Heidegger- Case
Advantage one
They have no reason that aff is uniquely key, if their evidence is true that the ocean
perception changes with every epoch then our conception of the ocean will change
soon anyway
The aff does nothing that is not the Squo, ever single decision we make and question
we ask comes with a prior ontological question associated with it. every time we ask a
question it is an action
There is no capital B being—being on exists as a manifestation of phenomena—
authentic relationships to being are impossible
Sartre 43 [Jean Paul, (philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist), “Being and Nothingness”, Translated
by Hazel Barnes, Washington Square Press; Reprint edition, preface (preface) ] RMT
THE appearance
is not supported by any existent different from itself; it has its own being. The first being
which we meet in our ontological inquiry is the being of the appearance. Is it itself an appearance? It
seems so at first. The phenomenon is what manifests itself, and being manifests itself to all in some way,
since we can speak of it and since we have a certain comprehension of it. Thus there must be for it a
phenomenon of being, an appearance of being, capable of description as such. Being will be dis- closed
to us by some kind of immediate access-boredom, nausea, etc., and ontology will be the description of the
phenomenon of being as it manifests itself; that is, without intermediary. However for any ontology we should
raise a preliminary question: is the phenomenon of being thus achieved identical with the being of
phenomena? In other words, is the being which discloses itself to me, which appears to me, of the same nature as
the being of existents which appear to me? It seems that there is no difficulty. Husserl has shown how an eidetic
reduction is always possible; that is, how one can always pass beyond the concrete phenomenon
toward its essence. For Heidegger also "human reality" is ontic-ontological; that is, it can always pass
beyond the phemomenon toward its being. But the passage from the particular object to the essence
is a passage from homo- geneous to homogeneous. Is it the same for the passage from the existent to the
phenomenon of being: Is passing beyond the existent toward the passes beyond the particular red
toward its essence? Let us consider fur- ther.¶ In a particular object one can always distinguish qualities
like color, odor, etc. And proceeding from these, one can always determine an essence which they imply, as a
sign implies its meaning. The totality "object-essence" makes an organized whole. The essence is not in
the object; it is the meaning of the object, the principle of the series of appear- ances which disclose it.
But being is neither one of the object's qualities, capable of being apprehended among others, nor a
meaning of the object. The object does not refer to being as to a signification; it would be im- possible, for
example, to define being as a presence since absence too dis- closes being, since not to be there means still
to be. The object does not possess being, and its existence is not a participation in being, nor any other
kind of relation. It is. That is the only way to define its manner of being; the object does not hide being,
but neither does it reveal being.¶ The object does not hide it, for it would be futile to try to push aside
certain qualities of the existent in order to find the being behind them; be- ing is being of them all
equally. The object does not reveal being, for it would be futile to address oneself to the object in order to
apprehend its being. The existent is a phenomenon; this means that it designates it- self as an organized
totality of qualities. It designates itself and not its being. Being is simply the condition of all revelation. It is being-for-
re- vealing (etre-pour-dcvoiIer) and not revealed being (etre devoiIe). What then is the meaning of the surpassing
toward the ontological, of¶ which Heidegger speaks? Certainly I can pass beyond this table or this chair
toward its being and raise the question of the being-of-the-table or the being-of-the-chair.2 But at that
moment I turn my eyes away from the phenomenon of the table in order to concentrate on the
phenomenon of being, which is no longer the condition of all revelation, but which is it- self something
revealed-an appearance which as such, needs in turn a being on the basis of which it can reveal itself.
Their own author is an issue, he claims that the cultivation of perfection and
knowledge is distinctly human, turns the case
Thomson, 2k1
[Iain, University of New Mexico, Heidegger on Ontological Education, or: How We Become What We Are,
Inquiry, 2001]
How can Heidegger’s understanding of ontological education help us restore substance to our currently empty
guiding ideal of educational ‘excellence’, and in so doing provide the contemporary university with a renewed
sense of unity, not only restoring substance to our shared commitment to forming excelent students, but also
helping us recognize the sense in which we are in fact al working on the same project? The answer is surprisingly
simple: By re-essentializing the notion of excelence. Heidegger, like Aristotle, is a perfectionist; he argues
that there is a distinctive human essence and that the good life, the life of ‘excelence’ (arete), is the life
spent cultivating this distinctively human essence. For Heidegger, as we have seen, the human ‘essence’
is Dasein, ‘being-there’, that is, the making-inteligible of the place in which we Ž nd ourselves, or, even
more simply, world disclosing. For a world-disclosing being to cultivate its essence, then, is for it to
recognize and develop this essence, not only acknowledging its participation in the creation and maintenance
of an inteligible world, but actively embracing its ontological role in such world disclosure. The ful ramiŽ cations of
this seemingly simple insight are profound and revolutionary.57 We wil restrict ourselves to brie• y developing
the two most important implications of Heidegger’s re-essentialization of excelence for the future of the
university.
Irwin and Peters go neg, the final part of the conclusion talks about how tech is a
saving power
Irwin and Peters, 2k2
[Ruth (Senior Lecturer in Ethics at Auckland University of Technology); Michael (Research Professor in
Education at the University of Glasgow); Earthsongs: Ecopoetics, Heidegger and Dwelling, The
Trumpeter Journal of Ecosophy, 2002]
Associated with his epistemic turn in the 1930s, Heidegger began to think that technology was both the
danger in terms of human obliviousness to Being and also the saving power. The destiny of Being has
metamorphosed into an epoch inescapably enframed by technology. The spark of life that is humanity is
beginning to envisage itself more positively than as the polluter of the Earth. In Kim Stanley
Robinson’sMars trilogy, terraforming other planets was both the possibility and the result of the political and
ecological mess produced by consumer capitalism and technology. In Sam Neil’s televised series on
astronomy, terra-forming is imagined because the solar system will age and gradually heat up, making Earth
unearthly. Technological creativity makes it possible to take all life elsewhere in a fast forward version of
evolution. The spark of life, Neil states, quite possibly only exists on this planet, in the billions of stars
and solar systems of the universe. Safe-guarding, nurturing, and regenerating it is the potential and
responsibility of technology and humanity.
The Susik card is about the portrayal of the ocean in art which the aff doesn’t solve
sTheir Mitchells card is power tagged, all that article is talking about it how Heidegger
would perceive terrorists and how they are seen as a standing reserve in the world, it
has no relation to the ocean or the 1ac. It is also advocating a pressurvation of US
security interests
Adv 2
It is the specific question that is asked is important- any argument explores ontology
inevitably. They stop instrumental action which has been successful to ask
unanswerable questions- don’t do anything
It’s impossible to determine an answer to being – ontological questioning results in an
infinite regress and total political paralysis
Levinas and Nemo, ’85 (Emmanuel, professor of philosophy, and Philippe, professor of new philosophy, Ethics and Infinity, pg. 6-7)
Are we not in need of still more precautions? Must
we not step back from this question to raise another, to
recognize the obvious circularity of asking what is the “What is . .?“ question? It seems to beg the question. Is our new
suspicion, then, that Heidegger begs the question of metaphysics when he asks “What is poetry?” or
“What is thinking?”? Yet his thought is insistently anti-metaphysical. Why, then, does he retain
the metaphysical question par excellence? Aware of just such an objection, he proposes, against the vicious circle of the
petitio principi, an alternative, productive circularity: hermeneutic questioning. To ask “What is. . .?“ does not partake of onto-theo-logy
if one acknowledges (1) that the answer can never be fixed absolutely, but calls essentially, endlessly, for
additional “What is . . .?“ questions. Dialectical refinement here replaces vicious circularity. Further, beyond the openmindedness called for
by dialectical refinement, hermeneutic questioning (2) insists on avoiding subjective impositions, on avoiding reading
into rather than harkening to things. One must harken to the things themselves, ultimately to being, in a careful
attunement to what is. But do the refinement and care of the hermeneutic question — which succeed in avoiding ontotheo-logy succeed in
avoiding all viciousness? Certainly they convert a simple fallacy into a productive inquiry, they open a path for thought. But
is it not the
case that however much refinement and care one brings to bear, to ask what something is leads
to asking what something else is, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum? What is disturbing in this is not so
much the infinity of interpretive depth, which has the virtue of escaping onto-theology and remaining true to the way things are, to the
phenomena, the
coming to be and passing away of being. Rather, the problem lies in the influence
the endlessly open horizon of such thinking exerts on the way of such thought. That is, the
problem lies in what seems to be the very virtue of hermeneutic thought, namely, the
doggedness of the “What is . . .?“ question, in its inability to escape itself, to escape being and
essence.
Conceded in cross-ex of the 1AC and a rreason they don’t get any solvency is that they
look for and come to a solution, that’s in direct contradiction with their Prezze
evidence on solvency, he is pretty clear that questioning cant lead to a conclusion this
puts the aff in a double bind
Puts them in a double bind either they come to conclusion of ocean as object contra
pezze or they dont come to a conclusion of the ocean so dont solve
instrumentalization
Focusing on ontology obfuscates recognition of the truth about the world—It
encourages relativist accounts of identity, which serve the interests of the market—
This leads to environmental destruction, mass poverty and violent oppression
Graham 99 – Professor of Management
Phil Graham, Graduate School of Management , University of Queensland, Heidegger’s Hippies: A
dissenting voice on the “problem of the subject” in cyberspace, Identities in Action! 1999,
http://www.philgraham.net/HH_conf.pdf
Half the world’s people have never made a phone call. In reality, the Asian “miracle” wasn’t. In reality,
the world is
worse off now than it was thirty years ago. These are facts of life. Which brings me to another
sticky point: fact. Ethics, morality, and social justice are (separate) notions that have buckled under
the weight of a consciousness-free, totalitarian work ethic. They have disappeared
from the public agenda, except for those who wish to point out that we really can’t afford to have any, economically
speaking. That’s a fact. Symbol worship has replaced questions of reality, ethics, and beauty.
The “problem of the subject” is a dumb issue of ontology that has been settled
innumerable times throughout history, both in the East and the West, if I may make the crass distinction. Of
course, if we do not look back at history, which gives the clearest view of humanity’s progress, then we
may not realise this. The various relativisms that plague notions of reality have placed
the burden of proof on existence itself - a task that Heidegger kick-started in a (seemingly successful) effort
to wipe out public thought in 1933. In reality, 0.1 percent of the world’s people own a computer. If
this is the constituency of the global information society, it is a very small society
indeed. But computers, of course, are just a small part of the informationalism story.
Multinational companies, especially multinational media companies, are generally much more powerful
than nation-states these days –except, perhaps, in the United States where the one is almost indistinguishable
from the other. Regardless, business tells government what it should and should not do, and it gets paid good money for its
flawed and self-interested advice. In reality, by 1997, the 358 richest people in the world owned more than the poorest 2.3 billion
(Bauman, 1998). The
inequality is increasing. These are not controversial statements, which
market” continues to go about its socially and
environmentally destructive work, largely unhindered by any coherent opposition, the
remnants of which are either being financially assuaged, intellectually confused, or violently
silenced. “Harmony and understanding” are the public order of the day in the information
age. Community consciousness in the West is a function of propaganda. Identity is a
mere commodity –a “thing”. The media fix is the public consciousness in action. It is the symbol
worship, the ritual, myth, and ceremony of everyday life at the end of the second Christian millenium.
makes them all the more alarming. “The
Waiting for a new ontology is a strategy that dooms us to nuclear omnicide and makes
extinction inevitable
Santoni, Phil. Prof @ Denison, 1985 (Ronald E., Nuclear War, ed. Fox and Groarke, p. 156-7)
Zimmerman calls for
a “paradigm shift” in our thinking about ourselves, other, and the Earth. But it is not clear that
what either offers as suggestions for what we can, must, or should do in the face of a runaway arms
race are sufficient to “wind down” the arms race before it leads to omnicide . In spite of the importance of
To be sure, Fox sees the need for our undergoing “certain fundamental changes” in our “thinking, beliefs, attitudes, values” and
Fox’s analysis and reminders it is not clear that “admitting our (nuclear) fear and anxiety” to ourselves and “identifying the mechanisms that dull or mask our
emotional and other responses” represent much more than examples of basic, often-stated principles of psychotherapy. Being aware of the psychological
maneuvers that keep us numb to nuclear reality may well be the road to transcending them but it must only be a “first step” (as Fox acknowledges), during which
we Simultaneously act to eliminate nuclear threats, break our complicity with the arms race, get rid of arsenals of genocidal weaponry, and create conditions for
international goodwill, mutual trust, and creative interdependence. Similarly, in respect to Zimmerman: in spite of the challenging Heideggerian insights he brings
out regarding what motivates the arms race, many questions may be raised about his prescribed “solutions.” Given our need for a paradigm shift in our (distorted)
are we merely left “to prepare for a possible shift in our selfunderstanding? (italics mine)? Is this all we can do? Is it necessarily the case that such a shift “cannot come as a result of our own will?” –
understanding of ourselves and the rest of being,
and work – but only from “a destiny outside our control?” Does this mean we leave to God the matter of bringing about a paradigm shift? Granted our fears and
the importance of not being controlled by fears, as well as our “anthropocentric leanings,” should we be as cautious as Zimmerman suggests about out disposition
“to want to do something” or “to act decisively in the face of the current threat?” In spite of the importance of our taking on the anxiety of our finitude and our
present limitation, does it follow that “we should be willing for the worst (i.e. an all-out nuclear war) to occur”? Zimmerman wrongly, I contend, equates
“resistance” with “denial” when he says that “as long as we resist and deny the possibility of nuclear war, that possibility will persist and grow stronger.” He also
wrongly perceives “resistance” as presupposing a clinging to the “order of things that now prevails.” Resistance connotes opposing, and striving to defeat a
prevailing state of affairs that would allow or encourage the “worst to occur.” I submit, against Zimmerman, that
we should not, in any sense, be
willing for nuclear war or omnicide to occur. (This is not to suggest that we should be numb to the possibility of its occurrence.)
Despite Zimmerman’s elaborations and refinements his Heideggerian notion of “letting beings be” continues to be too
permissive in this regard. In my judgment, an individual’s decision not to act against and resist his or
her government’s preparations for nuclear holocaust is, as I have argued elsewhere, to be an early
accomplice to the most horrendous crime against life imaginable – its annihilation. The Nuremburg
tradition calls not only for a new way of thinking, a “new internationalism” in which we all become co-nurturers of the whole planet, but for resolute actions that
We must not
only “come face to face with the unthinkable in image and thought ” (Fox) but must act now - with a
“new consciousness” and conscience - to prevent the unthinkable, by cleansing the earth of nuclear weaponry.
Only when that is achieved will ultimate violence be removed as the final arbiter of our planet’s
fate.
will sever our complicity with nuclear criminality and the genocidal arms race, and work to achieve a future which we can no longer assume.
And they don’t name what sort of ontology they create, they don’t know which means
that they will never be able to solve
Ontology doesn’t come first—human existence is a prerequisite for being
Zimmerman, professor of philosophy @ Tulane, 1994 (Michael, Contesting Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and
Postmodernity, p. 109, Kel)
Unlike animals, humans can encounter as entities because humans can apprehend the “ontological difference” between being and entities. “ Being”
does
not name a superentity, a metaphysical ground, a primal source, or a divine creator. Radically other than any entity,
being names the event of presencing (Anwesen) by which an entity presents, reveals, or shows itself. Human existence constitutes the
temporal, historical, lingusitc clearing, or absencing (Abwesen) in which the being (presencing, self-manifesting) of
entities can occur. Without human existence, things could not be manifest and in this sense could not
“be” at all.
The past 10 years were awesome – disproves the aff
Kenny, 10 (Charles, author of Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding
Aug 16, 2010 and contributor to Foreign Policy, “Best. Decade. Ever.¶ The first 10
years of the 21st century were humanity's finest -- even for the world's bottom
billion,”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/16/best_decade_ever?page=full)
The past 10 years have gotten a bad rap as the "Naughty Aughties" -- and deservedly so, it seems, for a
decade that began with 9/11 and the Enron scandal and closed with the global financial crisis and the
Haiti earthquake. In between, we witnessed the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, SARS and swine
flu, not to mention vicious fighting in Sudan and Congo, Afghanistan and, oh yes, Iraq. Given that our
brains seem hard-wired to remember singular tragedy over incremental success, it's a hard sell to
convince anyone that the past 10 years are worthy of praise.¶ But these horrific events, though mortal
and economic catastrophes for many millions, don't sum up the decade as experienced by most of the
planet's 6-billion-plus people. For all its problems, the first 10 years of the 21st century were in fact
humanity's finest, a time when more people lived better, longer, more peaceful, and more prosperous
lives than ever before.¶ Consider that in 1990, roughly half the global population lived on less than $1 a
day; by 2007, the proportion had shrunk to 28 percent -- and it will be lower still by the close of 2010.
That's because, though the financial crisis briefly stalled progress on income growth, it was just a hiccup
in the decade's relentless GDP climb. Indeed, average worldwide incomes are at their highest levels
ever, at roughly $10,600 a year -- and have risen by as much as a quarter since 2000. Some 1.3 billion
people now live on more than $10 a day, suggesting the continued expansion of the global middle class.
Even better news is that growth has been faster in poor places like sub-Saharan Africa than across the
world as a whole.¶ There are still 1 billion people who go to bed each night desperately hungry, but
cereal prices are now a fraction of what they were in the 1960s and 1970s. That, alongside continued
income growth, is why the proportion of the developing world's population classified as
"undernourished" fell from 34 percent in 1970 to 17 percent in 2008, even at the height of a global spike
in food prices. Agricultural productivity, too, continues to climb: From 2000 to 2008, cereal yields
increased at nearly twice the rate of population growth in the developing world. And though famine
continues to threaten places such as Zimbabwe, hundreds of millions of people are eating more -- and
better -- each day.¶ We're also winning the global battle against infectious disease. The 2009 swine flu
has killed more than 18,000 people so far, according to the World Health Organization. But its impact
has been far less severe than the apocalyptic forecasts of a few years ago, fueled by nightmare scenarios
of drug-resistant, Airbus-hopping viruses overwhelming a hot, flat, and crowded world. The truth is that
pandemics are on the wane. Between 1999 and 2005, thanks to the spread of vaccinations, the number
of children who died annually from measles dropped 60 percent. The proportion of the world's infants
vaccinated against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus has climbed from less than half to 82
percent between 1985 and 2008.¶ There are dark spots still, not least the continuing tragedy of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic. But though the 15 countries with the highest HIV prevalence still see life
expectancies more than three years lower than their 1990 peak, at least the trend has started ticking
back up in the last decade. The overwhelming global picture is of better health: From 2000 to 2008, child
mortality dropped more than 17 percent, and the average person added another two years to his or her
life expectancy, now just one shy of the biblical standard of three score and 10.¶ We can thank improved
literacy, which has played a role in spreading vital knowledge in low-income societies, for some of these
health gains. More than four-fifths of the world's population can now read and write -- including more
than two-thirds of Africans. The proportion of the world's young people who go on to university climbed
from below one-fifth to above a quarter from 2000 to 2007 alone. And progress in education has been
particularly rapid for women, one sign of growing gender equity. Although no one would argue the
struggle is complete, the gains are striking -- the worldwide proportion of women parliamentarians, for
instance, increased from 11 percent in 1997 to 19 percent in 2009.¶ Even the wars of the last 10 years,
tragic as they have been, are minor compared with the violence and destruction of decades and
centuries past. The number of armed conflicts -- and their death toll -- has continued to fall since the
end of the Cold War. Worldwide, combat casualties fell 40 percent from 2000 to 2008. In sub-Saharan
Africa, some 46,000 people died in battle in 2000. By 2008, that number had dropped to 6,000. Military
expenditures as a percentage of global GDP are about half of their 1990 level. In Europe, so recently
divided into two armed camps, annual military budgets fell from $744 billion in 1988 to $424 billion in
2009. The statistical record doesn't go back far enough for us to know with absolute certainty whether
this was the most peaceful decade ever in terms of violent deaths per capita, but it certainly ranks as the
lowest in the last 50 years.¶ On the other hand, humanity's malignant effect on the environment has
accelerated the rate of extinction for plants and animals, which now reaches perhaps 50,000 species a
year. But even here there was some good news. We reversed our first anthropogenic global atmospheric
crisis by banning chlorofluorocarbons -- by 2015, the Antarctic ozone hole will have shrunk by nearly
400,000 square miles. Stopping climate change has been a slower process. Nonetheless, in 2008, the G-8
did commit to halving carbon emissions by 2050. And a range of technological advances -- from
hydrogen fuel cells to compact fluorescent bulbs -- suggests that a low-carbon future need not require
surrendering a high quality of life.¶ Technology has done more than improve energy efficiency. Today,
there are more than 4 billion mobile-phone subscribers, compared with only 750 million at the decade's
start. Cell phones are being used to provide financial services in the Philippines, monitor real-time
commodity futures prices in Vietnam, and teach literacy in Niger. And streaming video means that fans
can watch cricket even in benighted countries that don't broadcast it -- or upload citizen reports from
security crackdowns in Tehran.¶ Perhaps technology also helps account for the striking disconnect
between the reality of worldwide progress and the perception of global decline. We're more able than
ever to witness the tragedy of millions of our fellow humans on television or online. And, rightly so,
we're more outraged than ever that suffering continues in a world of such technological wonder and
economic plenty.¶ Nonetheless, if you had to choose a decade in history in which to be alive, the first of
the 21st century would undoubtedly be it. More people lived lives of greater freedom, security,
longevity, and wealth than ever before. And now, billions of them can tweet the good news. Bring on
the 'Teenies.
Management is the only way to truly care for the natural- the alternative is extinction
Soule 95 - Professor of Environmental Studies
Michael E., Professor and Chair of Environmental Studies, UC-Santa Cruz, REINVITING NATURE?
RESPONSES TO POSTMODERN DECONSTRUCTION, Eds: Michael E. Soule and Gary Lease, p. 159-160
Should We Actively Manage Wildlands and Wild Waters? The decision has already been made in most places. Some of the
ecological myths discussed here contain, either explicitly or implicitly, the idea that nature is selfregulating and capable of caring for itself. This notion leads to the theory of management known as
benign neglect – nature will do fine, thank you, if human beings just leave it alone. Indeed, a
century ago, a hands-off policy was the best policy. Now it is not. Given natures`s current
fragmented and stressed condition, neglect will result in an accelerating spiral of
deterioration. Once people create large gaps in forests, isolate and disturb habitats, pollute,
overexploit, and introduce species from other continents, the viability of many ecosystems and native species
is compromised, resiliency dissipates, and diversity can collapse. When artificial disturbance reaches a
certain threshold, even small changes can produce large effects, and these will be compounded by climate change. For
example, a storm that would be considered normal and beneficial may, following widespread clearcutting, cause disastrous
blow-downs, landslides, and erosion. If global warming occurs, tropical storms are predicted to have greater force than now.
Homeostasis, balance, and Gaia are dangerous models when applied at the wrong spatial
and temporal scales. Even fifty years ago, neglect might have been the best medicine, but that was a world with a lot
more big, unhumanized, connected spaces, a world with one-third the number of people, and a world largely unaffected by
chain saws, bulldozers, pesticides, and exotic, weedy species. The
today`s parlance, an
alternative to neglect is active caring – in
affirmative approach to wildlands: to maintain and restore them, to become
stewards, accepting all the domineering baggage that word carries. Until humans are able to control their numbers and their
technologies, management is the only viable alternative to massive attrition of living nature . But
management activities are variable in intensity, something that antimanagement purists ignore. In general, the greater the
disturbance and the smaller the habitat remnant, the more intense the management must be. So if we must manage, where do
we look for ethical guidance?
Trying to solve problems gives meaning to life
May 05
Todd May, Clemson Univ PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CRITICISM • 2005
vol 31 nos 5–6 • pp. 517–531 To change the world, to celebrate life Merleau-Ponty
and Foucault on the body
http://psc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/5-6/517
We seek to conceive what is wrong in the world, to grasp it in a way that offers us the possibility for
change. We know that there is much that is, to use Foucault’s word, ‘intolerable’. There is much that
binds us to social and political arrangements that are oppressive, domineering, patronizing, and
exploitative. We would like to understand why this is and how it happens, in order that we may prevent
its continuance. In short, we want our theories to be tools for changing the world, for offering it a new
face, or at least a new expression. There is struggle in this, struggle against ideas and ways of
thinking that present themselves to us as inescapable. We know this struggle from Foucault’s writings.
It is not clear that he ever wrote about anything else. But this is not the struggle I want to address here.
For there is, on the other hand, another search and another goal. They lie not so much in the
revisioning of this world as in the embrace of it. There is much to be celebrated in the lives we lead,
or in those led by others, or in the unfolding of the world as it is, a world resonant with the rhythms of
our voices and our movements. We would like to understand this, too, to grasp in thought the elusive
beauty of our world. There is, after all, no other world, except, as Nietzsche taught, for those who
would have created another one with which to denigrate our own. In short, we would like our
thought to celebrate our lives.
To change the world and to celebrate life. This, as the theologian Harvey Cox saw, is the struggle
within us.1 It is a struggle in which one cannot choose sides; or better, a struggle in which one must
choose both sides. The abandonment of one for the sake of the other can lead only to disaster or
callousness. Forsaking the celebration of life for the sake of changing the world is the path of the sad
revolutionary. In his preface to Anti-Oedipus, Foucault writes that one does not have to be sad in order to
be revolutionary. The matter is more urgent than that, however. One cannot be both sad and
revolutionary. Lacking a sense of the wondrous that is already here, among us, one who is bent upon
changing the world can only become solemn or bitter. He or she is focused only on the future; the
present is what is to be overcome. The vision of what is not but must come to be overwhelms all else, and
the point of change itself becomes lost. The history of the left in the 20th century offers numerous
examples of this, and the disaster that attends to it should be evident to all of us by now.
The alternative is surely not to shift one’s allegiance to the pure celebration of life, although there are
many who have chosen this path. It is at best blindness not to see the misery that envelops so many of
our fellow humans, to say nothing of what happens to sentient nonhuman creatures. The attempt to
jettison world-changing for an uncritical assent to the world as it is requires a self-deception that I assume
would be anathema for those of us who have studied Foucault. Indeed, it is anathema for all of us who
awaken each day to an America whose expansive boldness is matched only by an equally expansive
disregard for those we place in harm’s way.
The affirmative is utopian, they have an idea of a world in which they can magically
solve for all our issues, but just siting back and thinking about things will never
produce real change
Utopian imagery is dangerous – utopia is impossible and we will create scapegoats
and exterminate them
Stavrakakis 99 (Yannis, Lacan and the Political, Visiting Professor, Department of Government,
University of Essex, pages 99-100).
Our age is clearly an age of social fragmentation, political disenchantment and open cynicism
characterised by the decline of the political mutations of modern universalism—a universalism that, by replacing God with Reason,
reoccupied the ground of a pre-modern aspiration to fully represent and master the essence
and the totality of the real. On the political level this universalist fantasy took the form of a series of
utopian constructions of a reconciled future society. The fragmentation of our present social terrain and
cultural milieu entails the collapse of such grandiose fantasies.1 Today, talk about utopia is usually
characterised by a certain ambiguity. For some, of course, utopian constructions are still seen as
positive results of human creativity in the socio- political sphere: ‘utopia is the expression of a desire for a better way of
being’ (Levitas, 1990:8). Other, more suspicious views, such as the one expressed in Marie Berneri’s book Journey through Utopia, warn—
taking into account experiences like the Second World War—of the dangers entailed in trusting
the idea of a perfect, ordered and regimented world. For some, instead of being ‘how can we realise our utopias?’,
the crucial question has become ‘how can we prevent their final realisation?.... [How can] we return to a non-utopian society, less perfect and
more free’ (Berdiaev in Berneri, 1971:309).2 It is particularly the political experience of these last decades that led to the dislocation of utopian
sensibilities and brought to the fore a novel appreciation of human finitude, together with a growing suspicion of all grandiose political projects
and the meta-narratives traditionally associated with them (Whitebook, 1995:75). All these developments, that is to say the crisis of the
utopian imaginary, seem however to leave politics without its prime motivating force: the politics of today is a politics of aporia. In our current
political terrain, hope seems to be replaced by pessimism or even resignation. This is a result of the crisis in the dominant modality of our
political imagination (meaning utopianism in its various forms) and of our inability to resolve this crisis in a productive way.3 In this chapter, I
will try to show that Lacanian
theory provides new angles through which we can reflect on our
historical experience of utopia and reorient our political imagination beyond its suffocating
strait-jacket. Let’s start our exploration with the most elementary of questions: what is the meaning of the current crisis of utopia? And is
this crisis a development to be regretted or cherished?
In order to answer these questions it
is crucial to enumerate the conditions of possibility and the basic
characteristics of utopian thinking. First of all it seems that the need for utopian meaning arises in
periods of increased uncertainty, social instability and conflict, when the element of the
political subverts the fantasmatic stability of our political reality. Utopias are generated by the
surfacing of grave antagonisms and dislocations in the social field. As Tillich has put it ‘all utopias strive to
negate the negative...in human existence; it is the negative in that existence which makes the idea of utopia
necessary’ (Tillich in Levitas, 1990:103). Utopia then is one of the possible responses to the ever-present
negativity, to the real antagonism which is constitutive of human experience. Furthermore, from the time
of More’s Utopia (1516) it is conceived as an answer to the negativity inherent in concrete political
antagonism. What is, however, the exact nature of this response? Utopias are images of future
human communities in which these antagonisms and the dislocations fuelling them (the element of the political) will be
forever resolved, leading to a reconciled and harmonious world—it is not a coincidence that, among others, Fourier names his utopian
community ‘Harmony’ and that the name of the Owenite utopian community in the New World was ‘New Harmony’. As Marin has put it,
utopia sets in view an imaginary resolution to social contradiction; it is a simulacrum of synthesis which dissimulates
social antagonism by projecting it onto a screen representing a harmonious and immobile
equilibrium (Marin, 1984:61). This final resolution is the essence of the utopian promise.
What I will try to do in this chapter is, first of all, to demonstrate the deeply problematic nature of utopian politics. Simply put, my argument
will be that every
utopian fantasy construction needs a ‘scapegoat’ in order to constitute itself—the
Nazi utopian fantasy and the production of the ‘Jew’ is a good example, especially as pointed out in Žižek’s
analysis.4 Every utopian fantasy produces its reverse and calls for its elimination. Put another way, the
beatific side of fantasy is coupled in utopian constructions with a horrific side, a paranoid need
for a stigmatised scapegoat. The naivety—and also the danger—of utopian structures is revealed when
the realisation of this fantasy is attempted. It is then that we are brought close to the
frightening kernel of the real: stigmatisation is followed by extermination. This is not an accident. It is
inscribed in the structure of utopian constructions; it seems to be the way all fantasy
constructions work. If in almost all utopian visions, violence and antagonism are eliminated, if
utopia is based on the expulsion and repression of violence (this is its beatific side) this is only because
it owes its own creation to violence; it is sustained and fed by violence (this is its horrific side). This
repressed moment of violence resurfaces, as Marin points out, in the difference inscribed in the name
utopia itself (Marin, 1984:110). What we shall argue is that it also resurfaces in the production of the
figure of an enemy. To use a phrase enunciated by the utopianist Fourier, what is ‘driven out through the door
comes back through the window’ (is not this a ‘precursor’ of Lacan’s dictum that ‘what is foreclosed in the
symbolic reappears in the real’?—VII:131).5 The work of Norman Cohn and other historians permits the articulation of a
genealogy of this manichean, equivalential way of understanding the world, from the great witch-hunt up to modern
anti-Semitism, and Lacanian theory can provide valuable insights into any attempt to
understand the logic behind this utopian operation—here the approach to fantasy developed in Chapter 2 will further
demonstrate its potential in analysing our political experience. In fact, from the time of his unpublished seminar on The Formations of the
Unconscious, Lacan identified the utopian dream of a perfectly functioning society as a highly problematic area (seminar of 18 June 1958).
Their utopian conception is impossible and ensures violence – these conceptions of
utopia DIRECTLY influence reality
Stavrakakis 99 (Yannis, Visiting Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex, Lacan and
the Political, “The Lacanian Object” p.63-5)
Mac Arthur, Odum and Clements, like Isaac Newton,
‘had tried to make nature into a single, coherent picture where all
the pieces fitted firmly together’. All of them tried to reduce the disorderliness or the unknown qualities of
nature to a single all-encompassing metaphysical idea (Worster, 1994:400). Even conceptions of nature stressing the element
of conflict, such as the Darwinian one, sometimes feel the need to subject this non-perfect image to some discernible
goal of nature (for example the ‘constantly increasing diversity of organic types in one area’—Worster, 1994:161) which introduces a
certain harmony through the back door. What constantly emerges from this exposition is that when harmony is not present it
has to be somehow introduced in order for our reality to be coherent. It has to be introduced through a
fantasmatic social construction. 19 One should not get the impression though that this is a mere philosophical discussion. In so far
as our constructions of reality influence our behaviour—and this is what they basically do—our fixation on
harmony has direct social and political consequences. Reality construction does not take place on a superstructural level.
Reality is forced to conform to our constructions of it not only at the spiritual or the intellectual, but also at the material
level. But why does it have to be forced to conform? This is due, for instance, to the gap between our harmonious fantasmatic constructions of
nature and nature itself, between reality and the real. Our constructions of reality are so strong that nature has to conform to them and not
they to nature; reality is conceived as mastering the real. But there
is always a certain leftover,
§ Marked 21:02
§ a disturbing element destabilising our constructions of nature. This has to be stigmatised, made into
a scapegoat and exterminated. The more beatific and harmonious is a social fantasy the more this repressed
destabilising element will be excluded from its symbolisation—without, however, ever disappearing. In this regard, a vignette
from the history of nature conservation can be revealing. As is well known nature conservation was developed first in the United States; what is
not so well known is that ‘a major feature of the crusade for resource conservation was a deliberate campaign to destroy wild animals—one of
the most efficient, well-organized, and well-financed such efforts in all of man’s history’ (Worster, 1994:261). All this, although not solely
attributable to it, was part of a ‘progressive’ moralistic ideology which conceived of nature together with society as harbouring ruthless
exploiters and criminals who should be banished from the land (Worster, 1994:265). The driving force behind this enterprise was clearly a
particular ethically distinctive construction of nature articulated within the framework of a conservation ideology. According to this
construction what ‘was’ had to conform to what ‘should be’ and what ‘should be’, that is to say nature without vermin (coyotes and other wild
predators), was accepted as more natural—more harmonious—than what ‘was’: ‘These conservationists were dedicated to reorganizing the
natural economy in a way that would fulfil their own ideal vision of what nature should be like’ (Worster, 1994:266). This construction was
accepted by the Roosevelt administration in the USA (1901-9) and led to the formation of an official programme to exterminate vermin. The job
was given to a government agency, the Bureau of the Biological Survey (BBS) in the Department of Agriculture, and a ruthless war started (in
1907 alone, 1,700 wolves and 23,000 coyotes were killed in the National Parks and this policy continued and expanded for years) (Worster,
1994:263). What is this dialectic between the beatific fantasy of nature and the demonised vermin doing if not illustrating the Lacanian dialectic
between the two sides of fantasy or between fantasy and symptom? Since we will explore the first of these two Lacanian approaches to fantasy
in Chapter 4, we will concentrate here on the fantasy/symptom axis. 20 As far as the promise of filling the lack in the Other is concerned,
fantasy can be better understood in its relation to the Lacanian conception of the symptom; according to one possible reading, fantasy and
symptom are two inter-implicated terms. It is the symptom that interrupts the consistency of the field of our constructions of reality, of the
object of identification, by embodying the repressed jouissance, the destabilising part of nature excluded from its harmonious symbolisation.
The symptom here is a real kernel of enjoyment; it is the repressed jouissance that returns and does not ever ‘stop in imposing itself [on us]’
(Soler, 1991:214). If fantasy is ‘the support that gives consistency to what we call reality’ (Žižek, 1989:49) on the other hand reality is always a
symptom (Žižek, 1992). Here we are insisting on the late Lacanian conception of the symptom as sinthome. In this conception, a signifier is
married to jouissance, a signifier is instituted in the real, outside the signifying chain but at the same time internal to it. This paradoxical role of
the symptom can help us understand the paradoxical role of fantasy. Fantasy gives discourse its consistency because it opposes the symptom
(Ragland-Sullivan, 1991:16). Hence, if the symptom is an encounter with the real, with a traumatic point that resists symbolisation, and if the
discursive has to arrest the real and repress jouissance in order to produce reality, then the negation of the real within fantasy can only be
thought in terms of opposing, of stigmatising the symptom. This is then the relation between symptom and fantasy. The self-consistency of a
symbolic construction of reality depends on the harmony instituted by fantasy. This
fantasmatic harmony can only be
sustained by the neutralisation of the symptom and of the real, by a negation of the generalised lack that crosses the
field of the social. But how is this done? If social fantasy produces the self-consistency of a certain construction it can do so only by
presenting the symptom as ‘an alien, disturbing intrusion, and not as the point of eruption of the otherwise hidden truth
of the existing social order’ (Žižek, 1991a:40). The social fantasy of a harmonious social or natural order can only be
sustained if all the persisting disorders can be attributed to an alien intruder. To return to our example, the illusory
character of our harmonious construction of nature is shown in the fact that there is a part of the real which escapes its schema and assumes a
symptomatic form (vermin, etc.); in
order for this fantasy to remain coherent, this real symptom has to be
stigmatised and eliminated. It cannot be accepted as the excluded truth of nature; such a recognition would
lead to a dislocation of the fantasy in question. When, however, the dependence of fantasy on the symptom is revealed, then
the play—the relation—between the symptom and fantasy reveals itself as another mode of the play between the real and the
symbolic/imaginary nexus producing reality.
Overview
The aff gurantees the continued genocide of non human animals. They have
sanctioned the slaughter of 55 billion non-humans animals. This slaughter far o/w any
other impact in terms of sheer number but also there is an ethical responsibility to
combat the suffering of all beings who can suffer. The alt is to reject their
slaughterhouse and create a space for Agamben’s “open” where there is neither
human nor animal but something in between.
Framing issue - The sheer magnitude on non-human animal slaughter renders their impact
framing incoherent
Deckha (Associate Professor at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law in Victoria) 10
(Maneesha, It’s time to abandon the idea of human rights”, The Scavenger, dec 10
http://www.thescavenger.net/animals/its-time-to-abandon-the-idea-of-human-rights-77234-536.html)
One of the most violent places imaginable is the modern day slaughterhouse. The rate of killing inside is
swift and of unprecedented proportions. In the United States alone, around 9.5 billion animals
are killed per year. To put that in perspective, that amounts to 250 cows per hour and 266
chickens per second. This figure does not account for all slaughter of animals for food in the United
States, merely the extent of killing of land farm animals. The overwhelming number are born, raised, and
killed for consumption making the violence against farm animals the most pervasive form of
institutionalized violence against animals. These statistics also fail to capture the
suffering animals endure while in the slaughterhouse, where they are raised for slaughter. All of this
infliction on animal bodies is perceived as legitimate violence because of the nonhuman status of the
species involved. The law buttresses this cultural acceptance. Animals are the property of
corporate and human owners; theirs is a near universal status in western legal systems, which facilitates
their instrumental use and exploitation for human ends. Due to the humanist parameters of our
typical framings of violence, when we do think of violence against animals, it is only certain
forms of violence that enter the realm of legal sanction. The protection that animals receive in
western common law systems extends to protection from “cruelty”. Yet, “cruelty” only covers a fraction
of the violent activities against animals and even then is designed to protect owners’ property interests,
rather than recognize any inherent interests of animals themselves. According to Richard Bulliet,
professor of history at Columbia University, part of what characterizes postdomestic society in the United
States is the invisibility of violence against animals.
AT You have will to mastery
They say that our performative contradiction means we have a will to mastery
Cross apply why performative contradictions are good – I’ll add on and add an
interpretation here.
Interpretation: we’ll only take one in the 2NR and won’t cross apply contradictory answers.
Negation theory – we just have to prove that the plan is a bad idea.
Multiple worlds good – key to negative ground and negative flexibility and increases strategic
thinking.
It is a question of how to orient ourselves – we’ll win they do it in an anthropocentric
way that damns their project and makes exploitation of animals and the environment
inevitable.
LINK
Our link is to the thesis of the aff – the way they conceive Being – the way the aff
conceives of being is inherently anthropocentric. The category of the human becomes
the Dasein with the power to pose the ontological question while the rest of the world
becomes categorically separate and inferior as it lacks the essential ability to question.
This is a fundamentally flawed view of Being as it creates human being as separate
and above all others.
Just because they don’t read first source Heidegger doesn’t mean they get to weasel
their way out of a link – they can say that instrumentalization of nature is bad, but just
because they think its bad doesn’t mean that they solve – our evidence indicates that
as long as they maintain their ontological purview that sees humanity as defined
against the animal, instrumentalization becomes impossible as the hierarchy is only
enforced.
Here’s some lines from their aff that proves their still adhering to traditional
heideggarian antrhpocentric ways of viewing Being
Magrini, 2k12 evidence says:
Dasein denotes specifically the way of life, or Being, of the human
directed toward awakening humans to their authentic ontological potential for living as true guardians
of Being
Heidegger's philosophy
represents the movement toward thinking on the human as a true ‘guardian of
Being’
Gur-Ze’ev, 2k2
transcendence into learning to think is still an open human possibility.
truth as letting-be the otherness of beings realizes human freedom.
IMPACT
The impact is the endless destruction of non human animals and the environment as
well as human beings – anthropocentrism is the root cause of all other impacts –
Anthropocentricism is the historical and present root of all systemic impacts – being
used to justify the isolated of excluded populations: chains of slaves were based on
cattle slavery, massacres were based on the reduction of human beings to our concept
of animals, justifying killing them off like chicken in a factory farm, Nazis justified
extermination jews by casting them as less than human, and female prostitutes
rooted in the same practice and in the 1920’s were under the same consideration as
milking cows and excessive treatment of other animals
Anthropocentricism is the root cause of other structural violence and the historical
means by which oppression has be materially persisted in the status quo – means the
affirmative doesn’t go far enough to solve. They still entrench the animal divide and
continue the materially deficit
That means they can’t resolve any of their instrumentalization or managerialism
impacts –
1. They mis-identify the source of their enframing impacts and fail to address their
root cause – managerialism is rooted in a view of certain entities as being less
than human, justifying endless abuse and violence – that’s the root cause
analysis
2. They fail to resolve the fundamental question of ontology – that of the
separation between humanity and nature – as long as that initial separation
remains, no amount of openness can resolve the unending violence towards
those perceived as less than human.
The alternative is a prior ethical question
We must risk ourselves for ethical responsibility towards the animal-other – failure to
confront our complicity dooms us to life denial
Adams (feminist and animal rights advocate; Masters of Divinity from Yale ’76) 94
(Carol J., Neither man nor beast : feminism and the defense of animals, pg. 174-7)
We are estranged from animals through institutionalized violence and have accepted
inauthenticity in the name of divine authority. We have also been estranged from ways to think about
our estrangement. Reli- gious concepts of alienation, brokenness, separation ought to include our
treatment of animals. Eating animals is an existential expression of our estrangement and
alienation from the created order.
Elisabeth Shussler Fiorenza reminds us that "the basic insight of all liberation theologies, including
feminist theology, is the recognition that all theology, willingly or not, is by definition always engaged
To side with history and posit vegetarianism as unattainable is to
side against the oppressed animals; to side with the praxis of vegetarianism is to side
with the oppressed and against institutional violence.
for or against the oppressed."
We are not bound by our histories. We are free to claim an identity based on current understandings of
animal consciousness, ecological
spoilage, and health issues. No more crucifixions are necessary:
animals,
who are still being crucified, must be freed from the cross. (See Figure
11.) The suffering of
animals, our sacrificial lambs, does not bring about our redemption but furthers suffering, suffering from
the inauthenticity that institutional violence promotes. Feminist ethicist Beverly Harrison offers important
insights into this process of resisting institutional vio- lence, which can be readily connected to the eating
of animals. {I add these connections in brackets.)
Each of us must learn to extend a critical analysis of the contradictions affecting our lives in an everwidening circle, until it inclusively incor- porates those whose situations differ from our own [such as
animals]. This involves naming structures that create the social privilege we possess [to
eat animals and make them appropriate victims] as well as understanding how we have been
victims [manipulated into passiv- ity so that we believe that we need to eat dead animals]. . . . Critical
consciousness and, therefore, genuine social and spiritual transcen- dence, do not and cannot
emerge apart from our refusing complicity in destructive social forces and resisting
those structures that perpetuate life-denying conditions [including eating animals].
Perhaps our greatest challenge is to raise the consciousness of those around us to see the
institutional violence of eating animals as an ethical issue. But how does something become an ethical
issue? Sarah Bentley has described the process by which wornan-battering became an ethical concern. She does so by drawing on
Gerald Fourez's Liberation Ethics that demonstrates that "'concrete historical struggles'" are the basis for the development of "the
discipline called 'ethics.'" For something to become an ethical issue we need "'a new awareness of some oppression or conflict.'"
This is critical consciousness.
The defense of animals and its identification of the eating of animals as inhumane and exploitative is an example of this critical
consciousness. As Bentley explains, after a time of agitation by a group living with the critical consciousness of this oppression,
others besides the group with the critical consciousness will begin to question the oppression as well. The social consciousness of a
community or a culture is transformed by this agitation. "Ethical themes, therefore, are historically specific, arising from 'the
particular questions that certain groups are asking themselves.'"
Responding to the insights from the defense of animals, individuals must ask questions about the institutional violence that permits
them the personal satisfaction of eating flesh. "In effect, the [particular] questions represent 'problems raised by practices that have
to be faced.'" Farming and slaughtering practices such as caging, debeaking, liquid diets for calves, twenty-four-hour starvation
before death, transporting and kill- ing animals are all troublesome practices and they raise particular ques- tions that need to be
addressed.
Ethical statements "always evolve 'as particular ways of questioning in which people,
individually or in groups, stake their lives as they decide what they want to do and what their
solidarity is.' Thus, */ no one questions, if no practical engagement takes place, no problem exists." False
naming and other denial mechanisms I have mentioned cannot be overcome at a merely theoretical level.
Practical engagement is required. Unless we acquaint ourselves with the practice of farming and
slaughter-ing animals, we will not encounter the problems raised by these practices, such as the abuse of
animals, the environment, our health, and workers in the corpse industry. If the problem is invisible,
in a sense mirroring the physical invisibility of intensively farmed animals, then there will be ethical
invisibility.
ALT
Extend the alt to refuse the choice of the affirmative – they force us to take the side of
humans in opposition to the animal but we must occupy the open a space that rejects
this binary. We must deconstruct the relationship between the categories of animal
and human, suspending the two definitions in order to find a unknown middle ground.
This rejects the idea of the animals as the un-savable life, the slave, and creates a new
category without difference between animal and human. That’s pugliese 13
In the context of the aff, it would mean taking a different ontological position – their
understanding of Being is inherently anthropocentric – that’s all the link analysis – the
only way to foster a non-binary relationship with non-human animals is to adopt the
alternative’s ethics that would prioritize forming an ethical relationship with nonhuman animals.
They didn’t contest the alt’s solvency, means there’s only a risk that the aff is net
more anthropocentric.
PERM
The perm is severance out of their ontological position – that’s a voter for fairness and
education – justifies the aff severing any part of the 1AC to spike out of DA’s and CP’s
The alternative would mean a completely different way of understanding what it
means to be human than the 1AC has proposed.
Conceded alt solvency for anthropocentrism means that there’s no net benefit to the
permutation – there’s only a risk the affirmative upholds an instrumental view of the
non-human
Any reason they’re humanist is a reason to reject - Rejecting humanism in every instance is
crucial for the liberation of all
Wolfe (Professor of English at Rice University) 3
(Cary, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory, pg. 7-8)
It is understandable, of course, that traditionally marginalized peoples would be
skeptictical about calls by academic intellectuals to surrender the humanist model of
subjectivity, with all its privileges, at just the historical moment when they are poised to "graduate"
into it. But the larger point I stress here is that as long as this humanist and speciesist structure
of subjectivization remains intact, and as long as it is institutionally taken for granted
that it is all right to systematically exploit and kill nonhuman animals simply be- cause
of their species, then the humanist discourse of species will always be available for use
by some humans against other humans as well, to countenance violence against the
social other of whatever species-or gender, or race, or class, or sexual difference. That
point has been made graphically in texts like Carol Adams's The Sexual Politics o[Meat, which, despite
its problems, demonstrates that the humanist discourse of species not only makes possible the
systematic killing of many billions of animals a year for food, product testing, and research but
also provides a ready-made symbolic economy that overdetermines the representation
of women, by transcoding the edible bodies of animals and the sexualized bodies of
women within an overarching "logic of domination"-all compressed in what Derridas recent
work calls "carnophallogocentrism."15
**ANTHRO**
**1NC SHELL**
Their starting point for ontology presumes the human as the center of problems
Oliver ‘07(Kelly, American Philosopher, W. Alton Jones Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Women's Studies at Vanderbilt University,
“Stopping the Anthropological Machine: Agamben with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty”, Fall/Winter 2007,
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/philosophy/_people/faculty_files/_oliveragamben.pdf, C.B.)
On Agamben’s reading, Heidegger’s
comparative analysis of man and animal is another example of
the anthropological machine in action: humanity is produced by excluding animality, against
which it defines the human as precisely not-animal; in this way, it is the human who becomes the
exception, the exceptional animal who is not really an animal after all. In a sense, then, the human is both the telos and the missing link
between animal and man. Agamben concludes that both versions of the anthropological machine are
able to function only by establishing a zone of indifference at their centers, within which—
like a ‘missing link’ which is always lacking because it is already virtually present—the
articulation between human and animal, man and non-man, speaking being and living being,
must take place. Like every state of exception, this zone is, in truth, perfectly empty, and the
truly human being who should occur there is only the place of a ceaselessly updated decision
in which the caesurae and their rearticulation are always dislocated and displaced anew. (37-38)
Anthropocentrism is radically evil and must be rejected – it is connected to every form
of oppression and ensures the genocide and devaluation of people based on their
proximity to civil society.
Bell (PhD candidate in social philosophy at Binghamton) 11
(Aaron, The Dialectic of Anthropocentrism in Critical Theory and Animal Liberation, pg. 171-2)
To return, now, to the anthropocentric gaze, we find that it too looks out upon the world and, like
the radically evil individual, sees nothing but its own reflection. The rest of nature is
reduced to "the chaotic stuff of mere classification,"33 to be organized by the subject of logos
in order to attain actu- ality and meaning. Like the radically evil subject, a sort of megalomania motivates the anthropocentric subject, which understands itself as the sole point of reference in an
otherwise meaningless universe. Furthermore, as Derrida notes, the anthropocentric subject, like
the radically evil individual and its indeterminate freedom, is defined by an emptiness or lack;
and "from within the pit of that lack, an eminent lack, a quite different lack from that he assigns to the
animal, man installs or claims in a single stroke his property . . . and his 34 superiority over what is called
animal life." However, unlike the radical evil of the individual in Hegel's account, anthropocentrism is
culturally sanc- tioned, hence persists through time as an institutionally stabilized phenome- non. The
many practical limitations that finally render (individual) radical evil self-subverting have been either
defused or omitted by the formal struc- ture that anthropocentrism has evolved into over the history of
Western civi- lization. Perhaps it is the historical scale of anthropocentrism that has allowed it to thrive
while individual radical evil necessarily fails. A grandiose narrative scaled down to the life of an
individual quickly becomes problematic; when inflated to the size of a society or civilization, however, it
becomes a thing of truly awesome power, taking on the appearance of a "second nature." On the
individual level, the deep irrationality and impractical nature of radical evil's egoism come to the fore
almost immediately, whereas on a cultural level this sort of species-narrative has been able to persist
and develop in a way that obscures and leaves latent these issues. As Goebbels remarked, the bigger the
lie, the more it will be believed (a matter he knew something about).
By comparing Hegel's conception of radical evil to humanist anthropocen- trism I have tried to show the
way in which violent irrationality is implicit in the grandiose narrative and the logic of ontological
exclusion of Western an- thropocentrism. But I want to push this claim further still—to suggest that
humanist anthropocentrism is not simply analogous to Hegel's conception of radical evil, it is evil.
The logic of exclusion deployed in the ontological distinction of human and animal and
the radical evil of anthropocentrism have been the implements of unimaginable
violence. The express, intentional purpose of anthropocentrism has been not only a
"war of the species" but a war on empathy. As Derrida claims, the conflict "accelerating,
intensifying, no longer knowing where it is going, for about two centuries, at an incalculable rate
and level" 35 is "being waged .. . [by] those who violate not only animal life but. . . compassion"
itself. This radical evil is not content with the rationalized destruction of the lives of animals in infernal
industrial farms—it works to eradicate pity for all that is other. Of all the things that Adorno
meant when he said, "Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and
thinks: they're only animals," perhaps this destruction of pity was what he meant to warn against
most. The use of the same train cars designed to transport cows, the same crematorium ovens originally
designed to burn animal bodies, the same elec- trified barbed wire enclosures used to intern animals
before slaughter, makes the denial of the material similarities between the two events absurd, but the
37 affinity between the two events is much more fundamental.
The denial of the significance of
the others suffering because she is "only an animal" is inextricably linked to
indifference because she is "only" a woman, a black, a Jew, and so on. The "bare life"
of the camps is the everyday existence of every factory farmed animal in the world . But
the horror of the violence against animals is a kind of impossible genocide, a perpetual
violence:
[T]he annihilation of certain species is indeed in process, but it is occurring through the organization and
exploitation of an artificial, infernal, virtually in- terminable survival.... As if, for example, instead of
throwing people into ovens and gas chambers (lets say Nazi) doctors and geneticists had decided to
organize the overproduction and overgeneration of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals by means of
artificial insemination, so that, being continually more numerous and better fed, they could be destined
in always increasing numbers for the same hell, that of the imposition of genetic experimentation, or
extermination by gas or by fire. In the same abattoirs.
Alt is a rejection of the 1ac – a deconstruction of the biopolitical machine that
guarantees the destruction of the non-human.
Pugliese (an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney) 13
(Joseph, State Violence and the Execution of Law, pg. 95-7)
***gender modified by A A RON**
In the pumpkin patch, the hooded detainees are compelled to embody the strange
hybrid of vegetable-animal life. They fulfill, in a grotesque fashion, Martin Heidegger’s euroanthropocentric vision of the hierarchy of entities that inhabit the world: ‘man is not merely a part of
the world but is also master and servant of the world in the sense of “having” world. Man has world.’
The hierarchy of life, after this imperial ground-clearing opening statement, follows: ‘[1] the stone
(material object) is worldless; [2] the animal is poor in the world; [3] man is world-forming.’20 In the
context of Guantánamo’s ‘pumpkin patch,’ the masters of the world govern their militarized domain and
all its entities according to the biopolitical hierarchy of life. As masters of the world, they are indeed
world-forming, as they shape and constitute the lives, deaths and realities of their subjugated subjects.
In the ‘pumpkin patch,’ the detainee, that strange hybrid that has been reduced to animal-vegetable, is
both worldless (in the absolute denial through shackling, hooding, manacling and goggling of his worldforming sensorium) and, once dispatched to his cage, entirely poor in the world, as he is stripped naked
and denied the most rudimentary of things essential to a liveable existence.
Critically, the ‘solution’ to this regime of violence is not to shuffle the categories of life
up or down the biopolitical hierarchy as this merely reproduces the system while
leaving intact the governing power of the biopolitical cut and its attendant violent
effects. Reflecting on the possibility of disrupting this biopolitical regime and its hierarchies of life,
Agamben writes:
in our culture man has always been the result of a simultaneous division and articulation of the animal
and the human, in which one of the two terms of the operation was what was at stake in it. To render
inoperative the machine that governs our conception of man will therefore mean no
longer to seek new – more effective or authentic – articulations, but rather to show
the central emptiness, the hiatus that – within human – separates human and animal,
and to risk ourselves in this emptiness: the suspension of the suspension.21
Precisely because everything is always already at stake in the continued mobiliza- tion of biopolitical
caesurae, the seeking of new articulations of life that will be valorized as more
‘authentic’ will merely reproduce the machine without having eliminated its capacity
for violence as ensured by the re-articulation of the biopo- litical cut. Looking back at the
biopolitical infrastructure of the Nazi state, one can clearly see the imbrication of ecology, the regime of
animal rights, and the racio- speciesist branding of Jews as collectively exemplifying the dangers of
seeking more ‘authentic’ articulations of animals and humans that are predicated on the biopolitical
division and its capacity for inversions and recalibrations while leaving the violent order of the
biopolitical regime intact. The Nazis effectively called for a more ‘authentic’ relation to nature (‘blood
and soil’) that was buttressed by animal rights (Reich Animal Protection laws) and the rights of nature
(Reich Law on the Protection of Nature).22 Animals and nature were thereby recalibrated up the
speciesist scale at the expense of Jews. Deploying the violence of racio- speciesism, the Nazis animalized
Jews as ‘rats,’ ‘vermin’ and other low life forms, situated them at the bottom of the biopolitical
hierarchy, and then proceeded to enact the very cruelty and exterminatory violence (cattle car
transport, herding in camps replicating stockyards and the industrialized killing procedures of animal
slaughterhouses) that they had outlawed against animals. The Nazi state also exemplifies the manner in
which the regime of (animal) rights can be perfectly accommodated within the most genocidal forms of
state violence. This is so, precisely because the prior concept of human rights is always-already founded
on the human/animal biopolitical caesura and its asymmetry of power – otherwise the very categories
of ‘human’ and ‘animal’ rights would fail to achieve cultural intelligibility. The paternal distribution of
rights to non-human animals still pivots on this asymmetrical a priori. Even as it extends its seemingly
benevolent regime of rights and protections to animals, rights discourse, by disavowing this violent a
priori, merely reproduces the species war by other means. In order to short-circuit this machine,
a deconstructive move is needed, a move that refuses to participate in the mere overturning of
the binarized hierarchy, for example: animal > human, and that effectively displaces the hierarchy by
disclosing the conceptual aporias that drive it. The challenge is to proceed to inhabit the
hiatus, to run the risk of living the ‘emptiness’ of an atopical locus that is neither
animal nor human. This non-foundational locus is the space that Agamben designates
as ‘the open,’ marked by the ‘reciprocal suspension of the two terms [human/animal],
something for which we perhaps have no name and which is neither animal nor
[hu]man [and that] settles in between nature and humanity.’ Critically, the reciprocal
suspension articulates ‘the play between the two terms, their immediate constellation in a noncoincidence.’23 In naming their constellation in a non-coincidence, Agamben enunciates the possibility
of a Levinasian ethics that refuses the anthropocentric assimilation of the Other/animal/nature into the
imperialism of the Same/human. The urgent necessity of instigating the move to render inoperative this
anthropocentric regime is not incidental to the violent biopolitical operations of the state. On the
contrary, state violence is viru- lently animated by the logic of the biopolitical caesura and its
‘anthropological machine’ – which ‘produce[s] the human through the suspension and capture of the
inhuman.’24 The anthropocentrism that drives this biopolitical regime ensures that
whatever is designated as non-human-animal life continues to be branded not only as
expendable and as legitimately enslaveable but as the quintessential ‘unsavable figure
of life.’25 The aporetic force that drives this regime is exposed with perverse irony in one of the entries
of the al-Qahtani interrogation log, which documents an interrogator reading to the detainee in the
course of his torture session two quotes from the book What Makes a Terrorist and Why?: ‘The second
quote pointed out that the terrorist must dehumanize their victims and avoid thinking in terms of guilt
or innocence.’ In the context of the post-9/11 US gulags, this biopolitical regime of state
terror is what guarantees the production of captive life that can be tortured with
impunity and that, moreover, enables its categoriza- tion as unsavable. Once captive life
is thus designated, it can be liquidated without compunction – without having to think ‘in
terms of guilt or innocence.’
**LINKS**
Our link is to the thesis of the aff – the way they conceive Being is inherently
anthropocentric. The category of the human becomes the Dasein with the power to
pose the ontological question while the rest of the world becomes categorically
separate and inferior as it lacks the essential ability to question. This is a
fundamentally flawed view of Being as it creates human being as separate and above
all others.
Just because they don’t read first source Heidegger doesn’t mean they get to weasel
their way out of a link – they can say that instrumentalization of nature is bad, but just
because they think its bad doesn’t mean that they solve – our evidence indicates that
as long as they maintain their ontological purview that sees humanity as defined
against the animal, instrumentalization becomes impossible as the hierarchy is only
enforced.
Here’s some lines from their aff that proves their still adhering to traditional
heideggarian antrhpocentric ways of viewing Being
Magrini, 2k12 evidence says:
Dasein denotes specifically the way of life, or Being, of the human
directed toward awakening humans to their authentic ontological potential for living as true guardians
of Being
Heidegger's philosophy
represents the movement toward thinking on the human as a true ‘guardian of
Being’
Gur-Ze’ev, 2k2
transcendence into learning to think is still an open human possibility.
And in the 8 point font part of the card: “truth as letting-be the
otherness of beings realizes human freedom”
These examples aren’t just rhetorical artifacts, they’re symptomatic of a larger
problem in the way that the 1AC has described what it means to Be.
Their conceptualization of being and dasein poses man as the ideal subject, as
opposed to nature, which becomes only an object – this forecloses possibility of an
ethical utopia
Derrida 69 – Deep singh’s idol(Jacques, “The Ends of Man”, Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, Vol. 30, No. 1. (Sep., 1969), pp. 31-57.)
The thought of Being, the thought of the truth of Being in whose name Heidegger de-limits humanism
and metaphysics nevertheless remains a thought of man. In the question of Being as it is raised in
metaphysics. man and the name of man are not displaced. And they certainly do not disappear. There is,
rather, a sort of re-evaluation or revalorization of the essence and the dignity of man. In Heidegger's
eyes, what is threat- ened in the extension of metaphysics and technique — and we know the great
extent to which Heidegger associates the two — is the essence of man, which should here be considered
before and beyond its metaphysical determinations: "The devastation of language which is spreading
every- where rapidly is not only a result of the responsibility for esthetic and moral order which we
assume in every use we make of speech. It is caused by man's essence being put in danger (Gefahrdung
des Wesens des Menschen)" ... "It is only in this way, on the basis of Being, that the absence of native
land (die Ueberwindung der Heimatlosikeit), in which not only men but the essence of man are lost (das
Wesen des Menschen), begins to be surmounted." it is therefore this essence which must be reestablished or restored: "But if man is one day to arrive at the proximity of Being (in die Nahe des Seins),
he must first therefore learn to exist within that which has no name (im Namenlosen). He must know
how to recognize the temptation of publicity as well as the impo- tence of private existence. Before
speaking (befor er spricht) man must first let himself be appealed to, (demanded anew: wieder
Ansprechen) by Being and warned by it of the danger of having little or rarely anything to say in the face
of this demand (Anspmch). It is only then that the inestimable wealth is restored to the essence of
speech and that man is given shelter (Behausung) to live in the truth of Being. But is there not in this
demand (Anspruch) of Being on man, as in the attempt to prepare man for this appeal, an effort which
concerns man? What is the orien- tation of the "concern," if not to re-establish man in his essence (den
Menschen wieder in sein Wesen zuruckzubringen)? Can this mean other than making man (homo)
human (humanus)? humanilas remains at the heart of such thought, for humanism consists of this: to
reflect and to see that man be human and not inhuman (unmenschlich); that is, outside of his essence.
Of what, then, does man's humanity consist? It resides in his essence."18 Once the notion of essence is
removed from the cssentia-cxistentia opposition the proposition according to which "man ek-sists is not
a reply to the question as to whether man is real or not; it is a reply to the question regarding the
essence of man." The restoration of essence is also the restoration of a dignity and of a proximity: the
corresponding dignity of Being and of man, the prox- imity of Being and of man. "What still remains to
be said today and for the first time could perhaps become the impulsion (Anstoss) which would lead the
essence of man to be attentive by thought (denkcnd) to the dimension, which is omni-reigning over it, of
the truth of Being. Such an event could not, furthermore, be produced every time except for the dignity
of the being and to the benefit of this being-there which man assumes in ek-sislence (nur dem Scin zur
WUrde und dem Da-sein zugunsten geschehen, das der Mensch cksistierend aussteht) but not to the
advantage of man in order that civilization and culture shine by his action." The ontological distance
from Dasein to what it is as eksistcnce and to the Da of Sein; this distance which was given as first ontic
proximity, must be reduced by the thought of the truth of Being. Hence, the pre- dominance, in
Heidegger's discourse, of a whole mctaphorics of proximity, simple and immediate presence, associating
with the proximity of Being the values of neighborhood, shelter, house, service, guard, voice and
listening. Not only is this not insignificant rhetoric, but a whole theory of metaphor in general could
even be made explicit on the basis of this mctaphorics and of the thought of the ontico-ontological
difference. I shall cite but a few examples of this language which is so highly con- noted and so clearly
inscribed within a certain landscape. "But if man is to arrive one day at the proximity of Being (in die
Nahe des Seins), he must first of all learn to exist in that which has no name.... The proposition: The
substance of man is eksistence' says nothing other than this: The manner in which man in his own
essence (in seincn eigenen Wesen) is present to Being (Zum Sein anwest) is the ek-static instance in the
truth of Being. Humanis interpretations of man as rational animal, as 'person,' as spiritual-beingendowed-with-a-soul-and-a-body, are not held as false by this essential determination of man, nor are
they rejected by it. The sole purpose is rather that the highest humanist determinations of the essence
of man do not yet experience the dignity characteristic of man (die eigentliche Wiirde des Menschen). In
this sense, the thought expressed in Sein und Zeit is against humanism. But this opposition docs not
mean that such thought is directed in opposition to man, that it pleads for the inhuman, defends
barbarism and lowers man's dignity. If we think against humanism it is because humanism does not
value highly enough the humanitas of man .... 'Being' is not God, nor a foundation of the world. Being is
more removed than every being and yet nearer (nahcr) to man than every being, whether it be a rock,
an animal, a work of art, a machine, an angel or God. The being is that which is nearest (Das Sein ist das
NSchste). This proximity remains for man, however, that which is farthest. Man holds always, and first,
and only, to being____ It is because man, as ek-sisting, succeeds in keeping himself within this relation
within which Being determines its own destiny, by supporting it ek-statically, that is to say by assuming it
within concern, that he fails to recognize the nearest (das Nachste) and is contented by that which is
beyond the near (das Uebernachstc). He even thinks that this is the nearest. But nearer than the nearest
and at the same time farther than the farthest for usual thought is proximity itself: the truth of
Being____ The unique (das Einzige) which is aimed at by the thought attempting to express itself for the
first time in Sein und Zeit is something simple (ctwas Einfaches). Inasmuch as it is this simple, Being
remains myste- rious, simple proximity (schlicht) of a non-compelling power. This prox- imity unfolds its
essence (west) as language itself.... But man is not only a living being who, in addition to other
capacities, possesses lan- guage. Language is rather the home of Being in which man lives and thus eksists, belonging to the truth of Being, whose custody (hutend gehort) he assumes."
Heidegger maintains human exceptionalism
Thiele 1995 (Leslie Paul Thiele [Professor of Political Science @ University of Florida] Timely
Meditations, pp. 185)
Heidegger, as Zimmerman notes, also supports a nonanthropocentric approach to the earth and the world. This is absolutely true, and has
obvious ecological merit. But Heidegger
does not suggest that we replace anthropocentrism with biocentrism.
Biocentrism, intrinsic to most deep-ecological perspectives, relegates the human species to the same status as all
other organisms." Despite his fervent attack on subjectivism and humanism, Heidegger firmly maintains human
exceptionalism. He maintains this exceptionalism because of human being's unique disclosive capacities;
"it is man, open toward Being, who alone lets Being arrive as presence" (ID 31 - 32; see also BT 28, 35). Animals,
Heidegger writes, cannot engage in the "work" - philosophical, artistic, or political – in which the disclosure of Being in
thought, word, or deed occurs. And this incapacity of beasts arises for one simple reason: "they lack freedom" (PT 109). Our
capacity for disclosive freedom makes our sojourn here on earth exceptional, however brief this sojourn
is in cosmic or evolutionary terms.
Heidegger’s reintrenches metaphysical thinking through the creation of the
human/inhuman divide
Calarco 2008 (Matthew Calarco [assistant professor of philosophy @ CalState Fullerton]; Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida, pp.
52)
Let me, then, sum up the issue with Heidegger as clearly as possible. Where classical humanisms have been content to determine man's Being
in light of a presupposed determination of nature and humanity, Heidegger has boldly raised the question of the ground of these
determinations, thereby exposing humanism's complicity with dogmatic metaphysics and offering a new determination of man's essence as
eksistence. With this critique of humanism and conception of ek-sistence we are given not only the possibility for a clearer understanding of the
collapse of value theory and its attendant nihilism but also the possibility for an alternative "ethics," another thought of responsibility itself of
responsibility qua responsivity or exposure.t6 This is Heidegger's great contribution to contemporary thought and one with which I am largely
sympathetic. The problem arises, though, when Heidegger limits ek-sistence to man alone. And the issue here is not simply that
Heidegger offers no analysis or argumentation in support of this claim (although this deficiency does pose certain difficulties); nor is the
problem that this claim about ek-sistence is anything but certain. (Is anyone certain, including Heidegger himself, that ek-sistence cannot be
found beyond the human? If he is certain and the case is so obvious, what is the status of his constant denegrations and disavowals of animal
ek-sistence?) The
problem lies instead with Heidegger's uncritical reliance on a logic of opposition in
differentiating human beings from animals. Why does Heidegger repeatedly insist that man alone eksists? Could one not just as easily speak of ek-sistence without drawing single, insuperable lines
between human and animal? Of course a less anthropocentric and more nuanced discussion of ek-sistence might still eventually give
rise to certain distinctions and boundaries-but would these differences necessarily be essential, simple, oppositional, binary, and abyssal, and
would they necessarily fall along a line dividing human from animal? Ultimately, despite
his profound analysis of the limits of
metaphysical humanism, Heidegger offers nothing in the way of critique concerning the metaphysical
tradition's drawing of the oppositional line between human beings and animals; his final concern,
rather, is with the way in which this oppositional line has been determined and understood. Heidegger thus
says the "Same" as the humanist tradition-he too insists on an oppositional logic separating human from animal. The difference in
Heidegger's repetition of the Same lies in his shifting of the opposition between human and animal onto another
register. The essential difference between human and animal for Heidegger lies not merely in having
language or reason but in the ground of these capacities: ek-sistence, which is reserved for the human
alone. Thus, what we find in Heidegger's text when read from the perspective of the question of the animal is an effective challenge to
metaphysical humanism (where man is determined according to a pre-established interpretation of the Being of beings) but, at the same time,
a further sedimentation and reinforcement of the anthropocentrism of this same humanist tradition (in
which the animal's Being is determined in strict binary opposition to and against the measure of the Being of the human).
Anthropocentrism is not simply a matter of placing the human being in the center of beings (something
Heidegger is keen to avoid); it is also the desire to determine human specificity over and against those beings
who/that threaten to undermine that specificity. It is this problematic anthropocentric remnant that
Heidegger has bequeathed to contemporary thought. In the following chapters, I will track this remnant of
anthropocentrism as it gets taken up, refined, interrogated, and refigured in Levinas, Agamben, and Derrida.
**IMPACT**
The aff gurantees the continued genocide of non human animals. They have
sanctioned the slaughter of billions of non-humans animals. This slaughter far o/w any
other impact in terms of sheer number but also there is an ethical responsibility to
combat the suffering of all beings who can suffer.
Anthropocentricism is the historical and present root of all systemic impacts – being
used to justify the isolated of excluded populations: chains of slaves were based on
cattle slavery, massacres were based on the reduction of human beings to our concept
of animals, justifying killing them off like chicken in a factory farm, Nazis justified
extermination jews by casting them as less than human, and female prostitutes rooted
in the same practice and in the 1920’s were under the same consideration as milking
cows and excessive treatment of other animals
they can’t resolve any of their instrumentalization or managerialism impacts and the
alt can–
They mis-identify the source of their enframing impacts and fail to address their root
cause – managerialism is rooted in a view of certain entities as being less than human,
justifying endless abuse and violence – that’s the root cause analysis
They fail to resolve the fundamental question of ontology – that of the separation
between humanity and nature – as long as that initial separation remains, no amount
of openness can resolve the unending violence towards those perceived as less than
human.
**ALT**
Extend the alt to refuse the choice of the affirmative – they force us to take the side of
humans in opposition to the animal but we must occupy the open a space that rejects
this binary. We must deconstruct the relationship between the categories of animal
and human, suspending the two definitions in order to find a unknown middle ground.
This rejects the idea of the animals as the un-savable life, the slave, and creates a new
category without difference between animal and human. That’s pugliese 13
In the context of the aff, it would mean taking a different ontological position – their
understanding of Being is inherently anthropocentric – that’s all the link analysis – the
only way to foster a non-binary relationship with non-human animals is to adopt the
alternative’s ethics that would prioritize forming an ethical relationship with nonhuman animals. Shifting the line between human and animal isn’t enough – we need
to find a space outside of that binary, an unknown middle ground.
**PERM**
The perm is severance out of their ontological position - The alternative would mean a
completely different way of understanding what it means to be human than the 1AC
has proposed.
– that’s a voter for fairness and education – justifies the aff severing any part of the
1AC to spike out of DA’s and CP’s – makes it impossible to be neg.
They don’t get perms in a method debate
Links are all disadvantages to the perm that the alt solves.
Alt has to be absolute – humanist line-drawing is at the root of all other oppressions and
hierarchies
Pugliese (an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney) 13
(Joseph, State Violence and the Execution of Law, pg. 220-6)
In the wake of the war on terror, understood in its most expansive historical sense, what
has emerged is a terrain of horror littered with the detritus left by the violent operations of the
biopolitical state and its various operatives. The trammelled earth left in the wake of this war
discloses squealing pigs dressed in military uniforms immolated in a nuclear test blast,
horses with seared eyes running blindly, Carrie and Mary Dann’s self-listing as ‘endangered
species’ in the expro- priated and ecocidal landscape of Newe Sogobia, the child prisoner Omar Khadr
imprisoned in Guantánamo exposing his scarred body of evidence, al-Qahtani tortured to the brink of
death, El-Masri trussed and shackled with virtually all of his bodily orifices gagged and plugged, Gul
Rahman dying a slow death as he hangs from a hook in the Salt Pit, and the Afghani civilians reduced to
‘lumps’ in the incinerated field of a drone strike. In the course of writing this book, a Levinasian phrase
haunted me: ‘as if consenting to horror.’ This phrase reso- nated for me as I struggled to read the torture
testimonies and the investigative reports on civilian killings. As if consenting to horror by effacing the
magnitude of the impact of state violence on its target subjects. As if consenting to horror by normalizing
the suffering inflicted on the other as merely what happens in the scheme of things, as what is their due,
or as what is not, in the end, any of my busi- ness. If nothing else, this book stands as a refusal to consent
to the violence that the biopolitical state declares to be legitimate and to the attendant horrors it produces
under the rationalizing imprimatur of imperial law. At this historical juncture, and in the face of the
devastation that the biopolitical category of ‘the human’ has wreaked in both intra- and
inter-species terms, I want to re-invoke Agamben’s call for the ‘reciprocal suspension of the
two terms [human/animal]’ in order to begin to envisage ‘something for which we
perhaps have no name and which is neither animal nor [hu]man [and that] settles in
between nature and humanity.’3 Even as I valorize Agamben’s call, I am reflexive of the dangers it
presents for those subjects situated outside the euro-speciesist category of ‘the human.’ The momentous
declarations announcing the ‘death of the subject,’ the redundancy of ‘identity,’ the supersession of ‘race’
and so on, inevitably fail to take into account the fraught relationship that many subjects of the Global
South have with the very categories now deemed by the West to be obsolete. Agamben’s call for the
suspension of the binary terms human/animal is, once situated in the context of asymmetrical relations of
geopolitical and epistemic power, troubled by the possibility that this suspension is already a lived reality
for some and that the reality of this suspensive existence is horrific. I return, for one final time, to a
post-drone strike incinerated field in Afghanistan. In this field, the dead and the living
remain undifferentiated. In this field, there are neither humans nor animals, only lumps
that do not die but merely perish. The anguish of living and dying in this suspensive state is
eloquently articulated by the contemporary Afghan poet, Samiullah Khalid Sahak: Everything has gone
from the world, The world has become empty again. Human animal.
Humanity animality. They don’t
accept us as humans, They don’t accept us as animals either. And, as they would say, Humans have two
dimensions. Humanity and animality, We are out of both of them today.4 What is crystallized in this
poem is the brutal reality that the very ability to even occupy the category of ‘the animal,’ let
alone the category of ‘the human,’ is precluded for those subjects who are at the
frontline of the violence of the war on terror. To be situated as ‘out of both of them’ is to be
rendered utterly disposable in the biopolitical scheme of things. To be positioned on the non-foundational
ground marked by the sign ‘Neither Human, Nor Animal’ establishes the very conditions of possibility to
be liquidated with cool impunity. Having drawn attention to the unthought dangers that shadow
Agamben’s urgent call, I still want to take up the burden of his call precisely because the biopolitical
violence of the state continues to achieve its conditions of legitimacy through the animating logic of the
biopolitical caesura and its attendant laws. The preclusion of subjects from both the categories of ‘the
human’ and ‘the animal’ in order to exercise unpunishable death can only take effect through the
operations of the anthropological machine and its biopolitical hierarchies of life. In order to thwart its
selective and targeted violence, the machine needs to be rendered inoperative. In the
closing paragraphs of his landmark archaeology of the human sciences, Foucault outlines a summation of
his work that in fact borders on the possibility of a future that renders what he has just labored to
materialize obsolete and that gestures evocatively to something for which we as yet have no name:
Taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area – European culture
since the sixteenth century – one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it. It is not around
him and his secrets that knowledge prowled for so long in the darkness. In fact, among all the knowledge
of identities, differences, characters, equivalences, words – in short, in the midst of all the episodes of that
profound history of the Same – only one, that which began a century and a half ago and is now perhaps
drawing to a close, has made it possible for the figure of man to appear.5 That profound history of
the Same names the onto-epistemological violence that, as embodied in the imperial,
euro-phallogocentric figure of ‘man,’ has mobilized endless divisions in the
construction of identities and differences that would ensure the articulation of a
hierarchical racio-gendered-heterosexist-ableist-speciesist order premised on separating
the human from the animal. It also names, in a different key, the emergence of what Foucault would
later term the ‘species body’ and the consequent differentiation of this species body into racialized subspecies (the black, the slave, the native), with their assignation along hierarchies of life. Yet, in the wake
of this profound and violent history of the Same, Foucault signals the possibility of yet another mutation:
As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And perhaps one
nearing its end. If those arrangements were to disap- pear as they appeared, if some event of which we
can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility – without knowing either what its form will be or
what it promises – were to cause them to crumble . . . then one can certainly wager that man would be
erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea.6 Writing well before the apocalyptic warnings
of global warming were on the horizon, Foucault presciently locates the euro-phallogocentric figure of
‘man’ on that fragile, liminal stretch of sand on the edge of sea, its surging tides already threatening not
the erasure of the tautological figure of the Western-human- rights-bearing subject, but those human and
animal subjects of the Global South that have for so long borne the brunt of centuries of colonial
biopower: Africa, Polynesia and South Asia. The ongoing power of that imperial history of the Same is
now determining in a global manner who will live and who can be let to die. Yet, inscribed in Foucault’s
evocative meditation on the effacement of ‘man’ is an opening toward other futural possibilities ‘without
knowing either what their forms will be or what they promise.’ For me, these other possibilities are
cryptically encoded in another oracular pronouncement by Foucault in which he identifies ‘the human as
a transitory postulate.’ A postulate is, by definition, an axiom, a principle and a prerequisite. ‘The
human,’ as qualified euro-anthropocentric axiom, has functioned as the biopolitical
figure that has ordered the earth’s life forms into speciesist hierarchies, thereby
legitimating the exercise of violence, control and regularization over all those other life
forms that are ranked below it. This postulate, however, is inscribed by its own unthought
prerequisite and the torsions of a double movement. On the one hand, ‘the animal’ founds ‘the human’ as
its unthought precisely because, as a priori, its status in articulating this division is always-already given;
on the other hand, even as it supplies the conditions of possibility for this conceptual order, ‘the animal’
is relegated to the domain of the nonconceptual where it assumes the emblematic status of ‘nature’ –
outlaw locus of unthinking instinct and unmedi- ated materiality. As such, anything that is captured
within this domain is presented as open to conquest, enslavement, domestication and/or execution. As
Spillers’ work attests, a critical review of the colonial history of ‘the human’ only too quickly evidences
the positioning of non-European peoples within the vestibularity of nature in opposition to the culture. Da
Silva’s work theorizes this division as what is constructed and maintained by the arsenal of
raciality and its production of the self- determined ethical-juridical figure – ‘the human’ – and the
affectable I that stands before the horizon of death – the ‘no body.’ The operation of this dense
biopolitical matrix has enabled the violent history of preclusion of non-European
subjects from the very category of ‘the human.’ Relatedly, this biopolitical matrix also explains
why the international apparatus of ‘human rights’ fails to deliver its universalist promises as it remains
‘generally compatible with the maintenance of existing geopolitical structures of wealth and authority in
the world.’8
Adding on fails – must be a new starting point
Taylor (Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Flinders University; PhD in Sociology from Manchester Metropolitan
University) 11
(Nik, Can Sociology Contribute To The Emancipation Of Animals?, Theorizing Animals: Rethinking Humanimal
Relations, pg. 214-215)
It may be that animal rights also constitutes an "issue around which challenges for power can be made"
(Woods 1997, 321 ) but only if those involved (and that includes in this analysis its antimembers/protagonists) are actively involved in creating such a dis- course. Even if they are, this will not
be the only discourse, nor will it be produced in a vacuum. It, and others like it, will always be the
outcome of actors utilizing agency within a network, a network which we tend to see as being comprised
of humans alone. ANT forces a reconsideration of this and starts from the position that this
network is comprised of humans, animals and inanimate objects, and, crucially, that
their respective place in the network are of equal import. It is, however, important to note that
this suggests equality in terms of function/role but should not be mistaken as a moral equivalent. 'Ihis is
not unproblematic for human-animal scholars and it is something to which I turn later in the chapter.
This will lead to very different kinds of analyses than we are used to, precisely because
it starts from a fundamentally different point. One cannot hope, for example, to simply
'apply' ANT like a new layer, on top of traditional analyses. The epistemological and
ontological uniqueness of ANT demands a different starting point, different methods and an
alto- gether different emphasis—on the processes of relating rather than on those who do the
relating. But this, in essence, is the point. Until we begin to think of animals differently—not as innately
inferior and/or dependent upon humans for meaning—we cannot contribute to their emancipation. Whilst
some will object to this idea because it appears, prima facie, to relegate animals to the same 'level' as
inanimate objects, such an objection misses the point. Conceptually, ANT essentially removes the
'hierarchical' view which pervades social science thinking and thus, there is nothing intrinsically 'wrong'
with arguing that humans, animals and inanimate objects occupy equal spaces within the network. After
all, ANT is an analytical approach, not a moral one. This does not mean, however, that the outcomes of it
cannot contribute to a social theory which itself, in turn, contributes to an eradication of animal
oppression. In other words, once we begin to 'think about' animals differently, some form of
emancipation will of necessity follow. If the current uses and abuses of animals are—to
oversimplify the argument—based on the idea that they are both different to humans and
outside the social/human realm then removing such distinctions will lead to a radical
rethink of animals' place(s). How this emancipation might look is beyond the scope of the current
chapter.