Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
1
File Title
Lab
T
A. Interpretation: The affirmative must defend the United States federal government.
The USFG is the government in Washington D.C.
Encarta 2k http://encarta.msn.com
“The federal government of the United States is centered in Washington DC”
AND, “United States Federal Government should” means the debate is solely about the
outcome of a policy established by governmental means
Ericson, 03 (Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et al., The
Debater’s Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains certain key elements, although
they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting --“The United States” in “The United States should adopt a policy of free trade.” Like the object of evaluation in a
proposition of value, the
agent is the subject of the sentence. 2. The verb should—the first part of a verb phrase
that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here
means to put a program or policy into action though governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or
a limitation of the action desired. The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for
example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce.
Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred. The entire debate is about whether something
ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and
compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you propose.
B. Violation – The aff doesn’t defend any form of stable advocacy of the resolution.
C. You should vote negative:
First, dialogue. Debate’s critical axis is a form of dialogic communication within a confined
game space.
Unbridled affirmation outside the game space makes research impossible and destroys
dialogue in debate
Hanghoj
8
http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2
009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf Thorkild Hanghøj, Copenhagen, 2008 Since this PhD project began in 2004, the present
author has been affiliated with DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials),
which is located at the Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Southern Denmark.
Research visits have taken place at the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), the
Institute of Education at the University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the
School of Education, University of Aarhus, where I currently work as an assistant professor.
Debate games are often based on pre-designed scenarios that include descriptions of issues to be debated,
educational goals, game goals, roles, rules, time frames etc. In this way, debate games differ from
textbooks and everyday classroom instruction as debate scenarios allow teachers and students to actively
imagine, interact and communicate within a domain-specific game space. However, instead of mystifying
debate games as a “magic circle” (Huizinga, 1950), I will try to overcome the epistemological dichotomy
between “gaming” and “teaching” that tends to dominate discussions of educational games. In short,
educational gaming is a form of teaching. As mentioned, education and games represent two different
semiotic domains that both embody the three faces of knowledge: assertions, modes of representation and
social forms of organisation (Gee, 2003; Barth, 2002; cf. chapter 2). In order to understand the interplay
between these different domains and their interrelated knowledge forms, I will draw attention to a central
assumption in Bakhtin’s dialogical philosophy. According to Bakhtin, all forms of communication and
culture are subject to centripetal and centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981). A centripetal force is the drive to
impose one version of the truth, while a centrifugal force involves a range of possible truths and
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
2
File Title
interpretations. This means that any form of expression involves a duality of centripetal and centrifugal
forces: “Every concrete utterance of a speaking subject serves as a point where centrifugal as well as
centripetal forces are brought to bear” (Bakhtin, 1981: 272). If we take teaching as an example, it is
always affected by centripetal and centrifugal forces in the on-going negotiation of “truths” between
teachers and students. In the words of Bakhtin: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of
an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their
dialogic interaction” (Bakhtin, 1984a: 110). Similarly, the dialogical space of debate games also
embodies centrifugal and centripetal forces. Thus, the election scenario of The Power Game involves
centripetal elements that are mainly determined by the rules and outcomes of the game, i.e. the election is
based on a limited time frame and a fixed voting procedure. Similarly, the open-ended goals, roles and
resources represent centrifugal elements and create virtually endless possibilities for researching,
preparing, presenting, debating and evaluating a variety of key political issues. Consequently, the actual
process of enacting a game scenario involves a complex negotiation between these centrifugal/centripetal
forces that are inextricably linked with the teachers and students’ game activities. In this way, the
enactment of The Power Game is a form of teaching that combines different pedagogical practices (i.e.
group work, web quests, student presentations) and learning resources (i.e. websites, handouts, spoken
language) within the interpretive frame of the election scenario. Obviously, tensions may arise if there is
too much divergence between educational goals and game goals. This means that game facilitation
requires a balance between focusing too narrowly on the rules or “facts” of a game (centripetal
orientation) and a focusing too broadly on the contingent possibilities and interpretations of the game
scenario (centrifugal orientation). For Bakhtin, the duality of centripetal/centrifugal forces often manifests
itself as a dynamic between “monological” and “dialogical” forms of discourse. Bakhtin illustrates this
point with the monological discourse of the Socrates/Plato dialogues in which the teacher never learns
anything new from the students, despite Socrates’ ideological claims to the contrary (Bakhtin, 1984a).
Thus, discourse becomes monologised when “someone who knows and possesses the truth instructs
someone who is ignorant of it and in error”, where “a thought is either affirmed or repudiated” by the
authority of the teacher (Bakhtin, 1984a: 81). In contrast to this, dialogical pedagogy fosters inclusive
learning environments that are able to expand upon students’ existing knowledge and collaborative
construction of “truths” (Dysthe, 1996). At this point, I should clarify that Bakhtin’s term “dialogic” is
both a descriptive term (all utterances are per definition dialogic as they address other utterances as parts
of a chain of communication) and a normative term as dialogue is an ideal to be worked for against the
forces of “monologism” (Lillis, 2003: 197-8). In this project, I am mainly interested in describing the
dialogical space of debate games. At the same time, I agree with Wegerif that “one of the goals of
education, perhaps the most important goal, should be dialogue as an end in itself” (Wegerif, 2006: 61).
Dialogue is the biggest impact—the process of discussion precedes any truth claim by
magnifying the benefits of any discussion
Morson 4 http://www.flt.uae.ac.ma/elhirech/baktine/0521831059.pdf#page=331 Northwestern Professor, Prof.
Morson's work ranges over a variety of areas: literary theory (especially narrative); the history of ideas, both Russian
and European; a variety of literary genres (especially satire, utopia, and the novel); and his favorite writers -Chekhov, Gogol, and, above all, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. He is especially interested in the relation of literature to
philosophy.
A belief in truly dialogic ideological becoming would lead to schools that were quite different. In such
schools, the mind would be populated with a complexity of voices and perspectives it had not known, and
the student would learn to think with those voices, to test ideas and experiences against them, and to
shape convictions that are innerly persuasive in response. This very process would be central. Students
would sense that whatever word they believed to be innerly persuasive was only tentatively so: the
process of dialogue continues.We must keep the conversation going, and formal education only initiates
the process. The innerly persuasive discourse would not be final, but would be, like experience itself, ever
incomplete and growing. As Bakhtin observes of the innerly persuasive word: Its creativity and
productiveness consist precisely in the fact that such a word awakens new and independent words, that it
organizes masses of our words from within, and does not remain in an isolated and static condition. It is
not so much interpreted by us as it is further, that is, freely, developed, applied to new material, new
conditions; it enters into interanimating relationships with new contexts. . . . The semantic structure of an
innerly persuasive discourse is not finite, it is open; in each of the new contexts that dialogize it, this
discourse is able to reveal ever newer ways to mean. (DI, 345–6) We not only learn, we also learn to
learn, and we learn to learn best when we engage in a dialogue with others and ourselves. We appropriate
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
3
File Title
the world of difference, and ourselves develop new potentials. Those potentials allow us to appropriate
yet more voices. Becoming becomes endless becoming. We talk, we listen, and we achieve an openended wisdom. Difference becomes an opportunity (see Freedman and Ball, this volume). Our world
manifests the spirit that Bakhtin attributed to Dostoevsky: “nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the
world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and
free, everything is in the future and will always be in the future.”3 Such a world becomes our world
within, its dialogue lives within us, and we develop the potentials of our ever-learning selves. Letmedraw
some inconclusive conclusions, which may provoke dialogue. Section I of this volume, “Ideologies in
Dialogue: Theoretical Considerations” and Bakhtin’s thought in general suggest that we learn best when
we are actually learning to learn. We engage in dialogue with ourselves and others, and the most
important thing is the value of the open-ended process itself. Section II, “Voiced, Double Voiced, and
Multivoiced Discourses in Our Schools” suggests that a belief in truly dialogic ideological becoming
would lead to schools that were quite different. In such schools, the mind would be populated with a
complexity of voices and perspectives it had not known, and the student would learn to think with those
voices, to test ideas and experiences against them, and to shape convictions that are innerly persuasive in
response. Teachers would not be trying to get students to hold the right opinions but to sense the world
from perspectives they would not have encountered or dismissed out of hand. Students would develop the
habit of getting inside the perspectives of other groups and other people. Literature in particular is
especially good at fostering such dialogic habits. Section III, “Heteroglossia in a Changing World” may
invite us to learn that dialogue involves really listening to others, hearing them not as our perspective
would categorize what they say, but as they themselves would categorize what they say, and only then to
bring our own perspective to bear. We talk, we listen, and we achieve an open-ended wisdom. The
chapters in this volume seem to suggest that we view learning as a perpetual process. That was perhaps
Bakhtin’s favorite idea: that to appreciate life, or dialogue, we must see value not only in achieving this
or that result, but also in recognizing that honest and open striving in a world of uncertainty and
difference is itself the most important thing. What we must do is keep the conversation going.
Dialogue is critical to affirming any value—shutting down deliberation devolves into
totalitarianism and reinscribes oppression
Morson 4 http://www.flt.uae.ac.ma/elhirech/baktine/0521831059.pdf#page=331 Northwestern Professor, Prof.
Morson's work ranges over a variety of areas: literary theory (especially narrative); the history of ideas, both Russian
and European; a variety of literary genres (especially satire, utopia, and the novel); and his favorite writers -Chekhov, Gogol, and, above all, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. He is especially interested in the relation of literature to
philosophy.
Bakhtin viewed the whole process of “ideological” (in the sense of ideas and values, however
unsystematic) development as an endless dialogue. As teachers, we find it difficult to avoid a voice of
authority, however much we may think of ours as the rebel’s voice, because our rebelliousness against
society at large speaks in the authoritative voice of our subculture.We speak the language and thoughts
of academic educators, even when we imagine we are speaking in no jargon at all, and that jargon,
inaudible to us, sounds with all the overtones of authority to our students. We are so prone to think of
ourselves as fighting oppression that it takes some work to realize that we ourselves may be felt as
oppressive and overbearing, and that our own voice may provoke the same reactions that we feel when
we hear an authoritative voice with which we disagree. So it is often helpful to think back on the great
authoritative oppressors and reconstruct their self-image: helpful, but often painful. I remember, many
years ago, when, as a recent student rebel and activist, I taught a course on “The Theme of the Rebel”
and discovered, to my considerable chagrin, that many of the great rebels of history were the very same
people as the great oppressors. There is a famous exchange between Erasmus and Luther, who hoped to
bring the great Dutch humanist over to the Reformation, but Erasmus kept asking Luther how he could
be so certain of so many doctrinal points. We must accept a few things to be Christians at all, Erasmus
wrote, but surely beyond that there must be room for us highly fallible beings to disagree. Luther would
have none of such tentativeness. He knew, he was sure. The Protestant rebels were, for a while, far more
intolerant than their orthodox opponents. Often enough, the oppressors are the ones who present
themselves and really think of themselves as liberators. Certainty that one knows the root cause of evil:
isn’t that itself often the root cause? We know from Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s letters denouncing Prince
Kurbsky, a general who escaped to Poland, that Ivan saw himself as someone who had been oppressed
by noblemen as a child and pictured himself as the great rebel against traditional authority when he killed
masses of people or destroyed whole towns. There is something in the nature of maximal rebellion
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
4
File Title
against authority that produces ever greater intolerance, unless one is very careful. For the skills of
fighting or refuting an oppressive power are not those of openness, self-skepticism, or real dialogue. In
preparing for my course, I remember my dismay at reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf and discovering that
his self-consciousness was precisely that of the rebel speaking in the name of oppressed Germans, and
that much of his amazing appeal – otherwise so inexplicable – was to the German sense that they were
rebelling victims. In our time, the Serbian Communist and nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic
exploited much the same appeal. Bakhtin surely knew that Communist totalitarianism, the Gulag, and the
unprecedented censorship were constructed by rebels who had come to power. His favorite writer,
Dostoevsky, used to emphasize that the worst oppression comes from those who, with the rebellious
psychology of “the insulted and humiliated,” have seized power – unless they have somehow cultivated
the value of dialogue, as Lenin surely had not, but which Eva, in the essay by Knoeller about teaching
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, surely had. Rebels often make the worst tyrants because their word,
the voice they hear in their consciousness, has borrowed something crucial from the authoritative word
it opposed, and perhaps exaggerated it: the aura of righteous authority. If one’s ideological becoming is
understood as a struggle in which one has at last achieved the truth, one is likely to want to impose that
truth with maximal authority; and rebels of the next generation may proceed in much the same way, in an
ongoing spiral of intolerance.
Second, decisionmaking.
Linking the ballot to a should question in combination with USFG simulation teaches the
skills to organize pragmatic consequences and philosophical values into a course of action
Hanghoj
8
http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2
009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf Thorkild Hanghøj, Copenhagen, 2008 Since this PhD project began in 2004, the present
author has been affiliated with DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials),
which is located at the Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Southern Denmark.
Research visits have taken place at the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), the
Institute of Education at the University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the
School of Education, University of Aarhus, where I currently work as an assistant professor.
Joas’ re-interpretation of Dewey’s pragmatism as a “theory of situated creativity” raises a critique of
humans as purely rational agents that navigate instrumentally through meansends- schemes (Joas, 1996:
133f). This critique is particularly important when trying to understand how games are enacted and
validated within the realm of educational institutions that by definition are inscribed in the great
modernistic narrative of “progress” where nation states, teachers and parents expect students to acquire
specific skills and competencies (Popkewitz, 1998; cf. chapter 3). However, as Dewey argues, the actual
doings of educational gaming cannot be reduced to rational means-ends schemes. Instead, the situated
interaction between teachers, students, and learning resources are played out as contingent redistributions of means, ends and ends in view, which often make classroom contexts seem “messy” from
an outsider’s perspective (Barab & Squire, 2004). 4.2.3. Dramatic rehearsal The two preceding sections
discussed how Dewey views play as an imaginative activity of educational value, and how his
assumptions on creativity and playful actions represent a critique of rational means-end schemes. For
now, I will turn to Dewey’s concept of dramatic rehearsal, which assumes that social actors deliberate by
projecting and choosing between various scenarios for future action. Dewey uses the concept dramatic
rehearsal several times in his work but presents the most extensive elaboration in Human Nature and
Conduct: Deliberation is a dramatic rehearsal (in imagination) of various competing possible lines of
action… [It] is an experiment in finding out what the various lines of possible action are really like (...)
Thought runs ahead and foresees outcomes, and thereby avoids having to await the instruction of actual
failure and disaster. An act overtly tried out is irrevocable, its consequences cannot be blotted out. An act
tried out in imagination is not final or fatal. It is retrievable (Dewey, 1922: 132-3). This excerpt
illustrates how Dewey views the process of decision making (deliberation) through the lens of an
imaginative drama metaphor. Thus, decisions are made through the imaginative projection of outcomes,
where the “possible competing lines of action” are resolved through a thought experiment. Moreover,
Dewey’s compelling use of the drama metaphor also implies that decisions cannot be reduced to
utilitarian, rational or mechanical exercises, but that they have emotional, creative and personal qualities
as well. Interestingly, there are relatively few discussions within the vast research literature on Dewey of
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
5
File Title
his concept of dramatic rehearsal. A notable exception is the phenomenologist Alfred Schütz, who praises
Dewey’s concept as a “fortunate image” for understanding everyday rationality (Schütz, 1943: 140).
Other attempts are primarily related to overall discussions on moral or ethical deliberation (Caspary,
1991, 2000, 2006; Fesmire, 1995, 2003; Rönssön, 2003; McVea, 2006). As Fesmire points out, dramatic
rehearsal is intended to describe an important phase of deliberation that does not characterise the whole
process of making moral decisions, which includes “duties and contractual obligations, short and longterm consequences, traits of character to be affected, and rights” (Fesmire, 2003: 70). Instead, dramatic
rehearsal should be seen as the process of “crystallizing possibilities and transforming them into directive
hypotheses” (Fesmire, 2003: 70). Thus, deliberation can in no way guarantee that the response of a
“thought experiment” will be successful. But what it can do is make the process of choosing more
intelligent than would be the case with “blind” trial-and-error (Biesta, 2006: 8). The notion of dramatic
rehearsal provides a valuable perspective for understanding educational gaming as a simultaneously real
and imagined inquiry into domain-specific scenarios. Dewey defines dramatic rehearsal as the capacity to
stage and evaluate “acts”, which implies an “irrevocable” difference between acts that are “tried out in
imagination” and acts that are “overtly tried out” with real-life consequences (Dewey, 1922: 132-3). This
description shares obvious similarities with games as they require participants to inquire into and resolve
scenario-specific problems (cf. chapter 2). On the other hand, there is also a striking difference between
moral deliberation and educational game activities in terms of the actual consequences that follow
particular actions. Thus, when it comes to educational games, acts are both imagined and tried out, but
without all the real-life consequences of the practices, knowledge forms and outcomes that are being
simulated in the game world. Simply put, there is a difference in realism between the dramatic rehearsals
of everyday life and in games, which only “play at” or simulate the stakes and risks that characterise the
“serious” nature of moral deliberation, i.e. a real-life politician trying to win a parliamentary election
experiences more personal and emotional risk than students trying to win the election scenario of The
Power Game. At the same time, the lack of real-life consequences in educational games makes it possible
to design a relatively safe learning environment, where teachers can stage particular game scenarios to be
enacted and validated for educational purposes. In this sense, educational games are able to provide a safe
but meaningful way of letting teachers and students make mistakes (e.g. by giving a poor political
presentation) and dramatically rehearse particular “competing possible lines of action” that are relevant to
particular educational goals (Dewey, 1922: 132). Seen from this pragmatist perspective, the educational
value of games is not so much a question of learning facts or giving the “right” answers, but more a
question of exploring the contingent outcomesI and domain-specific processes of problem-based
scenarios.
Decisionmaking is a trump impact—it improves all aspects of life regardless of its specific
goals
Shulman, president emeritus – Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, ‘9 (Lee S, Education and
a Civil Society: Teaching Evidence-Based Decision Making, p. ix-x)
These are the kinds of questions that call for the exercise of practical reason, a form of thought that draws
concurrently from theory and practice, from values and experience, and from critical thinking and human
empathy. None of these attributes is likely to be thought of no value and thus able to be ignored. Our
schools, however, are unlikely to take on all of them as goals of the educational process. The goal of
education is not to render practical arguments more theoretical; nor is it to diminish the role of values in
practical reason. Indeed, all three sources—theoretical knowledge, practical knowhow and experience,
and deeply held values and identity—have legitimate places in practical arguments. An educated person,
argue philosophers Thomas Green (1971) and Gary Fenstermacher (1986), is someone who has
transformed the premises of her or his practical arguments from being less objectively reasonable to being
more objectively reasonable. That is, to the extent that they employ probabilistic reasoning or interpret
data from various sources, those judgments and interpretations conform more accurately to wellunderstood principles and are less susceptible to biases and distortions. To the extent that values, cultural
or religious norms, or matters of personal preference or taste are at work, they have been rendered more
explicit, conscious, intentional, and reflective. In his essay for this volume, Jerome Kagan reflects the
interactions among these positions by arguing: We are more likely to solve our current problem, however,
if teachers accept the responsibility of guaranteeing that all adolescents, regardless of class or ethnicity,
can read and comprehend the science section of newspapers, solve basic mathematical problems, detect
the logical coherence in non-technical verbal arguments or narratives, and insist that all acts of
maliciousness, deception, and unregulated self-aggrandizement are morally unacceptable. Whether
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
6
File Title
Lab
choosing between a Prius and a Hummer, an Obama or a McCain, installing solar panels or planting taller
trees, a well-educated person has learned to combine their values, experience, understandings, and
evidence in a thoughtful and responsible manner. Thus do habits of mind, practice, and heart all play a
significant role in the lives of citizens.
Undermining switch side debate destroys critical activism – debating both sides of
transportation infrastructure empirically creates powerful liberal coalitions
Guilhot, research fellow – Social Science Research Council, prof sociology – LSE, ‘5 (Nicolas, The Democracy
Makers, p. 13-14)
Finally, there can be double agents only where there is conflict and contending agendas. This is crucial
dimension to the analyses. The genesis of global prescriptions for democratization or human rights and the
production " of international norms in a variety of regulatory areas are conflictual processes. Goals, means,
strategies, models, interlocutors, experts, grantees are constantly being contested. The meaning of concepts
themselves is at stake in these struggles: for instance, the debate about human rights in the 1980s was entirely
about deciding whether human rights were a universal norm that could be opposed to any form of
government (as liberals would argue), in whether they did not exist outside of national political traditions and
legal systems (as neoconservatives would say)—which then meant, in the latter case, that the defense of U.S.
interests could not be contrary to human rights, and that exporting and imposing the rule of law and
democracy was the only possible human rights policy. The opposition between different political and social
agendas is the perfect ground for the emergence of a tiiick layer of intermediaries, mediators, arbiters, and
go-betweens shuttling back and forth between contending groups, between dominant institutions and NGOs,
between the national and the international, between the detached position of the academic and the
involvement of the practitioner. These double agents tend to occupy the middle ground and to be in the best
position to make hegemonic institutions more sensitive to emancipatory claims, while at the same time
disciplining or moderating NGOs and activists. By doing so, they seem to further all agendas at once. In the
1980s, for instance, the most successful advocates of democratization programs included committed U.S. and
Latin American political scientists who had been promoting both democratization and the limitation of
democracy to the political sphere. All this entails no judgment about the psychological motivations of actors.
Talking of double agents does not imply that individuals follow cynical self-serving calculations. Cynicism is
a model of individual rationality which is anthropologically dubious and epistemologically untenable. On the
contrary, the individuals who appear in this book are often idealists, motivated by a real commitment to the
causes they champion. What has changed is the place and the role of this idealism in the global context. What
makes them "double" agents is the structural context in which they participate. It is not an issue of character.
While the demands for a more ethical foreign policy and other forms of international democratic activism
were once clearly critical elements, they have become today the building blocks of new world orders. The
construction of "market democracies" across the world has been adopted as a crucial element of the U.S.
security doctrine and also an instrument of economic liberalization, while the exportation of democracy has
given birth to new forms of political, legal, and scientific imperialism. In this new context, democratic
activism has obviously changed its signification, if not its sides.
K
THE AFFIRMATIVE’S DISTINCTION BETWEEN PRODUCTIVE, MACHINE TRANSPORTATION AND EXCESSIVE HUMAN
TRANSPORTATION RELIES ON A FALSE NOSTALGIA. WE HAVE NEVER BEEN HUMAN, WE ARE ALWAYS ALREADY
CYBORG.
NORDQUIST, 2010
(MICHAEL ANDREW, PHD IN PHILOSOPHY @ UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, FEBRUARY 2010, “ENVIRONMENTAL
PARTICIPATION: IMMANENCE, COSMOPOLITICS, AND THE AGENCY OF ENVIRONMENTAL ASSEMBLAGES”)
Human action and human agency are only possible through the combination of nonhumans into what is
understood as the human, and then only through ignoring all of the nonhuman entities that went into the
process of making a human. Human bodies are the most obvious product of the process of nonhumans
making and making possible the idea of the human being. The organs that constitute bodies, the biochemical
processes that occur without consciousness, and the relations among all these parts and processes are all
nonhuman entities that enable the figure of the human to be understood as a whole. Human skin, typically considered to be a container for
our “internal” organs, physically connects bodies and their environments, exchanging air, water, and chemical compounds with whatever it comes into contact. The interconnection of these bodies with food, air, and water further
attach “humans” to their environments through the literal combination of these “external” things with “internal” bodily processes.
The many forms of material attachment to
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
7
File Title
environments point not only to the differences among “humans,” but also to the ways in which people are
radically transformed by the things they are attached to. The walker from the previous chapter— with her shoes, street, laws,
leg muscles, etc.—is radically different from a driver who, with an automobile and all of its attendant
connections to laws, norms, and physical power, can accomplish a different set of things through her
combination with them. A person who uses a cellular phone is not merely using a tool or technology to talk to
someone around the planet, but he becomes something different, a network of attachments, material and
otherwise, that transform a “human” into an entity that can do much more than simply “be human.” The
driver is not a human being in an automobile, but is a car-street-law-mobility assemblage. The cell phone
user is a communicating- wireless-electricity-phone company assemblage. The distinctively “human” things
they are doing can only be accomplished through the enrollment of things that fall outside of the definition of
human, such as phones, cars, and telephone companies. By detaching all of these “internal” and “external” connections that “human”
life depends upon, it is easy to overlook and underestimate the role other-than-human entities play in
everyday life. These are not tools we use to accomplish our pre- established goals or ranked preferences, but
they modify us, what we want to do, and what we are capable of doing. Envisioning the human as a rightsbearing and reason- and language-using sentient being actively eliminates the environmental connections that
a human being has. Thinking the human being as a universalizable norm 117 necessarily cuts off these
connections among entities that are integral aspects of their existences . As Latour notes, “no one can define in advance what a human being is, detached
from what makes him [sic] be.”26 As noted earlier , just as we have never been modern according to Latour, we have also never been human,
relying on the relations we have with the entities that enable us to do things that “the human” on its own is
incapable of. Subsuming the variously connected and constituted human assemblages into a model of human
existence radically transforms them into something they do not see themselves as and eliminates a particular
set of environmental relations .27 As a concept open to contestation and disagreement, it is important to push the limits of these conceptual forms of a politics of cosmos to understand what exactly
cosmopolitanism makes possible and what it cuts off. Just as Honig argues for an “agonistic cosmopolitics” in contrast to the “subsumptive normative cosmopolitanism” of neo-Kantians,28 I aim to make clear that these
Kantian-inspired and human-based cosmopolitanisms need not be the only form that a politics of cosmos can
take, and they are in fact rather limited, anthropocentric means of acting in a world. This is particularly the
case when what it means to be human is constantly challenged and redefined through the infinite relations
with entities that produce what we take to be humans.29
THE AFFIRMATIVE’S CONCEPTION OF A PURE HUMAN CONTRA MACHINE RELIES ON A CONCEPTION OF STABLE
IDENTITY AGAINST OTHERS TO JUSTIFY BOUNDLESS VIOLENCE AND DENIAL OF AGENCY TO THE POINT OF
EXTERMINATION
CAMPBELL, 2008
(DAVID, PROF. OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS @ THE UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE, WRITING SECURITY: UNITED STATES
FOREIGN POLICY AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY, REVISED EDITION, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, ISBN 08166-3144-1, PG. 48-51)
securing identity in the form of the state requires an emphasis
on the unfinished and endangered nature of the world. In other words, discourses of "danger" are central to the
discourses of the "state" and the discourses of "man."43 In place of the spiritual certitude that provided the
vertical intensity to support the horizontal extensiveness of Christendom, the state requires discourses of
"danger" to provide a new theology of truth about who and what "we" are by highlighting who or what
"we" are not, and what "we" have to fear. This is not to suggest that fear and danger are modern constructs that only emerged after the relative demise of Christendom. On the contrary,
the church relied heavily on discourses of danger to establish its authority, discipline its followers, and ward
off its enemies. Indeed, although this disposition was important to the power of the church throughout its
history, for the three centuries between the Black Death of 1348 and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the agents of God propagated a woeful vision of life
marked by a particular attitude toward death.44 Thinking that Western civilization was besieged by a horde of
enemies (Turks, Jews, heretics, idolaters, and witches, to name but a few), the church saw the devil everywhere and encouraged introspection
and guilt to such an extent that a culture of anxiety predominated. The literary tradition of contemptus
mundi ("contempt for the world"), which was pivotal to the culture of anxiety and the acute sense of endangeredness it
encouraged, bespoke hatred for the body and the world, the pervasiveness of sin, the fleeting nature of time,
and the fragility of life. Moreover, it was this "evangelism of fear"45 that produced a preoccupation with death. As the
In this context of incipient ambiguity brought on by an insistence that can no longer be grounded,
promise of an escape from earthly vices, the religious leitmotif of "salvation" obliged all those who sought this transcendence "to think continually about death in order to avoid sin, because sin plus death could land them in Hell."46
Meditation on death was thus the principal form of a moral pedagogy that sought to ensure salvation. In
fostering an evangelism of fear, with death as its impetus and salvation as its goal, the cultural agents of the
period were not simply responding to danger as an external condition. The required familiarity with death
demanded of individuals an eternal vigilance against the self: "One should always keep death in mind, just as
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
8
File Title
one would always mount guard against an enemy who might suddenly appear" (indeed, for essayists like Montaigne, death was a synonym for
enemy).*7 But it was this vigilance against the self, encouraged by the experience of finitude and required in the name of salvation, that constituted the conditions of contemptus mundi from which one sought salvation. In the
Speculum peccatoris ("Sinner's Mirror")—a manuscript attributed to Saint Augustine—the author declares, "Consideration of the brevity of life engenders contempt for the world," and continues: "Is there anything that can increase
man's vigilance, his flight from injustice, and his saintly behavior in the fear of God more than the realization of his [future] alteration, the precise knowledge of his mortal condition and the consequent thought of his horrible death,
The logic of the evangelism of fear thus ferments the very conditions that it claims necessitate
vigilance against the enemies of the self; put simply, it produces its own danger. The evangelism of fear and its logic
of identity are not just of the past, however. In our own time, argues Delumeau, we can witness their operation: Does not our own epoch help
us to understand the beginnings of European modernity? The mass killings of the twentieth century from 1914 to the genocide of
Cambodia—passing through various holocausts and the deluge of bombs on Vietnam—the menace of nuclear
war, the ever-increasing use of torture, the multiplication of Gulags, the resurgence of insecurity, the rapid
and often more and more troubling progress of technology, the dangers entailed by an overly intensive
exploitation of natural resources, various genetic manipulations, and the uncontrolled explosion of
information: Here are so many factors that, gathered together, create a climate of anxiety in our civilization
which, in certain respects, is comparable to that of our ancestors between the time of the plague and the end
of the Wars of Religion. We have reentered this "country of fear" and, following a classic process of
"projection," we never weary of evoking it in both words and images... Yesterday, as today, fear of violence is
objectified in images of violence and fear of death in macabre visions. 49 To talk of the endangered nature of
the modern world and the enemies and threats that abound in it is thus not to offer a simple ethnographic
description of our condition; it is to invoke a discourse of danger through which the incipient ambiguity of
our world can be grounded in accordance with the insistences of identity. Danger (death, in its ultimate form)
might therefore be thought of as the new god for the modern world of states, not because it is peculiar to our
time, but because it replicates the logic of Christendom's evangelism of fear. Indeed, in a world in which state
identity is secured through discourses of danger, some low tactics are employed to serve these high ideals.
These tactics are not inherent to the logic of identity, which only requires the definition of difference. But
securing an ordered self and an ordered world —particularly when the field upon which this process operates
is as extensive as a state—involves defining elements that stand in the way of order as forms of "otherness." 50
Such obstructions to order "become dirt, matter out of place, irrationality, abnormality, waste, sickness,
perversity, incapacity, disorder, madness, unfreedom. They become material in need of rationalization,
normalization, moralization, correction, punishment, discipline, disposal, realization, etc."51 In this way, the state project of security
when man becomes nonman?"48
replicates the church project of salvation. The state grounds its legitimacy by offering the promise of security to its citizens who, it says, would otherwise face manifold dangers. The church justifies its role by guaranteeing salvation to
its followers who, it says, would otherwise be destined to an unredeemed death. Both the state and the church require considerable effort to maintain order within and around themselves, and thereby engage in an evangelism of fear to
ward off internal and external threats, succumbing in the process to the temptation to treat difference as otherness. In contrast to the statist discourse of international relations, this understanding proffers an entirely different orientation
instead of
regarding foreign policy as the external view and rationalist orientation of a preestablished state, the identity
of which is secure before it enters into relations with others, we can consider foreign policy as an integral part
of the discourses of danger that serve to discipline the state. The state, and the identity of "man" located in
the state, can therefore be regarded as the effects of discourses of danger that more often than not employ
strategies of otherness. Foreign policy thus needs to be understood as giving rise to a boundary rather than
acting as a bridge.
to the question of foreign policy. In addition to the historical discussion above, which suggested that it was possible to argue that the state was not prior to the interstate system, this interpretation means that
When confronted with our inevitable entanglement with inanimate otherness, our
alternative is not the affirmative’s ontological rejection of the car, but a radical ethic of
hospitality and ‘letting beings be’ – This rejection of productivity and instrumentality in
affirmation of otherness is crucial to rupture violence and is the only moral imperative.
INTRONA, 2010
(LUCAS, PROFESSOR OF ORGANIZATION, TECHNOLOGY, AND ETHICS @ LANCASTER UNIVERSITY, AI & SOC, 2010,
VOL. 25, “THE ‘MEASURE OF A MAN’ AND THE ETHOS OF HOSPITALITY: TOWARDS AN ETHICAL DWELLING WITH
TECHNOLOGY,” PG. 93-102)
Increasingly we find ourselves surrounded by technological artefacts, artefacts that have become increasingly
complex and ubiquitous. As we draw on, and become dependent on the possibilities they provide, the
boundary between our machines and us are becoming less and less obvious. What is a soldier without the technology of global positioning, night
vision, laser guided telescopes, mobile telecoms, and more? What is the detective without the detecting technology of genetic profiling, fingerprint matching, voice recognition, bugging, and so forth? Is a soldier really a soldier
As society develops, we are putting more of ourselves ‘into’
technological artefacts (depending on them to make decisions we used to make), and technological artefacts are increasingly ‘inserting
themselves’ into us (as artificial limbs or extensions of ourselves), doing very important things we used to do for ourselves. At the end of the progression, we have
the android and the cyborg. We are becoming, or always have been, human/machine hybrids (Haraway 1991; Latour 1993).
As we progress along this path, which we clearly already started with the first tools, and without wanting to speculate about the inevitability of such a
progression or how rapid or slow this may be, it will certainly become increasingly important for us to consider an ethics of
technological artefacts qua artefacts. When referring to an ‘ethics of technology’ or an ‘ethics of the
without her kit? It seems that her kit is becoming integral to what she is, as a soldier.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
9
File Title
artificial’, I am referring to it in two very distinct ways. In the first, more traditional sense, I mean the values and interests built into the very materiality
of the technologies we draw upon—inscribed in their ‘flesh’ as it were (Winner 1980). In drawing upon the
possibilities presented by these technologies, we become wittingly or unwittingly enrolled into particular
scripts and programmes of action (in the actor network theory sense of the word). These scripts and programmes make certain things
possible and others not, include certain interests and others not (for example the increased use of ATM may have lead to the closure of bank branches which
exactly excludes those that can not use ATM’s, such as physically disabled people). In this sense of use, the ethics of machines is very important and is in
desperate need of our attentio n (an example of this type of work is the paper by Introna and Nissenbaum (2000) on search engines and the work of Brey (2000) as proposed in his disclosive ethics).
However, this paper is not primarily concerned with this sense of technological ethics. It is rather concerned with the question of the moral and ethical significance of technological artefacts in their technological being, i.e. the
question of the weight of our moral responsibility towards technological artefacts as artificial beings. In order to develop and structure the discussion, I will draw on a particular episode of Star Trek (2003) titled: ‘‘The measure of a
the problem of
ethical significance of the artificial can become apparent and considered. In discussing this case, I will argue that its approach to the issue, as well as
the work of Levinas, is essentially anthropocentric—ultimately the measure of ethical significance is ‘the
measure of a man’. I will argue, with Heidegger (1977a), that it will ultimately fail to provide us with an adequate way to consider
the ethical significance of the artificial. I will then proceed to suggest, with the help of Derrida, a more radical interpretation of Levinas as a possible way forward towards an ethics (or rather
man’’.1 In this episode, the ethical significance, and therefore subsequent rights, of the android Data becomes contested. This ‘case study’—if I may call it that—will give us some indication of how
ethos) of hospitality—an ethical dwelling with the artificial other that so pervade our everyday being in the world. […]Such a suggestion points the intimate link between ethics and politics. I will return to this matter in the next
ultimately we are going to be judged as a species about how we treat these
creations of ours; and if 97 they are ‘‘expendable, disposable, aren’t we?’’ This is an interesting step and
captures the essence of Heidegger’s argument against western metaphysics which is humanistic and in which
everything is valued in human terms and subsequently everything (also humanity) is robbed of its worth: [I]t
is important finally to realise that precisely through the characterisation of something as ‘a value’ what is so
valued is robbed of its worth. That is to say, by the assessment of something as a value what is valued is
admitted only as an object for man’s estimation. But what a thing is in its Being is not exhausted by its being
an object, particularly when objectivity takes the form of value. Every valuing, even where it values
positively, is a subjectivizing. It does no let beings: be. Rather, valuing lets beings: be valid—solely as the
objects of its doing (Heidegger 1977a, p. 228, emphasis mine). In this regard, neither Riker nor Picard escape this anthropocentric valuing. Riker argues that machines are instruments of man, at its disposal. They
should be valued in terms of their value ‘for us.’ However, in the sociotechnical assemblages of contemporary world, it is increasingly
difficult to draw a clear boundary between ‘them’ and ‘us.’ If they are merely ‘for us’, then we all are a ‘for
us’. As Heidegger (1977b) argues in his essay The Question Concerning Technology, in such a world we all become ‘standing reserve’ (at the disposal of
the network). Picard’s humanistic defence invokes a hierarchy of values in which Data becomes valued
because he is ‘like us’ (sentient beings). However, if Heidegger is right then even where valuing is positive it is
always subjectivising. Thus, neither of these positions escape the ‘technological’ world view in which the
world is rendered present as a ‘for us’ (Gestell/enframed in Heidegger’s terminology). As enframed beings not only the artificial but
also man becomes mere ‘standing reserve’ within which other possibilities for being are concealed. Not only
this. In framing beings (and itself) in its own terms the very concealing of other possibilities for being itself
becomes concealed. Instead of creating value systems in our own self-image, the absolute otherness of every
Other should be the only moral imperative , so argues Levinas and Derrida. We need an ethics of the artificial that is beyond
the self-identical of human beings. Such an ethics beyond anthropocentric metaphysics need as its ‘ground’,
not a system for comparison, but rather a recognition of the impossibility of any comparison—every
comparison is already violent in its attempt to render equal what could never be equal (Levinas 1991[1974]). How might
we encounter the other, ethically, in its otherness? This is what I will no turn to. 3 Hospitality as the ethics of a community that
have nothing in common ‘‘Hospitality is culture itself and not simply one ethic amongst others. Insofar as it
has to do with the ethos... ethics is hospitality; ethics is entirely coextensive with the experience of hospitality,
whichever way one expands or limits that.’’—Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, p. 16–17. The fundamental problem for the
android Data is that the question of the ethical, its imperative, is already colonised by humans. In this ethical
landscape, it becomes impossible for Data to state his case unless it is made in human terms—terms such as
‘machine’, ‘property’, ‘sentience’, etc. It is us humans who are making the decisions about the validity, or
not, of any criteria or category for establishing the ethical significance of a being . It is Data— and by extension all non-humans—that is on
trial, not we humans. Our moral worth is taken for granted. As such we are the measure. For example we often take
‘sentience’ as criteria for considering moral significance or worth because we argue that it is a necessary
condition for the feeling of pain (Singer 1977). Why should pain be a criterion for moral significance? Is it because we
can feel pain? Are not all our often-suggested criteria such as originality, sentience, rationality, autonomy,
and so forth, not somehow always already based on that which we humans by necessity comply with? Is not
the essential criterion for moral worthiness (in most ethical thought) a being in our image, like us? Is our
ethics not always an ethics of those with whom we have something in common? Obviously one can
legitimately ask whether it is at all possible for us humans to escape our own moral prejudices—especially if
we realise the intimate link between ethics and politics. Furthermore, it seems that every attempt one might have to
define common inclusive ethical categories or criteria for all things will fail, as it already violates every entity
section. The final step in his defence, which draws on the first two, is that
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
10
File Title
by exactly denying that which is most significant—its radical otherness. Indeed, as was suggested, most attempts (even some radical
environmental ethics) are mostly informed by the assumption that at some level we can indeed compare the
incomparable—and, ultimately that the only legitimate reference point for such comparison is that which is
in the image of the human Other. But what about the non-human Other, the inanimate, the artificial? What
about the community of those with whom we have nothing in common? 2 There has been many attempts to define more inclusive ethical categories and
values such as a biocentric ethics (Goodpaster 1978; Singer 1977), an ecocentric ethics (Leopold 1966; Naess 1995) or even an infocentric ethics by Floridi (2003). The non-human (inanimate)
other One might suggest that, for us human beings, a wholly Other, that is indeed wholly Other, is the
inanimate Other. In many respects, the destitute face of the human Other , in the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas for example, is already in
some sense a reflection of the human face opposite it. We can indeed substitute ourselves for the Other
(become her hostage) because we can imagine—at least in some vague sense—what it must be like for the
human Other to suffer violence because we suffer violence. It is possible for us to substitute ‘us for them’
because it could have been my friend, my child, my partner, etc.). As Husserl (1970/1929) argues, in his Cartesian Mediations, through empathy, ‘‘we
project ourselves into the alien cultural community and its culture’’ (p. 135) in which the ‘‘the Other’’ exists
‘‘phenomenologically [as] a ‘modification’ of myself’ ’ (p. 115). Through empathy, our egos constitutes a ‘‘single
universal community’’ of human intersubjectivity (p. 140)—a community with a common unity. As human beings, that also encounter
ourselves as Other, we know that we always exceed and overflow the caricatures that the intentionality of
consciousness endeavours to impose on us, that we are always infinitely more (or radically other) than any
and all such caricatures. It is this infinity that Levinas points to when he claims ethics as ‘first philosophy.’ What about the inanimate Other? In his book Technology
and Lifeworld Ihde (1990) argues for an extension of Levinas’ notion of alterity (or quasi-otherness) to inanimate things.3 He argues that the ‘religious object’ ‘‘does not simply ‘represent’ some absent power but is endowed with the
that this quasi-otherness always remains in the
domain of human invention. In other words, it is still within the realm of that which we humans bring to it—
even if it is unintentional or not for instrumental purposes, hence his designation of the object as quasi-other.
One might say it is plausible to see the religious object as an Other in some way (even if it is quasi-other) but
what about everyday objects such as the table? I want to suggest with Harman (2002, 2005) that the table (and all other inanimate
objects) are also infinitely other, always more than that which human intentionality brings to it. In Tool-Being Harman
(2002) argues that even the table, in the fullness of its being, is infinite. Although the intentional acts of consciousness
transform it by necessity into a caricature (into some form of present-at-hand being), such acts do not, and
never can, exhaust it. As Harman (2002) suggests: ‘‘However, deeply we meditate on the table’s act of supporting solid
weights, however, tenaciously we monitor its presence, any insight that is yielded will always be something
quite distinct from this act [of being] itself’’ (22)—what he calls its tool-being. The table, here before me, is always more than
all the perspectives, levels or layers that we can enumerate, more than all the uses we can put it to, more than
all possible perspectives, levels, layers or uses. Harman (2002, 2005) argues that any and all possible relations between humans
and things will inevitably fail to grasp them as they are; they are, in the fullness of their being, irreducible to
any and all of these relations.4 In short: they are, in the fullness of their being, infinite and wholly Other.
Indeed, as was suggested above, one might claim that they are in a sense more Other (if one can say this at
all) than the human Other since we can never in any sense put ourselves ‘in their shoes,’ as it were. Thus, if
the infinitely otherness of the Other is what compels us—puts our own right to existence into question, as Levinas
argues— then we have no basis for excluding the inanimate Other from the kingdom of Others —even if Levinas did
not arrive at this conclusion. His Other is always the humanistic, or ultimately, the theistic Other . This paper endeavours
to go beyond this boundary, to forsake all boundaries, to enter into a community that have nothing in
common (Lingis 1994). Is such a community possible? How is it is at all possible to approach the wholly Other, in any way
whatsoever, without turning the Other into an image (or project) of the self (or the same). Differently stated:
is it at all possible to be altruistic, wholly Other (Autrui) centred? Is there an ethic that takes the irreducible and wholly
Other as its only imperative? To this question, Derrida responds with the aporia 5 of hospitality (an ethics of hospitality one
might say). 5 Ethics is hospitality According to Levinas (1996), it is the always already otherness of the Other is what moves ethics. In the disruptive presence of the stranger, the
wholly Other, the question of ethics really becomes alive—it is a real question in that puts us humans (our
categories, values, etc.) into question . How is this stranger to be responded to? Derrida suggest that we should suspend our judgement (our 4 Nathan
Brown (2007) in his essay ‘‘The inorganic Open: Nanotechnology and physical being’’ proposes the notion of ‘nothing-other than-object’ to name this infinite physical being, ‘‘this immanent otherness
of that which is never nothing and yet not something’’ (41). Also refer to Benso (2000) and Davy (2007) for arguments to extend Levinas’ ethics for the no-human domain.
sacred. Its aura of sacredness is spatially and temporally present within the range of its efficacy’’ (98). Ihde argues, however,
5 I use the term ‘aporia’ as Derrida does to indicate the double meaning of something that is both an expression of doubt and a perplexing difficulty. 99 ethical categories) and allow her in ‘unconditionally’, as an act of hospitality. As
Derrida (2002, p. 361) points out: ‘‘If I welcome only what I welcome, what I am ready to welcome, and that I recognise in advance because I expect thecomingofthehoˆteasinvited,thereisnohospitality’’. This act of hospitality
In this relation, the other can only be faced, as Other, in the radical asymmetry of
unconditional hospitality. However, when we say this, we must also immediately say that for hospitality to
really be an act of ‘hospitality’, the welcome must also contain within itself the irreducible possibility of
hostility (hospitality and hostility share the same etymological root)—without a boundary (and the possibility
to enforce it) letting the total outsider in ‘as a friend’ would not make sense as an act of hospitality. Thus, in
hospitality there is a paradox, the unconditional is always already conditional . For Levinas, this aporia of hospitality is expressed as the aporia
between ethics and justice—the other (the guest) and the third (the host). Let us consider this relation before we attempt to imagine what hospitality
constitutes the host and guest pairing.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
11
File Title
towards the artificial might mean. For Levinas, ethics happens, or not, when the self-certain ego becomes
disturbed—shaken and fundamentally questioned—by the proximity, before me, of the absolute Other, the
absolute singular (the Infinite); ‘‘[w]e name this calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the
Other, ethics’’ (1967: 43). The wholly Other that takes me by surprise, overturns and overflows my categories,
themes and concepts; it shatters their walls, makes their self-evident sense explode into non-sense. For
Levinas, the claim of conventional ethics that we can know, the right thing to do, is to claim that the absolute
singular can become absorbed into, domesticated by, the categories of my human consciousness. Once the
Other, this singular before me, has become an instance in my categories or themes it can no longer disturb
the self-evidentness of those categories. Nothing is more self-evident than my categories and likewise with the
singular now absorbed as an instance of them (Introna 2001, 2002, 2003). Within the category, we can reason about rights,
obligations, laws and principles, and yet ethics may never happen—actual beings may starve, die, be
vandalised, dumped and scorned as they circulate in the economy of our categories. They fall through the
cracks of our debates, arguments and counterarguments, and yet we feel justified—we have our reasons; it
was the right thing to do after all . Levinas (1991[1974], 158) also argues that we cannot speak of our radical asymmetrical relation
with the infinitely Other without immediately and simultaneously also referring to all other Others. The
radical otherness of the Other obsesses me both in its refusal to be contained (rendered equal) and in its
simultaneous recalling of the always already equal claim of all other Others weighing down on me in this
particular singular here before me now. In the radical claim of the Other is signified always and already the
claim of all other Others—the ‘third’ in Levinas’ terminology. In the words of Critchley (1999, pp. 226–227): Thus my ethical relation to the Other is an
unequal, asymmetrical relation to a height that cannot be comprehended, but which, at the same time, opens
onto a relation to the third and to humanity [an all beings] as a whole—that is, to a symmetrical community
of equals. This simultaneity of ethics and politics gives a doubling quality to all discourse...the community has
a double structure; it is a community of equals which is at the same time based on the inegalitarian moment
of the ethical relation. It is exactly this simultaneous presence of the Other and all other Others that gives
birth to the question of justice. The urgency of justice is an urgency born out of the radical irreducible asymmetry of every ethical relation with the Other. Without such a
radical asymmetry, the claim of the Other can always in principle become determined and codified into a
calculation, justice as a calculation and distribution. Thus, justice has its standard, its force, in the ethical
proximity of the singular Other. As Levinas (1991[1974], 159) asserts: ‘‘justice remains justice only, in a society where there is no distinction between those close and those far off, but in which
there also remains the impossibility of passing by the closest. The equality of all is born by my inequality, the surplus of my duties over my rights. The forgetting of self moves justice’’ (emphasis added). This formulation of the aporia
between ethics and justice by Levinas highlights the tension, one may say the profound ‘paradox’ of hospitality in the relation between the quest and the host. We can welcome the guest (the wholly Other) unconditionally but we must
Without this impossible possibility ethics and
justice (or rather hospitality) will not have the urgency of an ethics that really matters. Buts what does this
mean for Data and all other artificial beings? 6 One may respond by claiming that an ethics of hospitality leaves us in a
dead-end with nowhere to go. Yes, it does leave one in an impossible possibility but that is exactly its strength.
It is when we believe that we have ‘sorted’ ethics out that violence is already present. Conversely, it is when
we become unsure, when we are full of questions, when our categories fails us, and we need to think afresh,
start all over again, that it becomes possible for us to be open to the questioning appeal of the otherness of the
Other, to be truly hospitable. Where does this leave us? What do we concretely do? I will suggest—in following Derrida and Levinas—that
an ethics of hospitality could be based on, but not limited to, the following aporia: this provided a basis for arguing for the measure of man. How might the inanimate
speak (not in our terms but in their terms)? It seems that there are at least two ways in which they ‘speak.’ First, they speak in their silence.
The fragility of their radical passivity, their ‘voicelessness’, serve to highlight and reveal (in a very stark
manner) implicit force of our moral judgements. As we dispose of them in scrap heaps, landfills and garbage
cans our power as the only moral authority is seemingly confirmed—yet they remain silent; ‘turning the
other cheek’ one might say. Second, they speak as ‘mirrors’, revealing us to ourselves. As Robert Hughes once remarked ‘‘societies
reveal themselves in what they throw away’’ (Hughes 1991, 333). What do we see if we listen to the things that surround us? What do our scrap heaps, landfills and garbage cans reveal to us. They reveal us as
consumers seeking an endless proliferation of possibilities to enact our own identity and power. They reveal
us as having a ‘one-dimensional’ relation with them, as instruments ‘for us’, ‘for our purposes’, ‘for our
projects’. We use them then we dump them. Yet, sometimes, they also point to a possibility that it could be
different. Notice what happened when we individuate them by decorating them (the Latin root of ‘decoration’ is to honour)—as was done in the case of Data for example. When we engage with
them in their singularity, a certain intimacy is possible. I am not referring to a singular piece of Royal Dalton that is valued because of its monetary value. Rather I am
simultaneously assert that the host (and all other possible guests) are also, and need also be taken as, radically singular Others.
referring to simple everyday objects that are valued because they reveal to us something more than their instrumental purposes suggest. For example, the intimacy we find between musicians and their musical instruments, or craftsmen
it seems that such appreciation and honouring only comes when we
come to see our own fragility and dependency on the possibilities provided by our relation with them—i.e.
when our own self-certainty becomes unsettled. This seems less likely in a ‘plug and play’ world of machines
designed for consumption and disposal. Hospitality will happen only if we become unsettled by the voices of
the Others that surrounds us. Data never got the opportunity to speak— except in answering their questions. However, outside the court he did speak. When confronted by Maddox about his
and their tools. Their relationship is not just one of use but also one of care. Nevertheless,
resignation he said: ‘‘I am the culmination of one man’s dream. This is not ego or vanity, but when Doctor Soong created me he added to the substance of the universe. If by your experiments I am destroyed, something unique and
wonderful will be lost.’’ Data is claiming (on behalf of all artificial beings) that it is exactly his/their singularity and Otherness that is at stake here. For Maddox, the issue was the possibility of reproducing him. For in reproducibility
lays the possibility of consumption and disposal—of The suspension of the law (unconditionally) Letting the Other speak Undecidability and impossibility Justice for all Others (for every third whatsoever) 6.1 The suspension of the
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
12
File Title
If the
possibility of becoming unsettled by the otherness of the Other becomes circumvented by the self-evidence of
the category, code, reasons, etc., then the law becomes a law onto itself—pure violence. Hospitality demands
that we interrogate again and again the implicit judgements—inclusions and exclusions— already implied in
the law . In the case of Data, the categories and judgements remained in tact in many interacting ways. It was Data that was on trial, not the humans. It was evident to everybody that he was the ‘lesser’ machine and that they
law (unconditionally) Derrida (1992) suggests, as was argued above, that it is only when we suspend the law unconditionally (categories, codes, values, etc.) to make a ‘fresh’ judgement, that hospitality becomes possible.
had the right to decide his fate. The right of the humans to decide did not come up for consideration. Furthermore, once the court case started his friends ironically believed that his moral worth was in being ‘like them’. They did not
suspend their categories of ‘machine’, ‘person’ and ‘sentience’ and asked the question ‘‘what is it about Data, as Data, that is significant’’. One can most certainly question whether Data really did find ‘justice’ in being spared because
Without radically unsettling the implicit judgements about ‘‘the measure’’ to be considered
ethics did not happen. More generally, our human tendency to treat the inanimate, the artificial, as our
instruments, as being in our service, for our purposes, needs to be suspended unconditionally. Without such
as step the possibility of an ethics of hospitality towards all beings is not possible. 6.2 Letting the other speak Levinas suggests that it is in
he was almost like them?
speaking that the other reveals itself as Other. For Levinas, speaking is the showing of the Other of itself and from itself as always already Other (Levinas 1991[1974]). Speaking expresses the otherness of the Other and in so doing
It is
through consumption and disposal that we can confirm our power and eventually also our own supposed
moral worth. 6.3 Undecidability and impossibility The reality of ethical situation that confront us (as was the case with Data) is that eventually
a decision has to be made—one way or the other. This decision is mostly required in the ‘now’ of our
everyday flow of life. Hospitality does not have the luxury of time to think about all the alternatives, weigh
them carefully and come to a reasoned, justifiable outcome. We can obviously talk and reason but in the final
instance the decision is now, yet it is undecidable. As Derrida (1999: 66) argues: ‘‘there would be no decision, in the strong
sense of the word, in ethics, in politics, no decision, and thus no responsibility, without the experience of some
undecidability. If you don’t experience some undecidability, then the decision would simply be the
application of a programme... ethics and politics, therefore, start with undecidability.’’ It is undecidable in
the sense that we cannot construct a framework that will ‘solve’ it for us ‘once and for all.’ Thus, there can
simply be no final reckoning, no balancing of all the books (Caputo 1993). Indeed the agonising that accompanies
hospitality already suggests that every welcome is also an implicit transgression. We know that every act of
hospitality doomed to failure, since we were forced to compare what is incomparable. Thus, when we make
the decision to welcome (or not), which we eventually will have to do, we must, for the sake of hospitality,
immediately and simultaneously declare the inherent uncertainty and exceptional nature of the act. If it no
longer unsettles us to simply dispose of any thing (to turn the stranger away), then the possibility for
hospitality have disappeared. The silent trashing of the disposable cup and the destitute face of a fellow human being must interrogate our ethical relationship to the Other with equal urgency for an
ethics of hospitality to become a impossible possibility. Any framework or category that will remove the trauma of the undecidable will
turn hospitality into hostility, pure calculation. 6.4 Justice for all others (for every ‘third’ whatsoever) In the final instance, we humans
must admit that justice is also a political question. To say that it is not a political question because it is based
on some sort of reasonable reason (proof, evidence, argument) is to cover over the fact that such a criteria
already benefits us as animals with the capacity to reason. How will we find justice for all others? Hospitality
immediately and simultaneously implicates politics , the question of justice (Critchley 1999). By avoiding the trauma of undecidability that hospitality demands the participants
leaves a trace. How do artificial beings—and things in general—speak? Of course, Data could speak, but his speaking only mattered in as much as 123 101 hiding, covering over, our fragility and dependency.
in the court case have also committed an injustice to all. How then will we move towards including all others into the sphere of ethics? Clearly, this will not be easy. There is no doubt that Data’s case is a difficult one, yet not the
hardest one could imagine. In the case of Data, one might ask: what about all the people that may in future lose their lives because there is not a Data available? What about the knowledge lost by not doing the disassembly? And we
may add many more ‘thirds’ here. Without simultaneously considering all the other thirds (who bears the cost of the welcome to Data) the hospitality extended to Data is not real hospitality; it is a welcome of what we are ‘ready to
welcome.’ We cannot speculate about how the case would have turned out had they followed an ethics of hospitality. Nevertheless, what seems to be a victory for Data is not necessary so. All we can claim is that it would have been
In considering an ethics of
hospitality, which include all strangers, we have multiplied many times over our moral responsibility. This
does not mean that we need to treat an inanimate object the same as a human—absolutely the opposite. There
is no ‘same’ whatsoever. We do not have the comfort of a boundary, we are forever in the open sea with no
land in sight. Hospitality throws us back into the aporia of the wholly undecidable; exactly that which an
anthropocentric metaphysics (and ethics) wanted to free us from. In an ethics of hospitality, we are in an
impossible situation where we have to continually ‘‘compare the incomparable.’’ We have to face
undecidability, suspend our prejudices and reinvent how we ought to live, here and now, again and again.
The hierarchy of values can no longer ‘simplify’ ethics for us. Not that it ever did. It merely covered over the
trauma we did not dare to face. Hospitality is impossible! Yes, and so it should be. The insurmountable
weight of our ethical responsibility is exactly what gives hospitality its force (Levinas 1991[1974]). To live a moral life in
the shadows of undecidability is to realise that ‘the decision is terrible.’ Clearly we must make very difficult
choices on an everyday basis. However, in being truly hospitable we must work out, instance by instance,
again and again, how we ought to live, with all Other (things). This is the task of an ethics of hospitality—the
ethics of a community that have nothing in common (Lingis 1994).
more just—and more terrible—if they had truly confronted an ethics of hospitality, if they really made a decision. 7 Some concluding thoughts What now?
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
13
File Title
Lab
Case
Bataille got it all wrong – it is precisely because of the finiteness of life that it must
be preserved – their value to life claims can only be made from a position that does
not respect it
Jean-Luc Nancy, 1991, French Philosopher, “The Unsacrificable” Yale French Studies 79
But if sovereignty is nothing, if the “obscure God” is only the obscurity of desire ecstatic in the face of itself, if existence arranges itself only
towards its own finitude, then we must think apart from sacrifice. On the one hand, what is at stake since the beginning of the Western sublation of sacrifice
should definitively be acknowledged: strictly speaking we know nothing decisive about the old sacrifice. We need to admit that what we
consider as a mercenary exchange (“Here is the butter…”) sustained and gave meaning to billions of
individual and collective existences, and we do not know how to think about what founds this
gesture. (We can only guess, confusedly, that this barter in itself goes beyond barter.) On the contrary, we know that, for us, it is
absolutely impossible to declare: “here are the lives, where are the others?” (all the others: our other lives, the life
of a great Other, the other of life and the other life in general). Consequently, on the other hand, it should be definitively acknowledged that the Western economy of sacrifice has
that bloody transgression by which the
“moment of the finite” would be transcended and appropriated infinitely. But finitude is not a
“moment” in a process or an economy. A finite existence does not have to let its meaning spring forth
through a destructive explosion of its finitude. Not only does it not have to do so; in a sense it
cannot even do so: thought rigorously, thought according to its Ereignis, “finitude” signifies that existence cannot be
sacrificed. It cannot be sacrificed because, in itself, it is already, not sacrificed, but offered to the
world. There is a resemblance, and the two can be mistaken for one another; and yet, there is
nothing more dissimilar. One could say: existence is in essence sacrificed. To say this would be to reproduce, in one of its forms, the fundamental utterance
come to a close, and that it is closed by the decomposition of the sacrificial apparatus itself,
of Western sacrifice. And we would have to add this major form, which necessarily follows: that existence is, in its essence, sacrifice. To say that existence is offered is no doubt to
use a word from the sacrificial vocabulary (and if we were in the German language, it would be the same word: Opfer, Aufopfertmg). But it is an attempt to mark that, if we have
to say that existence is sacrificed, it is not in any case sacrificed by anyone, nor is it sacrificed to anything. "Existence is offered" means the finitude of existence. Finitude is not
negativity cut out of being and granting access, through this cutting, to the restored integrity of being or to sovereignty. Finitude utters what Bataille utters in saying that
sovereignty is nothing. Finitude simply corresponds to the generative formula of the thought of existence, which is the thought of the finitude of being, or the thought of the
meaning of being as the finitude of meaning. This formula states: "the "essence" of Dasein lies in its existence.22 If its essence (in quotation marks) is in its existence, it is that
the existent has no essence. It cannot be returned to the trans-appropriation of an essence. But it is offered, that is to say, it is presented to the existence that it is. The existence
exposes being in its essence disappropriated of all essence, and thus of all "being:" the being that is not. Such negativity, however, does not come dialectically to say that it shall
be, that it shall finally be a trans-appropriated Self. On the contrary, this negation affirms the inappropriate as its most appropriate form of appropriation, and in truth as the
unique mode of all appropriation. Also, the negative mode of this utterance: "being is not" does not imply a negation but an ontological affirmation. This is what is meant by
The existent arrives, takes place, and this is nothing but a being-thrown into the world. In
this being-thrown, it is offered. But it is offered by no one, to no one. Nor is it self-sacrificed, if
nothing—no being, no subject—precedes its being-thrown. In truth, it is not even offered or sacrificed to a Nothing, to a Nothingness or an Other
in whose abyss it would come to enjoy its own impossibility of being impossibly. It is exactly at this point that both Bataille and Heidegger
must be relentlessly corrected. Corrected, that is: withdrawn from the slightest tendency towards
sacrifice. For this tendency towards sacrifice, or through sacrifice, is always linked to a
fascination with an ecstasy turned towards an Other or towards an absolute Outside, into which
the subject is diverted/spilled the better to be restored. Western sacrifice is haunted by an Outside of finitude, as obscure and
bottomless as this "outside" may be. But there is no "outside." The event of existence, the "there is," means that there is
nothing else. There is no "obscure God." There is no obscurity that would be God. In this sense, and since there is no longer any clear divine epiphany, I might say
Ereignis.
that what technique presents us with could simply be: clarity without God. The clarity, however, of an open space in which an open eye can no longer be fascinated. Fascination
is already proof that something has been accorded to obscurity and its bloody heart. But there is nothing to accord, nothing but "nothing." "Nothing" is not an abyss open to the
outside. "Nothing" affirms finitude, and this "nothing" at once returns existence to itself and to nothing else. It desubjectivizes it, removing all possibility of trans-appropriating
Thus there is room to give meaning
to the infinite absence of appropriable meaning. Once again, "technique" could well constitute such an horizon. That is once
more to say, there must be no retreat: the closure of an immanence. But this immanence would not have lost or be
itself through anything but its own event, advent. Existence, in this sense, its proper sense, is unsacrificeable.
lacking transcendence. In other words, it would not be sacrifice in any sense of the word. What we used to call "transcendence" would signify rather that appropriation is
"immanence" is not some indistinct coagulation: it is made only from its horizon. The
horizon holds existence at a distance from itself, in the gap or the "between" that constitutes it:
between birth and death, between one and the others. One does not enter the between, which is also the space of the play of mimesis
immanent, but that
and of methexis. Not because it would be an abyss, an altar, or an impenetrable heart, but because it would be nothing other than the limit of finitude; and lest we confuse it
Does this mean
rejoicing in a mediocre and limited life? Surely such a suspicion could itself come only from a
mediocre and limited life. And it is this same life that could suddenly be exalted, fascinated, by
sacrifice. Neither pain nor death are to be denied. Still less, if possible, are these to be sought
after in view of some transappropriation. At issue, rather, is a pain that no longer sacrifices, and which one no longer sacrifices. True pain,
doubtless, and perhaps even the truest of all. It does not efface joy (nor enjoyment), and yet, it is not the latter's dialectical or sublimating threshhold either. There is no
threshhold, no sublime and bloody gesture, that will cross it. After all, Western sacrifice has almost always known, and almost
with, say, Hegelian "finiteness," this limit is a limit that does not soar above nothingness. Existence alone breaks away from even itself.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
14
File Title
henceforth it is
incumbent upon us to say—after Bataille, with him and beyond him—that there is no "true" sacrifice, that veritable
existence is unsacrificeable, and that finally the truth of existence is that it cannot be sacrificed.
always been ready to say, that it sacrificed to nothing. That is why it has always tended to say that true sacrifice was no longer sacrifice. Yet
Expenditure is not transgressive- limitless consumption is useless theory
Paul Mann, 1999, “The Exquisite Corpse of Georges Bataille” in Masocriticism, p. 67-9
I would like at one and the same time to affirm this model and to dismiss it as the most desperate alibi of all. For “sacrificial consumption”
can never become an explicit critical motive.13 At the moment it presents itself as a proper element of some critical method, it degenerates into another useful
trope, another bit of intellectual currency, another paper-thin abyss, another proxy transgression; and the force of transgression moves elsewhere, beneath a blinder spot in the critical eye.14 Questions
of motive or understanding, the fact that one might be self-critical or at least aware of recuperation, are immaterial: what is at stake
here is not self-consciousness but economics, material relations of appropriation and exclusion, assimilation and
positive loss. Whatever transgression occurs in writing on Bataille does so only through the stupid recuperation and hence evacuation of the whole rhetoric and dream of transgression, only insofar
as the false profundity of philosophy or theory evacuates the false profundities it apes. To justify this as the sublime loss of loss is merely to
indulge a paradoxical figure. Excess is not a project but a by-product of any discourse; the interest of
Bataillean discourse lies chiefly in the compulsive and symptomatic way it plays with its feces. The spectacle of critics making fools of themselves
does not reveal the sovereign truth of death: it is only masocritical humiliation, a pathological
attempt to disavow the specter of death. As for the present essay, it makes no claims to any redeeming sacrifice. Far from presenting you with a truer Bataille, far
from speaking in his voice more clearly than his other readers, this essay pleads guilty to the indictment against every appropriation. Until philosophy and theory squeal like a pig before Bataille’s work, as he
In the end, one might have to take and even stricter view:
there is no discourse of transgression, either on or by Bataille. None at all. It would be necessary to write a “Postscript to
Transgression” were it not for the fact that Foucault already wrote it in his “Preface,” were it not for the fact that Bataille himself wrote it the moment before he first picked up his pen. It makes no
difference whether one betrays Bataille, because one lip syncs Bataille’s rhetoric or drones on in
the most tedious exposition. All of these satellite texts are not heliotropic in relation to the solar anus of Bataille’s writing, of the executioners he hoped (really?) would meet him in
the Bois de Boulogne, or depensives in spite of themselves. It would be sentimental to assign them such privileges. They merely fail to fail. They are symptoms of a discourse
in which everyone is happily transgressing everyone else and nothing ever happens, traces of a certain narcissistic pathos that never achieves
the magnificent loss Bataille’s text conveniently claims to desire, and under whose cover it can continue to account for itself, hoarding
its precious debits in a masocriticism that is anything but sovereign and gloriously indifferent. What is given to us, what is ruinously and profitably
exchanged, is a lie. Heterology gives the lie to meaning and discourse gives the lie to transgression, in a potlatch that reveals both in their most essential and constitutive relation.
Nothing is gained by this communication except profit-taking from lies. We must indict Bataille
as the alibi that allows all of this writing to go on and on, pretending it is nothing it is not, and
then turn away from Bataille as from a sun long since gone nova, in order to witness the slow
freezing to death of every satellite text. The sacrificial consumption of Bataille has played itself
out; the rotten carcass has been consumed: no more alibis. What is at stake is no longer ecstatic sexuality or
violent upheavals or bloody sacrifices under the unblinking eye of the sun; nor was it ever, from
the very beginning of Bataille’s career. These are merely figures in the melodramatic theater of
what is after all a “soft expenditure” (Hollier 1989, xv), a much more modest death, a death much closer to home. It has
never been more than a question of the death of the theory and of theory itself as death . Of theory-death. A
claims to have done before Dali’s canvases, there will be no knowledge of Bataille.
double fatality
.
Bataille is wrong—his theories of death and sacrifice are based on non-falsifiable
assertions contradicted by real world anthropological data
Olson, Allegheny College, 1994 [Carl, “Eroticism, violence, and sacrifice: A postmodern theory
of religion and ritual,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 6.3, p. 237-238, 241-248]
4. Eroticism and death Without giving any historical proof for his position, Bataille asserts that the
origin of eroticism can be traced prior to the division of humanity into those who were free and
those who were slaves. It's origins can be found m pre- historic signs of erotic life embodied by figures with large breasts and erect penises, but its foundation is the sexual act itself
(Bataille 1989a: 66). The knowledge of death plays an important role m the origin of eroticism. Al-though his claim cannot be refuted or
proven, Bataille asserts that prehistoric beings were aware of death, an awareness that gave nse
to an awareness of eroticism. The knowledge of death is essential because it gives rise to a sensibility that m turn stimulates eroticism, an extreme emotion that sepa- rates the
sexuality of humans from that of animals (Bataille 1989a: 31-32, 23).5 The difference between humans and animals is more precisely defined when he states that "eroticism differs from the animal sexual impulse
m that it is, m principle, just as work is, the conscious searching for an end, for sensual pleasure." (Bataille 1989a: 44) There is also an anticipation by the participants m erotic play that it will culminate with
[continues…] 6. Bataille's theory and the Sun Dance Bataille failed to
test his theory of sacrifice by applying it to actual examples of sacrifice m the religions of the
world. Havmg defined the nature of sacnfice for Bataille, it is therefore necessary to compare it to an actual sacnfice. In order to demonstrate the
shortcomings of Bataille's theory of sacrifice I have chosen to apply it to the Sun Dance of the Sioux.
sensual pleasure. In the pleasure of erotic play one does not gain anything or become enriched, unlike
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
15
File Title
contrary to Bataille's theory, a more reasonable interpretation of the Sun
Dance can be attained by concentratmg on its symbolism. This approach is suggested by the theoretical work of Clifford Geertz (1971) and
Following this example, I suggest that,
Victor Turner (1967; 1968; 1975), the latter of whom refers to a symbol as the smallest umt of ntual or as storage umts of dynamic entities. My account of the Sun Dance relies on the work James R. Walker (1980)
because his information was gathered from several different sources, and it represents the most authoritative account available to us of the rite in one period of its history My approach presupposes that the nte
and its meaning have continued to change m response to new circumstances for the Sioux. By selectmg this nte, I am bemg eminently fair to Bataille, from one perspective, because the erotic and violent features of
the Sun Dance could be used to prove the validity of his theory The complexity of the Sun Dance makes it difficult to interpret. Although he does not consider the Sun Dance of the Sioux, Jorgensen (1972: 206,
236) interprets, for mstance, the Ute and Shoshone nte as an acquisition of power that transforms the person and allows him to gain power, status, and autonomy From another perspective, Melody (1976)
interprets the Sun Dance of the Sioux as a commemoration of tribal virtues expressed m the dance, a celebration of the people, an acknowledgment of the generative power of the sun, and a celebration of renewal.
The rejoicing over renewal of the world is close to Hultkrantz's mterpretation (1981. 238) of the nte as a recreation of the cosmos. According to Hassnck (1967' 238, 248), the Sun Dance represents a socially
umfymg activityactivity and a chance to resolve a conflict between an individual ego and the adjustment to the physical and social forces. And Lewis (1972: 47) mterprets the Sun Dance in terms of its various
functions: umfymg force; maintaining tribal traditions; insuring tribal well-bemg in huntmg and warfare; offering to the dancer perpetual prestige. I propose offenng a different mterpretive approach for the Sun
Dance that cntically reflects on Bataille's theory According to this interpretation, the Sun Dance of the Sioux exhibits a threefold significance: existential, social, and cosmic. In other words, if one examines the
many symbols associated with the nte, one will see that this sacnfice enables one to attain three levels of being. While the sacred pole was bemg pamted, mstructors and students sat m a circle around the black
painted figures of a buffalo and man, each de- picted with exaggerated gemtals, m order to impart to the man the potency of Iya, patron-god of libertmism, and to the buffalo the potency of Gnaski, the crazy
According to Black Elk's non-nsqué interpretation of the images,
the buffalo represented all the four-legged animals on the earth, and the figure of the man
signified all people (Brown 1979' 79). In contrast, Bataille would be quick to seize on the erotic
connections of the patron gods of libertinism and licentiousness. However, if the erotic is a quest
for sensual pleasure, repre- sents a realm of play, and reveals a foretaste of continuity, it cannot be used to interpret
the meaning of Iya and Gnaski because within the context of the Sun Dance they more
powerfully suggest the renewal and recreation motifs of the rite. Bataille's concept of eroticism
also would not fit into an insightful interpretation of the Sun Dance as a dominant theme of the
rite because of its anti-social character as a solitary activity accomplished m secret. The
heterological method of Bataille is intended to alleviate the contra- dictions of life and free the
individual from the homogeneity of the world. In contrast to Bataille's insistence on a search for
radical difference, the world- view of the Sioux, embodied m the symbolic aspects of the Sun Dance con-ceived as an offering of body and soul to WakanTanka (the Great Spmt), suggests a homogeneous view of the cosmos . The umverse, for mstance, is represented by the round form of the ceremomal drum,
buffalo and patron-god of licentiousness (Walker 1980: 107-108).
whose steady beat is the throbbmg at the centre of the cosmos (Brown 1979' 69). Within the context of the Sun Dance, the cosmic pillar of the umverse is represented by the cottonwood tree, which further
represents the enemy who is symbolically killed and transported back to the centre of the campcamp by means of sticks because human hands are not allowed to touch the body The ntual partic- ipants consecrate
the tree with the stem of the sacred pipe, another symbol of the earth, the buffalo, and everything that lives and grows on the earth. Once the tree is trimmed of its branches and its sides and branch tips are painted
red, the rawhide effigies of a man and a buffalo are suspended from the crosspiece of the sacred tree, which is then placed into a hole at the centre of the camp. The sacred tree not only suggests a umversal pillar,
but it also represents the wayway of the people (Brown 1979 69, 75-76). Other cosmic symbols are the sun and earth signified by a red circle, symbolic of all that is sacred. In the centre of the circle representing the
sun is a blue circle which suggests Wakan-Tanka, the centre of the cosmos and all existence (Brown 1979' 71-72). Moreover, the lodge of the Sun Dance is composed of twenty- eight poles, each signifying an object
of creation, and staked m a circle that represents the entire created world (Brown 1979' 80). It is difficult to find anything excessive or transgressme in these cosmic symbols of the Sioux that would support
Bataille's position. Rather than achieving the differentiation that Bataille's theory advocates, the sun dancer symbolically acquires the cosmos. According to the ethno- logical report of Walker (1980: 114), the
candidate who dances the most excruciatingly painful form of the dance with the intention of becoming a shaman is given a small hoop by his mentor. This hoop is symbolic of the sky, the four winds, time, all
things that grow, and all circular thmgs made by the tribe. After his successful completion of the dance, the sun dancer is allowed to place this symbol on his tipi. This privilege suggests that he attams all that the
ontrary to Bataille's theory, the highest aspiring sun dancer does not find that the
cosmos becomes other for him, and he does not stand as an individual sovereign within the
cosmos. He rather becomes part of the whole, and he acquires the cosmos. Instead of perceiving the cosmic symbolism
hoop symbolizes. C
associated with the most painful performance of the rite, Bataille's writings suggest that he would stress its sadistic and masochistic aspects. Sadism, an excessive violation of modesty and a violent excretion, is not
onlyonly an eruption of excremental forces, but it also forms a limitation by subjugating whatever is opposed to such an eruption (Bataille 1970-1988: II, 56). If masochism is an enjoyment of pain, the violence
exercised on the flesh of the sun dancers would be viewed by Bataille as a transgression and violation of the participant's flesh, which also calls attention to the flesh itself and connects it to the erotic. Bataille also
mamtams (1984: 91) that violence agamst the flesh is an external manifestation of the internal violence of the sacnficial participant, which is perceived as a loss of blood and vanous forms of ejaculations.
Unlike the solitary activity of eroticism for
Bataille, the sun dancer of the Sioux rite does not distinguish or divorce himself from his society
because he represents the people and suffers on their behalf during the rite. After punfymg themselves, their clothing,
Moreover, for Bataille the cuttingcutting of the flesh would be suggestive of the discontinuity of the self.
and the equipment to be used m the nte, the participants crycry at the centre of the campcamp and assume the suffering of the people, which enables other tribal members to gain understanding and strength
If there is present the discontinuity charac-tenstic of Bataille's profane human society
among the Sioux, the Sun Dance bridges any social divisions by uniting the social bonds of a
particular tribe and umtmg them with different Indian tribes. By means of an invitation from the tribe initiating the nte prior to its begmnng, other Indian tribes are invited to participate m the
(Brown 1979' 72, 78).
nte, even though some of the visitors may be hereditary enemies (Dorsey 1894: 452). This scenano enhances the social solidarity of the Indian nation and builds a closer relationship with the things of the umverse ; the sacred centre created by the dancers is alleged always to be with them throughout the remainder of their existence. There is no evidence of transgressme or excessive social behaviour by the sun dancers
m Bataille's sense. Moreover, the dancers have acquired a sacred power dunng the nte that they may later share with other members of their societysociety According to Powers (1977' 100), the acquired power of
the sun dancers may be mvested m those who are sick by the placement of the dancers' hands on the less fortunate. Thereby the sacred power is shared to cure the sick, and enter into communion with others. I
comparison to Bataille's theory, the sun dancers do not differentiate themselves from their
society They share a sacred power that can benefit every member of the tribe. Bataille's
heterological method and its stress on finding radical difference prevents him from seeing the
socially unifying possibilities of a rite such as the Sun Dance. According to Bataille, violence is
inevitable because human beings can- not totally reject it. In contrast to Bataille's theory, the
Sun Dance represents a threefold sacrifice of which the initial two sacrificial actions are
symbolic: cutting down the cottonwood tree which is symbolic of the enemy; shooting at the effigies of a man and buffalo suspended from the crosspiece of the sacred tree, and the final action of the
n
actual sacrifice of human flesh on the fourth day of the rite. The second symbolic killing of the effigies of a man and buffalo, amid much rejoicing by the participants, represents the hope for future success m
hese sym-bolic killings by the Sioux violates Bataille's assertion that
violence cannot be controlled. Rather, the symbolic nature of the Sioux killings suggests a
limiting and eventual termination of violence and not a promoting of any cycle of violence.
Although Bataille is right to emphasize the importance of violence m sacrifice, there does not
appear to be any danger that the con- tagious violence of the sacred will overflow and
overwhelm the Sioux and other tribes. There are certainly martial features to the Sun Dance, but
their symbolic nature suggests a containment of violence rather than any overflow- ing of it. Bataille's
hunting and victory in war (Powers 1977' 98). T
theory does make clear, however, that the Sioux accept violence, even though they try to reject or control it. Within the drama of the Sun Dance, there is a hint of an inherent prestige associated with victims who
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
16
File Title
choose to perform the sacrifice in the most painful and violent manner. The actual sacnficial victims, for instance, can choose to dance m any of four ways-ways: gazing at the sun from dawn to dusk; having
wooden skewers, tied to rawhide ropes secured about half wayway up the sacred pole, mserted into their breasts; having wooden skewers mserted mto the breasts and then being suspended about one foot off the
ground; or having wooden skewers inserted which then are attached with thongs to one or more buffalo skull(s) that must be dragged along the dance area (Powers 1977' 98-99). The Sun Dance is not completed
until the flesh of the victim has been torn through, representing the death and rebirth of the victim. It is permissible for others to assist by pulling on the ropes to end the victim,' agony As well, the multiple
number of sun dancers contradicts Bataille's assertion (1988a: 59) that a victim represents a surplus of communal wealth and substitutes for other members of the commumty Neither is the victim an accursed
share destmed for violent destruction. Bataille is nght, however, to emphasize the importance of death m sacnfice, which possesses the power to return one to continuity by means of eroticism. What he fails to see
is the connection between death and spintual rebirth. And due to his notion of eroticism, which represents a disequilibrmm that stimulates a person consciously to call one's being into question, Bataille is not able
to recogmze that the sun dancer is actually actually able to find his identity Although Bataille's theory of sacrifice does not account for the Sun Dance in its entirety, the rite does adhere to his theory to some extent
because it calls attention to the flesh and reveals external violence and the internal violence of the subject. The violation and breaking of the sun dancer's flesh does suggest the usefulness of Bataille's observation
about the intimate connection between human flesh and violence. However, by giving pieces of their flesh, the sun dancers impugn Bataille's claim that the violation of the victim's flesh connotes a connection to a
Bataille's theory is problematic because it lacks consistent sense m the context of the
Sun Dance. Bataille's need to reintroduce eroticism blinds him to the facts or drama of an actual
sacrifice. The flesh of the sacrificial victim m the Sun Dance represents ignorance (Brown 1979' 85) and
not the dispossession of the self, an anti-social aspect of eroticism for Bataille. From an existential perspective, to be
sexual act. At this point,
freed from the ropes tied to the skewers symbolizes freedom from the bonds of the flesh and not some erotic urge. The lack of an erotic emotion is evident m the symbolism of donning rabbit skins on the dancer's
arms and legs. The rabbit is a symbol of humility, a virtue with which one must approach Wakan-Tanka. The victim is also equated symbolically with the sacred pipe that stretches from heaven to earth (Brown
1979. 74). In this context, the sacred pipe mdicates the transcending of earthlyearthly flesh. The dancer becomes the centre of the world m which the four directions meet when he is tied at the centre of the four
poles, so that the four directions converge m his body (Brown 1979' 95). Within the drama of the Sun Dance, elements of eroticism, violence, and death are evident. This does not mean, however, that these features
of sacrifice necessarily involve stressing separation, difference, transgression, and excess. Although it is possible to find these features in the Sun Dance to some degree, the Sioux nte stresses finding one's identity
within a religious and social tradition. By successfully completmg the nte, a sun dancer does not separate himself from the group or become distinct from other things; rather, he often assumes a position of
leadership within the tribe. And, as already noted, the sun dancer is intimately related to his mentor, ntual assistant or second, and other members of the tribe who play various roles m the nte. All this suggests the
socially unifying nature of the nte. Moreover, within a tribal society such as the Sioux, the individual's identity is sociallysocially defined, even though one's visions and dreams help one to define oneself and one's
place within a wider social context. Besides being a form of human sacnfice, the Sun Dance also functions as an initiation rite. The dancer, having died to his former ignorant condition, attains a totally new
existential status of enlightenment and responsibility The ordeal that one endures is often accompanied by visions of the divine; the successful completion of the nte is a prereqmsite if one aspires to become a
shaman. Walker (1980: 182) notes that after the successful completion of the Sun Dance the victim is eligible for leadership of a war party or for chieftamship. The candidate receives new meamng and status which
is symbolized by the red design, drawn on his chest by the shaman as a symbol of all that is sacred. Furthermore, the victim is equated throughout the nte with the moon, which waxes and wanes, lives and dies,
The significance of the Sun Dance enables us to see that there is an
alternative interpretation to Bataille's theory that is more faithful to the actual evidence and is
not simply imposed on the ritual activities by the creative imagination of a theorist .
This interpretive analysis of the Sun Dance is suggested by the patterns exhibited by the nte itself and reflects more accurately the actual nte and its religious and symbolic context. Bataille, however,
includes a personal agenda because he wants to re-introduce the erotic into religion. In other words,
Bataille's theoretical speculation about eroticism shapes his theory of religion and sacnfice. Thus, his theoretical world-view takes precedence over
the religious phenomena that he examines. With his involvement in the Surrealist movement, his emphasis on em- bracing bodily waste, his anal and erotic
like all things (Brown 1979- 71). 7 Concluding remarks
obsessions, the role of the ambiguous pineal eye in his works, and composition of excessively obscene novels, all suggest an explicit advocacy of decadence by Bataille. In his work entitled My Mother, the socially
excessive theme is mcest. His novel The Blue of Noon, for mstance, focuses on the nauseous and squalid aspects of human life where its characters are engaged m endless orgies, vomiting, and unnat- mg. The
erotic and death are contmually united in his Story of the Eye when, for example, the two leading libertmes of the novel have sexual mtercourse next to the cadaver of a young girl they have driven to death. Two
further dramatic examples are the rape of a priest by the female protagomst and his death by strangulation and simultaneous sexual orgasm, and the death of the distracted matador gorged through his eye by the
hom of a bull as he is distracted and blinded by the obscene antics of the female protagomst. Bataille's hermeneutical method of heterology is designed to lead to ex- cess and decadence. Trymg to explain his
mithode de meditataon used m his book on religious expenence, Bataille wntes (1954: 216), "I think like a girl takes off her dress. At its most extreme pomt, thought is immodesty, obscen- ity itself." This kind of
statement seems to suggest de Sade or Mephistopheles becommg Faust. In his work on heterology, Pefams summarily states (1991. 41) that the works of Bataille are "a theater of the excremental m whose scenes
one may glimpse golden threads." Frednc Jameson (1991. 382), a self-admitted Amencan adherent of postmodern literary cnticism, affirms that decadence is a charactenstic of postmodermsm:
"'Decadence' is thus in some way the very premonition of the postmodern itself, but under
condi- tions that make it impossible to predict that aftermath with any sociological or cultural
accuracy, thereby divertmg the vague sense of a future into more fantastic forms, all
borrowed from the misfits and eccentrics, the perverts and the Others, or aliens, of the present (modem) system." And if, as sug- gested by Rosen (1987' 142), this decadence
originates in political despair, Bataille's hermeneutical program is a political manifesto and not
an apt tool for interpretmg religious phenomena. From a more positive perspective, Bataille's theory of religion does call attention to neglected elements
in the study of religion in the form of bodily waste: excrement, saliva, tears, unne, mucus, dirt, skin, and so forth. Al- though his distinction between the sacred and the profane cannot be applied consistently as a
useful hermeneutical device with the religious phenomena or world-view of Native Amencan Indians, his emphasis on the difference within the sacred itself is suggestive. He is also nght to stress the violent aspects
e Sioux rite appears to move in the direction of
nonviolence - by symbolically killing an enemy represented by a tree, for instance - that
undermines Bataille's opinion that violence cannot be contained. By offering his body and soul,
the Sioux sun dancer points to a renewal and continuance of cosmic generative forces. The Sun
Dance also joins Indian societies together and provides for social continuity by allowing others to share m the sacred power
of sacrifice and their sexual implications. Although violence is certainly present m the Sun Dance, th
engendered by the rituals. Moreover, the rite enables the sun dancer to become ontologically transformed by being reborn and being set free of his mortal flesh. Although there is a sense in which the sun dancer is
distinctive, the emphasis of the nte is unity with societysociety and social well-being rather than stressing the differences between the sacrificial victim and society .
Embracing excess leads to extinction – conservation is key
Allan STOEKL, 2007, Professor of French and Comparative Literature – Penn State University,
“Excess and Depletion: Bataille’s Surprisingly Ethical Model of Expenditure” in Reading Bataille
Now edited by Shannon Winnubst, p. 253-4
Humans waste not only the energy accumulated by other species, but, just as important, their own energy, because humans themselves soon hit the
limits to growth. Human society cannot indefinitely reproduce: soon enough what today is called the “carrying capacity” of an environment is reached.3
Only so many babies can be born, homes built, colonies founded. Then limits are reached. Some excess can be used in the energy and population
required for military expansion (the case, according to Bataille, with Islam {1976a, 83-92; 1988, 81-91}), but soon that too screeches to a halt. A steady
state can be attained by devoting large numbers of people and huge quantities of wealth and labor to useless activity: thus the large numbers of
unproductive Tibetan monks, nuns, and their lavish temples (1976a, 93-108; 1988, 93-110). Or, most notably, one
can waste wealth in
military buildup and constant warfare. No doubt this solution kept populations stable in the past (one thinks of constant battles
between South American Indian tribes), but in the present (i.e., 1949) the huge amounts of wealth devoted to
military armament, worldwide, can only lead to nuclear holocaust (1976a, 159-60; 1988, 169-71). This final
point leads to Bataille’s version of a Hegelian “Absolute Knowing,” one based not so much on the certainty of a higher knowledge as on the certainty of a
higher expenditure, improperly conceived, can threaten the very existence of society. Bataille’s
theory, then, is a profoundly
ethical one: we must somehow distinguish between versions of excess that are “on the scale of
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
17
File Title
the universe,” and whose recognition-implementation guarantees the survival of society (and human
expenditure), and other versions that entail blindness to the real role of expenditure and thereby
threaten man’s, not to mention the planet’s, survival. This, in very rough outline, is the main thrust of Bataille’s book. By viewing
man as waster rather than conserver, Bataille manages to invert the usual order of economics: the moral imperative, so to speak, is
the furthering of a “good” expenditure, which we might lose sight of if we stress an inevitably
selfish model of conservation or utility. For if conservation is put first, inevitably the bottled-up forces will break loose, but in
unforeseen and in, so to speak, untheorized ways. We should focus our attention, not on conservation, maintenance, and the steady state – which can
lead only to mass destruction and the ultimate wasting of the world – but instead on the modes of waste in which we, as human animals, should engage.
But how does one go about privileging waste in an era in which waste seems to be the root of all
evil? Over fifty years after the publication of The Accursed Share, we live in an era in which
nuclear holocaust no longer seems the main threat. But other dangers lurk, ones just as
terrifying and definitive: global warming, deforestation, and the depletion of resources – above all,
energy resources: oil, coal, even uranium. How can we possibly talk about valorizing waste, when waste seems
to be the principle evil threatening the continued existence of the biosphere on which we
depend? Wouldn’t it make more sense to stress conservation, sustainability, downsizing, rather
than glorious excess?
The affirmation of unconditional expenditure leads to fascism—the concentration camp is
the modern figure of a totally useless loss
Bell, M.A. Thesis in the Theory, Culture and Politics Program at Trent University, 2008
[Jeremy, “Bataille, the Economic, and the Sacred: Working through the accursed share,”
January, proquest, 91-96]
At the same time however, we need not apologize for the irrefutable problems with Bataille's vision, problems better recognized by those sympathetic to this vision than by its
overt detractors. For although Sartre's critique of Bataille as a "nouveau mystique" or Breton's critique that "Bataille professes to wish only to consider in the world that which is
vilest, most discouraging, and most corrupted"24 are not without their grain of truth, it is Caillois, Kojêve, and Walter Benjamin that properly identify the most problematic
points of Bataille's vision. Caillois' criticism is the most obvious, the least surprising: simply put, Bataille's preoccupation with "mysticism, tragedy, madness, and death" borders
on a pathological obsession that compromises the establishment of "a moral community... as accessible as the community of established science".25 Kojêve's criticism is subtler,
in wanting to revitalize the sacred within contemporary existence the College generally but
Bataille particularly were "wanting to play at being sorcerer's apprentices... [and that] a
miracleworker, for his part, could no more be carried away by a sacred knowingly activated by
himself, than could a conjuror be persuaded of the existence of magic while marveling at his own
sleight of hand".26 Even if one does recognize a value in the sacred, in this time of its fragmentation, its internalization, how possibly could one knowingly revitalize
but equally valid:
it? Although Kojêve's critique may, ultimately, be wrong, the puzzles set forth within it move it toward Benjamin's criticism, by far the most grave and persistently pertinent.
the College
was toying with explosive ideas without realistically weighing up the consequences."27 These
explosive ideas, as we know, concerned fascism. For although, as Michel Surya's biography of Bataille conveys in the most unequivocal
terms, in the most immediate sense Bataille was passionately opposed to fascism, which is illustrated, for example, in "Nietzsche and the
"According to Klossowski," Michel Surya writes, "recent German exiles (Walter Benjamin first and foremost, but also Hans Meyer...) grew worried that
Fascists", his single- handed effort to rescue and differentiate Nietzsche's philosophy from its cooptation by the fascists, as well as the journal of Acephale generally, one of the
one cannot help but feel that, nonetheless, there is an
unsettling truth to Benjamin's worries. Was it not fascism, more than any other ideology within
the last century, which toyed with idea of the sacred, while at the same time expressing an
uprootedness no longer binding it to explicit religious formations? Bataille was well aware of this, as he expresses in no
central purposes of which was the refutation of fascist ideology,
uncertain terms in "The Psychological Structure of Fascism". Not only this, but even if Acephale was oriented around a headlessness antithetical to the "head" of a fascist state,
is there not, nonetheless, an insidious character to the secret society which evokes for us the
most disturbing occult configurations of the Nazis? Although, on the one hand, it is wrong and
false to accuse Bataille of being a fascist, are we really surprised that he has elicited this
criticism, continually, from his detractors? One way in which we can acknowledge these dangers while nonetheless retaining Bataille's
essential lessons without exhaustively rehashing Bataille's biography is by returning to our earlier observations regarding negative entropy, and how this is counterbalanced by
an interest in "remaining a child" in the face of "mere survival", particularly as these terms are configured in "The Survivor", Lyotard's essay on Hannah Arendt and the dangers
of totalitarianism. For as Lyotard explains it here, echoing Bataille's observations in "The Psychological Structure of Fascism", the shortcoming of Arendt's analysis of
totalitarianism rests in her failure to recognize the proper "origins of totalitarianism" in our relation to the heterogeneous, repressed, or sacred. Although her analysis elegantly
illustrates the particular historical conditions responsible for its development, it fails to observe the manner in which totalitarian ideology makes use of the forces of attraction
and repulsion by simultaneously drawing from the anxiety brought about by our relation to these forces and by presenting it as a tremendously threatening force disseminated
across the political sphere It is for this reason that we cannot view the defeat of particular regimes as properly sufficient in exhausting the presence of these dangers within
contemporary political structures or forms. What totalitarianism earlier accomplished through extermination camps and military ventures he argues, now occurs through what
Lyotard describes as the administration of daily life, and — more generally — the processes of negative entropy wherein the human is no more meaningful than any other term
within the system, the dangerous culmination of the concept of utility. For as Lyotard writes, Crude propaganda is discreet in democratic forms: it gives way to the inoffensive
worldwide expansion occurs not through war, but through technological,
scientific, and economic competition. The historical names for this Mr. Nice Guy totalitarianism
are no longer Stalingrad or Normandy (much less Auschwitz), but Wall Street's Dow Jones
Average and the Tokyo's Nikkei Index.28 Where efficiency and productivity are granted primacy, and the human is no more important than any
rhetoric of the media. And
other term within the system, what we have called the heterogeneous, the sacred, and the repressed, which Lyotard describes as our enigmatic relation to birth and death, is
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
18
File Title
Lab
threatened with the possibility of permanent and absolute foreclosure, which he calls "mere survival" in a manner similar to his scenario regarding the death of the sun and our
exit from planet earth. For Lyotard, our recognition of this danger, the dangers present within both totalitarianism and contemporary capitalism, of foreclosing our relation to
the heterogeneous and the sacred while simultaneously disseminating it across the political sphere, can occur in "neither a remission nor a challenge" — both of which fall within
the parallel systems of totalitarianism and capitalism — but rather, can only occur in "the scruple of an as if," which is what he calls childhood.29 Childhood, what Bataille might
call sovereignty, I would like to argue, is our mode of relation to and recognition of what I have described as the epistemological or psychological dimension of the accursed
share. For as Lyotard writes, The effect is childhood that knows all about as 0; all about the pain of impotence and the complaint of being too small, of being there late
(compared to others) and (as to its strength) of having arrived early, prematurely—childhood that knows all about broken promises, bitter disappointments, failings, and
abandonment, but which also knows all about dreaming, memory, question, invention, obstinacy, listening to the heart, love, and real openness to stories. Childhood is a state of
the soul inhabited by something to which no answer is ever given. It is led in its undertakings by an arrogant loyalty to this unknown guest to which it feels itself a hostage.
Antigone's childhood. I understand childhood here as obedience to a debt (which we call a debt of life, of time, of event; a debt of being there in spite of everything), a debt for
which only the persistent feeling of respect can save the adult from bein no more than a survivor, a creature living on reprieve from annihilation. 0 Of course, our obedience to
this debt, our arrogant loyalty to this unknown guest, our accursed share, is not simply accomplished and completed, but rather perpetually worked through in our effort —
which we should not hesitate to call painful — to bear witness to that inaccessible point, wholly heterogeneous, where, in intimate immanence, a sacred animality is —
momentarily — attained. Only by transgressing the boundaries and limits of negative entropy, the systematic peak of utility and use- value, can we overcome the horrible burden
of time and rejoin in that sacred totality, where — acephalic — we can attain that "sovereign self-consciousness that, precisely, no longer turns away from itself."31 What I mean
Bataille's thought does in fact hold a dangerous proximity to fascism, a
danger moreover that is only heightened in our failure to recognize this proximity. This is not to say that his
thought is fascist. Nonetheless, it is extremely important that we recognize how Bataille's fascination with
mysticism, tragedy, madness, and death does, like the sorcerer's apprentice, enter into a
dangerous game, a game that for this reason is to be played neither as a remission nor a challenge to the accursed share, this unknown guest to which the soul feels
itself a hostage, but only with the scruple of an as if, a game that is only to be played with humility. For if we acknowledge, for example, that the
human sacrifices offered by the Aztecs to satiate the thirst of the sun does approach a general
economy founded upon consumption and expenditure, it is not difficult to see how,
similarly, concentration camps could also facilitate an economy of expenditure
and consumption where nothing is left in reserve. However, it is difficult to see how an economy of listening to the heart,
to suggest by this is that, in a certain sense,
love, and real openness to stories, as well as abandonment and dispossession, ultimately a childish economy of play, could lapse into the bloodshed of primitive war.
Bataille’s notions of subjectivity are consistent with Nazism – lead to extinction
Slavoj ZiZek, 1996, The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Shelling and Related Matters, p.
124-5
This notion of the modern, Cartesian subject qua the radical negativity of the double (self-relating)
sacrifice also enables us to demarcate the paradoxical place of the theories of Georges Bataille,
that is, of Bataille’s fascination with the ‘real’, material sacrifice, with the different forms of
holocaust and the excessive destruction of (economic, social, etc.) reality.41 On the one hand, of course, Bataille’s topic is modern
subjectivity, the radical negativity implied in the position of the pure transcendental subject. On the other hand, Bataille’s universe remains the pre-Newtonian universe of
: Bataille’s ‘subject’
balanced circular movement, or – to put it in a different way – his notion of subjectivity is definitely pre-Kantian
is not yet the pure void (the
transcendental point of self-relating negativity), but remains an inner-worldly, positive force. Within these co-ordinates, the negativity which characterizes the modern subject
can express itself only in the guise of a violent destruction which throws the entire circuit of
nature off the rails. It is as if, in a kind of unique short circuit, Bataille projects the negativity of the modern subject backwards, into the ‘closed’, pre-modern
Aristotelian universe of balanced circular movement, within which this negativity can materialize itself only as an ‘irrational’, excessive, non-economical expenditure. In
what Bataille fails to take notice of is that the modern (Cartesian) subject no longer needs to
sacrifice goat’s intestines, his children, and so on, since his very existence already entails the most radical (redoubled,
self-relating) sacrifice, the sacrifice of the very kernel of his being. Incidentally, this failure of Bataille
also throws a new light on the sacrificial violence, the obsession with the ultimate twilight of the
universe, at work in Nazism: in it, we also encounter the reinscription of the radical negativity
characteristic of the modern subject into the closed ‘pagan’ universe in which the stability of the
social order guaranteed by some kind of repeated sacrificial gesture – what we encounter in the
libidinal economy of Nazism is the modern subjectivity perceived from the standpoint of the
pre-modern ‘pagan’ universe.42
short,
Civilization and order do not repress human instincts – their theory is
fundamentally flawed and provides no explanation for the supposed contradiction
between desires against civilization and humanities constant attempts to further
civilization – social bonds are an inherent part of the human condition – not
destruction
Vinit reader of philosophy at the Sorbonne University 1995 Paul Penniless Press Issue 1
http://www.pennilesspress.co.uk/prose/freud_and_the_myth_of_instinct.htm
This presupposes that individuals are engaged in an attempt to abolish "civilization", that it is a
desire harboured by everyone, because "civilization" trammels our instincts. We want to live according to
instinct. We want, that is, to commit incest, cannibalism and murder; we feel that if only we could
we would be free. Yet this only deepens the mystery: if our desire to do these things is so strong,
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010
Lab
19
File Title
why, universally, have we created cultures which militate against them? Surely this is possible
only because we have a will which is stronger than our "instincts". But this returns us to the
problem that an "instinct" which is not powerful enough to dictate behaviour is something less
than an instinct. Further, Freud suggests here that the abolition of civilization is indeed possible, that humankind can return to "a state of nature", difficult those
this would be to bear. What, it is fair to ask, would a "state of nature" look like? And if a "state of nature" is somehow the original condition of humankind, why and how did we
The problem with the idea of a
"state of nature" is that it presupposes a place in nature for humanity that is not contradictory. It
supposes that humanity can be embedded in nature as completely as the bee. Yet this could only
be so if we were incapable of creating "civilization" for the latter is built out of our contradictory
place in the natural order. "Civilization" is not an optional adjunct to human nature, it is its
fundamental expression. A "state of nature" would not be hard to bear, it would be impossible to achieve. Human
leave it? Freud's myth of the murder of the primeval father is a poor answer, especially for a would-be scientist.
beings live socially and the origin of society lies not in the murder of a primeval father, but in the taboo on incest and this is introduced, not out of any intrinsic disgust with
incest, but in order to establish clear relations of kinship. In other words, incest is sacrificed in order to create social cohesion and this is. indispensable because, as Reinhold
human beings are individuals but not self-sufficing. Society, community, "civilization"
do not come into existence in order to hold our rapacious instincts in check, they express,
rather, a need for mutuality which is more powerful than mere sexual desire. Compared to the need for
Niebuhr says,
mutuality, the human sexual drive is feeble. Indeed, the need for mutuality makes up a great portion of the sexual impulse. We do not seek sexual partners for mere physical
release, but for togetherness, and for the escape from egotism that love of others provides. It is not the case that, as Rieff puts it, the individual self is the locus of a struggle
between "unregenerate instincts and overbearing culture"7, it is rather that it is the locus of a struggle to create the culture without which human life is simply impossible
"Civilization" does not, as Freud insisted, have to be "defended against the
individual"8 it is the only means by which individuality can be expressed. Freud's model of
the isolated individual nursing his or her destructive instincts while collective
"civilization" erects one barrier after another against them is an utterly false
picture of what it means to be human. There is no contradiction between "civilization" and
the individual for without the former the latter would simply perish. Freud's belief that "civilization" could be
because it is, irreducibly, a life in common.
dismantled and that we could live in "a state of nature" flows from his separation of "instinct" and "civilization". If we were to remove the interdictions which make up
"civilization" we would then live by "instinct" alone, which would mean a state of savagery in which murder and cannibalism were rife. But if we were able to live by "instinct"
alone, why would we have created "civilization"? Freud's opposition of powerful instincts and powerful culture is mistaken. In its place we should put impulse which is too weak
to tell us how to live and culture which is precisely an attempt to answer the eternal question "how should we live?”