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1NC CP
Thus Rufus and I think that the United States should substantially increase its exploration of the Reavers
The affs embrace of Star Trek overlooks some troubling undersides- in the pursuit of an imaginary
utopia, Star Trek’s militaristic undertones embrace a form of totalitarian militarist fascism that justifies
the extermination of any civilian, even children
Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D., retired from the Department of Philosophy, Los Angeles Valley College, Van Nuys, California, 19 96, “ The
Fascist Ideology of Star Trek: Militarism, Collectivism, & Atheism”, http://www.friesian.com/trek.htm
These absurdities, however, can be easily forgiven. Less easily forgiven or forgotten are the more troubling messages about
the nature of the future, the nature of society, and even the nature of reality. Star Trek typically reflects certain political,
social, and metaphysical views, and on close examination they are not worthy of the kind of tribute that is often paid to Star
Trek as representing an edifying vision of things. In a 1996 newspaper column, James P. Pinkerton, discussing the new Star
Trek movie (the eighth), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), quotes Captain Picard saying how things have changed in his day,
"The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force; we work to better humanity." Perhaps Picard never stopped to
reflect that greater wealth means greater material well being, which is to the betterment of humanity much more than any
empty rhetoric. But this is typical of Star Trek. A first season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called "The Neutral
Zone," has Picard getting up on his high horse with a three hundred year old businessman who is revived from suspended
animation: The businessman, naturally, wants to get in touch with his agents to find out what has happened to his
investments. Picard loftily informs him that such things don't exist anymore. Indeed, poverty and want have been abolished,
but how this was accomplished is never explained. All we know is, that however it is that people make a living, it isn't
through capitalism as we know it. Stocks, corporations, banking, bonds, letters of credit -- all these things seem to have
disappeared. We never see Picard, or anyone else, reviewing his investment portfolio. And those who still have a lowly
interest in buying and selling, like the Ferengi, are not only essentially thieves, but ultimately only accept payment in
precious commodities. In the bold new future of cosmic civilization, galactic trade is carried on in little better than a
Phoenician style of barter, despite the possibilities of pan-galactic banking and super-light speed money transfers made
possible by "sub-space" communications. Too much of Star Trek has always reflected trendy leftist political sentiments. It
was appropriate that John Lennon's "Imagine" should have been sung at the 30th Anniversary television special: Capitalism
and religion get little more respect from Star Trek than they do from Lennon. Profit simply cannot be mentioned without a
sneer. The champions of profit, the Ferengi, not only perceive no difference between honest business, piracy, and swindle,
but their very name, the Hindi word for "European" (from Persian Farangi), seems to be a covert rebuke to European
civilization. At the same time, one can find little in the way of acknowledgement of the role of religion in life that, whether
in India or in Europe, would be essential. Although exotic extraterrestrials, like the Klingons and Bajorans, have quaint
religious beliefs and practices, absolutely nothing seems to be left of the historic religions of Earth: There are no Jews, no
Christians, no Moslems, no Buddhists, no Hindus, no Jains, no Confucians, and no Sikhs, or anything else, on any starship
or settlement in the Federation. (Star Trek is, not to put too fine a point on it, what the Nazis called "Judenfrei," free of Jews
[note], a condition that Marx also anticipated with the death of Capitalism -- though Leonard Nimoy did introduce,
subversively, the hand sign of the Hebrew letter "shin" to signify the Trek benediction, "Live long and prosper.") With no
practitioners, there are no chaplains for the crew -- no ministers, no priests, no rabbis, no mullas, no brahmins, no monks,
no nuns. The closest thing to religious advice is the tedious psycho-babble of counselor Troi. The absence of traditional
human religions stands in stark contrast to the more recent, shortlived science ficiton series, Firefly. Why there is this
conspicuous absence of religion is made plain in a third season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called "Who
Watches the Watchers?" It concerns a planet of people who are still at only a pre-industrial level of development but who
are related to the Vulcans and, presumably because of this, are so intellectually advanced that they long ago ceased to
believe in anything so absurd as a God (so some races are just smarter than others?(!?) -- sounds like some kind of racism).
Because a Federation observing post and its advanced technology is inadvertently revealed, one of the natives mistakenly
takes Captain Picard to himself be the God of ancient belief. He spreads the word among his people. The rest of the episode
is then taken up with how this folly can be undone without otherwise distorting the natural development of the natives. In
the end, they realize that Picard is not God, and they continue on their previous path of atheistic wisdom. Such a story is so
blatantly hostile to theistic religion, that it is astonishing that it provoked neither comment nor protest. Perhaps the
messages contained in science fiction television are simply not noticed. Movies have a somewhat higher profile and,
indeed, the futile quest for God in the fifth Star Trek movie, The Final Frontier, provoked the comment from Michael
Medved, a political conservative and devout Jew, that it was the same old "secular humanism." Even the aforementioned
religious beliefs and practices of the Klingons and Bajorans seem to consist of little more than ritual and mythology, and
one is left with the impression that respect for such things is motivated more by cultural relativism than by a sense that they
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might contain religious truths of interest to others. The Star Trek universe is one without religious truths -- where the
occasional disembodied spirit can be explained away with talk about "energy" or "subspace." If daily life is not concerned
with familiar economic activities and the whole of life is not informed with religious purposes, then what is life all about in
Star Trek? Well, the story is about a military establishment, Star Fleet, and one ship in particular in the fleet, the Enterprise.
One might not expect this to provide much of a picture of ordinary civilian life; and it doesn't. One never sees much on
Earth apart from the Star Fleet Academy and Picard's family farm in France -- unless of course we include Earth's past,
where the Enterprise spends much more time than on the contemporaneous Earth. Since economic life as we know it is
presumed not to exist in the future, it would certainly pose a challenge to try and represent how life is conducted and how,
for instance, artifacts like the Enterprise get ordered, financed, and constructed. And if it is to be represented that things like
"finance" don't exist, one wonders if any of the Trek writers or producers know little details about Earth history like when
Lenin wanted to get along without money and accounting and discovered that Russia's economy was collapsing on him.
Marx's prescription for an economy without the cash nexus was quickly abandoned and never revived. Nevertheless, Marx's
dream and Lenin's disastrous experiment is presented as the noble and glorious future in Star Trek: First Contact, where
Jean Luc Picard actually says, "Money doesn't exist in the Twenty-Fourth Century." So what one is left with in Star Trek is
military life. Trying to soften this by including families and recreation on the Enterprise in fact makes the impression
worse, since to the extent that such a life is ordinary and permanent for its members, it is all the easier to imagine that all
life in the Federation is of this sort. Not just a military, but a militarism. In the show, this actually didn't work out very well.
In the beginning, Star Trek: The Next Generation wanted to remind us of the daily life, children in school, etc. on board;
and more than once the "battle hull" of the ship was separated from the "saucer" so that the civilian component of the crew
would be safe from hostile action. This cumbersome expedient, however, was soon enough forgotten; and we later forget,
as the Enterprise finds itself in desperate exchanges with hostile forces, that small children are undergoing the same battle
damage that we see inflicted on the bridge -- unless of course it is brought to our attention because there is a story with a
special focus on a child, as with Lieutenant Worf's son. In Star Trek: First Contact, crew members are being captured and
turned into Borg. Does that include the children? We never see any. Do Picard's orders to shoot any Borg include Borg who
were human children? This disturbing situation is completely ignored by the movie. Star Trek, therefore, cannot maintain
its fiction that military life on a major warship will be friendly to families and children. In the 20th Century there has been a
conspicuous political ideology that combines militarism, the subordination of private economic activity to collective social
purposes, and often the disparagement of traditional religious beliefs and scruples: Fascism, and not the conservative
Fascism of Mussolini and Franco, who made their peace with the Church and drew some limits about some things (Franco
even helped Jews escape from occupied France), but the unlimited "revolutionary," Nihilistic Fascism of Hitler, which
recoiled from no crime and recognized no demands of conscience or God above the gods of the Führer and the Volk.
Certainly the participants in all the forms of Star Trek, writers, staff, producers, actors, fans, etc., would be horrified,
insulted, and outraged to be associated with a murderous and discredited ideology like Fascism; but I have already noted in
these pages how naive philosophers and critics have thoughtlessly adopted the philosophical foundations of Fascism from
people like Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger to what they think are "progressive" causes in the present day. This
danger has come with the corruption of the idea of "progress" away from individualism, the rule of law, private property,
and voluntary exchanges -- in short the characteristics of capitalism and the free market -- into collectivist, politicized, and
ultimately totalitarian directions. Star Trek well illustrates the confusion, ignorance, and self-deception that are inherent in
this process. Dreams of Utopia have turned to horror in this century so often, but the same dreams continue to be promoted
just because they continue to sound good to the uninformed. As Thomas Sowell recent wrote about the determination of
many to find Alger Hiss innocent of espionage, regardless of the evidence: Hiss is dead but the lies surrounding his case
linger on. So do the attitudes that seek a cheap sense of superiority by denigrating this country and picturing some foreign
hell hole as a Utopia. Star Trek has a Utopia to picture, or at least a world free of many of the ills perceived in the present,
but it doesn't have to deal with anything so inconvenient as the experience of history. Star Trek is free to disparage business
and profit without the need to explain what would replace them. Star Trek is free to disparage religious belief and ignore
traditional religions without the need to address the existential mysteries and tragedies of real life in ways that have actually
meant something to the vast majority of human beings. And it is particularly interesting that Star Trek is free to do all this
with the convenience of assimilating everything to the forms of military life, where collective purpose and authority are
taken for granted. Captain Picard does indeed end up rather like God, come to think of it.
We should investigate the scifi western “Firefly” instead- our metaphor is anti-statist politics and can
fight back against militarism without embracing dangerous utopias
Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D., retired from the Department of Philosophy, Los Angeles Valley College, Van Nuys, California, 20 06, “
Firefly, the anti-Trek”, http://www.friesian.com/trek.htm#firefly
All of the disturbing characteristics of the Star Trek shows, the militarism, collectivism, anti-capitalism, and atheism, are
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notably missing from the excellent but shortlived series Firefly. Firefly only aired on the Fox network for three months at
the end of 2002. Fourteen episodes were filmed, including the two hour pilot. Three of the episodes were never aired, and
the others were shown out of sequence, even though they contained elements from previous episodes. This must have been
particularly confusing as the show was trying to find an audience. The pilot, which introduced all the characters, was shown
last, after the series had been cancelled. Despite the cancellation, the shows had found an audience, which rallied in defense
of the series. Although it was too late for Fox, the creator of the show, Joss Whedon, used the enthusiasm of the fans to
persuade Universal to continue the series as a movie, Serenity, which was released in 2005. The movie didn't have the
greatest box office, but together with the series it lives, of course, on video, where sales have continued to be strong, better
than some recent pretigious movies. Hopefully, the continued support of old fans, and the acquisition of new fans, like
myself, will allow the story to return to some medium in some form -- just like Star Trek. Unlike the starship Enterprise, a
powerful warship of the United Federation of Planets, the ship Serenity is a small, private "Firefly" class transport with no
weapons -- except the hand weapons of the crew. The captain and first officer, Malcolm (Nathan Fillion) and Zoe (Gina
Torres, the statuesque, sexually smoking, and real life wife of Laurence Fishborne, "Morpheus" of The Matrix), are
veterans of the attempt to prevent the vast Alliance of planets from taking over their own worlds. They were fighting with
the "Independents," the "Brown Coats," and the ship is named after the battle of Serenity Valley, where the Independents all
but lost the war against the Alliance. Now, Malcolm, Zoe, and the rest of crew eek out a living with small shipping jobs,
smuggling, and theft under the unwelcome eye of Alliance cruisers and "fed" policemen. In the pilot, they also take aboard
two fugitives from the law, a brother and sister, Simon (Sean Maher) and River (Summer Glau). Simon is a physican who
rescued River from an Alliance "academy" where sinister police-state men with "hands of blue" were modifying her brain
to turn her into a psychic and a "Manchurian candidate"-like assassin. This initially left her in a state of psychosis, from
which she gradually emerges and becomes aware of her psychic abilities and powers of combat -- in the movie she all but
becomes Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Whedon's previous TV series). None of this makes the Alliance look very good.
Whedon wants to make it clear, however, that he doesn't think of the Alliance as evil (although the men with "hands of
blue" are evil enough for the Third Reich, and the Alliance soldiers wear German-looking helmets, while the helmets of
Independants look like WWII American ones), but rather as something perhaps too big for its own good, or the good of its
citizens. Indeed, while the Alliance countenances slavery and indentured servitude, Serenity and the crew are as often saved
by the inefficiency, indifference, or corruption of the authorities as by any official benevolence or justice. This in itself is all
a rebuke to the statist complacency of Star Trek. In the pilot, Serenity takes on, not only Simon and River, but the
Shepherd, i.e. Minister, Book (played by the kind and noble Ron Glass, perhaps best remembered from the Barney Miller
TV series). Although the Shepherd expresses his religious views in, usually, a low key way, and the details given of his
beliefs are spare, he does have an actual Bible, and once he even seems to make a reference to Jesus, as a carpenter. In the
movie, the word "Christian" is even uttered -- though most viewers may not have noticed that the words "Jesus" () and
"Buddha" (, literally "Buddha Founder") have both been spoken in Chinese during the shows. This is startling stuff in
comparison to Star Trek. Captain Malcolm himself has lost his faith, but the Shepherd seems to the working on that. As the
shows went along, it began to look as though the Shepherd himself had a military, police, or intelligence background.
Unfortunately, one of the decisions made in the movie was to have him be killed, before we had learned all his secrets. He
was such a good character, this is disappointing, but it is always possible that, if the story is continued in some form, his
history could emerge anyway. That was pretty standard stuff on The X-Files. There is frequent use of Chinese in the series,
although actual Chinese actors were only, so far, in the background; and the cast members struggle with Chinese
pronunciation. The name Serenity is written in Chinese characters on the ship as , though the Chinese pronunciation is
never used. This is the version of the word in the new "simplified" characters. An older form in traditional characters would
look like , while even more traditional characters would look like . Joss Whedon evidently likes the idea that future human
culture features both English and Chinese as the universal languages -- though in Firely we also see some evidence of other
languages and other cultures surviving as well. Much of the appeal of Firefly is the ensemble cast. Besides Malcolm, Zoe,
Simon, River, and Shepherd, we also have the engineer Kaylee (Jewel Staite), whose own sweetness embodies the persona
of Serenity herself as a home for the crew, Jayne (Adam Baldwin), whom Malcolm has picked up as a bit of mercenary
muscle, but who isn't always faithful to his crewmates, Wash (Alan Tudyk, recently seen as "Steve the Pirate" in Dodgeball,
a True Underdog Story, but who also did the motion capture performance for the robot Sonny in I, Robot), the pilot and
unlikely husband of Zoe, and finally Inara (the lovely Morena Baccarin). Again, the decision was made to have Wash be
killed in the movie, which is a grave loss if the story is to continue. Inara is actually a courtesan, a "registered Companion,"
who isn't really a crew member, but who rents one of Serenity's small shuttles to use as her detachable place of business.
This seems very un-Trek-like also. Even in the pilot, it is already obvious that Malcolm and Inara have fallen in love with
each other, but neither one is quite up to admitting it, and their feelings are often expressed in apparently hostile banter.
This a familiar approach in many TV series and movies -- although we also notice that under stress the two of them
sometimes function as a couple, with Inara as the voice of Mal's conscience. It is not a relationship that is likely to be soon
resolved, should the story continue, since Malcolm is already uncomfortable with Inara's profession, and she would be
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unlikely to continue it were they to actually become involved with each other. We get some hints that Inara has some
secrets in her own background. At the end of the TV shows, Inara and Malcolm have problems enough that Inara leaves
Serenity. By the end of the movie, however, she returns, but matters are not otherwise resolved. On the other hand, the
unrequited love category is kept in bounds when Simon and Kaylee, after some false starts, have become lovers at the end
of the movie. Yes, there is actual money -- the familiar science fiction "credits" -- in Firefly, and bank accounts. There also
seems to be hard commodity coinage, in platinum, for the gold bugs out there. The hard money seems to go with the Wild
West feel of the newly settled "outer planets." The very best thing about Firefly, in comparison to Star Trek, is probably
that it doesn't try for the slightest bit of Utopianism. It does not assume that a single galactic government would be best, as
it does not assume that present religion and capitalist economics are undesirable. This is refreshing, to say the least, but it is
also done very well. The science in Firefly consists of some basic science fiction conceits that generally do not need to be,
and are not, explained. Serenity has an artificial gravity that Kaylee references once (in "The Message") and that we only
see turned off once, at the beginning of the pilot, when Mal, Zoe, and Jayne float into the airlock and we see the gravity
turn on. Otherwise, the artificial gravity still seems to be working even when the ship has lost all power, as in "Out of Gas."
Nobody gets "beamed" up here, and while there are energy weapons, these seem to be familiar lasers rather than "phasers."
The food is often tasteless synthetic stuff, not everyone's favorite right out of the replicator. What it takes a while to gather
is the scale of the universe in which Firefly is set. Despite references to the "'verse" and the galaxy, all the action takes
place in one solar system -- and not that of the Earth. This is not completely clarified until the beginning of the movie,
where it is stated explicitly. Otherwise it must be inferred, given that there is no "warp drive" or any other reference to
faster-than-light travel. And space is pretty crowded in Firefly. Twice, in the pilot and in "Bushwacked," Serenity is caught
in the act at a derelict ship by an Alliance cruiser. This would seem unlikely even in interplanetary space, and certainly
impossible in interstellar. Similarly, in "Safe" we discover that an Alliance cruiser is only a few hours away. Nevertheless,
Joss Whedon has not paid sufficient attention to how solar systems work. Characters often speak of the "quadrant," a term
that is really only meaningful in galactic terms. In a solar system, planets move, and at different rates. The relationship of
the planets to each other thus changes constantly, and a trip that might at one time might take a few days under high power
might otherwise take weeks or months (all depending on the energy budget of space ships like Serenity, about which we are
only vaguely informed). The geometry of space, where it is even shown, usually doesn't make much sense. Thus, in the
movie, the Reavers, in a tight mass, block the route to the planet Miranda, even though there would be countless ways, in a
very large sky, to just go around them. With "dozens" of planets and "hundreds" of moons, the implication is that this new
solar system is much larger than that of "Earth that was." With a "blue sun," i.e. a brighter star, the solar system could be
effectively larger, and we certainly have no sense that the "outer" planets are colder or darker than the "central" ones.
Whether there can be solar systems with so many terrestrial bodies, in comparison to what we are familiar with, is an open
question. A fair number of extra-solar planets have now been identified, but the overall makeup, or frequency, of other solar
systems is still a mystery. An unfortunate notion in the series is that space is dark. We do not see strong sunlight in the ship
unless Serenity is visiting a planet (both in the shows and in the movie). However, it should be readily obvious on reflection
that planets do not generate sunlight. Stars do. And the "blue sun" is going to be shining on Serenity whether the ship is
near a planet or in deep (interplanetary) space. Interstellar space will be dark, but this is not the domain of Firely. Another
problem with the science of Firefly is communication. We have no hint of "subspace" communication here, and in
interplanetary space there would be no need for that. However, the velocity of light does impose some limits on
communication even within a solar system. At almost any extra-planetary distance there will be delays of seconds in
transmission (it is a light second from the Earth to the Moon), and more commonly of minutes or hours. This would make
real time dialogue from Serenity to system planets awkward to impossible. We get no hint of this. On the other hand, we
don't get much in the way of real time dialogue anyway. Malcolm talks to Patience on Whitefall in the pilot, and Malcolm
talks to Inara at her "training house" in the movie. There should at least be short delays, if not long ones, in reponses in both
cases. Allowing for them, of course, would be bad, for wasting time, both on television and in movies. So perhaps it should
be chalked up to poetic license. The "science" in the "fiction" of Firefly is not very daring and is not intended to be. More
so even than in Star Wars, where George Lucas made a point of it, the science tends to be invisible, and we get nothing of
the deadly exposition that used to be the bane of science fiction -- and sometimes still is. Instead, as in the best of Star Wars
and in the Alien movies, the universe is presented as one lived in and familiar, even if things don't get explained that
perhaps should. In Firefly, there is even a bit of joke about this. In "Objects in Space," when Mal suggests that River reads
minds, Wash says that this "sounds like science fiction." Zoe responds, "Dear, we live in a space ship." In March 2011 the
Science Channel is beginning to run the Firefly TV shows. Since the release of the movie, the Firefly story has apparently
been dropped, and Joss Whedon went on to do another science fiction TV series, The Doll House, which wasn't as good as
Firefly but ironically lasted two whole seasons. Go figure. In retrospect, the deaths of Book and Wash in the movie
probably meant that the story could not or should not have been continued. What is usually the most attractive thing about
any show or movie to an audience are the characters. And given the ensemble cast of Firefly, and the family-like dynamic
of the crew of Serenity, it is a particularly grave blow that characters are lost. I suspect that the bloom of the series Heroes
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on NBC, which at first was a kind of popular sensation, was rapidly lost because the series made a habit of killing off
characters, sometimes rapidly. When an audience has made an emotional connection and investment in particular people,
there is a kind of feeling of betrayal when they are just expended to make some plot point. Whedon had something in mind
when he killed off Book and Wash. It was not done lightly or gratuitously. We see the point by recalling an early line in the
movie. Zoe tells one of the temporary hostages during the heist that starts the story, "A hero is someone who gets other
people killed." Then we see that Mal, indeed, becomes a hero. He is a real hero, saving the day and striking a blow against
the Alliance, with the full and enthusiastic participation of the crew, but there is a cost. The cost is that Mal gets Wash
killed, as previously he has, inadvertently, gotten Book killed. Although Zoe loses her own husband, she is made of the
same warrior stuff as Mal, so she can endure. In lesser hands, all this might be used to draw some cheap anti-war moral
from the story. Whedon doesn't do that. The war, such as it is, is a good war. Whedon's point is that there is a price even for
a good war, and the price is not trivial. Such a point is rather like what we see in the Mahâbhârata, where the good guys are
the good guys, they are supposed to win, and they do; but there is a considerable, indeed a terrible, cost to the whole
business. Things cannot be restored to what they were ante bellum. The same can be said about Firefly itself. By killing
Book and Wash, Joss Whedon also paid a price, and the price is the ensemble situation that people grew to know and love
in the series. If Serenity were to continue on its voyage, things would necessarily be different. No one will be there to play
with Wash's toy dinosaurs. Indeed, new cast members would certainly need to be brought in, and how that would work out
is subject to all the uncertainties of any series or movie. The Firefly that we knew for its brief and marvelous life could not
be the same.
Specifically, we affirm the Reavers, the true mirror of human civilization, both human and monster at
the same time- our exploration of them can access your aff
Rod of Alexandria, Black Scholar of Patristics and Writer for Nonviolent Politics, 20 11, “Firefly & Theology, Part 1: The Alliance
and The Reavers”, http://politicaljesus.com/2011/02/18/firefly1/
With the faces of evil exposed in the FIREFLY universe, I must now turn to the second part of the question of evil: Where
does evil come from? Quite simply, evil is a human construct, and the effects of that construction is social in nature.It was
the Alliance desire to create a inter-planetary system whereby all human beings would be conformed in the Alliance’s
image. To do this, the Alliance sought a way to prevent human persons from fighting back. Their solution was to
experiment with a gas that would end human aggression. The Pax gas (pax being Latin for peace, the false peace of empire,
i.e., Pax Romana) was used in experiments on the terraformed planet Miranda, on the very outskirts of the Universe. Rather
than weeding out aggression, however, it had two affects. First, a large portion of the population on Miranda died for not
eating, losing the will to survive. However, the remnant became even far more aggressive to the point of losing their
humanity: The Reavers, a cannibalistic nation that would ravage ships. Multiple times in the series and movie, the
shipmates of Serenity would try to remind themselves that maybe in another life, the Reavers were human, but now they are
monsters. The interesting part about the role of the Reavers is that about half of those living on other planets do not believe
in the existence of Reavers (that they should be left to old wives tells) while those that have seen them first hand know how
dangerous they are. The legend works to make them larger than life, and in the process, works towards furthering their
marginalization and dehumanization.The monstrosity, however, is not the Reavers’ collectivity, but in fact, the society that
gave birth to them: the Alliance is the monster that made the efforts to marginalized these people. The Reavers are the
blowback of imperial domination. The source of evil is group of human beings that work against human liberation. The last
five parts of this series will be the crew of Serenity, as Whedon’s anti-colonial religious response to evil.
Framework 1NC (highlight the standards waaaay down)
A. They must propose and advocate a course of action to be undertaken by the government in
Washington, D.C. in order to win the debate round.
1. To be ‘resolved’ is to express an opinion regarding some action following the colon.
Words and Phrases 1964 [Permanent Edition //STRONG]
Definition of the word “resolve,” given by Webster is “to express an opinion or determination by
resolution or vote; as ‘it was resolved by the legislature;” It is of similar force to the word “enact,” which is
defined by Bouvier as meaning “to establish by law”.
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2. The United States is the government in Washington, D.C.
DPG 1998 [Dictionary of Government and Politics Ed. P.H. Collin, p. 292//STRONG]
United States of America (USA) [ju:’naitid ‘steits av e’merike] noun independent country, a federation of states (originally
thirteen, now fifty in North America; the United States Code = book containing all the permanent laws of the USA, arranged in
sections according to subject and revised from time to time COMMENT: the federal government (based in
Washington D.C.) is formed of a legislature (the Congress) with two chambers (the Senate and House of
Representatives), an executive (the President) and a judiciary (the Supreme Court). Each of the fifty states making up
the USA has its own legislature and executive (the Governor) as well as its own legal system and constitution.
3. “Should” expresses the desirability of the action of the verb phrase following it. In this case, you must
substantially decrease military or police presence.
Cambridge Dictionary, 2000 [Cambridge University Press p.792//STRONG]
Should – v. aux. Used to express that it is necessary, desirable, admirable, or imperative to perform
the action of the following verb
B. Violation – the affirmative does not defend an action carried out by the USFG- instead they read the
plan as a metaphor for star trek in an imaginary TV show
C. Vote Negative
1.
Predictable Ground – If the affirmative does not have to defend a policy action, but instead can defend the
positive consequences of any performance in which they choose to engage during the eight minutes of the 1AC,
the negative will never be able to prepare for all the different sorts of performances that might happen – our
interpretation allows them one kind of performance – the advocacy of a policy. There are many different policies
the affirmative can advocate, but they will all be policies and so will all have ground which is predictable. They
justify the affirmative saying genocide is bad for eight minutes—it may be true, but the negative has nothing to
say against it.
2.
3. Objective Judging – The affirmative puts the judge in the position of having to assess the performative
impact of one speech and decide whether it earns them the ballot. This is an inherently subjective
decision which has no clear criteria which the judge can apply. Under our interpretation, the judge can
consider the more objective question of whether the policy advocated by the affirmative would be a
good idea, forcing both teams to engage in cost-benefit analysis, an activity that has a relatively stable
set of criteria which a judge can apply.
4. Topic-Specific Policy Education – The affirmative claims to be discussing something that is central to
discussion of this year’s topic, but we learn more about the policy context of this discussion if the
affirmative is required to advocate a course of action. Otherwise, we are just discussing abstractions
which don’t educate us about the relative merits of different ideas within the context of accompanying
courses of action.
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5. We have the only interpretation that allows for switch side debate- defending a topical affirmative is
the only way to ensure that teams must research and debate both sides of an argument and learn from
multiple perspectives about the topic. Forcing a rigid adherence to the topic facilitates switch-side
debating – the advocacy of things you sometimes don’t necessarily believe in.
No risk of offense - they can still read their ethics claims as a justification why the federal government should
take action – they just can’t be the starting point of the plan.
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Race K
The Next Generation is entrenched in white ideals of dominance and multiculturalism. The alternative is
to reject the Aff’s blind embrace of whiteness to historicize the history of whiteness, with the goal being to
create an alternative universe that is more honest about the past and more open to a truly different
pres¬ent
Bernardi 98 (Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future)
I am not suggesting that Spiner's Data somehow or in any way ex¬cuses the episode's underlying embrace of whiteness.
Because I enjoy watching the actor—finding space in his performance for a nonwhite reading—does not mean the episode
itself is somehow subversive or democratic. "The Measure of a Man," like the Trek mega-text in gen¬eral, is structured in
dominance. As I argue throughout this book, de¬spite Trek's didactic call for civil rights and multiculturalism, despite its
moments of beauty and resistance, the mega-text's imagination has been and continues to be depressingly Western and
painfully white. In¬deed, whiteness is everywhere in Trek, spread out in all, directions like the background noise of the
Big Bang. Like the Cardassians, it is polite but insidious. Like the Klingons, it is tenacious in its effort to remain viable.
Like the Vulcans, it consistently pretends to be logical in an ef¬fort to suppress its emotions. Like the Ferengi, whiteness is
never far from profit. And like the humans, it undermines an otherwise beautiful call for a more humane universe.
Whiteness dominates the mega-text's common sense, and must be rigorously challenged if the popular series is to push its
imagination of the future toward the reality of "infinite di¬versity in infinite combinations." Perhaps the chapter on the fans
speaks the most poignantly to the meaning of race in Trek specifically and society in general. For the Trek-kers surfing the
Internet on STREK-L, race is not an illusion or an un¬conscious formation. For the most part, it is also not simply a thing
of the past or something that should be excused in the present. Like Trek, the fans see and talk about race at almost every
opportunity—often demonstrating a willingness to challenge its shifting status quo. Yet, be¬cause these same fans define
race in biologically reductive terms, imbue it with discourses ranging from assimilation to reverse discrimination— and
ultimately accept its white ideal—the strategy for challenging Trek's racial play is at best ambiguous and at worst
paradoxical. The racial formation cannot be challenged, subverted, and rearticulated if the meaning of whiteness is either
accepted as natural or loved. The most common factor informing the mega-text's continued em¬brace of whiteness is
history itself: in terms of both the representation of the past/future and the impact of the sociopolitical present on its
production and reception. Sometimes this history takes the form of ex¬plicit historiography. Each series of the mega-text—
from the original to the films to the spinoffs to the fans—has represented and spoken to the past and present of the real
world: from the cold war to a United Fed¬eration of Planets; from the Prime Directive to U.S. intervention in Haiti. Our
past and present are fodder for Trek's vision of the future. Yet, history is also of automatic quotations, as Barthes might say,
not necessarily explicit representations but no less a fundamental part of the text. This form of history, the influence of the
civil rights and neo¬conservative movements, for example, makes its presence known in Trek's diegetic logics,
chronotopes, intertexts, and reading formations: interconnected and interdependent elements that enable the science fiction
series to be coherent, relevant—significant. While deep space might be a vacuum, Trek exists in the space-time of history.
Looking closely at both types of history—explicit and contextual— allows us to see what histories are being told, and how.
It enables us to examine the contradictions and paradoxes that work under the blind¬ing cover of bright lights to dominate
our universe. Indeed, the history of race—or, more specifically, the meaning of whiteness—is every¬where in front of our
eyes. We can see it if we look in the right space-times. Yet it is hard if not impossible to do anything about if we think it is
either predetermined or the best thing going. If, however, we see whiteness as a sociocultural formation, a historical system
of mean¬ing production, that works to privilege some of us at the expense of Others—that steers the racial formation—then
we have a chance to challenge its intense veracity and dogged versatility. Like the shape-shifting Changelings of the analretentive Dominion who seek to bring a particular order to the galaxy, whiteness is anything but fixed. There are moments
of beauty and resistance in Trek. Contrary to the claim of the undifferentiated Borg collective, resistance is not futile. The
white paradox is not always already a given; there are chinks in its armor. The task, it seems to me, is to historicize the
history in and of whiteness, with the goal being to create an alternative universe that is more honest about the past and more
open to a truly different pres¬ent. At stake in such an undertaking are our very identities. As Edward Said imagines: "Just
as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities."1 For me, Spiner's
per¬formance, coupled with my own historical sense of identity and race, provides an opportunity—complete with its own
ironies and contra¬dictions—to realize a different space-time.
A stance against the institutional walls of racism is the only mechanism for survival
BARDNT Director of a non profit organization called CrossRoads 91
Joesph-; DISMANTUNG RACISM: The Continuing Challenge to White
America; p.155-156
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To study racism is to study walls. We have looked at barriers and fences, restraints and limitations,
ghenos and prisons. The prison of racism commes us all, people of color and white people alike. It
shackles the victimizer as well as the victim. The walls forcibly keep people of color and white
people separate from each other; in our separate prisons we are all prevented from achlevmg the human
potential that God intends for us. The limitations im- posed on people of color by poverty, subservience,
and power-lessness are cruel, inhuman, and unjust, the effects of uncon trolled power, privilege, and
greed, which are the marks of our white prison, will inevitably destroy us as well. .vBut we have also seen
that the walls of racism can be dismantled. We are not condemned to an inexorable rate, bUt ate offered
the vision and the possibilirv of freedom. Brick by brick, stone bv stone, tlle prison of individual,
institutional, and culrural racism can be destroyed. You and I are urgently called to join tlle efforts of
those who know it is time to tear dO~ once and for all, the walls of racism. CfSS- . The danger point of
self-destruction seems to be awing ever more near. The resullS of centuries of national and worldwide
conguest and colonialism, of military buildups and violent aggression, of overconsumption and
environmental destruction may be reaching a point of no return. A small and predominantly white
minority of the global population derives its power and privilege from the sufferings of the vast majority
of peoples of color. For the sake of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.
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Gender K
Star Trek the next generation places women in supportive roles and men in active roles, reinscribing a
masculinist view of the world
Ott and Aoki 1 (“Popular Imagination and Identity Politics: Reading the Future in Star Trek: The Next Generation”)
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
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Gender K 2/
The universality of the affirmative’s claims re-enforces the masculine/feminine binaries making the
power structures it wishes to eliminate inevitable
Judith Butler (PhD, Yale, Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature) 1999 “Gender Trouble: Feminism and
the Subversion of Identity” p. 6-8
The political assumption that there must be a universal basis for feminism, one which must be found in an identity assumed
to exist cross-culturally, often accompanies the notion that the oppression of women has some singular form discernible in
the universal or hegemonic structure of patriarchy or masculine domination. The notion of a universal patriarchy has been
widely criticized in recent years for its failure to account for the workings of gender oppression in the concrete cultural
contexts in which it exists. Where those various contexts have been consulted within such theories, it has been to find
“examples” or “illustrations” of a universal principle that is assumed from the start. That form of feminist theorizing has
come under criticism for its efforts to colonize and appropriate non-Western cultures to support highly Western notions of
oppression, but because they tend as well to construct a “Third World” or even an “Orient” in which gender oppression is
subtly explained as symptomatic of an essential, non-Western barbarism. The urgency of feminism to establish a universal
status for patriarchy in order to strengthen the appearance of feminism’s own claims to be representative has occasionally
motivated the shortcut to a categorial or fictive universality of the structure of domination, held to produce women’s
common subjugated experience. Although the claim of universal patriarchy no longer enjoys the kind of credibility it
once did, the notion of a generally shared conception of “women,” the corollary to that framework, has been much more
difficult to displace. Certainly, there have been plenty of debates: Is there some commonality among “women” that
preexists their oppression, or do “women” have a bond by virtue of their oppression alone? Is there a specificity to
women’s cultures that is independent of their subordination by hegemonic, masculinist cultures? Are the specificity and
integrity of women’s cultural or linguistic practices always specified against and, hence, within the terms of some more
dominant cultural formation? If there is a region of the “specifically feminine,” one that is both differentiated from the
masculine as such and recognizable in its difference by an unmarked and, hence, presumed universality of “women”? The
masculine/feminine binary constitutes not only the exclusive framework in which that specificity can be recognized, but in
every other way the “specificity” of the feminine is once again fully decontextualized and separated off analytically and
politically from the constitution of class, race, ethnicity, and other axes of power relations that both constitute “identity”
and make the singular notion of identity a misnomer.4 My suggestion is that the presumed universality and unity of the
subject of feminism is effectively undermined by the constraints of the representational discourse in which it functions.
Indeed, the premature insistence on a stable subject of feminism, understood as a seamless category of women, inevitably
generates multiple refusals to accept the category. These domains of exclusion reveal the coercive and regulatory
consequences of that construction, even when the construction has been elaborated for emancipatory purposes. Indeed, the
fragmentation within feminism and the paradoxical opposition to feminism from “women” whom feminism claims to
represent suggest the necessary limits of identity politics. The suggestion that feminism can seek wider representation for
a subject that it itself constructs has the ironic consequence that feminist goals risk failure by refusing to take account of the
constitutive powers of their own representational claims. This problem is not ameliorated through an appeal to the category
of women for merely “strategic” purposes, for strategies always have meanings that exceed the purposes for which they
are intended. In this case, exclusion itself might qualify as such an unintended yet consequential meaning. By conforming
to a requirement of representational politics that feminism articulate a stable subject, feminism thus opens itself to charges
of gross misrepresentation.
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Gender K 3/
The alternative is to reject the aff’s masculine view of IR—adopting a more holistic view of IR solves, but
the perm fails because the aff is constructed from a masculine standpoint
Shepherd 9 [Laura, 4/3, Department of Political Science and International Studies @ University of Birmingham, “Gender,
Violence and Global Politics: Contemporary Debates in Feminist Security Studies”, p. EBSCO, RCB]
As well as conceiving of gender as a set of discourses, and violence as a means of reproducing and reinforcing the relevant discursive limits, it is possible
to see security as a set of discourses, as I have argued more fully elsewhere (Shepherd, 2007; 2008; see also Shepherd and Weldes, 2007). Rather than
pursuing the study of security as if it were something that can be achieved either in absolute, partial or relative terms, engaging with security as discourse
enables the analysis of how these discourses function to reproduce, through various strategies, the domain of the international with which IR is self-consciously
concerned. Just as violences that are gendering reproduce gendered subjects, on this view states, acting as authoritative entities, perform violences, but
violences, in the name of security, also perform states. These processes occur simultaneously, and across the whole spectrum of social life: an instance of rape
in war is at once gendering of the individuals involved and of the social collectivities – states, communities, regions – they feel they represent (see Bracewell,
2000); building a fence in the name of security that separates people from their land and extended families performs particular
kinds of violence (at checkpoints, during patrols) and performs particular subject identities (of the state authority, of the individuals affected),
all of which are gendered. All of the texts under discussion in this essay argue that it is imperative to explore and expose gendered power relations
and, further, that doing so not only enables a rigorous critique of realism in IR but also reminds us as scholars of the need for such a critique. The
critiques of IR offered by feminist scholars are grounded in a rejection of neo-realism/realism as a dominant intellectual framework for academics in the
discipline and policy makers alike. As Enloe reminds us, 'the government-centred, militarized version of national security [derived from a realist framework]
remains the dominant mode of policy thinking' (Enloe, 2007, p. 43). Situating gender as a central category of analysis encourages us to 'think
outside the "state security box"' (p. 47) and to remember that 'the "individuals" of global politics do not work alone, live alone or politic alone – they
do so in interdependent relationships with others' (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2008, p. 200) that are inherently gendered. One of the key analytical contributions of all
three texts is the way in which they all challenge what it means to be 'doing' IR, by recognising various forms of violence,
interrogating the public/private divide and demanding that attention is paid to the temporal and physical spaces in-between war
and peace. Feminist security studies should not simply be seen as 'women doing security', or as 'adding women to IR/security
studies', important as these contributions are. Through their theorising, the authors discussed here reconfigure what 'counts' as IR, challenging orthodox
notions of who can 'do' IR and what 'doing' IR means. The practices of power needed to maintain dominant configurations of international relations
are exposed, and critiquing the productive power of realism as a discourse is one way in which the authors do this. Sjoberg and Gentry pick up on a recent
theoretical shift in Anglo-American IR, from system-level analysis to a recognition that individuals matter. However, as they rightly point out, the individuals
who are seen to matter are not gendered relational beings, but rather reminiscent of Hobbes' construction of the autonomous rational actor. '[T]he narrowness
of the group that [such an approach] includes limits its effectiveness as an interpretive framework and reproduces the gender, class and race biases in systemlevel international relationship scholarship' (Sjoberg and Gentry 2008, p. 200, emphasis added). Without paying adequate attention to the
construction of individuals as gendered beings, or to the reproduction of widely held ideas about masculine and feminine
behaviours, Sjoberg and Gentry remind us that we will ultimately fail 'to see and deconstruct the increasingly subtle , complex
and disguised ways in which gender pervades international relations and global politics' (2008, p. 225). In a similar vein, Roberts
notes that 'human security is marginalised or rejected as inauthentic [because] it is not a reflection of realism's (male) agendas
and priorities' (2008, p. 169). The 'agendas and priorities' identified by Roberts and acknowledged by Sjoberg and Gentry as being productive of particular
biases in scholarship are not simply 'academic' matters, in the pejorative sense of the term. As Roberts argues, 'Power relationships of inequality
happen because they are built that way by human determinism of security and what is required to maintain security (p. 171).
Realism, as academic discourse and as policy guideline, has material effects. Although his analysis employs an unconventional definition of the term
'social construction' (seemingly interchangeable with 'human agency') and rests on a novel interpretation of the three foundational assumptions of realism
(Roberts, 2008, pp. 169–77), the central point that Roberts seeks to make in his conclusion is valid: 'it is a challenge to those who deny relationships between
gender and security; between human agency (social construction) and lethal outcome' (p. 183). In sum, all three texts draw their readers to an inescapable, and
– for the conventional study of IR – a devastating conclusion: the dominance of neo-realism/realism and the state-based study of security that
derives from this is potentially pathological, in that it is in part productive of the violences it seeks to ameliorate. I suggest that critical
engagement with orthodox IR theory is necessary for the intellectual growth of the discipline, and considerable insight can be gained by acknowledging the
relevance of feminist understandings of gender, power and theory. The young woman buying a T-shirt from a multinational clothing
corporation with her first pay cheque, the group of young men planning a stag weekend in Amsterdam, a group of students
attending a demonstration against the bombing of Afghanistan – studying these significant actions currently falls outside the
boundaries of doing security studies in mainstream IR and I believe these boundaries need contesting . As Marysia Zalewski argues:
International politics is what we make it to be ... We need to rethink the discipline in ways that will disturb the existing boundaries of both that which we claim
to be relevant in international politics and what we assume to be legitimate ways of constructing knowledge about the world (Zalewski 1996, p. 352, emphasis
in original). Conclusion: 'Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend' (Mao Tse-Tung) In this essay, I have used the analysis
of three contemporary publications in the field of feminist security studies to demonstrate three significant sets of analytical contributions that such scholarship
makes to the discipline of IR. Beyond the war/peace dichotomy that is frequently assumed to be definitive of the discipline, we find many and
various forms of violence, occurring in and between temporally distinct periods of conflict, which are the product/productive of
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socially acceptable modes of gendered behaviour, ways of being in the world as a woman or man. I have also argued that critical engagement
with conventional, state-based approaches [Continues…]
[Continues…]
to (national) security must persist as the academic discourses we write are complicit in the construction of the global as we
understand it. Further, 'if all experience is gendered, analysis of gendered identities is an imperative starting point in the study of
political identities and practice' (Peterson, 1999, p. 37). To this end, I conclude by suggesting that we take seriously Enloe's final comment: 'Tracking
militarization and fostering demilitarization will call for cooperative investigations, multiple skills and the appreciation of diverse perspectives' (2007, p. 164).
While there has been intense intra-disciplinary debate within contemporary feminist security studies over the necessary 'feminist credentials' of some gendered
analyses, it is important to recognise the continual renewal and analytical vigour brought to the field by such debates. Broadly speaking, there are two positions
we might map. On the one side, there are those who refuse to reduce gender to a variable in their research, arguing that to do so limits the
critical insight that can be gained from treating gender instead as a noun, a verb and a structural logic (see, for example, Sjoberg, 2006; Zalewski, 2007). On
this view, 'gender', whether deployed as noun, verb or logic in a particular analysis, cannot be separated from the decades of feminist
scholarship that worked to explore, expand on and elucidate what gender might mean . On the opposing side are scholars who, typically
using phrases such as 'balanced consideration' (Jones, 1998, p. 303) and 'an inclusive perspective on gender and war' (Griffiths, 2003, pp. 327–8, emphasis in
original), manipulate gender as a variable in their research to 'extend the scope of feminist IR scholarship' (Caprioli, 2004, p. 266) and to draw conclusions
regarding sex-specific behaviours in conflict and post-conflict situations (see also Caprioli and Boyer, 2001; Carpenter, 2006; Melander, 2005). Crucially,
however, scholarship on both sides of this 'divide' coexists, and in doing so encourages 'the appreciation of diverse perspectives'. While bracketing feminist
politics from the study of gender is an overtly political move, which can be presented as either strategic (Carpenter, 2006, pp. 6–10) or as common sense, in
that it 'enhances [the] explanatory capabilities' of feminist security studies (Caprioli, 2004, p. 266), all interrogations of security that take gender
seriously draw attention to the ways in which gender is at once personal, political and international. Although it might seem that
conceiving of gender as a variable adheres both to a disciplinary narrative that rewards positivist and abstract theory (without messy reference to bodies) and to
a neo-/anti-/post-feminist narrative that claims 'we' have solved the gender problem (see Zalewski, 2007, p. 303), at the very least such approaches give
credence to the idea that gender matters in global politics. Mary Caprioli suggests that ' IR feminists shattered the publishing boundary for
feminist IR scholarship, and tackled the difficult task of deconstructing IR theory' (2004, p. 257). I would caution that it is perhaps too
soon to represent the shattering and tackling as a fait accompli, but with the vital interjections of texts such as those discussed here, security studies scholars
may yet envisage a politics of violence and human subjectivity that transcends the arbitrary disciplinary boundaries which
constrain rather than facilitate understanding.
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Case
Human responses ensure destruction
Seth D. Baum, Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University, Jacob D. Haqq-Misra, Department of Meteorology,
Pennsylvania State University, & Shawn D. Domagal-Goldman, NASA Planetary Science Division, 2011, “Would Contact with
Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis” //ZY
If humanity did not come into direct physical contact with ETI, it could still be possible for ETI to unintentionally harm
humanity. This could occur if ETI send harmful information to humanity via electromagnetic transmission. A malicious
ETI broadcaster could, for example, send a message containing harmful information that either damages human technology,
analogous to a computer virus, or coerces humans into a seemingly benign but ultimately destructive course of action, such
as the construction of a dangerous device, [76]. As another example, ETI might send information about its biology, perhaps
hoping that humanity could use this information to protect itself against ET diseases or invasive species. However, perhaps
such an effort would backfire on humanity if we use the information to create a disease, invasive species, or other hazard.
The hazard would be created by humans from the information received, and the creation could be intentional or
unintentional. But if the creation was intentional, then it would be human intent, not ETI intent. The possibility of an
intentional or unintentional informational hazard suggests that at least some care should be taken in efforts to detect and
analyze electromagnetic signals sent from ETI. There is one final information hazard scenario to consider. In this scenario,
contact with ETI serves as a demoralizing force to humanity, with strong negative consequences. In human history, contact
between modern society and stone age culture usually leads to the demise of the more primitive society. Likewise, in the
event of contact with ETI, humanity may be driven toward global cultural collapse when confronted with ETI technology,
beliefs, and lifestyle [88]. Even if the ETI are friendly toward us and give us the choice to accept or reject their knowledge,
the vast differences between our respective societies may force the more primitive one (ours) into a demoralizing state of
societal collapse. For this reason, if ETI do already know of our presence and if they wish to preserve the integrity of our
civilization, then they may choose to reveal themselves to us slowly and gradually in order to avoid a calamitous response
[23].
Science fiction turns the alien into the other- turning case
Sardar & Cubitt, 02, Ziauddin, London-based scholar, writer and cultural-critic who specializes in the future
of Islam, science and cultural relations. Sean, Director of the Program in Media and Communications at the
University of Melbourne and Honorary Professor of the University of Dundee, Introduction, Aliens R us, the
other in science fiction, 6/24/11, EG
In science fiction, the ‘other’ as ‘alien’ is deployed to concretise the deeply divisive dichotomies of race and
gender embedded in the repressive structures and relations of dominance and subordination. Modernity remains
intact, the moral guardian of the future, whilst the ‘other’ emerges demonised and thus can be justifiably
annihilated. ‘The centre,’ as John Rutherford has argued, ‘invests the “other” with its terrors. It is the threat of dissolution of self that ignites
the irrational hatred and hostility as the centre struggles to assert its boundaries, that constructs self from not
self.’2Of all the categories of cinema, ‘alien invader’ films are the most prolific and conservative for, as Susan Hayward notes, ‘They point at otherness
as threatening to life and/or social mores’ and ‘represent the most “worrying” category of all with their innate
potential for misogyny, racism and nationalistic chauvinism’.3
Science Fiction prevents action and solvency.
Sardar & Cubitt, 02, Ziauddin, London-based scholar, writer and cultural-critic who specializes in the future
of Islam, science and cultural relations. Sean, Director of the Program in Media and Communications at the
University of Melbourne and Honorary Professor of the University of Dundee, Introduction, Aliens R us, the
other in science fiction, 6/24/11, EG
Science fiction explores space – ‘in a galaxy far, far away’, The Outer Limits, Space: Above and Beyond. It projects us into
imagined futures – ‘Beam me up, Scottie.’ Yet as a genre the space that science fiction most intimately explores is interior and human; to tell future stories it
recycles the structure and tropes of ancient narrative tradition and to devise dramatic tension it deploys issues and angst that are immediately present. The fiction in
science fiction is the fiction of space, outer space, and time, future time. Far from being the essential object of its concern the devices of space and time are window
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dressing, landscape and backdrop. The
‘science’ offered by science fiction is populist dissection of the psyche of Western
civilisation, its history, preoccupations and project of future domination – past, present and future. Science
fiction is a time machine that goes nowhere, for wherever its goes it materialises the same conjunctions of the
space-time continuum: the conundrums of Western civilisation. Science fiction shows us not the plasticity but the
paucity of the human imagination that has become quagmired in the scientist industrial technological, culturosocio-psycho babble of a single civilisational paradigm. Science fiction is the fiction of mortgaged futures. As a genre it makes it
harder to imagine other futures, futures not beholden to the complexes, neuroses and reflexes of Western
civilisation as we know it. ‘Houston, we have a problem.’
Science fiction is more exclusionary than what they criticize- it’s limited to Western thought and using it
in politics expands Western thought globally.
Sardar & Cubitt, 02, Ziauddin, London-based scholar, writer and cultural-critic who specializes in the future
of Islam, science and cultural relations. Sean, Director of the Program in Media and Communications at the
University of Melbourne and Honorary Professor of the University of Dundee, Introduction, Aliens R us, the
other in science fiction, 6/24/11, EG
So the
basic ingredients out of which science fiction has been fashioned exist everywhere, in different
civilisations and cultures, in the past and the present. Yet science fiction, the genre as we know it, does not.
Science fiction is a very particular possession of just one tradition – Western civilisation. It does not exist in India,
China (leaving out the special case of Hong Kong), Indonesia or Egypt – countries with flourishing and -- ensive film
industries.3Moreover, only one kind of science provides the backdrop for science fiction, while its creators, contributors and in large part its audience are drawn
from the West. This particularity is not accidental. An examination of the structure, themes and dramatic devices of science fiction provides an explanation for this
particular and necessary relationship.
What distinguishes science fiction is a particular view of science; a scientistic view of
humanity and culture; the recycling of distinctive narrative tropes and conventions of storytelling. In each case
science fiction employs the particular constellations of Western thought and history and projects these Western
perspectives on a pan-galactic scale. Science fiction re-inscribes Earth history, as experienced and understood
by the West, across space and time.
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