1nc

Playing with Fire

The Black Body and Fire
Have a long history,
Existing hand and hand as tools of whiteness.
With one used against the other, in an acts of hatred
Our homes lit-a-flame
Our flesh burned,
Our existence scorched
Our spaces incinerated
And just like that, our ashes are swept away
by the white man’s history,
To Be Forgotten
Audra D.S. Burch et al 21, (Audra D.S. Burch is an award-winning National Enterprise
Correspondent for The New York Times. Before that, she was an enterprise writer at the Miami
Herald before joining the Investigations Team. As part of a two-person team, Burch worked on
Innocents Lost, a project exploring failures in Florida’s child welfare system. The project won the
2015 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize and the Worth
Bingham Prize. Burch began her career at the Gary Post-Tribune followed by a stint at the Sun
Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. She is a graduate of Florida A&M University and a member of the
National Association of Black Journalists.), “What the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Destroyed,”
NYTimes, May 24, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/24/us/tulsa-race-
massacre.html, 11/5/22, AND?

Imagine a community of great possibilities and prosperity built by Black people for Black
people. Places to work. Places to live. Places to learn and shop and play. Places to worship.
Now imagine it being ravaged by flames. In May 1921, the Tulsa, Okla., neighborhood of
Greenwood was a fully realized antidote to the racial oppression of the time. Built in the early
part of the century in a northern pocket of the city, it was a thriving community of commerce
and family life to its roughly 10,000 residents. Brick and wood-frame homes dotted the
landscape, along with blocks lined with grocery stores, hotels, nightclubs, billiard halls, theaters,
doctor’s offices and churches. Greenwood was so promising, so vibrant that it became home to
what was known as America’s Black Wall Street. But what took years to build was erased in less
than 24 hours by racial violence — sending the dead into mass graves and forever altering
family trees. Hundreds of Greenwood residents were brutally killed, their homes and
businesses wiped out. They were casualties of a furious and heavily armed white mob of
looters and arsonists. One factor that drove the violence: resentment toward the Black
prosperity found in block after block of Greenwood. The financial toll of the massacre is evident in the $1.8 million in property loss
claims — $27 million in today’s dollars — detailed in a 2001 state commission report. For two decades, the report has been one of the most comprehensive accounts to reveal
the horrific details of the massacre — among the worst racial terror attacks in the nation’s history — as well as the government’s culpability. The destruction of property is only
one piece of the financial devastation that the massacre wrought. Much bigger is a sobering kind of inheritance: the incalculable and enduring loss of what could have been, and
the generational wealth that might have shaped and secured the fortunes of Black children and grandchildren. “What if we had been allowed to maintain our family business?”
asked Brenda Nails-Alford, who is in her early 60s. The Greenwood Avenue shoe shop of her grandfather and his brother was destroyed. “If they had been allowed to carry on
that legacy,” she said, “there’s no telling where we could be now.” For decades, what happened in Greenwood was willfully
buried in history. Piecing together archival maps and photographs, with guidance from historians, The New York Times constructed a 3-D model of the Greenwood
neighborhood as it was before the destruction. The Times also analyzed census data, city directories, newspaper articles, and survivor tapes and testimonies from that time to
show the types of people who made up the neighborhood and contributed to its vibrancy. “My grandfather often talked about how you could enjoy a full life in Greenwood, that
everything you needed or wanted was in Greenwood. You never had to go anywhere,” said Star Williams, 40, the granddaughter of Otis Grandville Clark, who was 18 during the
massacre. “He talked about seeing Black success and how his sense of identity and pride came from Greenwood.” The businesses on Greenwood Avenue were owned by people
who were among Tulsa’s most prominent Black citizens. In the evenings, residents had their choice of entertainment. Survivor accounts that were relayed to relatives recall
neighbors getting “gussied up” to gather in Greenwood, with Thursdays being big because of “Maids’ Night Out.” Black domestics, many of them live-in workers who cleaned the

Many African Americans migrated to Tulsa after the Civil War,

homes of white residents across town, were off that day.

carrying dreams of new chapters and the kind of freedom found in owning businesses. Others
made a living working as maids, waiters, chauffeurs, shoe shiners and cooks for Tulsa’s new oil
class. In Greenwood, residents held more than 200 different types of jobs. About 40 percent of the community’s residents were professionals or skilled craftspeople, like
doctors, pharmacists, carpenters and hairdressers, according to a Times analysis of the 1920 census. While a vast majority of the neighborhood rented, many residents owned

Segregation kept African-Americans from patronizing white-owned shop s, and

their homes.

Greenwood thrived from community support of Black-owned businesses. “Black folks faced an economic
detour,” said Hannibal B. Johnson, an author and the education chair for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. “When they approached the gates to the wider
Tulsa economy, they were turned away, so they ended up creating their own largely insular community.” THE MASSACRE THAT ENDED IT ALL The assaults on Greenwood raged
over two days. The morning of June 2, 1921 revealed emptiness and ruin in every direction. Plumes of smoke hovered over the neighborhood. Ash coated the ground. Brick
buildings had been reduced to bombed-out husks. And soon, the bodies of those killed would be stacked and discarded in mass graves and a river. It all began on May 30 with
two teenagers in an elevator in the Drexel building in downtown Tulsa and morphed into a sexual assault accusation. Accounts vary about what happened between Dick
Rowland, 19, a young Black shoe shiner, and Sarah Page, 17, a white elevator operator. One common theory suggests Mr. Rowland tripped and grabbed onto the arm of Ms.
Page while trying to catch his fall. She screamed, and he ran away, according to the commission report. The next day, Mr. Rowland was arrested and jailed in the Tulsa County
Courthouse. By that afternoon, The Tulsa Tribune published a front-page news story with the headline “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator,” which essentially mobilized a
lynch mob that showed up at the courthouse. Twice, a group of armed Black Tulsans, many of them World War I veterans, offered to help protect Mr. Rowland but were turned

As the Black men were leaving the second time, a white man attempted to disarm a
away by the sheriff.

Black veteran, and a gun went off in the scuffle. That clash and others that day marked the
beginning of what would become Greenwood’s armed destruction. Some white rioters were
even deputized and given weapons by civil officials. Near dawn, the white mob descended on
Greenwood. Black Tulsans fought back, valiantly defending their families and property. But
they were woefully outnumbered. The mob indiscriminately shot Black people in the streets. Members of the mob ransacked homes and stole
money and jewelry. They set fires, “house by house, block by block,” according to the commission report. Terror came from the sky, too. White pilots flew airplanes that
dropped dynamite over the neighborhood, the report stated, making the Tulsa aerial attack what historians call among the first of an American city. The numbers presented a
staggering portrait of loss: 35 blocks burned to the ground; as many as 300 dead; hundreds injured; 8,000 to 10,000 left homeless; more than 1,470 homes burned or looted;
and eventually, 6,000 detained in internment camps. The neighborhood economy was destroyed. Two dozen grocery stores. Thirty-one restaurants. Four drug stores.

Greenwood, where Black success embodied the American dream, was no more, suddenly,
dreadfully wiped out. WHAT WAS LOST Greenwood would be rebuilt, and for a few decades, it would
again thrive before falling to urban renewal and other forces. But that spring of 1921 unmoored
and unrooted the neighborhood with lasting effects. Not long after the attack, shell-shocked
survivors — who were blamed for the violence — returned home to ruin. Amid the charred
remnants, they were forced to make an excruciating decision that would change family histories
forever: leave and start over again somewhere else, or rebuild. They also faced another kind of
white resistance: a fire ordinance intended to prevent Black property owners from rebuilding
on their own and insurance companies that refused to pay damage claims. “Greenwood wasn’t a gift from
anyone, it was created by the citizens of Greenwood who withstood the tragedy of 1921 and rebuilt it again,” said Scott Ellsworth, the author of the recently released book, “The
Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice.” “Greenwood is the story of resilience. It is the story of courage.” Those who stayed began stitching their lives back
together almost immediately. They joined forces and began rebuilding homes and businesses. Within a day, C.L. Netherland, a massacre survivor and minister whose barber
shop at 110 Greenwood Avenue was destroyed, purchased a folding chair, a strop and razor, and set up shop on a sidewalk. The massacre also claimed the Mount Zion Baptist
Church, whose first service in its new building had been held less than two months earlier. The congregation’s hundreds of members had financed and built the $92,000 church
over several years, according to “Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District,” a book by Mr. Johnson, education chair for the centennial
commission. It would have been easier to declare bankruptcy. Instead, church members rebuilt and dug in. It took an additional 21 years before the initial debt was repaid.

The final insult of the massacre came in the silence . For decades, Tulsa deliberately ignored
and covered up what had happened in Greenwood. Many descendants said they learned about
the mob and the killings only as adults — and even then, some of the recounting was told in
whispers. “You could see the pain in my grandmother’s eyes when she talked about what happened,” said LeRoy Gibbs II, 52, the grandson of Ernestine Gibbs, a
massacre survivor who was 17 when the violence unfolded. “Before she would get too far, before it became too painful, she would shift and start talking about where we are
today.” Some surviving business owners who built the 100 block of Greenwood Avenue had remarkable second chapters. Others, who struggled in the aftermath, had
heartbreaking stories. The Williams family, among the most successful before the massacre, stayed and rebuilt. Mr. Smitherman, the civil rights activist who ran The Tulsa Star,
eventually landed in Buffalo, where he became the publisher of The Buffalo Star (later named The Empire Star). He was among several Black Tulsans indicted for “inciting a riot,”
and was exonerated posthumously. Ms. Parrish, the journalist who ran a typing school, stayed to chronicle the massacre. The two wealthy men who helped found Greenwood
were hit hard financially. Mr. Stradford, who was indicted, escaped to Kansas and then Chicago. He never recovered his fortune. Mr. Gurley reportedly lost nearly $158,000 in
1921, or $2.3 million in today’s dollars. James Nails, who had opened a shoe shop with his brother Henry, rebuilt but never really recovered. He eventually left Tulsa. “He was
really unable to carry on emotionally, psychologically,” Ms. Nails-Alford said. “You get your education, you work hard, you start businesses, you’re able to employ your family
members and community members, and then you lose it all within hours. It takes away a man’s dignity.” FROM THE MAGAZINE 100 Years After the Tulsa Massacre, What Does
Justice Look Like? There is a pending lawsuit and ongoing discussions about how and whether to compensate the families of the Tulsa Massacre victims. No compensation has

To this day, not one person has been prosecuted or punished for
ever been paid under court order or by legislation.

the devastation and ruin of the original Greenwood .

In religions we are the damned souls,

Burned by God’s flame
Darkening our skin
The white view of us is already that of death,
Black Bodies are simply burned husks ready to be lit-a-flame again
We are the scorched souls

The political and performative “allies” of blackness in the debate space

Role play as the white arsonists,
Using the ballot, or the fire
To attack us
Ensuring that any space we create
Is incinerated and forgotten

You can’t expect to carve out room and lock the door
When whiteness holds the keys to this activity
They will find you
The state of debate is a manipulative Euro-centric institution
The labor to carve out new spaces in the activity are consumed for Capitalist
fuel
Escape is an impossible fantasy presented to keep debaters subservient
The tools of whiteness, in a violent act of indecency, must unite
The scorched soul and the rebellious flames of the ballot together must
BURN IT ALL DOWN
AJ 18 – AbolitionJournal, (A project for research, publishing, and study that encourage us to
make the impossible possible, to seek transformation well beyond policy changes and toward
revolutionary abolitionism.), “Burn it Down: Abolition, Insurgent Political Praxis, and the
Destruction of Decency,” AbolitionJournal, April 22, 218, https://abolitionjournal.org/burn-it-
down/, 11/5/22, AND?

This journal calls for abolition, a call implicitly asserting that

Introduction: The Contemporary State and the “Decent Fellow”

contemporary sociopolitical and economic institutions are inherently unfixable and beyond
resuscitation, reform, or rescue. The fantasy of radically changing political structures from
within is simply not a viable political option for those concerned with the ultimate destruction
of the mechanisms of carnage that shape modern life and its attendant regimes of governance,
such as: the global war machine, the prison industrial complex, transnational resource extraction, and the national sacrifice areas (Ortiz 1992) generated in the wake of these
lethal socioeconomic configurations and expressions of empire.[i] Rather than drawing from these regimes of death for social and legal recognition, power, and welfare—what
we broadly refer to as the “state”—consider what it would mean to the modern ordering of life to utterly destroy the state, to refuse its seductions and ruses of power, to

Our imperative to “burn it down” draws from a rich tradition of

incinerate it until nothing remains but ash?

scholarship that positions the state as a technique , practice, and effect of modern governance
and its optimization, rationalization, and normalization. Following Timothy Mitchell, we define the state as a
“network of institutional mechanisms through which a certain social and political order is
maintained” (Mitchell 2006, 175). In the words of Michel Foucault, the state functions as “a schema of intelligibility for a whole set of already established institutions,
a whole set of given realities” (Foucault 2004, 286). As a schematic and reality, we perceive the state as providing a legible matrix for the parameters of self-management and
self-conduct: for social and political order. As Achille Mbembe insists, the adoption of state or sovereign power is “a twofold process of self-institution and self-limitation”
(Mbembe 2003, 13). Attendant to the important critiques made by Fanon, we argue that this twofold process remains shaped by Euro-American colonial mores at the “objective
as well as subjective level” of experience and perception (Fanon 2008, xv). That is to say, we understand state power as generative of inherently colonial relations of rule:
relations that produce contemporary sociopolitical, juridical, and affective orientations, sensibilities, and subjectivities.[ii] As Glen Sean Coulthard argues, “colonial relations of
power are no longer reproduced primarily through overtly coercive means, but rather through the asymmetrical exchange of mediated forms of state recognition and
accommodation” (Coulthard 2014, 15). We add that the state accomplishes this mediation vis-à-vis the internalized politics of decency: an argument to which we shortly return.
The project of this piece is not to think about how to make life more livable under current regimes of power or to ponder building something new or altered in the state’s place.

Rather, we imagine alternative worlds based in the total abolition of these regimes because of
their astonishingly responsive capabilities , which render profound social transformation
impossible. The state successfully incorporates its margins and continually extends its
representation in order to further its grasp on the body politic (for instance, the inclusion of
women in combat roles or the Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage). Simultaneously,
and without coincidence, the state manipulates its boundaries through violent forms of capital
accumulation and proxy wars, marks borders with fences and deportations, and uses its streets
as a costly theater for subjects that deviate from its aims. H owever, the fundamentally lethal interests of state power have not
changed since the European invasion of the Americas. Instead, global technologies of communication and visibility have forced the state to pivot, creating the illusion of a more

Nonetheless, the state relies on fantasies of “individual” participation

transparent, democratic, and equal society.

(civil rights, voting, recognition, and protest) as much as it relies on its authoritarian power to
revoke those fantasies without notice or recourse. As the violences executed by the state continue to shape everyday life in this
country, we believe that it is by no means extreme to posit that one solution to these ills is to destroy—to burn down—contemporary institutions of governance, policing, and
comfort, to cooperatively dismantle the workings of the state. For us, a radical project of abolition and insurgent political praxis refuses to negotiate with the state, or seek
recognition from any of its bureaucratic apparatuses, in order to secure the small-scale concessions that only colonize and quell resistance. Political projects of compromise with
the state have proven insufficient—especially in addressing everyday violence, such as police brutality, that continues to erupt unchecked in the face of mainstream “social
justice” organizing. Ultimately, this organizing and activism treats the state as a central means of stopping the very political violence that insures its core function, operation, and
maintenance. State tactics shift, but are nonetheless continually productive of social protocols for acceptable, legible citizens and aberrant, disposable subjects: a division and
“existential deviation” (Fanon 2008, xvii) that we argue is rooted in Euro-American colonial power, such as white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. This power, which continues
to inform the tangible parameters of the modern state, must remain the strategic target of abolition as a practice and vision if new worlds or alternative spaces of sociopolitical
organization are to exist and thrive. As we show, one of the central challenges that insurgents face is the fact that colonial state power remains occluded by the representational
moorings of the Euro-American civilizing mission, such as the political conceptions of civility and decency that remain the ideological cornerstones of democratic participation.
[iii] These notions legitimize certain forms of organizing and comportment over others, ensuring that state power is distributed, unchanged, into the hands of those that best
serve its interests. We dedicate the remainder of this article to examining how these concepts further colonial state power in order to ground our call for the incineration of

The terms “decency” and “civility” are used interchangeably in

decency as a starting point for insurgent political praxis.

this article to describe a particular form of exclusionary, homicidal, and suicidal politics . This politics
demands inclusion within the colonial state, as it currently exists—at the expense of dismantling white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, transphobia, and capitalism on a global
level, in the name of respectability, conviviality, progress and democracy. Following Aimé Césaire, we argue that the politics of decency represents the true “barbarism” of the
colonizer (Césaire 2000, 47). Césaire stated that: I make no secret of my opinion that at the present time the barbarism of Western Europe has reached an incredibly high level,
being surpassed—far surpassed, it is true—by the barbarism of the United States. And I am not talking about Hitler, or the prison guard, or the adventurer, but about the
“decent fellow” across the way…the respectable bourgeois [emphasis added] (Césaire 2000, 47). For Césaire, the problem of colonial domination did not lie solely within its
more overt acts of death dealing, expressed “openly…in broad daylight” (Césaire 2000, 49). Rather, Césaire held that the problem of this domination also resided in its
ideological shadows: its “decent” homes, families, schools and churches, its “respectable” citizen-subjects who turned a blind eye to the genocide shaping everyday life in
colonized locations (e.g., the U.S.) and long before World War II. In fact, Césaire insisted that the politics of decency was central to legitimizing the genocide of the original
civilizing mission: the violent implementation of Euro-American systems of thought, embodied taxonomies, historicity, and political governance to consolidate socioeconomic
and biological power. As Césaire poignantly argued: “I hear the storm. They talk to me about progress, about achievements, diseases cured, improved standards of living. I am
talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot…extraordinary possibilities wiped out” (Césaire 2000, 42). Thus, at the heart of the civilizing
mission, the conceptual fuel that drove its murderous engine was the framing of its white supremacist, capitalist, and heteropatriarchal violences as the epitome of Euro-
American decency and civility. We argue that the continued advancement and adoption of decency as a cultural commandment of behavior for participation in the civic sphere
enacts the civilizing mission in its recalibrated form and lethally fortifies colonial statecraft and power. For example, these politics legitimize (what appears to be) the passive
participation of the “decent fellow” and the “respectable bourgeois” in this mission vis-à-vis so-called “peaceful” desires for inclusion within the state. The danger of this
passivity and desire is that both are absolutely violent and perpetuate an outside, “indecent” constituency. This “indecent” constituency is figured as the biopolitical break in the
population that threatens to overrun state interests; wherein Muslims are imagined as terrorist, blackness is always already criminal, and whiteness remains the standard by
which diversity is measured and extracted.[iv] When everyday violence is deployed in the name of these ideologies, the state arbitrates between those who are innocent and
guilty, offering a judgement that continues to be divided by race, class, gender, and sexuality. This violence is perceived as the “natural” expression of “civilization,” key to its
maintenance and safety. When those who decry these judgements deploy violence, they do so outside of the Euro-American parameters of the “decent,” and are thus marked
for rationalized, legitimized, “civilized” annihilation. As the state is intent on maintaining interpretive and legal control over violence via decency, we see a counter politics of

Our call to burn it down is thus a promotion of

“indecency” as entirely necessary to dismantle its power.

indecency as an acceptable practice in order to refuse colonial state structures

at emotional, cultural, and psychic levels. We violently reject the politics of
decency as an ideology, practice, and psychic orientation . The next section begins to advance the rationales
of our position by outlining the role of decency in channeling political responses to environmental genocide in the U.S. Southwest. We draw from the “EPA Spill,” which occurred
during the summer of 2015 and devastated occupied Indigenous lands in the Four Corners region, to center this discussion. In the following section, we outline the mechanisms
of embodiment that fortify colonial state power vis-à-vis decency and as articulated by the 2016 presidential election. In the final section, we explore how “decent” state
concessions and accommodations further all of these processes, by contextualizing the “Central American Immigration Crisis”: the U.S. detainment of children primarily from

Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, in the name of humanitarian “law and order.” To answer Abolition’s call “to make the impossible possible,” we conclude by
addressing some of the challenges of our “indecent” politics and position. Conclusion: Burn it Down In this article, we examined the modern
state from three very different points of entry: the global coloniality of power, necropolitics, and freedom. However, decency—as a vehicle for the distribution of death—was
the thread we used to weave together these seemingly disparate concepts. Using decency as our theoretical springboard, we blended what might appear to be irreconcilable

We did so in order to review the rich body of work

approaches to understanding the U.S. colonial state.

attacking decency as a colonial, white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, and

capitalist concept; to unpack our particular vision of abolition; to promote a
viable counter politics of indecency; and to call for an irrevocable burning down
of the state. In fashioning this piece, our desire was to grapple with the pressing necessity of abolition, as well as some of the tangible barriers to insurgent
political praxis, in a gesture toward “making the impossible possible.” In thinking through the “impossible,” we argued that it is not solely the police, the military, or other violent
defenders of the state and capital that are problematic for abolitionist liberation. Following Césaire, we asserted that the “decent fellow” is also a serious blockade to this
liberation: the “decent fellow” is an unequivocal emissary of colonial state power and the regimes of representation that make this power legible. In other words, we argued
that the internalized politics of decency, the comforts of acquiescing to state rule, are as toxic to abolition as the instruments of death that the contemporary state relies upon
for dominion. Abolition entails a much broader project than merely the end of the state. Abolition also requires a dismantling of all of the ideological moorings of colonial power,
a burning down of the spheres of representation that privilege docile decency as the ideal form of comportment and civic participation. State rule has its own seductive ruses of
power and recognition including the very tangible benefits of protection, access to some of the necessities of life, as well as providing an affective sense of belonging or the
desire for the same through the adoption and internalization of its codes for decency and/or proper citizen-subject behavior. While the state makes particular ways of living and
comforts possible, it does so always at the expense of others. As we stressed throughout this article, to acquiesce to the state is not, in any way, passive. The price paid for the
maintenance of decency is exacted in blood. In the short term, we understand that life is made livable by embracing the representational, juridical, and economic mores of the
colonial state; by carving out small spaces of refuge or alternative ways of being within the shadows of empire. Still, we find this approach ultimately untenable, in terms of
fostering the continuance of all life on this planet. We have discussed some initial roadblocks for abolition—decency, complacency, power—but there is a glaring challenge that
up to this point has been ignored. We mention it now to highlight our openness to the line of inquiry that follows and to guide future work and collaborations. Political life is
always already in symbiosis with the non-human. To attend to the cacophony of vegetal, animal or other actants would be an entire project in itself; the human is not the

A key component of our argument is that abolition,

penultimate political being and actants are more-than-human (Haraway 1985).

as a project and vision, must take up and address these unfixable relations in their entirety and
on the horizon of a new order. Molecular possibilities for the complete abolition of the colonial state are all around us: possibilities evidenced by the
fact that Abolition is a project and meeting ground for insurgents and scholars seriously engaged in the work of developing an entirely new way to go about the business of life
and living. The necessity of such a project and meeting ground is made even more urgent by contemporary academic and political domains; their attendant and lethal seductions
of power, where the reliance on the colonial state has become so enmeshed that it is embodied. Normative protocols leveraged by institutions work as corrosive agents
targeting the Other (the object) and teaching it how to sweetly suffer with whispers and promises of upward mobility, legal protections, and freedom: the politics of decency.
We can approach these concerns in a number of different ways, but if we ignore them, push them out of our way, they become hollow political alternatives. Perhaps, one day,
these lines of flight will exceed the band-aids of legal protections and fantasies of livability. They may offer, with further examination, a route to disrupt our very notions of
society, which have throughout time, privileged the techniques of power that we analyze in this article. However, none of these potentialities can come to fruition if we do not
seriously grapple with the immaterial and material moorings of modern oppression, such as the global coloniality of power, necropolitics, and ideologies of freedom, executed
vis-à-vis decency as a weapon of contemporary empire building.
The role of the judge is to become a Torch Bearer meaning if the neg proves
that the Aff does something that is inherently anti-black then the judge is to
burn down their constructed institution in a total rejection of the team voting
neg.
The ROB is to be a match to set this anti-black state of debate ablaze – Voting
Aff locks in the repetitive cycle of black spaces being burned down. Recreating
more Greenwoods with each Aff ballot. More pain, more suffering, total black
incineration.
 Parametrics
Interp --- the aff should specify a specific political demand resulting from the
reading of the 1AC

Violation --- the aff has presented a theory of power but is not committed to a
specific demand

Prefer it:

1. Education --- criticism without action is only a vicious cycle of

consumption that doesn’t lead to change – specific political demands
provide the best potential for comparative analysis and different strats
each round – anything else is a Socratic seminar in a highschool
classroom – it’s a solvency deficit to the aff

2. Testing --- just describing the squo without moving away from it makes
the aff unfalsifiable means you lower the threshold our links have to
meet – frame it this way for the rest of the debate – only defending grass
roots political demands allows us to test the nuance and specificity
required to restructure systems of oppression

3. Clash --- Forcing the aff to stick to a specific demand is the only way to
elicit a stable stasis point for both sides to debate – anything else means
they can switch out of any position in the 2AC and skew the block –
means they always win and we never learn and don’t get in depth
debate over revolutionary tactics – turns the aff.

We’ll answer their “t is violent” here:

1. It’s not – us reading parametrics isn’t inherently violent and they haven’t
met the threshold on why it is – at best it’s just a reasonable response
for when they cede the political.
2. It won’t be assimilation – there are still instances in which having
political action can be beneficial for marginalized peoples ie: “withdraw
from nato” or “sabotage nato” that allow for us to use the state to undo
itself
 Fuck NATO CP
Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase
its security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the area
of Artificial Intelligence by banning lethal autonomous weapons.
AI governance causes massive infighting within the alliance – divergent
priorities between allies makes cohesion impossible and hampers NATO
efficacy and cohesion
Heikkila ’21 -- (Melissa Heikkilä, 3-29-2021, "NATO wants to set AI standards. If only its
members agreed on the basics.," POLITICO, https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-ai-artificial-
intelligence-standards-priorities/, accessed 6-19-2022)

On paper, NATO is the ideal organization to go about setting standards for military applications
of artificial intelligence. But the widely divergent priorities and budgets of its 30 members
could get in the way. The Western military alliance has identified artificial intelligence as a key technology needed to maintain an edge over adversaries, and it
wants to lead the way in establishing common ground rules for its use. “We need each other more than ever. No country alone or no continent alone can compete in this era of

The standard-
great power competition,” NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoană, the alliance’s second in command, said in an interview with POLITICO.

setting effort comes as China is pressing ahead with AI applications in the military largely free of
democratic oversight. David van Weel, NATO’s assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges, said Beijing's lack of concern with the tech's ethical
implications has sped along the integration of AI into the military apparatus. "I'm ... not sure that they're having the same debates on principles of responsible use or they're
definitely not applying our democratic values to these technologies,” he said. Meanwhile, the EU — which has pledged to roll out the world's first binding rules on AI in coming

fforts have been slow

weeks — is seeking closer collaboration with Washington to oversee emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. But those e

in getting off the ground. F or Geoană, that collaboration will happen at NATO, which is working closely with the European Union as it prepares AI
regulation focusing on “high risk” applications. The pitch NATO does not regulate, but “once NATO sets a standard, it

becomes in terms of defensive security the gold standard in that respective field ,” Geoană said. The
alliance's own AI strategy, to be released before the summer, will identify ways to operate AI
systems responsibly, identify military applications for the technology, and provide a “platform
for allies to test their AI to see whether it's up to NATO standards ,” van Weel said. The strategy will also set ethical
guidelines around how to govern AI systems, for example by ensuring systems can be shut down by a human at all times, and to maintain accountability by ensuring a human is
responsible for the actions of AI systems. “If an adversary would use autonomous AI powered systems in a way that is not compatible with our values and morals, it would still
have defense implications because we would need to defend and deter against those systems,” van Weel said. “We need to be aware of that and we need to flag legislators

The problem
when we feel that our restrictions are coming into the realm of [being detrimental to] our defense and deterrence,” he continued. Mission impossible?

is that NATO's members are at very different stages when it comes to thinking about AI in the
military context. The U.S., the world's biggest military spender, has prioritized the use of AI in
the defense realm. But in Europe, most countries — France and the Netherlands excepting —
barely mention the technology’s defense and military implications in their national AI strategies.
“It’s absolutely no surprise that the U.S. had a military AI strategy before it has a national AI strategy," but the

Europeans "did it exactly the other way around ," said Ulrike Franke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations,
said: That echoes familiar transatlantic differences — and previous U.S. President Donald Trump's complaints — over defense

spending, but also highlights the different approaches to AI regulation more broadly. The EU's AI strategy
takes a cautious line, touting itself as "human-centric," focused on taming corporate excesses and keeping citizens' data safe. The U.S., which tends to be light on regulation and

There are also divergences over what technologies the alliance ought to
keen on defense, sees things differently.

develop, including lethal autonomous weapons systems — often dubbed “killer robots” —
programmed to identify and destroy targets without human control. Powerful NATO members
including France, the U.K., and the U.S. have developed these technologies and oppose a treaty
on these weapons, while others like Belgium and Germany have expressed serious concerns
about the technology. These weapons systems have also faced fierce public opposition from civil society and human rights groups, including from United
Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who in 2018 called for a ban. Geoană said the alliance has “retained autonomous weapon systems as part of the interests of

These issues
NATO.” The group hopes that its upcoming recommendations will allow the ethical use of the technology without “stifling innovation.” Staying relevant

threaten to hamper NATO's standard-setting drive. "I think there’s a certain danger that if NATO doesn’t take this on as a real
challenge, that it may be marginalized by other such efforts,” Franke said. She pointed to the U.S.-led AI Partnership for Defense, which consists of 13 countries from Europe and
Asia to collaborate on AI use in the military context — a forum which could supplant NATO as the standard-setting body. That could have consequences for human rights, too.
“NATO… is a great place to responsibly think about how to harness the good parts of this technology and how to prohibit the parts that would be catastrophic for humanitarian
law and human rights law, and people at the end of the day,” said Verity Coyle, a senior adviser at Amnesty International, which is part of the Stop Killer Robots campaign.
“Without oversight mechanisms to ensure ethical standards and measures, which would guarantee that this technology will operate under meaningful human control” NATO’s

strategy could head into an “ethical vacuum,” Coyle said. Franke said it's better for the alliance to focus on the basics, like increased
data sharing to develop and train military AI and cooperating on using artificial intelligence in logistics. “If NATO countries were to cooperate on that, that could create good
procedures and set precedents. And I think we should then move on to the more controversial things such as autonomous weapons systems,” she said.

NATO Member states in-fighting leads to the glue that holds NATO togther to
fall apart, meaning NATO collapse
Jonathan Eyal 22, (Jonathan Eyal is associate director at the Royal United Services Institute in
London), “Yes, Nato has a new vitality. But its united front could collapse when it has to deal
with Russia,” The Gaurdian, July 3, 2022,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/03/yes-nato-has-a-new-vitality-but-its-
united-front-could-collapse-when-it-has-to-deal-with-russia, 10/30/22, AND?
Most summits bill themselves as “historic” and those who attend invariably talk about “forging a new consensus”. But Nato’s Madrid summit can credibly make such claims, for
there is no question that a military alliance that only a few years ago was famously dismissed by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as “brain dead” has regained vitality
and reaffirmed its strategic purpose. As the alliance’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, put it, Nato’s decision to increase its rapidly deployable troops to at least 300,000 to
deter any further Russian aggression “constitutes the biggest overhaul of our collective deterrence and defence since the cold war”. The determination of all of the alliance’s 30
member states to increase defence spending is unprecedented. Even more significant is the reassertion of Nato’s importance as the only institution capable of offering collective
defence for the European continent. It is often forgotten that Sweden and Finland already enjoyed a supposedly cast-iron joint security guarantee as part of their membership in
the European Union, yet both countries deemed it prudent to seek to join the alliance at the Madrid summit because they understood the difference between EU aspirations

Nato leaders know all too well, the alliance’s challenges

and Nato capabilities, backed up by US military might. Still, as

remain significant. One claim made at the Madrid summit by people such as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is that Finland and Sweden’s
accession made Nato “more European”. Yet this is a blindingly obvious statement, for all the Nato enlargements since the alliance’s creation happened in Europe. Therefore,

what each enlargement failed to achieve and what the entry

each can be portrayed as making the alliance more European. But

of Sweden and Finland will miss too is to reduce Nato’s overwhelming dependence on the
contribution of the United States. The transatlantic alliance reacted well in response to Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine. Since March, Nato has not only been present with multinational battle
groups in the Baltic states and Poland, but also in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. The
Nato presence stretches from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The military alliance has also
increased the number of soldiers on the ground. Around 10,000 of the 40,000 Nato soldiers are
divided among eight battle groups. The battle groups are equipped with different units geared
to the respective location’s military needs. Each battlegroup is led by a different nation,
providing the bulk of the troops. What each enlargement failed to achieve is to reduce Nato’s overwhelming dependence on the contribution of the
United States Yet, although many allies have brought in beneficial assets, the US contribution dwarfs that of all the Europeans put together. Had it not been for the fact that US

troops in Europe now number 100,000 – the highest figure since the mid-1990s – it’s doubtful that the alliance could have
presented such a united front. Recent pledges to boost defence spending have also been impressive. But, at least for the moment, only nine of the 30
members dedicate 2% of their GDP to defence, and those who fail to reach this threshold include big European nations such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The rest, as
theysay, remains a “work in progress”. . Nato calculates that its members have promised to spend £172.6bn in additional defence expenditure on top of existing defence
budgets, with Germany accounting for perhaps half this amount. But the question is how this will be spent and over what period. The easiest way to improve European
capabilities would be to use this cash to buy US equipment off the shelf: this offers substantial economies of scale and time. Yet such an approach will go against European
aspirations to boost their defence industries; French diplomats are warning that the Ukraine war must not end up as a bonanza for US arms manufacturers. Chances are high
that Nato’s eternal “burden-sharing” debate will continue, even if more cash is available. Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump and his disciples are poised to argue – as “The
Donald” did when he was in the White House – that Nato is a scam to fleece American taxpayers. Even if he does not stage a comeback, the idea that the US is spending far more
than it should to defend fat, wealthy Europeans is likely to feature prominently when a new Congress is elected this November. The sheer audacity of the Russian aggression has
allowed the Biden administration to get the cash it needed from Congress. Still, it is taken for granted in Washington that the $40bn package recently approved by Congress for
security assistance to Ukraine is unlikely to be repeated. And a future Nato burden-sharing debate is bound to get more acrimonious when it is joined with a parallel discussion
about paying for Ukraine’s postwar economic reconstruction, a project estimated at an eye-watering $500bn. Nato has also set itself a huge objective by pledging to increase the

For this still does not answer the fundamental question of

number of high-readiness forces to more than 300,000.

whether, to deter further Russian aggression, the alliance must position significant forces in the
countries near Russia permanently. Not doing so could expose existing Nato members to the
danger of a Russian occupation for at least a period until help arrives to liberate them, a risk
that, given the horrors of Bucha, no alliance nation is ready to contemplate. But keeping
multinational troops deployed permanently in central and eastern Europe will be hugely
expensive, well beyond current raised spending plans. The idea that the US is spending far more than it should to defend fat,
wealthy Europeans is likely to feature prominently when a new Congress is elected In effect, all that Nato has done in Madrid is to issue a promissory note on this score in the

for the alliance is that the

hope that both the nature of the promise and the conditions of its redemption could be discussed later. Yet the biggest paradox

glue that holds it so solidly together – the determination to stand up to Russia’s imperial
intentions – remains its most significant vulnerability. Despite all the back-slapping in Madrid there is no consensus on how to deal
with Russia. Everyone agrees that it must not be allowed to succeed in its current aggression. But does this mean that it should be physically defeated on the battlefield in

Ukraine, as Britain and most of the central and eastern Europeans are arguing, or would it be enough if the war ends
without Moscow being able to make a plausible claim to victory, as Germany’s leaders would prefer? For now, this debate seems abstract. But the moment Moscow hints that it
wants a ceasefire in Ukraine, all these differing opinions within Nato will come into the open. Nato’s new Strategic Concept adopted at Madrid includes a total of 71 “we will”
categorical commitments, spread across just 11 pages of text. An admirable set of pledges, no doubt. But some won’t endure when the guns in Ukraine fall silent. Jonathan Eyal
is associate director at the Royal United Services Institute in London

collapse of nato wrecks ir and the lio

Hans Binnendijk 22, (Hans Binnendijk is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. He
previously served as senior director for defense policy on the Clinton administration’s National
Security Council.), “5 consequences of a life without NATO,” DefenseNews, March 19, 2019,
https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/03/19/5-consequences-of-a-life-
without-nato/, 11/2/22, AND?

The final impact of NATO’s retirement would be the near collapse of what has been called the
“liberal international order.” This order consists of treaties, alliances, agreements, institutions
and modes of behavior mostly created by the United States in an effort to safeguard
democracies. This order has kept relative peace in the trans-Atlantic space for seven decades.
The Trump administration has begun to unravel elements of this order in the naive notion that
they undercut American sovereignty. The entire European project is built on the edifice of this
order. NATO is its principal keystone. Collapsing this edifice would undercut the multiple
structures that have brought seven decades of peace and prosperity. So the answer is clear. Life
without NATO would be more dangerous and less prosperous. Russia and China would be the
big winners at America’s expense. NATO simply can’t retire. Yes, NATO has problems. It needs
to be managed. But there is too much left to be done for retirement. And there is too much to
lose if NATO fails.
They isolate IR and NATO as the main struggle if we take those down then we
can compete with their aff!
 Case
1. Vote neg on presumption:
a. competitive incentives kill the aff – their project immediately
becomes deradicalized in debate’s competitive arena as students
attempt to twist and contort lit and research into a method to win
the ballot – their necessity for the ballot is the link – cx checks
b. There is no internal link from the reading of the 1AC or the
affirmation of aesthetics and linguistics to lessening the impacts of
international warfare. We are not saying they must solve all instances
this warfare and these forms of structural violence, but they must
prove they spill out.
c. The aff is non-uq – debaters have affirmed linguistics before. –
especially when MBA LH has won aff rounds – they haven’t met the
threshold on why their adovcacy uniquely changes a harm in the
status quo.
d. They haven’t given a reason why the ballot isn’t key – and its not the
ballot isn’t going to forget ir – at best the reading of the 1ac should
have done that but it doesn’t so vote neg.
e. They didn’t let the poem speak! They spent more time doing a whole
lot of mumbley spreading and more cards then poetry – the poetry
was hidden in the political message and not the other way around
turns case
Roland 1AC Bleiker 09, Professor of International Relations, Director of the
Rotary Peace Center and Coordinator of the Visual Politics Research Program,
“Poetic World Politics”, Aesthetics and World Politics, pp 92-95,
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230244375, lenox
How can one turn language from a system of exclusion to a practice of inclusion, from a method of domination to an instrument of resistance?
The starting point lies with what is aptly called Sprachkritik in German. Literally translated as ‘ critique of language’ , Sprachkritik is, at least according to the linguist Fritz Mauthner, ‘the most important task of thinking humanity’ . The poet Paul Valéry probably captured its objective best when claiming that ‘the secret of well-founded thinking is based on suspicion towards language’.32 If challenges to practices of domination and attempts to open up thinking space
are to avoid being absorbed by the dominant discourse, then they must engage in a struggle with conventionally recognised linguistic practices, or at least with the manner in which these practices have been constituted. The form of speaking and writing becomes as important as their content. There can be ‘no new world without a new language’ , says one of Ingeborg Bachmann’s fictional characters.33
But can a language so easily be appropriated as a tool of dissent against its own subjugating power? Is it enough, as Nietzsche suggests, to ‘create new names, estimations and probabilities to create eventually new “things ”’?34 Of course not. One can never be free within language . One can never break free from language. But one can engage language.
There are many ways of stylistically resisting impositions by systems of shared meaning. Consider Nietzsche’s resort to aphorisms and his particular writing style in general, which is often considered to be the most important substantive contribution of his work. We know of Zarathustra, who constantly asserts things just to deconstruct them a few pages later, to the point that Thomas Mann, Giorgio Colli and many others argued that to take Nietzsche literally is
to be lost, for ‘he said everything, and the opposite of everything’ .35 The key to Nietzsche does not lie in his viewpoints, but in the style through which he opened up thinking space and celebrated diversity.
The essence of poetry, then, is not located primarily in its formal aspects, such as rhyme or line breaks. The key, rather, lies in the self-consciousness with which a poem engages the links between language and socio-political reality . In its broadest meaning the poetic refers, as Valéry suggests, to all compositions in which language is means and substance at the same time.39 He separates poetry from prose and stresses that in the latter form is not preserved. It
disappears as soon as it has fulfilled its purpose. Once you have understood the content of my speech, Valéry illustrates, the form of my speech becomes meaningless; it vanishes from your memory. The form of the poem, by contrast, does not vanish after its usage. It is an integral part of speech, designed to rise from its ashes.40 Roman Jakobson offers a similar definition and refuses either to reduce the poetic function to poetry or limit poetry to the poetic
function. What matters is whether or not the poetic function becomes dominant in a literary work. This is the case if a word possesses its own weight and value, if it is perceived as a word, and not simply as a substitute for an object.41
The content of a poem cannot simply be translated into straightforward prose . The manner in which the poem speaks is an essential element of what it says. Language is not merely a means to an end. It merges into an inseparable unity of substance and form. Language, then, is recognised as being part of the material realm, as constituting a form of action in its own right. This is why any definition of poetry that tries to be more specific than drawing attention
to the importance of form runs the risk of failing to appreciate the very power that poetry may be able to unleash. Indeed, it is precisely this fluidity, the stylistic refusal to accept what is, that sets poetry apart from other forms of writing. It generates shifts of focus not unlike the one usually associated with Proust’s monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu: an aesthetic mutation from the ‘what is said’ to the ‘how it is said’.43
The poem is not able to escape the constraints of language, but it makes these constraints its raison d’être. The ensuing process is, of course, ongoing. Language will never be free of power and exclusion. There will always be a need to disturb meaning, to search for words that name silences, to disturb immobilising certitudes . Step by step, invisibly and inaudibly, the poet works away at language. This is why the inability to come up with immediate political
solutions cannot be held against her or him or the potential of aesthetics to make a political contribution. ‘With each collapse of proofs the poet responds with a salvo of future’, René Char would say.44
Writing poetic world politics Illustrating the power of poetry to redescribe reality is no easy task, for poetry is not about this or that argument, this or that idea. It is about searching for a language that provides us with different eyes , different ways of perceiving what we already know; it is about unsettling, making strange that which is familiar, opening up thinking space and creating possibilities to act in more inclusive ways. No isolated citation will ever do justice
to this objective. Only an extended lecture of poetry can succeed in stretching the boundaries of our mind.
If form is indeed the essence of poetry, then the problem arises of how to talk about it. Because style is what sets poetry apart from other forms of writing, one cannot simply translate the meaning of poetry into prose and explain its significance to world politics in a language familiar to our daily forms of verbal interaction . How can poetics, the study of poetry, possibly do justice to its object of inquiry? To speak of a poem, Martin Heidegger warns, is to judge

let a poem speak, to

from the outside what a poem is. No position, no insight can ever justify such a presumptuous approach.45 This is why Paul Celan, when asked to explain the meaning of his poems, often replied: ‘ Read! Just keep reading. Understanding comes of itself.’46 The point, then, is not to drown poetry in an ocean of explanatory prose, but to

accept its authority and listen to the political message that is hidden in its core.
But the problem of speaking about poetry cannot be solved by poems alone. No poem can ever represent or even illustrate what poetry is all about. This is in part because a poem, and often a work of literature in general, works by way of synecdoche. This is to say, as George Von der Muhll stresses, that it confronts readers with a part of life – all too often a minuscule one: a state of mind, a concrete life situation – and then tries to crystallise key aspects that are
of much larger significance.47 The key challenge then consists, as Philip Darby stresses, in understanding the extent to which one can explore political and social issues through the lives of individuals.48 Whatever insight might emerge from such inquiries, they embody a process that is the reverse of what is practised in social science, where scholars tend to identify and analyse broad institutional structures and socio-political patterns through the introduction of
abstraction and generalisation .
Because the poem strives for openness it refuses to speak of and for a totality . Because the poem searches for cracks in hegemonies, voices that have gone unnoticed, it is an instance of subversive particularity . Celan explains in one of his rare excursions from poetry into poetics: ‘But I am speaking of poetry that does not exist! The absolute poem – no, it certainly does not exist, it cannot exist!’49 Heidegger, likewise, explains that ‘ no single poem, not even all of
them taken together, can tell everything’ .50 Poetry deals with the particular, but it is not primarily about this or that argument, this or that idea. It is about searching for a language that provides us with different eyes, different ways of perceiving what we already know. It is about unsettling, about making strange that which is familiar to us, about opening up thinking space and creating possibilities to act in more inclusive ways .
What are we, as students of world politics, left with if poetry cannot be explained in prose and if there is no absolute poem either, one that could represent and illuminate the power of poetry? We must attempt the impossible task of speaking about the unspeakable . Heidegger has some ideas about how to tackle this difficult puzzle. For him, a poem surrounded by the noise of unpoetic language is like a bell hanging freely outside. Even the slightest snowfall
would throw it out of tune. Each comment to a poem, he frets, may well do nothing but cast snow onto the bell. But because there is no absolute poem we must still look for a way to talk about poetry, a way that swirls up as little snow as possible. What we must aim for, Heidegger suggests, is a form of comment that renders itself obsolete once it is spoken; a form of comment that explains but then defers authority back to the poem.51 And we must then try to
find a way of bringing this close reading to bear on broader, sociopolitical issues.52 To search for this formless form and its political potential is the principal methodological challenge of the chapters that follow. I can only hope that I manage to maintain at last a basic poetic sensibility in my prose, thus avoiding a fall into the stylistic abyss that James Wood identified with Roland Barthes and Viktor Shklovsky: two highly insightful critics who nevertheless ‘were
drawn, like larcenous bankers, to raid again and again the very source that sustained them – literary style’.53
 2. One speech act and linguistics don’t cause securitization – no link
to the topic
Ghughunishvili 10 (Irina, “Securitization of Migration in the United States after 9/11: Constructing Muslims and
Arabs as Enemies”, Submitted to Central European University Department of International Relations European Studies In
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Supervisor: Professor Paul Roe
http://www.etd.ceu.hu/2010/ghughunishvili_irina.pdf)

As provided by the Copenhagen School securitization theory is comprised by

speech act, acceptance of the audience and facilitating conditions or other non-securitizing actors contribute to a
successful securitization. The causality or a one-way relationship between the speech

act, the audience and securitizing actor, where politicians use the speech act
first to justify exceptional measures, has been criticized by scholars, such as Balzacq.
According to him, the one-directional relationship between the three factors, or some of them, is not the best approach. To

fully grasp the dynamics, it will be more beneficial to “rather than looking for
a one-directional relationship between some or all of the three factors
highlighted, it could be profitable to focus on the degree of congruence
between them. 26 Among other aspects of the Copenhagen School’s theoretical framework, which he criticizes, the
thesis will rely on the criticism of the lack of context and the rejection of a ‘one-way causal’ relationship between the audience
The process of threat construction, according to him, can be clearer if
and the actor.

external context, which stands independently from use of language, can be

considered. 27 Balzacq opts for more context-oriented approach when it comes down to securitization through the
speech act, where a single speech does not create the discourse, but it is created

through a long process, where context is vital. 28 He indicates: In reality, the speech
act itself, i.e. literally a single security articulation at a particular point in time,
will at best only very rarely explain the entire social process that follows from
it. In most cases a security scholar will rather be confronted with a process of
articulations creating sequentially a threat text which turns sequentially into
a securitization. 29 This type of approach seems more plausible in an empirical study, as it is more likely
that a single speech will not be able to securitize an issue, but it is a lengthy
process, where a the audience speaks the same language as the securitizing
actors and can relate to their speeches.
3. Don’t give them any offense on the performance – it can’t change the
ontological positioning of blackness
Warren 18 (Calvin Warren is an assistant professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
at Emory University, “Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation,” ///ghs-sc)

1 InTroubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness, Nicole Fleetwood understands the
black body as troubling scopic regimes through performativity . The idea of troubling, then,
indicates a certain resistance to antiblackness through the visual. I agree that the black body
troubles but part ways with Fleetwood’s iteration of resistance and agency . In other words,
troubling does not yield ontological or transformative results—rather, it translates into an
incorrigibility that antiblack violence works to subdue . Michael Chaney also offers a reading of the visual and the
“alternate field of vision” fugitivity engenders in Fugitive Vision: Slave Image and Black Identity in Antebellum Narrative.

4. Performativity can’t account for the structural positioning of blackness—

affect is structured by an antiblack violence that forecloses the
recuperative possibility of performing identity
Aranke 13
(Sampada, PhD Candidate in Performance Studies at University of California at Davis, “Fred
Hampton's Murder and the Coming Revolution”, Trans-
Scripts?, http://www.humanities.uci.edu/collective/hctr/trans-scripts/2013/2013_03_09.pdf)
 
Whereas Phelan insists that performance is excessive expenditure that "saves nothing", for Roach, this excessive expenditure is not
the nature of performance, but in fact the nature of violence. He insists that "violence is the performance of waste"— excessive,
"because to be fully demonstrative, to make its point, it must spend things". This spending is "never senseless but always
meaningful" (41). At first glance, it is almost as if Roach replaced Phelan's definition of "performance" with the word "violence";
but the theoretical implications of Roach's argument leads us to new understandings of how race
and affect are produced by violence. If we take that which is excessive as constitutive of how we conceptualize both
performance and violence, then the indication that some subjects come into being precisely through
violent acts has striking theoretical implications, especially for black subjects, which is of main concern
for both Roach's analysis and mine. Both aesthetics and violence "exist as forms of cultural expression"
wherein the question of blackness is the auction block of the world  (41). This is where Roach's
definition of race occurs at a structural level , rather than that of identity. For Phelan, identity
is marked by and through performance . Whether in their ephemerality or their repetition, representational
strategies (performance's excessive expenditure) charge affect in the service of performatively
engaging bodies. This affective charge mobilizes that which is not fully redeemable,
understandable, legible, or visible as an indication of how bodies are marked through
performance. What I find most generative in Roach's work is his insistence that some bodies — in his case and in mine,  black
bodies — are not marked, they are structurally positioned  as affect is structured by that very
antiblack violence that forecloses the recuperative possibility  of performing identities and
instead circulates performance as violent affirmation of the structural captivity of blackness.that
which is always already saturated with violent meaning. Affect, here, takes an unprecedented
turn away from that which has potential for either hegemonic or performative rupture, toward a
more striking accusation: that
 

5. Performance is not a mode of resistance - it gives too much power to the

audience because the performer is structurally blocked from controlling
the (re)presentation of their representations.  Appealing to the ballot is
a way of turning over one’s identity to the same reproductive economy
that underwrites liberalism
Phelan 96—chair of New York University's Department of Performance Studies (Peggy,
Unmarked: the politics of performance, ed published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005, 146
Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded,
documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation  of representations of representations :
once it does so, it becomes something other than performance. To the degree that
performance attempts to enter the economy of reproduction it  betrays and lessens the
promise of its own  ontology. Performance’s being, like the ontology of subjectivity proposed
here, becomes itself through disappearance.
The pressures brought to bear on performance to succumb to the laws of the reproductive
economy are enormous. For  only rarely  in this culture is the “now” to which performance
addresses its deepest questions valued. (This is why the now is supplemented and buttressed
by the documenting camera, the video archive.) Performance occurs over a time which will not
be repeated. It can be performed again, but this repetition itself marks it as “different.” The
document of a performance then is only a spur to memory, an encouragement of memory to
become present.

6. Their idea of forgetting IR deems the bodies killed in the onslaught of

NATO’s as collateral – there willingness to forget all of IR recreates
necropolitics by choosing who can be deeemed killable and forgotten.