K tricks

Georgetown 2011-12 [File Name]

[Name]

Schlag Link DA This can also go on Framework! Fiat is illusory Schlag 90 (Pierre, Prof of Law at U. Colorado, Stanford Law Review, Nov, Lexis) In fact, normative legal thought is so much in a hurry that it will tell y ou what to do even though there is not the slightest chance that that you might actually be in a position to do it. For instance, when was the last time you were in a position to put the difference difference principle n31 into effect, effect, or to restructure [*179] the doctrinal corpus of the first amendment? "In the future, we should. . . ." When was the last time you were in a position to rule whether judges should become pragmatists, efficiency purveyors, civic republicans, or Hercules surrogates? Normative legal thought doesn't seem overly concerned with such worldly questions about the character and the effectiveness effectiveness of its own discourse. It just goes along and proposes, recommends, prescribes, solves, and resolves. resolves. Yet despite its obvious desire to have worldly effects, worldly consequences, normative normative legal thought remains seemingly seemingly unconcerned unconcerned that for all practical purposes, its only consumers are legal academics and perhaps a few law students -- persons who are virtually never in a position position to put any of its wonderful normative advice advice into effect.

Attempting to change the world when they don‘t have their hands on the levers of power results in individuals holding life in contempt, making it something to take revenge upon —subsumes their impacts. Deleuze 6 (Gilles, ex-professor of phil at Vincennes, Translation by Tomlinson, Nietzsche and Philosophy P 108, *This card has been gender modified*) As a result of his type the man of ressentiment does not react: his reaction is endless, it is felt instead of being acted. This reaction therefore blames its object, whatever it is, as an object on which revenge must be taken, which must be made to pay for this infinite delay. Excitation can be beautiful and good and the man of ressentiment of ressentiment can can experience it as such ; it can be can be less than the force of the man of ressentiment and and he can possess an abstract quantity of forces great as that of anyone else. He will none the less feel the corresponding object as a personal offence and affront because he makes the object responsible for his own powerlessness to invent anything but the trace – a qualitative or typical powerlessness. The man of ressentiment experiences every being and object as an offence in exact proportion to its effect on him . Beauty and goodness are, for him, necessarily as outrageous as any pain or misfortune that he experiences. ―One cannot get rid of anything, one cannot get over anything, one cannot repel anything – everything hurts . Men and things obtrude too closely; experiences strike one too deeply; memory becomes a festering wound‖ (EH I 6 p. 320). The man of ressentiment in in himself is a being full of pain: the sclerosis or hardening of his consciousness, the rapidity with which every excitation sets and freezes within him, the weight of the traces that invade him are so many cruel sufferings. And, more deeply, the memory of traces is full of hatred in itself and by itself . It is venomous and depreciative because it blames the object in order to

compensate for its own inability to escape from the traces of the corresponding excitation . This is why ressentiment’s revenge, even when it is realized, remains ―spiritual‖, imaginary and symbolic in principle.

1


[Name]

Schlag Link DA 2NR There is literally no reason to vote aff just vote neg on presumption. Their 1AC may be a good idea, but the idea of fiat is a bad way to view the world, because after this round Obama won‘t suddenly pass the aff‘s plan because they won a debate round. ro und. Instead focus on the impacts of the k, because the intellectual discussion of the K and the methodologies utilitzed in this debate can actually influence the way we think and the outside world. – Schlag If you read the deleuze card add this: Extend the ressentiment DA. Their attempts to change the world when we don‘t have our hands on the levers of power results in individuals hating their powerlessness— powerlessness —this makes life something to take revenge upon and kills value to life—that‘s life —that‘s Deleuze 6. Deleuze 6. They concede that value to life subsumes their impacts— impacts —physical existence is irrelevant if there‘s no capacity to affirm it or create within it.

2


[Name]

Adorno Link DA The affirmative posits themselves as a moral actor, but there form of politics leads to interpassivity-turning case Adorno 72 (Theodor,Leading member of the Frankfurt School of C ritical Theory-specializing in sociology and philosophy, The Culture Industry, Published 2001, p 198-203) *This card has been gender modified.* We older representatives of that for which the name Frankfurt School has established itself have recently had the reproach of resignation leveled against us. We had, it is stated, developed elements of a critical theory of society, but we were not prepared to draw the practical consequences from this theory. We neither designed programmes for action nor did we s upport the actions of those who felt themselves inspired by critical theory. I shall sidestep the question whether this demand can be made at all upon theoretical thinkers who always remain to a certain de gree sensitive and by no means unshakable instruments. The task assigned such individuals within a society characterized by the division of labour might indeed by questionable; they themselves might well be deformed by it. But they have also been formed by it. And there is no way in which they can repeal that which they have become merely through an act of their own will. I should not want to deny the impulse of subjective weakness inherent in the confinement to theory. The objection raised against us can be stated approximately in these words; a person who is in the present hour doubts the possibility of radical change in society and who for that reason neither takes part in nor recommends spectacular , violent action is guilty of resignation. He does not consider the vision of change which he once held capable of realization; indeed, he actually had no true desire to see it realized in the first place. In leaving conditions as they are, he offers his tacit approval of them. Distance from praxis is disreputable in the eyes of everyone. Anyone who does not take immediate action and who is not willing to get his hands dirty is the subject of suspicion; it is felt that his antipathy toward such action was not legitimate, and further that his view has even been distorted by the privileges he enjoys. Distrust of those who distrust praxis extends from those on the opposite side, who repeat the old slogan, ‗ We‘ve had enough of talking‘ all the way to the objective spirit of advertising, which propagates the picture – it‘s called Leitbild or ‗image as motif‘ – of the actively involved human being, no matter whether his activity lies in the realm of economics or athletics. One should take part. Whoever restricts himself to thinking but does not get involved is weak, cowardly and virtually a traitor. This hostile cliché on the intellectual is to be encountered with deep roots within that branch of the opposition that is in turn reviled as intellectual without any awareness thereof on their part. Thinking activists answer; among the things to be changed is that very separation of theory and prax is. Praxis is essential if we are ever to be liberated from the domination of practical people and practical ideals. The trouble with this view is that it results in the prohibition of thinking . Very little is needed to turn the resistance against repression repressively against those who – little as they might wish to glorify their state of being – do not desert the standpoint that they have come to occupy. The often-evoked unity of theory and praxis has a tendency to give way to the predominance of praxis. Numerous views define theory itself as a form of repression – as though praxis did not stand in a far more direct relationship to repression. For Marx, the dogma of this unity was animated by the immanent possibility of action which even then was not to be realized. Today it is rather the opposite situation that prevails. One clings to action because of the impossibility of a ction. But Marx himself reveals a concealed wound in this regard. He no doubt d elivered the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach in such an authoritarian fashion because he was not at all sure of it himself. In his youth he had demanded the ‗ruthless criticism of everything that exists‘. Now he mocked criticism. But his famous joke about the Young Hegelians, his coinage ―critical criticism‘, was a dud and went up in smoke as nothing but a tautology. The forced precedence of praxis brought the criticism which Marx himself practiced to an irrational halt. In Russia and in the orthodoxy of other countries, the malicious mockery of critical criticism became the instrument that permitted the status quo to establish itself in such horrifying fashion. The only meaning that praxis retained was this: increased production of the means of production. The only criticism still tolerated was that people were not working hard enough. This demonstrates how easily the subordination of theory to praxis results in the support of renewed repression. Repressive

intolerance toward a thought not immediately accompanied by instructions for action is founded in fear . Unmanipulated thought and the position that allows nothing to be

3


[Name]

deduced from this thought must be feared because that which c annot be admitted is perfectly clear: this thought is right. An aged bourgeois mechanism with which the men of the E nlightenment of the eighteenth century were very familiar displays itself anew but unchanged: suffering caused by a negative condition – in this case by obstructed reality – turns into anger toward the person who expresses it. Thought, enlightenment conscious of itself, threatens to disenchant pseudo-reality within which, according to Habermas‘ formulation, activism moves. This activism is tolerated only because it is viewed as pseudo-activity . Pseudo-activity is allied with pseudo-reality in the design of a subjective position ; an activity that overplays itself and fires itself up for the sake of its

own publicity without admitting to what degree it serves as a substitute for satisfaction, thus elevating itself to an end in itself . All those behind bars are despondent in their desire to be released. In such situations one no longer thinks or thinks only in fictive postulates. Within absolutized praxis, only reaction is possible and for this reason the reaction is false. Only thinking could offer an escape , and then only that thinking , the results of which are not prescribed – as is so frequently the case in those discussions in which it is predetermined who is right and which therefore do not advance the cause – but rather degenerate without fail into tactics. When the doors are barricaded, it is doubly important that thought not be interrupted. It is rather the task of thought to analyse the reasons behind this situation and to draw the consequences from these reasons. It is the responsibility of thought not to accept the situation as finite. If there is any chance of changing the situation, it is only through undiminished insight . The leap into praxis will not cure thought from resignation as long as it is paid for with the secret knowledge that this course is simply not the right one. Generally speaking, pseudo-activity is the attempt to

preserve enclaves of immediacy in the midst of a thoroughly mediated and obdurate society. This process is rationalized through the acceptance of any small change as one step on the long way toward total change . The unfortunate model for pseudo-activity is the ‗do-it- yourself‘ syndrome – activities that do that which has long been done better through the means of industrial production and which arouse in unfree individuals , hampered in their spontaneity, the confident feeling that they are of central concern. The nonsense of the ‗do -it- yourself‘ approach to the production of material goods and in the making of many repairs is equally obvious. However, it is not total. In view of the reduction of so-called services – sometimes superfluous in terms of technical standards – measures taken by a private person fulfill a semi-rational purpose. In politics, however, the ‗do-it- yourself‘ attitude is not of quite the same character. The society that confronts human beings in such an impenetrable manner is these humans themselves. Confidence in the limited action of small groups is reminiscent of the spontaneity which atrophies beneath the encrusted totality and without which this totality cannot be transformed into something different. The administered world has a tendency to strangle all spontaneity or at least to channel it into pseudo-activity. This, however, is not achieved so totally without difficulty as the agents of the administered world would like to imagine. Nonetheless, spontaneity is not to be absolutized – just as little as it is to be separated from the objective situation and idolized in the same manner as is the administered world itself. Otherwise the axe will break down the next door in the house – a process which never spares the carpenter – and the riot squad will appear on the spot. Political acts of violence can also sink to the level of pseudo -activity, resulting in mere theatre. It is hardly a wonder that the ideal of direct action and propaganda glorifying the deed have b een resurrected, upon the heels of the willing integration of formerly progressive organizations that, in all lands of the earth, manifest the character of that against which they were once direc ted. This process, however, has not weakened the criticism of anarchism, the return of which is the return of the ghost. The impatience toward theory manifested in this return does nothing to advance thought beyond itself. Theory falls behind the thought which it forgets. For the individual, life is made easier through capitulation to the collective with which he identifies. He is spared the cognition of his impotence; within the circle of their own company, the few become many. It is this act – not unconfused thinking – which is resignation. No transparent relation prevails between the interests of the ego and the collective to which it ass igns itself. The ego must abrogate itself, if it is to sha re in the predestination of the collective. Explicitly a remnant of the Kantian categorical imperative manifests itself: your signature is required . The feeling of a new security is purchased with the sacrifice of autonomous thinking. The consolation that thought within the context of collective action is an improvement proves deceptive: thinking, employed only as the instrument of action, is blunted in the same manner as all instrumental reason. At the present moment, no higher form of society is concretely visible: for that reason, anything that seems in easy reach is regressive. According to Freud, however, whoever regresses has not achieved the goal of his drives. Objectively viewed, reformation is renunciation, even if it considers itself the opposite and innocently

4


[Name]

propagates the pleasure principle. In contrast, the uncompromisingly critical thinker, who neither superscribes his conscience nor permits himself to be terrorized into action , is in truth the one who does not give up . Furthermore, thinking is not the spiritual reproduction of that which exists. As long as thinking is not interrupted, it has a firm grasp u pon possibility. Its insatiable quality, the resistance against petty satiety , rejects the foolish wisdom of resignation. The Utopian impulse in thinking is all the stronger, the less it objectifies itself as Utopia – a further form of regression – whereby it sabotages its own realization. Open thinking points beyond itself. For its part, such thinking takes a position as a figuation of praxis which is more closely related to a praxis truly involved in change than in a position of mere obedience for the sake of praxis. Beyond all specialized and particular content, thinking is actually and above all the force of resistance, alienated from resistance only with great effort. This emphatic concept of thinking is by no means secure; no security is granted it by existing conditions nor by the ends yet to be attained nor by any type of organized force. Whatever was once thought, however, can be suppressed; it can be forgotten and can even vanish. But it cannot be denied that something of it survives. For thinking has the momentum of the general. What has been cogently thought must be thought in some other place and by other people. This confidence accompanies even the loneliest and most impotent thought. Whoever thinks is without anger in all criticism: 1 thinking sublimates anger. Because the thinking person does not have to inflict anger upon himself , he furthermore has no desire to inflict it upon others . The happiness visible to the eye of a thinker is the happiness of mankind. The universal tendency toward suppression goes against thought as such. Such thought is happiness, even where unhappiness prevails; thought achieves happiness in the expression of unhappiness . Whoever refuses to permit this thought to be taken from him has not resigned.

5


[Name]

Adorno Link DA 2NR Academic deliberation doesn‘t do anything about material violence like <> because we are high schoolers confined to one debate round without our hands on the levers of power —that‘s Adorno—all they do is parade ethical crises in exchange for a ballot, ushering in interpassive deliberation and complacency that turn case. They view themselves as doing the world a favor by advocating for <> , but then when they leave the room they allow their own harms to continue, because they already ―saved the world‖ by reading the 1ac.

6


[Name]

State Bad Link DA Reliance on the state guarantees mass violence and destroys value to life Shaffer 7 (Butler teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. B.S., La w, 1958, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; B.A., Political Science, 1959, and J.D., 1961, University of Chicago; Member, Colorado and Nebraska State Bars. ―Identifying With the State‖ June 29th 2007. http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer159.html) One of the deadliest practices we engage in is that of identifying ourselves with a collective entity. Whether it be the state, a nationality, our race or gender, or any other abstraction, we introduce division – hence, conflict – into our lives as we separate ourselves from those who identify with other groupings. If one observes the state of our world today, this is the pattern that underlies our dead ly and destructive social behavior. This mindset was no better articulated than when Geo rge W. Bush declared ―you‘re either with us, or against us.‖ Through years of careful conditioning, we learn to think of ourselves in terms of agencies and/or abstractions external to our independent being. Or, to express the point more clearly, we have learned to internalize these external forces; to conform our thinking and behavior to the purposes and interests of such entities. We adorn ourselves with flags, mouth shibboleths, a nd decorate our cars with bumper-stickers, in order to communicate to others our sense of ―who we are.‖ In such ways does our being become indistinguishable from our chosen collective. In this way are institutions born. We discover a particular form of organization through which we are able to cooperate with others for o ur mutual benefit. Over time, the advantages derived from this system have a sufficient consistency to lead us to the conclusion that our well-being is dependent upon it. Those who manage the organization find it in their self-interests to propagate this belief so that we will become dependent upon its permanency. Like a sculptor working with clay, institutions take over the direction of our minds, twisting, squeezing, and pounding upon them until we have embraced a mindset conducive to their interests. Once this has been accomplished, we find it easy to subvert our will and sense of purpose to the collective. The organization ceases being a mere tool of mutual convenience, and becomes an end in itself. Our lives become ―institutionalized,‖ and we regard it as fanciful to imagine ourselves living in any other way than as constituent parts of a machine that transcends our individual sense. Once we identify ourselves with the state, that collective entity does more than represent who we are; it is who we are. To the politicized mind, the idea that ―we are the government‖ has real meaning , not in the sense of being able to control such an agency, but in the psychological sense . The successes and failures of the state become the subject‘s successes and failures; insults or other attacks upon their abstract sense of being – such as the burning of ―their‖ flag – become assaults upon their very personhood. Shortcomings on the part of the state become our failures of character. This is why so many Americans who have belatedly come to criticize the war against Iraq are inclined to treat it as only a ―mistake‖ or the product of ―mismanagement,‖ not as a m oral wrong. Our egos can more easily admit to the making of a mistake than to moral transgressions. Such an attitude also helps to explain why, as Milton Mayer wrote in his revealing post-World War II book, They Thought They Were Free, most Germans were unable to admit that the Nazi regime had been tyrannical. It is this dynamic that makes it easy for political officials to generate wars, a process that reinforces the sense of identity and attachment people have for ―their‖ state . It also helps to explain why most Americans – though tiring of the war against Iraq – refuse to condemn government leaders for the lies, forgeries, and deceit employed to get the war started: to acknowledge the dishonesty of the system through which they identify themselves is to admit to the dishonest base of their being. The truthfulness of the state‘s rationale for war is irrelevant to most of its subjects. It is sufficient that they believe the abstraction with which their lives are intertwined will be benefited in some way by war. Against whom and upon what claim does not matter – except as a factor in assessing the likelihood of success. That most Americans have pipped nary a squeak of protest over Bush administration plans to attack Iran – with nuclear weapons if deemed useful to its ends – reflects the point I am making. Bush could undertake a full-fledged war against Lapland, and most Americans would trot out their flags and bumper-stickers of approval. The ―rightness‖ or ―wrongness‖ of any form of collective behavior becomes interpreted by the standard of whose actions are being considered. During World War II, for example, Japanese kamikaze pilots were regarded as crazed fanatics for crashing their planes into American battleships. At the same time, American war movies (see, e.g., Flying Tigers) extolled the heroism of American pilots who did the same

7


[Name]

thing. One sees this same double-standa rd in responding to ―conspiracy theories.‖ ―Do you think a conspiracy was behind the 9/11 attacks?‖ It certainly seems so to m e, unless one is prepared to treat the disappearance of the World Trade Center buildings as the consequence of a couple pilots having bad navigational experiences! The question that should be asked is: whose conspiracy was it? To those whose identities coincide with the state, such a question is easily answered: others conspire, we do not. It is not the symbiotic relationship between war and the expansion of state power, nor the realization of corporate benefits that could not be obtained in a free market, that mobilize the machinery of war. Without most of us standing behind ―our‖ system, and cheering on ―our‖ troops, and defending ―our‖ leaders, none of this would be possible. What would be your likely response if your neighbor prevailed upon you to join him in a violent attack upon a local convenience store, on the grounds that it hired ―illegal aliens?‖ Your sense of identity would not be implicated in his efforts, and you would likely dismiss him as a lunatic. Only when our ego-identities become wrapped up with some institutional abstraction – such as the state – can we be persuaded to invest our lives and the lives of our children in the collective madness of state action. We do not have such attitudes toward organizations with which we have more transitory r elationships. If we find an accounting error in our bank statement, we would not find satisfaction in the proposition ―the Fi rst National Bank, right or wrong.‖ Neither would we b e inclined to wear a T -shirt that read ―Disneyland: love it or leave it.‖ One of the many adverse consequences of identifying with and attaching ourselves to collective abstractions is our loss of control over not only the meaning and direction in our lives, but of the manner in which we can be efficacious in our efforts to pursue the purposes that have become central to us. We become dependent upon the performance of ―our‖ group; ―our‖ reputation rises or falls on the basis of what institutional leaders do or fail to do. If ―our‖ nation-state loses respect in the world – such as by the use of torture or killing innocent people - we consider ourselves no longer respectable, and scurry to find plausible excuses to redeem our egos. When these expectations are not met, we go in search of new leaders or organizational reforms we believe will restore our sense of purpose and pride that we have allowed abstract entities to personify for us. As the costs and failures of the state become increasingly evident, there is a growing tendency to blame this system. But to do so is to continue playing the same game into which we have allowed ourselves to become conditioned. One of the practices employed by the state to get us to mobilize our ―dark s ide‖ energies in opposition to the endless recycling of enemies it has chosen for us, is that of psychological projection. Whether we care to acknowledge it or not – and most of us do not – each of us has an unconscious capacity for attitudes or conduct that our conscious minds reject. We fear that, sufficiently provoked, we might engage in violence – even deadly – against others; or that inducements might cause us to become dishonest. We might harbor racist or other b igoted sentiments, or consider ourselves lazy or irresponsible. Though we are unlikely to act upon such inner fears, their presence within us can generate discomforting self-directed feelings of guilt, anger, or unworthiness that we would like to eliminate. The most common way in which humanity has tried to bring about such an exorcism is by subconsciously projecting these traits onto others (i.e., ―scapegoats‖) and punishing them for what are really our own shortcomings. The state has trained us to behave this way, in order that we may be counted upon to invest our lives, resources, and other energies in pursuit of the enemy du jour. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that most of us resort to the same practice in our criticism of political systems. After years of mouthing the high-school civics class mantra about the necessity for government – and the bigger the government the better – we begin to experience the unexpected consequences of politicization. Tax burdens continue to escalate; or the state takes our home to make way for a proposed shopping center; or ever-more details of our lives are micromanaged by ever burgeoning state bureaucracies. Having grown weary of the costs – including the loss of control over our lives – we blame the state for what has befallen us. We condemn the Bush administration for the parade of lies that precipitated the war against Iraq, rather than indicting ourselves for ever believing anything the state tells us. We fault the politicians for the skyrocketing costs of governmental programs, conveniently ignoring our insistence upon this or that benefit whose costs we would prefer having others pay. The statists have helped us accept a world view that conflates our incompetence to manage our own lives with their omniscience to manage the lives of billions of people – along with the planet upon which we live! – and we are now experiencing the costs generated by our own gullibility. We have acted like country bumpkins at the state fair with the egg money who, having been fleeced by a bunch of carnival sharpies, look everywhere for someone to blame other than ourselves. We have been euchred out of our very lives because of our eagerness to believe that benefits can be enjoyed without incurring costs; that the freedom to control one‘s life can be separated from the responsibilities for one‘s actions ; and that two plus two does not have to add up to four if a sizeable public opinion can be amassed against the proposition. By identifying ourselves with any abstraction (such as the state) we give up the integrated life, the sense of wholeness that can be found only within each of us. While the state has manipulated, cajoled, and

8


[Name]

threatened us to identify ourselves with it, the responsibility for our acceding to its pressures lies within each of us. The statists have – as was their vicious purpose – simply taken over the territory w e have abandoned. Our politico-centric pain and suffering has been brought about by our having allowed external forces to move in and occupy the vacuum we created at the center of our being. The only way out of our dilemma involves a retracing of the route that brought us to where we are. We require nothing so much right now as the development of a s ense of ―who we are‖ that transcends our institutionalized identities, and returns us – without division and conflict – to a centered, self-directed integrity in our lives.

9


[Name]

Shaffer 2NR Institutions design forms of educational blackmail like the aff to ensure that individuals are stuck functioning only within the macro realm. All of their resistance gets coopted because the state will always preempt their individual desires and use them on behalf of its interests. These kinds of schemas make us think that we are preventing atrocities, all the while we become resources for the state to consume and we are conditioned to accept the kind of bankrupt institutions that drive us to the edge of destruction. This is the root cause of war and allows for forms of violence to go unchecked. In turn this destroys our sense of personal agency and Value to life.They concede that value to life subsumes their impacts —physical existence is irrelevant if there‘s no capacity to affirm it or create within itthat‘s Shaffer – this is a 100 percent take out on their cede the political arguments as well as the entire aff.

10


[Name]

Error Replication Link DA They cause error reps Baudrillard 94 (Jean, The Illusion of the End , p. 66-71) We have long denounced the capitalistic, economic exploitation of the poverty of the 'other half of the world' [['autre monde]. We must today denounce the moral and sentimental exploitation of that poverty charity cannibalism being worse than oppressive violence. The extraction and humanitarian reprocessing of a destitution which has become the equivalent of oil d eposits and gold mines. The extortion of the spectacle of poverty and, at the same time, of our charitable condescension: a worldwide appreciated surplus of fine sentiments and bad conscience. We should, in fact, see this not as the extraction of raw materials, but as a waste-reprocessing enterprise. Their destitution and our bad conscience are, in effect, all part of the waste-products of history- the main thing is to recycle them to produce a new energy source. We have here an escalation in the psychological balance of terror. World capitalist oppression is now merely the vehicle and alibi for this other, much more ferocious, form of moral pred ation. One might almost say, contrary to the Marxist analysis, that material exploitation is only there to extract that spiritual raw material that is the misery of peoples, which serves as psychological nourishment for the rich countries and media nourishment for our daily lives. The 'Fourth World' (we are no longer dealing with a 'developing' Third World) is once again beleaguered, this time as a catastrophe-bearing stratum. The West is whitewashed in the reprocessing of the rest of the world as waste and residue. And the white world repents and seeks absolution - it, too, the waste-product of its own history. The South is a natural producer of raw materials, the latest of which is catastrophe. The North, for its part, specializes in the reprocessing of raw materials and hence also in the reprocessing of catastrophe. Bloodsucking protection, humanitarian interference, Medecins sans frontieres, international solidarity, etc. The last phase of colonialism: the New Sentimental Order is merely the latest form of the New World Order. Other people's destitution becomes our adventure playground. Thus, the humanitarian offensive aimed at the Kurds - a show of repentance on the part of the Western powers after allowing Saddam Hussein to crush them - is in reality merely the second phase of the war, a phase in which charitable intervention finishes off the work of extermination. We are the consumers of the ever delightful spectacle of poverty and catastrophe, and of the moving spectacle of our own efforts to alleviate it (which, in fact, merely function to secure the conditions of reproduction of the catastrophe market); there, at least, in the order of moral profits, the Marxist analysis is wholly applicable: we see to it that extreme poverty is reproduced as a symbolic deposit, as a fuel essential to the moral and sentimental equilibrium of the West. In our defence, it might be said that this extreme poverty was largely of our own making and it is therefore normal that we should profit by it. There can be no finer proof that the distress of the rest of the world is at the root of Western power and that the spectacle of that distress is its crowning glory than the inauguration, on the roof of the Arche de la Defense, with a sumptuous buffet laid on by the Fondation des Droits de l'homme, of an exhibition of the finest photos of world poverty. Should we be surprised that spaces are set aside in the Arche d' Alliance. for universal suffering hallowed by caviar and champagne? Just as the economic crisis of the West will not be complete so long as it can still exploit the res ources of the rest of the world, so the symbolic crisis will be complete only when it is no longer able to feed on the other half's human and natural catastrophes (Eastern Europe, the Gulf, the Kurds, Bangladesh, etc.). We need this drug, which serves us as an aphrodisiac and hallucinogen. And the poor countries are the best suppliers - as, indeed, they are of other drugs. We provide them, through our media, with the means to exploit this paradoxical resource, just as we give them the means to exhaust their natural resources with our technologies. Our whole culture lives off this catastrophic cannibalism, relayed in cynical mode by the news media, and carried forward in moral mode by our humanitarian aid, which is a way of encouraging it and ensuring its continuity, just as economic aid is a strategy for perpetuating under-development. Up to now, the financial sacrifice has been compensated a hundredfold by the moral gain. But when the catastrophe market itself reaches crisis point, in accordance with the implacable logic of the market, when distress becomes scarce or the marginal returns on it fall from overexploitation, when we run out of disasters from elsewhere or when they can no longer be traded like coffee or other commodities, the West will be forced to produce its own catastrophe for itself, in order to meet its need for spectacle and that voracious appetite for symbols which characterizes it even more than its voracious appetite for food. It w ill reach the point where it devours itself. When we have f inished sucking out the destiny of others, we shall have to invent one for ourselves. The Great Crash, the symbolic crash, will come in the end from us Westerners,

11


[Name]

but only when we are no longer able to feed on the hallucinogenic misery which comes to us from the other half of the world. Yet they do not seem keen to give up their monopoly. The Middle East, Bangladesh, black Africa and Latin America are really going flat out in the distress and catastrophe stakes, and thus in providing symbolic nourishment for the rich world. They might be said to be overdoing it: heaping earthquakes, floods, famines and ecological disasters one upon another, and finding the means to massacre each other most of the time. The 'disaster show' goes on without any let-up and our sacrificial debt to them far exceeds their economic debt. The misery with which they generously overwhelm us is something we shall never be able to repay. The sacrifices we offer in return are laughable (a tornado or two, a few tiny holocausts on the roads , the odd financial sacrifice) and, moreover, by some infernal logic, these work out as much greater gains for us, whereas our kindnesses have merely add ed to the natural catastrophes another one immeasurably worse: the demographic catastrophe, a veritable epidemic which we deplore each day in pictures. In short, there is such distortion between North and South, to the symbolic advantage of the South (a hundred thousand Iraqi dead against casualties numbered in tens on our side: in every case we are the losers), that one day everything will break down. One day, the West will break down if we are not soon washed clean of this shame, if an international congress of the poor countries does not very quickly decide to share out this symbolic privilege of misery and catastrophe. It is of course normal, since we refuse to allow the spread of nuclear weapons, that they should refuse to allow the spread of the catastrophe weapon. But it is not right that they should exert that monopoly indefinitely. In any case, the under-developed are only so by comparison with the Western system and its presumed success. In the light of its assumed failure, they are not under-developed at all. They are only so in terms of a dominant evolutionism which has always been the worst of colonial ideologies. The argument here is that there is a line of objective progress and everyone is supposed to pass through its various stages (we find the same eyewash with regard to the evolution of species and in that evolutionism which unilaterally sanctions the superiority of the human race). In the light of current upheavals, which put an end to any idea of history as a linear process, there are no longer either developed or under-developed peoples them, in keeping with the objective illusion of progress, to technological salvation is a criminal absurdity. In actual fact, it is their good fortune to be able to escape from evolution just at the point when we no longer know where it is leading. In any case, a majority of these peoples, including those of Eastern Europe, do not seem keen to enter this evolutionist modernity, and their weight in the balance is certainly no small factor in the West's repudiation of its o wn history, of its own utopias and its own modernity. It might be said that the routes of violence, historical or otherwise, are being turned around and that the viruses now pass from South to North, there being every chance that, five hundred years after America was conquered, 1992 and the end of the century will mark the comeback of the defeated and the sudden reversal of that modernity. The sense of pride is no longer on the side of wealth but of poverty, of those who - fortunately for them - have nothing to repent, and may indeed glory in being privileged in terms of catastrophes. Admittedly, this is a privilege they could hardly renounce, even if they wished to, but natural disasters merely reinforce the sense of guilt felt towards them by the wealthy – by those whom God visibly scorns since he no longer even strikes them down. One day it will be the Whites themselves who will give up their whiteness. It is a good bet that repentance will reach its highest pitch with the five -hundredth anniversary of the conquest of the Americas. We are going to have to lift the curse of the defeated - but symbolically victorious - peoples, which is insinuating itself five hundred years later, by way of repentance, into the heart of the white race. No solution has been found to the dramatic situation of the under-developed, and none will be found since their dr ama has now been overtaken by that of the overdeveloped, of the rich nations. The psychodrama of congestion, saturation, super abundance, neurosis and the breaking of blood vessels which haunts us - the drama of the excess of means over ends – calls more urgently for attention than that of penury, lack and poverty. That is where the most imminent danger of catastrophe resides, in the societies which have run out of emptiness. Artificial catastrophes, like the beneficial aspects of civilization, progress much more quickly than natural ones. The underdeveloped are still at the primary stage of the natural, unforeseeable catastrophe. We are already at the second stage, that of the manufactured catastrophe - imminent and for eseeable - and we shall soon be at that of the pre-programmed catastrophe, the catastrophe of the third kind, deliberate and experimental. And, paradoxically, it is our pursuit of the means for averting natural catastrophe - the unpredictable form of destiny - which will take us there. Because it is unable to escape it, humanity will pretend to be the author of its destiny. Because it cannot accept being confronted with an end which is uncertain or governed by fate, it will pr efer to stage its own death as a species.

12


[Name]

Error Rep 2NR Their roleplaying of catastrophe will induce the catastrophes they try to prevent – humanity cannot stand to die by a chance event, our arrogance ensures that we will engage in these simulation games over and over until our desire for images of destruction force us into manufacturing our catastophes, meaning that error replication will always continue when we engage in macropolitics, that‘s Baudrillard.

13


[Name]

Death Cult Link DA The aff‘s invocation of death impacts is necrophilia, a blind obsession with body counts that ends in extinction. Baudrillard 93 (Jean, ex-Prof of Sociology at Paris X, symbolic exchange and death. p 164-5, gendered modified) Why is it that today there are no expected and foreseen deaths from old age, a death in the family, the only death that had full meaning for the traditional collectivity, from Abraham to our grandfathers? It is no longer even touching, it is almost ridiculous, and socially insignificant in any case. Why on the other hand is it that violent, accidental, and chance death, which previous communities could not make any sense of (it was dreaded and cursed as vehemently as we curse suicide), has so much meaning for us: it is the only one that is generally talked about; it is fascinating and t ouches the imagination. Once again, ours is the culture of the Accident, as Octavio Paz says. Death is not abjectly exploited by the Media since they are happy to gamble on the fact that the only events of immediate, unmanipulated and straightforward significance for all are those which in one way or another bring death onto the scene. In this sense the most despicable media are also the most objective. And again, to interpret this in terms of repressed individual pulsions or unconscious sadism is trivial and uninteresting, since it is a matter of a collective passion. Violent or catastrophic death does not satisfy the little individual unconscious, manipulated by the vile mass- media (this is a secondary revision, and is already morally weighted); this death moves us so profoundly only because it works on the group itself , and because in one way or another it transfigures and redeems in its own eyes. ` Natural ' death is devoid of meaning because the group has no longer any role to play in it . It is banal because it is bound to the policed and commonplace [banalisé] individual subject, to the policed and commonplace nuclear family, and because it is no longer a collective mourning and joy. Each buries his own dead . With the primitives, there is no `natural' death: every death is social, public and collective, and it is always the effect of an adversarial will that the group must absorb (no biology). This a bsorption takes place in feasting and rites. Feasting is the exchange of wills (we don't see how feasting would reabsorb a biological event). Evil wills and expiation rites are exchanged over the d eath's head. Death deceives and symbolically gains esteem; here death gains status, and the group is enriched by a partner. To us, the dead have just passed away and no longer have anything to exchange. The dead are residual even before dying. At the end of a lifetime of accumulation, the dead are subtracted from the total in an economic operation . They do not become effigies: they serve e ntirely as alibis for the living and to their obvious superiority over the dead. This is a flat, one-dimensional death, the end of the b iological journey, settling a credit: `giving in one's soul', like a tyre, a container emptied of its contents . What banality! [p. 165] All passion then takes refuge in violent death , which is the sole manifestation of something like the sacrifice, that is to say, like a real transmutation through the will of the group. And in this sense, it matters little whether d eath is accidental, criminal or catastrophic: from the moment it escapes ‗natural‘ reason , and becomes a challenge to nature , it once again becomes the business of the group, demanding a collective and symbolic response; in a word, it arouses the passion for the artificial , which is at the same time sacrificial passion. Nature is uninteresting and meaningless, but we need only `return' one death to `nature', we need only exchange it in accordance with strict conventional rites, for its energy (both the dead person's energy and that of death itself) to affect the group, to be reabsorbed and expended by the group, instead of simply leaving it as a natural `residue'. We, for our part, no longer have an effective rite for reabsorbing death and its rupturing energies; there remains the phantasm of sacrifice, the violent artifice of death. Hence the intense and profoundly collective satisfaction of the automobile death. In the fatal accident, the artificiality of death fascinates us. Technical, non-natural and therefore willed (ultimately by the victim him-- or herself), death becomes interesting once again since willed death has a meaning. This artificiality of death facilitates , on a par with the sacrifice, its aesthetic doubling in the imagination, and the enjoyment that follows from it . Obviously `aesthetics' only has a value for us since we are condemned to contemplation. The sacrifice is not `aesthetic' for the primitives, but it always marks a refusal of natural and biological succession, an intervention of an initiatory order, a controlled and socially governed violence. These days, we can only rediscover this anti-natural

14


[Name]

violence in the chance accident or catastrophe , which we therefore experience as socially symbolic events of the highest importance , as sacrifices. Finally, the Accident is only accidental, that is to say, absurd, for official reason; for the symbolic demand, which we have never been without, the accident has always been something else altogether.

15


[Name]

Death Cult 2NR Extend the Death Cult DA: In appealing for the ballot on the grounds of a massive future catastrophe, the 1AC renders death on an everyday level, such as the death in the family, socially useless and devoid of meaning. These deaths are merely those of ―private individuals,‖ who are simply empty biological containers in the view of the modern policymaking gaze, and socially useless by virtue of the fact that they no longer add to its social and economic operations. Additionally, they‘ve mishandled our desiring catastrophe turn— the need for individuals to achieve a socially meaningful existence drives them to replace what they would achieve through mourning rites for the individual with a massive death scenario, turning case and resulting in the external impacts of artificial catastrophes —proven by the fact that individuals‘ passions are easily mobili zed by status quo politicians that score political points by bombing countries into the Stone Age and orchestrating artificial scenarios of doom. That‘s Baudrillard 93.

16


[Name]

Armchair Activism DA Their calls to change are only permitted, because it will get co-opted by academia. Occupied UC Berkeley 9 (The Necrosocial: Civic Life, Social Death, and the UC; http://anticapitalprojects.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/the-necrosocial/, 11/19) He and his look forward to a reproduction of the logic of representative governance, the release valve of the university plunges us into an abyss where ideas a re wisps of ether —that is, meaning is ripped from action. Let‘s talk about the fight endlessly, but always only in their managed form: to perpetually deliberate, the endless fleshing-out-of — when we push the boundaries of this form they are quick to reconfigure themselves to contain us: the chancellor‘s congratulations, the reopening of the libraries, the managed general assembly —there is no fight against the administration here, only its own extension. Each day passes in this way, the administration on the look out to shape student discourse —it happens without pause, we don‘t notice nor do we care to. It becomes banal, thoughtless. So much so that we see we are accumulating days: one semester, two, how close to being this or that, how far? This accumulation is our shared history. This accumulation —every once in a while interrupted, violated by a riot, a wild protest, unforgettable fucking, the overwhelming joy of love, life shattering heartbreak —is a muted, but desirous life. A dead but restless and desirous life. The university steals and homogenizes our time yes, our bank accounts also, but it also steals and homogenizes meaning. As much as capital is invested in building a killing apparatus abroad , an incarceration apparatus in California, it is equally invested here in an apparatus for managing social death . Social death is, of course, simply the power source, the generator, of civic life with its talk of reform, responsibility, unity. A ‗life,‘ then, which serves merely as the public relations mechanism for death : its garrulous slogans of freedom and democracy designed to obscure the shit and decay in which our feet are planted. Yes, the university is a graveyard , but it is also a factory: a factory of meaning which produces civic life and at the same time produces social death. A factory which produces the illusion that meaning and reality can b e separated; which everywhere reproduces the empty reactionary behavior of students based on the values of life (identity), liberty (electoral politics), and happiness (private property). Everywhere the same whimsical ideas of the future. Everywhere democracy. Everywhere discourse to shape our desires and distress in a way acceptable to the electoral state , discourse designed to make our very moments here together into a set of legible and fruitless demands. Totally managed death. A machine for adm inistering death, for the proliferation of technologies of death. As elsewhere, things rule. Dead objects rule. In this sense, it matters little what face one puts on the university — whether Yudof or some other lackey. These are merely the personifications of the rule of the dead, the pools of investments, the buildings, the flows of materials into and out of the physical space of the university —each one the product of some exploitation — which seek to absorb more of our work, more tuition, more energy. The university is a machine which wants to grow, to accumulate, to expand, to absorb more and more of the living into its peculiar and perverse machinery: high-tech research centers, new stadiums a nd office complexes. And at this critical juncture the only way it can continue to grow is by more intense exploitation, higher tuition, austerity measures for the departments that fail to pass the test of ‗relevancy.‘ But the ‗irrelevant‘ departments also have their place . With their ‗pure‘ motives of knowledge for its own sake, they perpetuate the blind inertia of meaning ostensibly detached from its social context. As the university cultivates its cozy relationship with capital, war and power, these discourses and research programs play their own role, coopting and containing radical potential . And so we attend lecture after lecture about how ‗discourse‘ produces ‗subjects,‘ ignoring the most obvious fact that we ourselves are

produced by this discourse about discourse which leaves us believing that it is only words which matter, words about words which matter. The university gladly permits the precautionary lectures on biopower ; on the production of race and gender ; on the reification and the fetishization of commodities. A taste of the poison serves well to inoculate us against any confrontational radicalism. And all the while power weaves the invisible nets

17


[Name]

which contain and neutralize all thought and action , that bind revolution inside books, lecture halls.

18


[Name]

Armchair Activism 2NR Extend the Occupied UC Berkley —Debate is a mausoleum of theories of power, critique, and resistance—ideas that were once alive are now filtered, managed, and expected by the machinations of academia. The proliferation of critical discourse within the debate space gets coopted by the sign economy and merely circulates within the selfcontained space of the debate round. Their resistance is forever buried deep into the catacombs of empty school rooms. After this debate, we may go get lunch at a fast food joint or smoke a cigarette produced on the backs of disenfranchised workers. They breed interpassivity by making us forget that we are only producing discourses about discourse in exchange for a ballot instead of actually dealing with the harms they speak of.

19


[Name]

Race Link DA Their public response to make whiteness visible only feeds their own ego Pitcher 7 (Ben, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Westminster. I studied Literature at Goldsmiths (BA) and Cultural Studies at Lancaster University (MA) and the University of East London (PhD). I was most recently a Lecturer in Political Sociology at Oxford Brookes University. I am an External Examiner at the University of Brighton. )

What is particularly interesting about these modern-day morality plays is the particular status of the racist act and the public response it engenders. The former always constitutes a great Freudian slip of ethical propriety: it is, of course, never ‗really meant‘. Jade Goody, Patrick Mercer, even the policeman beating the shit out of Toni Comer – all of them are quick to deny they really are racists. They were caught off-guard, unawares, misconstrued. The amplification of their error across media platforms reminds us of Jeremy Beadle‘s oldfashioned reality TV: they had, indeed, been framed. Compare this, then, to the popular response, where racism comes to be identified and named. This theatre of mass disapproval is not, in the main, disingenuous. When Ofcom came to be incorporated into the Big Brother drama as an alternative site for the registration of telephone votes, this was an organic manifestation of the popular politics of reality TV. It was a protest that was – at least in its origins – quite unorchestrated by the newspapers or other peripheral media. The point to make here is not to challenge the sincerity of the reaction, but rather to consider the conditions under which such instances of impeccable anti-racism come to be expressed. All public discussion of race is today articulated from an anti-racist position. Indeed, it is in fact the only position from which to speak : it is not possible to mention the subject without stressing one‘s anti-racist credentials. All this is of course well and good: it should indeed be impossible to beg to differ. Yet it is at the same time still worth noting that this ethical injunction on racist reference makes the anti-racist response an oddly hollow act, for if to speak about race immediately places one in a superior position of judgment, then to do so is to simultaneously remove oneself from the field of racist practice: it excuses one from the possibility of being judged. We are as a result operating according to a social logic where racism only exists to be condemned: the rapidly censored spillages from the racist unconscious channelled by the ‗misunderstood‘ victims of reality TV have a single purpose, and that purpose is to feed our disapprobation. The popular spirit of anti-racism is not interested in much beyond these spectacular slips, for the sustained, longstanding and institutional facts of racist Britain cannot be booed off with a text vote to Ofcom. They are not amenable to the armchair activism that has seen anti-racism transformed into a cause for a twenty-first century green-ink brigade, treated as evidence of a lapse in public morality that might, in pruder times, have ranked alongside the display of nudity or the vocalization of a rude word. And so, beyond the excitement and public spectacle that appeared to invalidate Baudrillard‘s neat pessimism, we are witness to its confirmation in this strangely empty form of virtual reality racism. The racist act or incident is entirely incidental, though it is – as in the case of Big Brother – always better if it takes place in a controlled environment. It is racism reduced to a resource, a material which feeds our popular ethics of anti-racism. The ideal form of virtual racism is a racism that seems to have had an essential property emptied out of it: it is a racism where nobody appears to get hurt. Our popular culture is on constant alert for this precious substance, always on its tantalizing trail. We latch onto incidents upon which it can be hooked, temporarily pinned up for our audience, so that we can hold it before us and admonish it with full vigour.

20


[Name]

Race Link 2NR Even if the 1AC itself confronts [white privilege/civil society/the black body], the aff fails to understand how the site of deploying their revolutionary strategy shapes its message. When anti-racist messages enter a predominantly white symbolic economy like debate, an affirmation of their message merely ushers in interpassivity on issues of race—people will vote aff to settle their moral equilibriums and then continue to (1) vote for arguments like ―hegemony good‖ in other debates that actively endorse white supremacy and (2) engage in activities outside of debate like smoke cigarettes and eat food made on the backs of abused and disenfranchised workers which uncritically props up racism. Affirmation of the 1AC merely become an anti-racist alibi within a white symbolic economy which is a terminal solvency takeout.

21

K tricks

Recommend Documents