Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Capitalism K Poverty
Capitalism K Poverty
Capitalism K Poverty
Capitalism K Shell.................................................................................................................................................5
Capitalism K Shell.................................................................................................................................................6
Links General Poverty Solvency.........................................................................................................................9
Links -- Microenterprise......................................................................................................................................10
Links Work First...............................................................................................................................................11
Links International Public Health Assistance....................................................................................................12
Links -- Public Health Care.................................................................................................................................13
Links Desire/Endorsing....................................................................................................................................14
Links -- Armchair Activism.................................................................................................................................15
Links Moral Claims..........................................................................................................................................17
Links - Helping....................................................................................................................................................19
Links Moral Imperative....................................................................................................................................21
Links Moral Imperative....................................................................................................................................22
Links Human Rights.........................................................................................................................................23
Links Solving Hunger.......................................................................................................................................24
Links -- Levinas...................................................................................................................................................26
Links -- Levinas...................................................................................................................................................27
Links --Levinas....................................................................................................................................................28
Links -- Levinas...................................................................................................................................................29
Links Foucault..................................................................................................................................................30
Links -- Foucault..................................................................................................................................................31
Links -- Foucault..................................................................................................................................................32
Links -- Multiculturalism.....................................................................................................................................33
Links -- Multiculturalism.....................................................................................................................................34
Links -- Multicultaralism.....................................................................................................................................35
Links Animal Rights/Deep Ecology..................................................................................................................37
Links -- Fiat.........................................................................................................................................................38
Links -- Fiat.........................................................................................................................................................39
Links -- Sovereignty............................................................................................................................................40
Links -- Sovereignty............................................................................................................................................42
Links - Rationality...............................................................................................................................................43
Links Utopian Politics.......................................................................................................................................44
Links International Law....................................................................................................................................45
Links -- Democracy.............................................................................................................................................46
Links Military Strength.....................................................................................................................................47
Links State Power.............................................................................................................................................48
Links State Power.............................................................................................................................................49
Links State Power.............................................................................................................................................50
Links State Power.............................................................................................................................................51
Links -- Law........................................................................................................................................................52
Links -- Law........................................................................................................................................................53
Links Human Rights.........................................................................................................................................54
Links -- Democracy.............................................................................................................................................55
Links Development...........................................................................................................................................56
Links Development...........................................................................................................................................58
Links -- Development..........................................................................................................................................59
Links Development...........................................................................................................................................60
Development Link Outweighs Perm....................................................................................................................62
Links War/Realism............................................................................................................................................63
Links -- Ecology..................................................................................................................................................65
Links Techno Environmental Mangerialism.....................................................................................................67
Links Environment/Ecology.............................................................................................................................69
Links Environment/Ecology.............................................................................................................................74
1
Capitalism K Shell
A. Social services strengthen capitalism and eliminate resistance
Sarah Steinheimer, Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, 2008, Welfare Reform and Sexual
Regulation by Anna Marie Smith., p. 226-7
As a political theorist, Smith dedicates three chapters of her book to an in-depth examination of social
and political theory and concludes Chapter Three with an outline of her own theory of sexual
regulation. Inspired by Michel Foucault, Smith draws most heavily on his theory of biopower -modern population control by the State n1 (p. 38). Smith also emphasizes the work of welfare
theorists Piven and Cloward, who argue the true function of the welfare State is not to provide
for poor families, but to stifle political unrest and to ensure an ample supply of low-wage
workers for capitalist interests (p.15).
B. Capitalism causes extinction
MELBOURNE INDYMEDIA, May 13, 2003, p. http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2003/05/47400.php.
(DRGOC/E244)
We cannot be certain whether such an innate instinct for freedom exists but as Chomsky has stated, "by denying the instinct
for freedom, we will only prove that humans are a lethal mutation, an evolutionary dead end: by nurturing it, if it is real, we
may find ways to deal with dreadful human tragedies and problems that are awesome in scale." These problems are so
grave that we are left, contrary to the option offered by Washington of "hegemony or survival", with two fundamental
choices; self-induced extinction or emancipation from the forces of social domination. Capitalism and indefinite human
survival are incompatible, not only for the reasons stated here.
Capitalism K Shell
C. Resistance is essential, the alternative is extinction
Zizek, 2008 (Slavoj, In Defense of Lost Causes, pp.420-425)
The underlying problem is: how are we to think the singular universality of the emancipatory subject as not
purely formal, that is, as objectively-materially determined, but without the working class as its substantial
base? The solution is a negative one: it is capitalism itself which offers a negative substantial determination, for
the global capitalist system is the substantial "base" which mediates and generates the excesses (slums,
ecological threats, and so on) that open up sites of resistance. It is easy to make fun of Fukuyama's notion of the
End of History, but the dominant ethos today is "Fukuyamaian": liberal-democratic capitalism is accepted as the
finally found formula of the best possible society, all that one can do is render it more just , tolerant, and so forth.
The only true question today is: do we endorse this "naturalization" of capitalism, or does contemporary global
capitalism contain antagonisms which are sufficiently strong to prevent its indefinite reproduction? Let us cite
four such antagonisms:
1. Ecology: in spite of the infinite adaptability of capitalism which, in the case of an acute ecological
catastrophe or crisis, can easily turn ecology into a new field of capitalist investment and competition,
the very nature of the risk involved fundamentally precludes a market solutionwhy? Capitalism only
works in precise social conditions: it implies trust in the objectivized/"reified" mechanism of the
market's "invisible hand" which, as a kind of Cunning of Reason, guarantees that the competition of
individual egotisms works for the common good. However, we are currently experiencing a radical
change. Up until now, historical Substancehistory as an objective process obeying certain laws
played out its role as the medium and foundation of all subjective interventions: whatever social and
political subjects did, it was mediated and ultimately dominated, overdetermined, by the historical
Substance. What looms on the horizon today is the unprecedented possibility that a subjective
intervention will intervene directly into the historical Substance, catastrophically disturbing its course
by triggering an ecological catastrophe, a fateful biogenetic mutation, a nuclear or similar military
social catastrophe, and so on. No longer can we rely on the safeguarding role of the limited scope of
our acts: it no longer holds that, whatever we do, history will carry on. For the first time in human
history, the act of a single socio-political agent can really alter and even interrupt the global historical
process, so that, ironically, it is only today that we can say that the historical process should effectively
be conceived "not only as Substance, but also as Subject." This is why, when confronted with singular
catastrophic prospects (say, a political group which intends to attack its enemy with nuclear or
biological weapons), we can no longer rely on the standard logic of the "Cunning of Reason" which,
precisely, presupposes the primacy of the historical Substance over acting subjects: we can no longer
adopt the stance of "let us call the bluff of the enemy who threatens us for he will thereby self-destruct"
the price for letting historical Reason do its work is too high since, in the meantime, we may all
perish together with the enemy. Recall a frightening detail from the Cuban missile crisis: only later did
we learn how close to nuclear war we were during a naval skirmish between an American destroyer
and a Soviet B59 submarine off Cuba on October 27, 1962. The destroyer dropped depth charges
near the submarine to try to force it to the surface, not knowing it had a nuclear-tipped torpedo. Vadim
Orlov, a member of the submarine crew, told the conference in Havana that the submarine had been
authorized to fire it if three officers agreed. The officers began a fierce shouting match over whether to
6
sink the ship. Two of them said yes and the other said no. "A guy named Arkhipov saved the world,"
was the bitter comment of a historian on this incident.
2. The inadequacy of private property for so-called "intellectual property." The key antagonism of the new
(digital) industries is thus: how to maintain the form of (private) property, within which the logic of profit can be
maintained (see also the Napster problem, the free circulation of music)? And do the legal complications in
biogenetics not point in the same direction? A key element of the new international trade agreements is the
"protection of intellectual property": whenever, in a merger, a big First World company takes over a Third World
company, the first thing they do Is close down the research department. Phenomena emerge here which push the
notion of property towards extraordinary dialectical paradoxes: in India, the local communities suddenly
discover that medical practices and materials they have been using for centuries are now owned by American
companies, so they should be bought from the latter; with the biogenetic companies patenting genes, we are all
discovering that parts of ourselves, our genetic components, are already copyrighted, owned by others . . . The
crucial date in the history of cyberspace was February 3, 1976, the day when Bill Gates published his
(in)famous "Open Letter to Hobbyists," the assertion of private property in the software domain: "As the
majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. [. . .] Most directly, the thing you do is
theft." Bill Gates has built his entire empire and reputation on his extreme views about knowledge being treated
as if it were tangible property. This was a decisive signal which triggered the battle for the "enclosure" of the
common domain of software.
3. The socio-ethical implications of new techno-scientific development (especially in biogenetics)Fukuyama
himself was compelled to admit that biogenetic interventions into human nature are the most serious threat to his
vision of the End of History. What is false about today's discussion concerning the "ethical consequences of
biogenetics" (along with similar matters) is that it is rapidly turning into what Germans call Bliidautrkh-FAhik,
the ethics of the hyphen technology-ethics, environment-ethics, and so on. This ethics does have a role to
play, a role homologous to that of the "provisional ethic" Descartes mentions at the beginning of his Discourses
on Method: when we engage on a new path, full of dangers and shattering new Insights, we need to stick to old
established rules as a practical guide for our dally lives, although we are well aware that the new insights will
compel us to provide a fresh foundation for our entire ethical edifice (in Descartes's case, this new foundation
was provided by Kant, in his ethics of subjective autonomy). Today, we are in the same predicament:
"provisional ethics" cannot replace the need for a profound reflection regarding the emerging New. In short,
what gets lost here, in this hyphen-ethics, is simply ethics as such. The problem is not that universal ethics gets
dissolved into particular topics, but, quite the contrary, that particular scientific breakthroughs are directly
confronted with old humanist "values " (say, that biogenetics affects our sense of dignity and autonomy). This,
then, is the choice we confront today: either we choose the typically postmodern stance of reticence (let's not go
to the endlet's keep a proper distance towards the scientific Thing so that this Thing will not draw us into its
black hole, destroying all our moral and human notions), or we dare to "tarry with the negative Qad Verweilen
helm Negativen)," that is, we dare to fully assume the consequences of scientific modernity, with the wager that
"our Mind is a genome" will also function as an infinite judgment.
4. And, last but not least, new forms of apartheid, new walls and slums . On September 11, 2001, the Twin
Towers were hit; twelve years earlier, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. November 9 announced the
"happy nineties," the Fukuyama dream that liberal democracy had won, that the search was over, that the advent
of a global, liberal world community was lurking just around the corner, that the obstacles to this ultraHollywoodesque happy ending were merely empirical and contingent (local pockets of resistance where the
leaders had not yet grasped that their time was over). In contrast, 9/11 is the key symbol of the end of the
Clintonite happy nineties, of the era in which new walls are emerging everywhere , between Israel and the West
Bank, around the European Union, along the USMexico border. So what if the new proletarian position is that
7
Links -- Microenterprise
Empowerment rationale for microenterprises blames the poor
Nancy Jurik, (Prof., Social Justice Theory, Arizona State U.), WELFARE, 2008, 169-170.
My findings challenge proponent and media images that frame MDPs [as alternatives to state welfare and jobtraining programs. Over time, MDPs have found that it is difficult to serve poor and very-low-income clients
and still record sufficient program successes to stay in business. Proponent rhetoric about self-help and client
motivation also have often distracted from issues of structural disadvantage and reinforced images that poor and
low-income people are responsible for their failures.
Microenterprise success rhetoric reinforces notion that the market is the solution to all problems
Nancy Jurik, (Prof., Social Justice Theory, Arizona State U.), WELFARE, 2008, 170.
Given current trends toward a capital-investment welfare state, it is important to understand the contradictions
surrounding microenterprise development. Can MDPs really alleviate poverty in the new economy? If they
cannot, their claims to do so and associated efforts to use Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
dollars to fund MDP services only exacerbate and legitimate the state's failure to provide effective programming
for the poor. Without deeper analysis, MDP success rhetoric may simply reinforce the hegemony of the market
as a solution to all social problems. Understanding the embedded process of microenterprise development can
improve MDP practice and framing so as to encourage the recognition of other viable policy alternatives.
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Public health inextricably linked with globalization must take these connections into account
when formulating interventions
Alison Bashford, Medical History Professor University of Sydney, 2006, Medicine at the Border: disease, globalization,
and security, 1850 to the present, ed. Alison Bashford, p. 11
Globalization, disease and its management are related in several ways. First, the transboundary nature of microbes and
disease, has been, without question, augmented with the frequency of travel. Second, there has been considerable use of
supranational, fully global technologies and networks to track disease outbreak, as Weir and Mykhalovskiy discuss. Third,
the deep investment in the development idea of international health and world health, whereby the third world is
developed in line with the first world sanitary and health conditions as a way to secure disease-free regions, represents the
westernization dimension of globalization, for all its benefits in terms of morbidity and mortality. This latter aspect
recalls, of course, Zylbermans argument on civilization and sanitary pre-emption. For these reasons and more, historians of public health need
to further enter scholarly discussion on globalization. They need to complete the third side of a scholarly triangle. On one side, there is a considerable literature on globalization, disease and health in the
contemporary world. On a second, there is increasing scholarly interest in thinking about globalization historically, a recent extension of both imperial historiography and world historiography. But the
12
Public health movement created to serve the needs of capitalism and divert attention from
halting industrialization
Deborah Lupton, Social Sciences Lecturer- University Western Sydney, 1995, The Imperative of Health: public health and
the regulated body, p. 28
The aim of Chadwick and his like-minded reformers was to rationalize the principles of government, to remove waste,
inefficiency and corruption in order to make the free market more effective and to maintain and improve national
prosperity. Jones describes this approach as health care as a form of wise housekeeping; it was argued that a little
expenditure to prevent ill-health would lead, eventually, to a greater saving of money. This argument promoted
widespread support for public health measures, particularly among the newly prosperous industrialists. There was no
suggestion that industrialization should be halted or scaled down; on the contrary it was argued by the reformers that
industrialization was beneficial in the long run in raising the standard of living for all.
13
Links Desire/Endorsing
The affs desire for you to endorse ____________ sabotages the very liberation they struggle for
this desire is already imposed upon them by the system they denounce, hence their
attempts to institute an equality between those they identify as subjugated and
themselves
Zizek, 2007
(Slavoj, How to Read Lacan, Ch 3 The Interpassive Subject)
Jenny Holzer's famous truism "Protect me from what I want" renders in a very precise way the fundamental
ambiguity of the hysterical position. It can either be read as an ironic reference to the standard male chauvinist
wisdom that a woman, when left to herself, gets caught in the self-destructive fury, so that she must be protected
from herself by the benevolent male domination: "Protect me from the excessive self-destructive desire in me
that I myself am not able to dominate." Or it can be read in a more radical way, as pointing towards the fact that
in today's patriarchal society, woman's desire is radically alienated, that she desires what men expect her to
desire, that she desires to be desired by men. In this case, "Protect me from what I want" means "What I want,
precisely when I seem to formulate my authentic innermost longing, is already imposed on me by the patriarchal
order that tells me what to desire, so the first condition of my liberation is that I break up the vicious cycle of my
alienated desire and learn to formulate my desire in an autonomous way." Was not this same ambiguity clearly
discernible in the way the Western liberal gaze related to the Balkan war in the early 1990s? In a first approach,
the Western intervention may seem to answer the implicit call of the Balkan nations "Protect us from what we
want!" - from our self-destructive passions that led to ethnic cleansing and gang rapes. What, however, if we
read the imagined Balkan call "Protect us from what we want!" in the opposed, second way? To accept fully this
inconsistency of our desire, to accept fully that it is desire itself which sabotages its own liberation, is Lacan's
bitter lesson.
14
In the political domain, one of the recent outstanding examples of `interpassivity is the multiculturalist Leftist
intellectual's 'apprehension' about how even the Muslims, the great victims of the Yugoslav war, are now
renouncing the multi-ethnic pluralist vision of Bosnia and conceding to the fact that if the Serbs and Croats want
their clearly defined ethnic units, they too want an ethnic space of their own. This Leftist's 'regret' is
multiculturalist racism at its worst: as if the Bosnians were not literally pushed into creating their own ethnic
enclave by the way that the 'liberal' West has threatened them in the last five years . What interests us here,
however, is how the 'multi-ethnic Bosnia' is only the latest in the series of mythical figures of the Other through
which Western Leftist intellectuals have acted out their ideological fantasies: this intellectual is 'multi-ethnic'
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18
Links - Helping
The affs compassionate benevolence toward the other is a means of assuaging guilt. The plans
dispensation of charity only makes us all more comfortable and complacent in our
continual participation in the socio-economic processes that guarantee the third worlds
emiseration.
Zizek, Prof. of Sociology at Univ. Ljubljana, 2006. [Slavoj, Nobody Has to be Vile, London Review of Books,
Vol. 28 No. 7]
Liberal communists are pragmatic; they hate a doctrinaire approach. There is no exploited working class today,
only concrete problems to be solved: starvation in Africa, the plight of Muslim women, religious fundamentalist violence.
When there is a humanitarian crisis in Africa (liberal communists love a humanitarian crisis; it brings out the
best in them), instead of engaging in anti-imperialist rhetoric, we should get together and work out the best way
of solving the problem, engage people, governments and business in a common enterprise, start moving things
instead of relying on centralised state help, approach the crisis in a creative and unconventional way. Liberal
communists like to point out that the decision of some large international corporations to ignore apartheid rules within their companies was as important as
the direct political struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Abolishing segregation within the company, paying blacks and whites the same salary for the
same job etc: this was a perfect instance of the overlap between the struggle for political freedom and business interests, since the same companies can
now thrive in post-apartheid South Africa. Liberal communists love May 1968. What an explosion of youthful energy and creativity! How it shattered the
bureaucratic order! What an impetus it gave to economic and social life after the political illusions dropped away! Those who were old enough were
themselves protesting and fighting on the streets: now they have changed in order to change the world, to revolutionise our lives for real. Didnt Marx say
that all political upheavals were unimportant compared to the invention of the steam engine? And would Marx not have said today: what are all the
regulating their business, taxing them excessively, the state is undermining the official goal of its own activity (to make life better for the
majority, to help those in need). Liberal communists do not want to be mere profit-machines: they want their lives to have deeper meaning. They are
against old-fashioned religion and for spirituality, for non-confessional meditation (everybody knows that Buddhism foreshadows brain science, that the
power of meditation can be measured scientifically). Their motto is social responsibility and gratitude: they are the first to admit that society has been
incredibly good to them, allowing them to deploy their talents and amass wealth, so they feel that it is their duty to give something back to society and
help people. This beneficence is what makes business success worthwhile. This isnt an entirely new phenomenon. Remember Andrew Carnegie, who
employed a private army to suppress organised labour in his steelworks and then distributed large parts of his wealth for educational, cultural and
humanitarian causes, proving that, although a man of steel, he had a heart of gold? In the same way, todays liberal communists give away with one hand
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hindrances that thwart our access to the object are there precisely to create the illusion that without
them, the object would be directly accessiblewhat such hindrances thereby conceal is the inherent im possibility of attaining the object." In late capitalism, the immediate satisfaction of desire through
superabundance, permissiveness, and accessibility of objects threatens to suffocate desire . We are approaching a position
where for some of us the attainment of all possible empirical objects of desire is conceivable in practice. This will become even more so, Zizek claims,
Superabundance threatens desire by supplying the means for its satisfaction; the
function of the object-cause of desire is thwarted by this. Although officially de sire exists to be satisfied, in
Lacanian terms desire provides a means of transcending a primordial lack; it exists precisely because it has to be insatiable. By
providing an impossible object, the impossibility of fulfillment itself is sublimated. However, this superabundance
is not without its opposite: scarcity and deprivation. For Zizek, drawing on Hegel, universal abundance is impossible,
since in capitalism "abundance itself produces deprivation." Excess and lack are structurally interdependent
in a capitalist economy. The system produces both together. Some live in abundance and plenty while others live
in scarcity and deprivation. Superabundance goes hand in hand with its opposite. This does not mean that notions of desire
with the advent of so-called virtual reality.
are irrelevant in the context of a world where for large numbers of people the necessities of life itselffood, water, shelter, and freedom from violence
are hard to come by. On the contrary, Zizek's account of notions of desire as a concealment of an inherent lack and the need to sustain desire in conditions
of superabundance can help us to understand some of the paradoxes of responses to events such as famines and the sight of incredible suffering in these
and other disasters. The
25
Links -- Levinas
The levinasian abyssal other opens up the space for the reduction of the other to an absolute
enemy never to be understood
Zizek, 2008 (Slavoj, Violence, pp. 55-56) Christians usually praise themselves for overcoming the Jewish
exclusivist notion of the Chosen People and encompassing the entirety of humanity. The catch is that, in their
very insistence that they are the Chosen People with a privileged direct link to God, Jews accept the humanity of
the other people who celebrate their false gods, while Christian universalism tendentiously excludes nonbelievers from the very universality of humankind. So what about the opposite gesture-such as that made by the
French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas-of abandoning the claim to sameness that underlies universality, and
replacing it by a respect for otherness? There is, as Sloterdijk has pointed out, another obverse and much more
unsettling dimension to the Levinasian figure of the Neighbour as the imponderable Other who deserves our
unconditional respect 12 That is, the imponderable Other as enemy, the enemy who is the absolute Other and
no longer the "honourable enemy," but someone whose very reasoning is foreign to us, so that no authentic
encounter with him in battle is possible. Although Levinas did not have this dimension in mind, the radical
ambiguity, the traumatic character of the Neighbour makes it easy to understand how Levinas's notion of the
Other prepared the ground (opened up the space) for it in a way strictly homologous to the way that Kantian
ethics prepared the ground for the notion of diabolical evil. Horrible as it may sound, the Levinasian Other as
the abyss of otherness from which the ethical injunction emanates and the Nazi figure of the Jew as the lessthan-human Other-enemy originate from the same source.
26
Links -- Levinas
In order to have a non-totalizable relation to the other we must relate identity with the lack in
the other and not with the other per se.
Stavrakakis, department of government at the University of Essex, director of ideology and discourse analysis
program 1999 [Yannis, Lacan and the Political, p.139]
First, it is certain that this text shares with both Connolly and Critchley the aspiration to articulate an ethics of
.disharmony. in order to enhance the prospects of democracy. Our difference is that they both think that an ethics
founded on a recognition of Otherness and difference is enough. Connolly.s argumentation is developed along
the polarity identity/difference with the ethical sting being a recognition of Otherness. For Critchley also, what
seems to be at stake in deconstruction is the relation with .The Other.. although this Other is not understood in
exactly the same terms as the Lacanian Other (Critchley, 1992:197). Drawing on Levinasian ethics where the
ethical is related to the disruption of totalising politics, he contends that: .any attempt to bring closure to the
social is continually denied by the non-totalisable relation to the Other. (Critchley, 1992:238). Thus, the
possibility of democracy rests on the recognition of the Other: .The community remains an open community in
so far as it is based on the recognition of difference, of the difference of the Other. (Critchley, 1992:219).
Moreover, political responsibility in democracy has .its horizon in responsibility for the Other. (ibid.: 239). This
is also Touraine.s position: democracy entails the .recognition of the other. (Touraine, 1997:192). The problem
with such an analysis is that it presupposes the Other as a unified totality or, even if this is not always the case, it
seems to be offering a positive point of identification remaining thus within the limits of traditional ethical
strategies or, in any case, not undermining them in a radical way. What has to be highlighted is that it is
precisely this relation.the identification with the Other.that attempts to bring closure to the social. In order to
have a non-totalisable relation to the Other we must relate.identify.with the lack in the Other and not with the
Other per se. This is the radical innovation of Lacanian ethics. And this is what democracy needs today.
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Links --Levinas
The affs ethical injunction domesticates the otherrather than preserving its proximity it
radically alienates it, ensuring its destruction
Zizek, 2007
(Slavoj, How to Read Lacan, Ch 4 From Che vuoi? to Fantasy)
There is, however, another meaning to "man's desire is Other's desire": the subject desires only insofar as it experiences the
Other itself as desiring, as the site of an unfathomable desire, as if an opaque desire is emanating from him or her. The other
not only addresses me with an enigmatic desire, it also confronts me with the fact that I myself do not know what I really
desire, with the enigma of my own desire. For Lacan, who follows Freud here, this abyssal dimension of another human
being - the abyss of the depth of another personality, its utter impenetrability - first found its full expression in Judaism with
its injunction to love your neighbor as yourself. For Freud as well as for Lacan, this injunction is deeply problematic, since
it obfuscates the fact that, beneath the neighbor as my mirror-image, the one who is like me, with whom I can empathize,
there always lurks the unfathomable abyss of radical Otherness, of someone about whom I ultimately do not know anything
- can I really rely on him? Who is he? How can I be sure that his words are not a mere pretence? In contrast to the New Age
attitude which ultimately reduces my neighbors to my mirror-images or to the means on the path of my self-realization (as
is the case in the Jungian psychology in which other persons around me are ultimately reduced to the externalizationsprojections of the disavowed aspects of my own personality), Judaism opens up a tradition in which an alien traumatic
kernel forever persists in my neighbor - the neighbor remains an inert, impenetrable, enigmatic presence that hystericizes
me. The core of this presence, of course, is the neighbor's desire, an enigma not only for us, but also for the neighbor
himself. For this reason, Lacan's Che vuoi? is not simply an inquiry into "What do you want?" but more an inquiry into
"What's bugging you? What is it in you that makes you so unbearable not only for us, but also for yourself, that you
yourself obviously do not master? The temptation to be resisted here is the ethical domestication of the neighbor - for
example, what Emmanuel Levinas did with his notion of the neighbor as the abyssal point from which the call of ethical
responsibility emanates. What Levinas obfuscates is the monstrosity of the neighbor, monstrosity on account of which
Lacan applies to the neighbor the term Thing (das Ding), used by Freud to designate the ultimate object of our desires in its
unbearable intensity and impenetrability. One should hear in this term all the connotations of horror fiction: the neighbor is
the (Evil) Thing which potentially lurks beneath every homely human face. Just think about Stephen King's The Shining, in
which the father, a modest failed writer, gradually turns into a killing beast who, with an evil grin, goes on to slaughter his
entire family. No wonder, then, that Judaism is also the religion of divine Law which regulates relations between people:
this Law is strictly correlative to the emergence of the neighbor as the inhuman Thing. That is to say, the ultimate function
of the Law is not to enable us not to forget the neighbor, to retain our proximity to the neighbor, but, on the contrary, to
keep the neighbor at a proper distance, to serve as a kind of protective wall against the monstrosity of the neighbor.
28
Links -- Levinas
The Affs pretended benevolence toward the thid world actually does the worst form of violence
to those who live there. Their suffering is instrumentalized, their lives depoliticized and
reduces to the docile recipients of our mercy.
Jackson, Dept. of English, Wayne St. Univ, 2007. [Ken, The Great Temptation of Religion: Why Badiou has
been so important to iek IJZS Vol. 1 no. 2]
If the be all and end all of political activity (and much academic study) is the respect of the other -- and some quick,
honest reflection on the ultimate aim of any number of academic work will reveal this characterization as accurate -- we are not in
position to discover truth. This emphasis on truth rather than ethics may sound reactionary, but only because the
term truth has become associated with a certain absolutist or essentialist perspective. As iek makes clear, for
example, our attention to ethics tends actually to depoliticize those we would be ethical towards, leaving them
only at the depoliticized mercy of some vagaries we call human rights: Todays new reign of ethics . . . relies
on a violent gesture of depoliticization, of denying the victimized other any political subjectization beyond our
mercy (2006: 341). Badiou includes in hiscritique of this ethical ideology all its socialized variants, things near and dear to the
academic heart: the doctrine of human rights, the victimary conception of Man, humanitarian interference, bio-ethics, shapeless
democratism, the ethics of differences, cultural relativism, moral exoticism, and so on (2001: 90). iek will come to say towards the
withdrawing from global capitalism also involves withdrawing from these sorts of
things, global capitalisms more palatable supplements.
end of The Parallax View that
29
Links Foucault
Their idea of resistance is produced by the power relations they suppose to oppose. Only
overidentifying with the law, holding it to its public promise, can radically transform the
social order.
Slavoj Zizek, main man. The Rhetorics of Power. Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 91-104
In The Psychic Life of Power, Butler makes the same point apropos of Lacan himself: The [Lacanian]
imaginary [resistance] thwarts the efficacy of the symbolic law but cannot turn back upon the law,
demanding or effecting its reformulation. In this sense, psychic resistance thwarts the law in its effects, but
cannot redirect the law or its effects. Resistance is thus located in a domain that is virtually powerless to
alter the law that it opposes. Hence, psychic resistance presumes the continuation of the law in its anterior,
symbolic form and, in that sense, contributes to its status quo. In such a view, resistance appears doomed to
perpetual defeat. In contrast, Foucault formulates resistance as an effect of the very power that it is said to
oppose. [. . .] For Foucault, the symbolic produces the possibility of its own subversions, and these
subversions are unanticipated effects of symbolic interpellations. My response to this is triple. First, on the
level of exegesis, Foucault is much more ambivalent on this point: his thesis on the immanence of resistance
to power can also be read as asserting that every resistance is caught in advance in the game of the power it
opposes. Second, my notion of "inherent transgression," far from playing another variation on this theme
(resistance reproduces that to which it resists), makes the power edifice even more vulnerable: insofar as
power relies on its "inherent transgression," thensometimes, at leastoveridentifying with the explicit
power discourseignoring this inherent obscene underside and simply taking the power discourse at its
(public) word, acting as if it really means what it explicitly says (and promises)can be the most effective
way of disturbing its smooth functioning. Third, and most important: far from constraining the subject to a
resistance doomed to perpetual defeat, Lacan allows for a much more radical subjective intervention than
Butler: what the Lacanian notion of "act" aims at is not a mere displacement/ resignification of the
symbolic coordinates that confer on the subject his or her identity, but the radical transformation of the very
universal structuring "principle" of the existing symbolic order. Orto put it in more psychoanalytic terms
the Lacanian act, in its dimension of "traversing the fundamental fantasy" aims radically to disturb the
very "passionate attachment" that forms, for Butler, the ultimately ineluctable background of the process of
resignification.
30
Links -- Foucault
Their conception of fluid subjectivity and resistance are precisely what capitalism needs.
Slavoj Zizek. Hysteria and Cyberspace. (Interview) www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/2/2492/1/html 2000
SZ: Of course there is also a political axis to this: My answer to some popularised version of Foucault or
Deleuze which praises this multiple perverse post-modern subject with its no longer fixed paternal authority,
which shifts between different self-images and reshapes itself all the time, is: Why is this supposed to be
subversive? I claim, and this got me into a lot of trouble with some feminists, I claim that, to put it into old
fashioned Marxist terms, the predominant structure of today's subjectivity in "Spaetkapitalismus" (Advanced
Capitalism) or whatever we want to call it, is perverse: The typical form of psychic economy of subjectivity
which is more and more predominant today, the so called narcissist personality, is a perverse structure. The
paternal authority is no longer the enemy today. So this idea of an explosion of multiple perversions just
describes what fits perfectly today's late-capitalist order...
... the flexible economy.
SZ: Yes, you can put it that way. No firm identity, shifting and multiple identities. This is how subjectivity
functions today. To cut a long story short, in this sense perversion is not subversive, and the first step towards
subversion is precisely to reintroduce this hysterical doubt. I think the present social relations can fully
acknowledge multiple identities. I think that today the ideal subject is bisexual: I play with men, I play with
women, anything goes and it's not subversive. And the strategy of imagining the nastiest perversion will not
create a situation which the system will not be able to sustain. I think it's politically wrong and I think it doesn't
work. When you have a look at the art system for example: Perverse transgressions are directly organized by the
establishment to keep the market functioning and alive
31
Links -- Foucault
Their understanding of the subject as constituted by discourse privileges the symbolic and
effaces the real.
Sato, School of Educations Center for International Education, 2006 [Chizu, Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and
Development: Preliminary Thoughts on a New Approach to Postdevelopment Rethinking Marxism, Volume
18, Issue 2 April ]
Lacanian psychoanalysis makes it possible to see that the Foucauldian understanding of
the regime of power forces its critics to recognize subjects as 'multiple' rather than 'divided' and as articulated by
discourse (see Copjec 1994; Salecl 1998; iek 1999). For example, in work that examines the connections between political rationality
The framework provided by
within a particular development apparatus and microcredit as a governmental strategy, Rankin, drawing on Foucault's notion of
governmentality, claims that these connections reveal "markets themselves as a mechanism of governance that carefully regulates
individual behavior" (2001, 33).
While a politically potent intervention, what concerns me is that she and other
postdevelopment authors see individual behavior as regulated by discourse. A Lacanian psychoanalytic
approach would affirm this claim but would go on to argue that this approach is limited insofar as it can only
examine those phenomena that appear in the symbolic order of development. That is, the Foucauldian subject is
theorized as independent of what Lacan calls the real. Within Lacan it is impossible to represent the real in the
sociosymbolic field (1981). Laclau and Mouffe (1985) bring the real into socioideological analysis as antagonism
(iek 1989, 1990).4 The inability of postdevelopment critics to recognize the real/antagonism compels them to see
the subjectivities of development (for example, those of Third World women) as committed to those actions that sustain
the discourse of development and as unable to act in ways that expose the impossibility of that social order.
32
Links -- Multiculturalism
EQUALITY - their calls of equality under the democratic system are false democracy reinforces
the binaries that capitalism created by only including those who are of the social class to
participate the exclude have not vote in the democracy and are extorted
iek, Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, 2004
[Slavoj, Appendix I: canis a non canendo, iraq the borrowed kettle pg.86-87 ]
However, are things really that simple? First, direct democracy is not only still alive in many places, such as the
favelas , it is even being 'reinvented' and given a new boost by the rise the 'post industrial' digital culture (do not
the descriptions of the new `tribal' communities of computer-hackers often evoke the logic of conciliarly
democracy?). Secondly, the awareness that politics is a complex game in which a certain level of institutional
alienation is irreducible should not lead us to ignore the fact that there is still a line of separation which divides
those who are 'in' from those who are 'out', excluded from the space of the polis there are citizens, and then
there is the spectre of the excluded homo sacer haunting them all. In other words, even 'complex' contemporary
societies still rely on the basic divide between included and excluded. The fashionable notion of the 'multitude'
is insufficient precisely in so far as it cuts across this divide: there is a multitude within the system and a
multitude of those excluded, and simply to encompass them both within the scope of the same notion amounts to
the same obscenity as equating starvation with dieting. The excluded do not simply dwell in a psychotic nonstructured Outside: they have (and are forced into) their own self-organization (or, rather, they are forced into
organizing themselves) and one of the names (and practices) of this self-or organization was precisely
'conciliary democracy)
33
Links -- Multiculturalism
Their mode of multicultural tolerance is intimately related to violence against the intolerant
Other.
Jodi Dean, Prof. of Political Theory @ Hobart and William Smith College, 2005. Zizek Against Democracy.
http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/files/zizek_against_democracy_new_version.doc )
A second argument Zizek employs against multiculturalism concerns the way that multicultural tolerance is part
of the same matrix as racist violence. On the one hand, multicultural respect for the other is way of asserting
the superiority of the multiculturalist.i The multiculturalist adopts an emptied out, disembodied perspective
toward an embodied, ethnic other. The ethnic other makes the universal position of the multiculturalist
possible. Not only does this attitude disavow the particularity of the multiculturalists own position, but it also
repeats the key gesture of global corporate capital: the big corporations will eat up, colonize, exploit, and
commodify anything. They arent biased. They are empty machines following the logic of Capital. On the other
hand, tolerance towards the other passes imperceptibly into a destructive hatred of all (fundamentalist)
Others who do not fit into our idea of tolerancein short, against all actual Others.ii The idea is that the liberal
democrat, or multiculturalist, is against hatred and harassment. Tolerance, then, is tolerance for another who also
doesnt hate or harass, that is, tolerance for an other who is not really so other at all.iii To this extent, the
multicultural position blurs into a kind of racism such that respect is premised on agreement and identity. The
other with deep fundamental beliefs, who is invested in a set of unquestionable convictions, whose enjoyment is
utterly incomprehensible to me, is not the other of multiculturalism. For Zizek, then, todays tolerant liberal
multiculturalism is an experience of the Other deprived of its Otherness (the idealized Other who dances
fascinating dances and has an ecologically sound holistic approach to reality, while practices like wife-beating
remain out of sight . . .).iv Just as in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, so todays reflexive
multicultural tolerance has as its opposite, and thus remains caught in the matrix of, a hard kernel of
fundamentalism, of irrational, excessive, enjoyment. The concrete realization of rational inclusion and tolerance
coincides with contingent, irrational, violence.
34
Links -- Multicultaralism
Todays globalized world is populated by suffering victims, and that is just the way that ideology
likes it. The over-abundance of tolerance for those who suffer abjectly and meekly ask for
our help is the flip-side four our intolerance to those who challenge our vision of a peaceful
world with a home depot on every corner and a woman empowered in every village in the
Third World.
iek, Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, 2001 [Slavoj, The One Measure of True
Love Is: You Can Insult the Other, Interview by Sabine Reul and Thomas Deichman, Spiked, 15 November,
http://www.lacan.com/zizek-measure.htm]
what is sold to us today as freedom is something from which this more radical dimension of
freedom and democracy has been removed - in other words, the belief that basic decisions about social development are
discussed or brought about involving as many as possible, a majorit y. In this sense, we do not have an actual experience of freedom today. Our
freedoms are increasingly reduced to the freedom to choose your lifestyle. Question: Has 11 September thrown new light on your diagnosis of
Slavoj Zizek: I do claim that
what is happening to the world? SZ: One of the endlessly repeated phrases we heard in recent weeks is that nothing will be the same after 11 September. I wonder if there really is such a substantial change.
Certainly, there is change at the level of perception or publicity, but I don't think we can yet speak of some fundamental break. Existing attitudes and fears were confirmed, and what the media were telling us
about terrorism has now really happened. In my work, I place strong emphasis on what is usually referred to as the virtualisation or digitalisation of our environment. We know that 60 percent of the people
on this Earth have not even made a phone call in their life. But still, 30 percent of us live in a digitalised universe that is artificially constructed, manipulated and no longer some natural or traditional one.
At all levels of our life we seem to live more and more with the thing deprived of its substance. You get beer
without alcohol, meat without fat, coffee without caffeine...and even virtual sex without sex. Virtual reality to me is the climax of
this process: you now get reality without reality...or a totally regulated reality. But there is another side to this. Throughout the entire twentieth century, I see a counter-tendency,
for which my good philosopher friend Alain Badiou invented a nice name: 'La passion du rel', the passion of the real. That is to say, precisely because the
universe in which we live is somehow a universe of dead conventions and artificiality, the only authentic real
experience must be some extremely violent, shattering experience. And this we experience as a sense that now
we are back in real life. Q: Do you think that is what we are seeing now? SZ: I think this may be what defined the twentieth century, which really began with the First World War. We all
remember the war reports by Ernst J?nger, in which he praises this eye-to-eye combat experience as the authentic one. Or at the level of sex, the archetypal film of the twentieth century would be Nagisa
There must be
extreme violence for that encounter to be authentic. Another emblematic figure in this sense to me is the so-called 'cutter'- a widespread pathological phenomenon
Oshima's Ai No Corrida where the idea again is that you become truly radical, and go to the end in a sexual encounter, when you practically torture each other to death.
in the USA. There are two million of them, mostly women, but also men, who cut themselves with razors. Why? It has nothing to do with masochism or suicide. It's simply that they don't feel real as persons
and the idea is: it's only through this pain and when you feel warm blood that you feel reconnected again. So I think that this tension is the background against which one should appreciate the effect of the
act. Q: Does that relate to your observations about the demise of subjectivity in The Ticklish Subject? You say the problem is what you call 'foreclosure'- that the real or the articulation of the subject is
foreclosed by the way society has evolved in recent years. SZ: The starting point of my book on the subject is that almost all philosophical orientations today, even if they strongly oppose each other, agree
on some kind of basic anti-subjectivist stance. For example, Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida would both agree that the Cartesian subject had to be deconstructed, or, in the case of Habermas, embedded
in a larger inter-subjective dialectics. Cognitivists, Hegelians - everybody is in agreement here. I am tempted to say that we must return to the subject - though not a purely rational Cartesian one. My idea is
that the subject is inherently political, in the sense that 'subject', to me, denotes a piece of freedom - where you are no longer rooted in some firm substance, you are in an open situation. Today we can no
longer simply apply old rules. We are engaged in paradoxes, which offer no immediate way out. In this sense, subjectivity is political. Q: But this kind of political subjectivity seems to have disappeared. In
When I say we live in a post-political world, I refer to a wrong ideological impression. We don't really
live in such a world, but the existing universe presents itself as post-political in the sense that there is some
kind of a basic social pact that elementary social decisions are no longer discussed as political decisions.
They are turned into simple decisions of gesture and of administration. And the remaining conflicts are
mostly conflicts about different cultures. We have the present form of global capitalism plus some kind of tolerant democracy as the ultimate form of that idea. And,
your books you speak of a post-political world. SZ:
paradoxically, only very few are ready to question this world. Q: So, what's wrong with that? SZ: This post-political world still seems to retain the tension between what we usually refer to as tolerant
liberalism versus multiculturalism. But for me - though I never liked Friedrich Nietzsche - if there is a definition that really fits, it is Nietzsche's old opposition between active and passive nihilism. Active
nihilism, in the sense of wanting nothing itself, is this active self-destruction which would be precisely the passion of the real - the idea that, in order to live fully and authentically, you must engage in selfdestruction. On the other hand, there is passive nihilism, what Nietzsche called 'The last man' - just living a stupid, self-satisfied life without great passions. The problem with a post-political universe is that
we have these two sides which are engaged in kind of mortal dialectics. My idea is that, to break out of this vicious cycle, subjectivity must be reinvented. Q: You also say that the elites in our Western world
are losing their nerve. They want to throw out all old concepts like humanism or subjectivity. Against that, you say it is important to look at what there is in the old that may be worth retaining. SZ: Of
course, I am not against the new. I am, indeed, almost tempted to repeat Virginia Woolf. I think it was in 1914 when she said it was as though eternal human nature had changed. To be a man no longer means
the same thing. One should not, for example, underestimate the inter-subjective social impact of cyberspace. What we are witnessing today is a radical redefinition of what it means to be a human being.
Take strange phenomena, like what we see on the internet. There are so-called 'cam' websites where people expose to an anonymous public their innermost secrets down to the most vulgar level. You have
websites today - even I, with all my decadent tastes, was shocked to learn this - where people put a video-camera in their toilets, so you can observe them defecating. This a totally new constellation. It is not
private, but also it is also not public. It is not the old exhibitionist gesture. Be that as it may, something radical is happening. Now, a number of new terms are proposed to us to describe that. The one most
commonly used is paradigm shift, denoting that we live in an epoch of shifting paradigm. So New Age people tell us that we no longer have a Cartesian, mechanistic individualism, but a new universal mind.
In sociology, the theorists of second modernity say similar things. And psychoanalytical theorists tell us that we no longer have the Oedipus complex, but live in an era of universalised perversion. My point
35
Today's racism is precisely this racism of cultural difference . It no longer says: 'I am more than you.'
It says: 'I want my culture, you can have yours. ' Today, every right-winger says just that. These people can be very postmodern. They acknowledge that there is no
number of reasons.
natural tradition, that every culture is artificially constructed. In France, for example, you have a neo-fascist right that refers to the deconstructionists, saying: 'Yes, the lesson of deconstructionism against
universalism is that there are only particular identities. So, if blacks can have their culture, why should we not have ours? ' We should also consider the first reaction of the American 'moral majority',
specifically Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, to the 11 September attacks. Pat Robertson is a bit eccentric, but Jerry Falwell is a mainstream figure, who endorsed Reagan and is part of the mainstream, not an
eccentric freak. Now, their reaction was the same as the Arabs', though he did retract a couple of days later. Falwell said the World Trade Centre bombings were a sign that God no longer protects the USA,
According to the FBI, there are now at least two million so-called
radical right-wingers in the USA. Some are quite violent, killing abortion doctors, not to mention the Oklahoma
City bombing. To me, this shows that the same anti-liberal, violent attitude also grows in our own civilisation. I
see that as proof that this terrorism is an aspect of our time. We cannot link it to a particular civilisation. Regarding
because the USA had chosen a path of evil, homosexuality and promiscuity.
Islam, we should look at history. In fact, I think it is very interesting in this regard to look at ex-Yugoslavia. Why was Sarajevo and Bosnia the place of violent conflict? Because it was ethnically the most
mixed republic of ex-Yugoslavia. Why? Because it was Muslim-dominated, and historically they were definitely the most tolerant. We Slovenes, on the other hand, and the Croats, both Catholics, threw them
out several hundred years ago. This proves that there is nothing inherently intolerant about Islam. We must rather ask why this terrorist aspect of Islam arises now. The tension between tolerance and
Take another example: on CNN we saw President Bush present a letter of a sevenyear-old girl whose father is a pilot and now around Afghanistan. In the letter she said that she loves her father,
but if her country needs his death, she is ready to give her father for her country. President Bush described this
as American patriotism. Now, do a simple mental experiment - imagine the same event with an Afghan girl
saying that. We would immediately say: 'What cynicism, what fundamentalism, what manipulation of small
children.' So there is already something in our perception. But what shocks us in others we ourselves also do in a
way. Q: So multiculturalism and fundamentalism could be two sides of the same coin? SZ: There is nothing to be said against tolerance.
But when you buy this multiculturalist tolerance, you buy many other things with it. Isn't it symptomatic that
multiculturalism exploded at the very historic moment when the last traces of working-class politics disappeared
from political space? For many former leftists, this multiculturalism is a kind of ersatz working-class politics. We don't even know whether the working class still
exists, so let's talk about exploitation of others. There may be nothing wrong with that as such. But there is a danger that issues of
economic exploitation are converted into problems of cultural tolerance . And then you have only to make one step further, that of Julia Kristeva in
fundamentalist violence is within a civilisation.
her essay 'Etrangers nous mmes', and say we cannot tolerate others because we cannot tolerate otherness in ourselves. Here we have a pure pseudo-psychoanalytic cultural reductionism. Isn't it sad and
tragic that the only relatively strong - not fringe - political movement that still directly addresses the working class is made up of right-wing populists? They are the only ones. Jean-Marie Le Pen in France,
for example. I was shocked when I saw him three years ago at a congress of the Front National. He brought a black Frenchman, an Algerian and a Jew on the podium, embraced them and said: 'They are no
less French than I am. Only the international cosmopolitan companies who neglect French patriotic interests are my enemy.' So the price is that only right-wingers still talk about economic exploitation. The
multiculturalist tolerance is that it is often hypocritical in the sense that the other whom
they tolerate is already a reduced other. The other is okay in so far as this other is only a question of food,
of culture, of dances. What about clitoridectomy? What about my friends who say: 'We must respect Hindus.' Okay, but what about one of the old Hindu customs
which, as we know, is that when a husband dies, the wife is burned. Now, do we respect that? Problems arise here. An even more important problem is that this
notion of tolerance effectively masks its opposite: intolerance. It is a recurring theme in all my books that,
from this liberal perspective, the basic perception of another human being is always as something that
may in some way hurt you. Q: Are you referring to what we call victim culture? SZ: The discourse of victimisation is almost the
predominant discourse today. You can be a victim of the environment, of smoking, of sexual harassment. I find this reduction of the subject to a
victim sad. In what sense? There is an extremely narcissistic notion of personality here. And , indeed, an intolerant
one, insofar as what it means is that we can no longer tolerate violent encounters with others - and these
encounters are always violent.
second thing I find wrong with this
36
37
Links -- Fiat
The affs presumption of a free willing, fiating individual is a fantasy which covers over the
operations of the drives which hold the subject together. Enjoyment is the fuel that powers
the Self.
Jodi Dean. Enjoyment as a Category of Political Thought.Annual Meeting of American Political Science
Association, September, 2005 jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/files/aspa_05_enjoyment.doc 2005. Do not cite
without permission
Thinking enjoyment in terms of fixity enables us to distinguish Zizeks account of subjectivity from other
versions prominent in political theory. First, his subject is clearly not the same as the liberal subject in so far as
there is no notion of consciously free and rational will. Rather, the Zizekian subject is an emptiness held in place
by enjoyment. Second, for Zizek the subject is not properly understood in terms of the concept of subjectposition or the individual as it is constructed within the terms of a given hegemonic formation (as a
woman/mother, black/minority, etc). And, third, the subject is not the illusory container of a potentially infinite
plasticity or capacity for creative self-fashioning. Instead, of either a subject position or an opportunity for recreation, the subject is lack (in the structure, the other) marked by the limit point or nugget of an impossible
enjoyment.
Although this idea of the subject of lack might appear at first glance rather bizarre and
unhelpful, it nonetheless affiliates well with notions congenial to thinkers convinced by critiques of a specific
reading of the enlightenment subject such as those offered by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud and extended in
Foucauldian, feminist, and post-Nietzschean thought. Zizeks account of the subject shares with these views the
rejection of a primary will, rationality, wholeness, and transparency. Similarly, it acknowledges the role of the
unconscious, the body, and language, bringing these three elements together in its account of enjoyment as it
limits and ruptures language and provides the object that is the very condition of the subject. As it emphases the
object conditioning the subject, moreover, Zizeks discussion of enjoyment as a political factor draws our
attention to a certain fixity on the part of the subject. Far from the malleable self-creating subject championed by
consumer capital, the Zizekian subject finds itself in a place not of its choosing, attached to fantasies of which it
remains unaware that nevertheless structure its relation to enjoyment thereby fastening it to the existing
framework of domination.
38
Links -- Fiat
The aff claims it is ethical for the government to ______________. Pretending this debate rounds
outcome influences the government disables the affs ethical impetus, relegating it to an
empty gesture to be rejected.
Zizek, 2007 (Slavoj, How to Read Lacan, Ch 2 Empty Gestures and Performatives)
This brings us to the dense passage with which we opened this chapter: in it, Lacan proposes no less
than an account of the genesis of the big Other. "Danaoi" is the term used by Homer to designate the
Greeks who were laying siege to Troy; their gift was the famous wooden horse which, after it was
received by the Trojans, allowed the Greeks to penetrate and destroy Troy. For Lacan, language is such
a dangerous gift: it offers itself to our use free of charge, but once we accept it, it colonizes us. The
symbolic order emerges from a gift, an offering, which neutralizes its content in order to declare itself
as a gift: when a gift is offered, what matters is not its content but the link between the giver and the
receiver established when the other accepts the gift. Lacan even engages here in a bit of speculation
about animal ethology: the sea swallows who pass a caught fish from beak to beak (as if to make it
clear that the link established in this way is more important than who will finally keep and eat the fish),
effectively engage in a kind of symbolic communication. Everyone who is in love knows this: a
present to the beloved, if it is to symbolize my love, should be useless, superfluous in its very
abundance - only as such, with its use-value suspended, can it symbolize my love. Human
communication is characterized by an irreducible reflexivity: every act of communication
simultaneously symbolizes the fact of communication. Roman Jakobson called this fundamental
mystery of the properly human symbolic order "phatic communication": human speech never merely
transmits a message, it always also self-reflectively asserts the basic symbolic pact between the
communicating subjects. The most elementary level of symbolic exchange is a so-called "empty
gesture," an offer made or meant to be rejected. Brecht gave a poignant expression to this feature in his
play Jasager. in which the young boy is asked to accord freely with what will in any case be his fate (to
be thrown into the valley); as his teacher explains it to him, it is customary to ask the victim if he
agrees with his fate, but it is also customary for the victim to say yes. Belonging to a society involves
a paradoxical point at which each of us is ordered to embrace freely, as the result of our choice, what is
anyway imposed on us (we all must love our country or our parents). This paradox of willing
(choosing freely) what is in any case necessary, of pretending (maintaining the appearance) that there
is a free choice although effectively there isn't one, is strictly codependent with the notion of an empty
symbolic gesture, a gesture - an offer - which is meant to be rejected.
39
Links -- Sovereignty
State sovereignty serves as a universal lens through which to view the world and conduct
political life it constitutes a fantasy attempting to avoid confronting uncertainty, even to
the point of violent imposition.
Edkins, professor at Aberystwyth 2002 [Jenny The Subject of the Political Sovereignty and Subjectivity]
We have shown that the subject is of necessity incomplete, or impossi ble. It is always in process; it never fully
comes to presence but is structured around a lack. This lack arises, first, from the gap between the real and the
imaginary in the mirror phase and then from the gap between the imaginary and the symbolic, or social, during
interpellation. Like the subject, the symbolic, or social, order is similarly constituted around a lack, one that in
this case appears as a constitutive antagonism.11 This antagonism appears in a variety of guises in different
social orders, but it is always there and cannot be removed. A society without antagonism cannot exist: social
reality can never be complete or whole. However, for life to go on the lack must be concealed and the
concealment hidden. This is accomplished by the production of social reality. In order for what we call social
reality to be constituted, meaning has to be imposed. This is achieved through the "master signifier," a signifier
that stands in the place of the constitutive lack or antagonism at the heart of the social order. Without such a
signifier, the social order cannot constitute itself; the sliding of meaning cannot be arrested. This signifier is the
embodiment of lack; it enables us to account for the gap between result and intention. The act of imposing
meaning, halting the movement of free-floating signifiers, is an authoritative act, "a non-founded founding act of
violence" that recalls the violence of the founding decision in the work of Jacques Derrida.12 At this moment,
the symbolic order comes into being, the decision is taken, and the law is founded. The violence that is implicated in this process then disappears: in the history of what happened, what was brought into being with this
foundational act is narrated as always already inevitable. Once the decision has been taken, the moment of deci sion disappears, though not entirely without trace. We are now in a position to suggest how sovereignty and
subjectivity implicate each other. As we have seen, subjectivity can only exist, or rather, be constituted, in
relation to a particular social or symbolic order. The social order itself is brought into existence, supposed or
posited, in relation to a particular signifier, which covers the hole or lack in the-social or sym bolic order and
provides a nodal point around which meaning is articulated. In modernity, one of the signifiers that performs this
function is sovereignty. The concept of sovereignty is central to discourse and the International. It informs
conventional notions of what power might be: the relationship between sovereign and subject within the
absolutist kingdom, or the sovereignty of a government over the lives of its citizens in the modern nation state.
Sovereignty also plays a foundational role in discussions of international autonomy: the sovereign state is a
bounded unit in the international system. This centrality testifies to its place as the master signifier around which
a particular symbolic order is constituted "Sovereignty" as a master signifier is not free and autonomous here
but stands implicated and embroiled in questions of "subjectivity." The authori ty of the master signifier derives
only from its position in the social orderwhich itself derives only from the subjection of the subjects that
evoke it. It is an impostor, in a sense: any signifier that found itself at the place of con stitutive lack in the
structure would dodivine providence, the invisible hand of the market, the objective logic of history, or the
Jewish conspiracy, for example. Sovereignty performs this task for the social reality that is taken to be modern
politics. It conceals antagonism in a particular way and implicates particular subjectivities. For example, it
produces politics as subjection and sovereignty as absolute. Within the legal authority it establishes, violence is
concealed. That same violence is banished to the nonsoviereign realm of the international. The subjectivities it
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41
Links -- Sovereignty
Meaningful ethical or political action is impossible as long as the master-signifier of sovereignty
remains unchallenged.
Edkins, professor at Aberystwyth 2002 [Jenny The Subject of the Political Sovereignty and Subjectivity]
A symbolic order centered on sovereignty is not the only (im)possible solution; we could imagine other social
realities. However, once sovereignty is in place, an ethical-political challenge in the name of an alternative
becomes illegitimate. This difficulty arises because sovereignty as a master signifier conceals its status as will
have been, constituting the social order as always already. As such, sovereign as a political referent persists and
endures almost as if it were an inevitable and unavoidable _part of politics. Indeed, it functions to define politics
in a particular way such that sovereignty is the oily referent by which one can understand the political. We will
question this by asking whether another politics is possible, one that does not invoke sovereignty or an
alternative master signifier. Arguably, without a master signifier either the social order nor the subject are
possible. If this is accepted, emancipation as such becomes impossible. Liberation is always to come.
Revolution is a joyous but impossible moment, a singularity outside time, where repressive authority has been
overthrown and a new order has yet to be reimposed. There was such a moment during the revolutions at the end
of the cold war in Europe, with "rebels waving the national flag with the red star, the communist symbol, cut
out, so that instead of the symbol standing for the organizing principle of national life, there was nothing but a
hole in its centre." Zizek raises the prospect of "tarrying with the negative," although the logic of his Lacanian
position would repudiate that possibility. Derrida, in a parallel attempt to find a way of being outside the
dichotomized violence of logocentrism, suggests an endless process of decisioning. Both of these would be a
way of engaging with the political and returning to an ethicsin Derrida's case an ethics of responsibility, and
for Zizek an ethics of the real. Examining how an ethics of the real might operate leads to some interesting
conclusions about the role of sovereignty in preempting such a move. As a master signifier, sovereignty has
precisely the task of preventing the emergence of an ethics of the real. The imposition of meaning, which is what
the master signifier accomplishes, forecloses ethi cal possibility,)
42
Links - Rationality
Modern claims of reason are the feeble attempts to control language, action and thought, to create them as
universely manageable, grounded and understandable. But within this quest the picture of the rational,
conscious, autonomous individual has vanished. In its place, is a form of subjectivity that is bound up with
the social or symbolic order.
Edkins, professor at Aberystwyth 2002 [Jenny The Subject of the Political Sovereignty and Subjectivity]
Toward the end of this part of Chapter 1, before we outline the contribution subsequent chapters will make, we
pursue the entanglement of sovereignty and subjectivity further and pose the question of whether there is an
alternative to sovereignty. Does the political as such necessarily involve sovereignty as a nodal point, or can
other signifiers take its place, leading to alternative structures of authority? More radically, perhaps, is it
possible to talk of politics without the fixity such an authorizing concept imposes? We conclude by arguing that
it is only without a "sovereign" that a rethinking of the political is possible. The Cartesian subject was produced
in response to a sense of loss and a search for certainty amid the confusion of a newly decentered postCopernican world. The resolution of doubt for Rene Descartes was to be found in rational, conscious thought.
Since then, as Richard Ashley reminds us, "modem discourse has invoked the heroic figure of reasoning man
who is himself the origin of language, the maker of history, and the source of meaning in the world. . . .
Reasoning man . . . is the modern sovereign."3 The challenge to this notion of sovereign subjectivity has
occurred through a series of decenterings that have successively loosened its anchorages in language, action, and
thought. The first decentering contested the concept of language as no more than a medium for the expression of
thought. Ferdinand de Saussure contended that rather than linguistic signs being produced by the allocation of
names to preexisting objects, the association of signifier and signified that they embodied produced objects at
the same time as naming them.4 Language constituted the world in particular ways. More significantly for the
present discussion, since signifier and signified were arbitrary, meaning arose only from the linguistic system as
a whole, and words acquired their value through associations. Language as system, however, preexists, and
hence is beyond the control of, the speaker. In addition, words spoken are not determined in their meaning, since
meaning arises from associations that vary with the context and the listener.5 In an important sense, then, we do
not speak language; language speaks us. The sense that language was out of control, and that thoughts could not
be "expressed" as such, was only the first challenge. The next was to thought itself, with the notion of the
unconscious.6 If it was necessary to posit the existence of a realm of thinking that was not only unconscious
(and hence inaccessible) but that operated in an entirely different manner from that of consciousness, then the
picture of reason as central to subjectivity was shattered. The status of thought as originary was also contested
by the view that social being precedes and to an extent at least determines consciousness.? The whole edifice of
philosophy and political thought was argued to be no more than a superstructure resting on the foundations of an
economic base defined by its mode of production. Political ideas and aspi rations were seen as reflecting and
constrained by, rather than leading to, economic and social change. The subject was not in charge of history but
subjected to (and by) historical processes. After these several decenterings, what is left? The picture of the ratio nal, conscious, autonomous individual has vanished. In its place, what we have is a subjectivity that is bound up
with the social or symbolic order. The constitution of the subject and the social order seem to implicate each
other. This leads to the picture of the poststructuralist subject as not only a decentered subject but an incomplete,
impossible subject that only ever will have been. How does this relate to our contention that subjectivity and
sovereignty depend upon and contain each other and that this is a fiercely political relationship? Before we can
address this question, we need to elaborate how the impossible, split subjectivities we describe are constituted,
43
44
45
46
Links -- Democracy
Modern democracies are designed to facilitate the expansion of the corporation
Richard Moore, Political Scientist, 1996 (THE FATEFUL DANCE OF CAPITALISM AND DEMOCRACY,
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/rkm/ND/sep96FatefulDance.shtml) (PDOCSS2312)
Thus modern "democracies" have served as the vehicles supporting the growth of capitalism. Controlled via
propaganda and corruption, the nation state has been harnessed to expand investment opportunities, while the
corporation has evolved to exploit those opportunities.
47
48
49
50
51
52
Links -- Law
Judges apply our reified capitalistic roles
Henry Schegel, Professor of Law, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2001 (CARDOZO LAW REVIEW,
March, SYMPOSIUM CRITICAL LEGAL HISTORIES: OF DUNCAN, PETER, AND THOMAS KUHN, p.
1067) (PDOCSS2323)
A judge like all other humans in the capitalist system, is "passivised within a role, fulfilling ... "the judicial
function.'" In acting out this function, the judge begins with "a sense of the whole culture ... that he passivizes
into the movement of a quasi-object, such that each discrete situation of facts reveals itself to his mind against
the background of the total "factual' context from which the law has emerged." In other words, the judge
apprehends the completely reified social structure characteristic of capitalism, denying the made, changeable
contingency of social relations. This reified structure is understood as the normal movement of the social field,
both in the sense of "normal" as "regular," and in the sense of "normatively compelling." In this latter sense, the
reified structure embodies the "presupposed norm" that the judge thereafter will be called on to "apply."
The legal system relies on cost-benefit analysis that protects the market
Robin West, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, 2001 (FORDHAM LAW REVIEW, April,
SYMPOSIUM THE CONSTITUTION AND THE OBLIGATIONS OF GOVERNMENT TO SECURE THE
MATERIAL PRECONDITIONS FOR A GOOD SOCIETY: RIGHTS, CAPABILITIES, AND THE GOOD
SOCIETY, p. 1919) (PDOCSS2324)
The cost of health is balanced against lost profits, the value of future life is measured against present dollars, the
cost of suffering against the cost of prevention, the monetary benefits of speech against the cost of permitting it,
the cost of sexual harassment against the benefits of non-intervention. This cost-benefit analysis has widely
recognized and well-known pitfalls: it relies on real or shadow market values that are themselves reflective of
little but the forces of profit; it ferociously solidifies and legitimates the status quo by ignoring the effects of
given distributions on felt entitlements; it discriminates between us by valuing our lives differently on the basis
of our projected or actual incomes; it creates a wealth-based mentality that measures all, including goodness,
truth and justice, by reference to profit. But for all of its problems - for all of its well-known absurdities - costbenefit analysis now dominates legal analysis.
53
Links -- Law
Legal training supports globalization
Robin West, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, 2000 (QUINNAPAC LAW REVIEW, Is the
Rule of Law Cosmopolitan?, p. 22) (PDOCSS2325)
Second, and more importantly, a large number of working lawyers - in fact, the vast majority of the elite of the
profession - already think and act as cosmopolitan citizens of the world, in either the economic or ethical sense,
and already view that worldly identity as fully integrated with their legal identity. Private international lawyers
employed by transnational corporations or trade organizations, as well as public human rights lawyers employed
by human rights organizations, nations, governments, or individuals, circle the globe, dressed in their American
Express cards, as they quite explicitly seek to create a world without borders, united by legal ties of either
commerce or of a universal regard for human rights.
54
55
Links -- Democracy
Democracy is an ideological trap meant to ensure the smooth functioning of Capital.
Jodi Dean, Prof. of Political Theory @ Hobart and William Smith College, 2005. Zizek Against Democracy.
http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/files/zizek_against_democracy_new_version.doc )
In this article, I take up Slavoj Zizeks critical interrogation of democracy. I specify and defend Zizeks position
as an alternative left politics, indeed, as that position most attuned to the loss of the political today. Whereas
liberal and pragmatic approaches to politics and political theory accept the diminishment of political aspirations
as realistic accommodation to the complexities of late capitalist societies as well as preferable to the dangers of
totalitarianism accompanying Marxist and revolutionary theories, Zizeks psychoanalytic philosophy confronts
directly the trap involved in acquiescence to a diminished political field, that is to say, to a political field
constituted through the exclusion of the economy: within the ideological matrix of liberal democracy, any move
against nationalism, fundamentalist, or ethnic violence ends up reinforcing Capital and guaranteeing
democracys failure. Arguing that formal democracy is irrevocably and necessarily stained by a particular
content that conditions and limits its universalizability, he challenges his readers to relinquish our attachment to
democracy: if we know that the procedures and institutions of constitutional democracies privilege the wealthy
and exclude the poor, if we know that efforts toward inclusion remain tied to national boundaries, thereby
disenfranchising yet again those impacted by certain national decisions and policies, and if we know that the
expansion and intensification of networked communications that was supposed to enhance democratic
participation serves primarily to integrate and consolidate communicative capitalism, why do we present our
political hopes as aspirations to democracy, rather than something else? Why in the face of democracys obvious
inability to represent justice in the social field that has emerged in the incompatibility between the globalized
economy and welfare states to displace the political, do critical left political and cultural theorists continue to
emphasize a set of arrangements that can be filled in, substantialized, by fundamentalisms, nationalisms,
populisms, and conservatisms diametrically opposed to progressive visions of social and economic equality?
The answer is that democracy is the form our attachment to Capital takes. Faithful to democracy, we eschew the
demanding task of politicizing the economy and envisioning a different political order.
56
Links Development
The aff participates in a fantasy of harmony wherein underdeveloped countries are brought up
to speed with the Western self. This fantasy encounters perpetual resistance in the form of
new Third World obstacles for the US to solve. What results is an endless relationship of
domination and dependence wherein the Third World is presented as symbolically
deficient, subordinate to the West.
Sato, School of Educations Center for International Education, 2006 [Chizu, Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and
Development: Preliminary Thoughts on a New Approach to Postdevelopment Rethinking Marxism, Volume
18, Issue 2 April ]
Within Lacanian psychoanalysis, Development (with a capital D) can be thought of as one of a sequence of social
fantasies born after World War II whose effect has been to guarantee social harmony in the sociosymbolic field These
fantasies have naturalized longstanding though continually shifting imperialist class struggles . In modern society,
Development is promoted through the creation of a certain symbolic authority (ego ideal) with which both 'the
Developed' and 'the Underdeveloped' can identify. While changes in context have shaped the manifestation of this fantasmatic scenario, the Developed
have always had the mandate to identify and develop all the Underdeveloped through Western capitalist
development. The Underdeveloped, for their part, are forced by the Law of Development to accept their subordinate
symbolic position For the Developed, the relationship between the Developed and the Underdeveloped appears
to be noncontradictory. Let us look at a well-known example from a psychoanalytic perspective. In 1949, U.S. President Harry Truman said that the
Underdeveloped were, among other things, "victims of disease" (quoted in Escobar 1995, 3). In this speech he articulated fully the identity of the
Underdeveloped and made the excessive demand that they should develop themselves by engaging in "greater [Capitalist] commodity production" (3). He further stated that,
ultimately, it was the gift of "modern scientific and technical knowledge that would bring development to the
Underdeveloped" (3). This speech exposes the self-identified Developed as constituted within and dependent on
the Law of Development. The Developed exist only in relation to the Underdeveloped, and both can be found
only within the fantasy of Development. Looking at this self-congratulatory picture from the other side, two short statements made by India's first postindependence prime
minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, are telling. The very thing that India lacked, the modern West possessed and possessed to excess. It had a dynamic outlook Because it was dynamic, it was progressive and full of
life India, as well as China, must learn from the West for the modern West has much to teach, and the spirit of the age is represented by the West. (quoted in Bergeron
2003
as far as we can, with the Industrial Revolution that occurred long ago in Western countries. (quoted in Chakrabarti and Cullenberg
, 2)This bondage was to be resolved by pursuing 'greater
production' through the West-directed 'Industrial Revolution'. In other words, he accepted his (or India's) place in the symbolic order as the non-Modern, the non-Industrialized, thus 'the Underdeveloped' in
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58
Links Development
The aff promises a shiny new era of development policy but is really just more of the same. The
Third World is not empowered by the plan but further subjugated to the imperial desires
of the West. The 1AC fascination with the Other is really only a projection of the anxieties
that attend our own identities. Failure to confront this libidinal attachment to seeing
ourselves in the Other guarantees that the affirmative only repeats the terms of
imperialism and domination.
Kapoor, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, 2005 [Ilan, Participatory Development, Complicity,
and Desire. Third World Quarterly Vol. 26 Iss. 8 Novermber]
At a time when imperialism looks naked and pervasive, when 'freedom' and 'democracy' are all but forced on people (eg in Iraq), any
North-to-South exchange appears particularly suspicious. Thus, thanks at least in part to the growing influence of the Western-dominated
Bretton Woods institutions, the field of international development struggles harder and harder to escape its reputation as a Trojan horse.
And now, so does one of its newest offspring - participatory development (pd) - and this in spite of the latter's 'noble' goals. pd ostensibly
implies discarding mainstream development's neocolonial tendencies, Western-centric values and centralised decision-making processes.
It stands instead for a more inclusive and 'bottom-up' politics, which takes two dominant institutional forms: 1) Participatory Rural
Appraisal (pra), which aims at promoting local community 'empowerment'; and 2) country 'ownership' of development programmes,
where the state and/or international development agency seeks civil society involvement for policy development and agenda setting. 1 In
one form or the other, pd has become development's new orthodoxy, so much so that you would be hard-pressed to find any ngo, donor
agency or development institution that has not integrated it into programming. But of late PD has faced notable scrutiny and criticism.
Critics point out that, far from being inclusive and bottom-up, it reconfigures power and value systems which may end up being
exclusionary, if not tyrannical (Mosse, 1994; Cooke & Kothari, 2001; Kapoor, 2002a). It is shown to be gender-biased, frequently
ignoring and reinforcing patriarchal structures (Parpart, 2000). And it seen as a 'liberal populist' approach to development that fails to
address either class inequalities or the negative impacts of macro-socioeconomic structures (Mohan & Stokke, 2000). I would like, in this
article, to include and extend the above criticisms by carrying out a postcolonial and psychoanalytic reading of pd. Postcolonialism helps
point out that our discursive constructions of the Third World say more about us than the Third World; while psychoanalysis helps
uncover the desires we invest in the Other. Thus, to the question, 'why do neo-imperial and inegalitarian relationships pervade pd?', I
want to answer, 'because even as it promotes the Other's empowerment, it hinges crucially on our complicity and desire'; and 'because
disavowing such complicity and desire is a technology of power'. In other words, I want to argue that complicity and desire are written
into pd, making it prone to an exclusionary, Western-centric and inegalitarian politics. I write 'our' in an effort at self-implication: it seems
to me that, whether we are critics or advocates of pd, we are implicated in it. As development workers and researchers, as intellectuals
and academics, we may make (at least a part of) our careers off it. As Westerners, some of our sociocultural values and practices may
inform pd (as we shall see below). As members of Western(ised) elites participating in the global capitalist economy, we may be direct or
indirect contributors (as taxpayers, consumers, voters) to those national or transnational institutions that 'invest' in pd. True, there are
different degrees of contamination here; but my point is that not owning up to the range of these complicities ensures the reproduction of
inequality and empire.
59
Links -- Development
The affs fetishization of the Other and attempt to mold them in our image is a story about the
Western self. This strange economy of desire results in homogenizing development policies,
i.e. The plan, and demands violent outburst against threatening others to sustain itself.
Tuathail, Department of Geography, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2004. [Gearoid,
Critical Geopolitics and Development Theory: Intensifying the Dialogue. Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 19, No. 2]
Slater's argument can be read as primitively Lacanian. A more explicit consideration of Lacan's themes sharpens Slater's points. First, the
'geopolitical Imagination' can be read in terms of the Lacanian Imaginary, the identificatory process by which a subiect locates itself in
the world and separates inside from outside, subject from object, and self from other (Grosz 1990. 35). But this locating and affixing of
identity is truly imaginary, for the subject (in this case 'the West') is never unified and stable but fragmented and schizoid. Lacan stresses
the alienated nature of subjectivity, the gap between self-comprehension and the real. Secondly, Lacan's mirror stage highlights the
significance of the specular image in the process of identity. The imaginary ego-image is the organizing site of perspective on the world.
Western discourses on development and the Third World, therefore, can be understood not as discourse about the 'reality' of the Third
World, but as another means by which the West represents its own ideal of itself to itself. The West supposedly has civilization (which is
'protected' by periodic barbaric wars against its designated Others), democracy (built on cash, media manipulation and the gerrymander)
and market capitalism (which is organized gangsterism in Japan, Brazil, Italy and other places) whereas the Third World does not.
Western speculations on development, in Lacanian terms, are specularizations, discourses which positively image rather than describe the
world. For Lacan, the language of visualization ('we envisage', 'Western vision of development', 'IMF monitoring', etc.) and panoptic
survey is never neutral but a motivated projection of demand and desire. Thirdly, Lacan's account of desire as a fundamental lack which
impels subjects to search out a series of substitute objects may account for the persistent felt need to wage wars against defiant male
leaders (Castro, Qaddafi, Noriega, Hussein) in the Third World. Desire, for Lacan, is insatiable and not reducible to any symbolic logic.
This point would seem extremely relevant to explanations (insofar as 'we' can ever have any) of the persistent economic war against
Cuba, the airstrikes against Libya, the Panama invasion and the Gulf War.
60
Links Development
The Affs deferral to seemingly objective measures of advancement only evidences the extent to
which they have been thoroughly entrenched in the symbolic universe of Development.
This deferral stems from a libidinal enjoyment of the freedoms associated with
participation in the social consensus. Unfortunately, this same enjoyment tirelessly
frustrates itself, the letter always fails to arrive at its destination. Consequently, the
irrational attachment that the aff maintains to fixing the Third World endlessly
circulates, justifying ever new and ever more invasive development policies.
Sato, School of Educations Center for International Education, 2006 [Chizu, Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and
Development: Preliminary Thoughts on a New Approach to Postdevelopment Rethinking Marxism, Volume
18, Issue 2 April ]
Lacanianpsychoanalysisdirectsustorecognize'scientific'or'objective'knowledgeasproducedandconsumedatmany
levelswithinahistoricallymaintainedhierarchyofsocialbonds.Examplesarefoundintheprofessor/studentdyadata
universityandthedeveloper/beneficiaryrelationshipwhichisanupdateofthatofthecolonizerandthecolonized.These
bonds,inturn,formpartofthesociosymbolicwebswithinwhichindividualsareinterpellatedassubjectsofdevelopment.
TheactionsthatthesesubjectsofdevelopmentundertakebothinstantiateDevelopmentanddisguisethesemblancethat
bindstheselfidentifiedDevelopedandtheUnderdeveloped.Development,inamannersimilartothefunctioningofLouisAlthusser's
IdeologicalStateApparatuses(ISAs)(2001),deploysWestern'modernscientificandtechnicalknowledge'incombinationwith
repressivemethods,suchasexaminationsandtenureorperformancereviews,todisciplinebothitsshepherds(professors)andits
flocks(students,experts,nongovernmentalorganization(NGO)officers,'beneficiaries'). Butwhydoesanindividual,whowindsupserving
asaninstrumentforDevelopment,cometoobeytheLawofDevelopment?Whatdoespsychoanalysistellusaboutthis?
Psychoanalysistellsusthattheroleofenjoyment,whichisundertheorizedbybothAlthusserinhisdiscussionofISAs(iek
1989)andpostdevelopmentcritics,iscrucial.BoththeDevelopedandtheUnderdevelopedabidebytheLawinthehopeof
gainingsymbolicrespect,recognition,andapprovalfromtheOthertowhicheachisdifferentlyenchained.Again,let'susea
familiarexample,grossnationalproduct(GNP),whichcanbeconsideredtofunctionasamastersignifierinmodernsociety.The'detached'professor,
possessing'objective'knowledgederivedfromauthoritativetexts,teachestheundisciplinedstudent,whoisnotyetenchainedwithintheLaw,tobea
subjectofdevelopment.10TheprofessorteachesthatcapitalismistheonlywaytorealizedevelopmentandthatGNPisthebest
indicatorofdevelopment.Heteachesspecificknowledgesandskillsthathisstudentwilllaterberequiredtodeployasadevelopmentexpert:how
toplan,implement,andevaluatedevelopmentactivities,howtowriteproposalsandreports,howtogiveordersinshort,allthoseskillsnecessaryfora
developmentexperttoperformthosetasksthattheauthoritativetextssaywillincreaseGNP. Bypositioninghimselfastheneutralinstrument,
theprofessordoesnothingbutlegitimizeandrationalizetheLaw.Ontheotherhand,totheextentshewishestopass,the
undisciplinedstudentcomestoembodytheLaw:capitalismistheonlywayforward,andGNPistheprimeindicatorof
development.Inattemptingtoembodythe'correctknowledge'ofdevelopment,shecreatessymbolicrolemodelsforherself
valuedbytheOther(egoideals)(i.e.,anAstudentand/orgooddaughter).Inordertogainsymbolicesteemandrespect(in
otherwords,inordernottofailexams),shemustconfronther
superego's
dictatetoexperiencetheegoisticenjoyment
availablepriortoenteringthesymbolicorderofdevelopment.11Sheincrementallygivesuptheseegoisticenjoymentsby,forexample,
substitutingtheenjoymentsofsittinguplatestudyingforthoseofdrinkinglateandsleeping.Whatmakesherkeepstrivingistheenjoymentshecomesto
experienceasaresultofherattemptstocoveroverherlackwithparticularobjects,suchasgettinganAonanexam.Inthisexample, interpellationis
successfultotheextentthatthestudentconceivesofherselfasautonomous,asfreeoftheLaw,andasdecidingonthebasis
ofherownjudgments.BydeferringtothelocalembodimentoftheLaw(e.g.,theprofessor)inotherwords,byobeying
theLaw,thesubjectexperiences'freedom',whichistheenjoymentthatstemsfromgainingthesymbolicallymediated
rewards(e.g.,esteem,respect,symbolicposition,etc.)thattheOtherdesiredforhertodesire.Successfullyrealizingsymbolically
mediatedrewardsisnottheonlysourceofenjoymentforthesubject.Lacanianpsychoanalysistellsusthatdesirealwaysfailsbecausethe
subjectissplit(intotheconsciousandtheunconscious)andtheinternalnegativity,thatwhichwasexcludedasthepriceof
takingupherplacewithinthesociosymbolicfield,necessarilyeludessymbolization.Thisinternalnegativityconstantly
interfereswiththestableidentificationofthesubjectwithinitsfantasmaticscenario.Itprecipitatessubjects'hysterical
61
62
Whilefantasyisanindividualisedorinternalisedpsychicphenomenon,ideologyinterpellatesusatthe
levelofthesocial,fromtheoutside.Likefantasy,itisaframeworkthatforeclosestheRealinorderto
makerealitysmoothandconsistent.Butiekisadamantthatideologyisnotamaskorveilcoveringthe'real'
situation,arealitybehindreality:itis'notsimplya"falseconsciousness",anillusoryrepresentationofreality,itisrather
thisrealityitselfwhichisalreadytobeconceivedas"ideological"'(1989:21).Inthissense,foriek,ideology
isexternalisedandmaterialised:itisbuiltintooursociopoliticalpracticesandinstitutions.Butifit
surroundsusandinterpellatesus,howdowegoaboutdistancingourselvesfromit,critiquingit?Not
throughthedevelopmentofsomesuperconsciousness,since,asjustpointedout,thereisno'higher'groundfromwhichtodistinguish
'true'from'false'reality.Andnot
throughsomesortofpostmodernironicdistance,inwhichweadmitwe
knowbetterthantodosomething(butneverthelessgoaheadanddoit):theTVviewer,forexample,maymock
andrailagainstTVadvertisements,awarethattheyarecommercialmanipulations;butthepointisthats/hestillwatchesthem,anddoes
sowithsomedelight.Ironyorcynicismforiek,farfrombeingcritical,arebuiltintoideology,underlining
bothhowinsidiouslypervasiveideologyisandhowpsychicallyenjoyableitcanbe(1989:28,33).No,
ideologycritique,accordingtohim,canonlybeundertakenfromwithinideologyitself,bybeingintimately
alerttoitsmachinations.Andthismeanstrackingandidentifyingideology'sRealitsslips,disavowals,contradictions,
ambiguities.Whatiekhelpsreveal,then,arethepsychoanalyticdimensionsofourcomplicities.Hepointsup
thepsychicalideologicalworkthatgoesintodesiringrealityanddisavowingtheRealor,inourcase,desiringtoempowerthe
Otherandoverlookingourcomplicity.Andso,drawingontheseinsights,Iwanttoshowpdtobeideological.Asweshall
see,itispromotedasbenevolent,butforeclosesvariouscomplicitiesanddesires.Itischampionedand
propagatedbydevelopmentinstitutions,whichnonethelessseektoobscuretheirownparticipationin
participation.ItsupposedlyputslocalThirdWorldcommunitiesatthecentreofdevelopment,but
actuallycentresonFirstWorldand/oreliteinstitutionalandgeopoliticalinterests.Thetaskahead,
then,istotrackthesecomplicitiesanddesires,andtoscrutinisetheiraccompanyingslips,disavowals,
contradictions,ambiguities.
63
Links War/Realism
The voyueristic ways in which we experience war in debate are the exemplification of our desire
to find the single biggest impact card. This individual desrie is in a direct relationship with
what our leaders decide is best for the nation state. This national desire is manifested in our
need to be dominat of international relations. Their impact story is not external to journey
to achieve perfection just like hyping up and warranting down the biggest impact card is
not external to our mulitple invasions of Iraq and their failures on a libidnal level.
Shapiro, critical international relations theorist and a professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii.
1993. [Michael j. That obscure object of violence: Logistic and Desire in the Gulf War The political subject of
violence p.126-130]
the objects of desire are substitutable signs related to the subject's self-constitution and
coherence. They are thus never destined to provide the self with satisfaction. Accordingly, during the recent Gulf War,
discursively engendered understandings and desires found distant objects of attention, not only for those
involved in combat however technologically mediated that involvement was but also for the viewing public, who watched the war on
television and experienced the destruction of people and things at another technological level of remove. The highly mediated
Within a Lacanian frame,
relationship, in which linguistic, and weapons technologies intervened, rendered the relationship between viewing and fighting subjects complex, for the
targets of violence were rarely available to anyone's direct vision and were hardly ever available for direct contact. There was very little actual touching. It
was indeed telling when one airforce pilot praised his sighting devices and weapons by remarking of his recently vanquished enemy, 'we could reach out
and touch him, but he could not touch us' (a bit of discursive flotsam left over from AT&T's advertisement) one service remote touching of 'someone' was
objects of violence in the Gulf War were obscure and remote, both in that they were
removed from sight and other human senses and that they emerged as appropriate targets through a tortuous
signifying chain. More generally, they were remote in terms of the meanings they had for their attackers and the
attackers' legitimating and logistical supporters. To place the implications for how hostile actions can be understood in such a peculiar, modern condition, it is
involved. In most senses, then, the
appropriate to turn to Luis Bunuel's film Cet Obscur Objet du Desir (This/That Obscure Object of Desire), which contains not only a structure and dynamic that fits the array of subjects acting, in as well as
following, the story of the Gulf War but also is implicitly structured within a Lacanian frame that fits the approach to interpreting the Gulf War to follow. This/that obscure object of desir At the
level of its primary narration, Bunuel's film is the story of a failed seduction, told in flashbacks by the middle-aged Mathieu Fabert to his (accidental?) travelling companions, sharing a compartment in a
Moreover, as is shown (but necessarily evident to all viewers of the film) Conchita, whom Fabert names as the object of his amorous quest, is two
different women (she is represented by two different actresses), and this is seemingly never apparent to Fabert or his listeners in the train compartment. Apart from the various mediations between the various
desiring subjects and objects in the film, however (Fabert's audience in his train compartment are straining with attention to the narrative), as viewers, we also have desires, and they remain unconsummated
as the narrative and images frustrate our attempt to attain completion, to grasp a coherent episode unless we work to help make it coherent. Despite the seeming confidence with which Fabert delivers his
story, what one sees, especially the dualistic Conchita and other enigmatic images and events, deprive us of confidence that we have a story we can understand. Ultimately, the imposition of meaning (by the
viewers among others) on the ambiguous and arbitrary aspects of Fabert's story are organised within the frame of a Lacanian view of the functioning of desire. Bunuel leaves many hints that Lacan hovers in
the background, and most significant for thepurposes at hand, the lessons of the film transfer to the US actions in the Gulf for it developed narrative of the derealisation of the targets of violence developed
Lacanian desire operates through a series of substitutions, there is a compatibility between the
functioning of desire and logistical abstraction as they work together to locate targets of violence in modern
warfare, despite how recalcitrant those targets may actually be to the meaning frames that direct the enemyperceiving gaze. The operation of desire in a war works on the basis of a different process from that of an individual's search for erotic
completion. It is connected to a national-level rather than individual-level work on the production of a coherent
self. As has already been suggested in the analysis of Clausewitz's duplicitous discourse, what is represented as a quest for
accomplishing political and military objectives obfuscates a more fundamental, ontological quest, the
attempt for the national subject at completion through the display of courage and the lack of inhibition
against using force in a violent confrontation with an enemy . For a deeper appreciation of how desire complements the
above.
Because
historically emerging, logistical narrative in which the enemy/object has been derealised, it is necessary to recognise that within the Lacanian view,
desire is formed at the time when the subject first enters the realm of the symbolic. Residing as an infant in the domain of
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with Fabert in a chastity-protecting undergarment tied tightly with little knots that he cannot undo. As he weeps in frustration, she names the various parts
least, Fabert seems to understand much of what is driving his narrative, but there is also much evidence that the more fundamental part, remains obscure,
uncertain. First, his wife of many years is recently deceased and he has had no substitute prior to his pursuit of Conchita. Second, he is a law-abiding,
obviously well-established and well-off citizen and, in his pursuit of Conchita uses his spending power rather than his male strength (until the very end
when driven to the limit with frustration). Meanwhile, all around him, he witnesses a series of acts of violence, car bombings, political assassinations, etc.,
apparently carried out by terrorist groups. At one point we overhear a radio report claiming that the bombings, which are randomly dispersed in his
narrative, are attributed to coalitions of political groups that form the acronyms, PRIQUE and RUT. The virile young terrorists, with which one version of
the collective
subjectivity of the US prior to the Gulf War (the Vietnam syndrome) and its leader's potence (the 'wimp factor')
had been affronted by the violence of others not restricted by law-abiding inhibitions. Hence the increasingly
frenzied complaints from the White House against terrorists (similar complaints issue from Fabert about the terrorist acts
around him). Thus the comparisontwo levels of incomplete and increasingly provoked subjectivity in need of an episode of
completion. But perhaps, major similarity that suggests the Gulf War is the similarity in the dynamics governing the meanings of the objects of attention. In Fabert's narrative, Conchita appears as
Conchita seems to be associated, serve as an affront to Fabert, who cannnot show his potence (cannot use his prick). Similarly,
both lack (as an elusive object ofdesire) and excess (she appears everywhere Fabert goes). At one point, Fabert's servant likens women to a sac d'excrement. Rather than simply a sexist disparagement, this
can be read as reference to the object of desire's excess, of all that is imposed on it by a restless, driven subjectivity. Conchita flees Fabert's employ as a servant after his initial advances, and then he
encounters her as a restaurant coatcheck person, as part of a youthful gang in Switzerland, as a flamenco dancer in Seville. She is excessive, inexplicably appearing everywhere. With each encounter, she
seems to promise herself to Fabert and then does something extraordinary to frustrate him. Similarly, as the Gulf War progressed, Saddam's resistance capability was easily overcome, but the superiority in
the air and the decisive land battle left Saddam where he was, a defiant leader of an Iraqi nation that was badly bruised but had never been completely possessed, never made to totally capitulate. What
substitutes for a final and telling violence in the Gulf War, is a fitful and ambiguous attempt to force the object, Saddam, to comply with the law (the United Nations resolution). Within a Lacanian frame
and, accordingly, in Bunuel's film, the relationship between the law and desire is complex. The law cannot still the operation of desire in the direction of seeking consummation may -even provoke it. In a
telling episode, Fabert attempts to use the law, his cousin the judge, to send the object of desire away. His cousin uses his influence to have the police exile Conchita and her mother, sending them back to
Spain. As the decree is read, we learn that Conchita is a name related to her official/legal name which is Concepcion, and that her mother's name is Encarnacion, deepening our suspicion that their existence
and significance is largely a function of the work of the subject, Fabert, and his desire-driven imagination. Fabert decides to take an arbitrary trip to forget his frustration, but after he chooses Singapore by
pointing to a map while blindfolded, he ends up travelling to Seville, where Conchita is. The arbitrary is always controlled at some level by desire. It is not wholly clear what the signifying elements are that
turn Singapore (etymologically, 'Lion city') into Seville (etymologically, merely 'city'). Perhaps it is that the lion represents virility and reminds Fabert of his quest to consummate it. What energes most
significantly is the need for a woman to complete the self for Fabert (in the way that the US needed an enemy and Bush needed to get tough for self-completion), and here again the law does not quiet desire;
it seems only to inflame it.
Moreover,
the love or violent object is arbitrary inasmuch as it does not summon on the basis of
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Links -- Ecology
And, ecology is the new opium of the massesthe attempt to integrate energy into a more
efficient, individually governed market is the fantasy of capitalisms smooth functioning.
The solution to the global energy commodity crisis becomes newer, better commodities,
while the rush toward global annihilation continues unabated
iek, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies (Ljubljana), 11/26/2007 [Slavoj, Censorship Today:
Violence, or Ecology as a New Opium for the Masses, lacan.com]
Marco Cicala, a Leftist Italian journalist, told me about his recent weird experience: when, in an article, he once used the word "capitalism," the editor
asked him if the use of this term is really necessary - could he not replace it by a synonymous one, like "economy"? What better proof of the total triumph
of capitalism than the virtual disappearance of the very term in the last 2 or 3 decades? No
1. Ecology:In spite of the infinite adaptability of capitalism which, in the case of an acute ecological catastrophe or
crisis, can easily turn ecology into a new field of capitalist investment and competition, the very nature of the risk involved fundamentally precludes a market solution - why? Capitalism only works in precise social conditions: it implies the trust into the objectivized/"reified" mechanism of the market's
"invisible hand" which, as a kind of Cunning of Reason, guarantees that the competition of individual egotisms works for the common good. However, we are in the midst of a radical change. Till now, historical Substance played its role as the medium and foundation of all subjective interventions: whatever
social and political subjects did, it was mediated and ultimately dominated, overdetermined, by the historical Substance. What looms on the horizon today is the unheard-of possibility that a subjective intervention will intervene directly into the historical Substance, catastrophically disturbing its run by way of
triggering an ecological catastrophe, a fateful biogenetic mutation, a nuclear or similar military-social catastrophe, etc. No longer can we rely on the safeguarding role of the limited scope of our acts: it no longer holds that, whatever we do, history will go on. For the first time in human history, the act of a
single socio-political agent effectively can alter and even interrupt the global historical process, so that, ironically, it is only today that we can say that the historical process should effectively be conceived "not only as Substance, but also as Subject." This is why, when confronted with singular catastrophic
prospects (say, a political group which intends to attack its enemy with nuclear or biological weapons), we no longer can rely on the standard logic of the "Cunning of Reason" which, precisely, presupposes the primacy of the historical Substance over acting subjects: we no longer can adopt the stance of "let
the enemy who threatens us deploy its potentials and thereby self-destruct himself" - the price for letting the historical Reason do its work is too high since, in the meantime, we may all perish together with the enemy. Recall a frightening detail from the Cuban missile crisis: only later did we learn how close to
nuclear war we were during a naval skirmish between an American destroyer and a Soviet B-59 submarine off Cuba on October 27 1962. The destroyer dropped depth charges near the submarine to try to force it to surface, not knowing it had a nuclear-tipped torpedo. Vadim Orlov, a member of the submarine
crew, told the conference in Havana that the submarine was authorized to fire it if three officers agreed. The officers began a fierce, shouting debate over whether to sink the ship. Two of them said yes and the other said no. "A guy named Arkhipov saved the world," was a bitter comment of a historian on this
accident 2. Private Property: The inappropriateness of private property for the so-called "intellectual property." The key antagonism of the so-called new (digital) industries is thus: how to maintain the form of (private) property, within which only the logic of profit can be maintained (see also the Napster
problem, the free circulation of music)? And do the legal complications in biogenetics not point in the same direction? Phenomena are emerging here which bring the notion of property to weird paradoxes: in India, local communities can suddenly discover that medical practices and materials they are using for
centuries are now owned by American companies, so they should be bought from them; with the biogenetic companies patentizing genes, we are all discovering that parts of ourselves, our genetic components, are already copyrighted, owned by others... The crucial date in the history of cyberspace is February
3 1976, the day when Bill Gates published his (in)famous "Open Letter to Hobbysts," the assertion of private property in the software domain: "As the majority of hobbysts must be aware, most of you steal your software. /.../ Most directly, the thing you do is theft." Bill Gates has built his entire empire and
reputation on his extreme views about knowledge being treated as if it were tangible property. This was a decisive signal which triggered the battle for the "enclosure" of the common domain of software. 3. New Techno-Scientific Developments: The socio-ethical implications of new techno-scientific
developments (especially in bio-genetics) - Fukuyama himself was compelled to admit that the biogenetic interventions into human nature are the most serious threat to his vision of the End of History. With the latest biogenetic developments, we are entering a new phase in which it is simply nature itself
which melts into air: the main consequence of the scientific breakthroughs in biogenetics is the end of nature. Once we know the rules of its construction, natural organisms are transformed into objects amenable to manipulation. Nature, human and inhuman, is thus "desubstantialized," deprived of its
impenetrable density, of what Heidegger called "earth." This compels us to give a new twist to Freud's title Unbehagen in der Kultur - discontent, uneasiness, in culture. With the latest developments, the discontent shifts from culture to nature itself: nature is no longer "natural," the reliable "dense" background
of our lives; it now appears as a fragile mechanism which, at any point, can explode in a catastrophic direction. 4. New Forms of Apartheid: Last but not least, new forms of apartheid, new Walls and slums. On September 11th, 2001, the Twin Towers were hit; twelve years earlier, on November 9th, 1989, the
Berlin Wall fell. November 9th announced the "happy '90s," the Francis Fukuyama dream of the "end of history," the belief that liberal democracy had, in principle, won, that the search is over, that the advent of a global, liberal world community lurks just around the corner, that the obstacles to this ultraHollywood happy ending are merely empirical and contingent (local pockets of resistance where the leaders did not yet grasp that their time is over). In contrast to it, 9/11 is the main symbol of the forthcoming era in which new walls are emerging everywhere, between Israel and the West Bank, around the
European Union, on the U.S.-Mexico border. So what if the new proletarian position is that of the inhabitants of slums in the new megalopolises? The explosive growth of slums in the last decades, especially in the Third World megalopolises from Mexico City and other Latin American capitals through
Africa (Lagos, Chad) to India, China, Philippines and Indonesia, is perhaps the crucial geopolitical event of our times. It is effectively surprising how many features of slum dwellers fit the good old Marxist determination of the proletarian revolutionary subject: they are "free" in the double meaning of the
word even more than the classic proletariat ("freed" from all substantial ties; dwelling in a free space, outside the police regulations of the state); they are a large collective, forcibly thrown together, "thrown" into a situation where they have to invent some mode of being-together, and simultaneously deprived
of any support in traditional ways of life, in inherited religious or ethnic life-forms. While today's society is often characterized as the society of total control, slums are the territories within a state boundaries from which the state (partially, at least) withdrew its control, territories which function as white spots,
blanks, in the official map of a state territory. Although they are de facto included into a state by the links of black economy, organized crime, religious groups, etc., the state control is nonetheless suspended there, they are domains outside the rule of law. In the map of Berlin from the times of the now defunct
GDR, the are of West Berlin was left blank, a weird hole in the detailed structure of the big city; when Christa Wolf, the well-known East German half-dissident writer, took her small daughter to the East Berlin's high TV tower, from which one had a nice view over the prohibited West Berlin, the small girl
shouted gladly: "Look, mother, it is not white over there, there are houses with people like here!" - as if discovering a prohibited slum Zone... This is why the "de-structured" masses, poor and deprived of everything, situated in a non-proletarized urban environment, constitute one of the principal horizons of
the politics to come. If the principal task of the emancipatory politics of the XIXth century was to break the monopoly of the bourgeois liberals by way of politicizing the working class, and if the task of the XXth century was to politically awaken the immense rural population of Asia and Africa, the principal
task of the XXIth century is to politicize - organize and discipline - the "de-structured masses" of slum-dwellers. Hugo Chavez's biggest achievement is the politicization (inclusion into the political life, social mobilization) of slum dwellers; in other countries, they mostly persist in apolitical inertia. It was this
domains of what Hardt and Negri call "commons," the shared substance of our social
being whose privatization is a violent act which should also be resisted with violent means, if necessary :
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is only the reference to those Excluded, to those who dwell in the blanks of the
State space, that enables true universality. There is nothing more "private" than a State community which
perceives the Excluded as a threat and worries how to keep the Excluded at a proper distance. In other words, in the
series of the four antagonisms, the one between the Included and the Excluded is the crucial one, the point of
reference for the others; without it, all others lose their subversive edge: ecology turns into a "problem of
sustainable development," intellectual property into a "complex legal challenge," biogenetics into an "ethical"
issue. One can sincerely fight for ecology, defend a broader notion of intellectual property, oppose the copyrighting of genes, while not
questioning the antagonism between the Included and the Excluded - even more, one can even formulate some
of these struggles in the terms of the Included threatened by the polluting Excluded. In this way, we get no true
universality, only "private" concerns in the Kantian sense of the term. Corporations like Whole Foods and Starbucks
continue to enjoy favor among liberals even though they both engage in anti-union activities; the trick is that
they sell products that contain the claim of being politically progressive acts in and of themselves . One
buys coffee made with beans bought at above fair-market value, one drives a hybrid vehicle, one buys from
companies that provide good benefits for their customers (according to the corporation's own standards), etc. Political
action and consumption become fully merged. In short, without the antagonism between the Included and the Excluded, we may well
find ourselves in a world in which Bill Gates is the greatest humanitarian fighting against poverty and diseases, and Rupert Murdoch the greatest
environmentalist mobilizing hundreds of millions through his media empire When politics is reduced to the "private" domain, it takes the form of the
politics of FEAR - fear of losing one's particular identity, of being overwhelmed. Today's
predominant mode of politics is postpolitical bio-politics - an awesome example of theoretical jargon which, however, can easily be unpacked: "post-political" is a politics
which claims to leave behind old ideological struggles and, instead, focus on expert management and
administration, while "bio-politics" designates the regulation of the security and welfare of human lives as its
primal goal. It is clear how these two dimensions overlap: once one renounces big ideological causes, what remains is only
the efficient administration of life... almost only that. That is to say, with the depoliticized, socially objective,
expert administration and coordination of interests as the zero-level of politics, the only way to introduce
passion into this field, to actively mobilize people, is through fear, a basic constituent of today's subjectivity. The
affirmatives premonitions of ecological Armageddon construct a fantasy of a natural world out of balance. This
paranoic projection is only narcissism. The aff is sure that they must do something to save the world. In the
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be no Nature, there certainly is a politics of nature or a politics of the environment. The collages of apparently contradictory and
overlapping vignettes of the environmental conditions outlined above share one common threat that many of us, Bush and Blair, my son and Greenpeace, Oxfam and the World Bank, agree on. The world is
in environmental trouble. And we need to act politically now. Both the 2004 Tsunami and New Orleanss Katrina brought the politicisation of Nature home with a vengeance. Although the Tsunami had everything to do with the earths geodetic acting out and with the powerless
of South East Asia drowning in its consequences and absolutely nothing with climate change or other environmentally degrading practices, the Tsunami calamity was and continues to be staged as a socio-environmental catastrophe, another assertion of the urgent need to revert to more sustainable socioenvironmental practices. New Orleans socio-environmental disaster was of a different kind. While there may be a connection between the number and intensity of hurricanes and climate change, that of course does account neither for the dramatic destructions of poor peoples lives in the city nor for the
plainly blatant racist spectacles that were fed into the media on a daily basis in the aftermath of the hurricanes rampage through the city. The imaginary staged in the aftermath of the socio-environmental catastrophe of New Orleans singled out disempowered African Americans twice, first as victims, then as
criminals. Even the New York Times conceded that 80% of the reported crimes taking place in unruly and disintegrating New Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricanes devastations were based on rumour and innuendo. A perverse example of how liberal humanitarian concern is saturated with racialised
coding and moral disgust with the poorest and most excluded parts of society. Of course, after the poor were hurricaned out of New Orleans, the wrecked city is rapidly turning into a fairy-tale playground for urban developers and city boosters who will make sure, this time around, that New Orleans will be
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this post-political condition nurtured and embodied by most of current Western socio-environmental politics is what we shall
turn to next.
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Links Environment/Ecology
The faith in a natural order that will always try to maintain homeostasis is a screen to distract us
from fighting capitalism
Zizek, 2008 (Slavoj, In Defense of Lost Causes, pp.433-442)
This terror whose contours Hegel outlined in his description of the servant's subjective experience of
encountering the threat of death should serve us as the background against which one should read Marx and
Engels's famous description of the capitalist dynamic in the Communist Manifesto:
Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting
uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations,
with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last
compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. [. . .] In place of
the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have inter course in every direction, universal
inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of
individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and
more im possible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. Is this
not, more than ever, our reality today? Ericsson phones are no longer Swedish, Toyota cars are manufactured 60
percent in the USA, Hollywood culture pervades the remotest parts of the globe . . . Furthermore, does the same
not go also for all forms of ethnic and sexual identity? Should we not supplement Marx's description in this
sense, adding that also sexual "one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible," that
concerning sexual practices, it also true that "all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned," so that
capitalism tends to replace standard normative heterosexuality with a proliferation of unstable shifting identities
and/or orientations? And today, with the latest biogenetic developments, we are entering a new phase in which it
is simply nature itself which melts into air: the main consequence of the scientific breakthroughs in biogenetics
is the end of nature. Once we know the rules of its construction, natural organisms are transformed into objects
amenable to manipulation. Nature, human and inhuman, is thus "desubstantialized," deprived of its impenetrable
density, of what Heidegger called "earth." This compels us to give a new twist to Freud's title Unbehagen in der
Kultur discontent, uneasiness, in culture. With the latest developments, the discontent shifts from culture to
nature itself: nature is no longer "natural," the reliable "dense" background of our lives; it now appears as a
fragile mechanism which, at any point, can explode in a catastrophic manner. Biogenetics, with its reduction of
the human psyche itself to an object of technological manipulation, is therefore effectively a kind of empirical
instantiation of what Heidegger perceived as the "danger" inherent in modern technology. Crucial here is the
interdependence of man and nature: by reducing man to just another natural object whose properties can be
manipulated, what we lose is not (only) humanity but nature Itself. In this sense, Francis Fukuyama is right:
humanity relies on some notion of "human nature" as what we have inherited, as something that has simply been
given to us, the impenetrable dimension in/of ourselves into which we are born/thrown. The paradox is thus that
that there is man only insofar as there is impenetrable inhuman nature (Heidegger's "earth"): with the prospect of
biogenetic interventions opened up by the access to the genome, the species freely changes/redefines Itself, its
own coordinates; this prospect effectively emancipates humankind from the constraints of a finite species, from
its enslavement to "selfish genes." This emancipation, however, comes at a price: With interventions into man's
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75
Links Environment/Ecology
Trying to protect nature destroys it science is an ideology, must cut all ties to the big other
Zizek, 2008 (Slavoj, In Defense of Lost Causes, pp.442-447)
In his Reflections at the Edge of Askja, Pall Skulason reports how he was affected by Askja, a volcanic lake and
valley in the middle of Iceland, surrounded by snow-covered mountains: Askja is the symbol of objective
reality, independent of all thought, belief and expression, independent of human existence. It is a unique natural
system, within which mountains, lakes and sky converge in a volcanic crater. Askja, in short, symbolizes the
earth itself; it is the earth as it was, is, and will be, tor as long as this planet continues to orbit in space,
whatever we do and whether or not we are here on this earth. [. . .] Coming to Askja is like coming to the earth
itself for the first time; finding one's earthly grounding. Gilles Deleuze often played with the motif of how, in
becoming post-human, we should learn to practice "a perception as it was before men (or after) [. . .] released
from their human coordinates";^^ Skulason seems to be describing just such an experience, the experience of
subtracting oneself from the immediate immersion into the surrounding world of objects which are "ready-athand," moments of our engaged relationship with realityor is he? Let us take a closer look at what kind of
experience he is rendering: the world suddenly strikes us in such a way that reality presents itself as a seamless
whole. The question that then arises concerns the world itself and the reality that it orders into a totality. Is the
world really a unified totality? Isn't reality just an infinitely variegated manifold of particular phenomena? One
should be Hegelian here: what if this very experience of reality as a seamless Whole is a violent imposition of
ours, something we "project onto it" (to use this old inappropriate term) in order to avoid directly confronting
the totally meaningless "infinitely variegated manifold of particular phenomena" (what Alain Badiou calls the
primordial multiplicity of Being)? Should we not apply here the fundamental lesson of Kant's transcendental
idealism: the world as a Whole is not a Thing-in-itself it is merely a regulative Idea of our mind, something our
mind imposes on the raw multitude of sensations in order to be able to experience it as a well-ordered
meaningful Whole? The paradox is that the very In-itself of Nature as a Whole independent of us is the result of
our (subjective) "synthetic activity" do Skulason's own words, if we read them closely (i.e., literally), not
already point in this direction? "Askja is used in this text as the symbol of a unique and important experience of
the world and its inhabitants. There are numerous other symbols which men use to talk about the things that
matter most." So, exactly as is the case with the Kantian Sublime, the unfathomable presence of raw Nature-initself is reduced to a material pretext (replacable with others) for "a unique and important experience," Why is
this experience necessary? To live, to be able to exist, the mind must connect itself with some kind of order. It
must apprehend reality as an independent whole [. . .] and must bind itself in a stable fashion to certain features
of what we call reality. It cannot blind itself to the ordinary world of everyday experience, except by taking it on
faith that reality forms an objective whole, a whole which exists independently of the mind. The mind lives, and
we live, in a relationship of faith with reality itself. This relationship is likewise one of confidence in a detached
reality, a reality which is different and other than the mind. We live and exist in this relationship of confidence,
which is always by its nature uncertain and insecure. [. . .] [T]he relationship of confidence [. . .] is originally,
and truly, always a relationship with reality as a natural totality: as Nature. One should note here the refined
analysis of the tension between the inhabitable and the uninhabitable: in order to inhabit a small part of reality
that appears within our horizon of meaning, we have to presuppose that Realily-in-itself, "different and other
than the mind," which sustains our world is part of reality as an ordered and seamless Whole. In short, we have
to have faith and confidence in Reality: nature-in-itself is not merely a meaningless composite of multiples, it is
Nature. What, however, if this relationship of faith in Nature, in the primordial harmony between mind and
reality, is the most elementary form of idealism, of reliance on the big Other? What if the true materialist
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Thehugeincreaseinoilandotherfuelpricesoverthelastfewyearsandaconcernthatwehave
reached(orwillsoonreach)peakoilafterwhichoilextractionbeginstodecreasehave
createdrenewedinterestinalternativesourcesofenergy.Theseincludesolar,wind,oceanwaveand
tidalflow,geothermal,andbiofuels.Sometimeslipserviceisgiventotheneedforgreaterenergy
efficiency,changesinlifestyles(includingtheecologicallyirrationaloverrelianceonautomobiles
andlivingfarfromonesjob),theneedtoredesigneconomicactivityfromthefactoryfloorto
officebuildingsandhomes,andtheneedforaffluentsocietiestomoveawayfromeverhigher
levelsofconsumption.However,aradicalanalysisofactuallyputtingtheseintoeffectwouldlead
toquestioningtheverybasicsofhowcapitalismworks.Alternativefuelsourcesareattractive
becausetheycanbedevelopedandusedwithoutquestioningtheveryworkingsoftheeconomic
systemjustsubstituteamoresustainable,ecologicallysound,andrenewableenergyfor
themorepolluting,expensive,andfiniteamountsofoil.Peoplearehopingformagicbulletsto
solvetheproblemsothatcapitalistsocietiescancontinuealongtheirwastefulgrowthand
consumptionpatternswiththeleastdisruption.Althoughpricesoffuelsmaycomedownsomewhat
withdipsinthebusinesscycle,higherratesofproduction,oraburstinthespeculativebubblein
thefuturesmarketforoiltheywillmostlikelyremainathistoricallyhighlevelsasthereserves
ofeasilyrecoveredfuelrelativetoannualusagecontinuestodecline.
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count on
the fact that their demand will not be met in this way, they can hypocritically retain their clear radical
conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position. In 1994, when a new wave of emigration to the United States was in
the making, Fidel Castro warned the USA that if they did not stop encouraging Cubans to emigrate, Cuba would no longer prevent them -from doing so
and the Cuban authorities actually carried out this threat a couple of days later, embarrassing the United States with thousands of unwanted newcomers. Is
this not like the proverbial woman who snaps back at the man making macho advances to her: "Shut up, or you'll have to do what you're boasting about!"
In both cases, the
gesture is that of calling the other's bluff, counting on the fact that what the other really fears is
that one will fully meet his or her demand. And would not the same gesture also throw our radical academics
into a panic? Here the old '68 motto "Soyons ralistes, demandons l'impossible!" acquires a new cynical-sinister meaning which, perhaps, reveals its
truth: "Let's be realistic: we, the academic Left, want to ap pear critical, while fully enjoying the privileges the
system offers us. So let's bombard the system with impossible demands: we all know that such demands won't
be met, so we can be sure that nothing will actually change, and we'll maintain our privileged status quo!" If you
accuse a big corporation of particular financial crimes, you expose yourself to risks that can go even as far as murder attempts; if you ask the same
corporation to finance a research project on the link between global capitalism and the emergence of hybrid postcolonial identities, you stand a good
chance of getting hundreds of thousands of dollars.
82
83
a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature. To be a computer
expert or a successful manager is a gift of nature today, but lovely lips or eyes are a fact of culture.
84
85
The state is not responsible for a positive expansion of capitalism in the 1950s
Chris Harman, Marxist, 2001 (ANTI-CAPITALISM: THEORY AND PRACTICE,
http://www.marxists.de/anticap/theprax/part2.htm) (PDOCSS2351)
It is true that for a 30-year period after the Second World War the system was able to experience considerable
economic expansion, and that during these years some of the world's people were able to force their rulers to
concede improvements in living standards. Even then, however, the motor for expansion was not the
benevolence or rationality of rulers. Rather it was a Cold War driven worldwide level of arms expenditure
unprecedented in peacetime. At the high point of the Cold War in the early 1950s something like one fifth of the
wealth produced in the world's wealthiest country, the US, went directly or indirectly to the military budget, and
possibly twice that proportion in its poorer military competitor, the USSR.
86
87
Permutation Answers
The aff is a reformist gesture that domesticates the kritik
Zizek, 2008 (Slavoj, In Defense of Lost Causes, pp. 106-107)
Thus all the dangers that lurk in democracy can be understood as grounded in these constitutive inconsistencies
of the democratic project, as ways of dealing with these inconsistencies, but with the price that, in trying to get
rid of the imperfections of democracy, of its non-democratic ingredients, we inadvertently lose democracy Itself
recall simply how the populist appeal to a direct expression of the people's General Will, bypassing all
particular interests and petty conflicts, ends up stifling democratic life itself. In a Hegelian mode, one is thus
tempted to classify Brown's version as the extreme aggravation of the "democratic paradox" to the point of
direct self-inconsistency. What, then, would be the (re)solution of this opposition between "thesis " (Lacan as a
theorist of democracy) and "antithesis" (Lacan as its internal critic)? We suggest that it is the risky but necessary
gesture of rendering problematic the very notion of "democracy, " of moving elsewhere of having the
courage to elaborate a positive Iweable project "beyond democracy." Is Brown not all too un-Nletzschean in her
reduction of "Nietzsche" to a provocative correction of democracy which, through his exaggeration, renders
visible the inconsistencies and weaknesses of the democratic project? When she proclaims Nietzsche's implicit
(and also explicit) anti-democratic project "unliveable," does she not thereby all too glibly pass over the fact that
there were very real political projects which directly referred to Nietzsche, up to and including Nazism, and that
Nietzsche himself constantly referred to actual political events around him say, the "slave rebellion" of the
Paris Commune that he found so shattering?' Brown thus accomplishes a domestication of Nietzsche, the
transformation of his theory into an exercise in "inherent transgression": provocations which are not really
"meant seriously," but aim, through their "provocative" character, to awaken us from our democratic-dogmatic
slumber and thus contribute to the revitalization of democracy itself . . . This is how the establishment likes its
"subversive" theorists: harmless gadflies who sting us and thus awaken us to the inconsistencies and
imperfection of our democratic enterprise God forbid that they might take the project seriously and try to live
it . .
The perm simply reframes the alternative to match the affthis leaves the main problem
unaddressed
Khanna, Professor of English and Literature at Duke, 2003
(Ranjana, Frames, Contexts, Community, Justice, diacritics, Volume 33, No. 2, Summer)
Culler also writes of negative framing: the police frame-up, or manufacturing evi- dence. The frame-up
compromises the legal system, leading to wrongful accusation and condemnation of an innocent. The
compromise is negatively viewed because the ac- cused may subsequently be condemned on wrongful
grounds. Here, the theft is of the legal framework, and the frame itself (whether it protects or not) has become
the thing of value. On the occasions when the frame-up is discovered (usually through some supplementary
information that exceeds the frame-up), legal structures are validated and sanctified. There is little provision for
assessing the frame itselfthe claims it makes , and its ability to adapt to damage caused by the supplement
challenging of its norms. The discovery of a frame-up leads to a liberal responseto save the frame even if
those it apparently protects are not protected by it. But this would always leave the supplement outside of the
frame. And the frame would remain unresponsive to its own corruptibility and exclusionary framework.
88
Permutation Answers
Perm fails must accept the entirety of the Marxist impulse we cannot reject the ugly parts
and conditionally support revolutionaries if they act with good manners
Zizek, 2008 (Slavoj, In Defense of Lost Causes, pp.175-177)
In modern history, the politics of revolutionary terror casts its shadow over the epoch which spans from
Robespierre to Mao, or, more generally, the disintegration of the Communist bloc in 1990 its last installment
was the Maoist Cultural Revolution. Obviously, the socio-historical context had changed radically between the
French Revolution and the Cultural Revolutionto put it in Platonist terms, what unites the two is precisely and
only the same "eternal" idea of revolutionary Justice. In the case of Mao, the question is even whether one can
legitimately count him as a Marxist, since the social base of the Maoist revolution was not the working class.
One of the most devious traps which lurk for Marxist theorists is the search for the moment of the Fall, when
things took the wrong turning in the history of Marxism: was it already the late Engels with his more positivistevolutionary understanding of historical materialism? Was it the revisionism and the orthodoxy of the Second
International? Was it Lenin?^^ Or was it Marx himself in his late work, after he had abandoned his youthful
humanism (as some "humanist Marxists" claimed decades ago)? This entire trope has to be rejected: there is no
opposition here, the Fall is to be inscribed in the very origins. (To put it even more pointedly, such a search for
the intruder who infected the original model and set in motion its degeneration cannot but reproduce the logic of
anti-Semitism.) What this means is that, even ifor, rather, especially ifone submits the Marxist past to
ruthless critique, one has first to acknowledge it as "one's own, " taking full responsibility for it, not to
comfortably reject the "bad" side of things by attributing it to a foreign element (the "bad" Engels who was too
stupid to understand Marx's dialectics, the "bad" Lenin who did not grasp the core of Marx's theory, the "bad"
Stalin who spoilt the noble plans of the "good" Lenin, and so on). The first thing we must do is to fully endorse
the displacement in the history of Marxism concentrated in two great passages (or, rather, violent cuts): the
passage from Marx to Lenin, as well as the passage from Lenin to Mao. In each case, there is a displacement of
the original constellation: from the most advanced country (as Marx expected) to a relatively backward country
the revolution "took place in the wrong country"; from workers to (poor) peasants as the main revolutionary
agent. In the same way as Christ needed Paul's "betrayal" in order for Christianity to emerge as a universal
Church (recall that, amongst the twelve apostles, Paul occupies the place of Judas the traitor, replacing him!),
Marx needed Lenin's "betrayal" in order to enact the first Marxist revolution: it is an inner necessity of the
"original" teaching to submit to and survive this "betrayal"; to survive this violent act of being torn out of one's
original context and thrown into a foreign landscape where it has to reinvent itselfonly in this way is
universality born. So, apropos the second violent transposition, that of Mao, it is too easy either to condemn his
reinvention of Marxism as theoretically "inadequate," as a regression with regard to Marx's standards (it is easy
to show that peasants lack substanceless proletarian subjectivity), but it is equally too facile to blur the violence
of the cut and to accept Mao's reformulation as a logical continuation or "application" of Marxism (relying, as is
usually the case, on the simple metaphoric expansion of class struggle: "today's predominant class struggle is no
longer between capitalists and proletariat in each country, it has shifted to the Third versus the First World,
bourgeois versus proletarian nations"). The achievement of Mao is here tremendous: his name stands for the
political mobilization of the hundreds of millions of anonymous Third World layers whose labor provides the
invisible "substance," the background, of historical developmentthe mobilization of all those whom even such
a poet of "otherness " as Levinas dismissed as the "yellow peril", as we see in what is arguably his weirdest
text, "The Russo-Chinese Debate and the Dialectic" (1960), a comment on the SovietChinese conflict: The
89
90
Permutation Answers
The aff ushers in neoliberal governance as the normal way of ordering society this move
disposes things such that market norms dictate struggles and social actualization, shutting
down alternatives to capitalism.
Massimo De Angelis 7 Lecturer, University of East London The Beginning of History 88-9
This double function can be described, in general terms, using Foucault's term `governmentality'. This is an art of
government that, unlike `enclosures', is not based on decree but on management, although this, as we shall see, is also
predicated on the iron fist of the state. With governmentality, the question is 'not of imposing law on men but of disposing
things: 9 that is of employing tactics rather than laws, or even of using laws themselves as tactics to arrange things in such
a way that, through a certain number of means, such-and-such ends may be achieved' (Foucault 2002: 211). We cannot here
discuss this category in detail, as Foucault's work on this issue is dense with historical details and insights. 10 For our purposes here, governmentality is
the management of networks of social relations on the front line of conflicting value practices." This management does not come from a transcendental
authority that is external to the network itself, such as in the problematic of the Machiavellian prince. Rather, the problem and solution of authority is all
internal to the network, and it is for this reason that it deploys tactics rather than laws: tactics and strategies aimed at creating a context in which the nodes
interact without escaping the value practices of capita1. Social stability compatible with the priorities and flows necessary for accumulation is one of the
rationales of capitalist governmentality. Examples of these practices are post-war Keynesianism and the current discourses of neoliberal governance. A
classic example of this `governmentality' is the productivity deals that were at the heart of the Keynesian era. These where the result of a long institutional
process grounded on the crisis and struggles of the 1930s, the worldwide revolutionary ferments following the Russian Revolution, and became the kernel
not only of Keynesian policies, but also the hidden parametric assumptions of post-Second World War Keynesian models. Here the state did not implement
laws establishing prices and wages (when it tried this in emergency situations it usually failed), but promoted guidelines and an institutional context in
which unions and capital would negotiate within an overall framework. In other words, 'social stability' in the case of Keynesianism was seen as the output
91
Permutation Answers
The perm operates in the democratic framework which dooms it to fail because of the binary
created by democracy
iek, Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, 2004 [Slavoj, Appendix I: canis a non
canendo, iraq the borrowed kettle pg.112-113 ]
(This passage is worth quoting in extenso, since it presents, in a clear and concise way, the whole line of
reasoning that we should question everything is here, right up to the simplistic parallel b
D. etween
Nazism and Communism a la Ernst Nolte. The first thing that strikes us is the binary logic on which
Stavrakakis relies: on the one hand, in one big arch, premodern millenarian utopias, Communism and Nazism,
which all imply the localization of the origin of Evil in a particular social agent (Jews, kulaks . . .) once we
have eliminated these 'thieves of (our) enjoyment', social harmony and transparency will be restored; on the
other hand, the 'democratic invention', with its notion of the empty place of power, non-transparency and the
irreducible contingency of social life, and so on. Furthermore, in so far as the utopia of a harmonious society is a
kind of fantasy, which conceals the structural 'lack in the Other' (irreducible social antagonism), and in so far as
the aim of psychoanalytic treatment is to traverse the fantasy that is to say, to make the analysis and accept
the nonexistence of the big Other is the radical democratic politics whose premises is that 'society doesn't
exist' (Laclau) not eo ipso a post-fantasmatic politics? There is a whole series of problems with this line of
reasoning. First, in its rapid rejection of utopia, it leaves out of the picture the main utopia of today, which is the
utopia of capitalism itself it is Francis Fukuyama who is our true utopian. Second, it fails to distinguish
between, on the one hand, the contingency and impenetrability of social life, and, on the other, the democratic
logic of the empty place of power, With no agent who is 'natu rally' entitled to it. It is easy to see how these two
phenomena are independent of each other: if anything, a functioning democracy presupposes a basic stability
and reliability of social life. Third, such a simplified binary opposition also ignores the distinction between the
traditional functioning of power grounded in a `naturalized' authority (king) and the millenarian radical utopia
which strives to accomplish a radical rupture. Is not Stavrakakis's dismissal of millenarian radicalism all too
precipitate, overlooking the tremendous emancipatory potential of millenarian radicals, of their explosion of
revolutionary negativity? The very least we should do here is to complicate the picture by introducing two
couples of opposites: first the opposition full/empty place of power, then the opposition difference/ antagonism
as the fundamental structuring principle (to use Laclau's own terms). While the traditional hierarchical power
presupposes a 'natural' bearer of power, it asserts difference (hierarchical social order) as the basic structural
principle of social life, in contrast to millenarian 'fundamentalism', which asserts antagonism. On the other
hand, democracy combines the assertion of contingency (the empty place of power) with difference: while it
admits the irreducible character of social antagonisms, its goal is to transpose antagonisms into a regulated
agonistic competition. So what about the fourth option: the combination of contingency and antagonism? In
other words, what about the prospect of a radical social transformation which would not involve the well-worn
scarecrow 'complete fullness and transparency of the social'? Why should every project of a radical social
revolution automatically fall into the trap of aiming at the impossible dream of 'total transparency'? )
92
Permutation Answers
This makes the aff ethically indistinct from, and politically more dangerous than, even the most
base conservatisms. The may marginally contribute to the remediation of some of the
violence symptomatic of global power relations, but they do so while fundamentally
reinforcing the very structures which maintain them.
Zizek, Prof. of Sociology at Univ. Ljubljana, 2006. [Slavoj, Nobody Has to be Vile, London Review of Books,
Vol. 28 No. 7]
We should have no illusions: liberal communists are the enemy of every true progressive struggle today. All
other enemies religious fundamentalists, terrorists, corrupt and inefficient state bureaucracies depend on contingent local
circumstances. Precisely because they want to resolve all these secondary malfunctions of the global system,
liberal communists are the direct embodiment of what is wrong with the system. It may be necessary to enter into
tactical alliances with liberal communists in order to fight racism, sexism and religious obscurantism, but its important to remember
Balibar, in La Crainte des masses (1997), distinguishes the two opposite but
complementary modes of excessive violence in todays capitalism: the objective (structural) violence that is
inherent in the social conditions of global capitalism (the automatic creation of excluded and dispensable individuals, from
the homeless to the unemployed), and the subjective violence of newly emerging ethnic and/or religious (in short: racist)
fundamentalisms. They may fight subjective violence, but liberal communists are the agents of the structural
violence that creates the conditions for explosions of subjective violence. The same Soros who gives millions to
fund education has ruined the lives of thousands thanks to his financial speculations and in doing so created the
conditions for the rise of the intolerance he denounces.
exactly what they are up to. Etienne
The movement is already there, what we need to unite it is to universalize the struggle;
cooperation within the exsting system only legitimizes it and stops the revolution
Zizek, 2002 (Slavoj, Senior Researcher at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut in Essen [among other things],
A Plea for Leninist Intolerance, Cultural Inquiry, Winter, Proquest)
Todaywecanalreadydiscernthesignsofakindofgeneralunease.Recall
theseriesofeventsusuallylistedunderthe
nameofSeattle.Thetenyearhoneymoonof
triumphantglobal
capitalismisover;thelongoverduesevenyearitchishere
witnessthepanickedreactionsofbigmedia,whichfromTimemagazinetoCNN
suddenlystartedtowarnaboutthe
Marxistsmanipulatingthecrowdof"honest"protesters.TheproblemisnowthestrictlyLeninistone:howtoactualizethe
media'saccusations,howtoinventtheorganizationalstructurethatwillconferonthisunresttheformofauniversal
politicaldemand.Otherwisethemomenturnwillbelost,andwhatwillremainisamarginaldisturbance,perhapsorganized
asanewGreenpeace,endowedwithacertainefficiencybutalsostrictlylimitedgoals,marketingstrategy,andsoforth.In
otherwords,thekeyLeninistlessontodayisthatpoliticswithouttheorganizationalformofthepartyispoliticswithout
politics,sotheanswertothosewhowantjustthe(quiteadequatelynamed)newsocialmovementsisthesameasthe
answeroftheJacobinstotheGirondincompromisers:"Youwantrevolutionwithoutarevolution!"Today'schallengeis
thattherearetwoways
open
for
sociopolitical
engagement:eitherplaythegameofthesystem,engagein
thelongmarch
throughtheinstitutions,orgetactiveinnewsocialmovements
,fromfeminismtoecologytoantiracism.And,again,
the
limitofthesemovementsisthattheyarenotpoliticalinthesenseoftheuniversalsingular:theyareoneissuemovements
thatlackthedimensionofuniversality;thatis,theydonotrelatetothesocialtotality.Here,Lenin'sreproachtoliberalsis
crucial.Theyonlyexploittheworkingclasses'
discontenttostrengthentheirpositionvisavistheconservativesinsteadof
identifyingwithittotheend.16Isthisalsonotthecasewithtoday'sleftliberals?They
liketo
evokeracism,ecology
,
workers'grievances,andsoontoscorepoints
overtheconservatives
withoutendangeringthesystem.Recallhow,at
Seattle,BillClinton
himself
deftlyreferredtotheprotesters
onthestreetsoutside,
remindingthegatheredleaders
insidethe
guardedpalacesthattheyshouldlisten
tothemessageofthedemonstrators(
amessagethat
,ofcourse,
Clintoninterpreted,
93
,uptotheZapatistasinChiapas:
systemicpoliticsis
alwaysreadytolistentotheirdemands,thusdeprivingthemoftheirproperpoliticalsting.Thesystemisbydefinition
ecumenic,open
,tolerant,readytolistentoall;
evenifoneinsistsonone'sdemands,theyaredeprivedoftheiruniversal
politicalstingbytheveryformofnegotiation.
94
Permutation Answers
Negotiation coopts our ability to radically restructure society-we must dogmatically stick to the
revolution or it will be diluted and rearticulated back into capitalist structures
ZIZEK, 2002 (SLAVOJ, SENIOR RESEARCHER AT THE KULTURWISSENSCHAFTLICHES INSTITUT IN ESSEN
[AMONG OTHER THINGS], A PLEA FOR LENINIST INTOLERANCE, CULTURAL INQUIRY, WINTER,
PROQUEST)
SohowarewetorespondtotheeternaldilemmaoftheradicalLeft?Shouldonestrategicallysupportcenterleftfigures
likeBillClintonagainsttheconservatives,orshouldoneadoptthestanceof"Itdoesn'tmatter,weshouldn'tgetinvolvedin
thesefightsinaway,itisevenbetteriftheRightisdirectlyinpower,since,inthisway,itwillbeeasierforthepeopleto
seethetruthofthesituation?"TheansweristhevariationofoldStalin'sanswertothequestion"Whichdeviationisworse,
therightistortheleftistone?"Theyarebothworse.Whatoneshoulddoisadoptthestanceoftheproperdialectical
paradox.Inprinciple,ofcourse,oneshouldbeindifferenttowardthestrugglebetweentheliberalandconservativepolesof
today'sofficialpolitics.However,onecanonlyaffordtobeindifferentiftheliberaloptionisinpower.Otherwise,theprice
tobepaidmayappearmuchtoohighrecallthecatastrophicconsequencesoftheGermanCommunistParty'sdecisionin
theearlythirtiesnottofocusonthestruggleagainsttheNazis,withthejustificationthattheNazidictatorshipisthelast,
desperatestageofthecapitalistdomination,whichwillopeneyestotheworkingclass,shatteringtheirbeliefinbourgeois
democraticinstitutions.Alongtheselines,ClaudeLeforthimself,whomnoonecanaccuseofcommunistsympathies,
recentlymadeacrucialpointinhisanswertoFrancoisFuret:today'sliberalconsensusistheresultof150yearsofthe
leftistworkers'struggleandpressureuponthestate;itincorporateddemandsthatwereonehundredorevenfeweryearsago
dismissedbyliberalsashorror.4Asproof,oneshouldjustlookatthelistofthedemandsattheendoftheCommunist
Manifesto.Apartfromtwoorthreeofthem(which,ofcourse,arethekeyones),allothersaretodaypartoftheconsensus
(atleastthatofthedisintegratingwelfarestate):universalsuffrage,therighttofreeeducation,universalhealthcare,care
fortheretired,limitationofchildlabor,andsoon.Today,inatimeofcontinuousswiftchanges,fromthedigital
revolutiontotheretreatofoldsocialforms,thisthoughtismorethaneverexposedtothetemptationoflosingitsnerve,of
precociouslyabandoningtheoldconceptualcoordinates.Themediaconstantlybombarduswiththeneedtoabandonthe
oldparadigms,insistingthatifwearetosurvivewehavetochangeourmostfundamentalnotionsofpersonalidentity,
society,environment,andsoforth.NewAgewisdomclaimsthatweareenteringanew"posthuman"era;postmodern
politicalthoughtistellingusthatweareenteringapostindustrialphaseinwhichtheoldcategoriesoflabor,collectivity,
class,andthelikearetheoreticalzombies,nolongerapplicabletothedynamicsofmodernization.Andthesameholdsfor
psychoanalysis:startingfromtheriseoftheegopsychologyinthe1930s,psychoanalystshavebeenlosingtheirnerve,
layingdowntheir(theoretical)arms,hasteningtoconcedethattheoedipalmatrixofsocializationisnolongeroperative,
thatweliveintimesofuniversalizedperversion,thattheconceptofrepressionisofnouseinourpermissivetimes.The
ThirdWayideologyandpoliticalpracticeiseffectivelythemodelofthisdefeat,ofthisinabilitytorecognizehowthenew
isheretoenabletheoldtosurvive.Againstthistemptation,oneshouldratherfollowtheunsurpassedmodelofPascaland
askthedifficultquestion:howarewetoremainfaithfultotheoldinthenewconditions?Onlyinthiswaycanwegenerate
somethingeffectivelynew.
95
Permutation Answers
We cannot combine things we must clearly stake out positions
iek, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies (Ljubljana), 2004 [Slavoj,
Conversations with iek, p. 45]
On the one hand, I do consider myself an extreme Stalinist philosopher. That is to say, its clear where I stand.
I dont believe in combining things. I hate this approach of taking a little but from Lacan, a little but from
Foucault, a little bit from Derrida. No, I dont believe in this; I believe in clear cut positions. I think that the
most arrogant position is this apparent, multidisciplinary modesty of what I am saying is not unconditional, it is
just a hypothesis, and so on. It is really the most arrogant position. I think that the only way to be honest and to
expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a
position.
96
Permutation Answer
Reject the permutation any degree of acceptance of the big other or social structures
intelligibility colonizes the entirety of the affs gesture. The big other manages the affs
interaction with others to reproduce an inherently unethical configuration
Zizek, 2007
(Slavoj, How to Read Lacan, Ch 2 Empty Gestures and Performatives)
There are, however, many features of the "big Other" which get lost in this simplified notion. For Lacan, the reality of
human beings is constituted by three mutually entangled levels: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. This triad can
be nicely illustrated by the game of chess. The rules one has to follow in order to play it are its symbolic dimension: from
the purely formal symbolic standpoint, "knight" is defined only by the moves this figure can make. This level is clearly
different from the imaginary one, namely the way different pieces are shaped and characterized by their names (king,
queen, knight), and it is easy to envision a game with the same rules, but with a different imaginary, in which this figure
would be called "messenger" or "runner" or whatever. Finally, real is the entire complex set of contingent circumstances
which affect the course of the game: the intelligence of the players, the unpredictable intrusions that may disconcert one of
the players or directly cut the game short The big Other operates at a symbolic level. What, then, is this symbolic order
composed of? When we speak (or listen, for hat matter), we never merely interact with others; our speech activity is
grounded on our accepting of and relying on a complex network of rules and other kinds of presuppositions. First, there are
the grammatical rules I have to master blindly and spontaneously: if I were to bear in mind all the time these rules, my
speech would come to a halt. Then there is the background of participating in the same life-world which enables me and my
partner in conversation to understand each other. The rules that I follow are marked by a deep split: there are rules (and
meanings) that I follow blindly, out of custom, but of which, upon reflection, I can become at least partially aware (such as
common grammatical rules), and there are rules that I follow, meanings that haunt me, unbeknownst to me (such as
unconscious prohibitions). Then there are rules and meanings I am aware of, but have to act on the outside as if I am not
aware of them - dirty or obscene innuendos which one passes over in silence in order to maintain the proper appearances.
This symbolic space acts like a standard against which I can measure myself. This is why the big Other can be personified
or reified in a single agent: "God" who watches over me from beyond and over all real individuals or the Cause which
addresses me (Freedom, Communism, Nation) and for which I am ready to give my life. While talking, I am never merely a
"small other" (individual) interacting with other "small others," the big Other always has to be there.
97
Permutation Answers
The permutation taints the kritk the gestures we symbolize meaning with coproduce the
symbolic rules that limit us
Zizek, 2007
(Slavoj, How to Read Lacan, Ch 2 Empty Gestures and Performatives)
We can see now how, far from conceiving the Symbolic which rules human perception and interaction as a kind of
transcendental a priori (a formal network, given in advance, which limits the scope of human practice), Lacan is interested
precisely in how the gestures of symbolization are entwined with and embedded in the process of collective practice. What
Lacan elaborates as the "twofold moment" of the symbolic function reaches far beyond the standard theory of the
performative dimension of speech as it was developed in the tradition from J.L. Austin to John Searle: The symbolic
function presents itself as a twofold movement in the subject: man makes his own action into an object, but only to return
its foundational place to it in due time. In this equivocation, operating at every instant, lies the whole progress of a function
in which action and knowledge alternate. The historical example evoked by Lacan to clarify this "twofold movement" is
indicative in its hidden references: in phase one, a man who works at the level of production in our society considers
himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat; in phase two, in the name of belonging to it, he joins in a general strike.
Lacan's (implicit) reference here is to Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness, a classic Marxist work from 1923
whose widely acclaimed French translation was published in the mid-1950s. For Lukacs, consciousness is opposed to mere
knowledge of an object: knowledge is external to the known object, while consciousness is in itself 'practical', an act which
changes its very object. (Once a worker "considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat," this changes his very
reality: he acts differently.) One does something, one counts oneself as (declares oneself) the one who did it, and, on the
base of this declaration, one does something new - the proper moment of subjective transformation occurs at the moment of
declaration, not at the moment of act. This reflexive moment of declaration means that every utterance not only transmits
some content, but, simultaneously, renders how the subject relates to this content. Even the most down-to-earth objects and
activities always contain such a declarative dimension, which constitutes the ideology of everyday life. One should never
forget that utility functions as a reflective notion: it always involves the assertion of utility as meaning. A man who lives in
a large city and owns a land-rover (for which he obviously has no use), doesn't simply lead a no-nonsense, down-to-earth
life; rather, he owns such a car in order to signal that he leads his life under the sign of a no-nonsense, down-to-earth
attitude. To wear stone-washed jeans is to signal a certain attitude to life.
98
Permutation Answers
Detachment DAThe permuation is just another distancing strategy that promotes a false
reconciliation with the trauma of our desires and our complicity in suffering
Edkins, Lecturer in Politics at the University of Wales, 2000 [Jenny, Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine,
Practices of Aid p. 120]
If facing images of distant hunger is an experience of the traumatic real, what follows, in the response that we make, is the reconstitution of subjectivity and community through a reinstatement of what we call social reality/social fantasy. For
Zizek, social fantasy is to be seen as an escape from the traumatic real, a way of concealing antagonism and the
impossibility of the social order. It produces the master signifier and masks the "nothing" behind the curtain.
Critics point to the role of the ideological in Live Aid. The discourse of charitable response to disaster, the narrative of the West
as rescuer, performs the ideological role of concealing the "true" causes of famine and suffering that lie in the
dominance of the West and its exploitation of Africa. For these critics, famine has deep causes, for example, in the effects of
colonization and structural inequalities, and the Live Aid narrative is ideological in that it provides a way of avoiding the need
to confront these truths. This view of famine as a disaster with a scientific causewhether the science in question is Marxist
economics or natural scienceleads to a detachment from disaster relief in favor of a search for further knowledge ,
which alone can provide a reason to act. It contrasts with the humanitarian approach that calls for action without
knowledge to save lives in the immediate future without waiting for a political analysis. This approach is validated
by a different detachment or objectivity, one that in its own way equally repudiates involvement and empathy
with suffering. It is based on a strict separation of humanitarian and political actions, on an assumption of
neutrality, and on a valuation that holds the preser vation of human life to be above and distinct from any
political
99
100
Permutation Answers
The link between capitalism and the nation-state ensures the failure of socialism
John Kay, retired Professor of Management at Oxford, AN EXCHANGE ON A SOCIALIST APPROACH TO
THE PROTECTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT, January 10, 2001, p.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jan2001/corr-j10.shtml. (DRGOC/E303)
Capitalism further precludes the ability to address the environment in that it remains tied to a system of
competing nation-states. Environmental problems are inherently global in nature and must be addressed on a
global scale. Only by cooperatively mobilizing the world's scientific, technological and economic resources can
such an immense challenge be confronted. The international agreements that have been reached, such as the
Kyoto agreement on global warming, are generally of an extremely weak character, and even these have
floundered on the rocks of national competition. The problems created by the development of production under
capitalism can be solved only through the rational and international control of production, i.e., the conscious
direction of the dynamic interaction between man and the rest of the natural world.
101
Permutation Answers
Changing the capitalist system is key, minor alterations lack effectiveness
David Korten, President of the People-Centered Development Forum, ETHIX MAGAZINE, September-October
2002, p. http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/2002/ethix_magazine_issue_25.htm. (DRGOC/E305)
Gill: So you are not blaming these problems on individual evil capitalists but on an organizational structure and
a system of relationships? Korten: My focus is on the economy as an organizational system that is structured to
reward the worst in us. There are certainly some extraordinarily dishonest and greedy people who use this
system. But most in the corporate system are ordinary decent people, many of them with deep spiritual and
ethical values. They are caught in a system that gives them very little scope to behave in any way other than
what the system demands.
102
104
105
Impact-Zizek/Billions Dead
Global Capitalism asserts itself in terrible forms, having billions of nameless victims with out
value to life.
Zizek and Daly, Professor at the University of Ljublijana and general badass; Zizeks homeboy and
senior Lecturer in Politics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at University College,
Northampton, 2004 (Slavoj, Conversations with Zizek Polity Press, 14-16)
ForZizekitisimperativethatwecutthroughthisGordianknotofpostmodernprotocolandrecognizethatourethico
politicalresponsibilityistoconfronttheconstitutiveviolenceoftodaysglobalcapitalismanditsobscenenaturalization
/anonymizationofthemillionswhoaresubjugatedbyitthroughouttheworld.Againstthestandardizedpositionsof
postmodernculturewithallitspietiesconcerningmulticulturalistetiquetteZizekisarguingforapolitics
thatmightbecalledradicallyincorrectinthesensethatitbreakwiththesetypesofpositions7andfocuses
insteadontheveryorganizingprinciplesoftodayssocialreality:theprinciplesofgloballiberalcapitalism.This
requires some care and subtlety. For far too long, Marxism has been bedeviled by an almost fetishistic
economismthathastendedtowardspoliticalmorbidity.WiththelikesofHilferdingandGramsci,andmore
recentlyLaclauandMouffee,crucialtheoreticaladvanceshavebeenmadethatenablethetranscendenceofall
formsofeconomism.Inthisnewcontext,however,Zizekarguesthattheproblemthatnowpresentsitselfis
almostthatoftheoppositefetish.Thatistosay,theprohibitiveanxietiessurroundingthetabooofeconomism
canfunctionasawayofnotengagingwitheconomicrealityandasawayofimplicitlyacceptingthelatterasa
basichorizonofexistence.InanironicFreudianLacaniantwist,thefearofeconomismcanendupreinforcinga
defactoeconomicnecessityinrespectofcontemporarycapitalism(i.e.theinitialprohibitionconjuresupthe
verythingitfears).Thisisnottoendorseanykindofretrogradereturntoeconomism.Zizekspointisrather
thatinrejectingeconomismweshouldnotlosesightofthesystemicpowerofcapitalinshapingthelivesand
destiniesofhumanityandourverysenseofthepossible.InparticularweshouldnotoverlookMarxscentral
insightthatinordertocreateauniversalglobalsystemtheforcesofcapitalismseektoconcealthepolitico
discursiveviolenceofitsconstructionthroughakindofgentrificationofthatsystem.Whatispersistentlydenied
byneoliberalssuchasRorty(1989)
andFukuyama
(1992
)isthatthegentrificationofgloballiberalcapitalismisone
whoseuniversalismfundamentallyreproducesanddependsuponadisavowedviolencethatexcludesvastsectorsof
theworldspopulations.Inthisway,neoliberalideologyattemptstonaturalizecapitalismbypresentingitsoutcomesof
winningandlosingasiftheyweresimplyamatterofchanceandsoundjudgmentinaneutralmarketplace.Capitalism
doesindeedcreateaspaceforacertaindiversity,atleastforthecentralcapitalistregions,butitisneitherneutralnor
idealanditspriceintermsofsocialexclusionisexorbitant.Thatistosay,thehumancostintermsofinherentglobal
povertyanddegradedlifechancescannotbecalculatedwithintheexistingeconomicrationaleand,inconsequence,
socialexclusionremainsmystifiedandnameless (viz.thepatronizingreferencetothedevelopingworld).And
Zizekspointisthatthismystificationismagnifiedthroughcapitalismsprofoundcapacitytoingestitsown
excessesandnegativity:toredirect(ormisdirect)socialantagonismsandtoabsorbthemwithinacultureof
differentialaffirmation.InsteadofBolshevism,thetendencytodayistowardsakindofpoliticalboutiquismthat
is readily sustained by postmodern forms of consumerism and lifestyle. Against this Zizek argues for a new
universalismwhoseprimaryethicaldirectiveistoconfrontthefactthatourformsofsocialexistencearefoundedon
exclusiononaglobalscale.WhileitisperfectlytruethatuniversalismcanneverbecomeUniversal(itwillalways
require a hegemonicparticular embodiment in order to have any meaning), what is novel about Zizeks
universalismisthatitwouldnotattempttoconcealthisfactorreducethestatusoftheabjectOthertothatofa
glitchinanotherwisesoundmatrix.
106
Impact - Extinction
Capitalism guarantees nuclear and ecological extinction
Mandel, No Date, economist and politcal theorist and longstanding leader of the Fourth International (accessed
2 July 2008) [Ernest The End of History? World Revolution Today International Viewpoint Part 6
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?page=print _article&id_article=295]
The unity of the process of world revolution is related to the growing internationalization of the productive forces and of capital-exemplified in the
emergence of the transnational corporation as the typical late capitalist firm predominant in the world market-which leads unavoidably to a growing
internationalization of the class struggle. Hard material reality will teach the international working class that retreating toward purely national defensive
strategies (exemplified by protectionism) leaves all the advantages to capital and increasingly paralyzes even the defence of a given standard of living and
107
Impact - Extinction
Capitalist dynamics lead to global extinction
Cook, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Windsor, 2006 [Deborah, Staying Alive: Adorno and
Habermas on Self-Preservation under Late Capitalism, Rethinking Marxism, 18(3):433-447, electronic]
Adorno and Habermas obviously disagree about the character of self-preservation under late capitalism. Where Habermas
believes that survival imperatives are now harnessed to communicative and functionalist reason, Adorno claims that selfpreservation has not yet come under rational control because reason itself is blindly impelled by this drive. Against
Habermas one could certainly argue that, even if self-preservation is rational in his procedural sense of that term, it remains
destructive and self-destructive insofar as we do not consciously attempt to satisfy the goal of preserving the species as a
whole. Self-preservation is now the exclusive prerogative of the owners of the means of production in Western countries
who, in their relentless and self-interested pursuit of profit and power, continue to threaten the material survival of
everyone. In fact, given the obvious damage that continues to be inflicted on the environment, the wars that have been
fought and continue to be waged in the name of self-preservation, and the famine, disease, poverty, and malnutrition that
destroy the lives of most human beings on the planet, I would argue that Habermas's view of what is required for selfpreservation to be rational is seriously flawed and must therefore be rejected. On the one hand, even if citizens in the West
were to steer the economy toward normative ends, they could agree to act destructively and self-destructively and remain
rational on Habermas's procedural definition of rationality. On the other hand, it is difficult to see how the surrender of selfpreservation to blind economic forces that currently threaten everyone's survival can plausibly be described as rational. To
give the last word to Adorno: our lives, which are really no more than a means to the end of self-preservation, have
nonetheless become bewitched and fetishized as an end. Our current predicament consists in an antinomy: the
individual is debased and liquidated while simultaneously being thrown back on the fact that he no longer has anything but
this atomized self which lives our life (Adorno 2001, 110). Consequently, Adorno argues, the concept of ends, to which
reason rises for the sake of consistent self-preservation, ought to be emancipated from the idol in the mirror. Selfpreservation, which currently confuses means with ends, obscures the fact that an end would be whatever differs from the
subject, which is a means (1973, 349). If we were to make conscious to ourse lves the ways in which our behavior has
unconsciously been driven by survival imperatives, and win the energy of self-preservation for more substantive ends,
reason would be emancipated from its instinctual fetters and self-preservation would finally become rational. Again, the
goal of self-preservation is the preservation of humanity as a whole: to be rational in the more emphatic sense of that term,
individuals need to direct their efforts toward the preservation of the species on which their own lives depend. To preserve
the species, society must ultimately be transformed: the preservation of the species will only find its end in a reasonable
organization of society. Adorno adds that a society is rationally organized solely to the extent that it preserves its
societalized subjects according to their unfettered potentialities. If self-preservation were ever to become more fully
rational, humanity would gain the potential for that self-reflection that could finally transcend the self-preservation to
which it was reduced by being restricted simply to a means (Adorno 1998d, 2723).
108
Impact -- War
The economics of capitalism make war a necessity
Carchedi, University of Amsterdam, 2006 [Guglielmo, The Fallacies of Keynesian Policies, Rethinking
Marxism, 18(1):63-81, electronic]
The other option is given by the state-commissioned production of weapons: military Keynesianism. This is,
like the production of public works, production of (surplus) value. All the results reached in the previous section
concerning the unlikelihood of public works starting an upturn apply here, too, and will not be repeated.25 But
there are specific advantages and disadvantages (for Capital). Concerning the latter, the production of weapons
is even less likely to restore profitability than public works because it is usually very technologically advanced,
with a higher value composition than the rest of the economy. Also, unlike public works, weapons are
nonreproductive goods. Their production hampers the physical reproduction of the economy. And finally,
weapons are commodities that, in times of peace, are mostly not used. The labor that has gone into them (value)
is thus wasted. This, too, hampers the physical reproduction of the economy. But there are advantages as well.
First, if weapons are exported, the producers of weapons appropriate international value from other, foreign
capitalists due to the former's higher value composition (unequal exchange).26 Second, science- and
technology-based military innovations are the basic driving force in, and directly support, the development of
civilian science and technology. Since World War II, practically all the major innovations in the civilian sphere
have been first generated by military research and development. This gives the technological leaders a
competitive advantage that makes possible the appropriation of international surplus value. Third, the use of
public works can become part of the goods considered to be necessary for the reproduction of labor power and
thus can lead to an increase in real wages. This danger is avoided if resources are channeled into the military
industry. And finally, military might is a necessary condition for imperialist policies, thus for value appropriation
from weaker countries. Once imperialism is introduced into the analysis, the positive effects on the ARP
attributed to civilian Keynesianism in the imperialist countries can be seen to be in fact, at least partially, the
result of the appropriation of surplus value from the world working class, via foreign capitals, thanks also to
military Keynesianism. Disregard of this fundamental point gives Keynesian policies much more credit than
they deserve. There is thus no contraposition between civilian and military Keynesianism. The former is partly
made possible by the appropriation of international value inherent in the latter. If neither civilian nor military
Keynesian policies can jump-start the economy, the alternative is war. The use of weapons in time of war is a
specific, powerful method of destruction of excess capital in its commodity form, of value that cannot be
realized in times of peace. Their main contribution to an upturn is not through employment and the extra
production of surplus value (which are modest because of their high value composition) but through the
destruction of surplus capital: the more commodity capital is destroyed (both as weapons and as the other
commodities that are destroyed by those weapons), the more commodity capital can be subsequently created. At
the same time, this expanded reproduction is spurred by the higher rates of exploitation, and thus of profit,
induced by wars. Wars make possible the cancellation of the debt contracted with Labor (e.g., inflation destroys
the value of money and thus of state bonds) and the extraction of extra surplus value (the laborers, either forced
or instigated by patriotism, accept lower wages, higher intensity of labor, longer working days, etc.). Wars thus
create the conditions for an economic upturn. Capitalism needs weapons and thus wars. If capitalism needs
wars, wars need enemies. The imperialist nations display great ingenuity in finding, or creating, new enemies.
Before the fall of the USSR, the pretext for the arms industry was International Communism. After the Fall,
109
110
Impact -- Dehumanization
The drive to acquire material goods and money have lead to environmental crisis and shows no
respect for the natural world, dehumanizes individuals is at the root of many of the worlds
problems and makes world peace impossible to attain
Varma, Associate Professor and Regents Lecturer, School of Public Administration
University of New Mexico,2003 (Roli, Sage productions, E.F. Schumacher: Changing the Paradigm of
Bigger Is Better, http://bst.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/2/114, accesed 7/10/08, page 116).
Materialism holds that the world is by its very nature material; the world consists of particles of matter; each of them has its
own existence. These particles interact with each other and in their totality form the world. Matter is objective reality
existing outside and independent of the mind; anything mental or spiritual is a product of material processes. Materialism is
based on the scientific investigations of natural phenomena and thus seeks explanations in terms of factors that can be
verified. It views each human being as a social atom with certain inherent properties and attributes. In the industrial system
of production, materialism has been reduced to the ideology of market. The market is seen both as the natural condition of
mankind and irresistible; it gives the people what they want. The production and consumption of material goods and the
acquisition of money are the main goals of the market. It is believed that the generation of wealth will result in satisfaction
with nonmaterial goods such as justice, harmony, happiness, beauty, and health. Against materialism, Schumacher believed
in idealism, which views spiritual as prior to the material. For him, there was a higher, more real, and nonmaterial world
beyond the material world. He believed that the problem of industrial production resulting in the environmental crisis
stemmed from misplaced values. Unlike religious teachings, materialism shows no self control or respect with the natural
world. Schumacher(1977) made a distinction between convergent and divergent problems (p. 121). Convergent
problems relate to the nonliving aspect of the world; in contrast, divergent problems relate to the human issues. With
convergent problems, scientific investigations tend to find solutions; the answers tend to converge. However, with divergent
problems, scientific investigations lead to opposite solutions; the answers tend to diverge. Schumacher believed that
materialism treats all problems as convergent and thus dehumanizes individuals. He therefore suggested a return to
religious truth. In his words, the modern experiment to live without religion has failed (p. 139). Schumacher thought of
the materialist philosophy of overproduction and overconsumption as a root of many problems facing the modern world.
For instance, the practice of mechanized agriculture and factor farming adds to the pollution of land and water. Similarly,
increasing wealth of people depends on making continuous demands on limited world resources. Schumacher (1973)
questioned measuring a mans standard of living by assuming that a man who consumes more is better off than a man
who consumes less (p. 54). He believed that material prosperity could not lead to world peace because it is attainable
only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy (p. 30). According to him, man must never lose his
sense of the marvellousness of the world around and inside him (Schumacher, 1974, p. 31). He therefore promoted
reduction of needs to promote peace and permanence (Schumacher, 1973, p. 31).
111
112
Impact -- Dehumanization
In capitalism, human life is value below that of capital itself.
John Holloway, Sociologist and Philosopher, 2005, Change the World Without Taking Power, p.164
Thefirstindicationofthedivergenceisthereversalofsigns.Startingfromthescream,wehavearguedherethat
anticapitalisttheorymustbeunderstoodasnegativetheory,thatthemovementofstruggleisamovementof
negation. Mostautonomisttheory,however,presentsthemovementofstruggleasapositivemovement.Thereversal
ofthepolarityundertakenbyautonomisttheory transfersthepositivefromthesideofcapitaltothesideofthe
struggle against capital. In orthodox Marxist theory, capital
is the positivesubject
ofcapitalistdevelopment. In
autonomisttheory,theworkingclassbecomesthepositivesubject:thatiswhythepositiveconceptsofclasscomposition
andclassrecompositionareonthesideoftheworkingclass,whilethenegativeconceptofdecompositionisplaced
onthesideofcapital.Inthereversalofthepolarity,identityismovedfromthesideofcapitaltothesideoflabour,but
itisnotexplodedorevenchallenged.Thisiswrong. Subjectivityin
capitalismisinthefirstplace
negative, the
movement against the denial of
seekstocompose,tocreateidentities,tocreatestability(alwaysillusory,
butessentialtoitsexistence), tocontainanddenyour
negativity. Wearethesourceofmovement,wearethe
subject:inthat,autonomisttheoryisright.Butourmovementisanegativeone,onethatdefiesclassification.What
unitestheZapatistauprising in Chiapas or the Movement of theLandless (MST) in Brazil with the struggle of
InternetworkersinSeattle,say,isnotapositivecommonclasscompositionbutratherthecommunityoftheir
negativestruggleagainstcapitalism.
absorbalmosttheentireattentionofgovernment,andatthesametimebecomeevermoreimpotent.
Thesimplestthings,whichonlyfiftyyearsagoonecoulddowithoutdifficulty,cannotgetdoneanymore.
Thericherasociety,themoreimpossibleitbecomestodoworthwhilethingswithoutimmediatepayoff.
(Economics)tendstoabsorbthewholeofethicsandtakeprecedenceoverallotherhumanconsiderations.
Now,quiteclearly,thisisapathologicaldevelopment.(Schumacher1978:67)Thepressuretobe
competitiveindividuallyorcollectivelydrivenbyglobalisationisparticularlydamaging.Workersareexpectedto
putineverlongerhours.Universitiesmustconcentrateonpromotingskills
thatleadtofurthereconomic
growth.Statusismeasuredbywealththatdriveseventhe'haves'tospendlongerworkingandconsuming.Far
frommaximising'utility'orbenefitforindividuals,neoliberalismincreaseslevelsofpersonalstress(Toke2000).
Economicrationalitybasedonquantitativemeasuretreatsanythingthatcannoteasilybemeasuredandsold
withcontempt.AnAustralianGreennotes.
113
114
Itisstriking,andperhapssurprisingtosome,thatStegeralthoughhedoesnotdevelopthisthemeimplicates
consumerismasfarasglobalisation'seffectonthenaturalprobablythecasethatcapitalismasawayoflifeis
sofamiliarandcommonsensicaltomostpeopleinthedevelopedworldandincreasinglyinthedeveloping
worldthatanyargumenttotheeffectthatcapitalismisintheprocessofdestroyingnature(andcomitantly
theverygroundoforganiclifeonearth,includingthatofhumans)wouldstrikethemasabsurd.Andyet,itseems
tomethatthisconclusionisincreasinglyunavoidableinthefaceofmassiveevidencetothateffect.Inapublication
thatmustsurelyrankasbeingamongthemostpersuasiveinthisrespect,JoelKovel(2002)setsouttodemonstrate
atlengththatitis capitalismasawayoflifewhichisthe'culprit'whenitcomestothedestructionofthe
environmentandthefundamentalunderminingofthefunctioningofterrestrialecosystems.11Howisthis
possible?
115
116
117
Greenspan combined with a regulatory laissez-faire attitude toward the private financial system. As the financial system worsens and Fed action increasingly seems ineffective,
trends that have completely reversed in the last several years from what was occurring in the previous two decades, and begin to reestablish trends that were common for most of
the 20th century. The Financial Times reports on Barclay's Equities annual report on stocks and bonds, " Over
inflation on both
sides of the Atlantic has risen by more than 1 per cent during the current expansion
Now, the No. 1 enemy of finance is inflation, so as inflation begins to rear its ugly head, the ability for
Neoliberalism to provide its benefits, which are at best inequitable, becomes increasingly problematic . For in the
1950."
school of Neoliberalism, low interest rates are imperative to financial benefits, but low interest rates are impossible in inflationary times. It seems Neoliberalism has run into
intrinsic problems just as the New Deal economics did in 1970s. However, we may very well be at a point of fundamental questions neither the New Deal or Neoliberalism care
in the end, New Deal and Neoliberal political economy are simply two sides of the same coin. They are a
political and cultural school of thought that seeks one end, economic growth . Both ultimately depend on growth
in the creation of jobs, growth in the production of goods and growth in consumption each year. They are a
school of thought that depends on infinite resources from what every year becomes increasingly clear to the
collective mind of humanity is a very finite planet . It is this fundamental contradiction that will increasingly move into the center of all debate on
political economy and a question for which neither New Deal or Neoliberal economics has any answers. This contradiction has appeared most recently
in the rise in the price of oil, which is the life's blood of any economy we have deemed modern for the past
century. Global production of crude oil has basically plateaued, while demand has continued to rise . At the same time,
to ask. For
the rising standard of living across the globe has given pressure to prices in other commodities. Bloomberg reports:
118
accidents are continuous with a range of less spectacular but equivalently disruptive
destabilizations. Where a sufficient number of "cost-cuttings-in-the-name-of profit" occur, there is an accident
waiting to happen. At times, this may be facilitated or triggered by human error - possibly itself a product of the same complex (an under-trained, demoralized,
alienated staff, for example). However, the "human factor" fades as an independent cause to the extent people are shaped and
distorted by the profit complex. If we take Carbide's own explanation to be true for present purposes, as phony as it actually is: suppose it was more than mere
circumstances. Therefore,
error that destroyed the plant, but a saboteur who maliciously set the gas loose that night. What shaped him, then? Was it inscrutable evil or the product of a chain of
Was he one of the workers who had been "disciplined" for refusing to cut
corners, or fired for going on strike, or was he simply brutalized by a concatenation of causal factors descending
upon him from a hellish human ecology? Was he psychotic - and if so, was this some kind of genetic programming, or did it, too, descend from the mass of alienations
determinants within the force field of profit-seeking?
that comprised his life world, alienations in whose composition the dominant social system will be found to occupy a place at the end of every line? It is not that other factors are
missing from the network of causal processes that summate to cause an accident, or, beyond that, the ecological crisis itself. To the contrary, they must be present, inasmuch as
But they are present as scattered individualities, while through and around them, a great force field shapes and
The more globally and in terms of the whole we regard these things, the
less we think in terms of individual blame or look for the "accidents" that disrupt what is otherwise to be
construed as a rational process. Now we inquire whether the process is rational in the first place, and whether or
not in this light, "accidents are waiting to happen." We also come to ask the larger question of whether the
normal and non-accidental functioning of the system is in itself ecodestructive - in which case it is the system that continually
combines them into the effective events that move the world.
generates insults to ecologies of one kind or another and has to be transformed. An attention limited to the particular contours of the individual event loses track of that larger
pattern, of the merits of pesticides themselves, and more generally, the "Green Revolution" of which they comprise an essential part,8 along with the never-ending ordeal to
which the nations of the South, like India, are subjected in the world system.>
119
commodities so introduced, say, the SUVs, are both ecodestructive and profitable; and the people
who use and desire them are, because of their changed needs, themselves changed in an "anti-ecological"
direction, that is, they see capitalist life as ordained by nature, and become complicit in the ecological crisis and
unable to take action against it. In human ecology, "nature" is first of all a word signifying many things and relationships. Nature is what is past and there
before us, it surrounds us, immense, dumb, and uncaring, an awesome or debased Other, infinitely malleable. Capital - nature's actual enemy - plays upon
these meanings with virtuosic skill. Its ideologues tell us that capitalism is true to human nature, ignoring how people are
indoctrinated to play their assigned roles in accumulation. At the same time, nature is to be completely overcome, consumed as
resources, endlessly reworked even in its finest structures, like nanotubes and the DNA awaiting the sorcerers'
biotechnology. Bodies are cyborgs, bionic, continuously remade. Everything is to be torn up so that accumulation can proceed. Hence capital's relentlessly forwardlooking attitude, and its iron lock on the logic of modernity.>
120
Impact -- Tyranny
Capitalism is compatible with tyranny
Benjamin BaIber, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers, JIHAD VS. MCWORLD, 1996, p.14-15
(MHHARV6402)
This stealth rhetoric that assumes capitalist interests are not only compatible With but actively advance
democratic ideals, translated into policy, is difficult to reconcile With the international realities of the last fifty
years. Market economies have shown a remarkable adaptability and have flourished in many tyrannical states
from Chile to South Korea, from Panama to Singapore. Indeed, the state With one of the world's least
democratic governments-the People's Republic of China-possesses one of the world's fastest-growing market
economies. "Communist" Vietnam is not far behind, and was opened to American trade recently; presumably on
the strength of the belief that markets ultimately defeat ideology;24 Capitalism requires consumers With access
to markets and a stable political climate in order to succeed: such conditions mayor may not be fostered by
democracy, which can be disorderly and even anarchic, especially in its early stages, and which often pursues
public goods costly to or at odds With private-market imperatives--enviromentalism or full employment for
example. On the level of the individual, capitalism seeks consumers susceptible to the shaping of their needs and
the manipulation of their wants while democracy needs citizens autonomous in their thoughts and independent
in their deliberative judgments. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wishes to "tame savage capitalism," but capitalism
wishes to tame anarchic democracy and appears to have little problem tolerating tyranny as long as it secures
stability.
Benjamin BaIber, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers, JIHAD VS. MCWORLD, 1996, p.14-15
(PDOCSS2770)
This stealth rhetoric that assumes capitalist interests are not only compatible With but actively advance
democratic ideals, translated into policy, is difficult to reconcile With the international realities of the last fifty
years. Market economies have shown a remarkable adaptability and have flourished in many tyrannical states
from Chile to South Korea, from Panama to Singapore. Indeed, the state With one of the world's least
democratic governments-the People's Republic of China-possesses one of the world's fastest-growing market
economies. "Communist" Vietnam is not far behind, and was opened to American trade recently; presumably on
the strength of the belief that markets ultimately defeat ideology;24 Capitalism requires consumers With access
to markets and a stable political climate in order to succeed: such conditions mayor may not be fostered by
democracy, which can be disorderly and even anarchic, especially in its early stages, and which often pursues
public goods costly to or at odds With private-market imperatives--enviromentalism or full employment for
example. On the level of the individual, capitalism seeks consumers susceptible to the shaping of their needs and
the manipulation of their wants while democracy needs citizens autonomous in their thoughts and independent
in their deliberative judgments.
121
Capitalism is responsible for spills and leaks; low cost approaches ignore structural weakness of
maritime traffic
World Congress of the Fourth International, ECOLOGY AND SOCIALISM, 2003, p.
http://www.internationalen.se/sp/sphem/vkongress/ecology.pdf. (DRGOC/E256)
The state of the oceans is rapidly deteriorating. The increase in world-wide maritime traffic is to blame, all the
more so since the ruinous condition of many vessels is causing significant leakage. The systematic search for the
lowest possible cost by multinationals in the petroleum industry is directly responsible for catastrophes such as
Exxon Valdez and Erika. To the visible pollution of black tides - 70 tankers sank in 1996 - we must add the
astronomical quantity of petroleum seeping from underwater drilling operations and outgassing of ships. The sea
is also used to dispose of toxic, chemical and radioactive waste.
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Impact -- Genocide
Capitalism reduces all relations to an economic level necessitating genocide and ruthless
destruction of all those who stand in the way of profit.
Kovel, Prof. of Social Studies @ Bard, 2007 [Joel, The Enemy of Nature, p. 151-3]
<On the reformability of capitalism
dominated labor.
The monster that now bestrides the world was born of the conjugation of value and
From the former arose the quantification of reality, and, with this, the loss of the differentiated recognition essential for
from the latter emerged a kind of selfhood that could swim in these icy waters. From this
standpoint one might call capitalism a "regime of the Ego," meaning that under its auspices a kind of estranged
self emerges as the mode of capital's reproduction. This self is not merely prideful - the ordinary connotation of "egotistical" - though
under capitalism it certainly exhibits hubris; more fully, it is the ensemble of those relations that embody the domination of
nature from one side, and, from the other, ensure the reproduction of capital. This Ego is the latest version of the
purified male principle, emerging millennia after the initial crime and reflecting the absorption and rationalization of gender
domination into profitability and self-maximization (allowing suitable "power-women" to join the dance). It is a pure culture of
splitting and non-recognition: it recognizes neither itself, nor the otherness of nature, nor the nature of others. In terms of
the preceding discussion, it is the elevation of the merely individual and isolated mind-as-ego into a reigning
principle. Capital produces egoic relations, which reproduce capital. The isolated selves of the capitalist order can choose to
ecosystemic integrity;
become personifications of capital, or may have the role thrust upon them. In either case, they embark upon a pattern of non-recognition mandated by the
the almighty dollar interposes itself between all elements of experience: all things in the world, all other
persons, and between the self and its world. Hence nothing really exists except in and through monetization.
This setup provides an ideal culture medium for the bacillus of competition and ruthless self-maximization.
Because money is all that "counts," a peculiar heartlessness characterizes capitalists, a tough-minded and cold
abstraction that will sacrifice species, whole continents (viz Africa) or inconvenient subsets of the population
(viz black urban males) who add too little to the great march of surplus value, or may be seen as standing in its
way, or simply are suitable objects of demonization to distract the masses. The presence of value screens out
genuine fellow-feeling or compassion, replacing it with the calculus of profit-expansion. Never has a holocaust
been carried out so impersonally. When the Nazis killed their victims, the crimes were accompanied by a racist
drumbeat; for global capital, the losses are regrettable necessities or collateral damage.
fact that
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are multiplied by dependence on food supplies closely tied to the land and in which [toxic] materials . .. have been shown to accumulate" (ibid.). This essay will discuss the genocide of Native Americans
Although this type of genocide is not (usually) the result of a systematic plan
with malicious intent to exterminate Native Americans, it is the consequence of activities that are often carried
out on and near the reservations with reckless disregard for the lives of Native Americans .1 One very significant toxic threat to
Native Americans comes from Governmental and commercial hazardous waste sitings. Because of the severe poverty and extraordinary vulnerability of
Native American tribes, their lands have been targeted by the U.S. government and the large corporations as
permanent areas for much of the poisonous industrial by-products of the dominant society. "Hoping to take
advantage of the devastating chronic unemployment, pervasive poverty and sovereign status of Indian Nations",
according to Bradley Angel, writing for the international environmental organization Green- peace, " the waste disposal industry and the U.S. government
have embarked on an all-out effort to site incinerators, landfills, nuclear waste storage facilities and similar
polluting industries on Tribal land" (Angel 1991, 1). In fact, so enthusiastic is the United States government to dump its most dangerous waste from "the nation's 110
commercial nuclear power plants" (ibid., 16) on the nation's "565 federally recognized tribes" (Aug 1993, 9) that it "has solicited every Indian Tribe, offering
millions of dollars if the tribe would host a nuclear waste facility " (Angel 1991, 15; emphasis added). Given the fact that Native
Americans tend to be so materially poor, the money offered by the government or the corporations for this "toxic
trade" is often more akin to bribery or blackmail than to payment for services rendered .2 In this way, the Mescalero Apache tribe in
through environmental spoliation and native resistance to it.
1991, for example, became the first tribe (or state) to file an application for a U.S. Energy Department grant "to study the feasibility of building a temporary [sic] stor- age facility for 15,000 metric tons of
highly radioactive spent fuel" (Ak- wesasne Notes 1992, 11). Other Indian tribes, including the Sac, Fox, Ya- kima, Choctaw, Lower Brule Sioux, Eastern Shawnee, Ponca, Caddo, and the Skull Valley Band
of Goshute, have since applied for the $100,000 exploratory grants as well (Angel 1991, 16-17). Indeed, since so many reservations are without major sources of outside revenue, it is not surprising that
and benefit analysis performed by most tribes has led to decisions not to engage in commercial waste management" (ibid.). Indeed, Crow reports that by "the end of 1992, there were no commercial waste
facilities operating on any Indian reservations" (ibid.), although the example of the Campo Band of Mission Indians provides an interesting and illuminating exception to the trend. The Campo Band
undertook a "proactive approach to siting a com- mercial solid waste landfill and recycling facility near San Diego, California. The Band informed and educated the native community, developed an
environmental regulatory infrastructure, solicited companies, required that the applicant company pay for the Band's financial advisors, lawyers, and solid waste industry consultants, and ultimately
negotiated a favorable contract" (Haner 1994, 106). Even these extraordinary measures, however, are not enough to protect the tribal land and indigenous people from toxic exposure. Unfortunately, it is a
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137
positively need them (in that their behavior disintegrates without such intake); or grownups develop a similar need for giant sports-utility vehicles, or find
gas-driven leaf-blowers indispensable for the conduct of life; or are shaped to take life passively from the TV screen, or see the shopping malls and their
endless parking lots as the "natural" setting of society.>
138
pd
dependsfundamentallyonapropagatororconvenor,whointhecurrentgeopoliticalconjuncturetendstobeus
asmembersofelitesand
institutionsinboththeNorthandSouth.Itisbecauseofsuchinescapablecomplicitythatpersonalandinstitutionalbenevolenceinpd
,
whileoutwardlyotherregarding,isdeeplyinvestedinselfinterest(geopolitical,cultural,organisational,economic)anddesire
(narcissism,pleasurability,selfaggrandisement,purity,voyeurism,manageability,control).Butpd
'spropagationispremisedon
overlookingthesecontaminations(ietheReal),andtothisextentitisanideology,intheiekianmeaningofthetermdiscussedearlier.pd
asideologyisattractiveandpleasurablydesirable(inindulgingourselfcentredness).Itismarketedandbrandedaswholesomeand
unblemished.But,evenasitpapersoverits'dirtysecrets',whatisnotableaboutitsideologicalandmisrecognisingforceistheabilityto
appearopen,inclusiveandtransparent:'Thecentralparadoxisthattheveryprocessofproduction,thelayingbareofitsmechanism,
functionsasafetishwhichconcealsthecrucialdimensionof[its]form'(iek,1997:102).4
Threeimplicationsfollow.First,thedisavowal
ofcomplicityanddesire(ietheconstructionofpd
asideology)isatechnologyofpower,asaresultofwhichparticipationcaneasilyturn
intoitsoppositecoercion,exclusion,panopticism,disciplinarity.Here,'participationasempowerment'morphsinto'participationas
power'.pd
may
appear
pureandunmediatedbut,forthisveryreason,aswehaveseen,itisoftendeployedtowieldauthority,helpingto
maintainandfurthereliteorinstitutionalhegemony.Flashingpd
asabadge,orromanticisingourinvolvementinit,willtendtobe
similarlydangerous:innocentlyorbenevolentlyclaimingthatoneishelpingaThirdWorldcommunitybecomeparticipatoryisnotjust
selfaggrandising,butalsorisksperpetuatingelite,panopticorinstitutionalpower,allattheexpenseoftheThirdWord
community.(ThisofcourseconjuresupthetriumphalistBush/Blairclaimofbringing'freedomanddemocracy'toIraq.)Asecondimplicationis
thatpd
isavehicleforvarioustypesofempirebuildinginstitutional,geopolitical,socioeconomic,cultural,personal.One
suchinstance,asunderlinedearlier,isthebrandingofpdtohelpwideninstitutionalspheresofinfluence,whileanotheristheWorldBank/imf
constructionofpdasconditionality,throughwhichparticipationbecomesa'euphemismfor[global]neoliberalcapitalism'(Roy,
2004:56).6Ineithercase,itisnowonderthat
pd
isavehicleforempire:inthiseraofmediatisation,whenimageandspin
mattersomuch,theconstructionofpd(orindeedof'freedom'and'democracy')as'benevolent'and'good'isanideal
cover.Notethattomakesuchanargumentisnottomaintainthatpowerisconspiratorial(pd=empirebuilding=Western
conspiracy).Onthecontrary,itistoagreewithFoucaultinsuggestingthatpowercirculates,sothatinstitutionalandsocialcomplicities
anddesiresadjust,andarereconfigured,topd
'snewpower/knowledgeregime.Thus,asmentionedearlier,consensus
buildingcanalignwithelite/institutionalinterests,andcommunitygatheringscanenduphelpingstatemonitoringoflocal
communities.Nowitistruethat,inthecurrentglobalcontext,manyofthesecomplicitiesanddesiresareWestern/Westernised,reflectingWestern
economic,geopoliticalandculturalhegemonies.Buttheyarenotexclusivelyso(asIhavetriedtounderline);theyalsoreflectlocalhegemonies(class,
patriarchal,institutional).Moreover,itisbecausepowercirculatesthatwe,Western(ised)elitesandintellectuals,areimplicated
inempire.Forexample,astheearlierdiscussionon'transference'emphasised,ourdevelopmentworkispsychicallyand
politicallyconditioned,sothatwe,too,develop,amendandtransferourinterestsanddesiresinaccordancewithpd
'
knowledge/powerregime.Thisiswhyitistooeasyandconvenienttoblamecontemporaryempirebuildingontransnationalcorporationsorthe
Bush/Blairadministrationsalone;thelattermaywellbemorepowerfullycomplicitous,butthisisnoreasonforustoclaiminnocenceorneutrality.
Empirebuilding,inthissense,maywellbeabroadlyculturalsignofthetimes,implicatingthe'noble'asmuchasthe'ignoble','participation'asmuchas
'trade','citizens'asmuchas'leaders'.Andthisisalsowhydismantlingempire,ifitistohappen,musttakeplaceatsomanylevelssimultaneously
(personalstructural,localglobal,socialinstitutional,NorthSouth,etc),apointIshalltakeupfurtherbelow.Afinalimplicationisthatpd
perpetuatesthetreatmentoftheThirdWorldasobjectandresource.IfempowermentcentresnotontheOtherbutonour
owndesiretobeseenasbenevolent,thenThirdWorldcommunitiesareineffectregardedaspawns.Ifparticipationisa
conduitfortransferenceofourpoliticoculturalidealsandfrustrations,thentheThirdWorldbecomesadisposalsite,inthe
waythatitalreadyactsasadumpinggroundfortoxicwasteorhazardousmultinationalcorporateproducts(egmilk
substitutes,contraceptiveimplants).Andifpd
enablesthecollectionofinformationor'fielddata'forourresearchand
disciplinary/managerialneeds,thentheThirdWorldismadeintobothresourceandlaboratory.Spivakargues,inthis
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'
(1990:96)
140
Derrida 94, director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1994 [Jacques, Specters of
Marx, p. 84-86]
Let us return now to the immediate vicinity of the subject of our conference. My subtitle, "the New International," refers to
a profound transformation, projected over a long term, of international law, of its concepts, and its field of intervention. Just
as the concept of human rights has slowly been determined over the course of centuries through many socio-political
upheavals (whether it be a matter of the right to work or economic rights, of the rights of women and children, and so
forth), likewise international law should extend and diversify its field to include, if at least it is to be consistent with the
idea of democracy and of human rights it proclaims, the worldwide economic and social field, beyond the sovereignty of
States and of the phantom-States we mentioned a moment ago. Despite appearances, what we are saying here is not simply
anti-statist: in given and limited conditions, the super-State, which might be an international institution, may always be able
to limit the appropriations and the violence of certain private socio-economic forces. But without necessarily subscribing to
the whole Marxist discourse (which, moreover, is complex, evolving, heterogeneous) on the State and its appropriation by a
dominant class, on the distinction between State power and State apparatus, on the end of the political, on "the end of
politics," or on the withering away of the State, and, on the other hand, without suspecting the juridical idea in itself, one
may still find inspiration in the Marxist "spirit" to criticize the presumed autonomy of the juridical and to denounce
endlessly the de facto take-over of international authorities by powerful Nation-States, by concentrations of technoscientific capital, symbolic capital, and financial capital, of State capital and private capital. A "new international" is being
sought through these crises of international law ; it already denounces the limits of a discourse on human rights that will
remain inadequate, sometimes hypocritical and in any case formalistic and inconsistent with itself as long as the law of the
market, the "foreign debt," the inequality of techno-scientific, military, and economic development maintain an effective
inequality as monstrous as that which prevails today, to a greater extent than ever in the history of humanity. For it must be
cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelize in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has
finally realized itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic
oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the
ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the "end
of ideologies" and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made
up of innumerable singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute
figures, never have so many men, women, and children been subjugated, starved, or exterminated on the earth . (And
provisionally, but with regret, we must leave aside here the nevertheless indissociable question of what is becoming of socalled "animal" life, the life and existence of "animals" in this history-This-question-has always been a serious one, but it
will become massively unavoidable.
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institutions would not dwell on their inherent pathology. We can expect nothing less of the corporate media. I shall argue that we face what I refer to as
"Russell's problem": are Homo sapiens an intelligent maladaptive organism doomed to self extinction? There exists good reason to suppose that a
maladaptive, intelligent, organism would indeed cause its own extinction simply because of the destructive potential of intelligence. This is one of the
farces of many science fiction stories, such as Star Trek, which posit the existence of hideous innately war like but highly intelligent species. This is not a
productive mix; surely any advanced species, in order to reach such heights as inter-galactic travel, would need to be a species that places a premium on
cooperation and solidarity. An avaricious intelligent species would only over time succeed in destroying itself and much of the ecological basis for the
consequence of its internal nature. I shall focus in this essay on nuclear war, the most immediate threat. In doing so we will come to appreciate the nexus
US nuclear forces, Admiral Mies, stated that nuclear ballistic missile submarines would be able to "move undetected to any launch point" threatening "any
What lies at the heart of such a policy is the desire to maintain global strategic superiority what is
known as "full spectrum dominance" previously referred to as "escalation dominance". Full spectrum dominance means
spot on Earth".
that the US would be able to wage and win any type of war ranging from a small scale contingency to general nuclear war. Strategic nuclear superiority is
to be used to threaten other states so that they toe the party line. The Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review stipulated that nuclear weapons are
needed in case of "surprising military developments" not necessarily limited to chemical or biological weapons. The Clinton administration was more
explicit stating in its 2001 Pentagon report to Congress that US nuclear forces are to "hedge against defeat of conventional forces in defense of vital
interests". The passage makes clear that this statement is not limited to chemical or biological weapons. We have just seen in Iraq what is meant by the
phrase "defense of vital interests". Washington is asserting that if any nation were to have the temerity to successfully defend itself against US invasion,
armed with conventional weapons only, then instant annihilation awaits. "What we say goes" or you go is the message being conveyed. Hitler no doubt
would have had a similar conception of "deterrence". It should be stressed that this is a message offered to the whole world after all it is now a target rich
environment. During the cold war the US twice contemplated using nuclear weapons in such a fashion both in Vietnam, the first at Dien Bien Phu and
during Nixon administration planning for "operation duck hook". In both cases the main impediments to US action were the notion that nuclear weapons
were not politically "useable" in such a context and because of the Soviet deterrent. The Soviet deterrent is no more and the US currently is hotly pursuing
the development of nuclear weapons that its designers believe will be "useable" what the Clinton administration referred to as low yield earth penetrating
development of the RNEP draws us closer to the prospect of nuclear war, including accidental nuclear war, because lower yields will lower the barrier
between conventional and nuclear war. There
will exist no real escalatory firewall between these two forms of warfare
which means that in any conventional crisis involving nuclear powers, there will exist a strong incentive to
strike first. A relationship very similar to the interaction between the mobilisation schedules of the great powers prior to 1914. There exist strong
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One may well ask what has all this to do with state capitalism? Consider the
thinking behind the militarisation of space, outlined for us by Space Command; historically military forces have evolved
to protect national interests and investments both military and economic. During the rise of sea commerce, nations built
navies to protect and enhance their commercial interests. During the westward expansion of the continental United States,
military outposts and the cavalry emerged to protect our wagon trains, settlements and roads. The document
goes on, the emergence of space power follows both of these models. Moreover, the globalization of the
world economy will continue, with a widening between haves and have nots. The demands of unilateral
strategic superiority, long standing US policy known as "escalation" or "full spectrum" dominance, compel
Washington to pursue space control". This means that, according to a report written under the chairmanship of Donald Rumsfeld, "in the
destruction proliferation and US foreign policy.
coming period the US will conduct operations to, from, in and through space" which includes "power projection in, from and through space". Toward this
had early warning satellites placed in specialised orbits which could be relied upon to provide real time imagery of nuclear missile launch sites.
However the militarisation of space now means that these satellites will become open game; the benign
environment in space will disappear if the militarisation of space continues. Thus if the US were to "conduct operations to,
from in and through space" it will do see remotely. Technical failure may result in the system attacking Russian early warning
satellites. Without question this would be perceived by the Russian's as the first shot in a US nuclear first strike.
Consider for instance a curious event that occurred in 1995. A NASA research rocket, part of a study of the northern lights, was fired over Norway. The
rocket was perceived by the Russian early warning system as the spear of a US first strike. The Russian system then began a countdown to full scale
nuclear response; it takes only a single rocket to achieve this effect because it was no doubt perceived by Russian planners that this
single rocket was meant to disable their command and control system as a result of electromagnetic pulse effects. To prevent the loss of all nuclear forces
in a subsequent follow on strike the Russian's would need to launch a full scale response as soon as possible. Because the US itself has a hair trigger
launch on warning posture a Russian attack would be followed by a full scale US attack; the US has a number of "reserve options" in its war plans, thus
such an accidental launch could trigger a global chain of nuclear release around the globe. Calamity was averted in 1995 because Russia's early warning
satellites would have demonstrated that there was no launch of US nuclear forces. If these satellites were to be taken out then this ultimate guarantee
disappears; the Russian ground based radar system has a number of key holes that prevent it from warning of an attack through two key corridors, one
from the Atlantic the other from the Pacific. In the future if an event such as 1995 were to occur in space the Russians no longer would have the level of
comfort provided by its space based assets.
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Andafreemarketsystemenablesthemostpowerfulfewtotakeallthebusinessopportunities,and
thustodrivealltheothersintobankruptcy.Themost"efficient"firmcanundercutthepricesofthe
others,drivethemoutofthefield,andhaveallthesalestoitself.Yesthisminimisessellingprices
butthenetsocialbenefitincludesthehugecostofmanylittlepeoplenownothavingasourceof
income.IntheThirdWorldespeciallymillionsofpeoplearebeingdeprivedofthesalesandincome
theyoncehadbecausegovernmentsfollowingfreemarketprinciplesarelettinggianttransnational
corporationscomeinandtakethatbusiness.Thustheneoliberalagendaisenablingafewalready
extremelyrichcorporationstogetevenricherbytakingthebusinessesandlivlihoodsmanypoor
peopledesperatelyneed.Themarketisthemechanismthathasdevelopedtheworldintheinterests
oftherichcountriesandespeciallytheircorporateelites.Mostoftheproductivecapacityinthe
ThirdWorldnowproducesthingsthatbenefitonlythetransnationalcorporationsandpeoplewho
buycoffeeinrichworldsupermarkets,andthefewricherpeopleintheThirdWorldbecause
producingtosatisfytheirdemandisthemostprofitableaimforthosewithcapitaltoinvest.
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Inthiseconomyitwouldonlybepossibletosolvetheunemploymentproblemiftherewasahuge
increaseintheamountconsumedandthereforeintheamounttobeproducedandinthejobs
requiredforthat.Butwedonotneedanywherenearasmuchproducedaswehavenow,andpresent
levelsofproductionandconsumptionarequiteunsustainableinviewoftheresourceandecological
limitsoftheplanet.Ifweonlyproducedasmuchaswassensible,withmoderntechnologythe
unemploymentratemightbe70%!Inasatisfactoryeconomywewouldorganisetosharethe
necessaryworkamongallwhowantedit.Unemploymentrevealssomeoftheworstirrationalitiesin
thiseconomy.Inthiseconomylabouristreatedasjustanotherfactorofproduction,likebricksor
land,tobeusedinproductionaccordingtowhatwillmaximisethereturnoninvestment.Butlabour
shouldnotbetreatedasjustanothercommodity.Labourispeople.Itisalrighttoleaveabrickidle
ortoscrapit.Itisnotalrighttoleaveapersonunemployedandwithoutareasonableincome.The
faulthereisinexcludingfromeconomicdecisionsallbutmoneycostsandbenefits.Theseshould
begivenmuchlessattentionthanconsiderationsofjustice,moralityandthewelfareofpeopleand
ecosystems.Oftenweshouldkeeppeopleinjobsevenifthiswouldbeveryinefficientorcostlyin
monetaryterms.Organisingemploymentthewaywedoisobviouslyintheinterestsofemployers
notemployees.
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156
andunusualclementofgreenanticapitalismisoppositiontoeconomicgrowth
(Goldsmith1972;Porritt1984;Trainer1985).Intheearly1970s,scientistsbecame
concernedthateverincreasing
economicgrowthwoulddamagetheenvironment(Meadows1974).Theideathathumansocietiesshouldproducemore
goodsandserviceseveryyearis,aswenotedinChapter1,environmentallysuspect.Scarceresourcessuchasoilwill
eventuallybeexhausted,althoughitisdifficulttocalculatewhen.Inthesearchfornewresourcesvitalecosystems
aredisrupted.Toproduce more goods, more energy has to be produced which leads to
anincreaseingreenhousegases,or,ifthenuclearrouteistaken,toproblemsofradioactivewaste.Ifweconsume
moregoodsthiscreatesjobsandenhancesprofitsbutleadstoeverlargermountains
ofrubbishthathavetobe
disposedofbydumpingorpoisonousincineration:
Themorepeopleconsume,thebetteritis.It'snotsomuchaquestionof
consumerdurablesasofdurableconsumers.And in order to achieve this, consumers must be manipulated into the
smoothest possible cycle of acquisition and disposal, into a uniform, superficial understanding of personal and social
requirements. Consumption becomes an end in itself. Even when the market reaches saturation, the process doesn't
stop; for the only way to beat a glut is to turn everybody into gluttons. (Porritt 1984: 47)
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(PetersonandLewis1999).Womeneitherworkforfreeinthehomeorincreasingly
aslowpaid,parttimeand
poorlyprotectedworkersintheformaleconomy(Malos1980).DrawinguponboththeFrankfurtSchooland
feminism,greenmovementshavecrystallisedduringthelast
quarterofthetwentiethcenturytoarguethata
societyfocusedonmarketeconomicsdiminisheshumanbeingsandmanipulatesspiritualandsocialneedsinto
formsofconsumerism(Snyder1974).Greenshaveattackedcapitalism,aboveall,becauseofitsemphasison
economic
growth,whichtheyhaveseenasecologicallyunsustainable(Douthwaite1993;Porritt1984).
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Transcending Business as Usual Most climate scientists, including Lovelock and Hansen, follow the IPCC in basing their main projections of global warming on a socioecnomic scenario described as
The dire trends indicated are predicated on our fundamental economic and technological
developments and our basic relation to nature remaining the same . The question we need to ask then is what actually is business as usual? What can be
changed and how fast? With time running out the implication is that it is necessary to alter business as usual in radical ways in order to stave off or lessen catastrophe. Yet, the dominant
solutionsthose associated with the dominant ideology, i.e., the ideology of the dominant classemphasize
minimal changes in business as usual that will somehow get us off the hook. After being directed to the growing
planetary threats of global warming and species extinction we are told that the answer is better gas mileage and
better emissions standards, the introduction of hydrogen-powered cars, the capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide emitted in the atmosphere, improved
conservation, and voluntary cutbacks in consumption. Environmental political scientists specialize in the
construction of new environmental policy regimes, embodying state and market regulations. Environmental
economists talk of tradable pollution permits and the incorporation of all environmental factors into the market to ensure their efficient use. Some environmental
sociologists (my own field) speak of ecological modernization: a whole panoply of green taxes, green regulations, and new green technologies, even the greening of
capitalism itself. Futurists describe a new technological world in which the weight of nations on the earth is miraculously lifted as a result of digital dematerialization
of the economy. In all of these views, however, there is one constant: the fundamental character of business as usual is
hardly changed at all. Indeed, what all such analyses intentionally avoid is the fact that business as usual in our
society in any fundamental sense means the capitalist economyan economy run on the logic of profit and
accumulation. Moreover, there is little acknowledgement or even appreciation of the fact that the Hobbesian war of all against all that
characterizes capitalism requires for its fulfillment a universal war on nature . In this sense new technology
cannot solve the problem since it is inevitably used to further the class war and to increase the scale of the
economy, and thus the degradation of the environment. Whenever production dies down or social resistance
imposes barriers on the expansion of capital the answer is always to find new ways to exploit/degrade nature
more intensively. To quote Pontecorvos Burn!, that is the logic of profit....One builds to make money and to go on making it or to make more sometimes it is necessary to destroy. Ironically,
business as usual.
this destructive relation of capitalism to the environment was probably understood better in the nineteenth centuryat a time when social analysts were acutely aware of the issue of revolutionary changes
taking place in the mode of production and how this was transforming the human relation to nature. As a result, environmental sociologists of the more radical stamp in the United States, where the
contradiction between economy and ecology nowadays is especially acute, draw heavily on three interrelated ideas derived from Marx and the critique of capitalist political economy dating back to the
159
interaction between nature and society under capitalism.14 I shall concentrate on the third of these notions, the metabolic rift, since this is the most complex of these three socio-ecological concepts, and the
one that has been the focus of my own research in this area, particularly in my book Marxs Ecology. Marx was greatly influenced by the work of the leading agricultural chemist of his time, Justus von
catacombs of Europe for bones with which to fertilize the soil of the English countryside. They also resorted to the importation of guano on a vast scale from the islands off the coast of Peru, followed by the
importation of Chilean nitrates (after the War of the Pacific in which Chile seized parts of Peru and Bolivia rich in guano and nitrates). The United States sent out ships throughout the oceans searching for
guano, and ended up seizing ninety-four islands, rocks, and keys between the passage of the 1856 Guano Islands Act and 1903, sixty-six of which were officially recognized as U.S. appurtenances and nine
of which remain U.S. possessions today.15 This reflected a great crisis of capitalist agriculture in the nineteenth century that was only solved in part with the development of synthetic fertilizer nitrogen early
in the twentieth centuryand which led eventually to the overuse of fertilizer nitrogen, itself a major environmental problem. In reflecting on this crisis of capitalist agriculture, Marx adopted the concept of
metabolism, which had been introduced by nineteenth-century biologists and chemists, including Liebig, and applied it to socio-ecological relations.
Organisms carry out an exchange of energy and matter with their environment, which are integrated with
in fact been applied by environmental sociologists in recent years to problems such as global warming and the ecological degradation of the worlds oceans.16 What is seldom recognized, however, is that
Marx went immediately from a conception of the metabolic rift to the necessity of metabolic restoration, arguing
that by destroying the circumstances surrounding that metabolism, which originated in a merely natural and
spontaneous fashion, it [capitalist production] compels its systematic restoration as a regulative law of social
reproduction. The reality of the metabolic rift pointed to the necessity of the restoration of nature, through
sustainable production. It is this dialectical understanding of the socio-ecological problem that led Marx to what is perhaps the most radical conception of socio-ecological sustainability
ever developed. Thus he wrote in Capital: From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of
individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an
entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth. They
are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding
generations, as boni patres familias [good heads of the household]. For Marx, in other words, the present relation of human beings to the
earth under private accumulation could be compared to slavery. Just as private property of one man in other
men is no longer deemed acceptable, so private ownership of the earth/nature by human beings (even whole
countries) must be transcended. The human relation to nature must be regulated so to guarantee its existence in an improved state to succeeding generations. His reference to the
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Revolution and Metabolic Restoration Pontecorvos film Burn! about revolution in the Caribbean reaches its climax in the year 1848, a revolutionary year in real-world history. In 1848 Marx famously
observed in his speech on free trade: You believe perhaps, gentlemen, that the production of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the West Indies. Two centuries ago, nature, which does not trouble
an island; it stands for the entire world, which is heating up before our eyes. At the end of Pontecorvos film Jos Dolores is killed, but his revolutionary spirit lives on. The strategy of destroying nature to
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transition from
danger to risk can be related to the process of the weakening of the state. In risk society what is missing is an authority
that can symbolise what goes wrong. Risk is, in other words, the danger that cannot be symbolised (Diken and Laustsen
(2004: 11; see also iek 1999b: 322-347); that what has no name. Politicisation, then, is to make things enter the
parliament of politics (see Latour, 2004), but the post-democratic condition does so in a consensual conversation in tune
with the post-political evacuation of real antagonism. The environmental apocalypse in the making puts the state on the spot
(cfr. BSE, avian flue, climate change), yet exposes the impotence of the state to solve or divert the risk, and undermines
the citizens sense of security guaranteed by the state. It is these side-effects identified by Ulrich Beck (such as, for
example, the accumulation of CO2) that are becoming the key arenas around which political configuration and action
crystallise, and of course, (global) environmental problems are the classic example of such effects, unwittingly produced by
modernization itself, but now requiring second reflexive modernization to deal with. The old left/right collective politics
that were allegedly generated from within the social relations that constituted modernity are no longer, if they ever were,
valid or performative. This, of course, also means that the traditional theatres of politics (state, parliament, parties, etc)
are not any longer the exclusive terrain of the political: the political constellation of industrial society is becoming
unpolitical, while what was unpolitical in industrialism is becoming politicals (Beck, 1994: 18). It is exactly the sideeffects (the risks) of modernising globalisation that need management, that require politicization. A new form of politics
(what Rancire, iek, and Mouffe exactly define as post-politics) thus arises, what Beck calls sub-politics:
(characteristic of pre-modern and modern societies) and risk (the central aspect of late modern risk society) refers to technological change. However, the
Sub-politics is distinguished from politics in that (a) agents outside the political or corporatist system are allowed also to appear on the stage of social design (this group
includes professional and occupational groups, the technical intelligentsia in companies, research institutions and management, skilled workers, citizens initiatives, the public
sphere and so on), and (b) not only social and collective agents but individuals as well compete with the latter and each other for the emerging power to shape politics (Beck,
1994: 22). Chantal Mouffe (2005: 40-41) summarizes Becks prophetic vision of a new democracy as follows: In
Protocol; the Dublin Statement, the Rio Summit, etc.). These new global forms of governance are expressive of the post-political configuration (Mouffe, 2005: 103):
Governance entails an explicit reference to mechanisms or organized and coordinated activities appropriate to the solution of some specific problems. Unlike government,
governance refers to policies rather than politics because it is not a binding decision-making structure. Its recipients are not the people as collective political subject, but the
population that can be affected by global issues such as the environment, migration, or the use of natural resources (Urbinati, 2003: 80).
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Seattle is a model
Chris Harman, Marxist, 2001 (ANTI-CAPITALISM: THEORY AND PRACTICE,
http://www.marxists.de/anticap/theprax/part2.htm) (PDOCSS2307)
For many activists at Seattle the way forward was still seen as one of putting pressure on existing governments.
So William Greider puts a lot of emphasis on legal reforms to make multinationals more accountable, and argues
for "reform legislation, both at state and national level".
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bourgeois who, as a guard in a concentration camp, tortured Jews, also, accomplish what was considered impossible, in his previous decent existence and acknowledge his passionate attachment to
It is here that the notion of traversing the fantasy, and - on a different level - of transforming the
constellation that generates social symptoms becomes crucial. An authentic act disturbs the underlying fantasy,
attacking it from the point of `social symptom' (let us recall that Lacan attributed the invention of the notion of symptom to Marx!). The so-called
`Nazi revolution', with its disavowal/displacement of the fundamental social antagonism ('class struggle' that divides the social
edifice from within) - with its projection/externalization of the cause of social antagonisms into the figure of the Jew, and the consequent
reassertion of the corporatist notion of society as an organic Whole - clearly avoids confrontation with social.
antagonism; the Nazi revolution is the exemplary case of a pseudo-change, of a frenetic activity in the course
of which many things did change something was going on al1 the time - so that, precisely, something.- that
which really matters - would not change; so that things would fundamentally 'remain the same' In short, an
authentic act is not simply external with regard to the hegemonic symbolic field disturbed by it: an act is an act
only with regard to some symbolic field, as intervention into it. That is to say: a symbolic field is always and by definition in itself 'decentred', structured
sadistic torture?
around a central void/impossibility (a personal life-narrative, say, is a bricolage of ultimately failed attempts to come to terms with some trauma; a social edifice is an ultimately failed attempt to
an act disturbs the symbolic field into which it intervenes not out of nowhere, but
precisely from the standpoint of this inherent impossibility, stumbling block, which is its hidden, disavowed
structuring principle. In contrast to this authentic act which intervenes in the constitutive void, point of failure or what Alain Badiou has called the 'symptomal torsion of a given constellation - the inauthentic act legitimizes
itself through reference to the point of substantial fullness of a given contellation (on the political terrain: Race, True Religion, Nation...):
it aims precisely at obliterating the last traces of the 'symptomal torsion' which disturbs the balance of that
constellation. One palpable political consequence of this notion of the act that has to intervene at the `symptomal torsion' of the structure (and also a proof that our position does not involve
displace/obfuscate its constitutive antagonism); and
`economic essentialism') is that in each concrete constellation there is one touchv nodal point of contention which decides where one 'truly stands'. For example, in the recent struggle of the so-called
`democratic opposition' in Serbia against the Milosevic regime, the truly touchy topic is the stance towards the Albanian majority in Kosovo: the great majority of the `democratic opposition' unconditionally
endorse Milosevics anti-Albanian nationalist agenda, even accusing him of making compromises with the West and `betraying' Serb national interests in Kosovo. In the course of the student demonstrations
against Milosevic's Socialist Party falsification of the election results in the winter of 1996, the Western media which closely followed events, and praised the revived democratic spirit in Serbia, rarely
mentioned the fact that one of the demonstrators' regular slogans against the special police was `Instead of kicking us, go to Kosovo and kick out the Albanians!'. So - and this is my point - it is theoretically
as well as politically wrong to claim that, in today's Serbia, 'anti-Albanian nationalism' is simply one among the `floating signifiers' that can be appropriated either by Milosevic's power bloc or by the
opposition: the moment one endorses it, no matter how much one 'reinscribes it into the democratic chain of equivalences', one already accepts the terrain as defined by Milosevic, one - as it were - is already
`playing his game'. In today's Serbia, the absolute sine qua non of an authentic political act would thus be to reject absolutely the ideologico-political topos of the Albanian threat in Kosovo.
Psychoanalysis is aware of a whole series of `false acts': psychotic-paranoiac violent passage a l'acte, hysterical
acting out, obsessional self-hindering, perverse self-instrumentalization all these acts are not simply wrong
according to some external standards, they are immanently wrong since they can be properly grasped only as
reactions to some disavowed trauma that they displace , repress, and so on. What we are tempted to say is that the Nazi
anti-Semitic violence was `false' in the same way: all the shattering impact of this large-scale frenetic activity
was fundamentally `misdirected', it was a kind of gigantic passage a l'acte betraying an inability to confront the real kernel of the
trauma (the social antagonism) . So what we are claiming is that anti-Semitic violence, say, is not only `factually wrong' (Jews are `not really like that', exploiting us and organizing a
universal plot) and/or morally wrong (unacceptable in terms of elementary standards of decency, etc.), but also `untrue in the sense of an inauthenticity which is simultaneously epistemological and ethical,
just as an obsessional who reacts to his
[sic] disavowed sexual fixations by engaging in compulsive defence rituals acts in an inauthentic way. Lacan claimed that even if the
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life" that pertain within a particular social setting but can only describe the conditions under which the social actors may together agree on these elements in a rational manner. 72 In this respect,
Habermas follows Freud's insight that a theoretical reconstruction points the way not to resolutions of particular problems facing
the patient, but rather to an understanding of the conditions under which an individual obtains the autonomy to
handle life's demands in a rational manner . The theoretically-guided role of the analyst (critical theorist) is not to
tell the patient (society) how to live her life (organize itself), but instead to work from universal idealizations
to identify and eradicate distortions that prevent the patient (society) from exercising her autonomy to
make rational, rather than pathological, life choices. Although Habermas does not expressly invoke his psychoanalytic model of critical theory in support of
his philosophy of communicative reason, he returns to the model to explain the crucial difference between the simple manipulation of dialogue by one communication partner and
the unconscious, mutual deception that occurs in systematically distorted communication . 73 Similarly, Habermas
reiterates his critique of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics for its inability to underwrite a critical perspective on received traditions, arguing that a hermeneutical exegesis cannot be rational under
conditions of systematically distorted communication. 74 It seems clear that the theory of communicative [*324] rationality plays the role in Habermas's critical theory that Freud's theories of ego
development and neuroses played in his psychoanalytic practice. The theory of communicative rationality invests the seemingly artful and individual practice of social critique with the authority of
theoretical knowledge, even if Habermas's proceduralist approach remains quite subdued when compared with Freud's claims. Admittedly, Habermas's revised approach implicitly concedes much to the force
of Gadamer's critique. Even after his sharp criticism of Freud's theoretical overreaching, Habermas's psychoanalytic model accorded a unique role to critical theory in unmasking the distorting effects of
social organization. In contrast, Habermas's theory of communicative action looks within the practical experience of dialogue to locate the quasi-transcendental, regulative ideal that grounds the critical
enterprise. The critical impulse becomes one of clarification and extension in Habermas's recent writings, since the critical standards upon which he draws are always already instantiated in intersubjective
practices and, in fact, have served as the foundation of the modernist expansion of rationality. 75 Critical theory works from within rationality, one might say, to identify social deformations against the
internal standards of rationality itself. 76 Despite Habermas's reversion to the priority of practice, Paul Fairfield has correctly argued that
precisely the problems that he diagnosed in Freud's metapsycholog y. By adopting Kohlberg's developmental stages of moral reasoning,
Habermas participates in the "myth of the expert, the social critic "in the know' whose standpoint within the
"conversation that we are' is to be awarded a position of privilege. " 77 Fairfield persuasively [*325] demonstrates that Habermas's initial
attention to the dialogic encounter of psychoanalytic practice remains overshadowed by his desire to establish a
properly theoretical role for the social analyst, "whose self-appointed task is not to persuade but to "diagnose,'
not to submit interpretations to one's interlocutors but to "enlighten' and "explain,' not to listen to the claims of
others but to "score' their judgments" on a developmental scale. 78 The critic does not seek mutual understanding, but instead first discovers universal
criteria in the very use of language. The critic lays claim to expert knowledge about the existence of systematically distorted communication that must be eradicated before
ordinary conversation among citizens may proceed in a rationally justified manner. Habermas recently has extended the discourse principle of his moral philosophy to the pragmatic arena of law and politics,
thereby providing a striking contextual example of his approach to critical theory that clearly reveals the continuing tensions in his psychoanalytic model. Habermas argues that the conflict between the
empirical features of legal institutions and the normative requirement that lawmaking processes be legitimate imposes a heavy burden on legal systems. He regards the historical development of the modern
constitutional state as a series of attempts to bear this burden successfully. 79 Criticizing a wide range of philosophers who have suppressed either the factual or normative aspects of legality, Habermas
insists that the task of political theory is to synthesize the sociology of legal power and the philosophy of legal legitimacy. By grounding legal rationality in the universal discourse principle that is
presupposed by communicative action, Habermas argues that he is uncovering universal critical standards, albeit standards that regulate only the procedures of employing social reason. Unlike the classical
form of practical reason, communicative reason is not an immediate source of prescriptions. It has a normative content only insofar as the communicatively acting individuals must commit themselves to
pragmatic presuppositions of a counterfactual sort. That is, they must undertake certain idealizations... [and] are thus subject to the "must" of a weak transcendental necessity, but this does not mean they
already encounter the prescriptive "must" of a rule of action...Communicative reason thus makes an orientation to validity [*326] claims possible, but it does not itself supply any substantive orientation for
managing practical tasks - it is neither informative nor immediately practical. [Nevertheless] the concept of communicative reason... offers a guide for reconstructing the network of discourses that, aimed at
forming opinions and preparing decisions, provides the matrix from which democratic authority emerges. [This reconstruction would provide] a critical standard, against which actual practices - the opaque
and perplexing reality of the constitutional state - could be evaluated. 8 Habermas's conception of critique clearly accords with the psychoanalytic model that he developed thirty years earlier. He begins with
theoretical insights into the universal characteristics of reason and works toward concrete claims about the shape of reason in modern constitutional democracies as a standard for judging current practices.
Yet he does not presume that his theory can deliver the correct answers to specific political questions. He is content to leave the substance of social policy-making to democratic resolution, but only after the
procedural requirements of rationality that the philosopher identifies have been institutionally realized. 8 The irony in Habermas's approach is clear. The philosopher delivers theoretical knowledge about the
general features of the democratic constitutional state without need for conferences with his fellow citizens. Recognizing the tension between facts and norms in modern society is a matter of historical
reconstruction and the elucidation of the principles of communicative rationality. The philosopher's power is limited, however, to a rather thin conception of rationality, with the "good life" to be defined and
pursued only in the actual coordination of life plans by the members of society. Nevertheless, these actual communicative exchanges are adjudged rational only by virtue of a philosophical inquiry into
procedural prerequisites by the expert critic who stands outside these exchanges in his role as critic. While far more subtle and less hubristic than Freud's metapsychology, Habermas's philosophy of
communicative rationality plays the same role as a regulative theoretical truth. In his [*327] recent work, then, Habermas has attempted to make good on his earlier intuition that the "structural model which
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account of the 'uses' of the counter-transference in object-relations theories and praxes. That is not to say that Lacan did not develop a thorough-going rethinking of the concept of the object as understood in
object-relations theories and practices. He did so in the correspondence he maintained with Donald Winnicott with whom he had a friendship of many years. Indeed, they exchanged some 70 to 100 letters,
as well as visits for lectures. Although Lacan discussed object-relations theories and the uses made of various concepts of 'the object' in the counter-transference throughout his work-a thinking that is
incipient in his discussions with Winnicott-, it is elaborated in the greatest depth in his two major Seminars on 'the object': Le seminair, livre IV: La relation d'objet (On the object relation [1956-1957]) and
in Le seminair, livre XIII: L'objet de la psychanalyse (On the object of psychoanalysis [1966-1967]). However, the focus of my article here is on Lacan's view of the practice of ego psychology, not his
The Lacanian analyst , on the other hand, places himself or herself in the difficult
position of encouraging a "negative" transference in order that an analysand become acquainted with his or
her own unconscious structure, and name her or his own Desire. Lacan's model goes in the opposite direction of the ego-psychology paradigm.
American neo-Freudians use the reality of transference love to help the patient make over his ego based on the
doctor's supposedly healthy, reality ego. A Lacanian model would argue that transference love blocks
unconscious truth and leaves the analysand the slave of the Other's Desire. The Lacanian analyst, therefore, presumes to inscribe
himself or herself in the action of the transference with the goal of helping the analysand to see her own ego as an object, enslaved to the Desire and language of the Other. For the
analysand's suffering does, indeed, come from living in a state of unconscious subjugation and alienation .
But as long as the analyst literally takes a patient's transference --positive or negative--to be aimed at her and believe
she or he is supposed to respond to the hysteric's demand for love, the obsessional's search for answers, or serve
as a stand-in for better parents, the analysand will remain imprisoned. Lacan's campaign against ego psychology manifests itself throughout
his thought. He naturally opposed the idea that there is a whole self that serves as an agent of strength, synthesis, mastery ,
integration, and adaptation to realistic norms. Lacan perceived partisan analysts pushing analysands toward an ideal of health
which merely defined group norms. In his early essays, indeed, he accused the psychoanalytic establishment of having rendered Freud's revolutionary discoveries banal. By
theories concerning 'the object' or object-relations theories and practices. 1
prizing technique above the meaning of the unconscious, such analysts believed that Freud's rules themselves provided direct access to truth. But since these rules had evolved into a ceremonial formalism,
any questioning of the neo-Freudian canon amounted to heresy. Lacan alleges that Freud's miraculous structures have, therefore, been reduced to the nonconceptual, nonintellectual conformism of social
suggestion and psychological superstition (Sheridan, Ecrits, p. 39). Lacan's particular aversion to psychoanalytic practice in the United States can be partly attributed to cultural differences in intellectual
formation. Whereas pragmatism and empiricism have long reigned supreme in Anglo-American investigation, the French academy has given primacy to theoretical conceptualization from at least the time of
Descartes. It is not Lacan's concern to thrash out the relative merits of induction or deduction. Nor can Lacan's epistemology be reduced to a deductive methodology. But while his "empirical" data are not
those of quanitifiable studies, they are certainly "scientific": those of Jacques Monod's biological theories on perception; mathematical symbolism; ethnological realities; animal behavior; the Real of psychic
pain. In a sense, the criticism that Lacan has aimed at the American establishment should be more correctly aimed at nineteenth-century Austria, where psychoanalysis was born, or at England whither it fled
during World War II. Freud himself contributed to the image of the analyst as an objective, scientific observer who regarded the patient's behavior as an object of study outside the analyst. One might even
call Freud's "scientism" an Anglo-Austrian neopositivism in the wake of Darwinian evolutionary materialism. Freud, like his daughter Anna after him, increasingly stressed the defensive, synthesizing, and
adaptive functions of the ego. Lacan has not, however, attacked Freud's implicit Darwinianism so much as the general Anglo-American belief in the possibility of an objectifiable reality ego. Lacan has
unflaggingly insisted that the human subject is neither unified nor unifiable. But because Lacan delimits consciousness and makes consciousness and language themselves defenses against unconscious
meaning, he is not generally understood by ego psychologists who place defenses in the ego itself. The Lacanian subject (je/moi) is not unified in consciousness. The ego or moi, however, is intrinsically
unified-except in dreams, psychosis, and other unraveling manifestations-and projects itself into consciousness as the principle of individuality. But because it emanates from the unconscious and yet must
continually verify itself through the very means of its occultation-consciousness and language-the moi cannot "see" itself as it really is. This is quite a different theory from the popular misconception that the
The idea that the ego is whole has led psychoanalysts to analyze what they call
"unconscious defenses" in terms of the conscious ego's typical patterns. Partisan analysts then apply their own
conceptions of health in an attempt to remodel the patient's defenses. Lacan calls this a surface approach,
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Lacanian "subject" is in a state of permanent fragmentation.
emotions that hide behind the intellect. For Lacan, frustration forms but the tip of the analytic iceberg, and he is intrigued by the metaphysical plight that makes frustration such a telling response. Analysts
know how to induce it, he says, and how to link it to anxiety, aggression, and regression, but they cannot explain its source except as an empirical description of a function. Lacan's explanation of frustration
has placed psychoanalysis in the category of the Ur-human science and undermined the illusion that the world is divided into normal and pathological people. Frustration initially arises from the dialectical
presence of the moi versus the Other(A) and the je's efforts to deny or convey such "knowledge," although the conflict is always replayed via others. For this reason, Lacan does not see how analysis can
proceed toward truth unless aggressiveness is first aimed at the analyst (qua other), so that it can be returned to its source in the Other(A). Aggressiveness, therefore, is the first knot in the analytic drama.
The Lacanian analyst uses the transference phenomenon as a way to get the patient to talk about the analyst, so that the moi can be seen in projection and eventually relocated within the Other's Desire on the
Imaginary axis wherein varied unconscious components of the Ideal ego are reflected in relations with, and choices of, ego ideals (others). Lacan never disagreed with Freud's basic discoveries regarding the
unconscious. For example, he fully concurred that without transference there could be no psychoanalysis. Certain psychoanalysts have misconstrued Lacan's innovations here. For example, Francois
Roustang misinterprets Lacan's statements regarding the liquidation of a transference in analysis (Seminair XI, p. 267). Roustang's interpretation confuses the idea of liquidating transference with Lacan's
play on the concept of the sujet suppos savoir. Lacan argued that the analyst should aim to maintain a rather continuous transference with the goal of liquidating the analysand's Imaginary projections; that is
the narcissistic bond that elevate moi fantasies over any knowledge of the Real of unconscious truth. By enabling the analysand to see that the transference with the analyst was based on fiction and illusion,
Lacan hoped to teach that the Real transference was the intrasubjective exchange between the analysand's own moi and Other(A) and the je and the Other(A). What is to be liquidated or vaporized, then, is
not transference as a phenomenon, nor the unconscious, but the presupposition of a unified relationship bctween analyst and analysand. By clinging to an Imaginary identification with the analyst, the
analysand remains blocked by the other from hearing the knowledge contained in the Other(A). When the analyst's actual personhood begins to be grasped because moi fantasies are broken up, a paradox
occurs. The subject is no longer subject to illusion, but for that moment has assumed knowledge of his or her unconscious, has assumed subjectivity. By revealing various pitfalls in transference, not the least
of which is the analyst's satisfaction at being recognized, Lacan demonstrated how transference could be used to lead both analyst and analysand beyond narcissistic fixations, aiming the analysand toward
knowledge of his or her Desire, and away from the personhood of the analyst. Identification with the analyst can never be a final goal, then, since any life is an ever-moving, endlessly unfolding Desire and
Law epic (Seminair XI, p. 133). The analysis forms one fixed moment in the dialectical writing of the analysand's potential life story. In this way psychoanalysis is an apprenticeship in freedom won
through locating the roots of the moi and je in an-Other's Desire (Seminair XI, pp. 108-09). The end of analysis has been described as death's death, which is paid for with a de-being but offers the freedom
the standard neo-Freudian transference (Ubertrgung) goes in the opposite direction and
works by the law of misrecognition (mconnaissance). In such a situation analysands think they are talking directly
to the analyst about them- "selves" and solving problems once and for all. In fact, they are merely
rephrasing the identity question to yet one more substitute other. Insofar as people take their perceptions
to be objective and true, most analysands miss the circular subjectivity of their seemingly linear quest. In
to live (Schneiderman, Returning, pp. 166-67). But
reality, both patient and doctor constitute each other subjectively-objectively, each according to the permanent narcissistic (moi) modes that make up their individuality (Sheridan, Ecrits, p. 225ff.). In
Seminar Eleven Lacan taught that--through transference--the analysand "acts" out of the reality of the unconscious (p. 158). In the countertransference, the analyst returns the sum of the prejudices, passions,
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Alternative -- Disengage
The true ethical act is to disengage with an unethical social structure to refuse to become the
big others instrument object
Zizek, 2007 (Slavoj, How to Read Lacan, Ch 8 The Perverse Subject of Politics)
Perhaps, the proper way to conclude this book is to mention the case of Sophia Karpai, the head of the
cardiographic unit of the Kremlin Hospital in the late 1940s. Her act, the opposite of the perverse
elevation of oneself into an instrument of the big Other, deserves to be called a proper ethical act in the
Lacanian sense. Her misfortune was that it was her job to take twice the electrocardiogram of Andrei
Zhdanov, on July 25 1948 and on July 31, days before Zhdanov's death because of a heart failure. The
first EKG, taken after Zhdanov displayed some heart troubles, was inconclusive (heart attack could be
neither confirmed nor excluded), while the second one surprisingly showed a much better picture (the
intraventricular blockage disappeared, a clear indication that there was no heart attack). In 1951, she
was arrested with the charge that, in conspiracy with other doctors treating Zhdanov, she falsified the
data, erasing the clear indications that a heart attack did occur, depriving Zhdanov of the special care
needed by a victim of heart attack. After harsh treatment, including continuous brutal beating, all other
accused doctors confessed. "Sophia Karpai, whom her boss Vinogradov had described as nothing more
than 'a typical person of the street with the morals of the petty bourgeoisie,' was kept in a refrigerated
cell without sleep to compel a confession. She did not confess." [10] The impact and significance of
her perseverance cannot be overestimated: her signature would have dotted the i on the prosecutor's
case on the "doctor's plot," immediately setting in motion the mechanism that, once rolling, would lead
to the death of hundreds of thousands, maybe even to a new European war (according to Stalin's plan,
the "doctor's plot" should have demonstrated that the Western intelligence agencies tried to murder the
top Soviet leaders, and thus served as an excuse to attack Western Europe). She persisted just long
enough for Stalin to enter his final coma, after which the entire case was immediately dismissed. Her
simple heroism was crucial in the series of details which, like grains of sand in the gears of the huge
machine that had been set in motion, prevented another catastrophe in Soviet society and politics
generally, and saved the lives of thousands, if not millions, of innocent people. This simple persistence
against all odds is ultimately the stuff ethics is made of - or, as Samuel Beckett puts it in the last words
of the absolute masterpiece of 20th Century literature, The Unnameable, a saga of the drive that
perseveres in the guise of an undead partial object: "in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I
can't go on, I'll go on.
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Alternative -- Disengage
The aff acts to avoid the underlying tension. The alternative is an ominous passivity that clears
the grounds for a true act to change our coordinates
Zizek 2007 (Slavoj, How to Read Lacan, Ch 3 The Interpassive Subject)
This interpassivity is the opposite of Hegel's notion of List der Vernunft (cunning of Reason), where I
am active through the other: I can remain passive, sitting comfortably in the background, while the
Other does it for me. Instead of hitting the metal with a hammer, the machine can do it for me, instead
of turning the mill myself, water can do it: I achieve my goal by way of interposing between me and
the object on which I work another natural object. The same can happen at the interpersonal level: instead of
directly attacking my enemy, I instigate a fight between him and another person, so that I can comfortably observe the two
of them destroying each other. (This is how, for Hegel, the absolute Idea reigns throughout history. It remains outside of the
conflict, letting human passions do the work for it in their mutual struggles. The historical necessity of the passage from
republic to empire in the ancient Rome realized itself by using as its instrument Julius Caesar's passions and ambitions.) In
the case of interpassivity, on the contrary, I am passive through the other: I concede to the other the
passive aspect (enjoying) of my experience, while I can remain actively engaged (I can continue to
work in the evening, while the VCR passively enjoys for me; I can make financial arrangements for the
deceased's fortune while the weepers mourn for me). This brings us to the notion of false activity:
people not only act in order to change something, they can also act in order to prevent something from
happening, so that nothing will change. Therein resides the typical strategy of the obsessional neurotic:
he is frantically active in order to prevent the real thing from happening. Say, in a group situation in
which some tension threatens to explode, the obsessional talks all the time in order to prevent the
awkward moment of silence which would compel the participants to openly confront the underlying
tension. In psychoanalytic treatment, obsessional neurotics talk constantly, overflowing the analyst
with anecdotes, dreams, insights: their incessant activity is sustained by the underlying fear that, if they
stop talking for a moment, the analyst will ask them the question that truly matters - in other words,
they talk in order to keep the analyst immobile. Even in much of today's progressive politics, the
danger is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to be active and to participate. People intervene all
the time, attempting to "do something," academics participate in meaningless debates; the truly
difficult thing is to step back and to withdraw from it. Those in power often prefer even a critical
participation to silence - just to engage us in a dialogue, to make it sure that our ominous passivity is
broken. Against such an interpassive mode in which we are active all the time to make sure that
nothing will really change, the first truly critical step is to withdraw into passivity and to refuse to
participate. This first step clears the ground for a true activity, for an act that will effectively change the
coordinates of the constellation.
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Alternative -- Reject
Rejecting the 1ac exposes their neuroses as virtual fantasies that are true only because of their
misguided beliefs
Zizek, 2007 (Slavoj, How to Read Lacan, Ch 2 Empty Gestures and Performatives)
In spite of all its grounding power, the big Other is fragile, insubstantial, properly virtual, in the sense
that its status is that of a subjective presupposition. It exists only insofar as subjects act as if it exists.
Its status is similar to that of an ideological cause like Communism or Nation: it is the substance of the
individuals who recognize themselves in it, the ground of their entire existence, the point of reference
which provides the ultimate horizon of meaning to their lives, something for which these individuals
are ready to give their lives, yet the only thing that really exists are these individuals and their activity,
so this substance is actual only insofar as individuals believe in it and act accordingly. It is because of
the virtual character of the big Other that, as Lacan put it at the very end of his "Seminar on the
Purloined Letter," a letter always arrives at its destination. One can even say that the only letter which
fully and effectively arrives at its destination is the unsent letter - its true addressee are not flesh-andblood others, but the big Other itself: The preservation of the unsent letter is its arresting feature.
Neither the writing nor the sending is remarkable (we often make drafts of letters and discard them),
but the gesture of keeping the message when we have no intention of sending it. By saving the letter,
we are in some sense 'sending' it after all. We are not relinquishing our idea or dismissing it as foolish
or unworthy (as we do when we tear up a letter); on the contrary, we are giving it an extra vote of
confidence. We are, in effect, saying that our idea is too precious to be entrusted to the gaze of the
actual addressee, who may not grasp its worth, so we 'send' it to his equivalent in fantasy, on whom we
can absolutely count for an understanding and appreciative reading. Is it not exactly the same with the
symptom in the Freudian sense of the term? According to Freud, when I develop a symptom, I produce
a ciphered message about my innermost secrets, my unconscious desires and traumas. The symptom's
addressee is not another real human being: before an analyst deciphers my symptom, there is no one
who can read its message. Who, then, is the symptom's addressee? The only remaining candidate is the
virtual big Other. This virtual character of the big Other means that the symbolic order is not a kind of
spiritual substance existing independently of individuals, but something that is sustained by their
continuous activity.
194
Alternative -- Debate
Our debate is an example of our kritik alternative the point is to set the audience to work by
offering problematics. This makes us mutually exclusive with the 1acthe only choice is to
work through the affs flawed interpretations of reality to arrive at a decision
Zizek, 2007 (Slavoj, How to Read Lacan, Ch 1 Introduction)
If one disregards occasional short texts (introductions and afterwords, transcribed improvised interventions and
interviews, etc.), Lacans oeuvre clearly falls into two groups: seminars (conducted every week during the
school-year from 1953 till Lacans death, in front of an ever larger public) and 'crits (written theoretical texts).
The paradox pointed out by Jean-Claude Milner is that, in contrast to the usual way of opposing the secret oral
teaching to the printed publications for the common people, Lacans ecrits are elitist, readable only to an inner
circle, while his seminars are destined for the large public and, as such, much more accessible. It is as if Lacan
first directly develops a certain theoretical line in a straightforward way, with all oscillations and blind alleys,
and then goes on to condense the result in precise, but compressed ciphers. In fact, Lacans seminars and ecrits
relate like analysands and analysts speech in the treatment. In seminars, Lacan acts as analysand, he freely
associates, improvises, jumps, addressing his public, which is thus put into the role of a kind of collective
analyst. In comparison, his writings are more condensed, formulaic, and they throw at the reader unreadable
ambiguous propositions which often appear like oracles, challenging the reader to start working on them, to
translate them into clear theses and provide examples and logical demonstrations of them. In contrast to the
usual academic procedure, where the author formulates a thesis and then tries to sustain it through arguments,
Lacan not only more often than not leaves this work to the reader the reader has often even to discern what,
exactly, is Lacans actual thesis among the multitude of conflicting formulations or the ambiguity of a single
oracle-like formulation. In this precise sense, Lacans crits are like an analysts interventions whose aim is not
to provide the analysand with a ready-made opinion or statement, but to set the analysand to work.
195
Alternative -- De-Develoopment
De-development is the only way to counter the Marxist vision everyone upholds.
Ted Trainer 2000 (DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY,
http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/dn/vol6/trainer_where.htm ) JULY
ThereisaworldofdifferencebetweentheMarxistvisionofapostcapitalistsocietythatisstill
centralisedandindustrialisedandinwhichpeopledospecialisedworkandofficialsmanage,andon
theotherhandthealternativeorSimplerWayinwhichthereisradicaldecentralisationof
productionandcontrolintoverysmallselfgoverningregions,whichwillrequireagreatdealof
conscientiousparticipationandgoodwillonthepartofmostifnotallcitizens.Suchcommunities
cannotfunctionsatisfactorilyunlessalmostallpeopleworkenthusiasticallyatkeepingtheirlocal
ecological,agricultural,industrial,commercial,socialandculturalsystemsingoodshape.These
systemswillnotberunbyexternalorcentralisedgovernments.Theywillonlyfunctioniflocal
peopletakeresponsibility,research,plan,organise,manage,evaluateandgovernwell.These
functionswillrequireoftheaveragecitizenfarmoreskills,socialresponsibilityandpublicspirit
thanmostofushavetodayinconsumersociety.
Option of de-development is the only one and best available action.
Ted Trainer 2000 (DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY,
http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/dn/vol6/trainer_where.htm ) JULY
Itinvolvesfirstlyagrassrootsapproachwherebyordinarypeoplewillbethebuildersofthenew
ways,notauthorities,officials,expertsorthestate.Secondlyitcentrallyinvolvestheanarchist
principleofprefiguring,i.e.,buildingthenewwithintheold.Italsoinvolvesthecrucial
assumptionsthatitisnotnecessaryordesirable,atleastatthispointintime,toconfronttheold
systemandgetridofitbeforewecanstartbuildingthenew.Theseassumptionsarechallengeable
andproblematicbutneverthelessmyargumentisthattheimplicitEcoVillageMovementstrategy
isbyfarthebestoneavailabletousatthispointintime.(Atsomefuturepointintimeitmight
becomenecessarychangestrategymarkedly;seebelow.)Followingisanattempttocountersome
ofthemostobviouscriticisms.
The love to the de-development option is the best; crucial to start moving towards it.
Ted Trainer 2000 (DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY,
http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/dn/vol6/trainer_where.htm ) JULY
Capitalismhasneverbeensotriumphant,anditsdriveforevergreaterscopeandpowerviathe
globalizationagendaisfarfromhavingreachediszenith.Itisthereforedistressingtocontemplate
thecontinuingdevotionofminusculecriticalenergiestothemanifestlyfutilequesttodefeat
capitalism.Admittedlytherearesomedefensivebattlesthatmustbefoughtandonewouldnotwant
toseeallresistancecease,butinmyviewitnowmakesmuchmoresensetoholdtheestablishment
ofthenewwayasone'stoppriorityratherthanthestruggleagainsttheold
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Alternative -- De-Develoopment
The concept of de-development is more real than we realize.
Ted Trainer 2000 (DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY,
http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/dn/vol6/trainer_where.htm ) JULY
Sometimesitismorelikethefadingoutofaoncedominantthesis,tobereplacedbyanewly
popularone.Thisisinfactthenormatthelevelofparadigmchangeinscience[17],andinmany
culturalrealmssuchasart,popmusicandfashion.Aparticularviewortheoryorformisdominant
foratime,butthenpeoplemoreorlessloseinterestinit,ceaseattendingtoitandsupportingit,and
movetoanotherone.Someofthemostrevolutionarychangesofthetwentiethcenturyseemto
haveoccurredpredominantlyinthisway,suchasthecollapsesoftheSovietUnionandthe
apartheidregimeinSouthAfrica,andthefalloftheBerlinWall.Allseemtohavebeen
characterisedmostlybypeoplevotingwiththeirfeet,afteralongperiodofgrowing
disenchantmentandincreasingawarenessofthedesirabilityofotherways.Theserevolutionary
changesseemtobemuchbetterdescribedasinstancesofcollapseorabandonmentdueto
increasinginternalfailuretoperform,andlossoflegitimacyandsupport,ratherthanasdefeatsin
headoncombatwithsuperioropposingpowers.Intheendthevastmilitary,bureaucraticand
economicpoweroftherulingestablishmentscountedfornothinginthefaceofawithdrawalof
support.Theydidnothavetobeengagedindirectandopenbattleandconquered.
197
198
bethoughtofnotintermsofdoingbutin
termsofnotdoing,laziness,refusaltowork,enjoyment.'Letusbelazyineverything,exceptinlovingand
drinking,exceptinbeinglazy':LafarguebeginshisclassicThe Right to be Lazy withthisquotation(1999,p.3),
implyingthatthereisnothingmoreincompatiblewithcapitalistexploitationthanthelazinessadvocatedbyLessing.
Lazinessincapitalistsociety,however,impliesrefusaltodo,anactiveassertion
ofanalternativepractice.
Doing,inthesenseinwhichweunderstandithere,includeslazinessandthepursuitofpleasure,bothof
whichareverymuchnegativepracticesinasocietybasedontheirnegation.Refusaltodo,inaworldbased
ontheconversionofdoingintowork,canbeseenasaneffectiveformofresistance.
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Alternative -- Scream
Our alternative is to reject capitalism by screaming out against it because we have a moral
obligation to scream against things we feel negative.
Holloway, Sociologist and Philosopher, 2005
(John, Change the World Without Taking Power, p.3)
Whatwouldatrueworldlooklike?Wemayhaveavagueidea:itwouldbeaworldofjustice,aworldinwhich
peoplecouldrelatetoeachotheraspeopleandnotasthings,aworldinwhichpeople
wouldshapetheirown
lives.Butwedonotneedtohaveapictureofwhatatrueworldwouldbelikeinordertofeelthatthereis
somethingradicallywrongwiththeworldthatexists.Feelingthattheworldiswrongdoesnotnecessarily
meanthatwehaveapictureofautopiatoputinitsplace.Nordoesitnecessarilymeana
romantic,some
daymyprincewillcomeideathat,althoughthingsarewrongnow,onedayweshallcometoatrueworld,a
promisedland,ahappyending.Weneednopromiseofahappyendingto
justifyourrejectionofaworldwe
feeltobewrong.Thatisourstartingpoint:rejectionofaworldthatwefeeltobe
wrong,negationofaworldwe
feeltobenegative.Thisiswhatwemustclingto.
Doing things in the society that is not against the injustice condones the injustice.
Holloway, Sociologist and Philosopher, 2005
(John, Change the World Without Taking Power, p.23)
The scream implies doing. 'In the beginning was the deed', says Goethe's Faust.? But before the deed comes the doing.
In the beginning was the doing. But in an oppressive society, doing is not an innocent, positive doing: it is
impregnated with negativity, both because it Is negated, frustrated doing, and because it negates the negation of itself.
Before the doing comes the scream. It is not materialism that comes first, but negativity.8
hope,ahopethatwecanchange
things,ascreamofactiverefusal,ascream that pointstodoing.Thescreamthatdoesnotpointto doing,the
screamthatturnsinuponitself,thatremainsaneternal screamofdespairor,muchmorecommon,anendless
cynical grumble,isascreamwhichbetraysitself:itlosesitsnegativeforce andgoesintoanendlessloopofself
affirmationasscream.CynicismIhatetheworld,butthereisnothingthatcanbedoneisthe
screamgonesour,
thescreamthatsuppressesitsownselfnegation.
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Alternative -- Scream
Screaming helps us understand the root of the problem.
Holloway, Sociologist and Philosopher, 2005
(John, Change the World Without Taking Power, p.39)
In order to explain our Insistence on the binary nature of the antagonism of power (or, in more traditional terms, our
insistence on a class analysis), it is necessary to retrace our steps. The starting- point of the argument here is not the urge
to understand society or to explain how it works. Our starting-point is much sharper: the scream, the drive to
change society radically. It is from that perspective that we ask how society works. That starting-point led us to place
the question of doing in the centre of our discussion, and this in turn led us to the antagonism between doing and done.
ofscreamagainstandpowertocanperhapsbereferredtoasdignity,10followingthelanguageofthe
Zapatistauprising.
Dignityistherefusaltoaccepthumiliation,oppression,exploitation,dehumanization.Itisa
refusalwhichnegatesthenegationofh umanity,arefusalfilled,therefore,withtheprojectofthe
humanitycurrentlynegated.Thismeansapoliticsthatprojectsasitrefuses,refusesasitprojects:apolitics
densewiththedreamofcreatingaworldofmutualrespectanddignity,filledwiththeknowledgethatthis
dreaminvolvesthedestructionofcapitalism,ofeverythingthatdehumanizesordesubjectifiesus
201
Alternative -- Simplicity
Alternative: Switch to low emission Small scale society
Varma, Associate Professor and Regents Lecturer, School of Public Administration
University of New Mexico, 2003 (Roli, Sage productions, E.F. Schumacher: Changing the Paradigm of Bigger
Is Better, http://bst.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/2/114, accessed 7/10/08, page 119).
Schumachers most important claim, that smallscale technology could be the foundation of new society, needs a critical
examination. He understood smallscale technology in dichotomous fashion. He saw social, economic, and political
problems in a society as being associated with modern large-scale technology; the implementation of alternative
small-scale technology was seen as a panacea for all such problems. Some of the characteristics that distinguished
alternative from modern technology were small scale versus large scale, inexpensive versus expensive, ecologically sound
versus ecologically unsound, small energy input versus large energy input, low pollution rate versus high pollution rate,
nonviolent to nature versus violent to nature, decentralist versus centralist, simple versus complex, labor intensive versus
capital intensive, compatible with human needs versus incompatible with human needs, reversible use of materials versus
nonreversible use of materials, and so forth (Dickson, 1975, pp. 103-104). In the 1970s and 1980s, such a mystifying role of
alternative small-scale technology had turned into a theology. People had become devotees of small-scale technology,
believing that somehow the evil and social ills in their society would be destroyed with its implementation. Broadly, there
are two dominant meanings for alternative small-scale technology, one for industrial countries and the other for the less
developed countries. In industrial countries, alternative small-scale technology is understood as one that does not
degrade the environment, whereas in the less developed countries, it is understood as one that provides employment
to ordinary people.
The government and corporate sector cannot fix the harms Individual must consume less in
their lifestyles.
Rhena Howard, 2002 (The McGill Tribune, Environmental apocalypse: time to overhaul the system, 9/17,
http://media.www.mcgilltribune.com/media/storage/paper234/news/2002/09/17/Features/Environmental.Apocal
ypse.Time.To.Overhaul.The.System-274844.shtml)
While many environmentalists suggest that the solution involves heavier taxation for oil companies, Roulet
points out that "the reason why oil is produced is because you and I consume it." The onus does not fall on the
government and the corporate sector alone; individuals need to re-evaluate their ecological footprint, defined as
amount of land, water and energy that is required to sustain each individual's lifestyle. "Every human being on
the surface of the earth should be forced to do this. Because what most people would find, in Canada, is that if
all six billion people on the surface of the earth live the way that we do as individuals, we would require
somewhere between five and ten planets. We don't have five to ten planets, we have one; we've got Earth,"
affirms Roulet.
202
concept by distinguishing the "ideological state apparatuses" (such institutions as the media, the schools, churches) from the "repressive
ideological struggle is his notion of "interpellation" (1971.17077), from the Latin interpellare, to "hail" or "accost" someone. Ideological
interpellations.
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204
from flight, rigidify our segments, give ourselves over to binary logic; the harder they have been to us on one segment, the
harder we will be on another; we reterritorialize on anything available; the only segmentarity we know is molar, at the level of the large-scale
aggregates we belong to, as well as at the level of the little groups we get into, as well as at the level of what goes on in our most intimate and private
recesses. Everything is involved: modes of perception, kinds of actions, ways of moving, life-styles, semiotic regimes. A man comes home and says, "Is
the grub ready?", and the wife answers, "What a scowl! Are you in a bad mood?": two rigid segments in confrontation. The more rigid the segmentarity,
the more reassuring it is for us. That is what fear is, and how it makes us retreat into the first line. The second danger, Clarity, seems less obvious. Clarity,
in effect, concerns the molecular. Once again, everything is involved, even perception, even the semiotic regime, but this time on the second line.
Castaneda illustrates, for example, the existence of a molecular perception to which drugs give us access (but so many things can be drugs): we attain a
visual and sonorous microperception revealing spaces and voids, like holes in the molar structure. That is precisely what clarity is: the distinctions that
appear in what used to seem full, the holes in what used to be compact; and conversely, where just before we saw end points of clear-cut segments, now
there are indistinct fringes, encroachments, overlappings, migrations, acts of segmentation that no longer coincide with the rigid segmentarity. Everything
now appears supple, with holes in fullness, nebulas in forms, and flutter in lines. Everything
have a specificity of their own that can crystallize into a macro fascism, but may also float
along the supple line on their own account and suffuse every little cell. A multitude of black holes may very well not become centralized,
and acts instead as viruses adapting to the most varied situations, sinking voids in molecular perceptions and semiotics. Interactions without resonance.
Instead of the great paranoid fear, we
are trapped in a thousand little monomanias, self-evident truths, and clarities that gush
from every black hole and no longer form a system, but are only rumble and buzz, blinding lights giving any and everybody the mission of
self-appointed judge, dispenser of justice, policeman, neighborhood SS man. We have overcome fear, we have sailed from the shores of security, only to
enter a system that is no less concentricized, no less organized: the system of petty insecurities that leads everyone to their own black hole in which to turn
dangerous, possessing a clarity on their situation, role, and mission even more disturbing than the certitudes of the first line. Power (Pouvoir) is the third
danger, because it is on both lines simultane ously. It stretches from the rigid segments with their overcoding and resonance to the fine segmentations with
their diffusion and interactions, and back again. Every man of power jumps from one line to the other, alternating between a petty and a lofty style, the
rogue's style and the grandiloquent style, drugstore demagoguery and the imperialism of the high-ranking government man. But this whole chain and web
so only by creating a void, in other words, by first stabilizing the overcoding machine itself by containing it within the local assemblage charged with
effectuating it, in short, by giving the assemblage the dimensions of the machine. This
205
fourth danger: the line of flight crossing the wall, getting out of the black
with other lines and each time augmenting its valence, turning to destruction, abolition pure
and simple, the passion of abolition. Like Kleist's line of flight, and the strange war he wages; like suicide, double suicide, a way out that
turns the line of flight into a line of death. We are not invoking any kind of death drive. There are no internal drives in desire, only
assemblages. Desire is always assembled; it is what the assemblage determines it to be. The assemblage that draws lines of flight is on the same
level as they are, and is of the war machine type. Mutations spring from this machine, which in no way has war as its object, but rather the
holes, but instead of connecting
emission of quanta of deterritorialization, the passage of mutant flows (in this sense, every creation is brought about by a war machine). There are many
reasons to believe that the war machine is of a different origin, is a different assemblage, than the State apparatus. It is of nomadic origin and is directed
against the State apparatus. One of the fundamental problems of the State is to appropriate this war machine that is foreign to it and make it a piece in its
apparatus, in the form of a stable military institution; and the State has always encountered major difficulties in this. It
Mephisto, gives samplings of entirely ordinary Nazi speeches and conversations: "Heroism was something that was
beloved Fiihrer is dragging us toward
the shades of darkness and everlasting nothingness. How can we poets, we who have a special affinity for darkness and
lower depths, not admire him? . . . Fires blazing on the horizon; rivers of blood in all the streets ; and the frenzied
dancing of the survivors, of those who are still spared, around the bodies of the dead!"32 Suicide is presented not as a
punishment but as the crowning glory of the death of others. One can always say that it is just a matter of foggy talk and ideology,
being ruled out of our lives. . . . In reality, we are not marching forward, we are reeling, staggering. Our
nothing but ideology. But that is not true. The insufficiency of economic and political definitions of fascism does not simply imply a need to tack on
vague, so-called ideological determinations. We prefer to follow Faye's inquiry into the precise formation of Nazi statements, which are just as much in
evidence in politics and economics as in the most absurd of conversations. They always contain the "stupid and repugnant" cry, Long live death!, even at
the economic level, where the arms expansion replaces growth in consumption and where investment veers from the means of production toward the
means of pure destruction. Paul Virilio's analysis strikes us as entirely correct in defining fascism not by the notion of the totalitarian State but by the
notion of the suicidal State: so-called
total war seems less a State undertaking than an undertaking of a war machine that
appropriates the State and channels into it a flow of absolute war whose only possible outcome is the suicide of the State
itself. "The triggering of a hitherto unknown material process, one that is limitless and aimless. . . . Once triggered, its
mechanism cannot stop at peace, for the indirect strategy effectively places the dominant powers outside the usual
categories of space and time. . . . It was in the horror of daily life and its environment that Hitler finally found his surest
means of governing, the legitimation of his policies and military strategy; and it lasted right up to the end, for the ruins and
horrors and crimes and chaos of total war, far from discharging the repulsive nature of its power, normally only increase its scope. Telegram 71
is the normal outcome: If the war is lost, may the nation perish. Here, Hitler decides to join forces with his enemies in order to complete the destruction of
his own people, by obliterating the last remaining resources of its life-support system, civil reserves of every kind (potable water, fuel, provisions, etc.)."
It
was this reversion of the line of flight into a line of destruction that already animated the molecular focuses of fascism,
and made them interact in a war machine instead of resonating in a State apparatus. A war machine that no longer had
anything but war as its object and would rather annihilate its own servants than stop the destruction. All the dangers of the
other lines pale by comparison.
206
210
211
213
214
the "being" of blacks (as of whites or anyone else) is a socio-symbolic being. When
they are treated by whites as inferior, this does indeed make them inferior at the level of their socio-symbolic
identity. In other words, the white racist ideology exerts a performative efficiency. It is not merely an
interpretation of what blacks are, but an interpretation that determines the very being and social existence of the
interpreted subjects.
We can now locate precisely what makes Sandford and other critics of Beauvoir resist her formulation that blacks actually were inferior: this resistance is itself ideological. At the base of this ideology is the fear that, if one concedes this point, we will
have lost the inner freedom, autonomy, and dignity of the human individual. Which is why such critics insist that blacks are not inferior but merely "inferiorised" by the violence imposed on them by white racist discourse. That is, they are affected by an imposition which does not affect them in the very core of
their being, and consequently which they can (and do) resist as free autonomous agents through their acts, dreams, and projects.
This brings us back to the starting point of this chapter, the abyss of the Neighbour. Though it may appear that
there is a contradiction between the way discourse constitutes the very core of the subject's identity and the
notion of this core as an unfathomable abyss beyond the "wall of language," there is a simple solution to this
apparent paradox. The "wall of language" which forever separates me from the abyss of another subject is
simultaneously that which opens up and sustains this abyssthe very obstacle that separates me from the
Beyond is what creates its mirage.
217
219
220
221
225
226
227
You should refuse this fear mongering which is only a tactic of the system.
Slavoj Zizek, Repeating Lenin. http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm 2001.
It is true that, today, it is the radical populist Right which is usually breaking the (still) predominant liberaldemocratic consensus, gradually rendering acceptable the hitherto excluded topics (the partial justification of
Fascism, the need to constrain abstract citizenship on behalf of ethnic identity, etc.). However, the hegemonic
liberal democracy is using this fact to blackmail the Left radicals: "we shouldn't play with fire: against the new
Rightist onslaught, one should more than ever insist on the democratic consensus - any criticism of it willingly
or unwillingly helps the new Right!" This is the key line of separation: one should reject this blackmail, taking
the risk of disturbing the liberal consensus, up to questioning the very notion of democracy.
228
229
precludes politicization.
230
American cafeteria, where the omnipresent alternatives are Nutra-Sweet Equal and High&Low, small bags of red and blue, and most consumers have a habitual preference
(avoid the red ones, they contain cancerous substances, or vice versa) whose ridiculous persistence merely highlights the meaninglessness of the options themselves. Does the
same not go for late-night talk shows, where freedom of channels comes down to a choice
between Jay Leno and David Letterman? Or for the soda drinks: Coke
or Pepsi? It is a well-known fact that the Close the Door button in most elevators is a totally inoperative placebo,
placed there just to give people the impression they are somehow contributing to the speed of the elevator journey
whereas in fact, when we push this button, the door closes in exactly the same time as when we simply pressed the floor button. This extreme case of fake participation is an
appropriate metaphor for the role accorded citizens in our postmodern political process. Postmoderns, of course, will calmly reply that antagonisms are radical only so long as
society is stillanachronisticallyperceived as a totality. After all, did not Adorno admit that contradiction is difference under the aspect of identity? So today, as society loses
any identity, no antagonism can any longer cut through the social body. Postmodern politics thus logically accepts the claim that the working-class has disappeared and its
corollary, the growing irrelevance of class antagonisms tout court. As its proponents like to put it, class antagonisms should not be essentialized into an ultimate point of
hermeneutic reference to whose expression all other antagonisms can be reduced. Today we witness a thriving of new multiple political subjectivities (class, ethnic, gay,
ecological, feminist, religious), alliances between whom are the outcome of open, thoroughly contingent struggles for hegemony. However, as thinkers as different as Alain
Badiou and Fredric Jameson have pointed out, todays multiculturalist celebration of the diversity of lifestyles and thriving of differences relies on an underlying Onethat is, a
radical obliteration of Difference, of the antagonistic gap. (The
reply of a materialist theory is to show that this very One already relies on certain
exclusions: the common field in which plural identities sport is from the start sustained by an invisible
antagonistic split.
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234
is not the ultimate aim of his compulsive rituals to prevent the "thing" from happening- this
"thing" being the excess of life itself? Is not the catastrophe he fears the fact that, finally something will really
happen to him? Or, in terms of the revolutionary process, what if the difference that separates Lenin's era from Stalinism is, again, the difference
between life and death? There is an apparently marginal feature which clearly illustrates this point: the basic attitude of a Stalinist Communist is that of
following the correct Party line against "Rightist" or "Leftist" deviation-in short, to steer a safe middle course; for authentic Leninism, in clear contrast,
there is ultimately only one deviation, the Centrist one-that of "playing it safe," of opportunistically avoiding the risk of clearly and excessively "taking
sides." There was no "deeper historical necessity," for example, in the sudden shift of Soviet policy from "War Communism" to the "New Economic
Policy" in 1921it was just a desperate strategic zigzag between the Leftist and the Rightist line, or, as Lenin himself put it in 1922, the Bolsheviks made
"all the possible mistakes." This excessive "taking sides," this permanent imbalance of zigzag, is ultimately (the revolutionary political) life itself-for a
Leninist, the ultimate name of the counterrevolutionary Right is "Center" itself, the fear of introducing a radical unbalance into the social edifice. It is a
properly Nietzschean paradox that the
greatest loser in this apparent assertion of Life against all transcendent Causes is
actual life itself What makes life "worth living" is the very excess of life: the awareness that there is something
for which we are ready to risk our life (we may call this excess 'freedom," honor,' dignity, autonomy, etc.).
Only when we are ready to take this risk are we really alive. So when Holderlin wrote: To live is to defend a form," this form is not
simply a Lebensform, but the form of the excess-of-life, the way this excess violently inscribes itself into the life-texture. Chesterton makes this point
apropos of the paradox of courage: A soldier
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AT: Utilitarianism
The greatest happiness for the greatest number of people is not possible in a capitalist
framework.
Istvan Mszros, 1995 (Beyond Capital, Marginal Utility and neo-classical Economics,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/meszaros/works/beyond-capital/ch03-2.htm)
A great deal has been written about the so-called naturalistic fallacy concerning pleasure and the desirable
in utilitarian discourse. However, the real fallacy of utilitarian philosophy fully embraced in one form or
another by the representatives of marginal utility theory is to talk about the greatest happiness of the greatest
number in capitalist society. For the suggestion that anything even remotely approaching the greatest happiness
of the greatest number of human beings can be achieved under the rule of capital, without even examining let
alone radically changing the established power relations, constitutes a monumental vacuous assumption,
whatever the subjective intentions of the major utilitarian philosophers behind it. Marginal utility theory, instead
of acting in this respect as a corrective to Bentham and Mill, makes everything worse by asserting not only that
it is possible to maximise every individuals utility within the established framework of production and
distribution, but also that the desired maximisation is actually being accomplished in the normal processes of
self-equilibrating capitalist economy. People who deny the reality of such a happy state of affairs are dismissed
even by the enlightened paternalist Alfred Marshall by saying that they nearly always divert energies from
sober work for the public good, and are thus mischievous in the long run.
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AT: Intersectionality
Intersectional identities will be consumed without a universal critique of capital
Stacey Alaimo, 2000 (MELUS, Multiculturalism and Epistemic Rupture: The Vanishing Acts of Guillermo
Gomez-Pena and Alfredo Vea Jr., 6/22, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-67532180.html)
Multicultural soundbites do nothing to promote cross-cultural understanding; instead, they offer up easy-todigest tidbits for consumption. As bell hooks argues, "the commodification of difference promotes paradigms of
consumption wherein whatever difference the Other inhabits is eradicated, via exchange, by a consumer
cannibalism that not only displaces the Other but denies the significance of that Other's history through a
process of decontextualization' ("Eating the Other" 31). Decontextualization whitewashes bloody histories and
current systemic inequities in order to offer up a banquet of cultures that can be blithely consumed. As an angry
white woman in John Sayles's Lonestar retorts during a heated debate about whose version of history should be taught in the schools, "If
you're talking food and music I have no problem with that, but if you're talking about who did what to whom" forget it. Indeed, a
"utopian discourse of sameness," Guillermo Gomez-Pena argues, helps us to forget: "if we merely hold hands and dance the mambo
together, we can effectively abolish ideology, sexual and cultural politics, and class differences" ("The Border" 57). The mambo dream
induces historical amnesia and diverts our attention from systemic oppression by substituting cultural inclusion for social change. As E.
San Juan, Jr. argues, "multiculturalism may be conceived as the latest reincarnation of the assimilationist drive to pacify unruly subaltern
groups."
Intersectional identities intermesh with consumer capitalism. The Anglo is still at the center of
knowledge trying to know other peoples
Stacey Alaimo, 2000 (MELUS, Multiculturalism and Epistemic Rupture: The Vanishing Acts of Guillermo
Gomez-Pena and Alfredo Vea Jr., 6/22, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-67532180.html)
While there have been many thoughtful and incisive critiques of the politics of multiculturalism, little attention has been paid to the
about the clarity its perspective affords. This paradigm both insists that Students need to learn more about "other cultures" and
encourages them to feel that they can readily master--if, indeed, they haven't already--what Native Americans believe or what "Asians"
are like. "Culture" so readily substitutes for and masks the workings of race, class, and gender, as E. San Juan Jr. argues, partly because
"culture" fits so neatly into epistemologies that erase the positionality of the knower. Whereas the far-reaching, criss-crossing matrix of
race, class, gender, and sexuality enmeshes, positions, even constitutes all its subjects, the paradigm of knowledge as mastery over a
delimited object or distant "field" allows one to "learn" about some other circumscribed "culture" without any ramifications for one's own
subject position.
238
Gill:Soyouarenotblamingtheseproblemsonindividualevilcapitalistsbutonanorganizational
structureandasystemofrelationships?Korten:Myfocusisontheeconomyasanorganizational
systemthatisstructuredtorewardtheworstinus.Therearecertainlysomeextraordinarily
dishonestandgreedypeoplewhousethissystem.Butmostinthecorporatesystemareordinary
decentpeople,manyofthemwithdeepspiritualandethicalvalues.Theyarecaughtinasystemthat
givesthemverylittlescopetobehaveinanywayotherthanwhatthesystemdemands.
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240
241
The
emancipation movement started in the sixties as a protest against traditional forms of authority in both the public and the
private sphere. Many (although not all) of the old structures of authority indeed gave way to new ones that were more
conscious of, and responsive to, the diverse composition of the citizenry, taking note of the needs and preferences of women
and minority groups. Citizens were to be 'treated as equals.' But just as importantly, citizens were no longer satisfied with the passive 'being treated';
they started to demand an active part in government and in policy making. At first, this demand was fuelled to a relatively
large extent by the quasi-anarchist, activist progressivism of the protest movements of the sixties and seventies; later on,
however, the attitude of critical resistance to authority became ever more translated into a liberal selfconception as citizen. That is to say, the critical involvement with government became less focused on collective
deliberation concerning the common good than on the facilitation of individual preferences and conceptions of the good. As a
consequence of these developments, policy as a mode of governance became interactive. Interactivity was both the problem and the
solution to the twofold development sketched above: the attempt of government to intervene in social life under conditions of 'equal treatment' of all
citizens on the one hand, and the desire of citizens to actively interfere in government to pursue and safeguard their own interests on the other hand. These
developments effected a drastic change in the structure of political authority: government and policy-making became 'horizontal'. This
metaphor signifies of course that the hierarchical relation between government and citizens is being replaced by one of 'equal standing' conjunctive
involved in political life. In the official rhetoric, interactivity strengthens the involvement of citizens in politics, by committing them not only to the results
of the political process but also to that process itself. In this way they become 'co-producers of policy', dedicated citizens so to speak. In turn, government
is able to 'fine tune' its policies and in general stay in close contact with its citizens, enabling it to reach its objectives in a more precise and secure way.
More realistically, citizens become interactive because they see this as a better option to safeguard their (partial) interests than the traditional options of party membership or voting behavior. They feel that
interactivity will let their voice more forcefully be heard. Or even more straightforwardly, their attitude towards politics in general is one of 'what is in it for me?' In such a self-centered view,. politics
appears primarily as an institution that may facilitate one's own plans and preferences, rather than as a process of collective will formation furthering socially desirable practices Government, in turn, sees
interactivity as an effective way of 'polling' views and interests, which are usually better accommodated in an early stage of policy formation than in later stages, that may involve troublesome renegotiations,
the official view or 'ideology' underwriting interactivity denies that a shift in political interest is
taking place. It suggests that the interest of both citizens and government in what politics 'produces' some form of
collective good is enhanced and supplemented by an increased interest in the process of policy formation.
Against this 'win-win' view, I want to suggest that the increase in involvement in the political process, the sphere of
policy formation, goes along with a loss of involvement in the 'product' of the process . The point here is not merely
that people lack sufficient time or means to be involved in both process and result. Rather it seems that people nowadays feel more attached
to the process than to its eventual product. Being actively involved in the process has acquired a sense and
meaning of its own, that may compete with, or actually override, the interest in what the process aimed to
realize. In other words, what the process now mainly realizes , its main 'product', is involvement with itself.
or protracted litigation.
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AT: Framework
Their framework will not increase educaiton nor usher in some angel perfect role playing arena.
The only thing garunteed by their framework is a steady depolitization of the debate sphere
and the removal of all productive criticism within debate.
Van Oenen, professor of ethics, legal philosophy and social philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of
Erasmus University, Rotterdam. 2006 [Gijs A Machine That Would Go of Itself: Interpassivity and Its Impact
on Political Life Theory and Event]
Slavoj Zizek once explained the difference between Verstand and Vernunft in Hegel by saying that Vernunft is the state in which we realize that Verstand
suffices. Vernunft is Verstand minus the illusion that there is something beyond it. Interactivity and interpassivity, the third and the fourth mode of the political process we are
studying, are related to each other in much the same way. Interpassivity constitutes a radicalization of interactivity, in the following sense: it expresses the view, or rather the
The loss of the product of politics, or rather the loss of the sense that this product is
what matters primarily, characterizes the condition of political interpassivity. The main interest, or perhaps we
should say obsession, lies with the process, not with its eventual product. We may also recall here Jean Baudrillard's account of 'the end
of production'. Baudrillard argues that 'there is no longer any production' and, consequently, we cannot be liberated, or
regain authenticity, through revolution (that is to say, through the socialization of the means of production). Especially relevant here is his
analysis of the relation of 'the sign' to reality, represented as a four-stage sequence. From being a 'reflection of a basic reality', the sign
evolves into a 'mask' of this reality, and later into a mask of the absence of a basic reality; finally, the sign no
longer bears a relation to any reality whatsoever. Baudrillard's four stages may well be viewed as the (postmodernist) philosophical
habitus, that interactivity in fact suffices.
equivalent of the stages of politics I have distinguished. Of course, the difference between the philosophical and the political case I discuss is that in the
We do not consciously
realize that we have lost our interest to move beyond the state of policy-making, preparation and planning. But
neither does it seem correct to say that we believe, even more resolutely than before, that we are strongly interested in politics. Somehow we suspect
that our continuous 'access' to politics does not provide us with what we want or need, but we feel powerless to
change our condition, or even uninterested in doing so. In other words, we feel ambiguous. On the one hand, we
indulge in unwarranted optimism concerning the possible benefits of a hyper-interactive political process.
The political system tries to enhance its legitimacy by promising to be in ever-closer contact with its citizens.
The fine-tuning of the political process by interactive means promises an unprecedented capacity to
accommodate the plural and diverging demands of individuals and groups. The unrealistic nature of these promises is
of course itself a source of disappointment. In an attempt to win back our flagging interest, politics redoubles its promises,
only to fail again to deliver on them, etc. But this sustained failure does not yet sufficiently explain the sense of discontentment with politics that
constitutes the other pole of our ambiguous state. Politics fails us, or we fail politics, in a deeper sense. This deeper sense, of course,
is that we do not really care anymore about what politics actually delivers. We do not 'really' believe that politics
may deliver everything it promises, but neither do we 'really' feel interested in whatever it is that politics does
produce. Our 'monitoring' of the product of politics constitutes the obverse of politics' monitoring of our
behavior. Like people who converse in a room while a television set is turned on although no one is
watching, we witness everything that politics delivers, without really noticing. Apparently, both television ignorers and citizens
latter, the 'detachment' from the end-product is not necessarily reflective either at the individual or at the collective level.
assume that somehow someone else does, or might, take notice. In that sense, we have here a case of 'the illusions of others' as analyzed by Robert Pfaller: an illusion owned or claimed by no one, yet shared
by everyone. Certainly we do not 'confess' ourselves to be political beings, in Aristotle's sense, nowadays. Citizenship in the traditional sense of being committed to the formulation and realization of
collective goals increasingly constitutes a threatened spieces. Nevertheless, as noticed, we do feel an intense connection to the political process and we do expect it to 'deliver'. We do not know why we still
believe in politics, yet we do.
We do, because in some sense we realize that we would be lost without it. On the other hand, we strongly feel that we have
Chronic interactivity has not brought us closer to politics. To the contrary, it has fostered an
instrumental attitude. Rather than being engaged in politics, nowadays we perceive it as an object for use. This
attitude has in fact been encouraged by currently fashionable approaches to (the art of) government, particularly that of
'outgrown' it.
outsourcing. Just as in the industrial sphere, in government many activities and branches have been outsourced, in the eighties and nineties. It was claimed that such activities
could just as well, or better, be performed by external organizations. Regardless of the merit of these claims, the trend of outsourcement has damaged government by
243
Thus the shared illusion of government exists, but it is no longer claimed by anyone. Moreover, this
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AT: Framework
Continual appeals to fiat and policy making are the ultimate justification for domination. We
have an obligation as students and intellectuals to discuss the hidden assumptions behind
power structures.
iek, senior researcher department of philosophy university of ljubljana, 2/9/2005 [slavoj, the guardian, p. l/n]
From my communist youth, I still remember the formula, endlessly repeated in official
proclamations to mark the "unity of all progressive forces": "workers, peasants and
honest intellectuals" - as if intellectuals are, by their very nature, suspicious, all too freefloating, lacking a solid social and professional identity, so that they can only be
accepted at the price of a special qualification. This distrust is alive and well today, in our
post-ideological societies. The lines are clearly drawn. On the "honest" side, there are the
no-nonsense experts, sociologists, economists, psychologists, trying to cope with the
real-life problems engendered by our "risk society", aware that old ideological solutions
are useless. Beyond, there are the "prattling classes", academics and journalists with no
solid professional education, usually working in humanities with some vague French
postmodern leanings, specialists in everything, prone to verbal radicalism, in love with
paradoxical formulations that flatly contradict the obvious. When faced with fundamental
liberal-democratic tenets, they display a breathtaking talent to unearth hidden traps of
domination. When faced with an attack on these tenets, they display a no less
breathtaking ability to discover emancipatory potential in it. This cliche is not without
truth - recall the numerous fiascos of the 20th-century radical intellectuals, perhaps best
encapsulated by the French poet Paul Eluard's refusal to demonstrate support for the
victims of Stalinist show trials: "I spend enough time defending the innocent who
proclaim their innocence, to have any time left to defend the guilty who proclaim their
guilt." But hysterical over-reaction against"free-floating" intellectual renders such a
critique suspicious: distrust of intellectuals is ultimately distrust of philosophy itself. In
March 2003, Donald Rumsfeld engaged in a little bit of amateur philosophising: "There
are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns.
That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown
unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." What he forgot to add was
the crucial fourth term: the "unknown knowns", things we don't know that we know which is precisely the Freudian unconscious. If Rumsfeld thought that the main dangers in
the confrontation with Iraq were the "unknown unknowns", the threats from Saddam we
did not even suspect, the Abu Ghraib scandal shows where the main dangers actually are
in the "unknown knowns", the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we
pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values.
To unearth these "unknown knowns" is the task of an intellectual.
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The collapse of the current capitalist system is inevitable because of centralized economies
Abid Ullah Jan, July 13, 2008 (Dictator Watch, The Inevitable Doom of the Colonial, Capitalist World Order, July
15, http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=5326 )
On the home front, close to 50% of American households own stock. The economies of the imperial centers will definitely
fail to maintain their vigor when stockholders in the imperial centers do not remain broadly distributed; when speculations
do not continue to lay claim to the wealth of the periphery; when profits decrease due to lower profits from the increased
import costs and stock prices fall substantially as the money stops fleeing back to the security of America and Europe,
being invested in those markets; and when those stockholders stop spending a substantial share of their decreased wealth.
[viii] In short, if profits fall and stock and home prices fall that created money (created by borrowing against those
increased values) would evaporate and the economy will collapse. With the collapse of the economic order, all corporations
will cease to function. Means of transportation will suffer badly. This will affect transportation of agricultural products and
resources to the imperial center from the periphery of an empire which presently functions as a huge plantation
system. Unimaginable suffering for masses all over the world will accompany true liberation from a colonialism,
mercantilism and neo-mercantilism (now transposed into corporate imperialism) which has dispossessed hundreds of
millions of people from their land. The current owners are just the new plantation managers producing for the mother
countries.
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248
Strugglesagainstcapitalismareimbeddedwithinsocietyitself,makingcapitalismscollapse
inevitable
AndyBlunden,Communistadvocate,1978(RootandBranch,RosaLuxemburginRetrospect,July16,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattickpaul/1978/luxemburg.htm)
Justthesame,likeeveryoneelse,RosaLuxemburgwasachildofhertimeandcanonlybeunderstoodinthecontextofthe
phaseofthesocialdemocraticmovementofwhichshewasapart.WhereasMarxscritiqueofbourgeoissocietyevolvedin
aperiodofrapidcapitalisticdevelopment,RosaLuxemburgwasactiveinatimeofincreasinginstabilityforcapitalism,
whereintheabstractlyformulatedcontradictionsofcapitalproductionshowedthemselvesintheconcreteformsof
imperialisticcompetitionandinintensifiedclassstruggles.Whiletheactualproletariancritiqueofpoliticaleconomy,
accordingtoMarx,consistedatfirstintheworkersfightforbetterworkingconditionsandhigherlivingstandards,which
wouldpreparethefuturestrugglesfortheabolitionofcapitalism,inRosaLuxemburgsviewthisfinalstrugglecouldno
longerberelegatedtoadistantfuturebutwasalreadypresentintheextendingclassstruggles.Thedailyfightforsocial
reformswasinseparablyconnectedwiththehistoricalnecessityoftheproletarianrevolution.
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