Middle Passage
K
Your focus on discourse about the middle passage posits the ocean as merely a
vehicle for human signification that renders power invisible and makes
emancipation impossible
Steinberg 13
Philip E. Steinberg (2013) Of other seas: metaphors and
materialities in maritime regions, Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, 10:2, 156-169, DOI:
10.1080/14788810.2013.785192
Professor in the Department of Geography Telephone: +44 (0) 191 33 41945 Fax: +44 (0) 191 33 41801 Room number: 409
Contact Professor Philip Steinberg (email at philip.steinberg@durham.ac.uk) Biography I came to Durham in Autumn 2013 after
sixteen years in Florida State University’s Department of Geography, punctuated by one-year interludes at the New York Public
Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers (2002-2003), the University of California, Santa Cruz’ Center for Cultural
Studies (2005-2006), and Royal Holloway, University of London’s Department of Geography (2012-2013). Prior to Florida
State, I attended Clark University’s Graduate School of Geography (1990-1996), where I received my MA and PhD degrees, as
well as teaching briefly in Bucknell University’s Department of Geography (1997). My research focuses on the historical,
ongoing, and, at times, imaginary projection of social power onto spaces whose geophysical and geographic characteristics make
them resistant to state territorialization. These spaces include the world-ocean, the Arctic, and the universe of electronic
communications. Within these spaces, I study everything from artistic depictions to governance institutions to the lifeways of
individuals who inhabit (or cross) their expanses. In addition to these major research themes, I frequently conduct research in
complementary areas including urban planning politics; utopianism (especially as projected onto islands); critical theories of
development and nature; and the links between art, cartography, visualisation, and representation. If this turn toward ocean region
studies which broadly can be associated with historically informed political economy undertheorizes the ocean, the second
foundation for the rise of ocean region studies which can be associated with poststructuralist critical theory
overtheorizes the ocean. For scholars in this second group, the ocean is an ideal medium for rethinking
modernist notions of identity and subjectivity and the ways in which these are reproduced through
land-centered divisions and representations of space. Thus, for Deleuze and Guattari the ocean is the ‘‘ smooth
space par excellence , ’’ a space that lies apparently, if provisionally, apart from the striations that make difference calculable and
amenable to hierarchy. 12 Similarly, in his unpublished but oft-cited essay ‘‘ Of Other Spaces, ’’ Michel Foucault calls the ship at
sea the ‘‘ heterotopia par excellence , ’’ a space of alternate social ordering. 13 These assertions, in turn, are frequently
reproduced by scholars who pay little attention to the actual lives of individuals who experience and interact with the sea
on a regular, or even occasional, basis. The disconnect between the idealized sea of poststructuralist theorists and
the actual sea encountered by those who engage it is captured in David Harvey ’ s response to Foucault ’ s declaration
that ‘‘ in civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure and police take the place of
pirates . ’’ ‘‘ I keep expecting these words to appear on commercials for a Caribbean Cruise , ’’ writes
Harvey. ‘‘ ... And what is the critical, liberatory and emancipatory point of that? ... I am not surprised that [Foucault] left the
essay unpublished. ’’ 14 For scholars in this second, poststructuralist, group,
the ocean is not so much ignored as it is
reduced to a metaphor: a spatial (and thereby seemingly tangible) signifier for a world of shifting,
fragmented identities, mobilities, and connections. While metaphors provide powerful tools for thought, spatial
metaphors can be pernicious when they detract attention from the actual work of construction
(labor, exertions of social power, reproduction of institutions, etc.) that transpires to make a space what it is. 15 Thus, the
overtheorization of ocean space by poststructuralist scholars of maritime regions is as problematic as its
undertheorization by political economy-inspired scholars.
The focus on discourse/culture/language erases the material and turns it into
merely a mirror of the human. This makes emancipation impossible, turning
the case.
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 1-4
This books attempts a defense and renewal of materialism. This is a defense and renewal needed in the face of critics and defend
ers alike. On the side of the critics, materialism must be defended against obscurantists that seek to argue
that materialism is reductive, mechanistic, and that there is something about human beings,
culture, thought, and society that somehow is other than the material. However, it is perhaps the defenders
of materialism that are today the greater threat. Among Continental critical and social and political theorists,
we are again and again told that they're positions are "materialist," only to see the materiality of
matter up and disappear in their analyses. In these discourses and theoretical orientations, the term "materialism"
has become so watered down that it's come to denote little more than "history" and "practice." It is certainly true that matter
evolves and develops and therefore has a history, and practices such as building houses engage with matter. Unfortunately,
under the contemporary materialism, fol- lowing from a highly selective reading of Marx, "history"
has largely come to mean discursive history, and practice has come to mean discursive practices.
History became a history of discourses, how we talk about the world, the norms and laws by which
societies are organized, and practices came to signify the discursive practices — through the agency
of the signifier, performance, nar- rative, and ideology — that form subjectivities. Such a theory of
society was, of course, convenient for humanities scholars who wanted to believe that the things
they work with — texts — make up the most fundamental fabric of worlds and who wanted to
believe that what they do and investigate is the most important of all things. Material factors such
as the amount of calories a person gets a day, their geographical location (e.g., whether or not
they're located in a remote region of Alaska), the rate at which information can be transferred
through a particular medium, the effects of doing data entry for twelve hours a day, whether or not
people have children, the waste output of travel, computing, how homes are heated, the way in
which roads are laid out, whether or not roads are even present, the morphogenetic effects of
particular diets, and many things besides completely fell off the radar. With the "materialist" turn
in theory, matter somehow completely evaporated and we were instead left with nothing but
language, culture, and discursivity. The term materialism became so empty that Zi5ek could write, "Imlaterialism
means that the reality I see is never 'whole' not because a large part of it eludes me, but because it contains a stain, a blind spot,
which indicates my inclusion in it" (Zi5ek 2006: 17). This is a peculiar proposition indeed. What need does matter have
to be witnessed by anyone? What does a blind spot have to do with matter? Why is there no talk here of "stuff",
"physicality", or material agencies? It would seem that among the defenders, materialism has become a terme d'art which has
little to do with anything material. Materialism has come to mean simply that something is historical,
socially constructed, involves cultural practices, and is contingent. It has nothing to do with
processes that take place in the heart of stars, suffering from cancer, or transforming fossil fuels
into greenhouse gases. We wonder where the materialism in materialism is. We might attribute this to a mere difference in
intellectual histor- iCal lineages — those descended from the Greek atomist Democritus on the one side and the critical theorists
hailing from historical materialism on the other — but unfortunately,
this perversion of materialism, this reduction
to the cultural and discursive, has very real analytic and political effects. At the analytic level, it
has had the effect of rendering physical agencies invisible. This arose, in part, from the influence of Marx's
analysis — who was not himself guilty of what is today called " historical materialism" of com- modity fetishism, which showed
how we relate to things under capitalism is, in reality, a relation between people or social (Marx 1990: 165). Marx was right.
When a person buys a shirt, they are not merely buying a thing, but are rather participating in an entire network of social relations
involving production, distribution, and consumption. However, somehow — contrary to Marx's own views this
thesis became the claim that things aren't real, or that they are merely crystallizations (Marx 1990:
128) of
the social and cultural. Based on this elementary schema of critical theory, the critical
gesture became the demonstration that what we take to be a power of things is, in reality, a
disguised instance of the economic, linguistic, or cultural. Everything became an alienated mirror
of humans and the task became demonstrating that what we found in things was something that we
put there. To speak of the powers of things themselves, to speak of them as producing effects beyond their status as vehicles
for social relations, became the height of naiveté.
The analytic and political consequences of this were
disasterous. Analytically we could only understand one half of how power and domination
function. The historical materialists, critical theorists, structuralists, and post-structuralists taught us to discern how fashion
exercises power and reinforces certain odious social rela tions by functioning as a vehicle for certain meanings, symbolic capital,
and so on. Yet this is only part of the story. As Jane Bennett puts it, things have their power as well (see Bennett 2010).
Unfortunately, discursivist orientations of social and political theory could not explain how things
like turnstiles in subways, mountain ranges, and ocean currents also organize social relations and
perpetuate forms of domination because they had already decided that things are only vehicles or
carriers of social significations and relations. Because things had been erased, it became nearly
impossible to investigate the efficacy of things in contributing to the form social relations take. An
entire domain of power became invisible, and as a result we lost all sorts of opportunities for
strategic intervention in producing emancipatory change. The ole strategy for producing change
became first revealing how we had discursively constructed some phenomenon, then revealing how
it was contingent, and then showing why it was untenable. The idea of removing "turnstiles" as one
way of producing change and emancipation wasn't even on the radar. This was a curious antidialectical gesture that somehow failed to simultaneously recognize the way in which non-human,
non-signifying agencies, structure social relations as much as the discursive.
Representations of the ocean trades off with a recognition of its
MATERIALITY. Recognizing ocean materiality is crucial for an overall
return to materialism
Anderson and Peters 14
Dr Kimberley Peters Lecturer in Human Geography BSc (hons) Human Geography and Planning (Cardiff University) MA
Cultural Geography (Royal Holloway, University of London) PhD (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Dr Jon Anderson
Position:
Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Cardiff University
My academic interest is oriented around the 'extraordinary sets of relations between people and places' (Holloway & Hubbard,
2000:6). These 'extraordinary relations' circulate around a number of spaces of interest (Environmental Action and Identity;
Geography, Place & Culture; Rural Political Action; Water Worlds and Surfing Places; Emerging Ontologies; Literary
Geographies; Innovative methodologies and communication) and have led to a range of international quality research
publications and funding projects. They also inform my undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, both of which have won
national teaching awards (Royal Town Planning Institute Awards for Teaching Excellence, 2009, 2011). My key publications
include: Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces (2012), Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean (with
Peters, K, 2013), and Page and Place: Ongoing Compositions of Plot (with Morse, S, 2013). In the broader social sciences there
is a growing recognition that embodied experiences of the world are integral to both our humanity and understanding (see
Davidson, Bondi and Smith 2005). Emotions and more-than-cognitive understandings (see Pile 2010) are therefore seen as
increasingly essential components in our knowledge systems, as well as inevitable productions from our interactions with the
(water) world of which we are a part. It is through affects and emotions that we ‘literally make sense of the world’ (Wood and
Smith 2004: 534). Accordingly, in this book we draw on theories which enable us to engage with the practices and performances
through which we encounter the world. To this end we recognize that representation can
only take us so far in
knowing water worlds. As Thrift tells us, ‘the varieties of stability we call ‘r epresentation’ can only cover so
much ’ (2004: 89), thus it is vital to consider how the seas and oceans are thoroughly more-than
representational (after Lorimer 2005) in nature. In thinking of water worlds as more-than-representational
spaces, we can be alerted to the many ways in which seas and oceans ‘come to life’; the non-human
actors, materialities and natural states of water which all merge in this processual and fluid medium. Indeed, in this book we not
only seek to draw attention to the activities and embodied practices made possible at sea to reveal new visceral knowledges, we
also contemplate the role of nonhuman actors that fill this void: the fish, insects and rodents (see Bear and
Eden 2010, and Bear and Anim-Addo, this volume) and multiple materialities which reside, on, in, and under the oceans: ships,
surf boards and even trucks (see Anderson, Merchant and Vannini and Taggart, this volume). Such a move also echoes
broader steps in the social sciences to think beyond a world simply constructed by humans. As
Bennett writes, ‘humans are always in composition with nonhumanity’ (2004: 365). Thus human geographies of water
worlds require us to think seriously about the water itself as a non-human materiality (Jones 2011,
return to the ‘livingness’ of the world, Whatmore contends there is a need to
‘reanimate the missing matter of landscape’ (2006: 605). Yet arguably, we must also recognzse the
‘missing matter of seascape’ (Peters 2012: 1242), and thus in this book we must pay attention to the very nature of the
Peters 2012). In a manifesto for a
sea itself.
The Nature/culture divide makes racism inevitable.
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 253-55
But why go to all the trouble of arguing that culture is a part of nature? Why make the perverse move of
geophilosophy? The necessity of this move is twofold. First, cultural studies and social and political
thought has reached an impasse as a result of the nature/culture distinction. Focusing on norms,
signifiers, beliefs, meanings, and ideologies, it is unable to explain why social forma- tions take the
form they do and why they persist as they do even in the face of compelling critiques that
demonstrate that kinds parad-ing as "natural" essences are really socially constructed interactive
kinds. As theorists such as Bruno Latour and Jared Diamond have argued, we can't fully understand why social
ecologies take the form they do without taking into account the role played by non- human agencies
in constructing these assemblages. Diamond is particularly valuable in this context. "Why," he asks, "did wealth and
power become distributed as they now are, rather than in some other way" (Diamond 2005: 15)? Why
didn't wealth and power come to be concentrated among the aborigines, the Native Americans, or
the Africans? Modernity, premised on the nature/ culture distinction, presents us with two possible
and unpalatable possibilities. We can explain this distribution by adopting the standpoint of
"nature" and argue that Eurasians are biologically superior, and were therefore able to use their
greater intelligence to accumulate wealth and power and subdue other people. By contrast, if we
deny that these sorts of biological differences exist — as reams of empirical data should lead us to
do — then we're left with a cultural explanation. Something about those cultures where wealth and
power came to be concentrated must have been superior to these other cultures. In other words, we
replace bio- logical racism with cultural racism. Moreover, we're given no real account of how these superior
another approach. Working on the empirically well grounded thesis that
people are of more or less equal intel- ligence around the world and throughout history, and that as
a result of their intelligence make maximal use of the resources in their environment (ibid.: 22), he
instead looks at what geogra-phy contributed to the formation of various societies. Through an
analysis of climate conditions in different parts of the world, the number of plants and animals
available for domestication in different regions, soil conditions, the availability of mineral
resources, and disease epidemiologies, Diamond is able to show that those cultures where there was
cultures arose. Diamond takes
a greater concentration of resources were able to develop more quickly and therefore subdue other
cultures. Europeans, for example, had more domesticatable animals for food and labor than the peoples of the Americas. This
led to an acceleration in the development of diseases due to living in close proximity to other animals, as well as the formation of
immunities to these diseases. When they went to the Americas they brought these diseases with them, exposing the indigenous
popula- tion to microbes to which they had never developed immunities. As a result, hundreds of thousands of indigenous
Americans were killed off by diseases such as smallpox, allowing the Europeans to subdue local populations and divest them Of
their land and resources. It wasn't a biological or cultural superiority that allowed them to do this, but
rather, in part, the presence of more domesticatable animals in Europe that set up the conditions
for this to be possible. Similarly, geographical location such as longitude play a role in what crops can be grown and how
much yield there will be, which in turn plays a role in how large populations can become and how much social differentiation can
take place. Thus, for instance, cul- tures located at high northern latitudes exist in environments with less botanical diversity
because of the cold, wintery environment. This entails that there will be less available food, which, in its turn, has two
consequences: more time will have to be spent collectively pursuing food as a result, and due to scarcity, populations will have
great difficulty growing beyond a certain size. Consequently, it will become more difficult for social stratification to develop
between those who produce food and whatnot, and those who devote themselves to intellectual pursuits such as invention, the
sclentific exploration of nature, and so on. Here we have an inter- section of the spatial network constituted
by non-human entities playing a significant role in the temporal structuration of human
assemblages.
Ignoring hyperobjects results in billions of death.
James 13 (Arran, UK-based philosopher, graduate student of Critical Theory, and psychiatric nurse). “The catastrophic and the postapocalyptic,”http://syntheticzero.net/2013/08/21/the-catastrophic-and-the-post-apocalyptic/ August 21, 2013)//[AC]
There is a vast onto-cartography at work here that connects species of fish to coolant systems to hydrogen
molecules to legislation on nuclear safety; legislators, parliaments, regulatory bodies, anti-nuclear activists;
ideas like environmentalism; the food supply networks and geographic distribution of production centres; work practices;
capital investments and the wider financial markets as Tepco’s shares fall; and those networks that specifically
effect human beings in the exclusion area. After all, this exclusion zone has seen thousands of families
leave their homes, their jobs, their friends, and the possessions that had been rewarded to them as
recompense for their alienated labour. Consider that some of these people are still paying mortgages on homes they will
probably never be able to return to safely. And there remains one more reactor in the water that has not melted down but possibly will- if not by
human efforts to recover the fuel rods, then by the possibility of another unpredicted earthquake and/or tsunami. I don’t have the space or the
desire to trace the
onto-cartography of this disaster but it is clear that it includes both geological, ecological and
capitalist bodies; indeed, it is clear that the capitalist bodies might be the ones that are ultimately
responsible. According to Christina Consolo,¶ all this collateral damage will continue for decades, if not
centuries, even if things stay exactly the way they are now. But that is unlikely, as bad things happen like
natural disasters and deterioration with time…earthquakes, subsidence, and corrosion, to name a few. Every day that
goes by, the statistical risk increases for this apocalyptic scenario. No one can say or know how this will play out, except
that millions of people will probably die even if things stay exactly as they are, and billions could die
if things get any (here).¶ I raise the spectre of Fukushima as catastrophe and as apocalyptic because it accords to what
Timothy Morton has described as a hyperobject. In ‘Zero Landscapes in the time of hyperobjects’ Morton defines the states
that¶ Objects are beginning to compel us, from outside the wall. The objects we ignored for centuries,
the objects we created in the process of ignoring other ones: plutonium, global warming. I call them hyperobjects.
Hyperobjects are real objects that are massively distributed in time and space. Good examples would be global
warming and nuclear radiation. Hyperobjects are so vast, so long lasting, that they defy human time and
spatial scales. They wouldn’t fit in a landscape painting. They could never put you in the right mood. ¶ The ontocartography or
“map of entities” that we could trace in relation to Fukushima doesn’t just include all those bodies we have listed already but
also, and most importantly, it includes the radiation itself. Born of the unstable hybridisation of techno-materiality and geomateriality in pursuit of energy to satisfy the logic of the infinite growth of capital, the hyperobject of Fukushima’s radiation was
unleashed and now exists independently of those techno-geo-capitalist assemblages. That this radiation
exists on a huge spatio-temporal scale means that it exists
beyond our evolved capacity to think. We evolved to cope with
a world of mid-sized objects, the very tools and raw materials that helped to build
Fukushima. In the language of transcorporealist thought: the weaving or interpenetration of various autonomous
ontological bodies has led to this body composed of bodies. Just as numerous minerals, cells, exogenous
microorganisms, mitochondria, oxygen, lactic acid, sugars, contact lenses, and so on go up to constitute my body
in their choreographic co-actualisation so to does this process give rise to a similar shift in scale. In
my body the shift is that from the molecular to the “molar” scale but in this case, the shift is from the “molar” to the
hyper-scale. The radiation unleashed by the Fukushima meltdown exists on a geological spatial and temporal
scale that the human animal is not equipped to readily perceive.¶ Such hyperobjects proliferate around us and are
equally hard to detect in our proximal engagement with the various worlds we inhabit. They range from incidents like
Fukushima to the more encompassing threats of the collapse of capital, ecocide and cosmic death that
I mentioned above. The reason I have focussed on Fukushima is to illustrate the point that the catastrophe has already taken
and to handle
place. In relation to the example of Fukushima the catastrophe occurred two years ago but will be ongoing for
centuries. That I can sit here in all my relative comfort and enjoy the benefits of being a white male in Britain does
not mean that I am any the less existing after the catastrophe. Catastrophes are discreet events that
explode into being, even if such an explosion can seem very slow as they happen on the scale of vast
temporalities. In the last analysis that can’t be carried out, the cosmos itself exists as one huge catastrophe; the moment of the big bang
being the cosmic event, everything else since being the unfolding of that catastrophic actualisation working itself out.
Anthropocentrism is THE original hierarchy that makes racism, sexism, and
other “-isms” possible—if the future is not to endlessly repeat the horrors of
the past, then we NEED a politics that can respect more than human life – the
affirmatives focus on race only REPLICATES the violence of
anthropocentrism – only the alternative solves
Best 7 (Steven, Chair of Philosophy at UT-EP, JCAS 5.2)
While a welcome advance over the anthropocentric conceit that only humans shape human actions, the environmental determinism approach
typically fails to emphasize the crucial role that animals play in human history, as well as how the human exploitation of animals is a key
cause of hierarchy, social conflict, and environmental breakdown. A core thesis of what I call “animal standpoint theory” is that animals
have been key driving and shaping forces of human thought, psychology, moral and social life, and
history overall. More specifically, animal standpoint theory argues that the oppression of humanover human has deep
roots in the oppression of human over animal. In this context, Charles Patterson’s recent book, The Eternal Treblinka: Our
Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, articulates the animal standpoint in a powerful form with revolutionary implications. The main
argument of Eternal Treblinka is that the human
domination of animals, such as it emerged some ten thousand years ago with
the first hierarchical domination and laid the groundwork for
patriarchy, slavery, warfare, genocide, and other systems of violence and power. A key implication of Patterson’s theory is
that human liberation is implausible if disconnected from animal liberation, and thus humanism -the rise of agricultural society, was
a speciesist philosophy that constructs a hierarchal relationship privileging superior humans over inferior animals and reduces animals to
resources for human use -- collapses
under the weight of its logical contradictions. Patterson lays out his complex
and speciesism have direct and profound
connections to slavery, colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism. In Part II, he shows how these connections exist not only in the
realm of ideology – as conceptual systems of justifying and underpinning domination and hierarchy – but also in systems of
technology, such that the tools and techniques humans devised for the rationalized mass confinement and slaughter of animals were
holistic argument in three parts. In Part I, he demonstrates that animal exploitation
mobilized against human groups for the same ends. Finally, in the fascinating interviews and narratives of Part III, Patterson describes how
personal experience with German Nazism prompted Jewish to take antithetical paths: whereas most retreated to an insular identity and
dogmatic emphasis on the singularity of Nazi evil and its tragic experience, others recognized the profound similarities between how Nazis
treated their human captives and how humanity as a whole treats other animals, an epiphany that led them to adopt vegetarianism, to become
advocates for the animals, and develop a far broader and more inclusive ethic informed by universal compassion for all suffering and
oppressed beings. The Origins of Hierarchy "As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other" –Pythagoras It is little understood
that the first form of oppression, domination, and hierarchy involves human domination over animals Patterson’s thesis stands in bold
contrast to the Marxist theory that the domination over nature is fundamental to the domination over other humans. It differs as well from the
social ecology position of Murray Bookchin that domination over humans brings about alienation from the natural world, provokes
hierarchical mindsets and institutions, and is the root of the long-standing western goal to “dominate” nature. In the case of Marxists,
anarchists, and so many others, theorists typically don’t even mention human domination of animals, let
alone assign it causal primacy or significance. In Patterson’s model, however, the human subjugation of animals is the
first form of hierarchy and it paves the way for all other systems of domination such as include
patriarchy, racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. As he puts it, “the exploitation of animals
was the model and inspiration for the atrocities people committed against each other, slavery and the Holocaust being but two of the more
dramatic examples.” Hierarchy
emerged with the rise of agricultural society some ten thousand years
ago. In the shift from nomadic hunting and gathering bands to settled agricultural practices,
humans began to establish their dominance over animals through “domestication.” In animal
domestication (often a euphemism disguising coercion and cruelty), humans began to exploit animals for purposes such as
obtaining food, milk, clothing, plowing, and transportation. As they gained increasing control over the lives and
labor power of animals, humans bred them for desired traits and controlled them in various ways, such as
castratingmales to make them more docile.To conquer, enslave, and claim animals as their own
property, humans developed numerous technologies, such as pens, cages, collars, ropes, chains, and
branding irons. The domination of animals paved the way for the domination of humans. The sexual subjugation of
women, Patterson suggests, was modeled afterthe domestication of animals, such that men began to control
women’s reproductive capacity, to enforce repressive sexual norms, and to rape them as they
forced breedingin their animals. Not coincidentally, Patterson argues, slavery emerged in the same region of the
Middle East that spawned agriculture, and, in fact, developed as an extension of animal domestication
practices. In areas like Sumer, slaves were managed like livestock, and males were castrated and
forced to work along with females. In the fifteenth century, when Europeans began the colonization of
Africa and Spain introduced the first international slave markets, the metaphors, models, and
technologies used to exploit animal slaves were applied with equal cruelty and force to human slaves.
Stealing Africans from their native environment and homeland, breaking up families who scream in
anguish, wrapping chains around slaves’ bodies, shipping them in cramped quarters across
continents for weeks or months with no regard for their needs or suffering, branding their skin with a hot
iron to mark them as property, auctioning them as servants, breeding them for service and labor,
exploiting them for profit, beating them in rages of hatred and anger, and killing them in vast numbers– all
these horrors and countless others inflicted on black slaves were developed and perfected centuries
earlier through animal exploitation. As the domestication of animals developed in agricultural society, humans lost the
intimate connections they once had with animals. By the time of Aristotle, certainly, and with the bigoted assistance of medieval theologians
such as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, western humanity had developed an explicitly hierarchical worldview – that came to be known
as the “Great Chain of Being” – used to position humans as the end to which all other beings were mere means. Patterson underscores the
crucial point that the domination of human over human and its exercise through slavery, warfare, and genocide typically begins with the
denigration of victims. But the means and methods of dehumanization are derivative, for speciesism provided the conceptual paradigm that
encouraged, sustained, and justified western brutality toward other peoples. “Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master
species,” Patterson writes, “our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The
study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the
same to them.” Whether the conquerors are European imperialists, American colonialists, or German Nazis, western
aggressors
engaged in wordplay before swordplay, vilifying their victims – Africans, Native Americans, Filipinos, Japanese,
Vietnamese, Iraqis, and other unfortunates – with opprobrious terms such as “rats,” “pigs,” “swine,” “monkeys,” “beasts,” and
“filthy animals.”Once perceived as brute beasts or sub-humans occupying a lower evolutionary rung
than white westerners, subjugated peoples were treated accordingly; once characterized as animals, they could
be hunted down like animals. The first exiles from the moral community, animals provided a convenient discard bin for oppressors to dispose
the oppressed. The connections are clear: “For a civilization built on the exploitation and slaughter of animals, the `lower’ and more
degraded the human victims are, the easier it is to kill them.” Thus, colonialism, as Patterson describes, was
a “natural
extension of human supremacy over the animal kingdom. For just as humans had subdued animals with their
superior intelligence and technologies, so many Europeans believed that the white race had proven its superiority by bringing the “lower
races” under its command. There are important parallels between speciesism and sexism and racism in the elevation of white male
rationality to the touchstone of moral worth. The
arguments European colonialists used to legitimate exploiting
Africans – that they were less than human and inferior to white Europeans in ability to reason –
are the very same justifications humans use to trap, hunt, confine, and kill animals. Oncewestern norms of
rationality were defined as the essence of humanity and social normality, by first using non-human animals as the
measure of alterity, it was a short step to begin viewing odd, different, exotic, and eccentric peoples and types asnonor sub-human.Thus, the same criterion created to exclude animals from humans was also used to ostracize blacks, women, and
numerous other groups from “humanity.”
Anthropocentric ordering is the foundation of the war machine and drives the
exclusion of populations based on race, ethnicity and gender
Kochi, 2K9 (Tarik, Sussex law school, Species war: Law, Violence and Animals, Law Culture and Humanities Oct 5.3)
Grotius and Hobbes are sometimes described as setting out a prudential approach, 28 or a natural law of minimal content 29 because in contrast
to Aristotelian or Thomastic legal and political theory their attempt to derive the legitimacy of the state and sovereign order relies less upon a
thick con-ception of the good life and is more focussed upon basic human needs such as survival. In the context of a response to religious
civil war such an approach made sense in that often thick moral and religious conceptions of the good life (for example, those held
by competing Christian Confessions) often drove conflict and violence. Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that the categories of
“survival,” “preservation of life” and “bare life” are neutral categories. Rather survival, preservation of life and bare life as
expressed by the Westphalian theoretical tradition already contain distinctions of value – in particular, the specific
distinction of value between human and non-human life . “Bare life” in this sense is not “bare” but contains within it a
distinction of value between the worth of human life placed above and beyond the worth of non-human animal life. In this respect
bare life within this tradition contains within it a hidden conception of the good life. The foundational moment of the modern
juridical conception of the law of war already contains within it the operation of species war. The Westphalian tradition puts
itself forward as grounding the legitimacy of violence upon the preservation of life, however its concern for life is already
marked by a hierarchy of value in which non-human animal life is violently used as the “raw material” for preserving human life.
Grounded upon, but concealing the human-animal distinction, the Westphalian conception of war makes a double move: it excludes the
killing of animals from its definition of “war proper,” and, through rendering dominant the modern juridical definition of “war
proper” the tradition is able to further institutionalize and normalize a particular conception of the good life. Following from this
original distinction of life-value realized through the juridical language of war were other forms of human life whose lives were considered to be
of a lesser value under a European, Christian, “secular” 30 natural law conception of the good life. Underneath this concern with the
preservation of life in general stood veiled preferences over what particu-lar forms of life (such as racial conceptions of human
life) and ways of living were worthy of preservation, realization and elevation . The business contracts of early capitalism, 31 the
power of white males over women and children, and, especially in the colonial context, the sanctity of European life over nonEuropean and Christian lives over non-Christian heathens and Muslims, were some of the dominant forms of life preferred for
preservation within the early modern juridical ordering of war.
Flat ontology key
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 215-217
The first step in developing such a framework lies in overcoming human exceptionalism. As I argued in
The Democracy of Objects, ontology must be flattened (see Bryant 2011: ch. 6). Rather than bifurcating being
into two domains — the domain of objects and the domain of subiects, the domain of nature and the
domain of culture — we must instead conceive of being as a single flat plane, a single nature, on
which humans are beings among other beings. While humans are certainly exceptional, for us they
are not ontologically exceptional. To be sure, they differ in their powers and capacities from other
beings, but they are not lords or hierarchs over all other beings. They are beings that dwell among
other beings, that act on them and that are acted upon by them. As extended mind theorists such as Andy
Clark have argued — but also the new materialist feminists and actor-network theorists such as Latour mind and culture
are not special domains that can be separated from the other non-human entities of the world for
special investigation. Rather, we are intimately bound up with the other entities of the world,
coupled and conditioned by them in all sorts of ways. Above all, we must avoid treating the world
as a field given for the contemplative gaze of humans. A world is something within which we act
and engage, not something we passively contemplate. A flat ontology must therefore be conceived
along the lines of Lacan's famous Borromean knot (see Figure 7.1). A Borromean knot consists of three
inter-linked rings of string fastened together in such a way that if any one ring is severed, the other
two fall away. Lacan indexes each of the three rings to one of his three orders: the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary. With
the Borromean knot, Lacan's work undergoes a funda- mental transformation. In his earlier work, one of the three orders had
always been privileged as dominating and overcoding the others. In his earliest work, the imaginary dominated the real and the
symbolic. In the work of his middle period, it was the symbolic that overcoded the real and the imaginary. In his third phase, it
was the real that overcoded the symbolic and the imaginary. With the Borromean knot, no order overcodes the
others. Rather, they are all now treated as being on equal footing. This is how we need to think
about the order of being. The domain of the real indexes machines. Machines exist in their own
right, regardless of whether anyone registers them or discourses about them. The domain of the
symbolic refers to the plane of expression, or how beings are discoursed about, signified, imbued
with meaning, and so on. Finally, the domain of the imaginary refers to the way in which one
machine encounters another under conditions of structural openness and operational closure.
Situated within the framework of the Borromean knot, we can simultaneously investigate how a machine is
ideologically coded as in the case of Baudrillard's analysis of objects in System of Objects, how a
machine is phenomenologically encountered by another machine, and how a machine is a real,
independent being in its own right that produces effects irreducible to how it is signified or
phenomenologically given.
ALTERNATIVE: we should root our discussions of the OCEAN in its
MATERIALITY, not its status in human relations. We can talk about the
Middle Passage, and we can talk about the ocean, but we should not EQUATE
one with the other
Eckel 14
(Leslie Elizabeth Eckel, Associate professor of English at Suffolk University, “Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, Oceanic
mirrors: Atlantic literature and the global chaosmos,” Pg. 129-131, 03/04/14)
In Frederick Douglass’s novella The Heroic Slave (1853), a first mate who has witnessed a consciousness-altering shipboard slave rebellion
explains to a stubborn “old salt” that his national and racial prejudices simply will not “stand the test of salt water.” 1 What the first mate has
experienced onboard the Creole, an actual ship that changed hands from masters to slaves on its intended passage from Richmond, Virginia to
New Orleans in 1841, shakes his old assumptions loose and forces him to rethink the validity of territorial American law and its entrenched social
hierarchies. Now a central text of what William Boelhower has called “the new Atlantic studies matrix,” 2 , Douglass’s narrative suggests that the
Atlantic Ocean has a life of its own that is fundamentally separate from the historically implicated, culturally delineated lives led in the nations
around its rim. The familiar revolutionary rhetoric used by Douglass’s protagonist can be misleading, as we think we know whose side the ocean
is taking when we hear Madison Washington proclaim, “you cannot write the bloody laws of slavery on those restless billows. The ocean, if not
the land, is free” (Douglass, 504). Washington sounds like a new Founding Father, a man clever enough to use the liberating space of the ocean to
assert those transnational human rights that are not recognized on land. What both he and Douglass only begin to realize, however, is the
extremity of the oceanic “free[dom]” that he invokes, as well as the extent to which the “restless billows” of the ocean’s waters threaten to
obliterate all certainties belonging to those who attempt to “write” them into history – American, Atlantic, or global. As he shores up his own
defense, the Creole’s former first mate describes the danger involved in any ocean voyage. Reversals of fortune can be comprehended, he says,
“[…] when we learn, that by some mysterious disturbance in nature, the waters parted beneath, and swallowed the ship up, we lose our
indignation and disgust in lamentation of the disaster, and in awe of the Power which controls the elements” (Douglass, 501). Here, Washington’s
“restless billows” menace the very existence of the craft they grudgingly support, and through some “mysterious disturbance” display their
elemental “Power,” subject to neither the words nor the will of any human being. This
scene of conflict between those who attempt to
points us toward two versions of Atlantic theory: the first
rooted in the politics of human societies on land, which the narrative implies can be altered in a watery instant, and the
second subject to the unfathomable nature of the ocean itself. It is this second, more disruptive form of Atlantic
interpret the Creole’s dramatic change of course
theory whose potential I intend to explore here by drawing on three oceanic novels: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), CharlesJohnson’s
Middle Passage (1990), and Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (2008). Studies of Atlantic world literatures tend to lean heavily on historical
approaches to knowledge. Recognizing their indebtedness to the paradigms constructed by Atlantic historians from the 1980s onwards, Atlantic
literary scholars may struggle with the belatedness of their approaches or even with “plaintive” feelings about the comparative value of their own
discipline, as Elizabeth Maddock Dillon has noted.3 These scholars
often follow the interdisciplinary lines of inquiry established by Paul
Gilroy and Joseph Roach, which, as Gilroy explains, “take the Atlantic as one single, complex unit of analysis” as they
investigate the myriad cross-fertilizations generated by the movement of people, ideas, and cultural practices across the ocean and around the
Atlantic rim.4 Critical
studies of this kind often identify themselves with Gilroy’s Atlantic “unit of analysis” in a
black Atlantic , “ Indian” Atlantic , transatlantic, circumatlantic, British, Dutch,
variety of ethnic, linguistic, and color-coded terms:
French, Portuguese, or Spanish Atlantic,
and the Irish diaspora, respectively).
and “red” or “green” Atlantic
(the latter two designations focus on revolutionary history
With so much emphasis on categorizing and cataloguing its cultural
activity, however, a full and balanced understanding of the oceanic element of the Atlantic has
been lost . In his field-defining essay, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” David Armitage contends that circumatlantic, transatlantic, and
cisatlantic studies together constitute a uniquely “three-dimensional” area of inquiry, but his analysis largely excludes the oceanic fourth
dimension that can further deepen and complicate our understanding of the Atlantic world.5 Margaret Cohen recognizes this loss, calling it
“ hydrophasia, ” a
condition in which the ocean itself is forgotten en route to other critical
destinations .6 Before it became a field upon which scholars could stake their territorial claims, the Atlantic was a
space held in suspension by water , whose properties and influences are inherently distinct from those of earth.7 An oceanic
theory of Atlantic studies invites us to imagine a true “history from below,” one that is less concerned
with the immanence of slavery’s legacy
or the exigencies of seafaring labor than
with the ways in which the
ocean, by what Kate Flint terms its “fluid, mutable, dangerous” nature, overwhelms the human mind
and undermines attempts to
analyze the meaning of its vast expanse.8 Both Boelhower, a literary scholar, and Armitage, an historian, have asked what
would happen
if we put the ocean itself at the center of our conception of the Atlantic world.9 Would this constitute, as Jed
Esty has suggested, a “radical” change in our understanding of transatlantic studies, or, I would add, a productive challenge to our thinking about
any geopolitical region defined by an ocean, including the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Rim, and the Mediterranean Sea?10 Can focusing on the
Atlantic’s normally hidden identity as one ocean among many, all with a shared elemental nature, yet possessing separate historical footprints,
uncover common losses and ruptures in consciousness that trouble the field imaginary of a “single, complex” Atlantic studies? The essays
gathered in the Oceanic Studies cluster of the May 2010 issue of PMLA respond in part to these provocations, charting a promising “oceanic turn
in literary studies” that considers the environmental implications, genre shifts, identity formations, and power relations constituted in human
interactions with the sea.11 From Hester Blum’s perspective, attention to “the material conditions and praxis” of oceanic experience, particularly
the working lives of sailors, “allow[s] for a galvanization of the erasure, elision, and fluidity at work in the metaphorics of the sea that would
better enable us to see and to study the work of oceanic literature.”12 I want to suggest that an important way in which oceanic
texts do
this work is by mirroring the strong currents and blank zones of the waters they travel, especially as one
ocean flows into and mingles with another: the Atlantic folds into the Indian Ocean, for instance, and then again into the Pacific. My critical
method of “galvanizing” the global ocean’s power draws on both the figurative images of emptiness and perpetual transformation that the sea
presents as well as the literal implications that those fluid conditions have for the cultures connected by the ocean’s waves. From a
nineteenthcentury American standpoint, the prospect of oceanic emptiness is a daunting one, as it threatens to annihilate the nationally grounded
self carefully cultivated by the precepts of Romantic individualism. Such is the case for Ishmael, the narrator of Melville’s Moby- Dick. In
Middle Passage, Johnson challenges that assumption by exploring what emptiness looks like from a black Buddhist perspective, following
Atlantic currents from the Americas to Africa and then into the Indian Ocean (and by religious implication, the Pacific). Finally, Ghosh considers
the Indian Ocean as a dynamic mirror image of the Atlantic world in Sea of Poppies – a novel that dislocates the Atlantic’s categories of racial
and national identity even as it recreates familiar oceanic patterns of the slave trade, the creolization of language, and the painful loss of landed
bearings. The three novels with Atlantic roots (as well as global “routes,” accessed via Gilroy’s suggestive homonym) on which this essay
focuses its attention bring oceanic encounters into their imaginative foreground and allow their narratives to flow with
the sea’s shifting currents.13 They ask questions that shift our cultural frames of reference: How can emptiness be considered a victory, not a
void? Where is “blackness” a sign of divinity, not a social danger? As they do so, they
Isabel Hofmeyr notes, putting it in dialogue with other oceanic world systems,
not only “relativize the Atlantic,” as
but they invoke Johnson’s idea of the ocean
as a spiritual “chaosmos,” in which a world that devolves into “chaos” from one perspective may also be recreated from another.14
That dynamic situates these novels between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans but also between human territory and divine cosmos: standing, or
rather, sailing on what Cohen identifies as “the edge of knowledge,” facing the incomprehensible and the theoretically impossible.15 We have
already been warned by Douglass and the Creole’s first mate – the farther we sail from land and away from the known world, the more dangerous
the ocean will become.
When we truly immerse ourselves in the vortex of the sea, all of our systems of
thought will be called into question.
The affirmative trades off with flat ontology. Any demand for human
inclusion is a link to the criticism
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College, The Democracy of Objects, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dodidx/democracy-of-objects.pdf?c=ohp;idno=9750134.0001.001)
Flat ontology is a complex
variety of ontological theses under a single term. First, due to the split
characteristic of all objects, flat ontology rejects any ontology of transcendence or presence that privileges
Onticology proposes what might be called, drawing on DeLanda's term yet broadening it, a flat ontology.
philosophical concept that bundles together a
one¶ sort of entity as the origin of all others and as fully present to itself . In this regard, onticology proposes an
ontology resonant with Derrida's critique of metaphysics insofar as, in its treatment of beings as withdrawn, it undermines any pretensions to
presence within being. If
this thesis is persuasive, then metaphysics can no longer function as a synonym
for “metaphysics of presence”, nor substance as a synonym for “presence”,¶ but rather an ontology
has been formulated that overcomes the primacy¶ of presence. In this section, I articulate this logic in terms of
Lacan's¶ graphs of sexuation. Here I believe that those graphs have little to tell us about masculine or feminine sexuality—for reasons I will
outline in what follows—but a great deal to tell us about ontologies of immanence or flat ontologies and ontologies of transcendence. Second ,
flat ontology signifies that the world or the universe does not exist. I will develop the argument¶ for
this strange claim in what follows, but for the moment it is important¶ to recognize the definite
article in this claim. The claim that the world doesn't exist is the claim that there is no super-object
that gathers all other objects together in a single, harmonious unity. Third, following Harman, flat ontology
refuses to privilege the subject-object, human-world relation as either a) a form of metaphysical
relation different in kind from other relations between objects, and that b) refuses to treat the
subject-object relation as implicitly included in every form of object-object relation. To be sure, flat
ontology readily recognizes that humans have unique powers and capacities and that how humans
relate to the world is a topic more than worthy of investigation, yet nothing about this establishes
that humans must be included in every inter-object relation or that how humans relate to objects
differs in kind from how other entities relate to objects. Finally, fourth, flat ontology argues that all
entities are on equal ontological footing and that no entity, whether artificial or natural, symbolic
or physical, possesses greater ontological dignity than other objects.While indeed some objects might
influence the collectives to which they belong to a greater extent than others, it doesn't follow from
this that these objects are more real than others. Existence, being, is a binary such that something
either¶ is or is not.
OOO key to shifting from anthro.
Mylius 13 (Ben Mylius, March 10, 2013, law graduate, anthrodecentrism object oriented ontology and refining the goals of ecocreative writing
http://ecologeur.com/post/45014342168/anthrodecentrism-object-oriented-ontology-and-refining)
‘Ontology is the philosophical study of existence. Object-oriented ontology puts things at the centre of this study. Its proponents
contend that nothing has special status, but that everything exists equally -plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, and sandstone, for
example. In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as
constructions of human behaviour and society (social relativism). OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at
all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves.’ For
anyone interested in a more philosophically-oriented explanation, Wikipedia’s entry here is unusually helpful as a starting-point; Levi Bryant’s
‘Manifesto for object-oriented ontology’ is even more so, as is his book The Democracy of Objects, available as an ebook here. I find this
movement particularly interesting because it represents an attempt to think other than anthropocentrically: to develop a way of
seeing and thinking that avoid placing subjects in general, and human subjects in particular, at its centre. This is also where the
resonance lies with ecocreative writing, which I see as an attempt in a creative mode to do the same thing. The challenge, as it has always
been, is to find the way of theorising this ‘alternative to anthropocentrism’ in a coherent and non-problematic way. Perhaps the key
hurdle for the concept of ‘ecocentrism’ in object-oriented terms is that it proposes some overarching, unified ‘One’ (the ‘eco’) that might
replace the ‘anthro’ at the centre of our thought. My sense is that this might be avoided if we were able to sustain an image of an
ecosystem as a process - an assemblage (Deleuze), ‘mesh’ (Morton) or ‘collective’ (Latour) - rather than a thing. But the connotations
of any kind of ‘centrism’ (what is at the centre?) make this difficult.
Case
Using the ocean as a metaphor for social relations covers up its nature as a
space BEYOND the HUMAN and the SOCIAL. Only an OCEANCENTERED ontology allows us to relate to the ocean and spillover to
destabilize anthropocentrism
Steinberg 13
Philip E. Steinberg Professor in the Department of Geography @ Durham Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in maritime
regions”, Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, 10:2, 156-169, DOI:10.1080/14788810.2013.785192
Conclusion
In her review of recent ocean-related scholarship in social and cultural geography, Kimberley Peters asks, ‘‘ Oceans and seas are threedimensional, fluid and liquid, yet they are also undulating surfaces; how does the texture, the currents and the substance of the water impact
contemporary social and cultural uses of that space? ’’ 46 Others have raised similar points. For instance, Elizabeth DeLoughrey asserts, ‘‘ Unlike
terrestrial space, the perpetual circulation of ocean currents means that as a space, [the sea] necessarily dissolves local phenomenology and
defracts the accumulation of narrative. ’’ 47 In a similar vein, Lambert, Martins, and Ogborn write, ‘‘ Clearly, climatic, geophysical, and
ecological processes belong in work on the sea ... .Overemphasis
on human agency , especially in accounts of the Atlantic,
makes for a curiously static and empty conception of the sea, in which it serves merely as a
framework for historical investigations , rather than being something with a lively and energetic
materiality of its own. ’’ 48 Yet even those who advocate a ‘‘ more-than-human ’’ approach have difficulty incorporating the ocean ’ s
geophysicality, not just as a force that impacts humans but as part of a marine assemblage in which humans are just one component. Thus,
Lambert, Martins, and Ogborn discuss narratives
connections), and
Red Atlantic
of the White Atlantic
(European migration),
(the Atlantic as a space of labor) but curiously
Black Atlantic
leave out a Blue Atlantic
(postcolonial
(a geophysical
example of the North Atlantic circular system supporting the ‘‘ triangular trade ’’
culminates in a distinctly human set of patterns and interrelations in which, as with all maritime trade, the
underlying water is idealized as absent. 49 Despite their best intentions, the ocean environment,
although recognized as being more complex than a mere surface, is still treated as ‘‘ a framework for historical
space of dynamic liquidity), and their
investigations . ’’ A more systematic attempt to integrate geophysicality into our understanding of human activities in the sea can be seen
in recently published works by Kimberley Peters and by Jon Anderson. Peters focuses on pirate radio broadcasters who are continually thwarted
in their attempts to idealize the ocean as an abstract, extra-legal, extra-national space. Reflecting on the affective interaction between the maritime
broadcaster and the sea, she conceptualizes a ‘‘ hydro-materiality ’’ that incorporates 164 P.E. Steinberg Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at
15:01 08 May 2014 mobile biota (both human and non-human) as well as technologies and objects. 50 The geophysical properties of the ocean
take on an even more profound role in Anderson ’ s research on surfing. He uses the relationship between the surfer and the wave to explore how
the assemblage perspective can be expanded (or modified) to interpret fleeting moments of socio-biological-geophysical convergence. This
ontology of convergence may well characterize all moments in time, but its applicability is particularly profound in the ocean because of the
ocean ’ s underlying dynamism. 51 Peters and Anderson propose just two of the many ways in which we can take the ocean seriously as a
complex space of circulations. These
circulations are comprised not just of the people, ideas, commodities,
and ships that move across its surface or the fish who swim in its water. Rather, in a more fundamental way,
the ocean is a space of circulation because it is constituted through its very geophysical mobility. As
in Lagrangian fluid dynamics, movement is not something that happens between places, connecting discrete
points on a ‘‘ rim. ’’ Rather, movement emerges as the very essence of the ocean region, including the aqueous mass
at its center. From this perspective, the ocean becomes the object of our focus not because it is a space that
facilitates movement the space across which things move but because it is a space that is constituted by and
constitutive of movement. This perspective not only enables us to understand the ocean in its entirety; it disassembles accepted
understandings of relations between space and time, between stasis and mobility, and between human and non-human
actants like ships, navigational aids, and water molecules. This perspective suggests an ambitious agenda, and one that
goes well beyond more established goals in the ocean-region studies community, such as highlighting exchange over
production or emphasizing the hybrid nature of cultural identities. And yet, it is only through
engaging with the ocean in all its material complexity that we can develop the fluid perspective that
allows us to use the sea to look beyond the sea.
Accounts of the middle passage and transatlantic that CENTER history in
ocean studies DISPLACE its materiality. Clearly their historical account is
important, but should not be understood as OCEAN exploration because it’s
exploring SOCIALITY
Steinberg 13
Philip E. Steinberg Professor in the Department of Geography @ Durham Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in maritime
regions”, Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, 10:2, 156-169, DOI:10.1080/14788810.2013.785192
In this light, it is interesting to compare Dirlik ’ s Pacific Rim with Paul Gilroy ’ s The Black Atlantic . 16 At first glance, Gilroy seems to cover
the material (and the space) ignored by Dirlik. Whereas the distance and materiality of the ocean inside Dirlik ’ s Pacific Rim are seamlessly
transcended by the circuits of multinational capital, the space in the middle (the Atlantic) and the frictions encountered in its crossing are central
for Gilroy. The
Black Atlantic is primarily a book about the connections that persist among members of the
African diaspora and the ungrounded, unbounded, and multifaceted identities that result, and the trope of the Middle
Passage is deployed throughout the book to reference the travel of African-inspired ideas and cultural products, as well as bodies,
that continues to this day. Nonetheless, even as Gilroy appears to reference the ocean, the ultimate target of
these references is far removed from the liquid space across which ships carrying Africans
historically traveled. In fact, the geographic space of the ocean is twice removed from the phenomenon that captures Gilroy ’ s attention:
it is used to reference the Middle Passage which in turn is used to reference contemporary flows, and by
the time one connects this chain of references the materiality of the Atlantic is long forgotten. Venturing into
Gilroy ’ s Black Atlantic, one never gets wet. 158 P.E. Steinberg Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 15:01 08 May 2014
The problem, then, is not that studies that reference an oceanic center lack empirical depth. Rather, the problem is that the
experiences referenced through these studies typically are partial, mediated, and distinct from the
various non-human elements that combine in maritime space to make the ocean what it is. This then leads us back to
Blum ’ s call for a turn to actual experiences of the sea, as have been chronicled by anthropologists, labor historians, and historical geographers,
as well as in maritime or coastal-based fiction. Unfortunately, a scholar of (Western) literature or history who pursues this agenda soon runs into
methodological limits. As John Mack notes, Western accounts of ‘‘ life at sea, ’’ whether fictional or historical, are typically about ‘‘ life on ship, ’’ as they fail to
attend to the surface on which the ship floats, let alone what transpires beneath that surface. 17 And yet, contrary to Dirlik ’ s dismissal, the
physical
geography of the ocean does matter. How we interact with, utilize the resources of, and regulate the oceans that bind our
ocean regions is intimately connected with how we understand those oceans as physical entities : as wet, mobile,
dynamic, deep, dark spaces that are characterized by complex movements and interdependencies of water molecules, minerals, and non-human biota as well as
humans and their ships. The
oceans that unify our ocean regions are much more than surfaces for the
movement of ships (or for the movement of ideas, commodities, money, or people) and they are much more than spaces in
which we hunt for resources. Although these are the perspectives typically deployed in humancentered sea stories (i.e. the ones advocated by Blum), such perspectives
Rather, the oceans that anchor ocean regions need
to be understood as ‘‘ more-than-human ’’ assemblages, 18 reproduced by scientists, 19 sailors, 20 fishers, 21 surfers, 22 divers,
only begin to address the reality of the sea that makes these encounters possible.
23 passengers, 24 and even pirate broadcasters 25 as they interact with and are co-constituted by the universe of mobile non-human elements that also inhabit its
actions and interests of humans around the ocean ’ s
edges and on its surface certainly matter, a story that begins and ends with human ‘‘ crossings ’’ or
depths, including ships, fish, and water molecules. 26 Although the
‘‘ uses ’’ of the sea will always be incomplete . The physical boundaries of a maritime region are indeed human-defined as Dirlik asserts,
underlying, and specifically liquid nature of the ocean at its center needs to be understood as
emergent with, and not merely as an underlying context for, human activities.
but the
Using the Middle Passage as an emblem not only reduces the OCEAN – it
reduces the important particulars of transatlantic slave trade
Dayan 96
Paul
Gilroy's
Slaves,
Ships,
and
Routes:
The
Middle
(http://ezproxy.latech.edu:2071/stable/pdfplus/10.2307/3819981.pdf?acceptTC=true) CM
Passage
as
Metaphor
Joan
Dayan
Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness-a cartographyo f celebratoryjo urneys-reads like an expurgated epic
history. The Black Atlantic refers to, and stresses again and again, the rites of
World,
the Middle Passage , the journey from Africa to the New
as a kind of origin myth for later chosen tales of ocean crossings
by Wright, Du Bois, Douglass, and others who
make a modern journey from the Americas to Europe. Yet, there is something oddly dissembling about those sites of what Gilroy calls
"contamination." For the idea of slavery, so central to his argument (and so necessary to our understandingo f what he calls the enlightened"
complicityo f reasona nd terror")
becomes nothing more than a metaphor . How this happens demands some discussion.A
lthoughG ilroya rguesa gainst" Africentrisma"n di ts cult of Africathe nostalgia for Pharaoh's treasures instead of the liberation of the Exodus
story-in Gilroy's story, the
slave ship, the Middle Passage, and finally slavery itself become frozen , things that can be referred
to and looked back upon, but always wrenched out of an historically specific continuum. What is missing is the
continuity of the Middle Passage in today's world of less obvious, but no less pernicious enslavement. Although I can appreciate
the terms used, and laud Gilroy's call for retrieval of a past either ignored or misrepresented, something is not quite right aboutt his
heroics of choice and collaborationA. s terms like "hybridity,"" contamination," "mixture,"a nd "culturafl usion"w ere repeated,I wondereda boutt
heirg rounding in history.W hat history?W hose history?T he answeri s apparentlys imple: black history-a "transnationadl,i asporic"h istoryo f
black slaves with the "slave ship" as vessel of transit and means to knowledge. In Gilroy's attempt to anchor "black modernism" in "a
the slave experience becomes an icon for
modernity; and in a strangely magical way, the Middle Passage becomes a metaphor, anchored somewhere in
a vanishing history. In Gilroy's transit there is no historical past except as an empty fact turned into a fashionable call that dulls any
continued proximity to the unspeakable terrors of the slave experience,"
response that could carry the Middle Passage, slavery, ships, and routes into the present transnational drive of global capital and political terror.
Gilroy stops short of questioning the choice of exile and passage by a minority of educated elites whose names we remember: Delaney, Douglass,
Du Bois, and Wright, to name a few of Gilroy's chosen, along with the conveyors of "hip-hop," soul music, and rap in Gilroy's new, "keep on
moving," world. Gilroy's Middle Passage and his celebration of "crossculturacl irculation"a nd "nomadism"le nd a false idea of choice to forced
Migration Let me turn briefly to what I take to be the incisive plot of Gilroy's reflections, a plot that undergirdst he images and charactersc alled
up on his broadc anvas of modernity. The plot takes up three or four moments in the historiography and representation of a new
racialized culture of modernity or those of us who do literary history, the recovery of the institution of slavery and the presence of
African Americans in the texts of the so-called "American Renaissance" have been essential to a rereading of gothic fiction in the
Americas. Even the supernatural in many gothic tales, as I argued in "Amorous Bondage," had its real basis in the languageo f slaverya nd
colonization,p ut fortha s the most naturalt hing in the world. One has only to read the 1685 Code noir of Louis XIV, that collection of edicts
concerning "the Discipline and Commerce of Negro Slaves in the French Islands of America," to understandh ow what first seemed
phantasmagoricis locked into a nature mangled and relived as a spectacle of servitude. In fixing his critique in his "deep sense of the complicity
of racial terror with reason," Gilroy explores, "the ways in which closeness to the ineffable terrors of slavery was kept alive-carefully cultivatedin ritualized, social forms" (73). Here is a key to the excitement to be found in Gilroy's "doubleness":f or these social forms might reside in a
practice like Haitian vodou, utterly cooptive, and absorptive-a ritualr eenactmento f the colonial past, as well as an alternativep hilosophy.
Gilroy's ruminationss eem to encourages uch movementst o and fro, for "transnationald, iasporicc ulturali nnovation"a lways cuts both ways.
Slavery is the hub-the rite of memory,a stayingc lose to "terror"in ordert o recognizea gain and again "the complicity of rationality and ethnocidal
terror to which this book is dedicated" (213). Claiming quite rightly that slavery is not the "special property" of blacks-some easily
discarded residue-but rather" a part of the ethical and intellectual heritage of the West as a whole" (49), Gilroy announces that it's
time to reconstruct "the primal history of modernity" from the "slaves' point of view" (55). But what do we define as "the West as
a whole"? And where, oh where do we find the slaves' point of view? To Naipaul'sc laim thatt he Caribbeanis nothingb ut the "ThirdW
orld'sT hird World," Sidney Mintz argues that the Caribbean was "being force fit into the socalled First World before anything like a Third World
ever existed" (47). As best testing ground for the claims and coercions of capital, the colonies could be argued to be more Western than what we
deem to be West: places for excess, where a Jacobin could be more Jacobin than allowed in France, and Lady Maria Nugent in 18th-centuryJ
amaicac ould be morel uxuriouslyd ressed-bearing gifts from Pauline Bonaparte Leclerc next door in Haiti-than a lady in London. There's an odd
way in which the Caribbean colonies drop out of Gilroy's historiography. For Gilroy seems haunted by the ghosts of terms already defined by the
metropolitan definers. In quest of what he calls a "compound outlook" in place of "a pre-rational, spiritual mode of African thought" (60-61),
Gilroy oversimplifies the precarious encountero f colonial spiritualityt,a kingf or grantedt he very dichotomyh e claims to be debunking. Since he
deals with late-in-coming cultural products as exempla, he ignores the contextualization of his supposed subject: slavery. To take an example
from my recent Haiti, History, and the Gods, I am less interested in how the enlightenmenta nd the philosopherso f modernityw, hetherc alled
Habermaso r Du Bois, Hegel, or Douglass, crafted their analyses out of the "brute facts of
The INSTRUMENTALIZATION of the ocean was crucial to starting the
translatlantic slave trade - ontology comes first in this relation, both
HISTORICALLY and CONCEPTUALLY
Jacques 12
Environmental Governance: Power and Knowledge in a Local-Global World, ed Gabriela Kütting, Ronnie Lipschutz Peter
Jacques, Ph.D. Department of Political Science University of Central Florida P.O. Box 161356 4000 Central Florida Blvd.
Orlando, FL 32816 1356 Phone: (407) 823 6773 Home (407) 977 0880 Fax (407) 823 0051 pjacques@mail.ucf.edu website:
http://ucf.academia.edu/PeterJacques Education Ph.D., Political Science, Northern Arizona University, 2003, with distinction.
Masters in Public Administration (M.P.A.), environmental policy focus, Northern Arizona University, 2000. B.A., Philosophy,
Montana State University, with honors, 1993. B.A., Film and Theater Arts, Montana State University, with honors, 1993
Connery (2006: 499) writes that there is such
an extensive Western antagonism to the sea
that was
not found
elsewhere in the world, seen through Western biblical and mythological triumph over the sea until it is defeated and eliminated, that it
serves as an elemental antithesis—or “object of elemental rage.” This, he notes, feeds into metaphors that make the ocean
“ meaningless materiality,” like that pointed out by Steinberg, where a 1990 Meryl Lynch two-page ad shows the ocean with the
caption, “for us, this doesn’t exist” implying
a mare nuUius . It is easy to also read both the Grotian and Seldenian ocean as one that is
filled with meaningless materiality to be superseded: and, if this is the birth of “the international” then it is based on nullifying non-instrumental
materiality for vulgar accumulation. International relations, then, is a study in irony. We might argue that both perspectives
did eventually take hold, with Grotian law grasping the first chokehold on the oceans with free seas, then mare clausum national enclosures to
200 miles taking the second. In either case,
the ocean is cast as commodity for global capitalist interests,
epitomized through interests in accumulating wealth through overfishing, mining, enclosing
for private shrimp ponds, global trade in seafood,
and transportation
of common pool mangroves
of nearly all commodities. As Steinberg (2001) writes, the social
construction of the ocean has changed from “Davy Jones’ Locker to the Foot Locker” (referring to the preternatural life-taking power of the
ocean being transformed into a highway for commodity flows, where in one example, the cargo of shoes are lost at sea), and that it is insufiicient
to refer to the usual supposed dichotomy of Grotius vs. Selden. Of power The power to dominate ways of being in the world has repercussions for
the generation of all other types of power, from material use of force to agendasetting, because it normalizes one way of living in the world over
others. At first, we see that the ocean was imbued with multiplicities and particular meanings through a great
variety of cultures around the world. Many imbued the ocean with its own power and agency, as in indigenous coastal cultures, which limited
what these cultures saw as legitimate uses of their own power and effort in the sea. Some of these cultures saw a multitude of spaces and
identities as ontologically integrated with the rest of the world, and constitutive. Then, by “Art” as Ovid prescicntly describes,
transformations of control spread over the Earth at the same time that European jurisprudence not
only constituted the ocean as a tool for accumulation, but erased other ontological priorities and
particularities,
as a way to preclude other non-instrumental uses. Without this step, the rest would likely
not have followed.
If the ocean were the Christian god, it is difficult to imagine Grotius saying it could be used indiscriminately, and that
anyone interfering with this use could be punished via war. Thus, the first modern power of the sea is to erase other notions and meanings with its
own design. This
design is made in a specific historical time of imperial nation-building that grows into diffuse,
globalized commodified relations of contemporary corporate-led global capitalism that still sees the
ocean as a tool
for immediate (oil, fish) accumulation and intermediate accumulation through container ships, trawlers, and oil tankers.
The Spanish saw fit to use the ocean to conquer and destroy people like the Taino as an opportunity to build up the proto-Spanish state,
pretending to “civilize” indigenous peoples through dispossession. While Grotius rejects this pretense, the ocean is still a passage for imperiocorporate trade and profit which he believes is ordained in immutable natural law. Selden sees the ocean as limited and able to be dominated and
controlled like any other “dull heap,” which also creates ideational pathways for trade and conquest. Grotius’ and Selden's arguments have often
been counterposed, but their ontological assumptions and projects are the same, and both
assume that the ocean belongs to
and can be disposed of as their empires see fit. Ultimately, Mare Liberum was persuasive among the colonial set,
imagining the World Ocean into the ultimate abstraction—limitless, vast, and free for all to use
indiscriminately. This is exactly the kind of abstraction of space that Connery, via Edward Casey, notes was a “hegemonic
category of thought” that emerged during the seventeenth century (remember Mare Liberum was published in 1604) for the purposes of
nation-building. Here the ocean, as Connery describes it, becomes mere distance, “something to be superseded” (Connery 2006:
497). In superseding the dead “dull heap” of ocean, nations with imperial fleets can connect to other places to annihilate other people, as in the
Taino, and loot its shores .
Mare Liberum normalizes the oceans
seen historically in the Spanish search for gold, but also
for just this type of enterprise, Grotius willing or not. This is
in the intercontinental sugar-cotton-slave triangle
of domination
operated by the British, among others, that took slaves from Africa, enslaved them in the Caribbean and the colonial and post-colonial United
States, and shipped their cotton and sugar to Europe for manufacturing (Jacques 2006). Steinberg points out that mare liberum was much less
absolute until the British imposed end to slavery—but
modernity’s ontology of the ocean was necessary for the
beginning of the intercontinental slave trade that rested upon the imperial bursting outward from
the European continent.
The affirmative has no solvency because the alienation of the Black bodies
ancestors culture is unable to be traced—the affirmative can never solve
because as they were taken from their homeland they were forced to alienate
their culture and have nothing to trace themselves back to making their
impacts unable to be solved
Pettinger 93 Alasdair, studied at the Universities of Birmingham and Essex, completing his PhD in Literature in 1988 while
working as a civil servant in London. Since 1992, he has been based in Glasgow, working at the Scottish Music Centre and
pursuing his academic interests as an independent scholar. He has held visiting research fellowships at the University of Central
Lancashire (2000) and Nottingham Trent University (2004-2007) and is currently an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of
Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Liverpool (2010-2013). He is the editor of Always Elsewhere: Travels
of the Black Atlantic (1998), and has published a number of essays reflecting his (overlapping) interests in travel literature, the
cultures of slavery and abolitionism, and representations of Haiti. His current projects include a study of Frederick Douglass' visit
to Scotland in the 1840s and a history of the word voodoo in English, available from JSTOR, Research in African Literatures,
29.4, pg. 142-44, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820848, “Enduring Fortresses: A Review of ‘The Black Atlantic’” | ADM
First and foremost, perhaps, the "black
Atlantic" is a slogan, a call for a strategic realignment that will
to move away from what Gilroy sees as narrowly national or ethnically exclusive frames
of reference. Because even when they do cross borders and broaden their perspective, there remains a tendency to
think of black expressive cultures in terms of a single narrative trajectory that runs either back to
Africa (the pull of the ancient homeland, if you like) or forwards to (nowadays, usually) North America (the
promise?however distant?of full participa- tion in modernity). Now it may be true that Gilroy exaggerates the extent
to which this tendency has taken hold, but let me provide a few examples of the kind of approach he might have
had in mind. Consider, for instance, James Weldon Johnson's account of his visit to Haiti in 1920, ostensibly to
report on the American occupation. But Americans hardly figure in his text: he is interested in the "real"
encourage scholars
Haiti. He saw beautiful villas, inspected the clean, native huts, and admired the mag- nificent countrywomen. The weather was
glorious, the scenery stunning, but the sensation of his trip was a visit to Christophe's Citadel in the north: In places the walls
were from eight to twelve feet thick. Some of the size of the citadel may be gained from the statement that Christophe built it to
quarter thirty thousand soldiers. The more I saw of it, the more the wonder grew on me not only as to the exe- cution but as to the
mere conception of such a work. I should say that it is the most wonderful ruin in the Western Hemisphere, and, for the amount
of human energy and labor sacrificed in its construction, can be compared to the pyramids of Egypt. As I stood on the highest
point, where the sheer drop from the walls was more than 2000 feet, and looked out over the rich plains of Northern Haiti, I was
impressed with the thought that, if ever a man had the right to feel himself a king, that man was Christophe when he walked
around the parapets of his citadel. (352) And secondly by contrast here is an extract from a rather notorious article
written in 1995 by Keith Richburg, reflecting on three years as African correspondent with the Washington
Post. Standing on a bridge in Tanzania, watching corpses float down a river from Rwanda he comments: I know exacdy the
feeling that haunts me, but I've just been too embarrassed to say it. So let me drop the charade and put it as simply as I can: There
but for the grace of God go I. Somewhere, sometime, maybe 400 years ago, an ancestor of mine whose name I'U never know was
shackled in leg irons, kept in a dark pit, possibly at Goree Island off the coast of Senegal, and then put with thousands of other
Africans into the crowded, filthy cargo hold of a ship for the long and treacherous journey across the Atlantic. Many of them
died along the way, of disease, of hunger. But my ancestor survived, maybe because he was strong, maybe stubborn enough to
want to live, or maybe just lucky. He was ripped away from his country and his family, forced into slavery somewhere in the
Caribbean. Then one of his descendants some- how made it up to South Carolina, and one of those descendants, my father, made
it to Detroit during the Second World War, and there I was born, 36 years ago. And if that original ancestor hadn't been forced to
make that horrific journey, I would not have been standing there that day on the Rusumo Falls bridge, a journalist? a mere
spectator?watching the bodies glide past me like river logs. No, I might have instead been one of them?or have met some
similarly anonymous fate in any one of the coundess ongoing civil wars or tribal clashes on this brutal continent. And so I thank
God my ancestor made that voyage. (18) Both authors have traveled extensively and are well aware of the
dias- poric dimensions of black expressive cultures. Yet in these extracts, they allow themselves to reduce
these dimensions to well-rehearsed unidirectional narratives of descent and ascent. The writers offer not so
much travel accounts as extravagant homespun fantasies: they visit foreign lands but the scenarios they evoke are so familiar
(Johnson recalls Edmund Blyden, for instance, while in Richburg one hears an echo of Phillis Wheadey), they hardly seem to
things are a good deal more complicated than this, and his emphasis on
the Atlantic precisely because it lies between these points of anchorage, so to speak furnishes us with a
brilliant metaphor . The diaspora resembles not a river, gathering its tributaries in a relendess voyage to a final
have traveled at all. Gilroy insists that
destination, but
a vast stretch of water that touches many shores: Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and
the Americas . None of which, for Gilroy, has any special privilege over the others; it is the relationships
between them that matter, the ways in which they influence each other and become enmeshed. He deliberately chooses
examples of cross-cultural encounters that do not meet the demands of that hyphenated couple, the African American, by
pointing to the central importance of a third term: Europe. Whether it is Du Bois in Hegelian Berlin, Richard Wright in
existentialist Paris, or the restless "travels" implicit in the hybrid creations of contemporary British dance records, we get
a
sense of a more diverse and de-centered field of cross-fertilization, which cannot be accommodated
in grand narratives of assimilation or separation . Now many of the examples he cites have been marginalized by
more orthodox scholars, marked out as somehow inauthentic, bracketed off as if they are not part of the "tradition" if only
because of the prevailing institu? tional division of academic labor. But I don't think Gilroy is just asking us to reconsider their
application for membership of that tradition, as if the "black atlantic" is just another cultural world searching for recognition
alongside more "solid" entities such as North America, Africa, the Caribbean, and so on. On the contrary, I think he is suggesting
that the hybrid, restless character of the literary and musical forms he discusses are typical – that they
represent the normal condition of black cultures everywhere. The implica- tion is that even the least
promising site – the remotest village or the busiest financial headquarters – turns out on closer analysis to be
intersected by a range of transcontinental networks (recognizably "black" if not purely so) without which they
cannot be fully understood. These networks of information, mutual aid, emotional solidarity, political
collaboration would include the abolitionist movement ; the many initiatives embraced by the term PanAfrican' , syncretic cultural formations such as vodun, cricket, or jazz; and the traveling, mailing, and phoning
that keep the members of extended diasporic families in touch with each other. If this is the case, then the "black
Atlantic" is not about evening things up?if you like?between the national and the international, the
pure and the corrupt, the hardcore and the sell-out, but challenging these very distinctions altogether.
Garbology
K
The attempt to bring trash "to mind" is a move to render it accountable to the
human and transform it into a product of human meaning. This is the worst
form of correlationism
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 1-4
This books attempts a defense and renewal of materialism. This is a defense and renewal needed in the face of critics and defend
ers alike. On the side of the critics, materialism must be defended against obscurantists that seek to argue
that materialism is reductive, mechanistic, and that there is something about human beings,
culture, thought, and society that somehow is other than the material. However, it is perhaps the defenders
of materialism that are today the greater threat. Among Continental critical and social and political theorists,
we are again and again told that they're positions are "materialist," only to see the materiality of
matter up and disappear in their analyses. In these discourses and theoretical orientations, the term "materialism"
has become so watered down that it's come to denote little more than "history" and "practice." It is certainly true that matter
evolves and develops and therefore has a history, and practices such as building houses engage with matter. Unfortunately,
under the contemporary materialism, fol- lowing from a highly selective reading of Marx, "history"
has largely come to mean discursive history, and practice has come to mean discursive practices.
History became a history of discourses, how we talk about the world, the norms and laws by which
societies are organized, and practices came to signify the discursive practices — through the agency
of the signifier, performance, nar- rative, and ideology — that form subjectivities. Such a theory of
society was, of course, convenient for humanities scholars who wanted to believe that the things
they work with — texts — make up the most fundamental fabric of worlds and who wanted to
believe that what they do and investigate is the most important of all things. Material factors such
as the amount of calories a person gets a day, their geographical location (e.g., whether or not
they're located in a remote region of Alaska), the rate at which information can be transferred
through a particular medium, the effects of doing data entry for twelve hours a day, whether or not
people have children, the waste output of travel, computing, how homes are heated, the way in
which roads are laid out, whether or not roads are even present, the morphogenetic effects of
particular diets, and many things besides completely fell off the radar. With the "materialist" turn
in theory, matter somehow completely evaporated and we were instead left with nothing but
language, culture, and discursivity. The term materialism became so empty that Zi5ek could write, "Imlaterialism
means that the reality I see is never 'whole' not because a large part of it eludes me, but because it contains a stain, a blind spot,
which indicates my inclusion in it" (Zi5ek 2006: 17). This is a peculiar proposition indeed. What need does matter have
to be witnessed by anyone? What does a blind spot have to do with matter? Why is there no talk here of "stuff",
"physicality", or material agencies? It would seem that among the defenders, materialism has become a terme d'art which has
little to do with anything material. Materialism has come to mean simply that something is historical,
socially constructed, involves cultural practices, and is contingent. It has nothing to do with
processes that take place in the heart of stars, suffering from cancer, or transforming fossil fuels
into greenhouse gases. We wonder where the materialism in materialism is. We might attribute this to a mere difference in
intellectual histor- iCal lineages — those descended from the Greek atomist Democritus on the one side and the critical theorists
hailing from historical materialism on the other — but unfortunately,
this perversion of materialism, this reduction
to the cultural and discursive, has very real analytic and political effects. At the analytic level, it
has had the effect of rendering physical agencies invisible. This arose, in part, from the influence of Marx's
analysis — who was not himself guilty of what is today called " historical materialism" of com- modity fetishism, which showed
how we relate to things under capitalism is, in reality, a relation between people or social (Marx 1990: 165). Marx was right.
When a person buys a shirt, they are not merely buying a thing, but are rather participating in an entire network of social relations
— contrary to Marx's own views this
thesis became the claim that things aren't real, or that they are merely crystallizations (Marx 1990:
128) of the social and cultural. Based on this elementary schema of critical theory, the critical
gesture became the demonstration that what we take to be a power of things is, in reality, a
disguised instance of the economic, linguistic, or cultural. Everything became an alienated mirror
involving production, distribution, and consumption. However, somehow
of humans and the task became demonstrating that what we found in things was something that we
put there. To speak of the powers of things themselves, to speak of them as producing effects beyond their status as vehicles
for social relations, became the height of naiveté.
The analytic and political consequences of this were
disasterous. Analytically we could only understand one half of how power and domination
function. The historical materialists, critical theorists, structuralists, and post-structuralists taught us to discern how fashion
exercises power and reinforces certain odious social rela tions by functioning as a vehicle for certain meanings, symbolic capital,
and so on. Yet this is only part of the story. As Jane Bennett puts it, things have their power as well (see Bennett 2010).
Unfortunately, discursivist orientations of social and political theory could not explain how things
like turnstiles in subways, mountain ranges, and ocean currents also organize social relations and
perpetuate forms of domination because they had already decided that things are only vehicles or
carriers of social significations and relations. Because things had been erased, it became nearly
impossible to investigate the efficacy of things in contributing to the form social relations take. An
entire domain of power became invisible, and as a result we lost all sorts of opportunities for
strategic intervention in producing emancipatory change. The ole strategy for producing change
became first revealing how we had discursively constructed some phenomenon, then revealing how
it was contingent, and then showing why it was untenable. The idea of removing "turnstiles" as one
way of producing change and emancipation wasn't even on the radar. This was a curious antidialectical gesture that somehow failed to simultaneously recognize the way in which non-human,
non-signifying agencies, structure social relations as much as the discursive.
We are a prerequisite to ocean exploration or development - the ocean is
infinitely other and cannot be encapsulated – the only thing human’s should
extract is the being de-centered
Stacy Alaimo has published many books, and writes and speak about new materialism, material feminisms, environmental
science studies, and her concept of "trans-corporeality," while she undertakes new projects that explore marine animal studies,
science studies, and posthumanism. 2013 [“Violet-Black: Ecologies of the Abyssal Zone." Prismatic Ecologies: Ecotheory
Beyond Green, edited by Jeffrey Cohen, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.]/sbhag 7.9.2014
The unnervingly violet-black seas entice us to envision posthumanist perspectives that renounce
mastery, transcendence, and stable, terrestrial frames of reference that center the human subject
within visible horizons. That flat wall of black, used so effectively in Nouvian’s compositions, may, however, lead us
to believe the deep seas are devoid of light. Edith Widder, a marine biologist specializing in bioluminescence, or, as she calls herself, “a
bioluminescence junky”43 says this is not the case: “The deep sea is often described as ‘a world of eternal darkness.’ That is a lie. While it is true that
sunlight does not penetrate below 1000m, that does not mean that it is a lightless world down there. In fact, there are lots of lights—billions and billions of them.
These are animal lights and they serve many life sustaining functions.”44 Widder’s TED talk, “Glowing Life in an Underwater
World,” describes how her “addiction” to bioluminescence began in the Santa Barbara Channel: I knew I would see this phenomenon of animals making light called bioluminescence. But I was
totally unprepared for how much there was and how spectacular it was. I saw chains of jellyfish called siphonophores that were longer than this room, pumping out so much light that I could read
the dials and gauges inside the suit without a flashlight; and puffs and billows of what looked like luminous blue smoke; and explosions of sparks that would swirl up out of the thrusters. . . It was
breathtaking.45 Thus, a violet-black abyssal ecology is not a single hue, but is instead populated with a spectrum of colors extending across the range of what is humanly visible and beyond. A
veritable constellation of creatures who create their own light supplants a terrestrial, heliocentric model of sovereign, unitary, human (or divine) knowledge.
Prismatic, fluid
constellations of bioluminescent animals in the violet-black abyss experience a world where the
Copernican revolution is irrelevant. (Even the “fact” that all life ultimately depends on the sun, which most of us learned in elementary school, is no longer
exactly true, as chemosynthesis in the vent ecologies of the seas serves as an alternative source of energy to the solar energy on which photosynthesis depends.) In the depths, millions of lightcreating creatures dramatize a multitude of species-specific ways of being, communicating, surviving, and seducing. Widder explains that bioluminescence “can aide animal survival in at least
three critical ways: (i) It can serve as an aid in locating food, either by means of built-in headlights or by the use of glowing lures. (ii) It can be used to attract a mate by means of species-specific
spatial or temporal patterns of light emission. (iii) It can function as a defense against predators.”46 As 80-90% of deep sea life forms use some type of bioluminescence—a much larger
percentage than those found on land—it is not the broad categories of use that are intriguing, but the incredible diversity, ingenuity, and artistry involved in the deployment of light. For example,
“The male sea firefly, a crustacean the size of a sesame seed, squirts out light that hangs as a bright dot in the water, then zips upward and squirts out another and another, leaving a string of
hanging dots spaced out like smoke signals. The spacing is species specific; mate-ready females can go to the head of the dot string and find an appropriate male.”47 The sea firefly uses light as
his artistic medium of seduction, another fish, the shining tubeshoulder, uses light as a weapon, as he or she “literally squirts light out of a tube on its shoulder into the face of an enemy, much as
a squid shoots ink.”48 Deep sea anglerfish are so named because the female possesses a fishing pole-like lure, positioned in front of its mouth, glowing with bioluminescent bacteria. In the
Widder states, “So there’s a language of light in the
deep ocean, and we’re just beginning to understand it.”49 In order to attempt to decipher the language of light, Widder has sent the camera she designed, called “Eye-in-the-Sea,”
violet-black waters, animals use light as lures, alarms, distractions, weapons, and semiotic systems.
which uses a frequency of light that most creatures cannot see, to make the camera less disruptive. The Eye-in-the-Sea includes an electronic jellyfish that lights up in order to provoke
bioluminescent displays. At 2000 feet in the Bahamas, the flashing jellyfish provokes a lively discussion: “We basically have a chat room going on here, because once it gets started, everybody’s
talking. And I think this is actually a shrimp that’s releasing its bioluminescent chemicals into the water. But the cool thing is, we’re talking to it.
We don’t know what
we’re saying. Personally, I think its something sexy.”50 Not unlike David Rothenberg who makes music with birds and whales, attempting to interact with them in their own
languages, cobbling together a common tune, rather than studying them from a distance, Widder hints at her desire for intimacy with these creatures that are too often termed “alien.”51 She
There is a joyful abandon here, as the technologically
proficient, physically intrepid, renowned scientist, is exhilarated by the prospect of speaking in a
language she does not understand, daring to talk without knowing what she is saying. If as Cary Wolfe contends,
hopes that the messages of light will be interpreted as “something sexy.”
“the nature of thought itself must change if it is to be posthumanist, 52” then Widder’s attempt to speak a language of light, to seduce abyssal creatures with her electronic jellyfish, certainly
exceeds a mere “thematics of the decentering of the human.”53 Thinking with and through the electronic jellyfish, seeing through the prosthetic eye, playing open ended, improvisational
language games with deep sea creatures, being transformed by astonishment and desire enact a posthumanist practice. Yet Widder, safe from the consequences of her speech, may unwittingly be
sending harmful messages, akin to shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. The creatures with whom she speaks, are certainly more vulnerable to the potential effects of these conversations than
the multitude of light-emitting abyssal creatures dethrones
the monotheistic idea that one sovereign, transcendent, celestial deity is the source of true, holy,
knowledge—knowledge that he imparts solely to the one creature cast in his image. Bioluminescence epitomizes
animals as other worlds, as creatures profoundly different from, not inferior to, ourselves. As Mick Smith
are the scientists or the public. Posthumanists, nonetheless, may rejoice in how
advocates, “Instead of looking for the divine in Man (the metaphysics of the anthropological machine), we might instead try to divine, to sense something of, (as a water diviner does), the flows
and depths of diverse worldly existences happening beneath their surface appearances54” In Against Ecological Sovereignty, Smith develops an potent ecological ethics and politics, but his
theory does not account for the extent to which environmental politics requires scientific data. “Divining” the deep seas, for example, requires costly scientific expeditions, expensive technology,
artistically rendered images, and savvy modes of dissemination.
So little is currently known about the majority of sea animals and
ecosystems, so rarely do they figure into ethical or political consideration, that without a
“reconfiguration of the sensible,” which could only occur via the intermingling channels of science,
aesthetics, and advocacy, there is little chance these creatures would be divined . Notwithstanding the
lack of attention to science in Smith’s theory, his sense of the “infinite” dimension of ecological ethics and politics is
essential for coming to terms with the rather sudden disclosure of thousands of “new” species in the
seas as well as the many threats to their existence. Smith writes, “ecological politics a such emerges through facing up to and recognizing our
potentially infinite ethical responsibilities for Other (other than human) beings.”55 In the same essay in which Derrida contends that the “animal abyss” is “not a hole, a gulf but too much
being”56 he describes his own philosophical exertions as something akin to the efforts of an amateur marine biologist. At the moment of bringing and including together, in a single embrace,
Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Levinas, and Lacan, as a single living body at bottom, indeed as a single corpus delicti, the mobile system of a single discursive organization with several tentacles, I
have the impression that I am myself trying to gain—as though wrestling, fishing, or hunting—a sufficiently expert or knowledgeable purchase [prise] on what might touch the nervous system of
a single animal body. A little like someone who would claim to know which way to take hold of a cuttlefish or octopus, without hurting it too much, and especially without killing it, keeping it at
a distance long enough to let it expel its ink. In order to displace its powers without doing anybody too much harm. Its ink or power would here be the “I,” not necessarily the power to say “I” but
the ipseity of being able to be or able to do “I,” even before any autoreferential utterance in language. 57 For the philosopher, the tentacles are merely metaphorical and the grasping of the
cuttlefish, despite the palpable prose, is just a simile. And yet he seeks to gain “a sufficiently expert or knowledgeable purchase [prise] on what might touch the nervous system of a single animal
body.” Oddly, despite the wrestling, the scene is not described as a two-way encounter in which the philosopher is touched or altered, as the cephalopod is kept at a distance. The passage is still
relevant, however, because the multitude of lights in the abyssal zone, like the ink, are “able to be or able to do ‘I’.” As constellations of luminous creatures populate the seas being and doing
diverse things with the light they generate, the irreducibility of their ipseity lures terrestrial humans to imagine posthuman worlds. Mick Smith, speaking of commonplace “birds, stones, trees,”
Smith
advocates an ethics that emerges from a “non-self-centered response to the recognition of such
alienation from the world and from others.”59 The violet-black seas themselves, which entranced William
Beebe, and the addictive bioluminescent creatures, underscore the significant differences between the life
worlds of human beings and abyssal beings, as well as the potential for prismatic ecologies to lure
us into less anthropocentric, less terrestrial modes of knowledge, politics, and ethics.
insists that even they are “alien,” as they “exhibit radically different and sometimes extraordinarily strange ways of being-in-the-world.”58 Drawing on Levinas and Murdoch,
Your attempt to persuade institutions through ethical appeal guarantees your
politics fails. Alt is a prerequisite.
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 73
In light of the concept of thermodynamic politics, we can see the common shortcoming of protest
politics or what might be called semiotic politics. Semiotic politics is semiotic in the sense that relies
on the use of signs, either attempting to change institutions through communicative persuasion or
engaging in activities of critique as in the case of hermeneutics of suspicion that, through a critique
of ideology, desire, power, and so on, show that relations of domination and oppression are at work
in something we hitherto believed to be just. Semiotic politics is confused in that it is premised on
producing change through ethical persuasion, and thereby assumes that institutional-machines
such as corporations, governments, factories, and so on, are structurally open to the same sorts of
communicative flows as humans. It believes that we can persuade these organizations to change
their operations on ethical grounds. At best , however, these entities are indifferent to such arguments ,
while at worst they are completely blind to even the occurrence of such appeals as machines such as corporations are only structurally open to
information events of profit and loss.
Persuading a corporation through ethical appeals is about as effective to
explain calculus to a cat.
Anthropocentrism is THE original hierarchy that makes racism, sexism, and
other “-isms” possible—if the future is not to endlessly repeat the horrors of
the past, then we NEED a politics that can respect more than human life – the
affirmatives focus on race only REPLICATES the violence of
anthropocentrism – only the alternative solves
Best 7 (Steven, Chair of Philosophy at UT-EP, JCAS 5.2)
While a welcome advance over the anthropocentric conceit that only humans shape human actions, the environmental determinism approach
typically fails to emphasize the crucial role that animals play in human history, as well as how the human exploitation of animals is a key
cause of hierarchy, social conflict, and environmental breakdown. A core thesis of what I call “animal standpoint theory” is that animals
have been key driving and shaping forces of human thought, psychology, moral and social life, and
history overall. More specifically, animal standpoint theory argues that the oppression of humanover human has deep
roots in the oppression of human over animal. In this context, Charles Patterson’s recent book, The Eternal Treblinka: Our
Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, articulates the animal standpoint in a powerful form with revolutionary implications. The main
argument of Eternal Treblinka is that the human
domination of animals, such as it emerged some ten thousand years ago with
the rise of agricultural society, was the first hierarchical domination and laid the groundwork for
patriarchy, slavery, warfare, genocide, and other systems of violence and power. A key implication of Patterson’s theory is
that human liberation is implausible if disconnected from animal liberation, and thus humanism -a speciesist philosophy that constructs a hierarchal relationship privileging superior humans over inferior animals and reduces animals to
resources for human use -- collapses
under the weight of its logical contradictions. Patterson lays out his complex
holistic argument in three parts. In Part I, he demonstrates that animal exploitation and speciesism have direct and profound
connections to slavery, colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism. In Part II, he shows how these connections exist not only in the
realm of ideology – as conceptual systems of justifying and underpinning domination and hierarchy – but also in systems of
technology, such that the tools and techniques humans devised for the rationalized mass confinement and slaughter of animals were
mobilized against human groups for the same ends. Finally, in the fascinating interviews and narratives of Part III, Patterson describes how
personal experience with German Nazism prompted Jewish to take antithetical paths: whereas most retreated to an insular identity and
dogmatic emphasis on the singularity of Nazi evil and its tragic experience, others recognized the profound similarities between how Nazis
treated their human captives and how humanity as a whole treats other animals, an epiphany that led them to adopt vegetarianism, to become
advocates for the animals, and develop a far broader and more inclusive ethic informed by universal compassion for all suffering and
oppressed beings. The Origins of Hierarchy "As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other" –Pythagoras It is little understood
that the first form of oppression, domination, and hierarchy involves human domination over animals Patterson’s thesis stands in bold
contrast to the Marxist theory that the domination over nature is fundamental to the domination over other humans. It differs as well from the
social ecology position of Murray Bookchin that domination over humans brings about alienation from the natural world, provokes
hierarchical mindsets and institutions, and is the root of the long-standing western goal to “dominate” nature. In the case of Marxists,
anarchists, and so many others, theorists typically don’t even mention human domination of animals, let
alone assign it causal primacy or significance. In Patterson’s model, however, the human subjugation of animals is the
first form of hierarchy and it paves the way for all other systems of domination such as include
patriarchy, racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. As he puts it, “the exploitation of animals
was the model and inspiration for the atrocities people committed against each other, slavery and the Holocaust being but two of the more
dramatic examples.” Hierarchy
emerged with the rise of agricultural society some ten thousand years
ago. In the shift from nomadic hunting and gathering bands to settled agricultural practices,
humans began to establish their dominance over animals through “domestication.” In animal
domestication (often a euphemism disguising coercion and cruelty), humans began to exploit animals for purposes such as
obtaining food, milk, clothing, plowing, and transportation. As they gained increasing control over the lives and
labor power of animals, humans bred them for desired traits and controlled them in various ways, such as
castratingmales to make them more docile.To conquer, enslave, and claim animals as their own
property, humans developed numerous technologies, such as pens, cages, collars, ropes, chains, and
branding irons. The domination of animals paved the way for the domination of humans. The sexual subjugation of
women, Patterson suggests, was modeled afterthe domestication of animals, such that men began to control
women’s reproductive capacity, to enforce repressive sexual norms, and to rape them as they
forced breedingin their animals. Not coincidentally, Patterson argues, slavery emerged in the same region of the
Middle East that spawned agriculture, and, in fact, developed as an extension of animal domestication
practices. In areas like Sumer, slaves were managed like livestock, and males were castrated and
forced to work along with females. In the fifteenth century, when Europeans began the colonization of
Africa and Spain introduced the first international slave markets, the metaphors, models, and
technologies used to exploit animal slaves were applied with equal cruelty and force to human slaves.
Stealing Africans from their native environment and homeland, breaking up families who scream in
anguish, wrapping chains around slaves’ bodies, shipping them in cramped quarters across
continents for weeks or months with no regard for their needs or suffering, branding their skin with a hot
iron to mark them as property, auctioning them as servants, breeding them for service and labor,
exploiting them for profit, beating them in rages of hatred and anger, and killing them in vast numbers– all
these horrors and countless others inflicted on black slaves were developed and perfected centuries
earlier through animal exploitation. As the domestication of animals developed in agricultural society, humans lost the
intimate connections they once had with animals. By the time of Aristotle, certainly, and with the bigoted assistance of medieval theologians
such as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, western humanity had developed an explicitly hierarchical worldview – that came to be known
as the “Great Chain of Being” – used to position humans as the end to which all other beings were mere means. Patterson underscores the
crucial point that the domination of human over human and its exercise through slavery, warfare, and genocide typically begins with the
denigration of victims. But the means and methods of dehumanization are derivative, for speciesism provided the conceptual paradigm that
encouraged, sustained, and justified western brutality toward other peoples. “Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master
species,” Patterson writes, “our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The
study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the
same to them.” Whether the conquerors are European imperialists, American colonialists, or German Nazis, western
aggressors
engaged in wordplay before swordplay, vilifying their victims – Africans, Native Americans, Filipinos, Japanese,
Vietnamese, Iraqis, and other unfortunates – with opprobrious terms such as “rats,” “pigs,” “swine,” “monkeys,” “beasts,” and
“filthy animals.”Once perceived as brute beasts or sub-humans occupying a lower evolutionary rung
than white westerners, subjugated peoples were treated accordingly; once characterized as animals, they could
be hunted down like animals. The first exiles from the moral community, animals provided a convenient discard bin for oppressors to dispose
the oppressed. The connections are clear: “For a civilization built on the exploitation and slaughter of animals, the `lower’ and more
degraded the human victims are, the easier it is to kill them.” Thus, colonialism, as Patterson describes, was
a “natural
extension of human supremacy over the animal kingdom. For just as humans had subdued animals with their
superior intelligence and technologies, so many Europeans believed that the white race had proven its superiority by bringing the “lower
races” under its command. There are important parallels between speciesism and sexism and racism in the elevation of white male
rationality to the touchstone of moral worth. The
arguments European colonialists used to legitimate exploiting
Africans – that they were less than human and inferior to white Europeans in ability to reason –
are the very same justifications humans use to trap, hunt, confine, and kill animals. Oncewestern norms of
rationality were defined as the essence of humanity and social normality, by first using non-human animals as the
measure of alterity, it was a short step to begin viewing odd, different, exotic, and eccentric peoples and types asnon-
or sub-human.Thus, the same criterion created to exclude animals from humans was also used to ostracize blacks, women, and
numerous other groups from “humanity.”
Anthropocentric ordering is the foundation of the war machine and drives the
exclusion of populations based on race, ethnicity and gender
Kochi, 2K9 (Tarik, Sussex law school, Species war: Law, Violence and Animals, Law Culture and Humanities Oct 5.3)
Grotius and Hobbes are sometimes described as setting out a prudential approach, 28 or a natural law of minimal content 29 because in contrast
to Aristotelian or Thomastic legal and political theory their attempt to derive the legitimacy of the state and sovereign order relies less upon a
thick con-ception of the good life and is more focussed upon basic human needs such as survival. In the context of a response to religious
civil war such an approach made sense in that often thick moral and religious conceptions of the good life (for example, those held
by competing Christian Confessions) often drove conflict and violence. Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that the categories of
“survival,” “preservation of life” and “bare life” are neutral categories. Rather survival, preservation of life and bare life as
expressed by the Westphalian theoretical tradition already contain distinctions of value – in particular, the specific
distinction of value between human and non-human life . “Bare life” in this sense is not “bare” but contains within it a
distinction of value between the worth of human life placed above and beyond the worth of non-human animal life. In this respect
bare life within this tradition contains within it a hidden conception of the good life. The foundational moment of the modern
juridical conception of the law of war already contains within it the operation of species war. The Westphalian tradition puts
itself forward as grounding the legitimacy of violence upon the preservation of life, however its concern for life is already
marked by a hierarchy of value in which non-human animal life is violently used as the “raw material” for preserving human life.
Grounded upon, but concealing the human-animal distinction, the Westphalian conception of war makes a double move: it excludes the
killing of animals from its definition of “war proper,” and, through rendering dominant the modern juridical definition of “war
proper” the tradition is able to further institutionalize and normalize a particular conception of the good life. Following from this
original distinction of life-value realized through the juridical language of war were other forms of human life whose lives were considered to be
of a lesser value under a European, Christian, “secular” 30 natural law conception of the good life. Underneath this concern with the
preservation of life in general stood veiled preferences over what particu-lar forms of life (such as racial conceptions of human
life) and ways of living were worthy of preservation, realization and elevation. The business contracts of early capitalism, 31 the
power of white males over women and children, and, especially in the colonial context, the sanctity of European life over nonEuropean and Christian lives over non-Christian heathens and Muslims, were some of the dominant forms of life preferred for
preservation within the early modern juridical ordering of war.
The human nature divide justifies oppression and ecological destruction.
Bryant 13 (Levi, prof of phil @ Collin College, “Polymorphously Perverse Nature,” August 17 2013.
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/polymorphously-perverse-nature/)
with the growing rise of ecology as a site of political struggle due to climate change, we increasingly witness the
limitations of culturalist approaches. Appropriate responses to climate change require us to treat ozone holes,
the pollution of rivers and lakes due to fracking and other forms of waste, shifts in weather patterns
and changes in agriculture, droughts, dead zones in oceans, and so on as real. We can’t effectively
approach issues pertaining to climate change through a focus on how we signify things alone, but need both a
materialist and realist dimension in our thought to discuss these issues. Clearly analysis and deconstruction of our narratives
regarding nature will be necessary here, but we also need to be clear that rises in global temperatures and their effects are as real as a
heart attack and aren’t simply social or linguistic constructions.¶ It would seem then that announcements of the death of nature,
coupled with calls for an ecology without nature, have been a bit hasty. What we need is not an erasure of nature, but a rethinking of the concept of nature. We simply
can’t afford to dispense with the concept of nature; however, it is necessary to rethink this concept in a way that neutralizes it’s
ability to function as an apology for oppressive power as in the case of Chan’s remarks above, as a tool of the normativity of theistic theologies,
and in a way that takes into account the critiques of the culturalists (and here culturalism also requires a critique, freeing it of its
Second,
often reactionary and knee-jerk attitudes towards the sciences– an endemic problem in the humanities –while also retaining the insights that it’s provided pertaining to the role of politics in
The winning move, in my view, is not an “ecology without nature”, a pan-culturalism, but rather the claim that there is only nature, that
nature looks far more like culture than the old theological concept of nature, and that nature is radically immanent, without teleology,
norms, nor species or archetypes that govern what things ought to be. Nature is auto-constructing
science).
without a constructor, not designed.¶ In short, we must build a concept of nature as polymorphously
perverse and differential. The polymorphous, of course, refers to that which is capable of taking on a
variety of different forms. Far from being characterized by ineluctability and necessity, life testifies to the essential plasticity and
creativity of nature. In a Freudian framework, the “perverse” refers to that which deviates from its aim. For example,
the oral drive is “perverse” in that it aims not at sustenance, but at the pleasure of orality. The oral drive, as it were, subverts the teleology of the mouth and tongue. In this regard, Freud gave us a
non-teleological account of sexuality. Despite all of is problems, the novelty of Freud’s account of sexuality lies in having decoupled the sexual and reproductive. Within a Freudian framework,
we reproduce because of sexuality– as an accidental by-product of sexuality –we do not have sexuality for the sake of reproduction. Sexuality, in a Freudian framework, is inherently queer; even
it was Darwin that taught us to think of life as inherently perverse and queer (although this
message is often missed). Despite the abuses to which evolutionary thought is endlessly subjected by things such as Spencer’s social darwinism and evolutionary biology, Darwin’s
first step lay in erasing teleology. Within a Darwinian framework, form does not follow function, but rather
in heterosexual contexts.¶ Surprisingly,
function follows form. The eagle does not have keen sight for the sake of catching its prey, but
rather because eagles have keen eyesight they are better able to catch their prey. First, the function is
the result of a particular form, of a particular feature of the organisms morphology. The form is first there and then a use is
found. There is not first a pre-existent problem such as “the need to see prey” and then the production of a
particular organ or feature of the body. Moreover, more than one function can be found for one and the same form. For example, it is said that lungs
initially began as air sacs that ocean going organisms used to float. They did not originally have a
respiratory function. ¶ Darwin’s second step consisted in erasing the category of species altogether.
This might come as a surprise given that the title of one of his books is The Origin of Species. However, when we look at the details of Darwin’s thought we find that he is a radical ontological
there are only individual organisms and no two of these organisms is exactly alike.
There are indeed resemblances between organisms, but there is no shared essence. What we call a “species”, argues Darwin, is just
a statistical generalization of resemblances between different individuals. There is no additional thing– an
nominalist. For Darwin,
essence or form –that exists over and above these individuals. In this way, Darwin undermines one of the central foundations of the
teleological premise at the heart of the premodern concept of nature. Under the premodern concept of nature, individuals are copies of species. Species are
ideal forms, and individual differences that deviate from those ideal forms are treated as betrayals of the
essence of the species. In this way, the concept of species functions as a description, and norm, and a teleological draw or attractor of individuals. In the
Darwinian framework, everything is reversed. Here the species is a statistical effect of individuals and has no
causal power of its own. Species are something that are constructed. They are constructed both “culturally” through our classifications, but also “naturally” through
processes like natural selection.¶ It is with Darwin’s third gesture that we encounter the perverse and differential dimension of Darwin’s evolutionary theory: random mutation.
Individuals indeed produce copies of themselves through reproduction. However, no copy is the
same as the original or that from which it is copied. ”Random”, of course, does not mean uncaused. Random mutation is caused by all sorts of
things ranging from chemicals in the environment to highly charged cosmic particles. It’s as if, with
respect to life, nature functioned like Husserl’s practice of “free variation”, exploring the possibilities of form
for their own sake. This is the perversity of nature. The mutation of form, its polymorphousness, is not explored for the sake of solving sort of
problem such as seeing prey, but simply because. There is no goal to it, save the endless exploration of form. In this regard, random mutation resembles some features of modernist art, where
features of style and form are foregrounded, while theme, message, purpose, and meaning are pushed into the background. Nature itself is modernist. Where the premodern concept of nature saw
Individual difference is
thus unshackled from a nomos that measures the degree to which it approximates the essential
differences of the species, but instead becomes the generative principle of species. It is in this regard that the modern
concept of nature is differential and creative. Every species is doomed to be erased because in the replication of
individuals new differences, new vectors of speciation, are perpetually being produced. In this regard, arguments such as Chan’s are
immediately annulled, as individuals aren’t supposed to be anything, there is no “natural” norm they’re supposed to embody or exemplify, there
mutation as a deviant departure from the norm of the species, Darwin instead proposes that random mutation is itself the motor of “speciation”.
is no “ought” of individual organisms. Nature is queer. ¶ The claim that culture and society are phenomena
of nature is often met with raised eyebrows and even outrage. This is because too many of us in the humanities continue to assume the premodern concept of nature. When we hear such
a thesis, we immediately think that it’s being suggested that we explain culture by reference to biology and evolutionary sociology and psychology. However, nothing of the sort is being
there is no transcendent outside to nature such
as that proposed by Platonic forms and dualistic theories of mind. The social world is embedded in
the natural world and is of the natural world. Nothing about this, however, denies the historical and creative nature of social
assemblages. Social assemblages are unique and creative, but so are Amazonian rain forests and
suggested. First, the claim is that there is only nature, that everything is embedded in nature, and that
Hawaiian coral reefs. Second, “nature” signifies the pervasiveness of material and efficient causes in all
things, including social phenomena. Naturalism about society doesn’t entail that one appeals to genes to explain social
phenomena, but that all things being equal there must be causal mechanisms – often semiotic and linguistic –that account
for these formations. In many respects, the modern concept of nature annuls the normativity of the premodern concept of nature. That
normativity of species, forms, and essences is no longer operative because there are only individuals and deviations or
vectors of change form what came before. As Love & Rockets put it, you cannot go against nature, because
when you do it’s nature too. ¶ Of course, with this transformed concept of nature, it follows that we must transform our concept of
ecology as well. The ecologist can no longer appeal to the way assemblages ought to be were humans not to intervene through their practices and technology because there’s no way nature
ought to be. Likewise, when we speak of genetic engineering we can no longer protest it as being “unnatural”. These sorts of arguments follow exactly the same sort of discredited logic and
, we must take responsibility for the normative claims we make about how the
world and organisms ought to be, recognizing that these are our norms, not something legislated by “Nature” (and implicitly
a designer). The distinction between the artificial and the natural, techne and phusis, breaks down with the modern
concept of nature and instead we are left with a polymorphously perverse nature that “celebrates”,
like Spinoza’s god, everything that can be simply because it can be. Above all, it entails annulling the
human/animal divide, of recognizing ourselves as animals among other animals, not out of any sort
of misanthropy, but in recognition of how this distinction has both assisted in the oppression of
ontology as Chan’s arguments. Rather
various other humans, the denigration of women, and has also cultivated a sort of exceptionalism
that has helped to justify certain highly destructive ecological practices.
Ignoring hyperobjects results in billions of death.
James 13 (Arran, UK-based philosopher, graduate student of Critical Theory, and psychiatric nurse). “The catastrophic and the postapocalyptic,”http://syntheticzero.net/2013/08/21/the-catastrophic-and-the-post-apocalyptic/ August 21, 2013)//[AC]
There is a vast onto-cartography at work here that connects species of fish to coolant systems to hydrogen
molecules to legislation on nuclear safety; legislators, parliaments, regulatory bodies, anti-nuclear activists;
ideas like environmentalism; the food supply networks and geographic distribution of production centres; work practices;
capital investments and the wider financial markets as Tepco’s shares fall; and those networks that specifically
effect human beings in the exclusion area. After all, this exclusion zone has seen thousands of families
leave their homes, their jobs, their friends, and the possessions that had been rewarded to them as
recompense for their alienated labour. Consider that some of these people are still paying mortgages on homes they will
probably never be able to return to safely. And there remains one more reactor in the water that has not melted down but possibly will- if not by
human efforts to recover the fuel rods, then by the possibility of another unpredicted earthquake and/or tsunami. I don’t have the space or the
desire to trace the
onto-cartography of this disaster but it is clear that it includes both geological, ecological and
capitalist bodies; indeed, it is clear that the capitalist bodies might be the ones that are ultimately
responsible. According to Christina Consolo,¶ all this collateral damage will continue for decades, if not
centuries, even if things stay exactly the way they are now. But that is unlikely, as bad things happen like
natural disasters and deterioration with time…earthquakes, subsidence, and corrosion, to name a few. Every day that
goes by, the statistical risk increases for this apocalyptic scenario. No one can say or know how this will play out, except
that millions of people will probably die even if things stay exactly as they are, and billions could die
if things get any (here).¶ I raise the spectre of Fukushima as catastrophe and as apocalyptic because it accords to what
Timothy Morton has described as a hyperobject. In ‘Zero Landscapes in the time of hyperobjects’ Morton defines the states
that¶ Objects are beginning to compel us, from outside the wall. The objects we ignored for centuries,
the objects we created in the process of ignoring other ones: plutonium, global warming. I call them hyperobjects.
Hyperobjects are real objects that are massively distributed in time and space. Good examples would be global
warming and nuclear radiation. Hyperobjects
are so vast, so long lasting, that they defy human time and
spatial scales. They wouldn’t fit in a landscape painting. They could never put you in the right mood. ¶ The ontocartography or
“map of entities” that we could trace in relation to Fukushima doesn’t just include all those bodies we have listed already but
also, and most importantly, it includes the radiation itself. Born of the unstable hybridisation of techno-materiality and geomateriality in pursuit of energy to satisfy the logic of the infinite growth of capital, the hyperobject of Fukushima’s radiation was
unleashed and now exists independently of those techno-geo-capitalist assemblages. That this radiation
exists on a huge spatio-temporal scale means that it exists beyond our evolved capacity to think. We evolved to cope with
and to handle a world of mid-sized objects, the very tools and raw materials that helped to build
Fukushima. In the language of transcorporealist thought: the weaving or interpenetration of various autonomous
ontological bodies has led to this body composed of bodies. Just as numerous minerals, cells, exogenous
microorganisms, mitochondria, oxygen, lactic acid, sugars, contact lenses, and so on go up to constitute my body
in their choreographic co-actualisation so to does this process give rise to a similar shift in scale. In
my body the shift is that from the molecular to the “molar” scale but in this case, the shift is from the “molar” to the
hyper-scale. The radiation unleashed by the Fukushima meltdown exists on a geological spatial and temporal
scale that the human animal is not equipped to readily perceive.¶ Such hyperobjects proliferate around us and are
equally hard to detect in our proximal engagement with the various worlds we inhabit. They range from incidents like
Fukushima to the more encompassing threats of the collapse of capital, ecocide and cosmic death that
I mentioned above. The reason I have focussed on Fukushima is to illustrate the point that the catastrophe has already taken
place. In relation to the example of Fukushima the catastrophe occurred two years ago but will be ongoing for
centuries. That I can sit here in all my relative comfort and enjoy the benefits of being a white male in Britain does
not mean that I am any the less existing after the catastrophe. Catastrophes are discreet events that
explode into being, even if such an explosion can seem very slow as they happen on the scale of vast
temporalities. In the last analysis that can’t be carried out, the cosmos itself exists as one huge catastrophe; the moment of the big bang
being the cosmic event, everything else since being the unfolding of that catastrophic actualisation working itself out.
The affirmative trades off with flat ontology. Any demand for human
inclusion is a link to the criticism
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College, The Democracy of Objects, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dodidx/democracy-of-objects.pdf?c=ohp;idno=9750134.0001.001)
Flat ontology is a complex
variety of ontological theses under a single term. First, due to the split
characteristic of all objects, flat ontology rejects any ontology of transcendence or presence that privileges
Onticology proposes what might be called, drawing on DeLanda's term yet broadening it, a flat ontology.
philosophical concept that bundles together a
one¶ sort of entity as the origin of all others and as fully present to itself . In this regard, onticology proposes an
ontology resonant with Derrida's critique of metaphysics insofar as, in its treatment of beings as withdrawn, it undermines any pretensions to
presence within being. If
this thesis is persuasive, then metaphysics can no longer function as a synonym
for “metaphysics of presence”, nor substance as a synonym for “presence”,¶ but rather an ontology
has been formulated that overcomes the primacy¶ of presence. In this section, I articulate this logic in terms of
Lacan's¶ graphs of sexuation. Here I believe that those graphs have little to tell us about masculine or feminine sexuality—for reasons I will
outline in what follows—but a great deal to tell us about ontologies of immanence or flat ontologies and ontologies of transcendence. Second ,
flat ontology signifies that the world or the universe does not exist. I will develop the argument¶ for
this strange claim in what follows, but for the moment it is important¶ to recognize the definite
article in this claim. The claim that the world doesn't exist is the claim that there is no super-object
that gathers all other objects together in a single, harmonious unity. Third, following Harman, flat ontology
refuses to privilege the subject-object, human-world relation as either a) a form of metaphysical
relation different in kind from other relations between objects, and that b) refuses to treat the
subject-object relation as implicitly included in every form of object-object relation. To be sure, flat
ontology readily recognizes that humans have unique powers and capacities and that how humans
relate to the world is a topic more than worthy of investigation, yet nothing about this establishes
that humans must be included in every inter-object relation or that how humans relate to objects
differs in kind from how other entities relate to objects. Finally, fourth, flat ontology argues that all
entities are on equal ontological footing and that no entity, whether artificial or natural, symbolic
or physical, possesses greater ontological dignity than other objects.While indeed some objects might
influence the collectives to which they belong to a greater extent than others, it doesn't follow from
this that these objects are more real than others. Existence, being, is a binary such that something
either¶ is or is not.
Flat ontology key
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 215-217
The first step in developing such a framework lies in overcoming human exceptionalism. As I argued in
The Democracy of Objects, ontology must be flattened (see Bryant 2011: ch. 6). Rather than bifurcating being
into two domains — the domain of objects and the domain of subiects, the domain of nature and the
domain of culture — we must instead conceive of being as a single flat plane, a single nature, on
which humans are beings among other beings. While humans are certainly exceptional, for us they
are not ontologically exceptional. To be sure, they differ in their powers and capacities from other
beings, but they are not lords or hierarchs over all other beings. They are beings that dwell among
other beings, that act on them and that are acted upon by them. As extended mind theorists such as Andy
Clark have argued — but also the new materialist feminists and actor-network theorists such as Latour mind and culture
are not special domains that can be separated from the other non-human entities of the world for
special investigation. Rather, we are intimately bound up with the other entities of the world,
coupled and conditioned by them in all sorts of ways. Above all, we must avoid treating the world
as a field given for the contemplative gaze of humans. A world is something within which we act
and engage, not something we passively contemplate. A flat ontology must therefore be conceived
along the lines of Lacan's famous Borromean knot (see Figure 7.1). A Borromean knot consists of three
inter-linked rings of string fastened together in such a way that if any one ring is severed, the other
two fall away. Lacan indexes each of the three rings to one of his three orders: the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary. With
the Borromean knot, Lacan's work undergoes a funda- mental transformation. In his earlier work, one of the three orders had
always been privileged as dominating and overcoding the others. In his earliest work, the imaginary dominated the real and the
symbolic. In the work of his middle period, it was the symbolic that overcoded the real and the imaginary. In his third phase, it
was the real that overcoded the symbolic and the imaginary. With the Borromean knot, no order overcodes the
others. Rather, they are all now treated as being on equal footing. This is how we need to think
about the order of being. The domain of the real indexes machines. Machines exist in their own
right, regardless of whether anyone registers them or discourses about them. The domain of the
symbolic refers to the plane of expression, or how beings are discoursed about, signified, imbued
with meaning, and so on. Finally, the domain of the imaginary refers to the way in which one
machine encounters another under conditions of structural openness and operational closure.
Situated within the framework of the Borromean knot, we can simultaneously investigate how a machine is
ideologically coded as in the case of Baudrillard's analysis of objects in System of Objects, how a
machine is phenomenologically encountered by another machine, and how a machine is a real,
independent being in its own right that produces effects irreducible to how it is signified or
phenomenologically given.
The alternative is to adopt a methodology of alien phenomenology to relate to
objects- in this instance, rubbish- by developing an existential compassion; we
can produce more satisfying social assemblages.
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 70-71
This blindness to the alien and narcissistic primacy to the imaginary has massive deleterious ethical
and political conse- quences. Alien phenomenology, by contrast, opens the possibility of more
compassionate ways of relating to aliens, helping us to better attend to their needs, thereby creating
the possibility of better ways of living together. Let us take the amusing example of Cesar Millan of
the television show The Dog Whisperer. Millan is famous for his ability to effectively deal with problem dogs, rec- ommending
ways of changing their behavior and solving problems such as excessive barking or soiling the house. What is Millan's
secret? Millan's secret is that he's an exemplary alien phenome- nologist. Millan attempts to think
like a dog rather than a human. When Millan approaches a problem dog, he doesn't approach that
dog as a problem for humans, but instead approaches the dog's environment and owners as a
problem for the dog. Based on his knowledge of dog phenomenology, of what it is like to be a dog and how dogs relate to
the environment about them as well as their fellow pack members — which, for the dog, includes its owners Millan explores the
way in this environment as well as pack relations lead to the problematic behavior of the dog. He then makes suggestions
as to how the environment might be changed or pack relations restructured — i.e., how the
behavior of the human pack members might be changed — so as to create a more satisfying
environment for the dog in which the problematic behavior will change. In this way, Millan is able
to produce an ecology or set of social relations that is more satisfying for both the human owners or
fellow pack members and the dog. By contrast, we can imagine a dog trainer that only adopts the
human point of view, holding that it is the dog alone that is the problem, recommending that the
dog be beaten or disciplined with an electric collar, thereby pro- ducing a depressed and broken
dog that lives a life of submission and bondage. A great deal of human cruelty arises from the
failure to practice alien phenomenology. We can see this in cases of colonial exploi- ration,
oppression, and genocide where colonial invaders are unable to imagine the culture of the others
they encounter, instead measuring them by their own culture, values, and concept of the human,
thereby justifying the destruction of their culture as inferior and in many instances the genocide of
these peoples. We see it in the way that people with disabilities , those who suffer from war trauma,
and the mentally ill are measured by an idealized concept of what we believe the human ought to
be, rather than evaluating people in terms of their own capacities and aims. We see it in phenomena
of sexism , where our legal system is constructed around the implicit assumption of men as the
default figure of what the human is, ignoring the specificities of what it means to be a woman.
Finally, we see It In way we relate to animals , treating them only in terms of our own use and how
they advance our aims or pose problems for us, rather than entering the world of animals as Grandin
or Millan do, striving to attend to what animals might need. The point here isn't that we should adopt
some sort of moral masochism where we should always bow to the aims of others and deny our own
aims. The point is that through the practice of alien phenomenology, we might develop ways of living
that are both more compassionate for our others and that might develop more satisfying social
assemblages for all machines involved.
Alien Phenomenology is a prerequisite to effective politics.
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 71-73
Finally, at the political level, alien phenomenology increases the efficacy of our political
interventions. If we grant the premise that institutions like insurance companies are alien minds
over and above those that work at them, that they have their own structural openness to the world,
their own operational closure, and speak their own language, then our political engagement with
these entities requires us to be strategically aware of this fact. All too often we confuse larger scale
machines such as institutions with the people that occupy them such as CEOs. As a consequence, we
are led to believe that it is enough to persuade these people to produce changes in these machines.
Certainly these forms of political intervention cannot hurt, but if it is true that alien cogni- tion is
distributed in these larger-scale machines, then the people that work in these machines are more
akin to neurons or neuronal clusters than they are to the agencies that control and direct these
machines. To be sure, they influence these larger-scale machines, but the machine is itself its own
agent. If we are to change and influence these machines we must inter- act with them in terms of
how they encounter the world so as to devise strategies for getting them to respond. This entails
that we practice alien phenomenology. It is necessary to determine the flows to which these
machines are open, how they operate on these flows, and what goals or aims animate these
machines. Through this knowledge we are able to develop a broader variety of strate- gies for
intervention. If, for example, boycotts are often more effective than protests in compelling
corporations to abandon egregious labor, political, and environmental practices, then this is
because boycotts are implicitly aware of the flows and operations that animate corporate machines.
They are aware that the flows to which corporations are structurally open are those of profit and
loss. In staunching a corporation's profits, a boycott movement thus produces an information event
for the corporation to which It is operationally sensitive, thereby compelling a response and a correction of action. Strikes have been historically effective for similar reasons. In order to achieve its aims, a corporatemachine must engage in operations of producing goods to sell for the sake of creating surplus value or profit. A strike shuts down
these opera- tions, preventing the corporate-machine from operations that produce profit. In this way, workers are able to create
leverage on the machine so as to have their demands met. We can call these forms of engagement
thermodynamic politics. Thermodynamic politics is a form of political engagement that targets a
machine's sources of energy and capacity for work. As we will see in the next chapter, most machines
require work and energy to sustain themselves across time. In the case of a corpo- rate-machine,
the energy required consists of the resources the machine draws upon to produce and distribute its
goods — natural resources, electricity, water, fossil fuels, capital to invest in pro- duction, and so on
— as well as the labor that allows the machine to engage in its operations of production and
distribution. These are the flows to which a corporate-machine is structurally open.
Thermodynamic politics targets these flows of energy and work, effectively speaking the
"language" of the machine's operational closure, thereby creating leverage conducive to change. I'll
leave it to the imagination of my readers to think of other ways in which thermodynamic politics might be practiced.
OOO key to shifting from anthro.
Mylius 13 (Ben Mylius, March 10, 2013, law graduate, anthrodecentrism object oriented ontology and refining the goals of ecocreative writing
http://ecologeur.com/post/45014342168/anthrodecentrism-object-oriented-ontology-and-refining)
‘Ontology is the philosophical study of existence. Object-oriented ontology puts things at the centre of this study. Its proponents
contend that nothing has special status, but that everything exists equally -plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, and sandstone, for
example. In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as
constructions of human behaviour and society (social relativism). OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at
all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves.’ For
anyone interested in a more philosophically-oriented explanation, Wikipedia’s entry here is unusually helpful as a starting-point; Levi Bryant’s
‘Manifesto for object-oriented ontology’ is even more so, as is his book The Democracy of Objects, available as an ebook here. I find this
movement particularly interesting because it represents an attempt to think other than anthropocentrically: to develop a way of
seeing and thinking that avoid placing subjects in general, and human subjects in particular, at its centre. This is also where the
resonance lies with ecocreative writing, which I see as an attempt in a creative mode to do the same thing. The challenge, as it has always
been, is to find the way of theorising this ‘alternative to anthropocentrism’ in a coherent and non-problematic way. Perhaps the key
hurdle for the concept of ‘ecocentrism’ in object-oriented terms is that it proposes some overarching, unified ‘One’ (the ‘eco’) that might
replace the ‘anthro’ at the centre of our thought. My sense is that this might be avoided if we were able to sustain an image of an
ecosystem as a process - an assemblage (Deleuze), ‘mesh’ (Morton) or ‘collective’ (Latour) - rather than a thing. But the connotations
of any kind of ‘centrism’ (what is at the centre?) make this difficult.
Case
Focusing on the sea as a METAPHOR trades off with MATERIALIST
analysis of the ocean
Blum 10
h es T er b lu m is associate professor of e nglish and director of the c enter for a merican l iterary s tudies at p enn s tate u
niversity, u niversity p ark. Blum, Hester. "The Prospect of Oceanic Studies." PMLA 125.3 (2010): 670-677.
THE SEA IS NOT A METAPHOR . FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE HAS ITS PLACE IN ANALYSES OF THE MARITIME
WORLD, CERTAINLY, BUT OCEANIC studies could be more invested in the uses, and problems, of what is
literal in the face of the sea’s abyss of representation . The appeal that figures of oscillation and circulation have had is
easy to understand, since the sea, in William Boelhower’s formulation, “leaves no traces, and has no place names, towns or dwelling places; it
cannot be possessed.” Boelhower’s description
of the Atlantic world is representative of characterizations of
the ocean in recent critical work : it is “fundamentally a space of dispersion, conjunction,
distribution, contingency, heterogeneity, and of intersecting and stratified lines and images —in short, a
field of strategic possibilities in which the Oceanic order holds all together in a common but highly fluid space” (92-93). The ready availability—
and undeniable utility—of fluidity
as an oceanic figure means that the actual sea has often been rendered
immaterial in transnational work, however usefully such work formulates the ethos of transnationalism and oceanic studies alike. In this
essay I advocate a practice of oceanic studies that is attentive to the material conditions and praxis of the
maritime world, one that draws from the epistemological structures provided by the lives and writings of those for whom the sea was
simultaneously workplace, home, passage, penitentiary, and promise. This would allow for a galvanization of the erasure, elision, and fluidity at
work in the metaphorics of the sea that would better enable us to see and to study the work of oceanic literature. The sea is geographically central
to the hemispheric or transnational turn in American studies and to Atlantic and Pacific studies.1 Hemispheric American studies has sought to
challenge traditional definitions of the United States as a self-contained political and cultural entity, working against notions of American
exceptionalism by observing the transnational dimensions of cultural and political formulations and exchanges in the United States. Often
complementary with hemispheric methodologies, Atlantic- and Pacific-based scholarship has tended to venture the relative irrelevance of state
affiliations in the maritime world. The material conditions of maritime transit, trade, and labor would seem to be logical focuses of study in fields
that take oceanic spaces as fundamental “unit[s] of analysis,” to adapt Paul Gilroy’s description of the black Atlantic (15). Yet recent
in transnational studies has been dominated by attention to questions of empire, exchange,
translation, and cosmopolitanism - critical frames not unique to the sea.
work
They OVERTHEORIZE the ocean – treating it as an ideal SYMBOLIC space
reduces it to a term in a metaphor instead of a REAL OBJECT
Steinberg 13
Philip E. Steinberg Professor in the Department of Geography @ Durham Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in maritime
regions”, Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, 10:2, 156-169, DOI:10.1080/14788810.2013.785192
If this turn toward ocean region studies which broadly can be associated with historically informed political economy undertheorizes the ocean,
the second foundation for the rise of ocean region studies which can be associated with poststructuralist critical
theory
overtheorizes the ocean. For scholars in this second group, the ocean is an ideal medium for rethinking
modernist notions of identity and subjectivity and the ways in which these are reproduced through landcentered divisions and representations of space. Thus, for Deleuze and Guattari the ocean is the ‘‘ smooth space par
excellence , ’’ a space that lies apparently, if provisionally, apart from the striations that make difference calculable and amenable to hierarchy. 12
Similarly, in his unpublished but oft-cited essay ‘‘ Of Other Spaces, ’’ Michel Foucault calls the ship at sea the ‘‘ heterotopia par excellence , ’’ a
space of alternate social ordering. 13 These
assertions, in turn, are frequently reproduced by scholars who pay little attention
disconnect
between the idealized sea of poststructuralist theorists and the actual sea encountered by those who engage it is
captured in David Harvey ’ s response to Foucault ’ s declaration that ‘‘ in civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes
the place of adventure and police take the place of pirates . ’’ ‘‘ I keep expecting these words to appear on
to the actual lives of individuals who experience and interact with the sea on a regular, or even occasional, basis. The
commercials for a Caribbean Cruise , ’’ writes Harvey. ‘‘ ... And what is the critical, liberatory and emancipatory point of that?
... I am not surprised that [Foucault] left the essay unpublished. ’’ 14 For scholars in this second, poststructuralist, group,
so much ignored as it is reduced to a metaphor: a spatial
(and thereby seemingly tangible)
the ocean is not
signifier for a
world of shifting, fragmented identities, mobilities, and connections. While metaphors provide powerful tools for
thought, spatial metaphors can be pernicious when they detract attention from the actual work of
construction (labor, exertions of social power, reproduction of institutions, etc.) that transpires to make a space what it is. 15 Thus, the
overtheorization of ocean space
undertheorization
by poststructuralist scholars of maritime regions
is as problematic as its
by political economy-inspired scholars.
Thinking WITH water instead of ABOUT water is crucial to reversing both
human supremacy and the violence we do to the watery world
Chen, Macleod, and Neimanis 13
“Thinking with Water” Cecilia Chen is an architect and a doctoral candidate in communications at Concordia University. Janine
MacLeod is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Astrida Neimanis is a visiting
scholar of the Posthumanities Hub at Linköping University, Sweden.
The act of reading this page is enabled by a confluence of literacy, focused intent, and opportunity - but underlying this privileged and human
practice is a necessary balance of waters. If a sense of wellbeing accompanies this act, it rests on a frequently assumed, but always precarious,
equilibrium. As the reader draws in breath, the relative humidity of the air is neither too wet nor scorchingly dry. And while these words (this
page or this screen) are dry enough to be legible, the reader is neither distracted by thirst or dehydration, nor by an urgent need to pee. In all
likelihood, both reader and book are sheltered from the extremes of inclement weather. An environmental and somatic balance of waters, this
quiet background condition of healthy hydration and safety, is easy to forget. In fact, it may need to be forgotten to sustain the focus necessary to
reading, to writing, and to thinking. And, yet, our
intent with this book is to bring water forward for conscious
and careful consideration, and to explore the possibilities and limits of thinking with water. When
dominant cultures are undergirded by anthropocentric logics of efficiency, profit, and progress,
waters are all too often made nearly invisible, relegated to a passive role as a “resource,” and
subjected to containment, commodification, and instrumentalization. Where they are not being
immediately managed or contested, when they are not unexpectedly flooding or washing awav
human lives and livelihoods, waters are often conveniently forgotten and assumed to be malleable
resources. For these reasons, the diverse conceptual and artistic contributions in this volume are offered in remembrance and recognition of
the watery relations without which we could not live. There
are certainly times when water is at front and centre
stage: a steady stream of popular books and documentaries herald the arrival of a world water crisis, while
scholarly and political debates contest whether water should be understood as a common public good
or a commodified private resource. Important bodies of scholarship address the urgent need to
manage water scarcities, negotiate political and military conflicts over water, mitigate the impacts
of climate change on watersheds, and oppose the appropriation, diversion, and contamination of
water. Thinking of or about water in these ways may nonetheless repeat the assumption that water
is a resource needing to be managed and organized. While engaging in conversation with these
literatures that think about water, this collection attempts to enter into a more collaborative
relationship with the aqueous, actively questioning habitual instrumentalizations of water. We propose
that waters enable lively possibility even as they exceed current understandings. In questioning habitual ways of
understanding, representing, and forgetting waters, this volume responds to a series of everyday
assaults on the hydrosphere. Consider, for instance, the widespread industrial and agricultural
practices that deplete and contaminate ancient aquifers, or the reductive rechoreography of vital
waterways with dams, canals, and diversions. Once-vigorous rivers are exhausted before they reach
the sea.1 Emerging markets in water rights, bulk exports, and bottled water attempt to profit from
socially produced pollution and scarcity. In the context of Canada, where many of this book's authors and artists live, a
significant number of Indigenous communities suffer from chronically unsafe drinking water and witness widespread appropriation and pollution
of their waters. All is not well with the waters of the world – nor with the social relations mediated by their flows.
OUR ocean exploration NECESSARILY exceeds language – we have the sail
BEYOND THE MAP – only a history IRREDUCIBLE to definition can honor
the memory of the NAMELESS with a JUSTICE that is yet to come
Chambers 10
Iain Chambers teaches cultural and post-colonial studies at the university of Naplese“Maritime Criticism
and Theoretical Shipwrecks” PMLA, Volume 125, Number 3, May 2010, pp. 678–684 (7) DOI:
10.1632/pmla.2010.125.3.678 ISSN: 0030-8129
the screen of the sea , like the cinema screen theorized by Gilles Deleuze, proposes the dehumanization of
images. As Claire Colebrook glosses Deleuze, the visual is freed from the subject and released to yield its
autonomous powers (43). We are brought into the presence of a contingent, temporal relation and into the
multiplicity of the present, which is irreducible to its representation . This proposes the Deleuzian prospect of a
“more radical Elsewhere, outside homogeneous space and time” (17). Between perception and a re sponse emerges a zone of feeling,
a resonance, a vibration, a powerful affect that inaugurates the passionate geography evoked in Giuliana Bru no’s “atlas of emotion.” Here
This mask,
time exists beyond the linguistic act of nomination, beyond the subject that produces the image. This is why for
Deleuze—and here we can return to the immediacy of Isaac Julien’s work—art is not the expression of humanity, or of an underlying unity, but is
rather the release of imagination from its human and functional home. Impossible, we might say, and yet a necessary threshold, which a
nonrepresen tational and affective art seeks endlessly to cross. The veracity of the image is now to be located elsewhere: it is no longer a simple
sup port—realism, mimesis—for narration but is rather itself the narrating force. There are not images of life but images as life, a life already
imagined, activated, and sustained in the im age. There is not first the thought and then the image. The image itself is a modality of think ing. It
does not represent, but rather proposes, thought. This is the potential dynamite that resides in the image: it both marks and ex plodes time. This is
the unhomely insistence of the artwork, its critical cut, and its inter ruption. In the artwork, in
the movement and migration of
language, denomination is sundered from domination as it races on, along an unsuspected critical path
through the folds of a depossessed modernity. So we have traveled with the challenge of the sea to
the critical cut of the artwork: both evoke an interruption in and potential exit from a humanism that
seeks to secure the world
of the subject. The perspective that ar rives from
the heterotopic site of the sea a nd from
the artistic interval in representational reason provides the freedom for a critical piracy that raids a
selfassured,
stable thinking grounded in the provincial immediacies of
a unique
locale and language . This is
an idea of history , indebted to the critical oeu vre of Walter Benjamin, in which knowledge, sustained by a search for new
beginnings, proposes history not from a stable point but through a movement in which historians, no longer the source of
knowledge, emerge as subjects who can never fully command or comprehend their language.
to suggest
Historians,
as Georges DidiHuberman argues,
not of their making
are set to float,
called on
to navigate languages , currents, and conditions
(96). From this Benjaminian revaluation of the historical vision elaborated in “Theses on the Philosophy of
History,” there emerges the posthumanist confirmation that what we see commences not from the eye but from the external light of the world that
strikes it. Similiarly,
we do not research the past; the past researches us
(DidiHuberman 97). This is to engage with
a
history composed of in tervals, irruptions, and interruptions. It is a history that speaks of the past, of oblivion, while
seeking to open the doors of justice on the future. This is a history delineated in the explosive explication of time rather
than in the mental unity of an isolated intellect. All of which is to suggest a modernity that mi grates, susceptible to unlicensed winds
and currents: a modernity that seeds a discontinuous history, always out of joint with the synthesis required of an
epoch that seeks only the selfconfirmation of its will. At Port Bou, in Spain, is a window on the sea. It is a memorial to Walter Benjamin, who is
buried there, by the Israeli artist Dani K a r a v a n , e n t i t l e d Passages– Walter Benjamin (1990–94). Two steel walls, rusted red by the sea,
plunge downward toward the rocks and blue of the Mediterranean. A glass panel suspended between the walls intersects our gaze; on it is
inscribed a modified citation from “Theses on the Philosophy of History”: “Schwe rer ist es, das Gedächtnis der Namen losen zu ehren als das
Berühmten. Dem Ge dächt nis der Namenlosen ist die historische Kon struk tion geweiht” (“ It
is more arduous to honor the
memory of the nameless than that of the renowned . Historical construction is devoted to the memory of the nameless”
[my trans.]).
A window on the sea,
open to
the storm blowing in from oblivion, sustains an aperture on a
justice that has yet to come.
Attempts to exclude the question of ontology lead to genocidal violence
Dillon 99
Prof of Politics at Lancaster 1999 Michael Political Theory 27.2 jstor
Because you
cannot say anything about anything, that is, without always already having made
assumptions about the is as such, however, the return of the ontological has even wider ramifications than that of genealogy. For
any thought, including, therefore, that of Justice, always already carries some interpretation of what it means
to be, and of how one is as a being in bei6ng. To call these fundaments into question is to gain
profound critical purchase upon the thought that underpins the thought and practices of
distributive justice itself. We are at the level of those fundamental desires and fears which confine
the imagination and breed the cruelties upon which it relies in order to deflect whatever appears to
threaten or disturb its various drives for metaphysical security.12¶ Politics and philosophy have
always been wedded since their first inception in the polis. The return of the ontological was
therefore prompted by the twin political and philosophical crises that assailed European civilisation at
the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Hence the crisis of (inter)national politics (to which E. H.
Carr, for example, responded) was as much a crisis of thought as the crisis of thought, as expressed in debates about
Empiricism, Scientism, Positivism, and Historicism at that time, was a crisis of politics. For what was at issue was a thinking way of
life-complexly diverse and radically plural in its composition-that had hit the buffers in terms of the elevated universal expectations of reason and
justice which its thought and politics had promised. Historicism's failure to meet the challenges of Empiricism, Positivism, and Scientism
nonetheless served to expose the
crisis of political modernity itself: bureaucratisation, rationalisation, global
industrialisation, technologisation, the advent of mass society, world war and genocide.13 On the one
hand, a return to "basics" was prompted by the ways in which the slaughter of the Great War, the
holocaust of the Second World War, and the subsequent advent of the terminal dangers of the
nuclear age undermined the confidence of a European civilisation gone global. This "failure of nerve" was
enhanced by the impact of its racial and economic imperialism, together with the subsequent experience of postcolonialism. On the other hand,
the return of the ontological was indebted philosophically, amongst other influences to Nietzsche's overturning of the metaphysical deceits of
onto-theology, and to Heidegger's early attempt to formulate a fundamental ontology. In neither instance am I claiming that the outcome of the
ontological turn has resulted in some new orthodoxy or canon.14 Levinas, for example, through moves too complicated to retrace in this exercise,
championed the metaphysical over against the 'ontological'. Quite the contrary. The
question of ontology has, instead, been
split wide open, and the formulations, desires, institutions, and practices of our established ways of
being-justice and Justice included-are shown to be suspended in that very opening. ¶ Irrespective of this
return to basics, the preoccupation of both thought and politics nonetheless also became the future. Just as the self-annihilationist capacities of
European civilisation gone global posed the question of a habitable global future, so, in thought too, the crossover from the nineteenth to the
twentieth centuries became preoccupied with "an affirmation of the future or of an opening onto the future."15¶ Think of the problem of
messianicity in Benjamin, the question of the future in Nietzsche, the privilege of the futural ecstasis in Heidegger.... These thinkers are all
thinkers of the future.16¶ In each instance, also, the thought of and for the future is associated with destruction. The experiencing of an abyss
resonates somehow with the thinking of the abyss and, there-"where the mouth gapes"17-both politics and philosophy think, and seek to affirm,
the future.¶ The return of the ontological was, then, a plural one radically disturbing the fundaments of all regional thought such as that of politics
and justice as well as the more well-known and elaborated, though intimately related, subject of reason. This
movement of thought
was positive in that, while providing a critical reappraisal of ontology (cf. Heidegger), a certain
'ontological' sensibility has also emerged from it. It is based upon a profound, if variously
interpreted, appreciation of the ontological difference-the difference between beings, as existing
entities, and being as such. It offers for all other thought the alternative and radically dualistic
starting point of the mutually disclosive belonging together of being and beings.18¶ The return of the
ontological thus became the driving force behind what William Connolly calls ontopolitical interpretation. Connolly reminds us that all
political acts and every interpretation of political events, no matter how deeply they are sunk in
specific historical contexts, "or how high the pile of data," upon which they sit, contain an
"ontopolitical dimension."9 What that means, simply, is that all political acts, and all political utterances,
express-enact-a view of how things are. They establish fundamental presumptions, "fix possibilities,
distribute explanatory elements, generate parameters."20 In short, they establish a fundamental framework of necessity
and desire. That is why the ontological turn has a direct bearing upon the question of Justice as well as upon the allied questions of
freedom and belonging. It therefore challenges the language of politics as much as it challenges the politics of
Language, and thus re-poses the very question of the political itself.21
Arctic Affirmative
K
Environmentalism subordinates the relation with nature to desire for a clean
and “virgin” Nature – this reinforces a notion of heteronormativity and turns
the case.
Morton 2010 (Timothy, Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, “Queer Ecology,” from “QUEER
ENVIRONMENTALITY: ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND SEXUALITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE,” pp 278-279)
If being “environmental” only extends phobias of psychic, sexual, and social intimacy, current
conditions such as global warming will persist. Instead of insisting on being part of something
bigger, we should be working with intimacy. Organicism is not ecological. In organic form the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts. Many environmentalisms— even systems theories—are organicist: world
fits mind, and mind fits world. The teleology implicit in this chiasmus is hostile to inassimilable difference. Interdependence
implies differences that cannot be totalized. The mesh of interconnected life- forms does not constitute a world. Worlds have horizons: here and
there, inside and outside; queer ecology would undermine worlds. Relying
on touchyfeely ideologies of embeddedness,
ecophenomenology resists the humiliating paucity of the incomplete ontic level. No ontology is
possible without a violent forgetting. We can’t fight metaphysics with metaphysics without violence. Queer ecology will
explore this radical incompleteness through a profound and extensive study of sexuality. The mesh of
life- forms is not an alternative to organicism: thinking so would be seeking a new and improved version of Nature. Organicism polices
the sprawling, tangled, queer mesh by naturalizing sexual difference. This contradicts discoveries in
the life sciences. The biologist Joan Roughgarden argues that gender diversity is a necessary feature of evolution.
Moreover, her argument is possible because Darwin himself opened a space for it. Strict Darwinism might even be friendlier to queer ecology
than Roughgarden, because it’s so antiteleological (Marx liked it for this reason). Roughgarden
makes more of a teleological
meal than necessary to justify the existence of homosexuality in lizards, birds, sheep, monkeys, and
bonobos (145). Individuals and species don’t abstractly “want” to survive so as to preserve their
forms; only macromolecular replicators “want” that. From the replicators’ viewpoint, if it works
(“satisficing,” as stated earlier), you can keep it (Dawkins, Extended Phenotype 156; Roughgarden 26–27). A profusion of gender and sex
performances can arise. As far as evolution goes, they can stay that way. Thinking otherwise is “adaptationism.” You want antiessentialist
performativity? Again, just read Darwin. The engine of sexual selection is sexual display, not the “survival of the Fittest”—Alfred Russel
Wallace, wary of nonutilitarian conclusions, urged Darwin to insert that troublesome phrase (Dawkins, Extended Phenotype 179–80). Sexual
display accounts for a vast range of appearances and behaviors. There’s no good reason for some
aspects of my appearance (for instance, my reddish facial hair)—a few million years ago, someone just found it
sexy. Despite numerous critiques of Darwin’s views on gender (Grosz 72–79), a reserve of progressive energy remains. Because Darwin
reduces sexuality to sheer aesthetic display ( sub- Kantian purposelessness), the Descent of Man is as
antihomophobic as it is antiracist (Grosz 87).6 It refuses to traffic in the idea that pleasure in surfaces contrasts with “real”
activity. Desire is inescapable in an ecology that values intimacy with strangers over holistic belonging.
Yet environmentalism strives to rise above the contingency of desire. Loving Nature thus becomes
enslaved to masculine heteronormativity , a performance that erases the trace of performance: as the
green camping slogan puts it, “Leave no trace.” Masculinity performs no performance. If you appear to be acting
masculine, you aren’t masculine. Masculine is Natural. Natural is masculine. Rugged, bleak,
masculine Nature defines itself through contrasts: outdoorsy and extraverted, heterosexual, ablebodied—disability is nowhere to be seen; physical wholeness and coordination are valued over
spontaneity (McRuer; Mitchell and Snyder). Nature is aggressively healthy, hostile to self- absorption. Despite repressive images of Mother
Nature, Nature is not feminine. There is no room for irony or for ambiguity that is more than superficial. There is scant space for
humor, except perhaps a phobic, hearty kind. Masculine Nature is allergic to semblance. Afraid of its own shadow, it wants no truck with what
Hegel called the night of the world, the threateningly empty dimension of subjectivity (204). Masculine
Nature fears the
nothingness of feminine “mere” appearance (Levinas 158). Ecological phenomena display this infinite
strangeness (170). By contrast, masculine Nature is “unperversion.” Organicism articulates desire as erasure, erasure
desire. Organicism wants nature “untouched, ” subject to no desire: it puts desire under erasure,
since its concern for “virginity” is in fact a desire. Unmarked Nature is established by exclusion, then the exclusion of
exclusion. Queer ecology must show how interconnectedness is not organic. Things only look as if they
fit, because we don’t perceive them on an evolutionary or a geologic time scale. If you move a
paralyzed cricket away from the hole that the Sphex wasp who paralyzed it has made (and is inspecting
for the presence of wasp grubs), the wasp will move the cricket back meaninglessly, without dragging it in
(Hofstadter 360–61, 613–14). The wasp doesn’t have Platonic ideas of holes or food in mind; it mechanically repeats the
behaviors of dragging and of looking for its young. Nature (that reified, mythical thing over yonder in the mountains, in
our DNA, wherever) dissolves when we look directly at it (remember that breaking the taboo against looking directly at the goddess Diana
involved dire metamorphic consequences). Nature
looks natural because it keeps going, and going, and going,
like the undead, and because we keep on looking away, framing it, sizing it up. Acknowledging the
zombielike quality of interconnected lifeforms will aid the transition from an ideological fixation on
Nature to a fully queer ecology. I call this transitional mode “dark ecology” (Ecology 181–97). Instead of
perpetuating metaphors of depth and authenticity (as in deep ecology), we might aim for something profound yet
ironic, neither nihilistic nor solipsistic, but aware like a character in a noir movie of her or his entanglement in and with life- forms. Think
Blade Runner or Frankenstein: queer ecological ethics might regard beings as people even when they aren’t
people. All ecological positions are caught in desire. How dare ecological theory critique vegetarianism? Yet the position
from which vegetarian arguments are staged might be fascinated, carnivorous carnophobia, violent nonviolence: all that meat, all those mangled
bodies. Animal rights language can involve violent rendering and rending (Hacking 168–70). Percy Bysshe Shelley
advocated abstaining from meat and from unfairly traded spices. Yet his vegetarian rhetoric is obsessed with obsession, equating madness with
crime, crime with disease: longing for a society without a trace—a society without people (Morton, Shelley 134–35).7
The affirmative judges the ocean by the way that humankind perceives it
which is anthropocentric and inevitably fails because the ocean is withdrawn.
Morton ‘11 [Timothy, Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, Speculations 2, pg. 216219, http://www.speculations-journal.org/storage/Morton_Sublime%20Objects_v2.pdf] //JC//
According to OOO, objects
all have four aspects. They withdraw from access by other objects. They
appear to other objects. They are specific entities. And that’s not all: they really exist. Aesthetically, then,
objects are uncanny beasts. If they were pieces of music, they might be some impossible combination
of slapstick sound effects, Sufi singing, Mahler and hardcore techno. If they were literature, they might exist
somewhere between The Commedia Dell’ Arte, The Cloud of Unknowing, War and Peace and Waiting for Godot. Pierrot Lunaire might be a
object-oriented sublime doesn’t come from
some beyond, because this beyond turns out to be a kind of optical illusion of correlationism.
There’s nothing underneath the Universe of objects. Or not even nothing, if you prefer thinking it
that way. The sublime resides in particularity, not in some distant beyond. And the sublime is
generalizable to all objects, insofar as they are all what I’ve called strange strangers, that is, alien to
themselves and to one another in an irreducible way.26 Of the two dominant theories of the sublime, we have a
choice between authority and freedom, between exteriority and interiority. But both choices are
correlationist. That is, both theories of the sublime have to do with human subjec- tive access to
objects. On the one hand we have Edmund Burke, for whom the sublime is shock and awe: an
experience of terrifying authority to which you must submit.27 On the other hand, we have Immanuel Kant, for whom
the sublime is an experience of inner freedom based on some kind of temporary cognitive failure. Try counting up to infinity. You
good metaphor for grotesque, frightening, hilarious, sublime objects. The
can’t. But that is precisely what infinity is. The power of your mind is revealed in its failure to sum
infinity. 28 Both sublimes assume that: (1) the world is specially or uniquely accessible to humans; (2)
the sublime uniquely correlates the world to humans; and (3) what’s important about the sublime is
a reaction in the subject. The Burkean sublime is simply craven cowering in the presence of authority: the law, the might of a tyrant
God, the power of kings, and the threat of execution. No
real knowledge of the authority is assumed—terrified
ignorance will do. Burke argues outright that the sublime is always a safe pain, mediated by the
glass panels of the aesthetic. (That’s why horror movies, a truly speculative genre, try to bust through this aesthetic screen at every
opportunity.) What we need is a more speculative sublime that actually tries to become intimate with
the other, and here Kant is at any rate preferable to Burke. Those more sympathetic to Kant might argue that there is some faint echo of
reality in the experience of the sublime. Certainly the aesthetic dimension is a way in which the normal subject–object dichotomy is suspended in
Kant. And the
sublime is as it were the essential subroutine of the aesthetic experience, allowing us to
experience the power of our mind by running up against some external obstacle. Kant references telescopes
and microscopes that expand human perception beyond its limits.29 His marvelous passage on the way one’s mind can encompass human height
and by simple multiplication comprehend the vastness of “Milky Way systems” is sublimely expressive of the human capac- ity to think.30 It’s
also true that the Kantian sublime inspired the powerful speculations of Schelling, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and more work needs to be done
teasing out how those philosophers begin to think a reality beyond the hu- man (the work of Grant and Woodard stands out in particular at
present).31 It’s true that in §28 of the Third Critique, Kant does talk about how we experience the ‘dynamical sublime’ in the terror of vastness,
for instance of the ocean or the sky. But this isn’t anything like intimacy with the sky or the ocean. In fact, in the next sections, Kant explicitly
rules out anything like a scientific or even probing analysis of what might exist in the sky. As
soon as we think of the ocean as a
body of water containing fish and whales, rather than as a canvas for our psyche; as soon as we
think of the sky as the real Universe of stars and black holes, we aren’t experiencing the sublime
(§29): Therefore, when we call the sight of the starry sky sublime, we must not base our judgment upon
any concepts of worlds that are inhab- ited by rational beings, and then [conceive of] the bright dots
that we see occupying the space above us as being these worlds’ suns, moved in orbits prescribed
for them with great purposiveness; but we must base our judgment regarding merely on how we
see it, as a vast vault encompassing everything, and merely under this presentation may we posit
the sublimity that a pure aesthetic judgment attributes to this object. In the same way, when we judge
the sight of the ocean we must not do so on the basis of how we think , it, enriched with all sorts of
knowledge which we possess (but which is not contained in the direct intuition), e.g., as a vast realm
of aquatic creatures, or as the great reservoir supplying the water for the vapors that impregnate
the air with clouds for the benefit of the land , or again as an element that, while separating
continents from one another, yet makes possible the greatest communication among them; for all
such judgments will be teleological. Instead we must be able to view the ocean as poets do, merely in
terms of what manifests itself to the eye—e.g., if we observe it while it is calm, as a clear mirror of
water bounded only by the sky; or, if it turbulent, as being like an abyss threatening to engulf
every- thing—and yet find it sublime.32 While we may share Kant’s anxiety about teleology, his main point is less than
satisfactory from a speculative realist point of view. We positively shouldn’t speculate when we experience the
sublime. The sublime is precisely the lack of speculation
Ontology comes first. Objects precede our knowledge of them. All other ways
of relating to the world are incorrect an anthropocentric.
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. 2011. “Levi
Democracy Of objects”. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/9750134.0001.001/1:4/.
Yet in
all of the heated debates surrounding epistemology that have cast nearly every discipline in turmoil, we
nonetheless seem to miss the point that the question of the object is not an epistemological question,
not a question of how we know the object, but a question of what objects are. The being of objects is an issue
distinct from the question of our knowledge of objects. Here, of course, it seems obvious that in order to discuss the
being of objects we must first know objects. And if this is the case, it follows as a matter of course that epistemology or questions of knowledge
must precede ontology. However, I hope to show in what follows that questions of ontology are both irreducible to questions of epistemology and
that questions of ontology must precede questions of epistemology or questions of our access to objects.What an object is cannot be reduced to
our access¶ to objects. And as we will see in what follows, that access is highly limited. Nonetheless,
while our access to objects
is highly limited, we can still say a great deal about the being of objects.¶ However, despite the limitations of
access, we must avoid, at all costs, the thesis that objects are what our access to objects gives us. As Graham Harman has argued,
objects are not the given. Not at all. As such, this¶ book defends a robust realism.Yet, and this is crucial to everything that follows, the
realism defended here is not an epistemological realism, but an ontological realism. Epistemological realism argues that our representations and
language are accurate mirrors of the world as it actually is, regardless of whether or not we exist. It seeks to distinguish between true
representations and phantasms. Ontological
realism, by contrast, is not a thesis about our knowledge of
objects, but about the being of objects themselves, whether or not we exist to represent them. It is
the thesis that the world is composed¶ of objects, that these objects are varied and include entities
as diverse as mind, language, cultural and social entities, and objects independent of humans such
as galaxies, stones, quarks, tardigrades and so on. Above all, ontological realisms refuse to treat
objects as constructions of humans. While it is true, I will argue, that all objects translate one another, the objects that
are translated are irreducible to their translations. As we will see, ontological realism thoroughly refutes
epistemological realism
or¶ Introduction: Towards a Finally Subjectless Object 19¶ what ordinarily goes by the pejorative title of
“naïve realism”. Initially it might sound as if the distinction between ontological and epistemological realism is a difference that makes no
difference but, as I hope to show, this distinction has far ranging consequences for how we pose a number of questions and theorize a variety of
phenomena.¶
One of the problematic consequences that follows from the hegemony that epistemology
currently enjoys in philosophy is that it condemns philosophy to a thoroughly anthropocentric
reference.
Because the ontological question of substance is elided into the epistemological question of our knowledge of substance, all
discussions of substance necessarily contain a human reference.The subtext or fine print surrounding our discussions of substance always contain
reference to an implicit “for- us”.This is true even of the anti-humanist structuralists and post- structuralists who purport to dispense with the
subject in favor of various impersonal and anonymous social forces like language and structure that exceed the intentions of individuals. Here
we still remain in the orbit of¶ an anthropocentric universe insofar as society and culture are
human phenomena, and all of being is subordinated to these forces. Being is thereby reduced to what being is for us.¶ By contrast, this
book strives to think a subjectless object, or an object that is for-itself rather than an object that is an opposing pole before or in front of a subject.
Put differently, this essay attempts to think an object for-itself that isn't an object for the gaze of a subject, representation, or a cultural
discourse.This, in short, is what the democracy of objects means. The democracy of objects is not a political thesis to the effect that all objects
ought to be treated equally or that all objects ought to participate in human affairs.
The democracy of objects is the
ontological thesis that all objects , as Ian Bogost has so nicely put it, equally exist while they do not
exist equally. The claim that all objects equally exist is the claim that no object can be treated as
constructed by another object.The claim that objects do not exist equally is the claim that objects
contribute to collectives or assemblages to a greater and lesser degree. In short, no object such as
the subject or culture is the ground of all others. As such, The Democracy of Objects attempts to
think the being of objects unshackled from the gaze of humans in their being for-themselves.¶ 20 Levi
R. Bryant¶ Such a democracy, however, does not entail the exclusion of the human. Rather, what we get is a redrawing of distinctions and a
decentering of the human. The point is not that we should think objects rather than humans. Such a formulation is based on the premise that
humans constitute some special category that is other than objects, that objects are a pole opposed to humans, and therefore the formulation is
based on the premise that objects are correlates or poles opposing or standing-before humans. No, within the framework of onticology—my name
for the ontology that follows—there¶ is only one type of being: objects. As
a consequence, humans are not excluded, but
are rather objects among the various types of objects that exist or populate the world, each with
their own specific powers and capacities.
Ignoring hyperobjects results in billions of death.
James 13 (Arran, UK-based philosopher, graduate student of Critical Theory, and psychiatric nurse). “The catastrophic and the postapocalyptic,”http://syntheticzero.net/2013/08/21/the-catastrophic-and-the-post-apocalyptic/ August 21, 2013)//[AC]
There is a vast onto-cartography at work here that connects species of fish to coolant systems to hydrogen
molecules to legislation on nuclear safety; legislators, parliaments, regulatory bodies, anti-nuclear activists;
ideas like environmentalism; the food supply networks and geographic distribution of production centres; work practices;
capital investments and the wider financial markets as Tepco’s shares fall; and those networks that specifically
effect human beings in the exclusion area. After all, this exclusion zone has seen thousands of families
leave their homes, their jobs, their friends, and the possessions that had been rewarded to them as
recompense for their alienated labour. Consider that some of these people are still paying mortgages on homes they will
probably never be able to return to safely. And there remains one more reactor in the water that has not melted down but possibly will- if not by
human efforts to recover the fuel rods, then by the possibility of another unpredicted earthquake and/or tsunami. I don’t have the space or the
desire to trace the
onto-cartography of this disaster but it is clear that it includes both geological, ecological and
capitalist bodies; indeed, it is clear that the capitalist bodies might be the ones that are ultimately
responsible. According to Christina Consolo,¶ all this collateral damage will continue for decades, if not
centuries, even if things stay exactly the way they are now. But that is unlikely, as bad things happen like
natural disasters and deterioration with time…earthquakes, subsidence, and corrosion, to name a few. Every day that
goes by, the statistical risk increases for this apocalyptic scenario. No one can say or know how this will play out, except
that millions of people will probably die even if things stay exactly as they are, and billions could die
if things get any (here).¶ I raise the spectre of Fukushima as catastrophe and as apocalyptic because it accords to what
Timothy Morton has described as a hyperobject. In ‘Zero Landscapes in the time of hyperobjects’ Morton defines the states
that¶ Objects are beginning to compel us, from outside the wall. The objects we ignored for centuries,
the objects we created in the process of ignoring other ones: plutonium, global warming. I call them hyperobjects.
Hyperobjects are real objects that are massively distributed in time and space. Good examples would be global
warming and nuclear radiation. Hyperobjects are so vast, so long lasting, that they defy human time and
spatial scales. They wouldn’t fit in a landscape painting. They could never put you in the right mood. ¶ The ontocartography or
“map of entities” that we could trace in relation to Fukushima doesn’t just include all those bodies we have listed already but
also, and most importantly, it includes the radiation itself. Born of the unstable hybridisation of techno-materiality and geomateriality in pursuit of energy to satisfy the logic of the infinite growth of capital, the hyperobject of Fukushima’s radiation was
unleashed and now exists independently of those techno-geo-capitalist assemblages. That this radiation
exists on a huge spatio-temporal scale means that it exists beyond our evolved capacity to think. We evolved to cope with
and to handle a world of mid-sized objects, the very tools and raw materials that helped to build
Fukushima. In the language of transcorporealist thought: the weaving or interpenetration of various autonomous
ontological bodies has led to this body composed of bodies. Just as numerous minerals, cells, exogenous
microorganisms, mitochondria, oxygen, lactic acid, sugars, contact lenses, and so on go up to constitute my body
in their choreographic co-actualisation so to does this process give rise to a similar shift in scale. In
my body the shift is that from the molecular to the “molar” scale but in this case, the shift is from the “molar” to the
hyper-scale. The radiation unleashed by the Fukushima meltdown exists on a geological spatial and temporal
scale that the human animal is not equipped to readily perceive.¶ Such hyperobjects proliferate around us and are
equally hard to detect in our proximal engagement with the various worlds we inhabit. They range from incidents like
Fukushima to the more encompassing threats of the collapse of capital, ecocide and cosmic death that
I mentioned above. The reason I have focussed on Fukushima is to illustrate the point that the catastrophe has already taken
place. In relation to the example of Fukushima the catastrophe occurred two years ago but will be ongoing for
centuries. That I can sit here in all my relative comfort and enjoy the benefits of being a white male in Britain does
not mean that I am any the less existing after the catastrophe. Catastrophes are discreet events that
explode into being, even if such an explosion can seem very slow as they happen on the scale of vast
temporalities. In the last analysis that can’t be carried out, the cosmos itself exists as one huge catastrophe; the moment of the big bang
being the cosmic event, everything else since being the unfolding of that catastrophic actualisation working itself out.
Anthropocentrism is THE original hierarchy that makes racism, sexism, and
other “-isms” possible—if the future is not to endlessly repeat the horrors of
the past, then we NEED a politics that can respect more than human life – the
affirmatives focus on race only REPLICATES the violence of
anthropocentrism – only the alternative solves
Best 7 (Steven, Chair of Philosophy at UT-EP, JCAS 5.2)
While a welcome advance over the anthropocentric conceit that only humans shape human actions, the environmental determinism approach
typically fails to emphasize the crucial role that animals play in human history, as well as how the human exploitation of animals is a key
cause of hierarchy, social conflict, and environmental breakdown. A core thesis of what I call “animal standpoint theory” is that animals
have been key driving and shaping forces of human thought, psychology, moral and social life, and
history overall. More specifically, animal standpoint theory argues that the oppression of humanover human has deep
roots in the oppression of human over animal. In this context, Charles Patterson’s recent book, The Eternal Treblinka: Our
Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, articulates the animal standpoint in a powerful form with revolutionary implications. The main
argument of Eternal Treblinka is that the human
domination of animals, such as it emerged some ten thousand years ago with
the first hierarchical domination and laid the groundwork for
patriarchy, slavery, warfare, genocide, and other systems of violence and power. A key implication of Patterson’s theory is
that human liberation is implausible if disconnected from animal liberation, and thus humanism -the rise of agricultural society, was
a speciesist philosophy that constructs a hierarchal relationship privileging superior humans over inferior animals and reduces animals to
resources for human use -- collapses
under the weight of its logical contradictions. Patterson lays out his complex
and speciesism have direct and profound
connections to slavery, colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism. In Part II, he shows how these connections exist not only in the
realm of ideology – as conceptual systems of justifying and underpinning domination and hierarchy – but also in systems of
technology, such that the tools and techniques humans devised for the rationalized mass confinement and slaughter of animals were
holistic argument in three parts. In Part I, he demonstrates that animal exploitation
mobilized against human groups for the same ends. Finally, in the fascinating interviews and narratives of Part III, Patterson describes how
personal experience with German Nazism prompted Jewish to take antithetical paths: whereas most retreated to an insular identity and
dogmatic emphasis on the singularity of Nazi evil and its tragic experience, others recognized the profound similarities between how Nazis
treated their human captives and how humanity as a whole treats other animals, an epiphany that led them to adopt vegetarianism, to become
advocates for the animals, and develop a far broader and more inclusive ethic informed by universal compassion for all suffering and
oppressed beings. The Origins of Hierarchy "As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other" –Pythagoras It is little understood
that the first form of oppression, domination, and hierarchy involves human domination over animals Patterson’s thesis stands in bold
contrast to the Marxist theory that the domination over nature is fundamental to the domination over other humans. It differs as well from the
social ecology position of Murray Bookchin that domination over humans brings about alienation from the natural world, provokes
hierarchical mindsets and institutions, and is the root of the long-standing western goal to “dominate” nature. In the case of Marxists,
anarchists, and so many others, theorists typically don’t even mention human domination of animals, let
alone assign it causal primacy or significance. In Patterson’s model, however, the human subjugation of animals is the
first form of hierarchy and it paves the way for all other systems of domination such as include
patriarchy, racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. As he puts it, “the exploitation of animals
was the model and inspiration for the atrocities people committed against each other, slavery and the Holocaust being but two of the more
dramatic examples.” Hierarchy
emerged with the rise of agricultural society some ten thousand years
ago. In the shift from nomadic hunting and gathering bands to settled agricultural practices,
humans began to establish their dominance over animals through “domestication.” In animal
domestication (often a euphemism disguising coercion and cruelty), humans began to exploit animals for purposes such as
obtaining food, milk, clothing, plowing, and transportation. As they gained increasing control over the lives and
labor power of animals, humans bred them for desired traits and controlled them in various ways, such as
castratingmales to make them more docile.To conquer, enslave, and claim animals as their own
property, humans developed numerous technologies, such as pens, cages, collars, ropes, chains, and
branding irons. The domination of animals paved the way for the domination of humans. The sexual subjugation of
women, Patterson suggests, was modeled afterthe domestication of animals, such that men began to control
women’s reproductive capacity, to enforce repressive sexual norms, and to rape them as they
forced breedingin their animals. Not coincidentally, Patterson argues, slavery emerged in the same region of the
Middle East that spawned agriculture, and, in fact, developed as an extension of animal domestication
practices. In areas like Sumer, slaves were managed like livestock, and males were castrated and
forced to work along with females. In the fifteenth century, when Europeans began the colonization of
Africa and Spain introduced the first international slave markets, the metaphors, models, and
technologies used to exploit animal slaves were applied with equal cruelty and force to human slaves.
Stealing Africans from their native environment and homeland, breaking up families who scream in
anguish, wrapping chains around slaves’ bodies, shipping them in cramped quarters across
continents for weeks or months with no regard for their needs or suffering, branding their skin with a hot
iron to mark them as property, auctioning them as servants, breeding them for service and labor,
exploiting them for profit, beating them in rages of hatred and anger, and killing them in vast numbers– all
these horrors and countless others inflicted on black slaves were developed and perfected centuries
earlier through animal exploitation. As the domestication of animals developed in agricultural society, humans lost the
intimate connections they once had with animals. By the time of Aristotle, certainly, and with the bigoted assistance of medieval theologians
such as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, western humanity had developed an explicitly hierarchical worldview – that came to be known
as the “Great Chain of Being” – used to position humans as the end to which all other beings were mere means. Patterson underscores the
crucial point that the domination of human over human and its exercise through slavery, warfare, and genocide typically begins with the
denigration of victims. But the means and methods of dehumanization are derivative, for speciesism provided the conceptual paradigm that
encouraged, sustained, and justified western brutality toward other peoples. “Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master
species,” Patterson writes, “our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The
study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the
same to them.” Whether the conquerors are European imperialists, American colonialists, or German Nazis, western
aggressors
engaged in wordplay before swordplay, vilifying their victims – Africans, Native Americans, Filipinos, Japanese,
Vietnamese, Iraqis, and other unfortunates – with opprobrious terms such as “rats,” “pigs,” “swine,” “monkeys,” “beasts,” and
“filthy animals.”Once perceived as brute beasts or sub-humans occupying a lower evolutionary rung
than white westerners, subjugated peoples were treated accordingly; once characterized as animals, they could
be hunted down like animals. The first exiles from the moral community, animals provided a convenient discard bin for oppressors to dispose
the oppressed. The connections are clear: “For a civilization built on the exploitation and slaughter of animals, the `lower’ and more
degraded the human victims are, the easier it is to kill them.” Thus, colonialism, as Patterson describes, was
a “natural
extension of human supremacy over the animal kingdom. For just as humans had subdued animals with their
superior intelligence and technologies, so many Europeans believed that the white race had proven its superiority by bringing the “lower
races” under its command. There are important parallels between speciesism and sexism and racism in the elevation of white male
rationality to the touchstone of moral worth. The
arguments European colonialists used to legitimate exploiting
Africans – that they were less than human and inferior to white Europeans in ability to reason –
are the very same justifications humans use to trap, hunt, confine, and kill animals. Oncewestern norms of
rationality were defined as the essence of humanity and social normality, by first using non-human animals as the
measure of alterity, it was a short step to begin viewing odd, different, exotic, and eccentric peoples and types asnonor sub-human.Thus, the same criterion created to exclude animals from humans was also used to ostracize blacks, women, and
numerous other groups from “humanity.”
This Anthropocentric ordering is the foundation of the war machine and drives the
exclusion of populations based on race, ethnicity and gender
Kochi, 2K9 (Tarik, Sussex law school, Species war: Law, Violence and Animals, Law Culture and Humanities Oct 5.3)
Grotius and Hobbes are sometimes described as setting out a prudential approach, 28 or a natural law of minimal content 29 because in contrast
to Aristotelian or Thomastic legal and political theory their attempt to derive the legitimacy of the state and sovereign order relies less upon a
thick con-ception of the good life and is more focussed upon basic human needs such as survival. In the context of a response to religious
civil war such an approach made sense in that often thick moral and religious conceptions of the good life (for example, those held
by competing Christian Confessions) often drove conflict and violence. Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that the categories of
“survival,” “preservation of life” and “bare life” are neutral categories. Rather survival, preservation of life and bare life as
expressed by the Westphalian theoretical tradition already contain distinctions of value – in particular, the specific
distinction of value between human and non-human life . “Bare life” in this sense is not “bare” but contains within it a
distinction of value between the worth of human life placed above and beyond the worth of non-human animal life. In this respect
bare life within this tradition contains within it a hidden conception of the good life. The foundational moment of the modern
juridical conception of the law of war already contains within it the operation of species war. The Westphalian tradition puts
itself forward as grounding the legitimacy of violence upon the preservation of life, however its concern for life is already
marked by a hierarchy of value in which non-human animal life is violently used as the “raw material” for preserving human life.
Grounded upon, but concealing the human-animal distinction, the Westphalian conception of war makes a double move: it excludes the
killing of animals from its definition of “war proper,” and, through rendering dominant the modern juridical definition of “war
proper” the tradition is able to further institutionalize and normalize a particular conception of the good life. Following from this
original distinction of life-value realized through the juridical language of war were other forms of human life whose lives were considered to be
of a lesser value under a European, Christian, “secular” 30 natural law conception of the good life. Underneath this concern with the
preservation of life in general stood veiled preferences over what particu-lar forms of life (such as racial conceptions of human
life) and ways of living were worthy of preservation, realization and elevation . The business contracts of early capitalism, 31 the
power of white males over women and children, and, especially in the colonial context, the sanctity of European life over nonEuropean and Christian lives over non-Christian heathens and Muslims, were some of the dominant forms of life preferred for
preservation within the early modern juridical ordering of war.
The affirmative trades off with flat ontology. Any demand for human
inclusion is a link to the criticism
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College, The Democracy of Objects, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dodidx/democracy-of-objects.pdf?c=ohp;idno=9750134.0001.001)
Flat ontology is a complex
philosophical concept that bundles together a variety of ontological theses under a single term. First, due to the split
characteristic of all objects, flat ontology rejects any ontology of transcendence or presence that privileges
Onticology proposes what might be called, drawing on DeLanda's term yet broadening it, a flat ontology.
one¶ sort of entity as the origin of all others and as fully present to itself . In this regard, onticology proposes an
ontology resonant with Derrida's critique of metaphysics insofar as, in its treatment of beings as withdrawn, it undermines any pretensions to
presence within being. If
this thesis is persuasive, then metaphysics can no longer function as a synonym
for “metaphysics of presence”, nor substance as a synonym for “presence”,¶ but rather an ontology
has been formulated that overcomes the primacy¶ of presence. In this section, I articulate this logic in terms of
Lacan's¶ graphs of sexuation. Here I believe that those graphs have little to tell us about masculine or feminine sexuality—for reasons I will
outline in what follows—but a great deal to tell us about ontologies of immanence or flat ontologies and ontologies of transcendence. Second ,
flat ontology signifies that the world or the universe does not exist. I will develop the argument¶ for
this strange claim in what follows, but for the moment it is important¶ to recognize the definite
article in this claim. The claim that the world doesn't exist is the claim that there is no super-object
that gathers all other objects together in a single, harmonious unity. Third, following Harman, flat ontology
refuses to privilege the subject-object, human-world relation as either a) a form of metaphysical
relation different in kind from other relations between objects, and that b) refuses to treat the
subject-object relation as implicitly included in every form of object-object relation. To be sure, flat
ontology readily recognizes that humans have unique powers and capacities and that how humans
relate to the world is a topic more than worthy of investigation, yet nothing about this establishes
that humans must be included in every inter-object relation or that how humans relate to objects
differs in kind from how other entities relate to objects. Finally, fourth, flat ontology argues that all
entities are on equal ontological footing and that no entity, whether artificial or natural, symbolic
or physical, possesses greater ontological dignity than other objects.While indeed some objects might
influence the collectives to which they belong to a greater extent than others, it doesn't follow from
this that these objects are more real than others. Existence, being, is a binary such that something
either¶ is or is not.
Flat ontology key
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 215-217
The first step in developing such a framework lies in overcoming human exceptionalism. As I argued in
The Democracy of Objects, ontology must be flattened (see Bryant 2011: ch. 6). Rather than bifurcating being
into two domains — the domain of objects and the domain of subiects, the domain of nature and the
domain of culture — we must instead conceive of being as a single flat plane, a single nature, on
which humans are beings among other beings. While humans are certainly exceptional, for us they
are not ontologically exceptional. To be sure, they differ in their powers and capacities from other
beings, but they are not lords or hierarchs over all other beings. They are beings that dwell among
other beings, that act on them and that are acted upon by them. As extended mind theorists such as Andy
Clark have argued — but also the new materialist feminists and actor-network theorists such as Latour mind and culture
are not special domains that can be separated from the other non-human entities of the world for
special investigation. Rather, we are intimately bound up with the other entities of the world,
coupled and conditioned by them in all sorts of ways. Above all, we must avoid treating the world
as a field given for the contemplative gaze of humans. A world is something within which we act
and engage, not something we passively contemplate. A flat ontology must therefore be conceived
along the lines of Lacan's famous Borromean knot (see Figure 7.1). A Borromean knot consists of three
inter-linked rings of string fastened together in such a way that if any one ring is severed, the other
two fall away. Lacan indexes each of the three rings to one of his three orders: the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary. With
the Borromean knot, Lacan's work undergoes a funda- mental transformation. In his earlier work, one of the three orders had
always been privileged as dominating and overcoding the others. In his earliest work, the imaginary dominated the real and the
symbolic. In the work of his middle period, it was the symbolic that overcoded the real and the imaginary. In his third phase, it
was the real that overcoded the symbolic and the imaginary. With the Borromean knot, no order overcodes the
others. Rather, they are all now treated as being on equal footing. This is how we need to think
about the order of being. The domain of the real indexes machines. Machines exist in their own
right, regardless of whether anyone registers them or discourses about them. The domain of the
symbolic refers to the plane of expression, or how beings are discoursed about, signified, imbued
with meaning, and so on. Finally, the domain of the imaginary refers to the way in which one
machine encounters another under conditions of structural openness and operational closure.
Situated within the framework of the Borromean knot, we can simultaneously investigate how a machine is
ideologically coded as in the case of Baudrillard's analysis of objects in System of Objects, how a
machine is phenomenologically encountered by another machine, and how a machine is a real,
independent being in its own right that produces effects irreducible to how it is signified or
phenomenologically given.
Our alternative is to reject the question of the affirmative. This movement
away from correlationism is a necessary philosophical move.
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. 2011. “Levi
Democracy Of objects”. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/9750134.0001.001/1:4/.
It is unlikely that object-oriented ontologists are going to persuade epistemological realists or antirealists that they have found a way of surmounting the epistemological problems that arise out of
the two-world model of being any time soon. Quoting Max Planck, Marshall and Eric McLuhan write, “A new
scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but
rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”.6 This
appears to be how it is in philosophy as well. New innovations in philosophy do¶ not so much refute
their opponents as simply cease being preoccupied by certain questions and problems. In many
respects, object-oriented ontology, following the advice of Richard Rorty, simply tries to step out of
the debate altogether. Object-oriented ontologists have grown weary of a debate that has gone on
for over two centuries, believe that the possible variations of these positions have exhausted
themselves, and want to move on to talking about other things. If this is not good enough for the
epistemology police, we are more than happy to confess our guilt and embrace our alleged lack of
rigor and continue in harboring our illusions that we can speak of a reality independent of humans.
However, such a move of simply moving¶ on is not unheard of in philosophy. No one has yet
refuted the solipsist, nor the Berkeleyian subjective idealist, yet neither solipsism nor the
extremes¶ of Berkeleyian idealism have ever been central and ongoing debates in philosophy.
Philosophers largely just ignore these positions or use them¶ as cautionary examples to be avoided.
Why not the same in the endless debates over access?
Your attempt to persuade institutions through ethical appeal guarantees your
politics fails. Alt is a prerequisite.
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 73
In light of the concept of thermodynamic politics, we can see the common shortcoming of protest
politics or what might be called semiotic politics. Semiotic politics is semiotic in the sense that relies
on the use of signs, either attempting to change institutions through communicative persuasion or
engaging in activities of critique as in the case of hermeneutics of suspicion that, through a critique
of ideology, desire, power, and so on, show that relations of domination and oppression are at work
in something we hitherto believed to be just. Semiotic politics is confused in that it is premised on
producing change through ethical persuasion, and thereby assumes that institutional-machines
such as corporations, governments, factories, and so on, are structurally open to the same sorts of
communicative flows as humans. It believes that we can persuade these organizations to change
their operations on ethical grounds. At best , however, these entities are indifferent to such arguments ,
while at worst they are completely blind to even the occurrence of such appeals as machines such as corporations are only structurally open to
information events of profit and loss.
Persuading a corporation through ethical appeals is about as effective to
explain calculus to a cat.
Our way of accepting OOO key to shifting from anthro.
Mylius 13 (Ben Mylius, March 10, 2013, law graduate, anthrodecentrism object oriented ontology and refining the goals of ecocreative writing
http://ecologeur.com/post/45014342168/anthrodecentrism-object-oriented-ontology-and-refining)
‘Ontology is the philosophical study of existence. Object-oriented ontology puts things at the centre of this study. Its proponents
contend that nothing has special status, but that everything exists equally -plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, and sandstone, for
example. In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as
constructions of human behaviour and society (social relativism). OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at
all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves.’ For
anyone interested in a more philosophically-oriented explanation, Wikipedia’s entry here is unusually helpful as a starting-point; Levi Bryant’s
‘Manifesto for object-oriented ontology’ is even more so, as is his book The Democracy of Objects, available as an ebook here. I find this
movement particularly interesting because it represents an attempt to think other than anthropocentrically: to develop a way of
seeing and thinking that avoid placing subjects in general, and human subjects in particular, at its centre. This is also where the
resonance lies with ecocreative writing, which I see as an attempt in a creative mode to do the same thing. The challenge, as it has always
been, is to find the way of theorising this ‘alternative to anthropocentrism’ in a coherent and non-problematic way. Perhaps the key
hurdle for the concept of ‘ecocentrism’ in object-oriented terms is that it proposes some overarching, unified ‘One’ (the ‘eco’) that might
replace the ‘anthro’ at the centre of our thought. My sense is that this might be avoided if we were able to sustain an image of an
ecosystem as a process - an assemblage (Deleuze), ‘mesh’ (Morton) or ‘collective’ (Latour) - rather than a thing. But the connotations
of any kind of ‘centrism’ (what is at the centre?) make this difficult.
Case
Turn-- Arctic shipping introduces invasive species, destroying biodiversity
Geiling 14 (Natasha, Arctic Shipping: Good For Invasive Species, Bad For the Rest of Nature,
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/global-warmings-unexpected-consequence-invasive-species-180951573/)
Yes, shipping containers and bulk carriers do currently contribute to the spread of invasive species—it's
something that has been irking marine biologists for a long time. Bulk carriers (and ships generally) have things called ballast tanks, which are
compartments that hold water, in order to weigh a ship down and lower its center of gravity, providing stability. Ships
take in water
from one location and discharge it in another, contributing to concerns about invasive species. The zebra mussel, an
invasive species that has colonized the Great Lakes and caused billions of dollars of economic damage, is believed to have been
introduced from the ballast tank of ships coming from Western European ports .
Shipping is already the primary way that
invasive marine species become introduced—contributing to 69 percent of species introductions to
marine areas.¶ But Miller and Ruiz worry that Arctic shipping—both through the Arctic and from the Arctic—could make this statistic even
worse. ¶ "What’s happening now is that ships move between oceans by going through Panama or Suez, but that means ships from higher
latitudes have to divert south into tropical and subtropical waters, so if you are a cold water species, you’re not likely to do well in those
warm waters," Miller explains. "That could currently be working as a filter, minimizing the high latitude species that are moving from one
ocean to another."¶ Moreover, the Panama Canal is a freshwater canal, so organisms clinging to the hulls of ships passing through have to
undergo osmotic shock as saltwater becomes freshwater and back again. A lot of organisms, Miller explains, can't survive that.¶ These
new cold water routes don't have the advantage of temperature or salinity filters the way traditional shipping routes do. That means that
species adapted to live in cold waters in the Arctic could potentially survive in the cool waters in northern port cities in New York and
New Jersey, which facilitated the maritime transport of nearly $250 billion worth of goods in 2008. And because routes through the
Arctic are much shorter than traditional shipping routes, invasive animals like crabs, barnacles and mussels are more likely to survive
the short transit distance riding along inside the ballast tanks and clinging to the hulls.¶ ¶ Invasive species are always cause for
apprehension—a Pandora's Box, because no one really knows how they'll impact a particular ecosystem until it's too late. In an interview
with Scientific American in March of 2013, climate scientist Jessica Hellmann, of the University of Notre Dame, put it this way: "Invasive
species are one of those things that once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to put her back in." There aren't many invasive species from the
Arctic that are known, but one that is, the red king crab, has already wreaked havoc on Norway's waters; a ferocious predator, the red king
crab hasn't had much trouble asserting near total dominance over species unfamiliar with it. "You never know when the next red king crab is
going to be in your ballast tank," Miller warns. Invasive species pose two dangers, one ecological, the other economic. From an ecological
standpoint, invasive species threaten
to disrupt systems that have evolved and adapted to live together over
millions of years. "You could have a real breakdown in terms of [the ecosystems] structure and their
function, and in some cases, the diversity and abundance of native species," Miller explains. But invasive species do more than
threaten the ecology of the Arctic—they can threaten the global economy. Many invasive species, like mussels, can damage
infrastructure, such as cooling and water pipes. Seaports are vital to both the United States and the global economy—ports in the Western
hemisphere handle 7.8 billion tons of cargo each year and generate nearly $8.6 trillion of total economic activity, according to the American
Association of Port Authorities. If an invasive species is allowed to gain a foothold in a port, it could completely disrupt the economic
output of that port. The green crab, an invasive species from Europe, for example, has been introduced to New England coasts and feasts on
native oysters and crabs, accounting for nearly $44 million a year in economic losses. If invasive species are able to disrupt the infrastructure of
an American port—from pipes to boats—it could mean damages for the American economy. In recent years, due to fracking technology, the
United States has gone from being an importer of fuel to an exporter, which means that American ports will be hosting more foreign ships in the
coming years—and that means more potential for invasive species to be dispersed. Invasive
species brought into the Arctic
could also disrupt ecosystems, especially because the Arctic has had low exposure to invasions until now.
Potential invasive species could threaten the Arctic's growing economic infrastructure as well, damaging equipment set up to look for
natural gas and other natural resources in the newly-exposed Arctic waters.
Biodiversity Loss Leads to Extinction—destroys animal and human life
Buczynski ’10 gender modified* [Beth, writer and editor for important ecosystem sustainability, UN: Loss Of
Biodiversity Could Mean End Of Human Race, Care2, 18/10/10, http://www.care2.com/causes/un-humansare-rapidly-destroying-the-biodiversity-ne.html]
UN officials gathered at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Japan have issued a global warning that the
rapid loss of
animal and plant species that has characterized the past century must end if humans are to survive. Delegates in
Nagoya plan to set a new target for 2020 for curbing species loss, and will discuss boosting medium-term financial help for poor countries to
help them protect their wildlife and habitats (Yahoo Green). “Business
as usual is no more an option for
[hu]mankind*,” CBD executive secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf said in his opening statements. “We need a new approach, we need to
reconnect with nature and live in harmony with nature into the future.” The CBD is an international legally-binding treaty with three main goals:
conservation of biodiversity; sustainable use of biodiversity; fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources.
Its overall objective is to encourage actions which will lead to a sustainable future. As Djoghlaf acknolwedged in his opening statements, facing
the fact that many countries have ignored their obligation to these goals is imperitive if progress is to be made in the future. “Let us have the
courage to look in the eyes of our children and admit that we have failed, individually and collectively, to fulfil the Johannesburg promise made
to them by the 110 Heads of State and Government to substantially reduce the loss of biodiversity by 2010,” Djoghlaf stated. “Let us look in the
eyes of our children and admit that we continue to lose biodiversity at an unprecedented rate, thus mortgaging their future.” Earlier this year, the
U.N. warned several
eco-systems including the Amazon rainforest, freshwater lakes and rivers and coral reefs are approaching
a “tipping point” which, if reached, may see them never recover. According to a study by UC Berkeley and Penn
State University researchers, between 15 and 42 percent of the mammals in North America disappeared after humans arrived. Compared
to extinction rates demonstrated in other periods of Earth’s history, this
means that North American species are already half
way to to a sixth mass extinction, similar to the one that eliminated the dinosaurs. The same is true in many
other parts of the world. The third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook demonstrates that, today, the rate of loss of biodiversity is up to
Earth’s 6.8 billion humans are
effectively living 50 percent beyond the planet’s biocapacity in 2007, according to a new assessment by the World
Wildlife Fund that said by 2030 humans will effectively need the capacity of two Earths in order to survive.
one thousand times higher than the background and historical rate of extinction. The
Turn-- Russia won’t be able to develop the arctic alone – cooperation and
shipping development are key
Fadeyev ’13 [Alexei, PhD in Economics, Head of the Production Support Department at Gazpromneft-Sakhalin, Developing
the Arctic Territories Efficiently, http://russiancouncil.ru/en/inner/?id_4=1332#top]
Due to its vast hydrocarbon reserves and the greater role played by fundamental factors determining political and energy security, many
industrialized
states regard the Arctic as a key strategic region. Its industrial development would see intensive oil and gas production, extraction of
biological resources, massive cargo transshipment and, that would in turn require better transportation and the relevant infrastructure. International
cooperation in this field is vital for the region’s
efficient and safe
advancement , since organizing transport services is
technologically complicated and legislation in the different Arctic states varies greatly. Transportation Interests in Russia’s Arctic Zone and Infrastructure Status
Today The extensive development of the Arctic in the near future requires scores of new solutions , some of
which should produce highly effective breakthrough technologies, as well as sophisticated approaches to logistics support for remote facilities, vehicle propulsion and
ensuring minimal impact on the fragile environment. Russia possesses unique transportation and logistics capabilities and
can therefore play a major role in converting the country into a competitive transit territory with an advanced services sector and a service economy. The full-scale
realization of its transportation and transit potential seems most promising. It would involve creating a network of international transit corridors across the territory
and waters under Russia’s jurisdiction, in addition to the development of a capillary transport infrastructure to connect remote Arctic communities. Poor
and
sometimes nonexistent transportation infrastructure causes a mismatch between the significance of
resource development in Russia's polar territories and the continental shelf and national security
requirements. This undermines Russia’s competitiveness, despite its exceptional geographical
advantages. A comprehensive transportation system and infrastructure would not only remove existing hurdles to utilizing transit potential but would also
clear away infrastructural restrictions on resource activities in the Russian Arctic Zone (RAZ). Arctic ports are less than promising, given
the absence of long-distance railway lines, raising the importance of the Belkomur project that involves building the absent sections along
the Archangelsk-Perm railway line (Karpogory-Vendinga), connecting the Archangelsk seaport with Syktyvkar, Kudymkar and Perm (Solikamsk). The line would
carry products from these regions to foreign markets. To this end, projects such as the Sosnogorsk-Indiga (Barentskomur) and Vorkuta-Ust Kara lines seem especially
important, as does the North-South corridor linking the Persian Gulf states, India and Pakistan with Central and East Europe and Scandinavia via the Caspian.
Moreover, building the Polunochnaya-Obskaya railway line, completing the Obskaya-Bovanenkovo line to the port of Kharasaway, extending the Nadym-Salekhard
railway line to Labytnangi, and continuing the Korotchayevo-Igarka railroad line to Dudinka and Norilsk would forge a link between the ore fields of the polar Urals
and Yamal hydrocarbon deposits with industrialized areas in the Urals. [1] Meridian railway lines to ports on the White, Barents, Kara and Laptev seas should boost
the cargo potential of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and open direct access to West Europe. Some complications can be expected from building the Salkhard-NadymNovy Urengoy railroad that to reach Igarka and Norilsk, as cargos may leave via the Dudinka connection, the NSR’s best link. This could mean the emergence of
competition between railway and marine transportation with regard to tariffs, logistics and reliability. There would be growing demand for rapid cross-Polar transit,
including air routes (similar to the shortest routes between the Eastern and Western hemispheres), and for a multifunctional transcontinental traffic route through a
tunnel under the Bering Strait. Feasibility is based on the future use of the high-latitude Northern Transport Corridor: Russia’s multi-purpose sea-and-land route
incorporating the NSR and its adjacent meridian river and railway communications. The cities of Murmansk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky – its extreme points –
would allow the transshipment of cargos to ice-class vessels, icebreaker servicing and feeder route support [1]. Despite
the numerous technical
difficulties of Arctic sailing, the NSR offers the shortest route between Europe, the Far East and North America's western
coast, which could be used not only for transit but also for Russian exports that are currently
delivered to Southeast Asia via the Suez Canal. Interestingly, in recent years, government decisions have also
stressed the NSR’s key role in developing the Arctic areas and resources. There is now a clear and
pressing need for the modernization of existing and construction of new seaports, export terminals,
icebreakers and transport vessels, and for the creation of a marine platform for offshore geological
survey and servicing.
Russia needs a developed Arctic as a power base for Russian expansionism
and US-Russian war
Hodges 13 [Dave is an award winning psychology, statistics and research professor, and a political activist and writer who has published
dozens of editorials and articles, “Why Russia Needs Alaska”, http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/02/27/why-russia-needs-alaska/]
Soviet Russia had to be contained within the heartland.
Mackinder’s believed that whosoever controlled Eurasia, controlled the world, so long as the controller had
access to useable ports. The problem for Russia is that they have so few usable ports thus impacting commerce and
the movement of men and material in a time of war. So long as Russian could be prevented from being a major sea power,
the forces of the United States and Western Europe were safe. However, if Russia should become a
sea power in conjunction with its massive land-based power, Russia could rule the world. Zbigniew
Containing Russia Is the Key to World Peace From Mackinder’s perspective,
Brzezinski confirms the Heartland Theory, in his book, A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the US-Soviet Contest (pp 22-23), n which he echoed the words of Mackinder when he
If the Soviet Union captures the peripheries of this landmass … it
would not only win control of vast human, economic and military resources, but also gain access to
the geostrategic approaches to the Western Hemisphere – the Atlantic and the Pacific.” For Russia, controlling
stated that “Whoever controls Eurasia dominates the globe.
the peripheries of the landmass means controlling Alaska and having access to its ports. This would make Russia the world’s most preeminent land and sea power and the world would have to
pay homage to the new global master. Stalin’s Secret Plans to Invade Alaska In 1951 In 1999, at a conference held at Yale University, previously-secret Russian documents revealed that Russian
Stalin had undergone extensive planning in preparation to invade North America as early
as 1951. The event was one of a series of programs sponsored by the Washington D.C.-based Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), which monitors new documents pertaining
to the Cold War. The Yale conference centered on Stalin’s relationship with the United States. These documents, from the Cold War, revealed that Stalin had a definitive
plan to attack Alaska in 1951-52 and had undergone major military preparations in anticipation of
the invasion. Russia has always considered itself to be landlocked and this served as the major
motivation for Russia’s planned incursion which would have given Russia access to good sea ports.
Dictator Joseph
Stalin subsequently died and the plans were abandoned, at least temporarily. Suspicious Happenings In Alaska In light of the evidence, it is abundantly clear that there are clear economic,
political and military reasons why the Russians would want to occupy Alaska. My interest in this topic surfaced quite serendipitously as a couple of listeners to my radio program sent me
The
sighting of Russian troops in small Alaskan towns such Ketchikan, Alaska, got my undivided attention. Ketchikan is the
information on the Agenda 21 invasion of small Alaska communities, and oh, by the way, they also reported that they were seeing Russian troops in their respective communities.
southeastern most city in Alaska. With an estimated population of 8,050. Ketchikan is the fifth-most populous city in the state. Another area where there are civilian sightings of Russian troops is
in Sitka, Alaska. The City of Sitka, formerly New Archangel under Russian rule, is located on Baranof Island and the southern half of Chichagof Island in the Alexander Archipelago of the
one military veteran reports seeing Russian submarines, on a frequent basis, just off
the coast. Further, there are civilian reports of Russian vehicles and troops moving through Alaska
north of Anchorage. These are only anecdotal accounts and further proof is required in to validate these eyewitness accounts. Yet, there are indeed
verifiable, reported media accounts of Russian troops on American soil. The presence of Russian troops on American soil is
Pacific Ocean. Additionally,
very troublesome. America does not need to rely on the anecdotal accounts of Alaskan civilians to be concerned about the presence of Russian troops on American soil. Russian commandos are
also “training” at Fort Carson, in Colorado Springs since last spring. Why is this concerning? The United States is about to go to war with Iran for selling its oil to Russia, China and India for
Russia is, and should be considered to
be an enemy of the United States. A Stunning Act of Treason Obama has given away seven strategic, oil-rich Alaskan islands to the Russians at a time when we
could be going to war with Russia. At minimum, the oil, alone, from these Islands should be considered to be a military asset. I remain very concerned that these seven islands in the
Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea could also be used as a military staging area from which to invade
Alaska and defend its new claims of the mineral rich resources at the North Pole. The Department of Interior
gold instead of the Petrodollar. Russia and China have threatened to nuke the United States if it dares to attack Iran.
estimates billions of barrels of oil are at stake, related to these seven Islands. Didn’t Obama promise energy independence. Didn’t this proven communist president promise to help the economy
bounce back by lessening our dependence on foreign oil? And despite our ongoing economic depression, Obama killed the Keystone Pipeline a few months ago. Perhaps, very soon, America will
not need the Keystone Pipeline because Alaska will not be remaining as a viable member of the United States. To those who think that Obama would never sacrifice Alaska to Russia, then please
tell us “conspiracy theorists” why he would give away seven Islands, one as big as Delaware, with great natural resources, to the Russians? This is a case of bold-faced treason plain and simple.
Obama and his cabinet should be arrested, tried and sentenced as we would with any traitor. Yet, there is more. The Giveaway of Alaska There exists documented facts which support the reasons
Russia recently sent four brigades to the Arctic. The Arctic can be used as a
staging area for the invasion of the North Pole to protect its recent mineral claims, but more
importantly, this area of the Arctic could serve as a base of operations from which to invade
why Alaska should be placed on high alert.
Alaska with the help of pre-positioned assets within the state. In March of 2012, with a microphone left on. Obama made an unguarded
comment to Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev to be “more lenient on nuclear issues” because he could be more flexible “after the November election”. Does more flexible mean killing the
Keystone Pipeline prior to giving away seven rich Alaskan Islands to the Russians? Does more flexible mean letting the Russians train in Colorado Springs and in Alaska? Does being more
flexible mean compromising our defense of Alaska? More Treason From Obama Although some journalists have said that they suspect that Obama is preparing to give away Alaska to Russia. I
previously did not see how a sitting president could do such a thing and remain in office. However, if Russia were to militarily seize Alaska, that would provide Obama with a plausible excuse in
which he claims America was caught off guard and the danger was unforeseen. Obama could best accomplish this by weakening the defenses of Alaska and the evidence is supportive of this
suspicion. The evidence does not support a timetable, however, I would guess that this event may transpire in Obama’s last year in office, or possibly in the lame duck session where he cannot be
held accountable. This article will hopefully remove Obama’s ability to excuse away the notion that America lost Alaska because it go caught with its proverbial pants down. The giving away of
seven strategic, oil-rich Islands is a good start to support a claim of treason because Obama is purposely weakening the defense of Alaska. Also, local residents along the Alaskan coast have
reported to me that the massive over flights along the coast have all but ceased. The F-22′s have disappeared. The Air Force says the flights have been suspended because of oxygen concerns
which are impacting the pilots. Then shouldn’t the flights be replaced by F-16′s? What about national security?These over flights have been a staple of Alaskan defense since the Cold War. If we
are close to war with Iran and its ally, Russia, then shouldn’t we beefing up our patrols in Alaska? Recently the ATF asked for gun registration records in Alaska. Perhaps the Russians need to
It is now on the
record that Putin said that he was going to make his country the greatest country, economically, as
he said in print that he is claiming part of Alaska. Adding fuel to the fire, it is now clear that Russia
is also establishing plans for an Arctic industrialization. In geopolitical and military terms, it could
be an easy to claim to make if the military resistance in Alaska is greatly compromised, and it has
been. The last thing that country should do on a potential front line area is to close military facilities and bases, yet, this is exactly what is happening in Alaska. Obama and the Base
know, in advance, where the most civilian opposition will come from when they take over Alaska. Are Plans Being Made For a Post-Russian Takeover of Alaska?
Realignment and Closure Commission have been closing bases and/or reducing base operations all through Alaska. It has gotten so bad that the Alaskan Governor hired a lobbyistto prevent
military reduction. Two years ago, a prominent Russia Professor predicted the end of the United States. The professor stated that Alaska would return to the control of Russia and that the United
think it’s very clear that Russian ambitions are to restore the old
Russian Empire. Not the Soviet Union, but the Russian Empire.” There is also a tunnel from Russia to Alaska being constructed. Are
we funding our own demise with our tax money which is designed to set up Russia’s future? Last summer, Russia challenged west coast detection
capabilities of our military by making provocative moves with their submarines inside of our
territorial waters. Also, in a stunning move, Putinbanned adoptions of Russian children by American parents. Could it be likely that he is looking out for the Russian adoptees as
States would be split into six pieces. John McCain recently said “I
this is a reaction to what Putin knows is coming? Conclusion Should we be closing bases on the potential front lines? Should we be failing to patrol off of our coast? Should we allow the
unchallenged sightings of surfaced Russian subs close to the coastline? Any one of these events should be considered to be a serious national security concern. Yet, the media and Obama act as if
all is well. There are a lot of dots on this wall to connect. However, there is one monumental dot to seriously consider. Subsequently, I have some final questions. If Obama is willing to give
away seven oil-rich Islands in the area of Alaska, during these tough economic times, then what exactly isn’t he capable of doing to the United States? Is the sacrifice of Alaska so far-fetched in
? Aren’t the apparent Russian plans to seize Alaska part of the fulfillment of the
Heartland Theory in which Mother Russia propels itself in the status of the world’s super power by
making itself both a land and sea power through the seizure of Alaska? When someone can provide a plausible set of answers
to the questions that I have raised here, then I will continue to sound the alarm that “ The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.”
light of these other considerations
US-Russia war causes extinction—animals and human
Baum 3/7/14
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-baum/best-and-worst-case-scena_b_4915315.html
Seth Baum is Executive Director of the think tank Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. He recently completed a Ph.D. in
Geography at Pennsylvania State University and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship with the Columbia University Center for Research
on Environmental Decisions. Based in New York City, Baum's research covers a variety of topics including ethics, economics,
climate change, nuclear war, and life in the universe.
No one yet knows how the Ukraine crisis will play out. Indeed, the whole story is a lesson in the perils of prediction. Already we have a classic:
"Putin's Bluff? U.S. Spies Say Russia Won't Invade Ukraine," published February 27, just as Russian troops were entering Crimea. But
considering the best and worst cases highlights some important opportunities to make the most of the situation. Here's the short version: The best
case scenario has the Ukraine crisis being resolved diplomatically through increased Russia-Europe cooperation, which would be a big step
towards world peace. The worst
case scenario has the crisis escalating into nuclear war between the U nited S tates and
Russia, causing human extinction.
Let's start with the worst case scenario, nuclear war involving the American and Russian
arsenals. How bad would that be? Put it this way: Recent analysis finds that a "limited" India-Pakistan nuclear war could kill two billion people
via agricultural declines from nuclear winter. This "limited" war involves just 100 nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia combine to possess
about 16,700 nuclear weapons.
Humanity may not survive
the aftermath of a U.S.-Russia nuclear war. It seems rather unlikely that
the U.S. and Russia would end up in nuclear war over Ukraine. Sure, they have opposing positions, but neither side has anywhere near enough at
stake to justify such extraordinary measures. Instead, it seems a lot more likely that the whole crisis will get resolved with a minimum of deaths.
However, the story has already taken some surprising plot twists.
We cannot rule out the possibility of it ending in
direct nuclear war. A nuclear war could also occur inadvertently, i.e. when a false alarm is misinterpreted as real,
and nuclear weapons are launched in what is believed to be a counterattack. There have been several alarmingly close calls of inadvertent U.S.Russia nuclear war over the years. Perhaps the most relevant is the 1995 Norwegian rocket incident. A rocket carrying scientific equipment was
launched off northern Norway. Russia detected the rocket on its radar and interpreted it as a nuclear attack. Its own nuclear forces were put on
alert and Boris Yeltsin was presented the question of whether to launch Russia's nuclear weapons in response. Fortunately, Yeltsin and the
Russian General Staff apparently sensed it was a false alarm and declined to launch. Still, the disturbing lesson from this incident is that nuclear
war could begin even during periods of calm.
With the Ukraine crisis, the situation today is not calm. It is even
more tense than last year , when the United States was considering military intervention in Syria.
Desalinization
K
The affirmative judges the ocean by the way that humankind perceives it
which is anthropocentric and inevitably fails because the ocean is withdrawn.
Morton ‘11 [Timothy, Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, Speculations 2, pg.
216-219, http://www.speculations-journal.org/storage/Morton_Sublime%20Objects_v2.pdf] //JC//
According to OOO, objects
all have four aspects. They withdraw from access by other objects. They
appear to other objects. They are specific entities. And that’s not all: they really exist. Aesthetically, then,
objects are uncanny beasts. If they were pieces of music, they might be some impossible combination
of slapstick sound effects, Sufi singing, Mahler and hardcore techno. If they were literature, they might exist
somewhere between The Commedia Dell’ Arte, The Cloud of Unknowing, War and Peace and Waiting for Godot. Pierrot Lunaire might be a
object-oriented sublime doesn’t come from
some beyond, because this beyond turns out to be a kind of optical illusion of correlationism.
There’s nothing underneath the Universe of objects. Or not even nothing, if you prefer thinking it
that way. The sublime resides in particularity, not in some distant beyond. And the sublime is
generalizable to all objects, insofar as they are all what I’ve called strange strangers, that is, alien to
themselves and to one another in an irreducible way.26 Of the two dominant theories of the sublime, we have a
choice between authority and freedom, between exteriority and interiority. But both choices are
correlationist. That is, both theories of the sublime have to do with human subjec- tive access to
objects. On the one hand we have Edmund Burke, for whom the sublime is shock and awe: an
experience of terrifying authority to which you must submit.27 On the other hand, we have Immanuel Kant, for whom
the sublime is an experience of inner freedom based on some kind of temporary cognitive failure. Try counting up to infinity. You
good metaphor for grotesque, frightening, hilarious, sublime objects. The
can’t. But that is precisely what infinity is. The power of your mind is revealed in its failure to sum
infinity. 28 Both sublimes assume that: (1) the world is specially or uniquely accessible to humans; (2)
the sublime uniquely correlates the world to humans; and (3) what’s important about the sublime is
a reaction in the subject. The Burkean sublime is simply craven cowering in the presence of authority: the law, the might of a tyrant
God, the power of kings, and the threat of execution. No real knowledge of the authority is assumed—terrified
ignorance will do. Burke argues outright that the sublime is always a safe pain, mediated by the
glass panels of the aesthetic. (That’s why horror movies, a truly speculative genre, try to bust through this aesthetic screen at every
opportunity.) What we need is a more speculative sublime that actually tries to become intimate with
the other, and here Kant is at any rate preferable to Burke. Those more sympathetic to Kant might argue that there is some faint echo of
reality in the experience of the sublime. Certainly the aesthetic dimension is a way in which the normal subject–object dichotomy is suspended in
Kant. And the
sublime is as it were the essential subroutine of the aesthetic experience, allowing us to
experience the power of our mind by running up against some external obstacle. Kant references telescopes
and microscopes that expand human perception beyond its limits.29 His marvelous passage on the way one’s mind can encompass human height
and by simple multiplication comprehend the vastness of “Milky Way systems” is sublimely expressive of the human capac- ity to think.30 It’s
also true that the Kantian sublime inspired the powerful speculations of Schelling, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and more work needs to be done
teasing out how those philosophers begin to think a reality beyond the hu- man (the work of Grant and Woodard stands out in particular at
present).31 It’s true that in §28 of the Third Critique, Kant does talk about how we experience the ‘dynamical sublime’ in the terror of vastness,
for instance of the ocean or the sky. But this isn’t anything like intimacy with the sky or the ocean. In fact, in the next sections, Kant explicitly
rules out anything like a scientific or even probing analysis of what might exist in the sky. As
soon as we think of the ocean as a
body of water containing fish and whales, rather than as a canvas for our psyche; as soon as we
think of the sky as the real Universe of stars and black holes, we aren’t experiencing the sublime
(§29): Therefore, when we call the sight of the starry sky sublime, we must not base our judgment upon
any concepts of worlds that are inhab- ited by rational beings, and then [conceive of] the bright dots
that we see occupying the space above us as being these worlds’ suns, moved in orbits prescribed
for them with great purposiveness; but we must base our judgment regarding merely on how we
see it, as a vast vault encompassing everything, and merely under this presentation may we posit
the sublimity that a pure aesthetic judgment attributes to this object. In the same way, when we judge
the sight of the ocean we must not do so on the basis of how we think , it, enriched with all sorts of
knowledge which we possess (but which is not contained in the direct intuition), e.g., as a vast realm
of aquatic creatures, or as the great reservoir supplying the water for the vapors that impregnate
the air with clouds for the benefit of the land , or again as an element that, while separating
continents from one another, yet makes possible the greatest communication among them; for all
such judgments will be teleological. Instead we must be able to view the ocean as poets do, merely in
terms of what manifests itself to the eye—e.g., if we observe it while it is calm, as a clear mirror of
water bounded only by the sky; or, if it turbulent, as being like an abyss threatening to engulf
every- thing—and yet find it sublime.32 While we may share Kant’s anxiety about teleology, his main point is less than
satisfactory from a speculative realist point of view. We positively shouldn’t speculate when we experience the
sublime. The sublime is precisely the lack of speculation
Ontology comes first. Objects precede our knowledge of them. All other ways
of relating to the world are incorrect an anthropocentric.
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. 2011. “Levi
Democracy Of objects”. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/9750134.0001.001/1:4/.
Yet in
all of the heated debates surrounding epistemology that have cast nearly every discipline in turmoil, we
nonetheless seem to miss the point that the question of the object is not an epistemological question,
not a question of how we know the object, but a question of what objects are. The being of objects is an issue
distinct from the question of our knowledge of objects. Here, of course, it seems obvious that in order to discuss the
being of objects we must first know objects. And if this is the case, it follows as a matter of course that epistemology or questions of knowledge
must precede ontology. However, I hope to show in what follows that questions of ontology are both irreducible to questions of epistemology and
that questions of ontology must precede questions of epistemology or questions of our access to objects.What an object is cannot be reduced to
our access¶ to objects. And as we will see in what follows, that access is highly limited . Nonetheless,
while our access to objects
is highly limited, we can still say a great deal about the being of objects.¶ However, despite the limitations of
access, we must avoid, at all costs, the thesis that objects are what our access to objects gives us. As Graham Harman has argued,
objects are not the given. Not at all. As such, this¶ book defends a robust realism.Yet, and this is crucial to everything that follows, the
realism defended here is not an epistemological realism, but an ontological realism. Epistemological realism argues that our representations and
language are accurate mirrors of the world as it actually is, regardless of whether or not we exist. It seeks to distinguish between true
representations and phantasms. Ontological
realism, by contrast, is not a thesis about our knowledge of
objects, but about the being of objects themselves, whether or not we exist to represent them. It is
the thesis that the world is composed¶ of objects, that these objects are varied and include entities
as diverse as mind, language, cultural and social entities, and objects independent of humans such
as galaxies, stones, quarks, tardigrades and so on. Above all, ontological realisms refuse to treat
objects as constructions of humans. While it is true, I will argue, that all objects translate one another, the objects that
are translated are irreducible to their translations. As we will see, ontological realism thoroughly refutes
epistemological realism
or¶ Introduction: Towards a Finally Subjectless Object 19¶ what ordinarily goes by the pejorative title of
“naïve realism”. Initially it might sound as if the distinction between ontological and epistemological realism is a difference that makes no
difference but, as I hope to show, this distinction has far ranging consequences for how we pose a number of questions and theorize a variety of
phenomena.¶
One of the problematic consequences that follows from the hegemony that epistemology
currently enjoys in philosophy is that it condemns philosophy to a thoroughly anthropocentric
reference.
Because the ontological question of substance is elided into the epistemological question of our knowledge of substance, all
discussions of substance necessarily contain a human reference.The subtext or fine print surrounding our discussions of substance always contain
reference to an implicit “for- us”.This is true even of the anti-humanist structuralists and post- structuralists who purport to dispense with the
subject in favor of various impersonal and anonymous social forces like language and structure that exceed the intentions of individuals. Here
we still remain in the orbit of¶ an anthropocentric universe insofar as society and culture are
human phenomena, and all of being is subordinated to these forces. Being is thereby reduced to what being is for us.¶ By contrast, this
book strives to think a subjectless object, or an object that is for-itself rather than an object that is an opposing pole before or in front of a subject.
Put differently, this essay attempts to think an object for-itself that isn't an object for the gaze of a subject, representation, or a cultural
discourse.This, in short, is what the democracy of objects means. The democracy of objects is not a political thesis to the effect that all objects
ought to be treated equally or that all objects ought to participate in human affairs.
The democracy of objects is the
ontological thesis that all objects , as Ian Bogost has so nicely put it, equally exist while they do not
exist equally. The claim that all objects equally exist is the claim that no object can be treated as
constructed by another object.The claim that objects do not exist equally is the claim that objects
contribute to collectives or assemblages to a greater and lesser degree. In short, no object such as
the subject or culture is the ground of all others. As such, The Democracy of Objects attempts to
think the being of objects unshackled from the gaze of humans in their being for-themselves.¶ 20 Levi
R. Bryant¶ Such a democracy, however, does not entail the exclusion of the human. Rather, what we get is a redrawing of distinctions and a
decentering of the human. The point is not that we should think objects rather than humans. Such a formulation is based on the premise that
humans constitute some special category that is other than objects, that objects are a pole opposed to humans, and therefore the formulation is
based on the premise that objects are correlates or poles opposing or standing-before humans. No, within the framework of onticology—my name
for the ontology that follows—there¶ is only one type of being: objects. As
a consequence, humans are not excluded, but
are rather objects among the various types of objects that exist or populate the world, each with
their own specific powers and capacities.
Ignoring hyperobjects results in billions of death.
James 13 (Arran, UK-based philosopher, graduate student of Critical Theory, and psychiatric nurse). “The catastrophic and the postapocalyptic,”http://syntheticzero.net/2013/08/21/the-catastrophic-and-the-post-apocalyptic/ August 21, 2013)//[AC]
There is a vast onto-cartography at work here that connects species of fish to coolant systems to hydrogen
molecules to legislation on nuclear safety; legislators, parliaments, regulatory bodies, anti-nuclear activists;
ideas like environmentalism; the food supply networks and geographic distribution of production centres; work practices;
capital investments and the wider financial markets as Tepco’s shares fall; and those networks that specifically
effect human beings in the exclusion area. After all, this exclusion zone has seen thousands of families
leave their homes, their jobs, their friends, and the possessions that had been rewarded to them as
recompense for their alienated labour. Consider that some of these people are still paying mortgages on homes they will
probably never be able to return to safely. And there remains one more reactor in the water that has not melted down but possibly will- if not by
human efforts to recover the fuel rods, then by the possibility of another unpredicted earthquake and/or tsunami. I don’t have the space or the
desire to trace the
onto-cartography of this disaster but it is clear that it includes both geological, ecological and
capitalist bodies; indeed, it is clear that the capitalist bodies might be the ones that are ultimately
responsible. According to Christina Consolo,¶ all this collateral damage will continue for decades, if not
centuries, even if things stay exactly the way they are now. But that is unlikely, as bad things happen like
natural disasters and deterioration with time…earthquakes, subsidence, and corrosion, to name a few. Every day that
goes by, the statistical risk increases for this apocalyptic scenario. No one can say or know how this will play out, except
that millions of people will probably die even if things stay exactly as they are, and billions could die
if things get any (here).¶ I raise the spectre of Fukushima as catastrophe and as apocalyptic because it accords to what
Timothy Morton has described as a hyperobject. In ‘Zero Landscapes in the time of hyperobjects’ Morton defines the states
that¶ Objects are beginning to compel us, from outside the wall. The objects we ignored for centuries,
the objects we created in the process of ignoring other ones: plutonium, global warming. I call them hyperobjects.
Hyperobjects are real objects that are massively distributed in time and space. Good examples would be global
warming and nuclear radiation. Hyperobjects are so vast, so long lasting, that they defy human time and
spatial scales. They wouldn’t fit in a landscape painting. They could never put you in the right mood.¶ The ontocartography or
“map of entities” that we could trace in relation to Fukushima doesn’t just include all those bodies we have listed already but
also, and most importantly, it includes the radiation itself. Born of the unstable hybridisation of techno-materiality and geomateriality in pursuit of energy to satisfy the logic of the infinite growth of capital, the hyperobject of Fukushima’s radiation was
unleashed and now exists independently of those techno-geo-capitalist assemblages. That this radiation
exists on a huge spatio-temporal scale means that it exists beyond our evolved capacity to think. We evolved to cope with
and to handle a world of mid-sized objects, the very tools and raw materials that helped to build
Fukushima. In the language of transcorporealist thought: the weaving or interpenetration of various autonomous
ontological bodies has led to this body composed of bodies. Just as numerous minerals, cells, exogenous
microorganisms, mitochondria, oxygen, lactic acid, sugars, contact lenses, and so on go up to constitute my body
in their choreographic co-actualisation so to does this process give rise to a similar shift in scale. In
my body the shift is that from the molecular to the “molar” scale but in this case, the shift is from the “molar” to the
hyper-scale. The radiation unleashed by the Fukushima meltdown exists on a geological spatial and temporal
scale that the human animal is not equipped to readily perceive.¶ Such hyperobjects proliferate around us and are
equally hard to detect in our proximal engagement with the various worlds we inhabit. They range from incidents like
Fukushima to the more encompassing threats of the collapse of capital, ecocide and cosmic death that
I mentioned above. The reason I have focussed on Fukushima is to illustrate the point that the catastrophe has already taken
place. In relation to the example of Fukushima the catastrophe occurred two years ago but will be ongoing for
centuries. That I can sit here in all my relative comfort and enjoy the benefits of being a white male in Britain does
not mean that I am any the less existing after the catastrophe. Catastrophes are discreet events that
explode into being, even if such an explosion can seem very slow as they happen on the scale of vast
temporalities. In the last analysis that can’t be carried out, the cosmos itself exists as one huge catastrophe; the moment of the big bang
being the cosmic event, everything else since being the unfolding of that catastrophic actualisation working itself out.
Anthropocentrism is THE original hierarchy that makes racism, sexism, and
other “-isms” possible—if the future is not to endlessly repeat the horrors of
the past, then we NEED a politics that can respect more than human life – the
affirmatives focus on race only REPLICATES the violence of
anthropocentrism – only the alternative solves
Best 7 (Steven, Chair of Philosophy at UT-EP, JCAS 5.2)
While a welcome advance over the anthropocentric conceit that only humans shape human actions, the environmental determinism approach
typically fails to emphasize the crucial role that animals play in human history, as well as how the human exploitation of animals is a key
cause of hierarchy, social conflict, and environmental breakdown. A core thesis of what I call “animal standpoint theory” is that animals
have been key driving and shaping forces of human thought, psychology, moral and social life, and
history overall. More specifically, animal standpoint theory argues that the oppression of humanover human has deep
roots in the oppression of human over animal. In this context, Charles Patterson’s recent book, The Eternal Treblinka: Our
Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, articulates the animal standpoint in a powerful form with revolutionary implications. The main
argument of Eternal Treblinka is that the human
domination of animals, such as it emerged some ten thousand years ago with
the first hierarchical domination and laid the groundwork for
patriarchy, slavery, warfare, genocide, and other systems of violence and power. A key implication of Patterson’s theory is
that human liberation is implausible if disconnected from animal liberation, and thus humanism -the rise of agricultural society, was
a speciesist philosophy that constructs a hierarchal relationship privileging superior humans over inferior animals and reduces animals to
resources for human use -- collapses
under the weight of its logical contradictions. Patterson lays out his complex
and speciesism have direct and profound
connections to slavery, colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism. In Part II, he shows how these connections exist not only in the
realm of ideology – as conceptual systems of justifying and underpinning domination and hierarchy – but also in systems of
technology, such that the tools and techniques humans devised for the rationalized mass confinement and slaughter of animals were
holistic argument in three parts. In Part I, he demonstrates that animal exploitation
mobilized against human groups for the same ends. Finally, in the fascinating interviews and narratives of Part III, Patterson describes how
personal experience with German Nazism prompted Jewish to take antithetical paths: whereas most retreated to an insular identity and
dogmatic emphasis on the singularity of Nazi evil and its tragic experience, others recognized the profound similarities between how Nazis
treated their human captives and how humanity as a whole treats other animals, an epiphany that led them to adopt vegetarianism, to become
advocates for the animals, and develop a far broader and more inclusive ethic informed by universal compassion for all suffering and
oppressed beings. The Origins of Hierarchy "As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other" –Pythagoras It is little understood
that the first form of oppression, domination, and hierarchy involves human domination over animals Patterson’s thesis stands in bold
contrast to the Marxist theory that the domination over nature is fundamental to the domination over other humans. It differs as well from the
social ecology position of Murray Bookchin that domination over humans brings about alienation from the natural world, provokes
hierarchical mindsets and institutions, and is the root of the long-standing western goal to “dominate” nature. In the case of Marxists,
anarchists, and so many others, theorists typically don’t even mention human domination of animals, let
alone assign it causal primacy or significance. In Patterson’s model, however, the human subjugation of animals is the
first form of hierarchy and it paves the way for all other systems of domination such as include
patriarchy, racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. As he puts it, “the exploitation of animals
was the model and inspiration for the atrocities people committed against each other, slavery and the Holocaust being but two of the more
dramatic examples.” Hierarchy
emerged with the rise of agricultural society some ten thousand years
ago. In the shift from nomadic hunting and gathering bands to settled agricultural practices,
humans began to establish their dominance over animals through “domestication.” In animal
domestication (often a euphemism disguising coercion and cruelty), humans began to exploit animals for purposes such as
obtaining food, milk, clothing, plowing, and transportation. As they gained increasing control over the lives and
labor power of animals, humans bred them for desired traits and controlled them in various ways, such as
castratingmales to make them more docile.To conquer, enslave, and claim animals as their own
property, humans developed numerous technologies, such as pens, cages, collars, ropes, chains, and
branding irons. The domination of animals paved the way for the domination of humans. The sexual subjugation of
women, Patterson suggests, was modeled afterthe domestication of animals, such that men began to control
women’s reproductive capacity, to enforce repressive sexual norms, and to rape them as they
forced breedingin their animals. Not coincidentally, Patterson argues, slavery emerged in the same region of the
Middle East that spawned agriculture, and, in fact, developed as an extension of animal domestication
practices. In areas like Sumer, slaves were managed like livestock, and males were castrated and
forced to work along with females. In the fifteenth century, when Europeans began the colonization of
Africa and Spain introduced the first international slave markets, the metaphors, models, and
technologies used to exploit animal slaves were applied with equal cruelty and force to human slaves.
Stealing Africans from their native environment and homeland, breaking up families who scream in
anguish, wrapping chains around slaves’ bodies, shipping them in cramped quarters across
continents for weeks or months with no regard for their needs or suffering, branding their skin with a hot
iron to mark them as property, auctioning them as servants, breeding them for service and labor,
exploiting them for profit, beating them in rages of hatred and anger, and killing them in vast numbers– all
these horrors and countless others inflicted on black slaves were developed and perfected centuries
earlier through animal exploitation. As the domestication of animals developed in agricultural society, humans lost the
intimate connections they once had with animals. By the time of Aristotle, certainly, and with the bigoted assistance of medieval theologians
such as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, western humanity had developed an explicitly hierarchical worldview – that came to be known
as the “Great Chain of Being” – used to position humans as the end to which all other beings were mere means. Patterson underscores the
crucial point that the domination of human over human and its exercise through slavery, warfare, and genocide typically begins with the
denigration of victims. But the means and methods of dehumanization are derivative, for speciesism provided the conceptual paradigm that
encouraged, sustained, and justified western brutality toward other peoples. “Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master
species,” Patterson writes, “our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The
study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the
same to them.” Whether the conquerors are European imperialists, American colonialists, or German Nazis, western
aggressors
engaged in wordplay before swordplay, vilifying their victims – Africans, Native Americans, Filipinos, Japanese,
Vietnamese, Iraqis, and other unfortunates – with opprobrious terms such as “rats,” “pigs,” “swine,” “monkeys,” “beasts,” and
“filthy animals.”Once perceived as brute beasts or sub-humans occupying a lower evolutionary rung
than white westerners, subjugated peoples were treated accordingly; once characterized as animals, they could
be hunted down like animals. The first exiles from the moral community, animals provided a convenient discard bin for oppressors to dispose
the oppressed. The connections are clear: “For a civilization built on the exploitation and slaughter of animals, the `lower’ and more
degraded the human victims are, the easier it is to kill them.” Thus, colonialism, as Patterson describes, was
a “natural
extension of human supremacy over the animal kingdom. For just as humans had subdued animals with their
superior intelligence and technologies, so many Europeans believed that the white race had proven its superiority by bringing the “lower
races” under its command. There are important parallels between speciesism and sexism and racism in the elevation of white male
rationality to the touchstone of moral worth. The
arguments European colonialists used to legitimate exploiting
Africans – that they were less than human and inferior to white Europeans in ability to reason –
are the very same justifications humans use to trap, hunt, confine, and kill animals. Oncewestern norms of
rationality were defined as the essence of humanity and social normality, by first using non-human animals as the
measure of alterity, it was a short step to begin viewing odd, different, exotic, and eccentric peoples and types asnonor sub-human.Thus, the same criterion created to exclude animals from humans was also used to ostracize blacks, women, and
numerous other groups from “humanity.”
This Anthropocentric ordering is the foundation of the war machine and drives the
exclusion of populations based on race, ethnicity and gender
Kochi, 2K9 (Tarik, Sussex law school, Species war: Law, Violence and Animals, Law Culture and Humanities Oct 5.3)
Grotius and Hobbes are sometimes described as setting out a prudential approach, 28 or a natural law of minimal content 29 because in contrast
to Aristotelian or Thomastic legal and political theory their attempt to derive the legitimacy of the state and sovereign order relies less upon a
thick con-ception of the good life and is more focussed upon basic human needs such as survival. In the context of a response to religious
civil war such an approach made sense in that often thick moral and religious conceptions of the good life (for example, those held
by competing Christian Confessions) often drove conflict and violence. Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that the categories of
“survival,” “preservation of life” and “bare life” are neutral categories. Rather survival, preservation of life and bare life as
expressed by the Westphalian theoretical tradition already contain distinctions of value – in particular, the specific
distinction of value between human and non-human life . “Bare life” in this sense is not “bare” but contains within it a
distinction of value between the worth of human life placed above and beyond the worth of non-human animal life. In this respect
bare life within this tradition contains within it a hidden conception of the good life. The foundational moment of the modern
juridical conception of the law of war already contains within it the operation of species war. The Westphalian tradition puts
itself forward as grounding the legitimacy of violence upon the preservation of life, however its concern for life is already
marked by a hierarchy of value in which non-human animal life is violently used as the “raw material” for preserving human life.
Grounded upon, but concealing the human-animal distinction, the Westphalian conception of war makes a double move: it excludes the
killing of animals from its definition of “war proper,” and, through rendering dominant the modern juridical definition of “war
proper” the tradition is able to further institutionalize and normalize a particular conception of the good life. Following from this
original distinction of life-value realized through the juridical language of war were other forms of human life whose lives were considered to be
of a lesser value under a European, Christian, “secular” 30 natural law conception of the good life. Underneath this concern with the
preservation of life in general stood veiled preferences over what particu-lar forms of life (such as racial conceptions of human
life) and ways of living were worthy of preservation, realization and elevation. The business contracts of early capitalism, 31 the
power of white males over women and children, and, especially in the colonial context, the sanctity of European life over nonEuropean and Christian lives over non-Christian heathens and Muslims, were some of the dominant forms of life preferred for
preservation within the early modern juridical ordering of war.
The affirmative trades off with flat ontology. Any demand for human
inclusion is a link to the criticism
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College, The Democracy of Objects, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dodidx/democracy-of-objects.pdf?c=ohp;idno=9750134.0001.001)
Onticology proposes what might be called, drawing on DeLanda's term yet broadening it, a flat ontology. Flat
ontology is a complex
variety of ontological theses under a single term. First, due to the split
characteristic of all objects, flat ontology rejects any ontology of transcendence or presence that privileges
philosophical concept that bundles together a
one¶ sort of entity as the origin of all others and as fully present to itself . In this regard, onticology proposes an
ontology resonant with Derrida's critique of metaphysics insofar as, in its treatment of beings as withdrawn, it undermines any pretensions to
presence within being. If
this thesis is persuasive, then metaphysics can no longer function as a synonym
for “metaphysics of presence”, nor substance as a synonym for “presence”,¶ but rather an ontology
has been formulated that overcomes the primacy¶ of presence. In this section, I articulate this logic in terms of
Lacan's¶ graphs of sexuation. Here I believe that those graphs have little to tell us about masculine or feminine sexuality—for reasons I will
outline in what follows—but a great deal to tell us about ontologies of immanence or flat ontologies and ontologies of transcendence. Second ,
flat ontology signifies that the world or the universe does not exist. I will develop the argument¶ for
this strange claim in what follows, but for the moment it is important¶ to recognize the definite
article in this claim. The claim that the world doesn't exist is the claim that there is no super-object
that gathers all other objects together in a single, harmonious unity. Third, following Harman, flat ontology
refuses to privilege the subject-object, human-world relation as either a) a form of metaphysical
relation different in kind from other relations between objects, and that b) refuses to treat the
subject-object relation as implicitly included in every form of object-object relation. To be sure, flat
ontology readily recognizes that humans have unique powers and capacities and that how humans
relate to the world is a topic more than worthy of investigation, yet nothing about this establishes
that humans must be included in every inter-object relation or that how humans relate to objects
differs in kind from how other entities relate to objects. Finally, fourth, flat ontology argues that all
entities are on equal ontological footing and that no entity, whether artificial or natural, symbolic
or physical, possesses greater ontological dignity than other objects.While indeed some objects might
influence the collectives to which they belong to a greater extent than others, it doesn't follow from
this that these objects are more real than others. Existence, being, is a binary such that something
either¶ is or is not.
Flat ontology key
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 215-217
The first step in developing such a framework lies in overcoming human exceptionalism. As I argued in
The Democracy of Objects, ontology must be flattened (see Bryant 2011: ch. 6). Rather than bifurcating being
into two domains — the domain of objects and the domain of subiects, the domain of nature and the
domain of culture — we must instead conceive of being as a single flat plane, a single nature, on
which humans are beings among other beings. While humans are certainly exceptional, for us they
are not ontologically exceptional. To be sure, they differ in their powers and capacities from other
beings, but they are not lords or hierarchs over all other beings. They are beings that dwell among
other beings, that act on them and that are acted upon by them. As extended mind theorists such as Andy
Clark have argued — but also the new materialist feminists and actor-network theorists such as Latour mind and culture
are not special domains that can be separated from the other non-human entities of the world for
special investigation. Rather, we are intimately bound up with the other entities of the world,
coupled and conditioned by them in all sorts of ways. Above all, we must avoid treating the world
as a field given for the contemplative gaze of humans. A world is something within which we act
and engage, not something we passively contemplate. A flat ontology must therefore be conceived
along the lines of Lacan's famous Borromean knot (see Figure 7.1). A Borromean knot consists of three
inter-linked rings of string fastened together in such a way that if any one ring is severed, the other
two fall away. Lacan indexes each of the three rings to one of his three orders: the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary. With
the Borromean knot, Lacan's work undergoes a funda- mental transformation. In his earlier work, one of the three orders had
always been privileged as dominating and overcoding the others. In his earliest work, the imaginary dominated the real and the
symbolic. In the work of his middle period, it was the symbolic that overcoded the real and the imaginary. In his third phase, it
was the real that overcoded the symbolic and the imaginary. With the Borromean knot, no order overcodes the
others. Rather, they are all now treated as being on equal footing. This is how we need to think
about the order of being. The domain of the real indexes machines. Machines exist in their own
right, regardless of whether anyone registers them or discourses about them. The domain of the
symbolic refers to the plane of expression, or how beings are discoursed about, signified, imbued
with meaning, and so on. Finally, the domain of the imaginary refers to the way in which one
machine encounters another under conditions of structural openness and operational closure.
Situated within the framework of the Borromean knot, we can simultaneously investigate how a machine is
ideologically coded as in the case of Baudrillard's analysis of objects in System of Objects, how a
machine is phenomenologically encountered by another machine, and how a machine is a real,
independent being in its own right that produces effects irreducible to how it is signified or
phenomenologically given.
Our alternative is to reject the question of the affirmative. This movement
away from correlationism is a necessary philosophical move.
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. 2011. “Levi
Democracy Of objects”. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/9750134.0001.001/1:4/.
It is unlikely that object-oriented ontologists are going to persuade epistemological realists or antirealists that they have found a way of surmounting the epistemological problems that arise out of
the two-world model of being any time soon. Quoting Max Planck, Marshall and Eric McLuhan write, “A new
scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but
rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”.6 This
appears to be how it is in philosophy as well. New innovations in philosophy do¶ not so much refute
their opponents as simply cease being preoccupied by certain questions and problems. In many
respects, object-oriented ontology, following the advice of Richard Rorty, simply tries to step out of
the debate altogether. Object-oriented ontologists have grown weary of a debate that has gone on
for over two centuries, believe that the possible variations of these positions have exhausted
themselves, and want to move on to talking about other things. If this is not good enough for the
epistemology police, we are more than happy to confess our guilt and embrace our alleged lack of
rigor and continue in harboring our illusions that we can speak of a reality independent of humans.
However, such a move of simply moving¶ on is not unheard of in philosophy. No one has yet
refuted the solipsist, nor the Berkeleyian subjective idealist, yet neither solipsism nor the
extremes¶ of Berkeleyian idealism have ever been central and ongoing debates in philosophy.
Philosophers largely just ignore these positions or use them¶ as cautionary examples to be avoided.
Why not the same in the endless debates over access?
Your attempt to persuade institutions through ethical appeal guarantees your
politics fails. Alt is a prerequisite.
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 73
In light of the concept of thermodynamic politics, we can see the common shortcoming of protest
politics or what might be called semiotic politics. Semiotic politics is semiotic in the sense that relies
on the use of signs, either attempting to change institutions through communicative persuasion or
engaging in activities of critique as in the case of hermeneutics of suspicion that, through a critique
of ideology, desire, power, and so on, show that relations of domination and oppression are at work
in something we hitherto believed to be just. Semiotic politics is confused in that it is premised on
producing change through ethical persuasion, and thereby assumes that institutional-machines
such as corporations, governments, factories, and so on, are structurally open to the same sorts of
communicative flows as humans. It believes that we can persuade these organizations to change
their operations on ethical grounds. At best , however, these entities are indifferent to such arguments ,
while at worst they are completely blind to even the occurrence of such appeals as machines such as corporations are only structurally open to
information events of profit and loss.
Persuading a corporation through ethical appeals is about as effective to
explain calculus to a cat.
Our way of accepting OOO key to shifting from anthro.
Mylius 13 (Ben Mylius, March 10, 2013, law graduate, anthrodecentrism object oriented ontology and refining the goals of ecocreative writing
http://ecologeur.com/post/45014342168/anthrodecentrism-object-oriented-ontology-and-refining)
‘Ontology is the philosophical study of existence. Object-oriented ontology puts things at the centre of this study. Its proponents
contend that nothing has special status, but that everything exists equally -plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, and sandstone, for
example. In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as
constructions of human behaviour and society (social relativism). OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at
all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves.’ For
anyone interested in a more philosophically-oriented explanation, Wikipedia’s entry here is unusually helpful as a starting-point; Levi Bryant’s
‘Manifesto for object-oriented ontology’ is even more so, as is his book The Democracy of Objects, available as an ebook here. I find this
movement particularly interesting because it represents an attempt to think other than anthropocentrically: to develop a way of
seeing and thinking that avoid placing subjects in general, and human subjects in particular, at its centre. This is also where the
resonance lies with ecocreative writing, which I see as an attempt in a creative mode to do the same thing. The challenge, as it has always
been, is to find the way of theorising this ‘alternative to anthropocentrism’ in a coherent and non-problematic way. Perhaps the key
hurdle for the concept of ‘ecocentrism’ in object-oriented terms is that it proposes some overarching, unified ‘One’ (the ‘eco’) that might
replace the ‘anthro’ at the centre of our thought. My sense is that this might be avoided if we were able to sustain an image of an
ecosystem as a process - an assemblage (Deleuze), ‘mesh’ (Morton) or ‘collective’ (Latour) - rather than a thing. But the connotations
of any kind of ‘centrism’ (what is at the centre?) make this difficult.
Case
Desal is terrible for the environment and kills millions of microorganisms
CMBB 09 [Located at the world-renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Center for Marine Biotechnology and
Biomedicine (CMBB) is a campuswide UCSD research division dedicated to the exploration of the novel and diverse resources of the
ocean., “The Impacts of Relying on Desalination for Water”, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-impacts-of-relying-ondesalination/]
Meanwhile, expanding populations in desert areas are putting intense pressure on existing fresh water supplies, forcing communities to turn to
desalinization as the most expedient way to satisfy their collective thirst. But
the process of desalinization burns up many
more fossil fuels than sourcing the equivalent amount of fresh water from fresh water bodi es. As such,
the very proliferation of desalinization plants around the world‚ some 13,000 already supply fresh water in 120
nations, primarily in the Middle East, North Africa and Caribbean , is both a reaction to and one of many contributors to
global warming. Beyond the links to climate problems, marine biologists warn that widespread desalinization
could take a heavy toll on ocean biodiversity; as such facilities' intake pipes essentially vacuum up
and inadvertently kill millions of plankton, fish eggs, fish larvae and other microbial organisms
that constitute the base layer of the marine food chain. And, according to Jeffrey Graham of the Scripps Institute of
Oceanography's Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, the salty sludge leftover after desalinization for
every gallon of freshwater produced, another gallon of doubly concentrated salt water must be
disposed of can wreak havoc on marine ecosystems if dumped willy-nilly offshore. For some desalinization
operations, says Graham, it is thought that the disappearance of some organisms from discharge areas may
be related to the salty outflow.
Desalination is terrible for the environment and alien objects- assumes new
technology methods and Arabian gulf proves
Dawoud and Al Mulla 12 (Mohamed Dawoud and Mohamed Al Mulla, Professor of Water and Director of Water Resources Department,
Environmental Impacts of Seawater Desalination: Arabian Gulf Case Study, International Journal of Environment and Sustainability ISSN
1927‐9566 | Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 22‐37 (2012))
Although desalination of seawater offers a range of human health, socio-economic, and environmental benefits by providing a seemingly
unlimited, constant supply of high quality drinking water without impairing natural freshwater ecosystems, concerns are raised due to potential
negative impacts (Dawoud, 2006). These are mainly attributed to the concentrate and chemical discharges,
which may impair coastal water quality and affect marine life, and air pollutant emissions attributed to
the energy demand of the processes as shown in Figure (3). The list of potential impacts can be extended; however, the
information available on the marine discharges alone indicates the need for a comprehensive environmental¶ desalination capacity in GCC (20002030)¶ evaluation of all major projects (Lattemann and Hoepner, 2003). In
order to avoid an unruly and unsustainable
development of coastal areas, desalination activity furthermore should be integrated into
management plans that regulate the use of water resources and desalination technology on a
regional scale (UNEP/MAP/MEDPOL, 2003). In summary, the potential environmental impacts of desalination
projects need to be evaluated, adverse effects mitigated as far as possible, and the remaining
concerns balanced against the impacts of alternative water supply and water management options,
in order to safeguard a sustainable use of the technology. The effects on the marine environment
arising from the operation of the power and desalination plant from the routine discharge of
effluents. Water effluents typically cause a localized increase in sea water temperatures, which can
directly affect the organisms in the discharge area. Increased temperature can affect water quality
processes and result in lower dissolved oxygen concentrations. Furthermore, chlorination of the cooling water can introduce toxic
substances into the water. Additionally, desalination plants can increase the salinity in the receiving water. The substances of focus for water
quality standards and of concern for the ecological assessment can be summarized as follows:¶
Although technological advances
have resulted in the development of new and highly efficient desalination processes, little
improvements have been reported in the management and handling of the major by-product waste
of most desalination plants, namely reject brine . The disposal or management of desalination brine
(concentrate) represents major environmental challenges to most plants, and it is becoming more costly.
In spite of the scale of this economical and environmental problem, the options for brine management for inland plants have been rather limited
(Ahmed et al., 2001). These options include:
discharge to surface water or wastewater treatment plants; deep
well injection; land disposal; evaporation ponds; and mechanical/thermal evaporation. Reject brine
contains variable concentrations of different chemicals such as anti-scale additives and¶ inorganic
salts that could have negative impacts on soil and groundwater.¶ By definition, brine is any water stream in a
desalination process that has higher salinity than the feed. Reject brine is the highly concentrated water in the last
stage of the desalination process that is usually discharged as wastewater. Several types of chemicals
are used in the desalination process for pre- and post-treatment operations. These include: Sodium hypochlorite
(NaOCl) which is used for chlorination to prevent bacterial growth in the desalination facility; Ferric chloride (FeCl3) or aluminum
chloride (AlCl3), which are used as flocculants for the removal of suspended matter from the water; anti-scale additives such as Sodium
hexametaphosphate (NaPO3)6 are used to prevent scale formation on the pipes and on the membranes; and acids such as sulfuric
acid (H2SO4) or hydrochloric acid (HCl) are also used to adjust the pH of the seawater. Due to the presence of these different
chemicals at variable concentrations, reject brine discharged to the sea has the ability to change the salinity,
alkalinity and the temperature averages of the seawater and can cause change to marine
environment. The characteristics of reject brine depend on the type of feed water and type of desalination process. They also depend on the
percent recovery as well as the chemical additives used (Ahmed et al., 2000). Typical analyses of reject brine for different desalination plants
with different types of feed water are presented in Table (4).
Turn: Ocean desalination destroys the environment and kills marine life
FWW 9 (Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food, February 2009, “Desalination: An Ocean of
Problems”, aps)
Ocean desalination endangers the environment and public health.¶ While numbers do a good job of illustrating the
pure financial cost of desalination, they do not accurately reflect the full expense. Food & Water Watch found that additional costs
borne by the public include damage to the environment, danger to the public health and other
external considerations.¶ Ocean desalination could contribute to global warming.¶ Ironically, while
desalination is supposed to improve water shortages, its emissions could actually hasten the global
warming that will alter precipitation patterns and further strain existing water supplies. The greenhouse
gas pollution from the industrial seawater desalination plants dwarfs emissions from other water supply options such as conservation and reuse.
Seawater desalination in California, for example, could consume nine times as much energy as surface water treatment and 14 times as much
energy as groundwater production.¶ Ocean
desalination threatens fisheries and marine environments.¶ Further, on
its way into a plant, the ocean water brings with it billions of fish and other organisms that die in the
machin- ery. This results in millions of dollars of lost fishing revenue and a great loss of marine life.
Then, only a portion of the ocean water that enters the plant actually reaches the consumer. ¶ The remaining water ends up as a highly
concentrated solution that contains both the salt from the ocean and an array of chemicals from the industrial process – which is released right
Technical failures in desal plants means the plan doesn’t solve
Malik et al. No Date (Anees U. Malik, Saleh A. Al-Fozan, Fahd Al-Muaili, Mohammad Al-Hajri, Journal of Failure Analysis
and Prevention, No Date, “Frequent Failures of Motor Shaft in Seawater Desalination Plant: Some Case Studies”,
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/257713702_Frequent_Failures_of_Motor_Shaft_in_Seawater_Desalination_Plant_Some
_Case_Studies, aps)
The failure of a shaft from a motor in a pump or a compressor has been a phenomenon of common
occurrence in seawater desalination plants. The origin of the problem in majority of cases is either
the inability of the material to withstand the level of dynamic stresses to which shaft is subjected
during operation and/or inadequacy of the design. The shortcoming in the design may be
responsible for initiating localized corrosion which ultimately leads to failure of the component. The
mode of failure of the shaft could be stress-related failure such as stress corrosion cracking, mechanical fatigue or corrosion
fatigue, and/or localized corrosion such as crevice corrosion. This paper describes some recent case studies related to shaft
failures in seawater desalination plants. The case studies include shearing of a shaft in brine recycle pump in
which a combination of environment, design, and stresses played important role in failure. In another
case, ingress of chloride inside the key slot was the main cause of the problem. The failure in a high pressure seawater pump in a
SWRO plant occurred due to cracking in the middle of the shaft.
Turn: Desalination increases the costs forced on communities for clean water
McIntyre 8 (Mindy, Los Angeles Times, 4/10/08, “All that water, every drop to drink”, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-op-snow-mcintyre10apr10story.html#page=1, aps)
Many people mistakenly consider ocean desalination a harmless way to get water to growing cities
without the effects associated with damming rivers and over-pumping groundwater. The truth is,
desalination is one of the most harmful and expensive water options in California. When compared to other available strategies,
ocean desalination just doesn't pencil out.¶ Consider that ocean desalination is the most energy intensive way to get water.
That's right -- it requires more energy to desalinate a gallon of ocean water than it does to pump water from Northern California over a mountain range all the way to
Southern California. All
of that energy means more greenhouse gases, which would cause more problems
for our snowpack and groundwater, not to mention other resources.¶ Ocean desalination also
requires that massive amounts of sea water, carrying millions of fish, plankton and other ocean life, must be sucked up and filtered
everyday -- with 100% fish mortality. Those who care about the ocean know that these types of diversions can destroy miles of already stressed coastal habitats. In
fact, people
have been working for decades to stop power plants from this kind of water filtration.¶
Ocean desalination also fails the cost test. It is the most expensive source of new water for
California, thanks to the very high energy requirements. Despite the claims that desalination will
get less expensive as time goes on, you do not have to be an economist to understand that $4
gasoline means that all forms of energy will be much more expensive in the future, not cheaper.¶ We
should also be aware that many of these desalination plants would be owned by private companies, including subsidiaries of multinational corporations. That raises
concerns about transparency and accountability. ¶ Locally
controlled water conservation, water recycling and brackish
water desalination are all far cheaper than ocean desalination. Coincidentally, these options are also less energy- and
greenhouse-gas intensive, and less environmentally damaging. ¶ Ocean desalination, quite frankly, is the SUV of water. We have
better options. Communities need to decide whether they want their water sources to generate massive
amount of greenhouse gas, cost a fortune and destroy the environment. I suspect that in most cases, Californians would
Natural Gas
K
Natural gas drilling authorizes the mass murder of objects and is
incompatible with flat ethics.
Bryant 10 (Levi R. Bryant, June 27, 2010, flat ontology and flat ethics, http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/flat-ontology-and-flatethics/)
Second, I recently had the opportunity to watch the
harrowing HBO documentary Gasland which deals with the
impact of natural gas drilling. If you have On Demand capabilities, I highly recommend watching this documentary. Otherwise, get
it through Netflix once it’s available. This is a must see documentary. In many respects, I believe this documentary brings home the
question of a flat ethics of the relation to the non-relational. The issue here isn’t simply the tremendous
impact natural gas drilling is having on humans living in these areas through the pollution of water resources and the
emission of toxic neurotoxins and cancer causing gases, but also the question of the impact of other systems or objects in the
environment of human environments that have nothing to do directly with human survival and human interests. Not only is natural
gas “drilling” having a substantial impact on human lives by destroying the resources like water
and air upon which they depend, but it is also destroying all sorts of “natural” entities not directly
related to human survival .
The aff depicts global warming as something out there – this understanding
guarantees destruction because it distracts us from the fact it has already
begun.—This turns the case
Morton 13 (Timothy, Professor of literature and the environment and head of the English department at Rice University,
“Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World”, 2013, University of Minnesota Press, pg. 103-104)
Global warming is really here—even more spookily, it was already here, already influencing the supposedly real
wet stuff falling on my head and the warm golden stuff burning my face at the beach. That wet stuff
and that golden stuff, which we call weather, turns out to have been a false immediacy, an ontic
pseudo-reality that can’t stand up against the looming presence of an invisible yet far more real
global climate. Weather, that handy backdrop for human lifeworlds, has ceased to exist, and along with it, the cozy concept of lifeworld
itself. Lifeworld was just a story we were telling ourselves on the inside of a vast, massively
distributed hyperobject called climate, a story about how different groups were partitioned according to different horizons—
concepts now revealed as ontic prejudices smuggled into the realm of ontology. Global warming is
a big problem, because along with melting glaciers it has melted our ideas of world and worlding.
Thus, the tools that humanists have at their disposal for talking about the ecological emergency are
now revealed, by global warming itself, to be as useless as the proverbial chocolate teapot. It is rather like
the idea of using an antique (or better, antiqued) Christmas ornament as a weapon. The spooky thing is, we discover global
warming precisely when it’s already here. It is like realizing that for some time you had been
conducting your business in the expanding sphere of a slow-motion nuclear bomb . You have a few seconds
for amazement as the fantasy that you inhabited a neat, seamless little world melts away. All those apocalyptic narratives of
doom about the “end of the world” are, from this point of view, part of the problem, not part of the
solution. By postponing doom into some hypothetical future, these narratives inoculate us against the very
real object that has intruded into ecological, social, and psychic space. As we shall see, the hyperobject
spells doom now, not at some future date . (Doom will assume a special technical meaning in this study in the “Hypocrisies”
section.)
Economic collapse its inevitable. The attempt to prolong growth can only
result in total ecological destruction.—Takes out case impacts
James 13 (Arran, UK-based philosopher, graduate student of Critical Theory, and psychiatric nurse). “The catastrophic and the postapocalyptic,” http://syntheticzero.net/2013/08/21/the-catastrophic-and-the-post-apocalyptic/ August 21, 2013)//[AC]
The present is filled with catastrophe and apocalypticism. A certain phrase has been deployed and redeployed in summarising
the condition we find ourselves in: it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. While this phrase is typically used to
crystallise capitalist realism, the idea that there is no alternative to capitalism, it also distils another truth: the
end of the world has
become the very air that we breathe.¶ As compelling as the discourse on apocalypticism might be it makes one
fundamental mistake: it colludes with the very sense of impending catastrophe that it is usually trying to
critique or to use as a means to mobilise a political movement. In what follows, I want to discuss the relation between
catastrophe and apocalypse, and to look at what it would mean to shift the emphasis on the terms. I don’t mean to restate that catastrophe and
apocalypse mean different things for its own sake but rather to emphasise that from the perspective of a postnihilist praxis we
are neither
catastrophic nor apocalyptic but living within the time of catastrophe as post-apocalyptic survivors.¶ Whether we turn
our attention to the hyperobject of the climate and mounting predictions of ecocide or toward the
ongoing catastrophe of Fukushima it is clear that we are living in apocalyptic times. We look to our
economic structures- to capitalism itself- and we see the old vampire in the familiar poses of death throes; an oft-rehearsed
death that has never come . The global economy, despite recent bubbles and upswings in manufacturing, is
still in a state of terminal decline. The death of capitalism is everywhere predicated on its logic of
growth , a logic that American anarchists Murray Bookchin once compared to another version of the undead: the infinite
proliferation of cancer cells.¶ Another popular slogan: “ we can’t sustain infinite growth on a planet of finite
resources”. We have hit peak oil production, desertified the lungs of the earth, we are chasing new
and dangerous sources of gas. Intimately, we are chained to cycles of accumulating debt that morally
and materially shackle so many of us to meaningless “bullshit” jobs, with only compulsive hedonism as
our empty reward. When we turn on the news we are met with images of drones bombing civilians in other lands
or news of rising food prices and falling wages, we are shown images of disaster and death- a 24 hour news stream of collapse.
Our nervous systems are constantly wired into networks of information, data and advertising that move faster
than our brains can cope with, and permanently activate our threat response systems.¶ The ecological and
financial collapse are thus conjoined to a psychophysiological one. All of this, more than any other time in history, happening as the
result of an integral accident: capitalism itself. This is part of what it means to say that “the present” is an accomplished
nihilism, other elements being the fallout of Darwinism and astrophysics. This is what it means to say that the present is filled with
apocalypticism: we feel that the catastrophe is about to befall us, and we feel our vulnerability and
impotence in the face of it.¶ If the world is this accomplished nihilism this means that nihilism is no longer a position or a
disposition, no longer an anti-theoretical get out jail free card. There is no such thing as “a nihilist” or a “nihilist philosophy”. We know
that there are no Gods who can save us, and there are no transcendental signifiers that can stand in God’s empty
place. The history of postmodernism as the history of the death of metanarratives and grand discourses mirrors the various truths that have
brought us to realisation that nihilism is not a meme or a cultural mood but a condition of materiality itself. Matter is
meaningless, the universe is without purpose, and everything is fragile, precarious, heading towards
destruction, and there are no philosophical tools that we can draw on to make this all better. In the most extreme expressions of these truths,
we know that the sun will explode and the cosmos will cool, become inactive and “die”. So we have the most
proximal and the most distal evidences of the unshakeable conviction that the it is materiality that is the nihilist. There are those that argue that
apocalypticism is a natural and automatic response to this discovery- to obsessively approach the “end of the world” through fiction, film, cultural
products of all kinds, so as to engage in the grandest of anxieties whilst neutralising it. Hence, a proliferation of disaster movies, of zombie
movies, of films about dirty bombs and infections and outbreaks. This year this trend has taken a new turn. Three films have come out that
describe themselves as apocalypse comedies: It’s a disaster!; The world’s end; This is the end. These new films join Ghostbusters, Dr.
Strangelove, Shaun of the dead, and Zombieland as films that imagine the end of
the world in order to laugh at it. We could see in these films the attempt to take terrifying prospects of collapse and destruction and render them
safe by having characters do and say stupid things or, in the case of Strangelove, as dark satires that reveal how the apocalypse could be brought
on through the ineptitude of our leaders. Grim visions populate the imaginary of these films alongside slapstick humour and darker shades of
humour that almost revel in the coming of the end. This might have been a legitimate way to read these films once but today, and especially in
regard to the new crop, we have to read these films from within nihilism. If we no longer have a theoretical obsession with “the end” such that
postmodernism was unable to break itself free from (the end of history, the end of politics, the end of the end) it is because “the end” has become
as inevitable as the sunrise. Edgar Wright, director of Shaun… and World’s end has said that these films represent a ‘laughter in the face of
death’, but what good is that laughter when the prospect of human extinction looms on the horizon and masses of people are struggling to eat,
keep a roof over their head, or resist the seduction of suicide? No, I think it makes more sense to view these films via the golden rule of comedy:
tragedy+time=comedy. It is possible to laugh at horror only once that horror has passed; it is possible to make light of tragedy only when the
tragedy has been left behind. Following that rule, it is possible to laugh at the catastrophe because it has already occurred. A
statement like
that (“the catastrophe has already happened”) seems strange. I am sitting in my flat, drinking coffee and smoking, a
stomach full of food, waiting for a start date for my new job, writing on a laptop powered by electricity, electricity that is supplied by a fully
functional national grid, powered by industrial processes that are keeping the lights of the world bright. The
idea that I am a postapocalyptic survivor, that I am someone living in the midst of a catastrophic collapse, might seem
ridiculous or insulting. Yet this would be to reduce the register of the real merely to the actual and
thereby obliterate the potencies that are at work in materiality without yet fully being expressed. In
this regard, Fukushima becomes a perfect case-study.
Environmentalism subordinates the relation with nature to desire for a clean
and “virgin” Nature – this reinforces a notion of heteronormativity and turns
the case.
Morton 2010 (Timothy, Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, “Queer Ecology,” from “QUEER
ENVIRONMENTALITY: ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND SEXUALITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE,” pp 278-279)
If being “environmental” only extends phobias of psychic, sexual, and social intimacy, current
conditions such as global warming will persist. Instead of insisting on being part of something
bigger, we should be working with intimacy. Organicism is not ecological. In organic form the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts. Many environmentalisms— even systems theories—are organicist: world
fits mind, and mind fits world. The teleology implicit in this chiasmus is hostile to inassimilable difference. Interdependence
implies differences that cannot be totalized. The mesh of interconnected life- forms does not constitute a world. Worlds have horizons: here and
there, inside and outside; queer ecology would undermine worlds. Relying
on touchyfeely ideologies of embeddedness,
ecophenomenology resists the humiliating paucity of the incomplete ontic level. No ontology is
possible without a violent forgetting. We can’t fight metaphysics with metaphysics without violence. Queer ecology will
explore this radical incompleteness through a profound and extensive study of sexuality. The mesh of
life- forms is not an alternative to organicism: thinking so would be seeking a new and improved version of Nature. Organicism polices
the sprawling, tangled, queer mesh by naturalizing sexual difference. This contradicts discoveries in
the life sciences. The biologist Joan Roughgarden argues that gender diversity is a necessary feature of evolution.
Moreover, her argument is possible because Darwin himself opened a space for it. Strict Darwinism might even be friendlier to queer ecology
than Roughgarden, because it’s so antiteleological (Marx liked it for this reason). Roughgarden
makes more of a teleological
meal than necessary to justify the existence of homosexuality in lizards, birds, sheep, monkeys, and
bonobos (145). Individuals and species don’t abstractly “want” to survive so as to preserve their
forms; only macromolecular replicators “want” that. From the replicators’ viewpoint, if it works
(“satisficing,” as stated earlier), you can keep it (Dawkins, Extended Phenotype 156; Roughgarden 26–27). A profusion of gender and sex
performances can arise. As far as evolution goes, they can stay that way. Thinking otherwise is “adaptationism.” You want antiessentialist
performativity? Again, just read Darwin. The engine of sexual selection is sexual display, not the “survival of the Fittest”—Alfred Russel
Wallace, wary of nonutilitarian conclusions, urged Darwin to insert that troublesome phrase (Dawkins, Extended Phenotype 179–80). Sexual
display accounts for a vast range of appearances and behaviors. There’s no good reason for some
aspects of my appearance (for instance, my reddish facial hair)—a few million years ago, someone just found it
sexy. Despite numerous critiques of Darwin’s views on gender (Grosz 72–79), a reserve of progressive energy remains. Because Darwin
reduces sexuality to sheer aesthetic display ( sub- Kantian purposelessness), the Descent of Man is as
antihomophobic as it is antiracist (Grosz 87).6 It refuses to traffic in the idea that pleasure in surfaces contrasts with “real”
activity. Desire is inescapable in an ecology that values intimacy with strangers over holistic belonging.
Yet environmentalism strives to rise above the contingency of desire. Loving Nature thus becomes
enslaved to masculine heteronormativity , a performance that erases the trace of performance: as the
green camping slogan puts it, “Leave no trace.” Masculinity performs no performance. If you appear to be acting
masculine, you aren’t masculine. Masculine is Natural. Natural is masculine. Rugged, bleak,
masculine Nature defines itself through contrasts: outdoorsy and extraverted, heterosexual, ablebodied—disability is nowhere to be seen; physical wholeness and coordination are valued over
spontaneity (McRuer; Mitchell and Snyder). Nature is aggressively healthy, hostile to self- absorption. Despite repressive images of Mother
Nature, Nature is not feminine. There is no room for irony or for ambiguity that is more than superficial. There is scant space for
humor, except perhaps a phobic, hearty kind. Masculine Nature is allergic to semblance. Afraid of its own shadow, it wants no truck with what
Hegel called the night of the world, the threateningly empty dimension of subjectivity (204). Masculine
Nature fears the
nothingness of feminine “mere” appearance (Levinas 158). Ecological phenomena display this infinite
strangeness (170). By contrast, masculine Nature is “unperversion.” Organicism articulates desire as erasure, erasure
desire. Organicism wants nature “untouched, ” subject to no desire: it puts desire under erasure,
since its concern for “virginity” is in fact a desire. Unmarked Nature is established by exclusion, then the exclusion of
exclusion. Queer ecology must show how interconnectedness is not organic. Things only look as if they
fit, because we don’t perceive them on an evolutionary or a geologic time scale. If you move a
paralyzed cricket away from the hole that the Sphex wasp who paralyzed it has made (and is inspecting
for the presence of wasp grubs), the wasp will move the cricket back meaninglessly, without dragging it in
(Hofstadter 360–61, 613–14). The wasp doesn’t have Platonic ideas of holes or food in mind; it mechanically repeats the
behaviors of dragging and of looking for its young. Nature (that reified, mythical thing over yonder in the mountains, in
our DNA, wherever) dissolves when we look directly at it (remember that breaking the taboo against looking directly at the goddess Diana
involved dire metamorphic consequences). Nature
looks natural because it keeps going, and going, and going,
like the undead, and because we keep on looking away, framing it, sizing it up. Acknowledging the
zombielike quality of interconnected lifeforms will aid the transition from an ideological fixation on
Nature to a fully queer ecology. I call this transitional mode “dark ecology” (Ecology 181–97). Instead of
perpetuating metaphors of depth and authenticity (as in deep ecology), we might aim for something profound yet
ironic, neither nihilistic nor solipsistic, but aware like a character in a noir movie of her or his entanglement in and with life- forms. Think
Blade Runner or Frankenstein: queer ecological ethics might regard beings as people even when they aren’t
people. All ecological positions are caught in desire. How dare ecological theory critique vegetarianism? Yet the position
from which vegetarian arguments are staged might be fascinated, carnivorous carnophobia, violent nonviolence: all that meat, all those mangled
bodies. Animal rights language can involve violent rendering and rending (Hacking 168–70). Percy Bysshe Shelley
advocated abstaining from meat and from unfairly traded spices. Yet his vegetarian rhetoric is obsessed with obsession, equating madness with
crime, crime with disease: longing for a society without a trace—a society without people (Morton, Shelley 134–35).7
The affirmative judges the ocean by the way that humankind perceives it
which is anthropocentric and inevitably fails because the ocean is withdrawn.
Morton ‘11 [Timothy, Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, Speculations 2, pg. 216219, http://www.speculations-journal.org/storage/Morton_Sublime%20Objects_v2.pdf] //JC//
According to OOO, objects
all have four aspects. They withdraw from access by other objects. They
appear to other objects. They are specific entities. And that’s not all: they really exist. Aesthetically, then,
objects are uncanny beasts. If they were pieces of music, they might be some impossible combination
of slapstick sound effects, Sufi singing, Mahler and hardcore techno. If they were literature, they might exist
somewhere between The Commedia Dell’ Arte, The Cloud of Unknowing, War and Peace and Waiting for Godot. Pierrot Lunaire might be a
good metaphor for grotesque, frightening, hilarious, sublime objects. The
object-oriented sublime doesn’t come from
some beyond, because this beyond turns out to be a kind of optical illusion of correlationism.
There’s nothing underneath the Universe of objects. Or not even nothing, if you prefer thinking it
that way. The sublime resides in particularity, not in some distant beyond. And the sublime is
generalizable to all objects, insofar as they are all what I’ve called strange strangers, that is, alien to
themselves and to one another in an irreducible way.26 Of the two dominant theories of the sublime, we have a
choice between authority and freedom, between exteriority and interiority. But both choices are
correlationist. That is, both theories of the sublime have to do with human subjec- tive access to
objects. On the one hand we have Edmund Burke, for whom the sublime is shock and awe: an
experience of terrifying authority to which you must submit.27 On the other hand, we have Immanuel Kant, for whom
the sublime is an experience of inner freedom based on some kind of temporary cognitive failure. Try counting up to infinity. You
can’t. But that is precisely what infinity is. The power of your mind is revealed in its failure to sum
infinity. 28 Both sublimes assume that: (1) the world is specially or uniquely accessible to humans; (2)
the sublime uniquely correlates the world to humans; and (3) what’s important about the sublime is
a reaction in the subject. The Burkean sublime is simply craven cowering in the presence of authority: the law, the might of a tyrant
God, the power of kings, and the threat of execution. No real knowledge of the authority is assumed—terrified
ignorance will do. Burke argues outright that the sublime is always a safe pain, mediated by the
glass panels of the aesthetic. (That’s why horror movies, a truly speculative genre, try to bust through this aesthetic screen at every
opportunity.) What we need is a more speculative sublime that actually tries to become intimate with
the other, and here Kant is at any rate preferable to Burke. Those more sympathetic to Kant might argue that there is some faint echo of
reality in the experience of the sublime. Certainly the aesthetic dimension is a way in which the normal subject–object dichotomy is suspended in
Kant. And the
sublime is as it were the essential subroutine of the aesthetic experience, allowing us to
experience the power of our mind by running up against some external obstacle. Kant references telescopes
and microscopes that expand human perception beyond its limits.29 His marvelous passage on the way one’s mind can encompass human height
and by simple multiplication comprehend the vastness of “Milky Way systems” is sublimely expressive of the human capac- ity to think.30 It’s
also true that the Kantian sublime inspired the powerful speculations of Schelling, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and more work needs to be done
teasing out how those philosophers begin to think a reality beyond the hu- man (the work of Grant and Woodard stands out in particular at
present).31 It’s true that in §28 of the Third Critique, Kant does talk about how we experience the ‘dynamical sublime’ in the terror of vastness,
for instance of the ocean or the sky. But this isn’t anything like intimacy with the sky or the ocean. In fact, in the next sections, Kant explicitly
rules out anything like a scientific or even probing analysis of what might exist in the sky. As
soon as we think of the ocean as a
body of water containing fish and whales, rather than as a canvas for our psyche; as soon as we
think of the sky as the real Universe of stars and black holes, we aren’t experiencing the sublime
(§29): Therefore, when we call the sight of the starry sky sublime, we must not base our judgment upon
any concepts of worlds that are inhab- ited by rational beings, and then [conceive of] the bright dots
that we see occupying the space above us as being these worlds’ suns, moved in orbits prescribed
for them with great purposiveness; but we must base our judgment regarding merely on how we
see it, as a vast vault encompassing everything, and merely under this presentation may we posit
the sublimity that a pure aesthetic judgment attributes to this object. In the same way, when we judge
the sight of the ocean we must not do so on the basis of how we think , it, enriched with all sorts of
knowledge which we possess (but which is not contained in the direct intuition), e.g., as a vast realm
of aquatic creatures, or as the great reservoir supplying the water for the vapors that impregnate
the air with clouds for the benefit of the land , or again as an element that, while separating
continents from one another, yet makes possible the greatest communication among them; for all
such judgments will be teleological. Instead we must be able to view the ocean as poets do, merely in
terms of what manifests itself to the eye—e.g., if we observe it while it is calm, as a clear mirror of
water bounded only by the sky; or, if it turbulent, as being like an abyss threatening to engulf
every- thing—and yet find it sublime.32 While we may share Kant’s anxiety about teleology, his main point is less than
satisfactory from a speculative realist point of view. We
positively shouldn’t speculate when we experience the
sublime. The sublime is precisely the lack of speculation
Ontology comes first. Objects precede our knowledge of them. All other ways
of relating to the world are incorrect an anthropocentric.
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. 2011. “Levi
Democracy Of objects”. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/9750134.0001.001/1:4/.
Yet in
all of the heated debates surrounding epistemology that have cast nearly every discipline in turmoil, we
nonetheless seem to miss the point that the question of the object is not an epistemological question,
not a question of how we know the object, but a question of what objects are. The being of objects is an issue
distinct from the question of our knowledge of objects. Here, of course, it seems obvious that in order to discuss the
being of objects we must first know objects. And if this is the case, it follows as a matter of course that epistemology or questions of knowledge
must precede ontology. However, I hope to show in what follows that questions of ontology are both irreducible to questions of epistemology and
that questions of ontology must precede questions of epistemology or questions of our access to objects.What an object is cannot be reduced to
our access¶ to objects. And as we will see in what follows, that access is highly limited . Nonetheless,
while our access to objects
is highly limited, we can still say a great deal about the being of objects.¶ However, despite the limitations of
access, we must avoid, at all costs, the thesis that objects are what our access to objects gives us. As Graham Harman has argued,
objects are not the given. Not at all. As such, this¶ book defends a robust realism.Yet, and this is crucial to everything that follows, the
realism defended here is not an epistemological realism, but an ontological realism. Epistemological realism argues that our representations and
language are accurate mirrors of the world as it actually is, regardless of whether or not we exist. It seeks to distinguish between true
representations and phantasms. Ontological
realism, by contrast, is not a thesis about our knowledge of
objects, but about the being of objects themselves, whether or not we exist to represent them. It is
the thesis that the world is composed¶ of objects, that these objects are varied and include entities
as diverse as mind, language, cultural and social entities, and objects independent of humans such
as galaxies, stones, quarks, tardigrades and so on. Above all, ontological realisms refuse to treat
objects as constructions of humans. While it is true, I will argue, that all objects translate one another, the objects that
are translated are irreducible to their translations. As we will see, ontological realism thoroughly refutes
epistemological realism
or¶ Introduction: Towards a Finally Subjectless Object 19¶ what ordinarily goes by the pejorative title of
“naïve realism”. Initially it might sound as if the distinction between ontological and epistemological realism is a difference that makes no
difference but, as I hope to show, this distinction has far ranging consequences for how we pose a number of questions and theorize a variety of
phenomena.¶
One of the problematic consequences that follows from the hegemony that epistemology
currently enjoys in philosophy is that it condemns philosophy to a thoroughly anthropocentric
reference.
Because the ontological question of substance is elided into the epistemological question of our knowledge of substance, all
discussions of substance necessarily contain a human reference.The subtext or fine print surrounding our discussions of substance always contain
reference to an implicit “for- us”.This is true even of the anti-humanist structuralists and post- structuralists who purport to dispense with the
subject in favor of various impersonal and anonymous social forces like language and structure that exceed the intentions of individuals. Here
we still remain in the orbit of¶ an anthropocentric universe insofar as society and culture are
human phenomena, and all of being is subordinated to these forces. Being is thereby reduced to what being is for us.¶ By contrast, this
book strives to think a subjectless object, or an object that is for-itself rather than an object that is an opposing pole before or in front of a subject.
Put differently, this essay attempts to think an object for-itself that isn't an object for the gaze of a subject, representation, or a cultural
discourse.This, in short, is what the democracy of objects means. The democracy of objects is not a political thesis to the effect that all objects
ought to be treated equally or that all objects ought to participate in human affairs.
The democracy of objects is the
ontological thesis that all objects , as Ian Bogost has so nicely put it, equally exist while they do not
exist equally. The claim that all objects equally exist is the claim that no object can be treated as
constructed by another object.The claim that objects do not exist equally is the claim that objects
contribute to collectives or assemblages to a greater and lesser degree. In short, no object such as
the subject or culture is the ground of all others. As such, The Democracy of Objects attempts to
think the being of objects unshackled from the gaze of humans in their being for-themselves.¶ 20 Levi
R. Bryant¶ Such a democracy, however, does not entail the exclusion of the human. Rather, what we get is a redrawing of distinctions and a
decentering of the human. The point is not that we should think objects rather than humans. Such a formulation is based on the premise that
humans constitute some special category that is other than objects, that objects are a pole opposed to humans, and therefore the formulation is
based on the premise that objects are correlates or poles opposing or standing-before humans. No, within the framework of onticology—my name
for the ontology that follows—there¶ is only one type of being: objects. As
a consequence, humans are not excluded, but
are rather objects among the various types of objects that exist or populate the world, each with
their own specific powers and capacities.
Ignoring hyperobjects results in billions of death.
James 13 (Arran, UK-based philosopher, graduate student of Critical Theory, and psychiatric nurse). “The catastrophic and the postapocalyptic,”http://syntheticzero.net/2013/08/21/the-catastrophic-and-the-post-apocalyptic/ August 21, 2013)//[AC]
There is a vast onto-cartography at work here that connects species of fish to coolant systems to hydrogen
molecules to legislation on nuclear safety; legislators, parliaments, regulatory bodies, anti-nuclear activists;
ideas like environmentalism; the food supply networks and geographic distribution of production centres; work practices;
capital investments and the wider financial markets as Tepco’s shares fall; and those networks that specifically
effect human beings in the exclusion area. After all, this exclusion zone has seen thousands of families
leave their homes, their jobs, their friends, and the possessions that had been rewarded to them as
recompense for their alienated labour. Consider that some of these people are still paying mortgages on homes they will
probably never be able to return to safely. And there remains one more reactor in the water that has not melted down but possibly will- if not by
human efforts to recover the fuel rods, then by the possibility of another unpredicted earthquake and/or tsunami. I don’t have the space or the
desire to trace the
onto-cartography of this disaster but it is clear that it includes both geological, ecological and
capitalist bodies; indeed, it is clear that the capitalist bodies might be the ones that are ultimately
responsible. According to Christina Consolo,¶ all this collateral damage will continue for decades, if not
centuries, even if things stay exactly the way they are now. But that is unlikely, as bad things happen like
natural disasters and deterioration with time…earthquakes, subsidence, and corrosion, to name a few. Every day that
goes by, the statistical risk increases for this apocalyptic scenario. No one can say or know how this will play out, except
that millions of people will probably die even if things stay exactly as they are, and billions could die
if things get any (here).¶ I raise the spectre of Fukushima as catastrophe and as apocalyptic because it accords to what
Timothy Morton has described as a hyperobject. In ‘Zero Landscapes in the time of hyperobjects’ Morton defines the states
that¶ Objects are beginning to compel us, from outside the wall. The objects we ignored for centuries,
the objects we created in the process of ignoring other ones: plutonium, global warming. I call them hyperobjects.
Hyperobjects are real objects that are massively distributed in time and space. Good examples would be global
warming and nuclear radiation. Hyperobjects are so vast, so long lasting, that they defy human time and
spatial scales. They wouldn’t fit in a landscape painting. They could never put you in the right mood. ¶ The ontocartography or
“map of entities” that we could trace in relation to Fukushima doesn’t just include all those bodies we have listed already but
also, and most importantly, it includes the radiation itself. Born of the unstable hybridisation of techno-materiality and geomateriality in pursuit of energy to satisfy the logic of the infinite growth of capital, the hyperobject of Fukushima’s radiation was
unleashed and now exists independently of those techno-geo-capitalist assemblages. That this radiation
exists on a huge spatio-temporal scale means that it exists beyond our evolved capacity to think. We evolved to cope with
and to handle a world of mid-sized objects, the very tools and raw materials that helped to build
Fukushima. In the language of transcorporealist thought: the weaving or interpenetration of various autonomous
ontological bodies has led to this body composed of bodies. Just as numerous minerals, cells, exogenous
microorganisms, mitochondria, oxygen, lactic acid, sugars, contact lenses, and so on go up to constitute my body
in their choreographic co-actualisation so to does this process give rise to a similar shift in scale. In
my body the shift is that from the molecular to the “molar” scale but in this case, the shift is from the “molar” to the
hyper-scale. The radiation unleashed by the Fukushima meltdown exists on a geological spatial and temporal
scale that the human animal is not equipped to readily perceive.¶ Such hyperobjects proliferate around us and are
equally hard to detect in our proximal engagement with the various worlds we inhabit. They range
from incidents like
Fukushima to the more encompassing threats of the collapse of capital, ecocide and cosmic death that
I mentioned above. The reason I have focussed on Fukushima is to illustrate the point that the catastrophe has already taken
place. In relation to the example of Fukushima the catastrophe occurred two years ago but will be ongoing for
centuries. That I can sit here in all my relative comfort and enjoy the benefits of being a white male in Britain does
not mean that I am any the less existing after the catastrophe. Catastrophes are discreet events that
explode into being, even if such an explosion can seem very slow as they happen on the scale of vast
temporalities. In the last analysis that can’t be carried out, the cosmos itself exists as one huge catastrophe; the moment of the big bang
being the cosmic event, everything else since being the unfolding of that catastrophic actualisation working itself out.
Anthropocentrism is THE original hierarchy that makes racism, sexism, and
other “-isms” possible—if the future is not to endlessly repeat the horrors of
the past, then we NEED a politics that can respect more than human life – the
affirmatives focus on race only REPLICATES the violence of
anthropocentrism – only the alternative solves
Best 7 (Steven, Chair of Philosophy at UT-EP, JCAS 5.2)
While a welcome advance over the anthropocentric conceit that only humans shape human actions, the environmental determinism approach
typically fails to emphasize the crucial role that animals play in human history, as well as how the human exploitation of animals is a key
cause of hierarchy, social conflict, and environmental breakdown. A core thesis of what I call “animal standpoint theory” is that animals
have been key driving and shaping forces of human thought, psychology, moral and social life, and
history overall. More specifically, animal standpoint theory argues that the oppression of humanover human has deep
roots in the oppression of human over animal. In this context, Charles Patterson’s recent book, The Eternal Treblinka: Our
Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, articulates the animal standpoint in a powerful form with revolutionary implications. The main
argument of Eternal Treblinka is that the human
domination of animals, such as it emerged some ten thousand years ago with
the first hierarchical domination and laid the groundwork for
patriarchy, slavery, warfare, genocide, and other systems of violence and power. A key implication of Patterson’s theory is
that human liberation is implausible if disconnected from animal liberation, and thus humanism -the rise of agricultural society, was
a speciesist philosophy that constructs a hierarchal relationship privileging superior humans over inferior animals and reduces animals to
resources for human use -- collapses
under the weight of its logical contradictions. Patterson lays out his complex
and speciesism have direct and profound
connections to slavery, colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism. In Part II, he shows how these connections exist not only in the
realm of ideology – as conceptual systems of justifying and underpinning domination and hierarchy – but also in systems of
technology, such that the tools and techniques humans devised for the rationalized mass confinement and slaughter of animals were
holistic argument in three parts. In Part I, he demonstrates that animal exploitation
mobilized against human groups for the same ends. Finally, in the fascinating interviews and narratives of Part III, Patterson describes how
personal experience with German Nazism prompted Jewish to take antithetical paths: whereas most retreated to an insular identity and
dogmatic emphasis on the singularity of Nazi evil and its tragic experience, others recognized the profound similarities between how Nazis
treated their human captives and how humanity as a whole treats other animals, an epiphany that led them to adopt vegetarianism, to become
advocates for the animals, and develop a far broader and more inclusive ethic informed by universal compassion for all suffering and
oppressed beings. The Origins of Hierarchy "As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other" –Pythagoras It is little understood
that the first form of oppression, domination, and hierarchy involves human domination over animals Patterson’s thesis stands in bold
contrast to the Marxist theory that the domination over nature is fundamental to the domination over other humans. It differs as well from the
social ecology position of Murray Bookchin that domination over humans brings about alienation from the natural world, provokes
hierarchical mindsets and institutions, and is the root of the long-standing western goal to “dominate” nature. In the case of Marxists,
anarchists, and so many others, theorists typically don’t even mention human domination of animals, let
alone assign it causal primacy or significance. In Patterson’s model, however, the human subjugation of animals is the
first form of hierarchy and it paves the way for all other systems of domination such as include
patriarchy, racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. As he puts it, “the exploitation of animals
was the model and inspiration for the atrocities people committed against each other, slavery and the Holocaust being but two of the more
dramatic examples.” Hierarchy
emerged with the rise of agricultural society some ten thousand years
ago. In the shift from nomadic hunting and gathering bands to settled agricultural practices,
humans began to establish their dominance over animals through “domestication.” In animal
domestication (often a euphemism disguising coercion and cruelty), humans
began to exploit animals for purposes such as
they gained increasing control over the lives and
labor power of animals, humans bred them for desired traits and controlled them in various ways, such as
castratingmales to make them more docile.To conquer, enslave, and claim animals as their own
property, humans developed numerous technologies, such as pens, cages, collars, ropes, chains, and
branding irons. The domination of animals paved the way for the domination of humans. The sexual subjugation of
women, Patterson suggests, was modeled afterthe domestication of animals, such that men began to control
women’s reproductive capacity, to enforce repressive sexual norms, and to rape them as they
forced breedingin their animals. Not coincidentally, Patterson argues, slavery emerged in the same region of the
Middle East that spawned agriculture, and, in fact, developed as an extension of animal domestication
practices. In areas like Sumer, slaves were managed like livestock, and males were castrated and
forced to work along with females. In the fifteenth century, when Europeans began the colonization of
Africa and Spain introduced the first international slave markets, the metaphors, models, and
technologies used to exploit animal slaves were applied with equal cruelty and force to human slaves.
Stealing Africans from their native environment and homeland, breaking up families who scream in
anguish, wrapping chains around slaves’ bodies, shipping them in cramped quarters across
continents for weeks or months with no regard for their needs or suffering, branding their skin with a hot
iron to mark them as property, auctioning them as servants, breeding them for service and labor,
exploiting them for profit, beating them in rages of hatred and anger, and killing them in vast numbers– all
these horrors and countless others inflicted on black slaves were developed and perfected centuries
earlier through animal exploitation. As the domestication of animals developed in agricultural society, humans lost the
obtaining food, milk, clothing, plowing, and transportation. As
intimate connections they once had with animals. By the time of Aristotle, certainly, and with the bigoted assistance of medieval theologians
such as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, western humanity had developed an explicitly hierarchical worldview – that came to be known
as the “Great Chain of Being” – used to position humans as the end to which all other beings were mere means. Patterson underscores the
crucial point that the domination of human over human and its exercise through slavery, warfare, and genocide typically begins with the
denigration of victims. But the means and methods of dehumanization are derivative, for speciesism provided the conceptual paradigm that
encouraged, sustained, and justified western brutality toward other peoples. “Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master
species,” Patterson writes, “our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The
study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the
same to them.” Whether the conquerors are European imperialists, American colonialists, or German Nazis, western
aggressors
engaged in wordplay before swordplay, vilifying their victims – Africans, Native Americans, Filipinos, Japanese,
Vietnamese, Iraqis, and other unfortunates – with opprobrious terms such as “rats,” “pigs,” “swine,” “monkeys,” “beasts,” and
“filthy animals.”Once perceived as brute beasts or sub-humans occupying a lower evolutionary rung
than white westerners, subjugated peoples were treated accordingly; once characterized as animals, they could
be hunted down like animals. The first exiles from the moral community, animals provided a convenient discard bin for oppressors to dispose
the oppressed. The connections are clear: “For a civilization built on the exploitation and slaughter of animals, the `lower’ and more
degraded the human victims are, the easier it is to kill them.” Thus, colonialism, as Patterson describes, was
a “natural
extension of human supremacy over the animal kingdom. For just as humans had subdued animals with their
superior intelligence and technologies, so many Europeans believed that the white race had proven its superiority by bringing the “lower
races” under its command. There are important parallels between speciesism and sexism and racism in the elevation of white male
rationality to the touchstone of moral worth. The
arguments European colonialists used to legitimate exploiting
Africans – that they were less than human and inferior to white Europeans in ability to reason –
are the very same justifications humans use to trap, hunt, confine, and kill animals. Oncewestern norms of
rationality were defined as the essence of humanity and social normality, by first using non-human animals as the
measure of alterity, it was a short step to begin viewing odd, different, exotic, and eccentric peoples and types asnonor sub-human.Thus, the same criterion created to exclude animals from humans was also used to ostracize blacks, women, and
numerous other groups from “humanity.”
This Anthropocentric ordering is the foundation of the war machine and drives the
exclusion of populations based on race, ethnicity and gender
Kochi, 2K9 (Tarik, Sussex law school, Species war: Law, Violence and Animals, Law Culture and Humanities Oct 5.3)
Grotius and Hobbes are sometimes described as setting out a prudential approach, 28 or a natural law of minimal content 29 because in contrast
to Aristotelian or Thomastic legal and political theory their attempt to derive the legitimacy of the state and sovereign order relies less upon a
thick con-ception of the good life and is more focussed upon basic human needs such as survival. In the context of a response to religious
civil war such an approach made sense in that often thick moral and religious conceptions of the good life (for example, those held
by competing Christian Confessions) often drove conflict and violence. Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that the categories of
“survival,” “preservation of life” and “bare life” are neutral categories. Rather survival, preservation of life and bare life as
expressed by the Westphalian theoretical tradition already contain distinctions of value – in particular, the specific
distinction of value between human and non-human life . “Bare life” in this sense is not “bare” but contains within it a
distinction of value between the worth of human life placed above and beyond the worth of non-human animal life. In this respect
bare life within this tradition contains within it a hidden conception of the good life. The foundational moment of the modern
juridical conception of the law of war already contains within it the operation of species war. The Westphalian tradition puts
itself forward as grounding the legitimacy of violence upon the preservation of life, however its concern for life is already
marked by a hierarchy of value in which non-human animal life is violently used as the “raw material” for preserving human life.
Grounded upon, but concealing the human-animal distinction, the Westphalian conception of war makes a double move: it excludes the
killing of animals from its definition of “war proper,” and, through rendering dominant the modern juridical definition of “war
proper” the tradition is able to further institutionalize and normalize a particular conception of the good life. Following from this
original distinction of life-value realized through the juridical language of war were other forms of human life whose lives were considered to be
of a lesser value under a European, Christian, “secular” 30 natural law conception of the good life. Underneath this concern with the
preservation of life in general stood veiled preferences over what particu-lar forms of life (such as racial conceptions of human
life) and ways of living were worthy of preservation, realization and elevation . The business contracts of early capitalism, 31 the
power of white males over women and children, and, especially in the colonial context, the sanctity of European life over nonEuropean and Christian lives over non-Christian heathens and Muslims, were some of the dominant forms of life preferred for
preservation within the early modern juridical ordering of war.
The affirmative trades off with flat ontology. Any demand for human
inclusion is a link to the criticism
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College, The Democracy of Objects, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dodidx/democracy-of-objects.pdf?c=ohp;idno=9750134.0001.001)
Flat ontology is a complex
variety of ontological theses under a single term. First, due to the split
characteristic of all objects, flat ontology rejects any ontology of transcendence or presence that privileges
Onticology proposes what might be called, drawing on DeLanda's term yet broadening it, a flat ontology.
philosophical concept that bundles together a
one¶ sort of entity as the origin of all others and as fully present to itself . In this regard, onticology proposes an
ontology resonant with Derrida's critique of metaphysics insofar as, in its treatment of beings as withdrawn, it undermines any pretensions to
presence within being. If
this thesis is persuasive, then metaphysics can no longer function as a synonym
for “metaphysics of presence”, nor substance as a synonym for “presence”,¶ but rather an ontology
has been formulated that overcomes the primacy¶ of presence. In this section, I articulate this logic in terms of
Lacan's¶ graphs of sexuation. Here I believe that those graphs have little to tell us about masculine or feminine sexuality—for reasons I will
outline in what follows—but a great deal to tell us about ontologies of immanence or flat ontologies and ontologies of transcendence. Second ,
flat ontology signifies that the world or the universe does not exist. I will develop the argument¶ for
this strange claim in what follows, but for the moment it is important¶ to recognize the definite
article in this claim. The claim that the world doesn't exist is the claim that there is no super-object
that gathers all other objects together in a single, harmonious unity. Third, following Harman, flat ontology
refuses to privilege the subject-object, human-world relation as either a) a form of metaphysical
relation different in kind from other relations between objects, and that b) refuses to treat the
subject-object relation as implicitly included in every form of object-object relation. To be sure, flat
ontology readily recognizes that humans have unique powers and capacities and that how humans
relate to the world is a topic more than worthy of investigation, yet nothing about this establishes
that humans must be included in every inter-object relation or that how humans relate to objects
differs in kind from how other entities relate to objects. Finally, fourth, flat ontology argues that all
entities are on equal ontological footing and that no entity, whether artificial or natural, symbolic
or physical, possesses greater ontological dignity than other objects.While indeed some objects might
influence the collectives to which they belong to a greater extent than others, it doesn't follow from
this that these objects are more real than others. Existence, being, is a binary such that something
either¶ is or is not.
Flat ontology key
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 215-217
The first step in developing such a framework lies in overcoming human exceptionalism. As I argued in
The Democracy of Objects, ontology must be flattened (see Bryant 2011: ch. 6). Rather than bifurcating being
into two domains — the domain of objects and the domain of subiects, the domain of nature and the
domain of culture — we must instead conceive of being as a single flat plane, a single nature, on
which humans are beings among other beings. While humans are certainly exceptional, for us they
are not ontologically exceptional. To be sure, they differ in their powers and capacities from other
beings, but they are not lords or hierarchs over all other beings. They are beings that dwell among
other beings, that act on them and that are acted upon by them. As extended mind theorists such as Andy
Clark have argued — but also the new materialist feminists and actor-network theorists such as Latour mind and culture
are not special domains that can be separated from the other non-human entities of the world for
special investigation. Rather, we are intimately bound up with the other entities of the world,
coupled and conditioned by them in all sorts of ways. Above all, we must avoid treating the world
as a field given for the contemplative gaze of humans. A world is something within which we act
and engage, not something we passively contemplate. A flat ontology must therefore be conceived
along the lines of Lacan's famous Borromean knot (see Figure 7.1). A Borromean knot consists of three
inter-linked rings of string fastened together in such a way that if any one ring is severed, the other
two fall away. Lacan indexes each of the three rings to one of his three orders: the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary. With
the Borromean knot, Lacan's work undergoes a funda- mental transformation. In his earlier work, one of the three orders had
always been privileged as dominating and overcoding the others. In his earliest work, the imaginary dominated the real and the
symbolic. In the work of his middle period, it was the symbolic that overcoded the real and the imaginary. In his third phase, it
was the real that overcoded the symbolic and the imaginary. With the Borromean knot, no order overcodes the
others. Rather, they are all now treated as being on equal footing. This is how we need to think
about the order of being. The domain of the real indexes machines. Machines exist in their own
right, regardless of whether anyone registers them or discourses about them. The domain of the
symbolic refers to the plane of expression, or how beings are discoursed about, signified, imbued
with meaning, and so on. Finally, the domain of the imaginary refers to the way in which one
machine encounters another under conditions of structural openness and operational closure.
Situated within the framework of the Borromean knot, we can simultaneously investigate how a machine is
ideologically coded as in the case of Baudrillard's analysis of objects in System of Objects, how a
machine is phenomenologically encountered by another machine, and how a machine is a real,
independent being in its own right that produces effects irreducible to how it is signified or
phenomenologically given.
Our alternative is to reject the question of the affirmative. This movement
away from correlationism is a necessary philosophical move.
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. 2011. “Levi
Democracy Of objects”. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/9750134.0001.001/1:4/.
It is unlikely that object-oriented ontologists are going to persuade epistemological realists or antirealists that they have found a way of surmounting the epistemological problems that arise out of
the two-world model of being any time soon. Quoting Max Planck, Marshall and Eric McLuhan write, “A new
scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but
rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”.6 This
appears to be how it is in philosophy as well. New innovations in philosophy do¶ not so much refute
their opponents as simply cease being preoccupied by certain questions and problems. In many
respects, object-oriented ontology, following the advice of Richard Rorty, simply tries to step out of
the debate altogether. Object-oriented ontologists have grown weary of a debate that has gone on
for over two centuries, believe that the possible variations of these positions have exhausted
themselves, and want to move on to talking about other things. If this is not good enough for the
epistemology police, we are more than happy to confess our guilt and embrace our alleged lack of
rigor and continue in harboring our illusions that we can speak of a reality independent of humans.
However, such a move of simply moving¶ on is not unheard of in philosophy. No one has yet
refuted the solipsist, nor the Berkeleyian subjective idealist, yet neither solipsism nor the
extremes¶ of Berkeleyian idealism have ever been central and ongoing debates in philosophy.
Philosophers largely just ignore these positions or use them¶ as cautionary examples to be avoided.
Why not the same in the endless debates over access?
Your attempt to persuade institutions through ethical appeal guarantees your
politics fails. Alt is a prerequisite.
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 73
In light of the concept of thermodynamic politics, we can see the common shortcoming of protest
politics or what might be called semiotic politics. Semiotic politics is semiotic in the sense that relies
on the use of signs, either attempting to change institutions through communicative persuasion or
engaging in activities of critique as in the case of hermeneutics of suspicion that, through a critique
of ideology, desire, power, and so on, show that relations of domination and oppression are at work
in something we hitherto believed to be just. Semiotic politics is confused in that it is premised on
producing change through ethical persuasion, and thereby assumes that institutional-machines
such as corporations, governments, factories, and so on, are structurally open to the same sorts of
communicative flows as humans. It believes that we can persuade these organizations to change
their operations on ethical grounds. At best , however, these entities are indifferent to such arguments ,
while at worst they are completely blind to even the occurrence of such appeals as machines such as corporations are only structurally open to
information events of profit and loss.
explain calculus to a cat.
Persuading a corporation through ethical appeals is about as effective to
Our way of accepting OOO key to shifting from anthro.
Mylius 13 (Ben Mylius, March 10, 2013, law graduate, anthrodecentrism object oriented ontology and refining the goals of ecocreative writing
http://ecologeur.com/post/45014342168/anthrodecentrism-object-oriented-ontology-and-refining)
‘Ontology is the philosophical study of existence. Object-oriented ontology puts things at the centre of this study. Its proponents
contend that nothing has special status, but that everything exists equally -plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, and sandstone, for
example. In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as
constructions of human behaviour and society (social relativism). OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at
all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves.’ For
anyone interested in a more philosophically-oriented explanation, Wikipedia’s entry here is unusually helpful as a starting-point; Levi Bryant’s
‘Manifesto for object-oriented ontology’ is even more so, as is his book The Democracy of Objects, available as an ebook here. I find this
movement particularly interesting because it represents an attempt to think other than anthropocentrically: to develop a way of
seeing and thinking that avoid placing subjects in general, and human subjects in particular, at its centre. This is also where the
resonance lies with ecocreative writing, which I see as an attempt in a creative mode to do the same thing. The challenge, as it has always
been, is to find the way of theorising this ‘alternative to anthropocentrism’ in a coherent and non-problematic way. Perhaps the key
hurdle for the concept of ‘ecocentrism’ in object-oriented terms is that it proposes some overarching, unified ‘One’ (the ‘eco’) that might
replace the ‘anthro’ at the centre of our thought. My sense is that this might be avoided if we were able to sustain an image of an
ecosystem as a process - an assemblage (Deleuze), ‘mesh’ (Morton) or ‘collective’ (Latour) - rather than a thing. But the connotations
of any kind of ‘centrism’ (what is at the centre?) make this difficult.
Case
OCS wrecks oceans and the wildlife
DOW ‘12 (DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE, "OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF DRILLING",
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=vandq=cache:0hRYuUTRu6wJ:www.defenders.org/publications/impacts_of_outer_continenta
l_shelf_drilling.pdf+andhl=enandgl=usandpid=blandsrcid=ADGEESimvF33YzLvIENzYCceMo6rbZBgGL_qq52L3lPQbQp9oC
H-vySHbDLITJDlQ61o__xCzITqYc56OWssn5OEjL5C7HATlZWYsBP4Ec9SoxALLnh9Rk0NY_ANjAdUgfb3vh0Ce31andsig=AHIEtbSgOUGu_Q4pEWJM2fsBDGMuNjtfvA
Ocean Floor. Drilling infrastructure
permanently alters ocean floor habitats . Drill rig footprints,
undersea pipelines, dredging ship channels, and dumped drill cuttings-- the rock material dug out
of the oil or gas well-- are often contaminated with drilling fluid used to lubricate and regulate the pressure in
drilling operations. The fluid contains petroleum products and heavy metals. Strewn on the ocean floor, contaminated
sediments can be carried by currents over a mile from the rig, sharply reducing populations of
small bottom dwelling creatures that are important to the rest of the food chain and biomagnifying
toxic contaminants in fish we eat.
Gulf ecosystems are critical biodiversity hotspots and have a key effect on the
world’s oceans
Brenner ‘8 – (Jorge Brenner, “Guarding the Gulf of Mexico’s valuable resources”, SciDevNet, 3-14-2008,
http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/guarding-the-gulf-of-mexico-s-valuable-resources.html)
The Gulf Of Mexico is rich in biodiversity and unique habitats, and hosts the only known nesting beach of
Kemp's Ridley, the world's most endangered sea turtle. The Gulf's circulation pattern gives it biological and
socioeconomic importance: water from the Caribbean enters from the south through the Yucatan Channel
between Cuba and Mexico and, after warming in the basin, leaves through the northern Florida Strait
between the United States and Cuba to form the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic that helps to regulate
the climate of western Europe.
Collapse of ocean ecosystems ends life on Earth
Craig 3 (Robin Kundis, Associate Prof Law, Indiana U School Law, Lexis)
Biodiversity and ecosystem function arguments for conserving marine ecosystems also exist, just as they do for terrestrial ecosystems, but these arguments have thus
far rarely been raised in political debates. For example, besides significant tourism values - the most economically valuable ecosystem service coral reefs provide,
worldwide - coral reefs protect against storms and dampen other environmental fluctuations, services worth more than ten times the reefs' value for food production.
n856 Waste treatment is another significant, non-extractive ecosystem function that intact coral reef ecosystems provide. n857 More generally, "ocean
ecosystems play a major role in the global geochemical cycling of all the elements that represent the
basic building blocks of living organisms, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, as well as other less
abundant but necessary elements." n858 In a very real and direct sense, therefore, human degradation of marine
ecosystems impairs the planet's ability to support life. Maintaining biodiversity is often critical to
maintaining the functions of marine ecosystems. Current evidence shows that, in general, an ecosystem's ability to keep functioning in
the face of disturbance is strongly dependent on its biodiversity, "indicating that more diverse ecosystems are more stable." n859 Coral reef ecosystems are
particularly dependent on their biodiversity. [*265] Most ecologists agree that the complexity of interactions and degree of interrelatedness among component
species is higher on coral reefs than in any other marine environment. This implies that the ecosystem functioning that produces the most highly valued components is
also complex and that many otherwise insignificant species have strong effects on sustaining the rest of the reef system. n860 Thus, maintaining and restoring the
biodiversity of marine ecosystems is critical to maintaining and restoring the ecosystem services that they provide. Non-use biodiversity values for marine ecosystems
have been calculated in the wake of marine disasters, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. n861 Similar calculations could derive preservation values for marine
wilderness. However, economic value, or economic value equivalents, should not be "the sole or even primary justification for conservation of ocean ecosystems.
Ethical arguments also have considerable force and merit." n862 At the forefront of such arguments should be a recognition of how little we know about the sea - and
about the actual effect of human activities on marine ecosystems. The United States has traditionally failed to protect marine ecosystems because it was difficult to
detect anthropogenic harm to the oceans, but we now know that such harm is occurring - even though we are not completely sure about causation or about how to fix
every problem. Ecosystems like the NWHI coral reef ecosystem should inspire lawmakers and policymakers to admit that most of the time we really do not know
what we are doing to the sea and hence should be preserving marine wilderness whenever we can - especially when the United States has within its territory relatively
pristine marine ecosystems that may be unique in the world. We may not know much about the sea, but we do know this much: if
kill ourselves, and we will take most of the biosphere with us.
we kill the ocean we
Off Shore Wind
K
The focus on what is just offshore puts the materiality of the ocean in the
background and ensures correlationism.
Stacy Alaimo has published many books, and writes and speak about new materialism, material feminisms, environmental
science studies, and her concept of "trans-corporeality," while she undertakes new projects that explore marine animal studies,
science studies, and posthumanism. 2013 [“Violet-Black: Ecologies of the Abyssal Zone." Prismatic Ecologies: Ecotheory
Beyond Green, edited by Jeffrey Cohen, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.]/sbhag 7.9.2014
A violet-black ecology hovers in the bathypelagic, abyssopelagic, and hadal zones, the three regions of the deep seas, 1000 meters down and much deeper, where sunlight cannot descend.
The violet-black depths--cold, dark regions under the crushing weight of the water column--were
long thought to be “azoic,” or devoid of life. It is not surprising that Edward Forbes’ azoic theory of the 1840s (preceded by that of Henry de la Beche a
decade earlier) stood as the accepted doctrine for a quarter of a century, since it is difficult for terrestrial creatures to imagine what could possibly survive in the unfathomable seas. William J.
scientists “dismissed the abyss (a dismissive word in some respects) as inert and
irrelevant, as geologically dead and having only a thin population of bizarre fish”1 Even as deep sea
creatures have been brought to the surface, it remains convenient to assume that the bathyl, abyssl, and hadal
zones are empty, void, null--an abyss of concern. The deep seas epitomize how most ocean waters
exist beyond state borders, legal protection, and cultural imaginaries. Even as some marine areas
Broad argues that generations of
such as coastal zones are considered inexhaustibly abundant, the open seas have long been
considered empty space . As Philip Steinberg argues, the social construction of the ocean in industrial capitalism has been that of a “vast void,” an “empty transportation
emphasis on the transportation surface here neglects vertical zones in favor of
horizontal trajectories, making the deep seas the void of the void. Such a colossal, global, oceanic void is of an entirely different
surface, beyond the space of social relations.”2 The
scale than Derrida’s domestic encounter with the gaze of his cat, certainly. And yet Derrida’s ruminations are already drenched in the language of the depths, as he describes the question of
human and nonhuman subjectivity as “immense and abyssal” requiring that he wrestle with the “several tentacles” of philosophies which become, together, “a single living body at bottom.”3 If
we shift Derrida’s ruminations on the “animal abyss” from an encounter with the gaze of a specific animal to the collective “composition” (in Bruno Latour’s terms) of the vast abyssal zone and
its surrounding territories, 4 we discover the same sort of vertiginous recognition that there is, indeed, “being rather than nothing.” But what does it mean for the abyssal being to be or become
“too much”? When historic expeditions have dredged up creatures from the depths, the profusion of animals has been met with astonishment. The British H.M.S. Challenger, sailing from 1872 to
1876, hauled up “tens of thousands of animals, some writhing and squirming on deck,” and identified 4,717 new species, giant worms and slugs, spindly crabs and prawns, delicate sponges and
sea lilies.”5 The Danish Galathea, from 1950 to 1952, also dredged up thousands of creatures estimated to be part of a “global mass of deep diversity whose ranks held as many as ten million
The profusion of creaturely life should not be surprising
given the sheer magnitude of the violet-black zones of the ocean. The deep sea comprises, by volume, 78.5% of the planet’s habitat, a
stunning mass compared to only 21% of the rest of the sea and the paltry .5% of land habitats. 7 Rather than scrutinize deep sea creatures as they
writhe and squirm in suffocating air and glaring light, a violet-black ecology, would descend, in highly
mediated ways, to zones of darkness to witness diverse animals in their own watery worlds, but it
species—far more than the million or so varieties of life identified on land.”6
would also grapple with the watery “environment” itself . As the contemplation of the deep seas is
always already a politically charged, scientifically-mediated process —partly because of the
staggering costs of even the most basic investigations conducted at these depths---it exemplifies Bruno Latour’s call
to “compose the common world from disjointed pieces.”8 As a new materialist endeavor, a violet-black ecology would attempt
to understand the water of the abyssal zone as being rather than nothing, as substance rather than
background, as a significant part of the composition. At the turn of the 21st century scientists and
environmentalists warn of the devastating ecological effects of ocean acidification, massive overfishing, bottom trawling, deep sea
mining, shark finning, and decades of dumping toxic and radioactive waste into the oceans. Marine science, which is still in its infancy, struggles to keep
up with the devastating effects of capitalist waste and plunder as countless species may be rendered extinct before they are even discovered. William Beebe’s worry, however, that
biology would become “colorless” and “aridly scientific,” would be assuaged by the early 21st century representations of sea creatures in which science,
aesthetics, and politics swirl together. The massive, international, decade-long Census of Marine Life, for example, produced not only a treasure trove of scientific disclosures but a vibrant
profusion of still and moving images for wide audiences. While the Census of Marine Life’s gallery of photos on their web site and Claire Nouvian’s stunning photographic collection The Deep:
Extraordinary Creatures from the Abyss attempt to gain support for deep sea conservation by featuring newly discovered life forms, it may be worthwhile to scrutinize what is intentionally out of
focus in their photographic compositions—the violet-black background of the photos. What possibilities does this eerie and entrancing hue pose for new materialist and posthumanist ecologies of
the depths? And how do the prismatic bioluminescent displays of creatures in the abyss provoke recognitions of the multitude of aquatic modes of being, communicating, and knowing?
Violet-black ecologies of the abyssal zones entice us to descend, rather than transcend, to unmoor
ourselves from terrestrial and humanist presumptions, as sunlight, air, and horizons disappear,
replaced by dark liquid expanses and the flashing spectrum of light produced by abyssal creatures.
The affirmative judges the ocean by the way that humankind perceives it
which is anthropocentric and inevitably fails because the ocean is withdrawn.
Morton ‘11 [Timothy, Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, Speculations 2, pg.
216-219, http://www.speculations-journal.org/storage/Morton_Sublime%20Objects_v2.pdf] //JC//
According to OOO, objects
all have four aspects. They withdraw from access by other objects. They
appear to other objects. They are specific entities. And that’s not all: they really exist. Aesthetically, then,
objects are uncanny beasts. If they were pieces of music, they might be some impossible combination
of slapstick sound effects, Sufi singing, Mahler and hardcore techno. If they were literature, they might exist
somewhere between The Commedia Dell’ Arte, The Cloud of Unknowing, War and Peace and Waiting for Godot. Pierrot Lunaire might be a
object-oriented sublime doesn’t come from
some beyond, because this beyond turns out to be a kind of optical illusion of correlationism.
There’s nothing underneath the Universe of objects. Or not even nothing, if you prefer thinking it
that way. The sublime resides in particularity, not in some distant beyond. And the sublime is
generalizable to all objects, insofar as they are all what I’ve called strange strangers, that is, alien to
themselves and to one another in an irreducible way.26 Of the two dominant theories of the sublime, we have a
choice between authority and freedom, between exteriority and interiority. But both choices are
correlationist. That is, both theories of the sublime have to do with human subjec- tive access to
objects. On the one hand we have Edmund Burke, for whom the sublime is shock and awe: an
experience of terrifying authority to which you must submit.27 On the other hand, we have Immanuel Kant, for whom
the sublime is an experience of inner freedom based on some kind of temporary cognitive failure. Try counting up to infinity. You
good metaphor for grotesque, frightening, hilarious, sublime objects. The
can’t. But that is precisely what infinity is. The power of your mind is revealed in its failure to sum
infinity. 28 Both sublimes assume that: (1) the world is specially or uniquely accessible to humans; (2)
the sublime uniquely correlates the world to humans; and (3) what’s important about the sublime is
a reaction in the subject. The Burkean sublime is simply craven cowering in the presence of authority: the law, the might of a tyrant
God, the power of kings, and the threat of execution. No real knowledge of the authority is assumed—terrified
ignorance will do. Burke argues outright that the sublime is always a safe pain, mediated by the
glass panels of the aesthetic. (That’s why horror movies, a truly speculative genre, try to bust through this aesthetic screen at every
opportunity.) What we need is a more speculative sublime that actually tries to become intimate with
the other, and here Kant is at any rate preferable to Burke. Those more sympathetic to Kant might argue that there is some faint echo of
reality in the experience of the sublime. Certainly the aesthetic dimension is a way in which the normal subject–object dichotomy is suspended in
Kant. And the
sublime is as it were the essential subroutine of the aesthetic experience, allowing us to
experience the power of our mind by running up against some external obstacle. Kant references telescopes
and microscopes that expand human perception beyond its limits.29 His marvelous passage on the way one’s mind can encompass human height
and by simple multiplication comprehend the vastness of “Milky Way systems” is sublimely expressive of the human capac- ity to think.30 It’s
also true that the Kantian sublime inspired the powerful speculations of Schelling, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and more work needs to be done
teasing out how those philosophers begin to think a reality beyond the hu- man (the work of Grant and Woodard stands out in particular at
present).31 It’s true that in §28 of the Third Critique, Kant does talk about how we experience the ‘dynamical sublime’ in the terror of vastness,
for instance of the ocean or the sky. But this isn’t anything like intimacy with the sky or the ocean. In fact, in the next sections, Kant explicitly
rules out anything like a scientific or even probing analysis of what might exist in the sky. As
soon as we think of the ocean as a
body of water containing fish and whales, rather than as a canvas for our psyche; as soon as we
think of the sky as the real Universe of stars and black holes, we aren’t experiencing the sublime
(§29): Therefore, when we call the sight of the starry sky sublime, we must not base our judgment upon
any concepts of worlds that are inhab- ited by rational beings, and then [conceive of] the bright dots
that we see occupying the space above us as being these worlds’ suns, moved in orbits prescribed
for them with great purposiveness; but we must base our judgment regarding merely on how we
see it, as a vast vault encompassing everything, and merely under this presentation may we posit
the sublimity that a pure aesthetic judgment attributes to this object. In the same way, when we judge
the sight of the ocean we must not do so on the basis of how we think , it, enriched with all sorts of
knowledge which we possess (but which is not contained in the direct intuition), e.g., as a vast realm
of aquatic creatures, or as the great reservoir supplying the water for the vapors that impregnate
the air with clouds for the benefit of the land , or again as an element that, while separating
continents from one another, yet makes possible the greatest communication among them; for all
such judgments will be teleological. Instead we must be able to view the ocean as poets do, merely in
terms of what manifests itself to the eye—e.g., if we observe it while it is calm, as a clear mirror of
water bounded only by the sky; or, if it turbulent, as being like an abyss threatening to engulf
every- thing—and yet find it sublime.32 While we may share Kant’s anxiety about teleology, his main point is less than
satisfactory from a speculative realist point of view. We positively shouldn’t speculate when we experience the
sublime. The sublime is precisely the lack of speculation
Ontology comes first. Objects precede our knowledge of them. All other ways
of relating to the world are incorrect an anthropocentric.
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. 2011. “Levi
Democracy Of objects”. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/9750134.0001.001/1:4/.
Yet in
all of the heated debates surrounding epistemology that have cast nearly every discipline in turmoil, we
nonetheless seem to miss the point that the question of the object is not an epistemological question,
not a question of how we know the object, but a question of what objects are. The being of objects is an issue
distinct from the question of our knowledge of objects. Here, of course, it seems obvious that in order to discuss the
being of objects we must first know objects. And if this is the case, it follows as a matter of course that epistemology or questions of knowledge
must precede ontology. However, I hope to show in what follows that questions of ontology are both irreducible to questions of epistemology and
that questions of ontology must precede questions of epistemology or questions of our access to objects.What an object is cannot be reduced to
our access¶ to objects. And as we will see in what follows, that access is highly limited . Nonetheless,
while our access to objects
is highly limited, we can still say a great deal about the being of objects.¶ However, despite the limitations of
access, we must avoid, at all costs, the thesis that objects are what our access to objects gives us. As Graham Harman has argued,
objects are not the given. Not at all. As such, this¶ book defends a robust realism.Yet, and this is crucial to everything that follows, the
realism defended here is not an epistemological realism, but an ontological realism. Epistemological realism argues that our representations and
language are accurate mirrors of the world as it actually is, regardless of whether or not we exist. It seeks to distinguish between true
representations and phantasms. Ontological
realism, by contrast, is not a thesis about our knowledge of
objects, but about the being of objects themselves, whether or not we exist to represent them. It is
the thesis that the world is composed¶ of objects, that these objects are varied and include entities
as diverse as mind, language, cultural and social entities, and objects independent of humans such
as galaxies, stones, quarks, tardigrades and so on. Above all, ontological realisms refuse to treat
objects as constructions of humans. While it is true, I will argue, that all objects translate one another, the objects that
are translated are irreducible to their translations. As we will see, ontological realism thoroughly refutes
epistemological realism
or¶ Introduction: Towards a Finally Subjectless Object 19¶ what ordinarily goes by the pejorative title of
“naïve realism”. Initially it might sound as if the distinction between ontological and epistemological realism is a difference that makes no
difference but, as I hope to show, this distinction has far ranging consequences for how we pose a number of questions and theorize a variety of
phenomena.¶
One of the problematic consequences that follows from the hegemony that epistemology
currently enjoys in philosophy is that it condemns philosophy to a thoroughly anthropocentric
reference.
Because the ontological question of substance is elided into the epistemological question of our knowledge of substance, all
discussions of substance necessarily contain a human reference.The subtext or fine print surrounding our discussions of substance always contain
reference to an implicit “for- us”.This is true even of the anti-humanist structuralists and post- structuralists who purport to dispense with the
subject in favor of various impersonal and anonymous social forces like language and structure that exceed the intentions of individuals. Here
we still remain in the orbit of¶ an anthropocentric universe insofar as society and culture are
human phenomena, and all of being is subordinated to these forces. Being is thereby reduced to what being is for us.¶ By contrast, this
book strives to think a subjectless object, or an object that is for-itself rather than an object that is an opposing pole before or in front of a subject.
Put differently, this essay attempts to think an object for-itself that isn't an object for the gaze of a subject, representation, or a cultural
discourse.This, in short, is what the democracy of objects means. The democracy of objects is not a political thesis to the effect that all objects
ought to be treated equally or that all objects ought to participate in human affairs.
The democracy of objects is the
ontological thesis that all objects , as Ian Bogost has so nicely put it, equally exist while they do not
exist equally. The claim that all objects equally exist is the claim that no object can be treated as
constructed by another object.The claim that objects do not exist equally is the claim that objects
contribute to collectives or assemblages to a greater and lesser degree. In short, no object such as
the subject or culture is the ground of all others. As such, The Democracy of Objects attempts to
think the being of objects unshackled from the gaze of humans in their being for-themselves.¶ 20 Levi
R. Bryant¶ Such a democracy, however, does not entail the exclusion of the human. Rather, what we get is a redrawing of distinctions and a
decentering of the human. The point is not that we should think objects rather than humans. Such a formulation is based on the premise that
humans constitute some special category that is other than objects, that objects are a pole opposed to humans, and therefore the formulation is
based on the premise that objects are correlates or poles opposing or standing-before humans. No, within the framework of onticology—my name
for the ontology that follows—there¶ is only one type of being: objects. As
a consequence, humans are not excluded, but
are rather objects among the various types of objects that exist or populate the world, each with
their own specific powers and capacities.
Ignoring hyperobjects results in billions of death.
James 13 (Arran, UK-based philosopher, graduate student of Critical Theory, and psychiatric nurse). “The catastrophic and the postapocalyptic,”http://syntheticzero.net/2013/08/21/the-catastrophic-and-the-post-apocalyptic/ August 21, 2013)//[AC]
There is a vast onto-cartography at work here that connects species of fish to coolant systems to hydrogen
molecules to legislation on nuclear safety; legislators, parliaments, regulatory bodies, anti-nuclear activists;
ideas like environmentalism; the food supply networks and geographic distribution of production centres; work practices;
capital investments and the wider financial markets as Tepco’s shares fall; and those networks that specifically
effect human beings in the exclusion area. After all, this exclusion zone has seen thousands of families
leave their homes, their jobs, their friends, and the possessions that had been rewarded to them as
recompense for their alienated labour. Consider that some of these people are still paying mortgages on homes they will
probably never be able to return to safely. And there remains one more reactor in the water that has not melted down but possibly will- if not by
human efforts to recover the fuel rods, then by the possibility of another unpredicted earthquake and/or tsunami. I don’t have the space or the
desire to trace the
onto-cartography of this disaster but it is clear that it includes both geological, ecological and
capitalist bodies; indeed, it is clear that the capitalist bodies might be the ones that are ultimately
responsible. According to Christina Consolo,¶ all this collateral damage will continue for decades, if not
centuries, even if things stay exactly the way they are now. But that is unlikely, as bad things happen like
natural disasters and deterioration with time…earthquakes, subsidence, and corrosion, to name a few. Every day that
goes by, the statistical risk increases for this apocalyptic scenario. No one can say or know how this will play out, except
that millions of people will probably die even if things stay exactly as they are, and billions could die
if things get any (here).¶ I raise the spectre of Fukushima as catastrophe and as apocalyptic because it accords to what
Timothy Morton has described as a hyperobject. In ‘Zero Landscapes in the time of hyperobjects’ Morton defines the states
that¶ Objects are beginning to compel us, from outside the wall. The objects we ignored for centuries,
the objects we created in the process of ignoring other ones: plutonium, global warming. I call them hyperobjects.
Hyperobjects are real objects that are massively distributed in time and space. Good examples would be global
warming and nuclear radiation. Hyperobjects are so vast, so long lasting, that they defy human time and
spatial scales. They wouldn’t fit in a landscape painting. They could never put you in the right mood. ¶ The ontocartography or
“map of entities” that we could trace in relation to Fukushima doesn’t just include all those bodies we have listed already but
also, and most importantly, it includes the radiation itself. Born of the unstable hybridisation of techno-materiality and geomateriality in pursuit of energy to satisfy the logic of the infinite growth of capital, the hyperobject of Fukushima’s radiation was
unleashed and now exists independently of those techno-geo-capitalist assemblages. That this radiation
exists on a huge spatio-temporal scale means that it exists beyond our evolved capacity to think. We evolved to cope with
and to handle a world of mid-sized objects, the very tools and raw materials that helped to build
Fukushima. In the language of transcorporealist thought: the weaving or interpenetration of various autonomous
ontological bodies has led to this body composed of bodies. Just as numerous minerals, cells, exogenous
microorganisms, mitochondria, oxygen, lactic acid, sugars, contact lenses, and so on go up to constitute my body
in their choreographic co-actualisation so to does this process give rise to a similar shift in scale. In
my body the shift is that from the molecular to the “molar” scale but in this case, the shift is from the “molar” to the
hyper-scale. The radiation unleashed by the Fukushima meltdown exists on a geological spatial and temporal
scale that the human animal is not equipped to readily perceive.¶ Such hyperobjects proliferate around us and are
equally hard to detect in our proximal engagement with the various worlds we inhabit. They range from incidents like
Fukushima to the more encompassing threats of the collapse of capital, ecocide and cosmic death that
I mentioned above. The reason I have focussed on Fukushima is to illustrate the point that the catastrophe has already taken
place. In relation to the example of Fukushima the catastrophe occurred two years ago but will be ongoing for
centuries. That I can sit here in all my relative comfort and enjoy the benefits of being a white male in Britain does
not mean that I am any the less existing after the catastrophe. Catastrophes are discreet events that
explode into being, even if such an explosion can seem very slow as they happen on the scale of vast
temporalities. In the last analysis that can’t be carried out, the cosmos itself exists as one huge catastrophe; the moment of the big bang
being the cosmic event, everything else since being the unfolding of that catastrophic actualisation working itself out.
Anthropocentrism is THE original hierarchy that makes racism, sexism, and
other “-isms” possible—if the future is not to endlessly repeat the horrors of
the past, then we NEED a politics that can respect more than human life – the
affirmatives focus on race only REPLICATES the violence of
anthropocentrism – only the alternative solves
Best 7 (Steven, Chair of Philosophy at UT-EP, JCAS 5.2)
While a welcome advance over the anthropocentric conceit that only humans shape human actions, the environmental determinism approach
typically fails to emphasize the crucial role that animals play in human history, as well as how the human exploitation of animals is a key
cause of hierarchy, social conflict, and environmental breakdown. A core thesis of what I call “animal standpoint theory” is that animals
have been key driving and shaping forces of human thought, psychology, moral and social life, and
history overall. More specifically, animal standpoint theory argues that the oppression of humanover human has deep
roots in the oppression of human over animal. In this context, Charles Patterson’s recent book, The Eternal Treblinka: Our
Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, articulates the animal standpoint in a powerful form with revolutionary implications. The main
argument of Eternal Treblinka is that the human
domination of animals, such as it emerged some ten thousand years ago with
the first hierarchical domination and laid the groundwork for
patriarchy, slavery, warfare, genocide, and other systems of violence and power. A key implication of Patterson’s theory is
that human liberation is implausible if disconnected from animal liberation, and thus humanism -the rise of agricultural society, was
a speciesist philosophy that constructs a hierarchal relationship privileging superior humans over inferior animals and reduces animals to
resources for human use -- collapses
under the weight of its logical contradictions. Patterson lays out his complex
and speciesism have direct and profound
connections to slavery, colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism. In Part II, he shows how these connections exist not only in the
realm of ideology – as conceptual systems of justifying and underpinning domination and hierarchy – but also in systems of
technology, such that the tools and techniques humans devised for the rationalized mass confinement and slaughter of animals were
holistic argument in three parts. In Part I, he demonstrates that animal exploitation
mobilized against human groups for the same ends. Finally, in the fascinating interviews and narratives of Part III, Patterson describes how
personal experience with German Nazism prompted Jewish to take antithetical paths: whereas most retreated to an insular identity and
dogmatic emphasis on the singularity of Nazi evil and its tragic experience, others recognized the profound similarities between how Nazis
treated their human captives and how humanity as a whole treats other animals, an epiphany that led them to adopt vegetarianism, to become
advocates for the animals, and develop a far broader and more inclusive ethic informed by universal compassion for all suffering and
oppressed beings. The Origins of Hierarchy "As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other" –Pythagoras It is little understood
that the first form of oppression, domination, and hierarchy involves human domination over animals Patterson’s thesis stands in bold
contrast to the Marxist theory that the domination over nature is fundamental to the domination over other humans. It differs as well from the
social ecology position of Murray Bookchin that domination over humans brings about alienation from the natural world, provokes
hierarchical mindsets and institutions, and is the root of the long-standing western goal to “dominate” nature. In the case of Marxists,
anarchists, and so many others, theorists typically don’t even mention human domination of animals, let
alone assign it causal primacy or significance. In Patterson’s model, however, the human subjugation of animals is the
first form of hierarchy and it paves the way for all other systems of domination such as include
patriarchy, racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. As he puts it, “the exploitation of animals
was the model and inspiration for the atrocities people committed against each other, slavery and the Holocaust being but two of the more
dramatic examples.” Hierarchy
emerged with the rise of agricultural society some ten thousand years
ago. In the shift from nomadic hunting and gathering bands to settled agricultural practices,
humans began to establish their dominance over animals through “domestication.” In animal
domestication (often a euphemism disguising coercion and cruelty), humans began to exploit animals for purposes such as
obtaining food, milk, clothing, plowing, and transportation. As they gained increasing control over the lives and
labor power of animals, humans bred them for desired traits and controlled them in various ways, such as
castratingmales to make them more docile.To conquer, enslave, and claim animals as their own
property, humans developed numerous technologies, such as pens, cages, collars, ropes, chains, and
branding irons. The domination of animals paved the way for the domination of humans. The sexual subjugation of
women, Patterson suggests, was modeled afterthe domestication of animals, such that men began to control
women’s reproductive capacity, to enforce repressive sexual norms, and to rape them as they
forced breedingin their animals. Not coincidentally, Patterson argues, slavery emerged in the same region of the
Middle East that spawned agriculture, and, in fact, developed as an extension of animal domestication
practices. In areas like Sumer, slaves were managed like livestock, and males were castrated and
forced to work along with females. In the fifteenth century, when Europeans began the colonization of
Africa and Spain introduced the first international slave markets, the metaphors, models, and
technologies used to exploit animal slaves were applied with equal cruelty and force to human slaves.
Stealing Africans from their native environment and homeland, breaking up families who scream in
anguish, wrapping chains around slaves’ bodies, shipping them in cramped quarters across
continents for weeks or months with no regard for their needs or suffering, branding their skin with a hot
iron to mark them as property, auctioning them as servants, breeding them for service and labor,
exploiting them for profit, beating them in rages of hatred and anger, and killing them in vast numbers– all
these horrors and countless others inflicted on black slaves were developed and perfected centuries
earlier through animal exploitation. As the domestication of animals developed in agricultural society, humans lost the
intimate connections they once had with animals. By the time of Aristotle, certainly, and with the bigoted assistance of medieval theologians
such as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, western humanity had developed an explicitly hierarchical worldview – that came to be known
as the “Great Chain of Being” – used to position humans as the end to which all other beings were mere means. Patterson underscores the
crucial point that the domination of human over human and its exercise through slavery, warfare, and genocide typically begins with the
denigration of victims. But the means and methods of dehumanization are derivative, for speciesism provided the conceptual paradigm that
encouraged, sustained, and justified western brutality toward other peoples. “Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master
species,” Patterson writes, “our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The
study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the
same to them.” Whether the conquerors are European imperialists, American colonialists, or German Nazis, western
aggressors
engaged in wordplay before swordplay, vilifying their victims – Africans, Native Americans, Filipinos, Japanese,
Vietnamese, Iraqis, and other unfortunates – with opprobrious terms such as “rats,” “pigs,” “swine,” “monkeys,” “beasts,” and
“filthy animals.”Once perceived as brute beasts or sub-humans occupying a lower evolutionary rung
than white westerners, subjugated peoples were treated accordingly; once characterized as animals, they could
be hunted down like animals. The first exiles from the moral community, animals provided a convenient discard bin for oppressors to dispose
the oppressed. The connections are clear: “For a civilization built on the exploitation and slaughter of animals, the `lower’ and more
degraded the human victims are, the easier it is to kill them.” Thus, colonialism, as Patterson describes, was
a “natural
extension of human supremacy over the animal kingdom. For just as humans had subdued animals with their
superior intelligence and technologies, so many Europeans believed that the white race had proven its superiority by bringing the “lower
races” under its command. There are important parallels between speciesism and sexism and racism in the elevation of white male
rationality to the touchstone of moral worth. The
arguments European colonialists used to legitimate exploiting
Africans – that they were less than human and inferior to white Europeans in ability to reason –
are the very same justifications humans use to trap, hunt, confine, and kill animals. Oncewestern norms of
rationality were defined as the essence of humanity and social normality, by first using non-human animals as the
measure of alterity, it was a short step to begin viewing odd, different, exotic, and eccentric peoples and types asnonor sub-human.Thus, the same criterion created to exclude animals from humans was also used to ostracize blacks, women, and
numerous other groups from “humanity.”
This Anthropocentric ordering is the foundation of the war machine and drives the
exclusion of populations based on race, ethnicity and gender
Kochi, 2K9 (Tarik, Sussex law school, Species war: Law, Violence and Animals, Law Culture and Humanities Oct 5.3)
Grotius and Hobbes are sometimes described as setting out a prudential approach, 28 or a natural law of minimal content 29 because in contrast
to Aristotelian or Thomastic legal and political theory their attempt to derive the legitimacy of the state and sovereign order relies less upon a
thick con-ception of the good life and is more focussed upon basic human needs such as survival. In the context of a response to religious
civil war such an approach made sense in that often thick moral and religious conceptions of the good life (for example, those held
by competing Christian Confessions) often drove conflict and violence. Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that the categories of
“survival,” “preservation of life” and “bare life” are neutral categories. Rather survival, preservation of life and bare life as
expressed by the Westphalian theoretical tradition already contain distinctions of value – in particular, the specific
distinction of value between human and non-human life . “Bare life” in this sense is not “bare” but contains within it a
distinction of value between the worth of human life placed above and beyond the worth of non-human animal life. In this respect
bare life within this tradition contains within it a hidden conception of the good life. The foundational moment of the modern
juridical conception of the law of war already contains within it the operation of species war. The Westphalian tradition puts
itself forward as grounding the legitimacy of violence upon the preservation of life, however its concern for life is already
marked by a hierarchy of value in which non-human animal life is violently used as the “raw material” for preserving human life.
Grounded upon, but concealing the human-animal distinction, the Westphalian conception of war makes a double move: it excludes the
killing of animals from its definition of “war proper,” and, through rendering dominant the modern juridical definition of “war
proper” the tradition is able to further institutionalize and normalize a particular conception of the good life. Following from this
original distinction of life-value realized through the juridical language of war were other forms of human life whose lives were considered to be
of a lesser value under a European, Christian, “secular” 30 natural law conception of the good life. Underneath this concern with the
preservation of life in general stood veiled preferences over what particu-lar forms of life (such as racial conceptions of human
life) and ways of living were worthy of preservation, realization and elevation . The business contracts of early capitalism, 31 the
power of white males over women and children, and, especially in the colonial context, the sanctity of European life over nonEuropean and Christian lives over non-Christian heathens and Muslims, were some of the dominant forms of life preferred for
preservation within the early modern juridical ordering of war.
The affirmative trades off with flat ontology. Any demand for human
inclusion is a link to the criticism
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College, The Democracy of Objects, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dodidx/democracy-of-objects.pdf?c=ohp;idno=9750134.0001.001)
Flat ontology is a complex
variety of ontological theses under a single term. First, due to the split
characteristic of all objects, flat ontology rejects any ontology of transcendence or presence that privileges
Onticology proposes what might be called, drawing on DeLanda's term yet broadening it, a flat ontology.
philosophical concept that bundles together a
one¶ sort of entity as the origin of all others and as fully present to itself . In this regard, onticology proposes an
ontology resonant with Derrida's critique of metaphysics insofar as, in its treatment of beings as withdrawn, it undermines any pretensions to
presence within being. If
this thesis is persuasive, then metaphysics can no longer function as a synonym
for “metaphysics of presence”, nor substance as a synonym for “presence”,¶ but rather an ontology
has been formulated that overcomes the primacy¶ of presence. In this section, I articulate this logic in terms of
Lacan's¶ graphs of sexuation. Here I believe that those graphs have little to tell us about masculine or feminine sexuality—for reasons I will
outline in what follows—but a great deal to tell us about ontologies of immanence or flat ontologies and ontologies of transcendence. Second ,
flat ontology signifies that the world or the universe does not exist. I will develop the argument¶ for
this strange claim in what follows, but for the moment it is important¶ to recognize the definite
article in this claim. The claim that the world doesn't exist is the claim that there is no super-object
that gathers all other objects together in a single, harmonious unity. Third, following Harman, flat ontology
refuses to privilege the subject-object, human-world relation as either a) a form of metaphysical
relation different in kind from other relations between objects, and that b) refuses to treat the
subject-object relation as implicitly included in every form of object-object relation. To be sure, flat
ontology readily recognizes that humans have unique powers and capacities and that how humans
relate to the world is a topic more than worthy of investigation, yet nothing about this establishes
that humans must be included in every inter-object relation or that how humans relate to objects
differs in kind from how other entities relate to objects. Finally, fourth, flat ontology argues that all
entities are on equal ontological footing and that no entity, whether artificial or natural, symbolic
or physical, possesses greater ontological dignity than other objects.While indeed some objects might
influence the collectives to which they belong to a greater extent than others, it doesn't follow from
this that these objects are more real than others. Existence, being, is a binary such that something
either¶ is or is not.
Flat ontology key
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 215-217
The first step in developing such a framework lies in overcoming human exceptionalism. As I argued in
The Democracy of Objects, ontology must be flattened (see Bryant 2011: ch. 6). Rather than bifurcating being
into two domains — the domain of objects and the domain of subiects, the domain of nature and the
domain of culture — we must instead conceive of being as a single flat plane, a single nature, on
which humans are beings among other beings. While humans are certainly exceptional, for us they
are not ontologically exceptional. To be sure, they differ in their powers and capacities from other
beings, but they are not lords or hierarchs over all other beings. They are beings that dwell among
other beings, that act on them and that are acted upon by them. As extended mind theorists such as Andy
Clark have argued — but also the new materialist feminists and actor-network theorists such as Latour mind and culture
are not special domains that can be separated from the other non-human entities of the world for
special investigation. Rather, we are intimately bound up with the other entities of the world,
coupled and conditioned by them in all sorts of ways. Above all, we must avoid treating the world
as a field given for the contemplative gaze of humans. A world is something within which we act
and engage, not something we passively contemplate. A flat ontology must therefore be conceived
along the lines of Lacan's famous Borromean knot (see Figure 7.1). A Borromean knot consists of three
inter-linked rings of string fastened together in such a way that if any one ring is severed, the other
two fall away. Lacan indexes each of the three rings to one of his three orders: the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary. With
the Borromean knot, Lacan's work undergoes a funda- mental transformation. In his earlier work, one of the three orders had
always been privileged as dominating and overcoding the others. In his earliest work, the imaginary dominated the real and the
symbolic. In the work of his middle period, it was the symbolic that overcoded the real and the imaginary. In his third phase, it
was the real that overcoded the symbolic and the imaginary. With the Borromean knot, no order overcodes the
others. Rather, they are all now treated as being on equal footing. This is how we need to think
about the order of being. The domain of the real indexes machines. Machines exist in their own
right, regardless of whether anyone registers them or discourses about them. The domain of the
symbolic refers to the plane of expression, or how beings are discoursed about, signified, imbued
with meaning, and so on. Finally, the domain of the imaginary refers to the way in which one
machine encounters another under conditions of structural openness and operational closure.
Situated within the framework of the Borromean knot, we can simultaneously investigate how a machine is
ideologically coded as in the case of Baudrillard's analysis of objects in System of Objects, how a
machine is phenomenologically encountered by another machine, and how a machine is a real,
independent being in its own right that produces effects irreducible to how it is signified or
phenomenologically given.
Our alternative is to reject the question of the affirmative. This movement
away from correlationism is a necessary philosophical move.
Bryant 11 (Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. 2011. “Levi
Democracy Of objects”. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/9750134.0001.001/1:4/.
It is unlikely that object-oriented ontologists are going to persuade epistemological realists or antirealists that they have found a way of surmounting the epistemological problems that arise out of
the two-world model of being any time soon. Quoting Max Planck, Marshall and Eric McLuhan write, “A new
scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but
rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”.6 This
appears to be how it is in philosophy as well. New innovations in philosophy do¶ not so much refute
their opponents as simply cease being preoccupied by certain questions and problems. In many
respects, object-oriented ontology, following the advice of Richard Rorty, simply tries to step out of
the debate altogether. Object-oriented ontologists have grown weary of a debate that has gone on
for over two centuries, believe that the possible variations of these positions have exhausted
themselves, and want to move on to talking about other things. If this is not good enough for the
epistemology police, we are more than happy to confess our guilt and embrace our alleged lack of
rigor and continue in harboring our illusions that we can speak of a reality independent of humans.
However, such a move of simply moving¶ on is not unheard of in philosophy. No one has yet
refuted the solipsist, nor the Berkeleyian subjective idealist, yet neither solipsism nor the
extremes¶ of Berkeleyian idealism have ever been central and ongoing debates in philosophy.
Philosophers largely just ignore these positions or use them¶ as cautionary examples to be avoided.
Why not the same in the endless debates over access?
Your attempt to persuade institutions through ethical appeal guarantees your
politics fails. Alt is a prerequisite.
Bryant ’14 Levi Bryant is Professor of Philosophy at Collin College Onto-Cartography pg. 73
In light of the concept of thermodynamic politics, we can see the common shortcoming of protest
politics or what might be called semiotic politics. Semiotic politics is semiotic in the sense that relies
on the use of signs, either attempting to change institutions through communicative persuasion or
engaging in activities of critique as in the case of hermeneutics of suspicion that, through a critique
of ideology, desire, power, and so on, show that relations of domination and oppression are at work
in something we hitherto believed to be just. Semiotic politics is confused in that it is premised on
producing change through ethical persuasion, and thereby assumes that institutional-machines
such as corporations, governments, factories, and so on, are structurally open to the same sorts of
communicative flows as humans. It believes that we can persuade these organizations to change
their operations on ethical grounds. At best , however, these entities are indifferent to such arguments ,
while at worst they are completely blind to even the occurrence of such appeals as machines such as corporations are only structurally open to
information events of profit and loss.
Persuading a corporation through ethical appeals is about as effective to
explain calculus to a cat.
Our way of accepting OOO key to shifting from anthro.
Mylius 13 (Ben Mylius, March 10, 2013, law graduate, anthrodecentrism object oriented ontology and refining the goals of ecocreative writing
http://ecologeur.com/post/45014342168/anthrodecentrism-object-oriented-ontology-and-refining)
‘Ontology is the philosophical study of existence. Object-oriented ontology puts things at the centre of this study. Its proponents
contend that nothing has special status, but that everything exists equally -plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, and sandstone, for
example. In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as
constructions of human behaviour and society (social relativism). OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at
all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves.’ For
anyone interested in a more philosophically-oriented explanation, Wikipedia’s entry here is unusually helpful as a starting-point; Levi Bryant’s
‘Manifesto for object-oriented ontology’ is even more so, as is his book The Democracy of Objects, available as an ebook here. I find this
movement particularly interesting because it represents an attempt to think other than anthropocentrically: to develop a way of
seeing and thinking that avoid placing subjects in general, and human subjects in particular, at its centre. This is also where the
resonance lies with ecocreative writing, which I see as an attempt in a creative mode to do the same thing. The challenge, as it has always
been, is to find the way of theorising this ‘alternative to anthropocentrism’ in a coherent and non-problematic way. Perhaps the key
hurdle for the concept of ‘ecocentrism’ in object-oriented terms is that it proposes some overarching, unified ‘One’ (the ‘eco’) that might
replace the ‘anthro’ at the centre of our thought. My sense is that this might be avoided if we were able to sustain an image of an
ecosystem as a process - an assemblage (Deleuze), ‘mesh’ (Morton) or ‘collective’ (Latour) - rather than a thing. But the connotations
of any kind of ‘centrism’ (what is at the centre?) make this difficult.
Case
Turn-- Coastal ecosystems are fragile, but beginning to improve
EPA 12 National Coastal Conditions Report IV, March 14 2012,
http://water.epa.gov/type/oceb/assessmonitor/nccr/upload/Final-NCCR-IV-Fact-Sheet-3-14-12.pdf
Summary of the Findings • Overall
condition of the Nation’s coastal waters was fair from 2003 to 2006. • The
three indices that showed the poorest conditions throughout the U.S. were coastal habitat condition,
sediment quality, and benthic condition. • Southeastern Alaska and American Samoa received the highest overall
condition scores (5=Good). • The Great Lakes received the lowest overall condition score (2.2=Fair to poor). • Comparison
of the condition scores shows that overall condition in U.S. coastal waters has improved slightly
since NCCR I.1
FOOTNOTE BEGINS
Although the
overall condition of U.S. coastal waters was rated as fair in all four reports, the score increased
slightly from 2.0 to 2.3 from NCCR I to NCCR II and III, and increased to 2.5 in NCCR IV (based on assessments for the
conterminous U.S.). When south-central Alaska and Hawaii were added to NCCR III, the overall condition score increased from
2.3 to 2.8; Alaska has relatively pristine conditions and a large coastal area which contributed to the increase in score. With the
inclusion of southeastern Alaska, American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands in NCCR IV, the score increased from 2.5
to 3.0.
Offshore wind turbines devastate ocean life, especially plankton
Bailey 13 (Helen, Professor at University of Maryland, Center for Environmental Science. Offshore Wind Energy.
http://www.umces.edu/cbl/wind)
The major concern is the impact of the increased noise on marine life. Noise is produced during the
construction and installation of offshore wind farms from increased boat activity in the area and
procedures such as pile-driving. The sound levels from pile-driving, when the turbine is hammered to the
seabed, are particularly high. This is potentially harmful to marine species and have been of greatest concern to
marine mammal species, such as endangered whales. The noise and vibration of construction and
operation of the wind turbines can be damaging to fish and other marine species. The effects of noise may
be immediately fatal, cause injuries, or result in short or longer term avoidance of the area depending
on the frequency and loudness of the sounds. The impact of the offshore wind turbines on birds and bats:
Risk of death from direct collisions with the rotors and the pressure effects of vortices. There is also
a risk of displacement from the area causing changes in migration routes and loss of quality habitat.
Disturbance to the seabed: Construction activities at the wind power site and the installation of undersea cables to transmit
the energy to shore can have direct effects on the seabed and sediments, which can affect the abundance and
diversity of benthic organisms. Disturbance of the seafloor may also increase turbidity, which could affect
plankton in the water column.
Plankton is key to ocean biodiversity
Burkill and Reid 10 Peter, Sir Alister hardy Foundation for Ocean Science. Chris, University of Plymouth. “Plankton
biodiversity of the North Atlantic: changing patterns revealed by the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey,”
https://www.earthobservations.org/documents/cop/bi_geobon/observations/200910_changing_plankton_biodiversity_of_the_nort
h_atlantic.pdf
Plankton are the community of tiny drifting creatures that form the life blood of the sea. Although mostly
microscopic in size, this belies their importance. Their abundance and biodiversity fuels marine
food-webs that produce fish, and is a major contributor to oxygen production, carbon sequestration
and global climate regulation. Changes in plankton biodiversity reflect changes in the ocean’s
health and the ecological services provided by the marine ecosystem.
Biodiversity loss risks extinction
Coyne and Hoekstra, 07 (Jerry ,professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and
Hopi, Associate Professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University , The New
Republic, “The Greatest Dying,” 9/24, http://www.truthout.org/article/jerry-coyne-and-hopi-e-hoekstra-the-greatest-dying)
Aside from the Great Dying, there have been four other mass extinctions, all of which severely pruned life's diversity. Scientists agree that we're now in the midst of a
sixth such episode. This new one, however, is different - and, in many ways, much worse. For, unlike earlier extinctions, this one results from the work of a single
species, Homo sapiens.We are relentlessly taking over the planet, laying it to waste and eliminating most of our fellow species. Moreover, we're doing it much faster
than the mass extinctions that came before. Every
year, up to 30,000 species disappear due to human activity alone. At
could lose half of Earth's species in this century. And, unlike with previous extinctions,
there's no hope that biodiversity will ever recover, since the cause of the decimation - us - is here to stay. To scientists, this is an
this rate, we
unparalleled calamity, far more severe than global warming, which is, after all, only one of many threats to biodiversity. Yet global warming gets far more press.
Why? One reason is that, while the increase in temperature is easy to document, the decrease of species is not. Biologists don't know, for example, exactly how many
species exist on Earth. Estimates range widely, from three million to more than 50 million, and that doesn't count microbes, critical (albeit invisible) components of
ecosystems. We're not certain about the rate of extinction, either; how could we be, since the vast majority of species have yet to be described? We're even less sure
how the loss of some species will affect the ecosystems in which they're embedded, since the intricate connection between organisms means that the loss of a single
species can ramify unpredictably. But we do know some things. Tropical rainforests are disappearing at a rate of 2 percent per year. Populations of most large fish are
down to only 10 percent of what they were in 1950. Many primates and all the great apes - our closest relatives - are nearly gone from the wild. And we know that
extinction and global warming act synergistically. Extinction exacerbates global warming: By burning rainforests, we're not only polluting the atmosphere with carbon
dioxide (a major greenhouse gas) but destroying the very plants that can remove this gas from the air. Conversely, global warming increases extinction, both directly
(killing corals) and indirectly (destroying the habitats of Arctic and Antarctic animals). As extinction increases, then, so does global warming, which in turn causes
more extinction - and so on, into a downward spiral of destruction. Why, exactly, should we care? Let's start with the most celebrated case: the rainforests. Their loss
will worsen global warming - raising temperatures, melting icecaps, and flooding coastal cities. And, as the forest habitat shrinks, so begins the inevitable contact
between organisms that have not evolved together, a scenario played out many times, and one that is never good. Dreadful diseases have successfully jumped species
boundaries, with humans as prime recipients. We have gotten aids from apes, sars from civets, and Ebola from fruit bats. Additional worldwide plagues from unknown
Healthy ecosystems the world over
provide hidden services like waste disposal, nutrient cycling, soil formation, water purification, and
oxygen production. Such services are best rendered by ecosystems that are diverse. Yet, through both intention and accident, humans have introduced
microbes are a very real possibility. But it isn't just the destruction of the rainforests that should trouble us .
exotic species that turn biodiversity into monoculture. Fast-growing zebra mussels, for example, have outcompeted more than 15 species of native mussels in North
America's Great Lakes and have damaged harbors and water-treatment plants. Native prairies are becoming dominated by single species (often genetically
homogenous) of corn or wheat. Thanks to these developments, soils will erode and become unproductive - which, along with temperature change, will diminish
agricultural yields. Meanwhile,with increased pollution and runoff, as well as reduced forest cover, ecosystems will no longer be able to purify water; and a shortage
of clean water spells disaster. In many ways, oceans are the most vulnerable areas of all. As overfishing eliminates major predators, while polluted and warming
waters kill off phytoplankton, the intricate aquatic food web could collapse from both sides. Fish, on which so many humans depend, will be a fond memory. As
phytoplankton vanish, so does the ability of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. (Half of the oxygen we breathe is made by phytoplankton, with
the rest coming from land plants.) Species extinction is also imperiling coral reefs - a major problem since these reefs have far more than recreational value: They
provide tremendous amounts of food for human populations and buffer coastlines against erosion. In fact, the global value of "hidden" services provided by
ecosystems - those services, like waste disposal, that aren't bought and sold in the marketplace - has been estimated to be as much as $50 trillion per year, roughly
equal to the gross domestic product of all countries combined. And that doesn't include tangible goods like fish and timber.
Life as we know it would
be impossible if ecosystems collapsed. Yet that is where we're heading if species extinction continues at its current pace.Extinction also has a
huge impact on medicine. Who really cares if, say, a worm in the remote swamps of French Guiana goes extinct? Well, those who suffer from cardiovascular disease.
The recent discovery of a rare South American leech has led to the isolation of a powerful enzyme that, unlike other anticoagulants, not only prevents blood from
clotting but also dissolves existing clots. And it's not just this one species of worm: Its wriggly relatives have evolved other biomedically valuable proteins, including
antistatin (a potential anticancer agent), decorsin and ornatin (platelet aggregation inhibitors), and hirudin (another anticoagulant). Plants, too, are pharmaceutical gold
mines. The bark of trees, for example, has given us quinine (the first cure for malaria), taxol (a drug highly effective against ovarian and breast cancer), and aspirin.
More than a quarter of the medicines on our pharmacy shelves were originally derived from plants. The sap of the Madagascar periwinkle contains more than 70
useful alkaloids, including vincristine, a powerful anticancer drug that saved the life of one of our friends. Of the roughly 250,000 plant species on Earth, fewer than 5
percent have been screened for pharmaceutical properties. Who knows what life-saving drugs remain to be discovered? Given current extinction rates, it's estimated
that we're losing one valuable drug every two years. Our arguments so far have tacitly assumed that species are worth saving only in proportion to their economic
value and their effects on our quality of life, an attitude that is strongly ingrained, especially in Americans. That is why conservationists always base their case on an
economic calculus. But we biologists know in our hearts that there are deeper and equally compelling reasons to worry about the loss of biodiversity: namely, simple
morality and intellectual values that transcend pecuniary interests. What, for example, gives us the right to destroy other creatures? And what could be more thrilling
than looking around us, seeing that we are surrounded by our evolutionary cousins, and realizing that we all got here by the same simple process of natural selection?
To biologists, and potentially everyone else, apprehending the genetic kinship and common origin of all species is a spiritual experience - not necessarily religious, but
spiritual nonetheless, for it stirs the soul. But, whether or not one is moved by such concerns, it is certain that our future is bleak if we do nothing to stem this sixth
We are creating a world in which exotic diseases flourish but natural medicinal cures are lost; a world in
which carbon waste accumulates while food sources dwindle; a world of sweltering heat, failing
crops, and impure water. In the end, we must accept the possibility that we ourselves are not
immune to extinction. Or, if we survive, perhaps only a few of us will remain, scratching out a grubby existence on a
devastated planet. Global warming will seem like a secondary problem when humanity finally faces the
consequences of what we have done to nature: not just another Great Dying, but perhaps the
greatest dying of them all.
extinction.
Wind can't produce enough energy for cities, only centralized fossil fuels
solve.
Wilson 13 (Robert Wilson is a PhD Student in Mathematical Ecology at the University of Strathclyde. “The
Future of Energy: Why Power Density Matters.” The Energy Collective. August 8, 2013. http://goo.gl/NEPXBi)
The twenty first century will almost certainly witness a transition to an overwhelming urban
human population, and hopefully a transition to a low carbon energy system. The former however
will have a significant impact on the latter, because a fundamentally urban species cannot be
powered locally.¶ The continued, and essentially unabated, accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may at times
make considerations of the requirements of a de-carbonised energy system appear somewhat self indulgent, but I must ask the
reader to indulge me, and at a little length.¶ What would a low carbon energy system look like? (And let's avoid such fanciful
ideas as "zero carbon," because that would be truly self indulgent.) In essence we would get as much electricity as possible from
some combination of renewable and nuclear energy, and electrify as many aspects of our energy systems as is feasible. Predicting
the relative composition of such a system is a largely fruitless exercise. However, we can say something about the
extent to which it a low carbon energy system will be distributed and "local". This confidence
comes from the difference between the high physical concentrate of energy use in cities, and the
relatively low physical concentration of renewable energy resources.¶ Power density¶ There are fundamental
physical limits to how much energy we can extract from renewable resources for a given area of land. If we want to rigorously
quantify this we calculate an energy source's power density in watts per square metre (W/m2 ). ¶ To get an understanding of this
concept consider the recently opened London Array wind farm to the south of England. This is the world's
largest offshore wind farm and according to its owners will generate "enough energy to power nearly half a million
homes." Its total capacity is 630 MW covering a total of 100 km [≈ width of the Bering Strait]2, and is expected to have a
capacity factor of 39%. In other words the power density of the London Array will be 2.5 W/m2. This number is
also very similar to the average calculated by David MacKay for existing UK wind farms. The United Kingdom is windier than a
lot of the world, and some research suggests that large extraction wind farms will reduce average power density closer to 1
W/m2, so 2-3 W/m2 can be viewed as an upper limit on the power density of large scale wind power.
This power density reflects average output, however peak power density of wind farms will be perhaps three times higher, and
minimum power density will be close to zero. And it should be noted that it excludes the requirements for manufacturing steel
required for turbine towers and the extraction of fossil fuels for conversion to plastics for wind turbine blades. However inclusion
of these factors is not likely to result in a significant reduction to power density estimates. ¶ Globally solar radiation available for
conversion to electricity averages 170 W/m2, and in sunnier locations it can reach above 200 W/m2. This solar energy however is
currently not converted at anywhere close to 100% efficiency. Commercial solar photovoltaic panels typically average between
10 and 15% efficiency. Power density of solar installations must also account for space between panels, either for servicing in
solar farms or for spacing between houses in rooftop solar installation. As a result the highest power density achieved is around
20 W/m2 in desert solar PV farms, whereas solar farms in Germany generally achieve 5 W/m2. Future improvements in panel
production will hopefully see significant improvements in panel efficiency. However there will remain a firm physical upper
limit of 200 W/m2, which will be significantly lower when only considering large scale deployment of residential rooftop solar,
due to obvious physical restrictions on panel placement.¶ At their best biofuels might be able to produce close to 2 W/m2.
However power densities of 0.5 W/m2 and below are more typical, with prominent examples of this being corn ethanol for
transport and the burning wood for electricity. We will see later that this is a very important consideration for the scalability and
sustainability of biofuels.¶ In contrast typical generation of fossil fuel and nuclear electricity has a power
density of at least an order of magnitude greater than that of renewable energy. Power densities are
comfortably above 100 W/m2 after accounting for mining etc. And conventional power plants often
have power densites in excess of 1000 W/m2. A simple example of this higher power density is this
small propane powered generator, providing in excess of 1000 W/m2. This is far in excess of the
power density of any conceivable new method of generating renewable energy. ¶ A simple thought
experiment can demonstrate why power density needs to be a fundamental consideration when evaluating renewable energy.
Here it is: Imagine a world where all energy comes from bio-energy. What would be the requirements?¶ Currently the planet
consumes energy at a rate of over 16 TW [≈ average total power consumption of the human world in 2010] (16 trillion watts). If
we include non-commercial biomass energy used in Africa and Asia, an uncertain figure, this number would increase. However
for simplicity I will ignore non-commercial sources and will round our figure down to 15 TW [≈ average total power
consumption of the human world in 2010]. If we got all energy from corn ethanol we would need to convert a total of 75 million
km2 to corn ethanol plantations. This is roughly half of the land surface of the entire planet, land which is somehat scarce. So this
simple thought experiment shows there very real limits on how much energy we can, and should, get from biofuels. If we want
large scale biofuels to become truly sustainable, a questionable prospect, we will need to see significant improvements to their
power density, perhaps improvements of at least an order of magnitude. ¶ Physical concentration of energy consumption¶ How
much energy do we consume per unit of land? For ease of comparison this figure again can be calculated in W/m2. On a global
level this is 0.1 W/m2, if we only consider land surface area. Global averages however are not very instructive, power density
averaged at the scale of countries and cities is much more important. David MacKay has visualised this much better than I can in
his "Map of the World." Here is the average rate at which countries consume energy, in W/m2, compared with the power density
of different renewables: Ideally a country wants to have lots of available land for renewable energy, i.e. they want to be in the
bottom left of this graph. Being in the top right however may lead to some problems. ¶ Consider first the United Kingdom and
Germany. Both use energy at a rate of just over 1 W/m2. So a back of the envelope calculation will tell you that getting all of
their energy needs from onshore wind will require covering half of the UK or Germany in wind turbines. If you
have ever been confused by why these countries are building wind farms in the North Sea, instead of on land where it is much
cheaper, now you know why. Wind energy's low power density means you need to put it in a lot of back yards. And there are not
as many of them in the North Sea.¶ Things are even worse in Japan and South Korea. If you covered all of South Korea in wind
turbines they would generate less energy than is consumed there. Japan has a similar problem. And this ignores another
difficulty: trees. Both Japan (68%) and South Korea (63%) have very high forest cover. If we ignore forested land (which should
be out of bounds for large scale renewable energy generation, unless large scale biomass plantations are deemed acceptable)
energy is used with a power density of almost 6 W/m2 in Japan and 7.5 W/m2 in South Korea. This calculation makes it clear
that these countries can only be predominantly powered by renewable energy through the large scale utilisation of the more
power dense solar energy. And social and political constraints may mean this can only happen if the efficiency of typical solar
panels increases significantly from their current 10-15%.¶ Local Energy Is Not A Solution¶ Some environmentalists and
renewable energy advocates have an ideological preference for small and community scale renewable energy. However what if
your community looks like this: missingTokyo skyline¶ Some people may like the idea of running Tokyo on local renewable
energy. They will have some difficulty actually doing it, and that's putting it mildly. ¶ Since 2008 the majority of humanity live in
cities. And by 2050 it is probable that we will see seventy or eight percent of humanity living in cities. The key energy challenge
this century will be providing energy for these cities, and quite clearly local distributed energy is not a solution. To see why this
is the case requires untangling some issues.¶ Here are some considerations. An average North American has an annual energy
consumption of just over 7 tonnes of oil equivalent (toe)., which is the equivalent of a rate of 9,000 watts [≈ average power
consumption per person in the United States in 2008]. However, this is almost double what it is in countries such as Germany,
France and Japan. A comparison of these countries in terms of key well being measures makes one thing clear: there is no
evidence that North Americans have greater well being as a result of their excessive energy use. Americans don't live longer,
aren't healthier, or better educated than countries that consume half as much energy per capita. That this high per capita energy
consumption comes with a very significant environmental cost - global carbon dioxide emissions would drop by almost 10% if
North Americans consumed like Europeans - but little gain in terms of human well being, suggests that is is not desirable for
other countries to emulate North American consumption patterns.¶ Further evidence for the desirability to limit, and probably
reduce, per capita energy consumption in modernised countries is given by its evolution in recent decades. Instead of increasing
in the long term, per capita energy consumption now appears to have peaked in almost all modernised countries. Here are some
examples:¶ Per capita consumption has decline steadily in the United Kingdom for the last decade and is now at its lowest point
for over four decades:¶ United Kingdom¶ The United States saw peak per capita consumption in the 1970s, with consumption
now seeing an apparent decline. And the fact that per capita consumption did not rise in the age of the Hummer suggests
significant room for movement.¶ So, many modernised countries are now seeing reductions in per capita energy consumption,
and this is not being accompanied by a reduction in quality of living. Any sensible long term energy and climate policy should
include a strong desire to continue this trend. The belief that the world can transition to both American levels of energy
consumption and to a low carbon energy system by the middle of this century ignores the vital lessons of previous energy
transitions, and given the current position of renewable and nuclear energy it appears delusional. The world therefore must be
much more like Japan than America.¶ And cities must play a key role in reducing energy consumption. The most important and
effective way to do this is simple: make them dense. For a full elucidation of why, I recommend books by Edward Glaeser and
David Owen. But the key reasons are easy to understand: a dense city lets you walk or take public transport instead of drive and it
lets you live in a more energy efficient apartment building instead of a large inefficient house. Packing people more tightly
together in cities may not be to the taste of everyone, but it appears to be one of the most achievable and practical ways to reduce
how much energy people consume.¶ Let us now move forward to 2050, and the world is as I hope it will be. Global population
will have peaked below 9 billion as a result of the spread of the demographic transition to modernising countries, and the success
in reducing infant mortality and widespread availability of contraception. Perhaps 7 billion of us will live in cities, and they will
consume much more like modern day Japanese than Americans.¶ How will we provide energy for these cities? The
answer appears to be large, centralised power plants, whether they are wind, solar or nuclear. Here I
assume, wishfully, that we have managed to get rid of fossil fuels, an unlikely prospect. The answer
however is almost certainly not local distributed energy, and for simple reasons.¶ Consider
Manhattan, not what many would typically look at as the green ideal. Yet here you will find significantly lower
per capita energy consumption than in almost every American city. You will also find energy
consumption far greater than can conceivably be provided by local renewables. A recent study
managed to map energy consumption in the city that never sleeps right down to the individual city
block. This is what it looks like:¶ A typical block in Manhattan consumes energy at a rate of over
1,000 kWh per square metre each year, a power density of over 100 W/m2. This is almost two
orders of magnitude greater than the power density of wind power, and obviously you could not
plaster Manhattan in wind turbines. Solar power is not much better. Imagine that we could cover 20% of Manhattan
in solar panels. This would give us no better than 5 W/m2. Clearly Manhattan is not getting its energy locally.
And as you can see from the above map the other boroughs of New York are not going to fare much better.
Wind turbines don’t solve for climate change- they release excess CO2 into
the atmosphere
Gray, 12 (Louise, “Wind power is expensive and ineffective at cutting CO2 says Civitas,” The Telegraph,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9000760/Wind-power-is-expensive-and-ineffective-at-cutting-CO2-sayCivitas.html)
A study in the Netherlands found that turning back-up gas power stations on and off to cover spells when
there is little wind actually produces more carbon than a steady supply of energy from an efficient modern gas
station.¶ The research is cited in a new report by the Civitas think tank which warns that Britain is in danger of
producing more carbon dioxide (CO2) than necessary if the grid relies too much on wind.¶ Wind turbines only
produce energy around 30 per cent of the time. When the wind is not blowing - or even blowing too fast as in
the recent storms - other sources of electricity have to be used, mostly gas and coal.¶ However it takes a surge of
electricity to power up the fossil fuel stations every time they are needed, meaning more carbon emissions are
released.¶
The CO2 reduction provided by wind energy is vastly overstated
Bryce, 2013 -Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute (http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/wind-energycarbon.html)
Facts are pesky things. And they’re particularly pesky when it comes to the myths about the wind energy business. For
years, it’s been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy
can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind
energy’s carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does
help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale.
Those are the findings of an exhaustive new study, released today, by Bentek Energy, a Colorado-based energy
analytics firm. Rather than rely on computer models that use theoretical emissions data, the authors of the study, Porter Bennett
and Brannin McBee, analyzed actual emissions data from electric generation plants located in four regions: the Electric
Reliability Council of Texas, Bonneville Power Administration, California Independent System Operator, and the Midwest
Independent System Operator. Those four system operators serve about 110 million customers, or about one-third of the U.S.
population. Bennett and McBee looked at more than 300,000 hourly records from 2007 through 2009. Their results show
that the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and other wind boosters have vastly
overstated wind’s ability to cut sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide. Indeed, the study
found that in some regions of the country, like California, using wind energy doesn’t reduce sulfur
dioxide emissions at all. But the most important conclusion from the study is that wind energy is not
“a cost-effective solution for reducing carbon dioxide if carbon is valued at less than $33 per ton.” With the U.S. economy
still in recession and unemployment numbers near record levels, Congress cannot, will not, attempt to impose a carbon tax, no
matter how small. AWEA claims that every megawatt-hour of electricity produced by wind turbines cuts carbon dioxide
emissions by 0.8 tons. But the Bentek study shows that in California, a state that relies heavily on natural gas-fired generation,
the carbon dioxide reduction from wind energy was just 0.3 tons of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour. Further, the study found
that in the area served by the Bonneville Power Administration, which uses a large amount of hydropower, the carbon dioxde
reduction was just 0.1 ton of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour. To be clear, the Bentek study found that in the region served by
the Midwest Independent System Operator, which relies heavily on coal-fired generation, the carbon dioxide reduction benefits
of wind are actually greater (1.0 ton of carbon saved) than what AWEA claims. But when it came to reductions in
sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide in the Midwest, Bentek found that, again, the claims made by
AWEA were overstated. What about Texas, the state that has some 10,000 megawatts of installed wind generation
capacity, more than any other state? Again, the Bentek study found that AWEA’s claims were exaggerated. Texas relies
heavily on natural gas-fired generation. Therefore, when wind gets deployed within the Electric
Reliability Council of Texas, Bentek found that it cuts sulfur dioxide emissions by 1.2 pounds per
megawatt-hour, far less than the 5.7 pounds claimed by AWEA. Similarly, the reduction in nitrous
oxide was 0.7 pounds rather than AWEA’s 2.3 pounds, and carbon dioxide emissions were reduced
by 0.5 tons per megawatt-hour, not the 0.8 tons claimed by AWEA. The Bentek report provides yet more bad news
for the subsidy-dependent wind business, which is already on its heels. Low natural gas prices, the economic downturn, and uncertainty about the
continuation of federal subsidies have left the wind industry in tatters. In 2010, total U.S. wind generation capacity grew by 5,100 megawatts, about half as
much capacity as was added in 2009. During the first quarter this year, new wind installations totaled just 1,100 megawatts, indicating that this year will
likely be even worse than 2010. The wind industry’s prospects are so bad that T. Boone Pickens, long one of the sector’s loudest advocates, has given up
on the U.S. market. Pickens, the billionaire self-promoter who famously placed an order for some $2 billion worth of wind turbines back in 2008, is now
trying to find a home for those turbines in Canada. In addition, the wind industry faces increasingly vocal opposition in numerous countries around the
world. The European Platform Against Windfarms now has 485 signatory organizations from 22 European countries. In the UK, where fights are raging
against industrial wind projects in Wales, Scotland, and elsewhere, some 250 anti-wind groups have been formed. In Canada, the province of Ontario alone
has more than 50 anti-wind groups. The U.S. has about 170 anti-wind groups. While many factors are hurting the wind industry, the Bentek report, which
was released today, undercuts the sector’s primary reason for existing. The Global Wind Energy Council, one of the industry’s main lobby groups, claims
that reducing the amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere “is the most important environmental benefit from wind power generation.” For its part, the
American Wind Energy Association insists that the wind business “could avoid 825 million tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030.” But
if wind
energy doesn’t significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, then critics can easily challenge the
industry’s hefty subsidies, which include the federal production tax credit of $0.022 for each
kilowatt-hour of electricity. That amounts to a subsidy of $6.44 per million BTU of energy produced. For comparison, in 2008, the Energy
Information Administration reported that subsidies to the oil and gas sector totaled $1.9 billion per year, or about $0.03 per million BTU of energy
produced. In other words, subsidies to the wind sector are more than 200 times as great as those given to the oil and gas sector on the basis of per-unit-ofenergy produced. If those fat subsidies go away, then the U.S. wind sector will be stopped dead in its tracks. And for consumers, that should be welcome
news. The wind energy business is the electric sector’s equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it’s an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on
taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut
carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It’s a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about
wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy.