The AFF must be held responsible for the ideological programs they endorse, precisely because of the material consequences of their worldview – we have an ethical obligation to break from epistemologies that normalize hegemony and economic imperialism

An ethics of the name will insist on the performative character of naming and work to show that the name's seemingly definitive grasp of the reality it names is in fact only a "self-referential, tautological, performative operation" (Zizek 99) and, as such, will be vulnerable to the challenge of other names, other performative variations and interventions. It is with such an ethics in mind that I want to examine a name, a word that has entered our lexicon and our consciousness with great force. The word is, of course, "globalization," a word that has ambi- tions to become a master word that will name the overwhelming processes shaping our contemporary world. The very term "global- ization" presents itself as a universal, all-inclusive theoretical concept that is sufficient unto itself. As I will argue, not only are there theo- retical inconsistencies in the totalizing or universalizing claims of globalization, but there is also the danger that "globalization" as master term or metanarrative may swallow up and encompass even those discourses or narratives opposing it. Such a danger has been noticed, for example, by the political economist J. K. Gibson-Graham who confesses that in her earlier work she had ignored the perform- ative character of conceptual categories and as a result discovered that her critical portrayal of a powerful global capitalism merely confirmed and further entrenched its monolithic, all-encompassing power. In her words:

When theorists depict patriarchy, or racism, or compulsory heterosexuality, or capitalist hegemony they are not only delineating a formation they hope to see destabilized or replaced. They are also generating a representation of the social world endowing it with performative force. To the extent that this representation becomes influential it may con- tribute to the hegemony of a "hegemonic formation." (x)

Similarly, in our critical depiction of "globalization" we may in fact end up confirming its globality, its universality, and, as a conse- quence, end up accepting its inescapability. To talk about "globaliza- tion" may be to entrench it further, to "acknowledge that we live within something large that shows us to be small ... [and] in the face of which all our transformative acts are ultimately inconsequential" (Gibson-Graham, 253). No wonder, then, that an astute critic of glob- alization like Ian Robert Douglas has provocatively counseled us to "forget globalization" (25). For indeed we have to forget globaliza- tion in its constative form as a statement describing the reality of our contemporary world in order to remember its performative status as a discourse that actively constitutes and shapes the very reality it names. We must understand that globalization does not name a real- ity that has already taken place; globalization is a tautological, per- formative discourse actively seeking to convince us that globalization is our inescapable contemporary reality. Consequently, its performa- tive, rhetorical force can be challenged, contradicted, and rearticulated differently. The name "globalization," which pretends to totality or universality, can thus be shown to be partial in all senses of the word-a name that is both incomplete and ideologically selective. An ethical approach to the name "globalization" will challenge its claim to hegemony, singularity, and globality, and seek to reveal its un- avoidable duplicity, the otherness that disrupts it.