them." n23 It is precisely such humility that is needed, and rarely exhibited, in academic commentary on human rights. It is difficult merely to study human rights abuses. We know with certainty that rights are being abused at this very moment. And the fact that we can study, rather than endure, these abuses is a reminder that we too are implicated in and benefit from the increasingly global structures that determine, to an important extent, the nature and distribution of assaults on dignity. Ivory-tower engagement with health and human rights can, often enough, reduce us to seminar-room warriors. At worst, we stand revealed as the hypocrites that our critics in many parts of the world have not hesitated to call us. Anthropologists have long been familiar with these critiques; specialists in international health, including AIDS researchers, have recently had a crash course. It is possible, usually, to drown out the voices of those demanding that we stop studying them, even when they go to great lengths to make sure we get the message. But social scientists with more acute hearing have documented a rich trove of graffiti, songs, demonstrations, tracts, and broadsides on the subject. A hit record album in Haiti was called International Organizations. The title cut includes the following lines: "International organizations [*659] are not on our side. They're there to help the thieves rob and devour... International health stays on the sidelines of our struggle."

Human Rights Links The affirmative acts as an Ivory Tower intellectual, reducing us to a seminarroom warrior instead of engaging in actual solutions to poverty. Farmer and Gastineau 2002 (Paul and Nicole, “LEGAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS INTERVENTION FOR HEALTH: Rethinking Health and Human Rights: Time for a Paradigm Shift” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics Winter ln)

A few years ago, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his colleagues pulled together a compendium of testimonies from those the French term "the excluded" in order to bring into relief la misere du monde. Bourdieu and colleagues qualified their claims for the role of scholarship in addressing this misery: "To subject to scrutiny the mechanisms which render life painful, even untenable, is not to neutralize them; to bring to light contradictions is not to resolve them." n23 It is precisely such humility that is needed, and rarely exhibited, in academic commentary on human rights. It is difficult merely to study human rights abuses. We know with certainty that rights are being abused at this very moment. And the fact that we can study, rather than endure, these abuses is a reminder that we too are implicated in and benefit from the increasingly global structures that determine, to an important extent, the nature and distribution of assaults on dignity. Ivory-tower engagement with health and human rights can, often enough, reduce us to seminar-room warriors. At worst, we stand revealed as the hypocrites that our critics in many parts of the world have not hesitated to call us. Anthropologists have long been familiar with these critiques; specialists in international health, including AIDS researchers, have recently had a crash course. It is possible, usually, to drown out the voices of those demanding that we stop studying them, even when they go to great lengths to make sure we get the message. But social scientists with more acute hearing have documented a rich trove of graffiti, songs, demonstrations, tracts, and broadsides on the subject. A hit record album in Haiti was called International Organizations. The title cut includes the following lines: "International organizations [*659] are not on our side. They're there to help the thieves rob and devour... International health stays on the sidelines of our struggle."

Links: Indigenous People (Natives) Indigenous people don’t want academic institutions to help them Battiste 2000 (Marie, professor at the College of Education and Coordinator of the Indian and Northern Education Program within Educational Foundations at the University of Saskatchewan . Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision pg. 213)

The fifth challenge that I want to take up is addressed to both the community and Indigenous academics. I have a concern with the often strident anti-intellectual and anti-academic stance of Indigenous communities. The well founded and relates to a history of hurt, humiliation, and exploitation that has been perpetrated by some institutions and academics, with disastrous outcomes for some people. The problem is that distrust is also directed at Indigenous academics. There is also good reason to be concerned that some Indigenous academics become “ivory tower intellectuals” disconnected from Indigenous communities and concerns, mere functionaries for the colonization of our peoples.

Links: Academic Simulations Academic simulations in debate distract from political action to solve problems Mitchell 1998 [Gordon R., Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh, “PEDAGOGICAL POSSIBILITIES FOR ARGUMENTATIVE AGENCY IN ACADEMIC DEBATE” Argumentation & Advocacy, Vol. 35 Issue 2, p4160]

While an isolated academic space that affords students an opportunity to learn in a protected environment has significant pedagogical value (see e.g. Coverstone 1995, p. 8-9), the notion of the academic debate tournament as a sterile laboratory carries with it some disturbing implications, when the metaphor is extended to its limit. To the extent that the academic space begins to take on characteristics of a laboratory, the barriers demarcating such a space from other spheres of deliberation beyond the school grow taller and less permeable. When such barriers reach insurmountable dimensions, argumentation in the academic setting unfolds on a purely simulated plane, with students practicing critical thinking and advocacy skills in strictly hypothetical thought-spaces. Although they may research and track public argument as it unfolds outside the confines of the laboratory for research purposes, in this approach, students witness argumentation beyond the walls of the academy as spectators, with little or no apparent recourse to directly participate or alter the course of events (see Mitchell 1995; 1998). The sense of detachment associated with the spectator posture is highlighted during episodes of alienation in which debaters cheer news of human suffering or misfortune. Instead of focusing on the visceral negative responses to news accounts of human death and misery, debaters overcome with the competitive zeal of contest round competition show a tendency to concentrate on the meanings that such evidence might hold for the strength of their academic debate arguments. For example, news reports of mass starvation might tidy up the "uniqueness of a disadvantage" or bolster the "inherency of an affirmative case" (in the technical parlance of debate-speak). Murchland categorizes cultivation of this "spectator" mentality as one of the most politically debilitating failures of contemporary education: "Educational institutions have failed even more grievously to provide the kind of civic forums we need. In fact, one could easily conclude that the principle purposes of our schools is to deprive successor generations of their civic voice, to turn them into mute and uncomprehending spectators in the drama of political life" (1991, p. 8).

Links: Poverty Debates on Poverty are meaningless and don’t affect their needs Knitzer 2005 (Jane, executive director of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University. “All the pretty words, after Katrina” The New York Times October 15 edition, written on October 11. ln)

It is time to move beyond the ''liberal'' versus ''conservative'' framing of the debate on poverty. In the real world, the one beyond intellectual debates, too many American families live in dire poverty, and a much larger number do not have the resources to adequately meet their basic needs for housing, food, health care, child care and transportation. Many parents who work still can't support their families.

Links: International Relations The real world doesn’t care about international relations theories Nye 2009 (Joseph, professor at Harvard University and expert in International Relations and Soft Power. “Scholars on the sidelines” The Washington Post, Regional Edition. April 13 ln) Obama has appointed some distinguished academic economists and lawyers to his administration, but few high-ranking political scientists have been named. In fact, the editors of a recent poll of more than 2,700 international relations experts declared that "the walls surrounding the ivory tower have never seemed so high." While important American scholars such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski took high-level foreign policy positions in the past, that path has tended to be a one-way street. Not many top-ranked scholars of international relations are going into governme...