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Contention One: The Shadows of Latin America
Current economic engagement with Latin America is not neutral rather an
embodiment of neoliberalism where we exploit the countries we’re working with till
no end. The self-preservation of the west is something we can only resolve through
the gift- the gift of potlatch. An ethic where we break away from that dominant
ideology and give gifts without the expectation of a benefit
Ana Margheritis and Anthony Pereira 2007 (&, Both are writers for Sage Publications Inc., “The Neoliberal Turn in
Latin America: The Cycle of Ideas and the Search for an Alternative”, pg. 32-33, NN)
The literature on structural reforms in Latin America has, however, only indirectly addressed ideational issues. There are extensive studies on the
role of technocrats or technocratic teams who, acting in tandem with strong executives in the most aggressive cases of reform in the region,
became the "transmission belts" for the diffusion and implementation of policy recommendations. They embodied the consensus and worked as
amalgamators of different interests within the new governing coalitions (Centeno and Silva, 1998). These studies clearly provide us with a
grounded explanation of the diffusion of ideas. As Hall (1989: 390) reminds us, "ideas have real power in the political world, but they do not
acquire political force independently of the constellation of institutions and interests already present there." Furthermore, technocratic cadres are
part of the rising transnational elite who are now pursuing a post-Washington Consensus as one way of solving global economic problems and
securing the legitimacy of the capitalist system (Robinson, 2005). However, a critical cadre of officials was sometimes absent or
failed to obtain the necessary political support, and in these cases the reform attempt failed (e.g., Venezuela under Carlos Andres Perez, 19891993). Also, looking at those actors and their positions in the decision-making structures does not tell us much about the ideas they
promoted. The
policies recently adopted in Latin America did not originate in the region; technocrats
imported them from developed countries. The consensus formed around the new policy
orientation emanated mainly from intellectual and policy circles in the United States and was endorsed by
international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Thus, although the insights
provided by studies on technocrats' socialization and professional networks are relevant, we need toknow more about the links and alliances
between domestic and foreign policy elites that provided the basis for a new coalition with vested interests in the reforms and the mechanisms
through which their shared views contributed to the formation of widespread consensus. In fact, those links were not a new phenomenon. The
promotion of neoliberal policies in Latin America by the United States can be seen as part of a
long-term process of expansion, rebuilding, and consolidation of U.S. hegemony. The technocrats
mentioned above resemble the U.S. consultants who promoted laissez-faire ideas across the region from 1890 to 1920 (Drake, 2000). Then and
now, economic
policy consensus served the hegemon's interest by persuading subordinate states to
accept certain rules of the game, this time reinforced by a new enforcement
mechanism (financial conditionality) and complemented by a renewed impulse toward the promotion of
democracy. Yet, according to Robinson (2005), what the current attempt entails is not another round of old-style
imperialism but rather new and more subtle forms of global capitalist domination. In his words (1999:
44), “Neoliberalism is the grease, by which global capitalism tears down all non market structures
that have in the past placed limits on, or acted as a protective layer against, the accumulation of
capital. By prying open and making accessible to transnational capital every layer of the social fabric, neoliberalism extricates
the global economy from global society, and the state defers to the market as the sole organizing
power in the economic and social sphere.” Another explanation, suggested by international relations and political economy
specialists concerned with questions of order and governance at the international level, focuses on policy convergence. The adoption of similar
practices in the realm of economic policy making first in advanced democracies and later in the developing world has been seen as a new source
of international order in a time of crisis of hegemony and disintegration of international regimes (Biersteker, 1992; Phillips and Higgott, 1999). In
other words, policy convergence could help to maintain international order in the post-cold-war scenario by establishing a patterned regularity in
domestic and foreign economic policy that would facilitate governance in the international political economy.
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The state, the micro political, and this very room are intertwined in a way that shape
both epistemology which guides policy making and the ontological structures which
organize people, trade, and capital flows. Our advocacy is necessary to challenge the
dominant power structures produced through neoliberalism.
Bruno Brosteels 2012 (literary critic, a translator, and Professor of Romance Studies[2] at Cornell University. He served until 2010 as the
General Editor of diacritics.[3] Bosteels is best known to the English-speaking world for his work on Latin American literature and culture and his
translations of the work of Alain Badiou (a well-known French philosopher and militant) “Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics,
Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror” pgs 310-313 [NN]
In a really globalized world, the truth appears to be on the side of paranoia. From all sides a vague sense of persecution
is proliferating, based on the suspicion of an enemy both global and diffuse. After a moment of decline, there comes the moment of
overcompensation in the invention of secret and clandestine plots, just
as the incredulity toward the “grand narratives”
of modernity is followed by an obsessive accumulation of what we might call postmodern “global
fictions”—that is, paranoid stories about the conjuring tricks of the other, which are reproduced ad nauseam both on the side of
ultracapitalists and inside the new antiglobalization movement. Not only is there a presupposition that the violent process of subsumption under
capital obeys the laws of an implacable logic the deeper structure of which would be as enigmatic as a nightmare after waking up. What is more,
the same mortiferous coalition of capital, war, and “freedom,” which today conflates into a
single act of humanitarian aid with the brutal use of really existing weapons of mass destruction,
also alleges that the true enemy hides in mysterious networks of terrorism, millenarian conspiracies of
fundamentalism, and innumerable sleeper cells. Nobody can deny that we live in a glorious age for conspiracy theorists. We are all
potential suspects; the enemy is systematically the others; and the only social bonds, permeated by the grayest of
affects, are those based on suspicion, terror, and war. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that Ricardo Piglia devotes a recent essay to
“Teoría del complot” (“Theory of the Complot” or “Theory of Conspiracy”), in which he interrogates the use of fictional elements on behalf of
the state apparatus, secret services, and all forms of political capture and control. What else grounds the social bond, he asks, if not the exchange
of stories, rumors and codes for one gigantic, fragmented, and multitudinous fiction? Does not the economy, as the allegedly objective base of the
total social fact, depend on such highly subjective factors as the ups and downs of consumer optimism, moral hazard, and investor confidence?
Today, we may ask in the wake of the most recent financial crisis whether rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s are anything other than
instances for transforming such subjective factors into a simulacrum of objectivity and necessity. Much earlier, as we have seen, Piglia had
attributed a related phrase to Roberto Arlt in Nombre false ( Assumed Name ): “Capitalism speculates with good sentiments.” 1 Now what does
the market speculate with if not the good or bad sentiments of consumers, mirrored on the opposite side of the fence by the secret anticipations of
insider knowledge, whether accurate or computer-simulated? Does this distinction between truth and simulacrum even hold on the stock market?
Lastly, in the realm of so-called private life, when does a love relation acquire consistency if not in the act of giving credit to another’s words?
Are not all our
relationships—political, economic, amorous—in one way or another based on the
circulation of such “social fictions,” to borrow an expression from Fernando Pessoa? relate the conspiracy logic to three
fundamental questions that have to do with literature, vanguardism, and the economy. He begins by invoking the example that brings together
conspiracy and revolution in the clandestine form of the Leninist party, to which we could add the classical example of the Blanquist organization
as well as the Cuban model of the foco , but rather quickly his attention shifts toward the conspiratorial plot as a politics of fictionalization on the
part of the state. Elements of this view can be found in Book V of Plato’s Republic , a sinister anticipation of “The Lottery of Babylon” by Jorge
Luis Borges, all the way to their practical alternatives, the confabulations of counter-power invented by figures such as Pierre Klossowski or,
closer to the author’s home, Macedonio Fernández—without a doubt the Argentine writer with the greatest influence on this part of Piglia’s
thought, well beyond that of Borges or Arlt: “The complot, then, would be a point of articulation between practices of construction of alternate
realities and a way of deciphering a certain functioning of politics.” 2 From the revolutionary prescription, still active in the late 1960s and early
1970s, we thus move to the time of terror via a paranoid vision of society in the neoliberal era of capitalism. Paranoia would appear to be the far
extreme of the irrevocable defeat of that prescription, if it is not a regression pure and simple to the anti-repressive obsession. The
state, then,
can appear as the only possible subject in a view of politics reduced to sheer management, to the
exclusion of anything that would not be the mimetic repetition of one conspiratorial plot against
another. Indeed, the answer to the total subsumption of life under capital cannot be the invocation of an impossible outside
to this logic; it can only be the production of an immanent counter-conspiracy. As Piglia suggests, “We must
construct a complot against the complot.” 3 Such would be the task of a new, artistic, sectarian,
and conspiratorial vanguard, whose project would converge with the utopian dream of a countereconomy, or an anti-economy, within and against the commodity logic of neoliberalism: “The artistic vanguard
clearly deciphers itself as an anti-liberal practice, as a conspiratorial version of politics and art, as a complot to
experiment with new forms of sociability, which infiltrates itself into the existing institutions and
tends to destroy them and to create alternate networks and forms.” 4 In this prolonged war of position, however,
the art of the vanguard always runs the risk of doing nothing more than mimic the blind knot between power and conspiracy that is said to shape
all social relations within the state.
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Status quo economic engagement operates under an inherently “restrictive”
framework where economic decisions are judged only as so far as their utility for the
self- only an affirmation of potlatch is able to liberate the world from a laissez fair
worldview founded on hegemonic notions of utility
Nodoushani 7 (Department of Management, School of Business, Universio of New Haven, 300 Orange Ave., West Haven, CT 06516, “A
postmodern theory of general economy: The contribution of georges bataille,” Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies Volume 5, Issue
2, 1999)
the morality of the marketplace has changed little in
the recent business ethics revolution has reaffirmed the hegemony of
utilitarian principles in terms of market behavior and exchange. In contrast to all that, Bataille's theory of "general
While the institution of the market still remains central to postmodern business,
contrast to the laissez-faire worldview. In fact,
economy" aims at an overturning of the morality of the marketplace as put forward by Adam Smith, thus formulating a postmodern response to the changing nature of
business in late capitalism. Following Bataille's theory of general economy, a postmodern under- standing of business requires a transition from the utilitarian
principles of business disciplines. In so doing, a recurrent theme throughout his writings is to imagine the possibility of a society based on consumption rather than
Instead of economic necessity
as the motive behind business and economic activities advocated by the laissez- juire worldview, the theory of
general economy proposes the notion of waste, expenditure or gift as the engine of economic behavior. As
Jean Baudrillard put it, this has nothing to do with passivity. rather it is an activ- ity based on an obligatory social
phenomenon. or a form of postmodern consumerism (Baudrillard, 198 1 : 76-77). Since the 19th century, throughout all industrialized societies, our busiaccumulation, as an alternative to a system of values fostered by the laissez- fiire worldview (Pollock, 1973: 50).
ness values have been based upon the fallacies of a utilitarian or luissez- ,faire mind-set which raises the following principles. First, as regards man/ woman, we are
made to accept the view that his.'her motives can be described as either "material" or "ideal" and that the incentives on which everyday life is organized necessarily
arises from the material incentives. Second, as regards society,
the utilitarian doctrine propounds that social institutions are
determined by the economic system (Polanyi, 1947a: 110). ¶ Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 07:47 27 June 2013 ¶ To maintain
the unity of these principles, two further meanings of the term "rational" are brought in so that the worldview of utilitarianism rein- forces its own system of
rationality. With regards to "ends," a utilitarian value scale was postulated as rational; and with regards to "means," the test- ing scale for efficacy was applied by
science. The first scale debunks ration- ality on the basis of the esthetic, the ethical, or the philosophical; the second made rationality the antithesis of magic, myth, or
the laissez-faire mind-set manifests a way of looking at things
through the rational pursuit of selfish-interest that works relatively well in a society which has
been dominated by economic determinism of "the invisible hand". The notion of economic determinism here refers to a
the metaphysical (Polanyi, 1977: 15). In so doing,
value- system in which human society itself has been organized along dualistic lines; everyday life being handed over to a materialistic morality whereas Sundays
being reserved for an idealistic morality (Polanyi, 1947b: 101).
This form of engagement reeks of herd mentality- it is a calculative system that
reduces individuals to utility-seeking creatures- this justifies the extermination of
entire populations who don’t meet the standard of productivity- also kills value to life
Guldmann 10 (Rony Guldmann, PhD from Michigan and Professor of Philosophy, “Between Cynicism and Idealism: Nietzsche and the
Slanderers of Human Nature,” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1651505)
Nietzsche‘s plain hostility to utilitarianism reveals that his sympathy for psychological ¶
egoism coexists with a powerful aversion to the notion that human beings are rational
calculators of self-interest who, in the spirit of homo economicus, tough-mindedly employ
social institutions, if not social interaction itself, as mediums through which to maximize
gains.‖ He ¶ famously claims that ―[m]an does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that.‖
T33 ¶ Although Nietzsche sometimes suggests that individual egoism indirectly benefits the species,16 ¶ he
does not have anything like Adam Smith‘s invisible hand in mind. Rather than being a ¶ Darwinian jungle
in which the strongest, wiliest, or most adaptable prevail, commercial society represents the
triumph of asceticism and herd instinct over self-realization and individuality. ¶ Only the
contemptible bourgeois, not man as such, is a cool, cautious calculating machine. In ¶ The
Gay Science, Nietzsche suggests that this overly pessimistic moral psychology is the ¶ hallmark of
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―common natures‖: Common natures consider all noble, magnanimous feelings inexpedient
and therefore first of all incredible. They blink when they hear of such things and seem to feel like
saying: ―Surely, there must be some advantage involved; one cannot see through everything.‖ They are
suspicious of the noble person, as if he surreptitiously sought his advantage. When they are
irresistibly persuaded of the absence of selfish intentions and gains , they see the noble person
as a kind of fool ; they despise him in his joy and laugh at his shining eyes. ―How can one
enjoy being at a disadvantage? How could one desire with one‘s eyes open to be disadvantaged? Some
disease of reason must be associated with the noble affection.‖ Thus they think and sneer, as they
sneer at the pleasure that a madman derives from his fixed idea. What distinguishes the
common type is that it never loses sight of its advantage, and that this thought of purpose and advantage
is ¶ 16 See The Gay Science, Sec. 1,4. ¶ 11 ¶ even stronger than the strongest instincts; not to allow these
instincts to lead one astray to perform inexpedient acts—that is their wisdom and pride.1
The exploitation does not end with the United States- Europe’s’ neoliberal nature also
exploits Latin American countries’ just for the benefit of the west. We present an ethic
as a model for politics that should be used by all
Andean Observer ‘08
The Andean Observer is a collection of essays on Latin America originally created for the writer’s Masters Degree at Victoria
University of Wellington. NathanK
This was an essay for a paper on Development Theory, as part of the Master of Development Studies course at Victoria University of Wellington,
semester 1 2008.¶ ¶ In 1533, Spanish conquistadores sacked the imperial Incan palace of Coricancha in Cuzco, stripping its sumptuous
ornamentation and melting down the gold. The treasure that didn't become personal booty was sent to Spain and used to pay off the Flemish and
German bankers who had underwritten the royal family's expeditions of conquest1. ¶ ¶ As viewed by the ‘dependency theorists’ who emerged
from the 1960s onwards, that was emblematic of Latin America's post-conquest history. The plunder which typified the Spanish and Portuguese
empires continued into the post-independence age, as the rapidly industrializing countries in northern Europe exploited
Latin America for its raw materials. Unequal exchange between the industrial ‘core’ and dependent ‘periphery’ was perpetuated in
the twentieth century, as multinational companies sucked profit from Latin economies. It was this ongoing
process of exploitation, argued the dependentistas, which explained the chronic underdevelopment of Latin
American countries.¶ ¶ Dependency theories provided new and penetrating analyses of Latin America's pathway to underdevelopment.
However, I will argue that the perspectives which recognised the importance of political processes within dependent countries have proved more
insightful and enduring than those which gave an exaggerated role to external domination. ¶ ¶ The foundations for dependency theories were laid
by the group of economists associated with the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) from around 1950. The ECLA economists
maintained that Latin American countries' struggles for economic progress were hindered by their structural
disadvantage as primary producers. Critiquing Ricardo's law of comparative advantage, they argued that loss of value of raw
materials relative to sophisticated manufactured goods resulted in gradually declining terms of international trade2.¶ ¶ The ECLA proposed that
Latin America embark on a path to greater self-sufficiency through import-substituting industrialisation (ISI), a process that had already begun in
some countries during the international capitalist crises of the 1930s and 1940s. However, after initial progress in countries with
large internal markets like Argentina, Mexico and Brazil, industry stagnated and was forced to rely on foreign
finance, making it easy pickings for the multinational companies that began to dominate Latin American
domestic markets. Paradoxically, the push for development through local industrialisation left Latin American countries more dependent
than ever.¶ ¶ In the face of this apparent impasse, dependency theorists moved beyond the ECLA's identification of structural inequalities between
countries, to a more radical critique of the relations between core and periphery. Most agreed that the underdevelopment of Latin
American countries had been part and parcel of the historical expansion of capitalism, and could not simply be
overcome by cultural and social ‘modernization’. However, there was significant variation in the theoretical details. Following Vernengo3, we
can recognise a ‘continuum’ of dependency theories, with the respective ends represented by Andre Gunder Frank and Fernando Henrique
Cardoso.¶ ¶ In Gunder Frank's view, the underdevelopment of the periphery was an inevitable reflection of the
development of the core. He argued that the industrial 'metropolis' extracts a surplus from its ‘satellites’ in
order to sustain its own dynamic growth. Exploitative metropole-satellite relationships are reproduced
between countries in the periphery, and even within countries (as the rich countries are to Brazil, so is Brazil to Paraguay, and the
industrial-commercial centre of Sao Paulo to the impoverished Brazilian northeast). While internal political and social structures
contribute to the process of underdevelopment, they can only be understood as a function of this external
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dominance. Given the ongoing extraction of locally-generated capital, Frank doubted whether development was possible in dependent
countries
The story of economic engagement is inseparable from the story of violent
neoliberalism that sponsored inequality, funds the military industrial complex,
renders populations disposable, ecological destruction, racism, and incarceration of
entire populations. The topic is yet another pragmatic strategy that seeks to uphold
the project of American exceptionalism
Giroux 13 (Henry Giroux, American cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best
known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory. In 2002
Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period, Doctorate from Carnegie-Mellon in 1977. He then
became professor of education at Boston University from 1977 to 1983. In 1983 he became professor of education and renowned scholar in
residence at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio where he also served as Director at the Center for Education and Cultural Studies. He moved to
Penn State Univeristy where he took up the Waterbury Chair Professorship at Penn State University from 1992 to May 2004. He also served as
the Director of the Waterbury Forum in Education and Cultural Studies. He moved to McMaster University in May 2004, where he currently
holds the Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies, “The Violence of Neoliberalism and the Attack on Higher Education,
“interviewed by Chronis Polychroniou,
://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_violence_of_neoliberalism_and_the_attack_on_higher_education_20130327)
Neoliberalism creates a political landscape that destroys the social state, social protections,
and democracy itself. As a theater of cruelty , it produces massive inequality in wealth and
income, puts political power in the hands of ruling financial elites, destroys all vestiges of
the social contract, and increasingly views those marginalized by race, class, disability and
age as redundant and disposable . It facilitates the dismantling of democracy and the rise of
the punishing state by criminalizing social problems and ruling through a crime-control
complex. It also removes economics and markets from the discourse of social obligations and social
costs. The results are all around us, ranging from ecological devastation and widespread
economic impoverishment to the increasing incarceration of large segments of the population
marginalized by race and class. The language of possessive individualism now replaces the
notion of the public good and all forms of solidarity not aligned with market values. Under
neoliberalism the social is pathologized. As public considerations and issues collapse into the
morally vacant pit of private visions and narrow self-interests, the bridges between private and public life
are dismantled, making it almost impossible to determine how private troubles are connected to broader
public issues. Long-term investments are now replaced by short-term profits while
compassion and concern for others are viewed as a weakness. Neoliberalism drains the
pubic treasury while feeding the profits of the rich and the voracious military-industrial
complex. In the end, it abolishes institutions meant to eliminate human suffering, protect
the environment, ensure the right of unions, and provide social provisions. It has no vision
of the good society or the public good and it has no mechanisms for addressing society’s
major economic, political, and social problems.
Advocacy
X and I advocate the ethic of the potlatch as a foundation for our social, ethical, and
political interactions with the world. This ethic breaks away from status quo forms of
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economic management which idolize self-preservation that allows the state apparatus to
determine which individuals are and are not valuable. In contrast, the potlatch is an act of
economic engagement that approaches the other with an ethic of generosity, requiring
nothing in return.
(Or read this, but not both )
Plan Text: The United States federal government should economically engage with Cuba,
Venezuela, and Mexico through potlatch.
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Contention Two: Giving With No Return
Potlatch is a form of gift giving which transcends traditional means of calculating value
through a rational, utilitarian perspective. The gift is an act of ostensible generosity
which is able to break down the capital driven approach to politics that perpetuates
war and inequality
Hutnyk 4 (John Hutnyk, Three single authored monographs 1996, 2000, 2004 each often reviewed and cited, and marking distinct research
areas: urban studies, music and politics, politics and theory. One co-authored book Diaspora and Hybridity 2005 and four edited book collections
1996, 1999, 2006, 2012, BA HONS, Anthropology, First, Deakin University ¶ 1994, PhD, Political Science, University of
Melbourne,http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.re
valvaatio.org%2Fwp%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fhutnyk-bad_marxism_capitalism_and_cultural_studies.pdf&ei=m9HNUYKiBrw0gH42YHwDw&usg=AFQjCNHO6lL9HfP1ty4ocOOnqLvUk4whPA&sig2=fLDK3X7BYYG6Qsbb99x1fQ)
Bataille had attended Mauss’s lectures in the 1920s and, with the already mentioned essay in La Critique Sociale, began a lifelong exploration of notions of
expenditure, reciprocity, exchange and the problematic of the gift. The
gift is about ostensible generosity, it is that which is to be given
in excess of utility, given beyond what would be a utilitarian or reasoned calculation of
value. The gift establishes social ties, reciprocity implies an ongoing relationship. In anthropology and related disciplines the well-worked
generously,
theme of the Kula finds the Trobrianders engaged (seem- ingly forever) in a series of exchanges – of shells and necklaces – which bind trading partners together in a
circle of reciprocal gift relations – these are the obligations of the gift. For Malinowski, the Kula is a serious game of both calculating exchange and of excess, debt
and luxury (but for the Trobrianders?). Kula shells and necklaces are prized objects of renown, but the social relations Kula secures are trading relations, and all
manner of other exchanges accompany the Kula trading trips (Malinowski, 1922). The gift here is also contradictory in that it is never only a gift – as many have
pointed out, including Jacques Derrida – if
a gift is to be a gift there must be no exchange, no debt to be repaid, no
reciprocity, not even the idea of a payback – there can be no gift, there is only the exchange of gift and
counter-gift (Derrida, 1991/1992: 6). It is impossible to give without return. Even charity returns something to the anonymous giver. The Kula and the potlatch
is more like a contest, as most exchanges seem to be – destructive. As Dan Ross argues in an unpublished paper, the gift is the mythical virtuous side of a calculation
that, in other respects, takes the form of the gamble, another kind of exchange, that is about chance, but unrea- sonably – as everyone knows – it doesn’t pay off, one
does not escape the calculus of credit and debt (Ross, 1992). For Derrida the unreason of the gift is that it is always a debt that is invoked – he suggests that any calculation or legislation of the gift, or, in another example, of hospitality, is impossible – hospitality must be freely given in excess of what is expected, it cannot be
calculated (Derrida, 2000: 22). For Derrida, who ascribes to Bataille a ‘Hegelianism without reserve’ (Derrida, 1967/1978: 251), what the gift gives is time – the
possibility of taking time before repayment, whether that be a return gift or an even more extravagant potlatch. For Deleuze and Guattari, who mention Bataille only in
passing, the gift inscribes, it writes, it records. In the context of a discussion of ethnology and bourgeois colonial economy they write: The essential thing seemed to us
to be, not exchange and circulation, which closely depend on the requirements of inscription, but inscription itself, with its imprint of fire, its alphabet inscribed in
bodies, and on blocks of debts. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1972/1984: 188) ¶ For Bataille, the
gift and potlatch are a part of a calculus
which suggests the necessary expenditure of an organism that, generally, receives more energy
‘than is necessary to maintain life’ and ‘excess energy (wealth) can be used for growth of a system . . . if the system can no
longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit , it must be spent . . .
gloriously or catastrophically’ (Bataille, 1949/1988: 21). It is important again to note how Bataille distin- guishes between the general and
restricted, with the bourgeois manner of giving the most limited: ‘Where accumulation is concerned, the one who gives loses what they have given, but in the
traditional world their dignity grew in proportion to their material loss’ (Bataille, 1991: 346). This may hint at romanticism, derived in part from that reading of Frazer
and Mauss, and forgetting colonial disruptions. But would it change the reception of Bataille’s work if it were understood that his notion of the ‘ultimate’ neces- sity
to consume without return (Bataille, 1949/1988: 22) is distinguished from individual examples of destruction – coffee overboard etc. – in a way that can in fact be
reconciled with the contradictions of the capitalist circuit of production in Marx? Although he explicitly disregards the significance of individual examples – accidents
– in favour of the ‘totality of productive wealth on the surface of the globe’ (Bataille, 1949/1988: 22), he writes of ‘the final dissipation’. It is here that the trick of the
In a restricted economy, destruction serves primarily
to reaffirm the position in the hierarchy of the one who destroys most. Reciprocity of course is an ideal in the notion of
gift is most explicitly revealed in a political way, as part of a programme.
exchange as it must imply a notion of equivalence in value. That value equivalence is a matter of calculation is one of the key tricks of commerce. Hierarchy and
exploitation do not calcu- late this ideal except to subvert equivalence as the deceit of the market where money is used to stand for a general equivalent and
The desire to solve
this paradox of reciprocity which is never equal is perhaps the same sentiment that leads people
to project human qualities (good, evil) in idealized form on to a deity (cf. Feuerbach, 1841/1972). Bataille hints at
the various inter- ests come to trade do not do so from equal positions. Is it this idealism Bataille wished to fight?
something similar in his wartime introspection about sacrifice: The forces which together work at destroying us find in us such happy – and at times such violent –
complicities that we cannot just simply turn away from them as interest would lead us to. We are led to contain the fire within us . . . without going to the point of
delivering ourselves [Bataille had mentioned the Hindu who throws himself under a festival cart], we can deliver, of ourselves, a part: we sacrifice a good which
belongs to ourselves or – that which is linked to us by so many bonds, from which we distinguish ourselves so poorly – our fellow being. (Bataille, 1943/1988: 96)¶
In a system obsessed with things, the absolute and sacrificial ideal is curi- ously not things, but profit. Having
banished God and insisted on material- ism, capital still reifies a deity of abstract and awful power. Where what Bataille calls the
moral result of Marxism is to be achieved through subject- ing things to a regime of governance that enslaves things and not people, instead capital has developed into
the unrestrained liberation of things from any rigorous control, while humanity remains enslaved (Bataille, 1949/1988: 135–6). Against
complicity, against the restricted economy, Bataille
sacrifice and
wants to release a self-consciousness that would not be deceived
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into false transactions. He denounces the ignorance of the gener- ally ‘catastrophic destructions’ (Bataille, 1949/1988: 24) just as he condemns
What is needed is to face up to the fact that ‘the
choice is limited to how the wealth is squandered’ (Bataille, 1949/1988: 23). Bataille recognized that the compulsion
to produce an excess is not inevitable – but equilibrium is also not compatible with capitalism, as Marx’s analysis of the tendency of the rate
‘shameless attempts at evasion such as charitable pity’ (Bataille, 1997: 129).
of profit to fall had shown. There are, however, the possibilities of choice of expenditures: destructive war, or expansion of services, frivolous dissipations (like
brothels?) or ‘the rational extension of a difficult industrial growth’ (Bataille, 1949/1988: 25). In an introductory essay Bataille was not going to dwell on the
undeniably interesting possi- bilities and specific instances, he was concerned instead with exposing general parameters and working for an escape from the poverty of
accumu- lation. It was ‘Bataille who showed that the glorious and transcendent sover- eignty of the sun-king present[ed] to all [that] their common sovereignty had
only ever taken place held and enslaved within the installation of bour- geois power, of market economy, of the modern state’ (Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, 1997:
131). The trick of restricted economic systems is the conflicted hypocrisy of claims to equality mouthed by those whose privilege to speak rests upon an inequality
The structure of fascism, ruling class stupid- ity, illegitimacy, bourgeois delusion and
lack of courage is clear in the self- centred opportunism manifest in the failure to face up to the
ongoing crimes of that same privilege8 – bureaucrats claiming unrestrained universal forces as excuse for their repressive rules and showing
no restraint in claiming specific rights for when they break these rules them- selves. The advent of war is a curse of a sacrificial
they will not admit.
expenditure out of control, just as is the exploitation of slavery, including wage-slavery. The curse
of restricted economy can only be lifted by a consciousness of the process, and in this light it seems disappointing that
all that can be proposed instead of war is a general raising of the living standard (Bataille, 1949/1988: 40) – but after all, this would be something, wouldn’t it? No
doubt what is raised must also be education, and autonomy – sovereignty, the freedom to squander for all, not just the rich – but something in the formula of the gift –
its duplicity as debt, returns to haunt. Bataille had also argued that social security and wage claims increase the share of wealth that is allocated to non-productive
labour and this would apply to efforts – after the Second World War, the Marshall Plan – to raise the general standard. There would be less for the bosses’ luxuries,
but also less to devote to the development of the means of production. ‘The share allotted to present satisfaction [bosses’ luxury and welfare] increases at the expense
of the share allotted to the concern for an improving future’ (Bataille, 1949/1988: 154). Wage claims are part of the negotiation of a system which needs be abolished,
not improved. Shopping (for a better deal) is indeed a form of civil war.
The topic represents a mode of economics obsessed with utility, that only gives only in
order to get something in return or to gain power. The potlatch is the only way to
solve
David L. R Kosalka 1999 (“Georges Bataille and the Notion of Gift” [NN]
It is within this general economic context, then, that Bataille begins an explication of the gift which first of all fundamentally related to a type of
sacrifice. To understand Bataille's notion of the gift, however, it is first necessary to see his conception of sacrifice and then how that relates to
the gift. In
a rational economy goods and production are either designated for meeting the general life needs of the populace or for the
All production then is designed with the future in mind, as part of a process of growth
and expansion in which all objects are pre-ordained and understood as means towards the end, of
process of growth.
the future telos of the economy. "The subject leaves its own domain and subordinates itself to the objects of the real order as soon as it becomes concerned for the
In the ritual destruction of material in the form of sacrifice, however, these goods are removed from that process, from
are no longer seen as objects directed towards the use of the overall cultural system, but are seen
in and of themselves, free of utilitarian domination. ¶ Symbolically, along with the object itself, the one who offers the sacrifice is
future."
that orientation towards a future telos. They
seen as removed from the demands of utility and consequently as possibly a sovereign subject. Those who offer the sacrifice are not completely
dominated by the needs of the system or the process, but, rather, can exist free of their constraints in the moment of the sacrifice. Bataille
examines these notions in light of Aztec sacrifice. While to modern sensibilities the immense level of human sacrifice in that culture seems an
abomination, it represents the nature of sacrifice. In the words of Bataille, "The victim is surplus taken from the mass of useful wealth. And he
can only be withdrawn from it in order to be consumed profitlessly, and therefore utterly destroyed. Once chosen, he is the accursed share,
destined for violent consumption. But the curse tears him away from the order of things; it gives him a recognizable figure, which now radiates
intimacy, anguish, the profundity of living beings."¶ Those captured in war were sacrificed in place of the individuals of a particular culture. An
immense symbolic tie was created between the victim of the sacrifice and those for whom the victim was a substitute. An immense level of
intimacy is infused in the relationship with the victim. The victim is treated like a son, a daughter, or even as a king. By killing the associated
victim, that victim is removed from the realm of the object. He can no longer be used for anything, and becomes simply itself, a sovereign subject
in its absolute uselessness, and by association so is the one who offers the sacrifice. They enter the realm of the sacred, of the free subject who is
not subordinated to the demands of useful production. "The world of the subject is the night: that changeable, infinitely suspect night which, in
the sleep of reason, produces monsters. I submit that madness itself gives a rarefied idea of the free 'subject,' unsubordinated to the 'real' order and
occupied only with the present."¶ The notion of the gift in Bataille is closely related to that of sacrifice. Bataille basis his comments on the nature
of the gift on the essay by Marcel Mauss, first published as "Essai sur le Don" in 1950. Marcel Mauss (1872 - 1950) was the literal heir of Emile
Durkheim and deeply involved in Durkheim's project of sociology. While substantially a work of objective anthropology, the impact of the work,
as Mauss makes clear in comments in his
conclusion, was to be a critique, indeed an alternative vision, to
utilitarian visions of capitalism. As Mary Douglas has argued in her foreword to the translation of the essay, "The Essay on the
Gift was part of an organized onslaught on contemporary political theory, a plank in the platform against utilitarianism." ¶ At the heart of the
essay lies a critique of anthropologists' reading of gift-giving as a form of rational economic
exchange. He berated anthropologists for imposing on other cultures preconceived models concerning the necessity and universality of
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economic exchange. Considering the analyses of gift exchange given by many of his contemporaries, Mauss argued that "current economic and
judicial history is largely mistaken in this matter. Imbued with modern ideas, it forms a priori ideas of development and follows a so-called
necessary logic." Nevertheless, he
found different aims than utilitarian economics had in its considerations
of different systems of gift-giving. "Thus one section of humanity, comparatively rich, hardworking, and creating considerable
surpluses, has known how to, and still does know how to, exchange things of great value, under different forms and for reasons different from
those with which we are familiar."¶ Mauss asserted that in the ability to give a gift, as found in the supposedly "archaic" societies he was
analyzing, there is a certain spiritual force that is associated with the gift. For
every gift, there is a necessity of countergift necessary to remove or return the inherent power of the gift. It was the only way of lifting a
certain hold that the giver had on the recipient through the gift. Gift-giving, according to Mauss, is fundamental
glue in these societies for the maintenance of social structures. As Mary Douglas again argues, "the theory of the gift is a theory of social
solidarity." Through
gift giving social bonds are created, individuals are joined, sharing with each
other the back and forth of the social power that is associated with the gifts exchanged. It places
the individual into a structure of "total services." In typical Durkheimian fashion, he emphasizes the collaborative,
consensual social structure of an economic system as opposed to the rational calculation of individuals.¶ In other societies, however, Mauss
related that this notion of gift-exchange rises to another level where gift-exchange takes on an essentially competitive aspect. The textbook case
of this type of this kind of gift is found in the "potlatch" practiced among the tribes of the American Northwest. The potlatch takes the gift
completely beyond the regime of utilitarian economic exchange, taking on an essentially destructive nature. During a potlatch, there is an orgy of
gift-giving by the person holding the event. The emphasis is on a display of luxury and excess. However, one good potlatch deserves another.
Being the recipient of a potlatch demands that one reciprocates and holds an even more lavish potlatch. "Everything is based upon the principles
of antagonism and rivalry. The political status¶ of individuals in the brotherhoods and clans, ranks of all kinds, are gained in a 'war of property'."
The givers of the potlatch are urged to show a disdain for economic wealth to the point of destroying gifts in order that they will not be returned.
Precious coppers are broken and thrown in to the rivers. In extreme cases, entire villages are left destitute by the ravages of potlatch. In the
destruction of wealth, then, the individual gains status, the recognition of superiority by their contemporaries. ¶ Needless to say, the publication of
Mauss's essay inspired a lot of interest. As Bataille stated it, "since the publication of Marcel Mauss's The Gift, the institution of potlatch has been
the object of sometime dubious interest and curiosity." Bataille
found, in the description of potlatch, a fundamental
challenge to the necessity and role of rational capitalist economics. He saw in the potlatch the hint of his
conception of the need to annihilate excess, rather than the gathering and hoarding necessitated by conventional
analyses based on the assumption of scarcity. He argued that "classical economy imagined the first exchanges in the form of barter. Why would it
have thought that in the beginning a mode of acquisition such as exchange had not answered the need to acquire, but rather the contrary need to
lose or squander? The classical conception is now questionable in a sense." As one commentator on Bataille described, "The
entire
classical conceptual structure excludes an explanation for all human activities (such as extreme or violent
pleasure) that are motivated not by a desire to gain, but rather by a desire to lose."¶ Thus, in this process he
could conceive of the gift as having a central role. It is one of the primary means of expending excess. As Bataille argues in considering the
potlatch as well as the activities of Aztec "merchants",¶ We need to give away, lose or destroy. But the gift would be senseless (and so we would
never decide to give) if it did not take on the meaning of an acquisition. Hence giving must become acquiring of power. Gift-giving has the virtue
of surpassing of the subject who gives, but in exchange for the object given, the subject appropriates the surpassing: He regards his virtue, that
which he had the capacity for, as an asset, as a power that he now posses. He enriches himself with a contempt for riches, and what he proves to
be miserly of is in fact his generosity. ¶ Thus by making a display of his disregard for his excess he obtains in the eye of the other who observes
(and thus the necessity for giving over private destruction) a status, a power of expenditure and destruction. It is a means of killing two birds with
one stone. Not only is the necessary annihilation accomplished, but also there is acquired the respect and regard of the other members of the
society. Thus, paradoxically, by giving one is in fact gaining in presteige and societal power and status. ¶ This is tied to his conception of sacrifice
in that the gift is an escape from the circle of necessity. "An article of exchange, in these practices, was not a thing; it was not reduced to the
inertia, the lifelessness of the profane world. The gift that one made of it was a sign of glory, and the object itself had the radiance of glory. By
giving one exhibited one's wealth and one's good fortune (one's power)." Thus by
association the giver escapes the
domination of objectivity through an assertion of the ability to engage in such expenditure. As
the object is taken from the realm of utility to the sacred uselessness of sacrifice, so too is the
subjecthood, a basic freedom to express an individual will, of the giver affirmed through his
ability to expend beyond the demands of utility.Bataille applies the schema of the gift to many parts of human life. The
second major portion of The Accursed Share attempts a history of eroticism. There he argues that "it should come as no surprise to us that the
principle of the gift, which propels the movement of general activity, is at the basis of sexual activity." It is an expression of the kind of sacred
intimacy that is engendered from the escape from, and, indeed, the blatant disregard for rational necessity. ¶ Like Mauss, Bataille saw the modern
world having forgotten, to be lacking the type of intimacy that the gift allows. Bataille asserted a kind of greatness in the useless expression of
wealth, which laid the foundation for great cultural and individual expression. The
capitalist demand for the utilitarian
deployment of resources does not allow for the kind of sacred affirmation of subjecthood that the
excess of the gift required, a basic subjecthood that allowed for an intimacy that was antithetical
to appropriation of the individual as an object of production.
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The history of Latin America is riddled with narratives of tribal communities engaging
in potlatch- the practice of gift-giving without the expectation of the act’s
reciprocation. From the earliest of humans to Mexican merchants the exchange of
gifts has been a discourse which has generated societal forms of tangible and symbolic
meaning. We have since departed from this form of discourse in favor of a restricted
economy which prioritizes self-preservation of the other.
Bataille 49 (Georges Bataille, French intellectual and literary figure working in literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology
and history of art. Eroticism, sovereignty, and transgression are at the core of his writings, “The Rivalry of Potlatch”)
The Spanish chroniclers left precise information concerning the _mer- chants' of Mexico and the customs they followed, customs that must have
astonished the Spaniards. These merchants' led expeditions to unsafe territories. They often had to fight and they often prepared the way for a
war, which explains the honour that attached to their profession. But the risk they assumed could not have been enough to make them the equals
Europeans derived
from the prin- ciple of commerce based solely on interest. But the great _merchants' of Mexico did
not exactly follow the rule of profit; their trading was conducted without bargaining and it
maintained the glorious character of the trader. The Aztec _merchant' did not sell; he practised the exchange: he received
of the nobles. In the eyes of the Spaniards, business was demeaning, even if it led to adventure. The judgement of the
riches as a from the _chief of men' (from the sovereign, whom the Spanish called the king); he made a present of these riches to the lords of the
lands he visited. _In receiving these gifts, the great lords of that province hastened to give other presents in return . . . so that they might be
offered to the king . . .' The sovereign gave cloaks, petticoats and precious blouses. The _merchant' received as a gift for himself richly coloured
feathers of¶ various shapes, cut stones of aH sorts, shells, fans, shell paddles for stirring cocoa, wild-animal skins worked and ornamented with
the objects the _merchants' brought back from their travels, they did not consider
them to be mere commodities. On their return, they did not have them carried into their house in the daylight. _They waited for
designs.3 As for
nightfaH and for a favourable time. One of the days called ce caih (a house) was regarded as propitious because they held that the objects of
which they were the bearers, entering the house on that day, would enter as sacred things and, as such, would persevere there.'4 ¶ An
article
of exchange, in these practices, was not a thing, it was not reduced to the inertia, the lifelessness
of the profane world. The that one made of it was a sign of glory, and the object itself had the
radiance of glory. By giving, one exhibited one's wealth and one's good fortune (one's power). fhe _merchant' was the man-who-gives,
so much so that his first concern on returning from an expedition was with offering a banquet to which he invited his confreres, who went home
laden with presents.¶ This was merely a feast celebrating a return. But if
_some merchant became rich and accounted
himself rich, he would give a festival or a banquet for all the high-class merchants and for the
lords, because it would have been considered base to die without having made some splendid
expenditure that might add lustre to his person by displaying the favour of the gods who had given him everything'.5 The festival began
with the ingestion of an intoxicant giving visions which the guests would describe to each other once the narcosis had dissipated. For two days
the master of the house would distribute food, drinks, reeds for smoking and flowers. ¶ More rarely, a _merchant' would give a banquet during a
festival called panquetza!izdi. fhis was a type of sacred and rumens ceremony. The _merchant' who celebrated it sacrificed slaves for the
occasion. He had to invite people from all around and assemble presents worth a fortune, including cloaks _numbering eight hundred thousand',
waistbands _of which there were gathered four hundred of the richest and a great many others of ordinary quality'.6 The most substantial gifts
went to the captains and dignitaries; the men of lesser rank received less. The people danced countless am`tos, into which entered splendidly
dressed slaves, wearing necklaces, Bower garlands and rondaches decorated with flowers. They danced, taking turns smoking and smelling their
fragrant reeds. Then they were placed on a platform, _so that the guests might see them better, and they were handed plates of food and drinks
and attended to very gra- ciously'. When
the time came for the sacrifice, the _merchant' who gave the
festival dressed up like one of the slaves in order to go with them to the temple where the priests
were waiting. These victims, armed for combat, had to defend themselves against the warriors who attacked them as they passed by. If one
of the aggressors captured a slave, the _merchant' had to pay him the price of the salve. The sovereign himself attended the solemn sacrifice,
which was foHowed by the shared consumption of the flesh in the house of the _merchant.'7 ¶ These
particular, are far removed from present commercial practices.
customs, the exchange in
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2ac Fw (if not plan text)
C/i- the affirmative must be in the direction of the topic. They have to beat the content of
the aff to win a violation because if we win our aff then the 1AC is topical.
Our aff is at the heart of the topic-to speak of economic engagement is to speak of
neoliberalism- status quo attempts at engagement only reify systems of hierarchy which
render entire populations expendable in the name of productivity- gift giving can be found
in the narratives of hundreds of Latin American individuals and has shaped economic
engagement in Latin America in a unique way- that’s the bataille 49 evidence- our
affirmation of potlatch is a form of economic engagement which is able to challenge status
quo conceptions of engagement. That means they have to beat the content of the aff to win
that we should ignore the flawed knowledge this resolution brings about. Our aff is a prerequisite for better forms of education and effective politics
Our Offense:
First is Exclusion da- the act of presenting an interpretation of how debate ought to be and
exclude our discussion is the exact form of selfish politics that neoliberalism creates during
the status quo- that’s the Margheritis and Pereira 7 evidence- guldmann evidence says this
kills value to life and makes certain populations expendable
Second is decision making da- Their framework will not increase education or usher in
some perfect roleplaying arena. The only thing guaranteed by their framework is a steady
depolitization of the debate sphere and the removal of all productive criticism within
debate- turns their education arguments
Van Owen 6 (Van Oenen, professor of ethics, legal philosophy and social philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of Erasmus University, Rotterdam
“Gijs ‘A Machine That Would Go of Itself: Interpassivity and Its Impact on Political Life)
Slavoj Zizek once explained the difference between Verstand and Vernunft in Hegel by saying that Vernunft is the state in which we realize that
Verstand suffices. Vernunft is Verstand minus the illusion that there is something beyond it. 17 Interactivity and interpassivity, the third and the
fourth mode of the political process we are studying, are related to each other in much the same way.
Interpassivity constitutes a
radicalization of interactivity, in the following sense: it expresses the view, or rather the
habitus, that interactivity in fact suffices. The loss of the product of politics, or rather the
loss of the sense that this product is what matters primarily, characterizes the condition of
political interpassivity. The main interest, or perhaps we should say obsession, lies with the
process, not with its eventual product. ¶ ¶ We may also recall here Jean Baudrillard's account of 'the end of production'.
Baudrillard argues that 'there is no longer any production' and, consequently, we cannot be liberated, or regain authenticity, through revolution
(that is to say, through the socialization of the means of production). 18 Especially relevant here is his analysis of the relation of 'the sign' to reality,
represented as a four-stage sequence.19 From being a 'reflection of a basic reality', the sign evolves into a 'mask' of this reality, and later into a
mask of the absence of a basic reality; finally, the sign no longer bears a relation to any reality whatsoever. Baudrillard's four stages may well be
viewed as the (postmodernist) philosophical equivalent of the stages of politics I have distinguished.¶ ¶ Of course, the difference between the
philosophical and the political case I discuss is that in the latter, the 'detachment'
from the end-product is not
necessarily reflective – either at the individual or at the collective level. We do not consciously realize that we have lost our interest
to move beyond the state of policy-making, preparation and planning. But neither does it seem correct to say that we believe, even more
resolutely than before, that we are strongly interested in politics. Somehow we
suspect that our continuous 'access' to
politics does not provide us with what we want or need, but we feel powerless to change our
condition, or even uninterested in doing so.¶ ¶ In other words, we feel ambiguous. On the one hand, we indulge
in unwarranted optimism concerning the possible benefits of a hyper-interactive political
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process. The political system tries to enhance its legitimacy by promising to be in evercloser contact with its citizens. The fine-tuning of the political process by interactive means
promises an unprecedented capacity to accommodate the plural and diverging demands of
individuals and groups. The unrealistic nature of these promises is of course itself a source
of disappointment. In an attempt to win back our flagging interest, politics redoubles its
promises, only to fail again to deliver on them, etc. But this sustained failure does not yet sufficiently explain the
sense of discontentment with politics that constitutes the other pole of our ambiguous state. Politics fails us, or we fail politics,
in a deeper sense. ¶ ¶ This deeper sense, of course, is that we do not really care anymore
about what politics actually delivers. We do not 'really' believe that politics may deliver
everything it promises, but neither do we 'really' feel interested in whatever it is that
politics does produce. Our 'monitoring' of the product of politics constitutes the obverse of
politics' monitoring of our behavior. Like people who converse in a room while a television
set is turned on although noone is watching, we witness everything that politics delivers,
without really noticing. ¶ ¶ Apparently, both television ignorers and citizens assume that somehow someone
else does, or might, take notice. In that sense, we have here a case of 'the illusions of others' as
analyzed by Robert Pfaller: an illusion owned or claimed by noone, yet shared by everyone. Certainly we do not 'confess' ourselves to be political
beings, in Aristotle's sense, nowadays. Citizenship in the traditional sense of being committed to the formulation and realization of collective
goals increasingly constitutes a threatened spieces. Nevertheless, as noticed, we do feel an intense connection to the political process and we do
expect it to 'deliver'. We do not know why we still believe in politics, yet we do. ¶ ¶ We
do, because in some sense we
realize that we would be lost without it. On the other hand, we strongly feel that we have
'outgrown' it. Chronic interactivity has not brought us closer to politics. To the contrary, it has fostered an
instrumental attitude. Rather than being engaged in politics, nowadays we perceive it as an
object for use. This attitude has in fact been encouraged by currently fashionable approaches to (the art of) government, particularly that
of outsourcing.20 Just as in the industrial sphere, in government many activities and branches have been outsourced, in the eighties and nineties. It
was claimed that such activities could just as well, or better, be performed by external organizations. Regardless of the merit of these claims, the
trend of outsourcement has damaged government by undermining its credibility and authority. Citizens concluded that perhaps there is nothing
that government does especially well, compared to market actors. And worse, there is nothing that essentially needs to be done by the state, and
by the state alone. It seems that, under the right conditions, any government function could be outsourced. Thus
there is nothing
intrinsically political worth committing to. And in reverse, nothing worth committing to is
intrinsically political.¶ ¶ Although it is perhaps true that almost all government activities can be outsourced, even up to warfare, the
attempt to undertake such a large-scale outsourcing undermines the authority of all government. In fact here we have the 'negative' of the claim
that government can actually make good on all its promises: either in the sense of itself being able to deliver every 'product' that citizens
interactively put on the agenda, or in the sense of being able to perfectly monitor and control all the outsourced activities that now take care of the
actual delivery. Both claims entail that government can, and should, be made fully 'transparent'. Every
process, every function
needs to be assessed, evaluated, and accounted for. ¶ ¶ Yet, somehow we realize that this
cannot really be true. We need both less and more from government. We need less, because
'transparency' is a fantasy, an empty place that can (and should) never be filled. And we need
more, something that is hard to grasp yet essential for the authority of government. We
need to believe in government, and this belief is exactly what gets lost when we outsource
politics, or ask for transparency. Government – or politics – is necessarily more than the sum of its parts. Government is also
the shared illusion of government, so to speak – the mutual suspension of disbelief in its
possibility.¶ ¶ Thus the shared illusion of government exists, but it is no longer claimed by
anyone. Moreover, this uncomfortable sense of politics is associated not with the products
or results of politics, but primarily with the political process. Thus this process increasingly
acquires the character of a fetish. We are very much attached to it, although we do not really
care about its possible real effects. Or again, the process has itself become the product.
Third is Knowledge DA- Knowledge beyond the self is a self-effacement and destroys meaning
Georges Bataille 1945 (“On Nietzsche”, pg. 173-176
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"'Life." I said. "is
bound to be lost in death, as a river loses itself in the sea, the known in the
unknown" (Inner Experiena). And death is the end life easily reaches (as water does sea level). So why would I wish to
tum my desire to be persuasive into a worry? I dissolve into myself like the sea-and I know the
roaring waters of the torrent head straight at me! Whatever a judicious understanding sometimes seems to rude, an
inunense folly connected with it (understanding is only an infinitesimal part of that folly), doesn't hesitate to give back. The certainty of
incoherence in reading, the inevitable crumbling of the soundest constructions, is the deep truth of books. Since
appearance
constitutes a limit, what truly exists is a dissolution into common opacity rather than a
development of lucid thinking. The apparent unchangingness of books is deceptive: each book is also the sum of the
misunderstandings it occasions. So why exhaust myself with efforts toward consciousness? I can only make lun of myself as I write. (Why write
even a phrase if laughter doesn't immediately join me?) It goes without saying that, lor the task. I bring to bear whatever rigor I have within me.
But the
crumbling nature of thinking's awareness of itself and especially the certainty of thinking
reaching its end only in failing, hinder any repose and prevent the relaxed state that facilitates a
rigorous disposition of things. Committed to the casual stance-l think and express myself in the free play of hazard. Obviously,
everyone in some way admits the importance of hazard. But this recognition is as minimal and unconsdous as possible. Going my way
unconstralned. unhampered. I develop my thoughts, make choices with regard to expression-but I don't have the control over myseH that I wanl.
And the actual dynamic of my intelligence is equally uncontrollable. So that l owe to other dynamics-to lucky chance and to fleeting moments of
relaxation-the minimal order and relative learning that I do have. And the rest of the time . . . Thus,
as I see it my thought
proceeds in harmony with its object, an object that it attains more and perfectly the greater the
state of its own ruin. Though it isn't necessarily conscious of this. At one and the same time my thinking must
reach plenary illumination and dissolution . . . In the same individual, thought must construct and destroy itself. And even that isn't quite right.
Even the most rigorous thinkers yield to chance. In addition, the demands inherent in the exerdse
of thought often take me far from where I started. One of the great difficulties encountered by understanding is to put
order into thought's interrelations in time. In a given moment, my thought reaches considerable rigor. But how to link it with yesterday's thinking?
Yesterday, in a sense, I was another person, responding to other worries. Adapting one to the other remains possible, but . . . This insufficiency
bothers me no more than the insuffidency relating to the many woes of the human condition generally. Humanness is related in us to
nonsatisfaction. a nonsatisfaction to which we yield without accepting it, though; we distance ourselves from humann ess when we regard
ourselves as satisfied or when we give up searching for satisfaction. Sarue is right in relation to me to recll the myth Of Sisyphus, though "in
relation to me""' here equates to "in relation to humanity," I suppose. What can be expected of us is to go as far as possible and not to stop. What
by contrast. humanly speaking. can be aitidzed are endeavors whose only meaning is some relation to moments of completion. Is it possible for
me to go further? I won't wait to coordinate my efforts in that case-I'll go further. I'll take the risk. And the reader. free not to venture after me,
will often take advantage of that same freedom! The critics are right to scent danger here! But let me in turn paint out a greater danger, one that
comes from methods that, adequate only to an outcome of knowledge, confer on individuals whom they limit a sheerly fragmentary existence-an
existence that is mutilated with respect to the whole that remains inaccessible. Having recognized this, I'll defend my position. I've spoken of
inner experience: my intention was to make known an object. But by propo!iing this vague title, T didn't want to confine myself sheerly to inner
facts of that experience. It's
an arbitrary procedure to reduce knowledge to what we get from our
intuitions as subjects. This is something only a newborn can do. And we ourselves (who write) can only know something about this
newborn by observing it from outside (the child is only our object). A separation experience, related to a vital continuum (our conception and our
birth) and to a return to that continuum (in our first sexual feelings and our first laughter), leaves us without any clear recollections, and only in
objective operations do we reach the core of the being we are. A phenomenology of the developed mind assumes a coinddence of subjective and
objective aspects and at the same time a fusion of subject and object.* This means an isolated operation is admissible only because of fatigue (so,
the explanation I gave of laughter, because I was unable to develop a whole movement in tandem with a conjugation of the modalities of laughter
would be left suspended-since every theory of laughter is integrally a philosophy and. similarly, every integral philosophy is a theory of laughter .
. . ). But that is the point- though I set forth these principles, at the same time I must renounce following them. Thought is produced in me as
uncoordinated flashes, withdrawing endlessly from a term to which its movement pushes it. I can't tell if I'm expressing human helplessness this
way, or my own . . . I don't know. though I'm not hopeful of even some outwardly satisfying outcome. Isn't there an advantage in creating
philosophy as I do? A flash in the night-a language belonging to a brief moment . . . Perhaps in this respect this latest moment contains a simple
truth. In order to will knowledge, by an indirect expedient I tend to become the whole universe. But in this movement I can't be a whole hwnan
beinSt since I submit to a particular goal. becoming the whole. Granted. if I could become it, I would thus be a whole hwnan being. But in my
effon, don't I distance myself from exactly that? And how can I become the whole without becoming a whole human being? I can't be this whole
hwnan being except when I let go. I can't be this through willpower: my will necessarily has to will outcomes! But if misfortune (or chance) wills
the moment of revolt inherent in
willing a knowledge beyond practical ends can't be indefinitely continued. And in order to be the
whole universe, humankind has to let go and abandon its principle, accepting as the sole criterion
of what it is the tendency to go beyond what it is. This existence that I am is a revolt against existence and is indefinite
desire. For this existence God was simply a stage-and now here he is, looming large, grown from
unfathomable experience, comically perched on the stake used for impalement.
me to let go, then I know I am an integral whole humanness. subordinate to nothing. In other words.
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Fourth is Resentiment DA – Their only warrant for the ballot is either to punish us or to
create a perfect version of debate devoid of unpredictability – all of this breeds a hatred of
the world as it is, kills value to life
Fith is fairness da- Fairness is contingent and constantly evolving – there is no value to
static rulebooks
Johnston 96 (Ian, Malaspina College, “There's Nothing Nietzsche Couldn't Teach Ya About the Raising
of the Wrist,” http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/nietzs.htm, Josh Nabors)
When Nietzsche looks at Europe historically what he sees is that different games have been
going on like this for centuries. He further sees that many of the participants in any one game have
been aggressively convinced that their game is the "true" game, that it corresponds with the essence of games
or is a close match to the wider game they imagine going on in the natural world, in the wilderness beyond the playing fields. So they
have spent a lot of time producing their rule books and coaches' manuals and making claims
about how the principles of their game copy or reveal or approximate the laws of nature. This has
promoted and still promotes a good deal of bad feeling and fierce arguments. Hence, in addition to any one game itself, within the
group pursuing it there have always been all sorts of sub-games debating the nature of the
activity, refining the rules, arguing over the correct version of the rule book or about how to
educate the referees and coaches, and so on. Nietzsche's first goal is to attack this dogmatic
claim about the truth of the rules of any particular game. He does this, in part, by appealing to the tradition of
historical scholarship which shows that these games are not eternally true, but have a history. Rugby began when a soccer
player broke the rules and picked up the ball and ran with it. American football developed out
of rugby and has changed and is still changing. Basketball had a precise origin which can be historically located.
Rule books are written in languages which have a history by people with a deep psychological
point to prove: the games are an unconscious expression of the particular desires of inventive
games people at a very particular historical moment; these rule writers are called Plato, Augustine, Socrates, Kant,
Schopenhauer, Descartes, Galileo, and so on. For various reasons they believe, or claim to believe, that the
rules they come up with reveal something about the world beyond the playing field and are
therefore "true" in a way that other rule books are not; they have, as it were, privileged access
to reality and thus record, to use a favorite metaphor of Nietzsche's, the text of the wilderness. In attacking such claims, Nietzsche points
out, the wilderness bears no relationship at all to any human invention like a rule book (he points out
that nature is "wasteful beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at
the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power--how could you live according to this indifference. Living--is that not precisely wanting
to be other than this nature" (Epigram 9). Because
there is no connection with what nature truly is, such rule
books are mere "foreground" pictures, fictions dreamed up, reinforced, altered, and discarded
for contingent historical reasons. Moreover, the rule books often bear a suspicious resemblance to
the rules of grammar of a culture (thus, for example, the notion of an ego as a thinking subject, Nietzsche points out, is
closely tied to the rules of European languages which insist on a subject and verb construction as an essential part of any statement). So how
do we know what we have is the truth? And why do we want the truth, anyway? People
seem to need to believe that their
games are true. But why? Might they not be better if they accepted that their games were
false, were fictions, having nothing to do with the reality of nature beyond the recreational
complex? If they understood the fact that everything they believe in has a history and that, as he says in the Genealogy of Morals, "only
that which has no history can be defined," they would understand that all this proud history of searching for the truth
is something quite different from what philosophers who have written rule books proclaim.
Furthermore these historical changes and developments occur accidentally, for contingent reasons, and have nothing to do with the games, or
any one game, shaping itself in accordance with any ultimate game or any given rule book of games given by the wilderness, which is
indifferent to what is going on. And there
is no basis for the belief that, if we look at the history of the
development of these games, we discover some progressive evolution of games towards some
higher type. We may be able, like Darwin, to trace historical genealogies, to construct a narrative,
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but that narrative does not reveal any clear direction or any final goal or any progressive
development. The genealogy of games indicates that history is a record of contingent change. The assertion that
there is such a thing as progress is simply one more game, one more rule added by inventive minds (who need to believe in progress); it bears
no relationship to nature beyond the sports complex. Ditto for science. So long
as one is playing on a team, one
follows the rules and thus has a sense of what constitutes right and wrong or good and evil
conduct in the game, and this awareness is shared by all those carrying out the same endeavour. To pick up the ball in
soccer is evil (unless you are the goalie); and to punt the ball while running in American football is permissible but stupid; in
Australian football both actions are essential and right. In other words, different cultural communities have different
standards of right and wrong conduct. These are determined by the artificial inventions called
rule books, one for each game. These rule books have developed the rules historically; thus,
they have no permanent status and no claim to privileged access.
And, we are topical:
topicality is:
(wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=topicality)
S: (n) topicality
(the attribute of being of interest at the present time) “the library had to discard books that had lost their topicality.”
And that’s contextualized as “the quality or state of being topical” (http://i.word.com/idictionary/topicality) which is
determined by relevancy, “1a: of, relating to, or arranged by topics <set down in topical form> b: referring to
topics of the day or place: of local or temporary interest <a topical novel>< topical references>
(http://i.word.com/idictionary/topical)
If we win that argument that Solves their switch-side good offense. We’re still in the
direction of the topic and have to defend a whole theorization of economic engagement.
That preserves the burden of rejoinder, which is a core stabilizer for clash. The topic is a
stasis point; our interpretation establishes a sanctuary for predictable core neg ground
We solve switch side debate
a. They can still engage the opposite side of the topic and say the status quo is good
b. If we can read our aff on the neg it proves we provide predictable ground
No definition of what constitutes a side. We’ve made an argument about how we have a
definition of side that you don’t have a disad too. We switch side in so far as we make
argument in the context of different ideological shifts, we just don’t abide by your
definition- your attempt to objectively define sides is a superimposition of meaning which
eradicates difference
Also- they never switch sides- they always regurgitate the same switch side good arguments
but never said switch side bad- this is a reason why they don’t access their internal to
education and turns their dogmatism arguments
Pre-round switch side debate solves their offense
Greene and Hicks 5 (Ronald Walter and Darrin; debate legends, LOST CONVICTIONS
Debating both sides and the ethical self-fashioning of liberal citizens, Cultural Studies Vol. 19, No. 1 January 2005, josh Nabors)
Murphy’s master ethic / that a public utterance entails a public commitment / rested on a classical rhetorical theory that refuses the modern distinctions between
cognitive claims of truth (referring to the objective world), normative claims of right (referring to the intersubjective world), and expressive claims of sincerity
(referring to the subjective state of the speaker), although this distinction, and Murphy’s refusal to make it, would surface as a major point of contention in the 1960s
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for the proponents of debating both sides.7 Murphy is avoiding the idea that the words spoken by a debater can be divorced from what the speaker actually believes to
to stand and publicly proclaim that one affirmed the
resolution entailed both a claim that the policy being advocated was indeed the best
possible choice, given extant social conditions, and that one sincerely believed that her or
his arguments were true and right. In other words, a judge should not make a distinction
between the merits of the case presented and the sincerity of the advocates presenting it;
rather, the reasons supporting a policy and the ethos of the speakers are mutually
constitutive forms of proof. The interdependency of logos and ethos was not only a matter of rhetorical principle for Murphy but also a
be true, right, or good (expressive claims of sincerity). For Murphy,
foundational premise of public reason in a democratic society. Although he never explicitly states why this is true, most likely because he assumed it to be selfevident, a charitable interpretation of Murphy’s position, certainly a more generous interpretation than his detractors were willing to give, would show that his axiom
rests on the following argument: If public reason is to have any legitimate force, auditors must believe that advocates are arguing from conviction and not from greed,
desire or naked self-interest. If auditors believe that advocates are insincere, they will not afford legitimacy to their claims and will opt to settle disputes through force
sincerity is a necessary element of public reason
and, therefore, a necessary condition of critical deliberation in a democratic society. For Murphy,
the assumption of sincerity is intimately articulated to the notion of ethical argumentation
in a democratic political culture. If a speaker were to repudiate this assumption by
advocating contradictory positions in a public forum, it would completely undermine her
or his ethos and result in the loss of the means of identification with an audience. The real
danger of undermining the assumption of sincerity was not that individual speakers would
be rendered ineffective / although this certainly did make training students to debate both¶ 104 CULTURAL STUDIES¶ sides bad rhetorical
pedagogy. The ultimate danger of switch-side debating was that it would engender a distrust of
public advocates. The public would come to see the debaters who would come to occupy
public offices as ‘public liars’ more interested in politics as vocation than as a calling. Debate
or some seemingly neutral modus vivendi such as voting or arbitration. Hence,
would be seen as a game of power rather than the method of democracy.
Also absorbs their limits offense – they have to win reasons that the ONLY interpretation
should be having a plan text and defending instrumental action by the USfg to win limits,
we think the aff has to be in the core direction of the topic. We don’t explode limits because
we clearly don’t think everyone should read our aff, they don’t have a modeling internal
link.
Defense:
Fairness is only an internal link to education- if we win that their form of education leads
to bad policy making then debate should die
K-Spec good – every aff has ontological depth, we solve abuse by specifying in the 1AC,
gives specific link ground and prevents shiftiness in the 2AC.
Default to reasonability – the loss of some predictability is good, it increases critical
thinking
Mcdaniels 7 (Reuben McDaniels, Ed.D., Indiana University, 1971 M.S., University of Akron, 1968 ¶ B.S., Drexel University, 1964,
“Management Strategies for Complex Adaptive Systems Sensemaking, Learning, and Improvisation”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1937-8327.2007.tb00438.x/pdf)
In environments with uncertainty, managers will at times face surprises such as unanticipated
changes to the operating or market environment. At these moments, managers must often improvise to
adapt to the new environment. They often need to be able to improvise with or without new
resources. Bricolage is a key strategy for improvising—for reconfiguring information and
resources to create new opportunities. Bricolage (Levi- Strauss, 1966; Weick, 1993) is the ability to
create what is needed to cope with a situation from the resources that are available rather than to seek
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new resources. Bricolage is a way that we can create order out of chaos by drawing
together ideas and available materials in new ways to accomplish a task. A bricoleur knows
existing situations intimately by paying close at- tention to the present and, thereby, can invent new
ways for dealing with an emerging reality (McDaniel & Driebe, 2001; Weick, 1993). Bricolage
requires creativity, an understanding of tools and materials and a willing- ness to
experiment. You must learn while in the middle of action, and this means that you must
think your way out of a situation while acting and act your way out of a situation while
thinking (Weick, 1995).
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2ac T-Unilateral Engagement
“Toward” means “in the direction of” --- this is the commonly understood and
ordinary meaning
Campbell 13 – Tena Campbell, United States District Judge, “Econova, Inc., Plaintiff, v. DPS Utah,
Collier GROUP, and Kevin E. Collier, Defendants”, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2730, 1-4, Lexis
5. "Extending From Toward . . . ."
The disputed term "extending from toward the rotational axis to toward the peripheral wall" appears in claim 1 of
the '017 Patent. EcoNova's proposed construction is "the item so described has an extent along the direction from the rotational axis to the
peripheral wall." (Pl.'s Mem. at 22.) The Defendants' proposed construction is "extending from near the rotational axis to near the peripheral
wall." (See Defs.' Mem. at 22.)
EcoNova argues that the disputed phrase merely indicates a direction, and cites to the specification and prosecution history for support.
Defendants contend that the disputed phrase establishes both orientation and direction, arguing that "toward" in this context means "near."
The court disagrees with Defendants because their proposed construction is too far from the
ordinary meaning of the word "toward," is at odds with the intrinsic [*25] evidence, and appears to import limitations
from the various embodiments in the specification. Instead, the court agrees with EcoNova that the phrase merely indicates a direction.
The word "toward" is a commonly understood term that indicates a direction , and the specification of
the '017 Patent supports this conclusion. The specification uses "toward" or "towards" thirty-nine times, many of which are unambiguously
used to indicate a direction. (See, e.g., '017 Patent col.15 ll.40—41 ("As a result of the applied centrifugal force, heavy component 241 flows
toward wall 92 at equator 97."); id. col.26 ll.39—41 ("As feed stream 506 travels within flow channels 502 toward transfer tubes 400, the
stream is subjected to tremendous centrifugal forces . . . .").)
Moreover, the prosecution history of the '017 Patent supports the conclusion that the disputed phrase merely indicates a direction. In the first
iteration of the '017 Patent, claim 1 had a dependent claim 5 that read "A separator as recited in claim 1, wherein the first tube is aligned with
or offset from the rotational axis." (See U.S. Patent Application, Initial Common Exhibits Ex. 9, at 175, Nov. 6, 2012, ECF No. 65-9.) The patent
[*26] examiner rejected claim 5 for indefiniteness because it was unclear how the first tube could extend "from the rotational axis to the
peripheral wall" (as required in independent claim 1), but also be aligned with the rotational axis (as required in dependent claim 5). (See Office
Action Summary, Initial Common Exhibits Ex. 9, at 55, Nov. 6, 2012, ECF No. 65-9.) In other words, the patent examiner treated the phrase
"extending from toward the rotational axis to toward the peripheral wall" as a direction, noting that it could not be "aligned" with the
rotational axis.
For the above reasons, the
court's construction of "extending from toward the rotational axis to toward the
peripheral wall" is "the item so described has an extent along the direction from the rotational axis to the peripheral
wall."
Assign the ordinary and customary meaning to “toward” --- it’s the best interpretation
Gettleman 4 – Robert W. Gettleman, United States District Judge, “T. Andrew Janes, Plaintiff, v. Bose
Corporation, Defendant”, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8136, 5-7, Lexis
OVERVIEW: The patent concerned a loudspeaker system. The inventor alleged that defendant's home entertainment system infringed the
patent. Two of the patent claims spoke of speaker drivers mounted in sound cabinets with an axis "directed toward the listening area."
Defendant argued that "toward" should be construed as generally perpendicular to the front plane defined by the sound cabinets, while the
inventor argued that "toward"
should be interpreted as "in the direction of." The court agreed with the
inventor. There was nothing in the specification indicating that "toward" conveyed anything
other than its ordinary and customary meaning . The word "toward" was used to describe the orientation of the outer
drivers in relation to the listening area, and a narrow construction was not required . The court also declined to read into
independent claims of the patent a limitation disclaiming all modification of channel signals received by the speaker drivers, as such a limitation
would prevent use of the invention with amplifiers that had volume, bass, treble, and balance controls. The independent claims did not require
"distinct" left and right channels.
Unilateral engagement is topical, because of towards
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(Bauschard 13) – Stefan Bauschard, Harvard Graduate, Debate Coach for Harvard, “Defining
Economic Engagement”, 2013, Stefan Bauschard Debate: Defining Economic Engagement
a discussion of the term, “toward” is relevant
here for two reasons. First, one interesting question related to the term “economic engagement” is whether or not the engagement can
Although the focus of this section is on the term “economic engagement,”
involve third parties. Since the resolution says, “toward” instead of “with,” it may be topical to involve third parties and interact with them by directing the
engagement toward the topic countries because the plan just has to be “in the direction of.” I suspect that a more limited interpretation of toward will
“toward” meaning “in the direction of”
strengthens the interpretation that “economic engagement” can be unilateral because the
engagement just needs to be “towards” the country and not “with” the country.
prevail in this regard, but a broader interpretation is certainly possible. Second,
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2ac Gift K
EVEN IF they win that the act of gift giving is impossible, the act of radically imagining the
gift is good
Truscello 10 (Michael Truscello, Mount Royal University , “The Disruptive Time of the Gift: (Radical) Imagination at Work in Free and
Open Source Software, Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 2010, pp. 141-172 Josh Nabors)
Instead of proving that human subjectivity is reducible to ultimately selfish or ultimately
altruistic behaviour, or that a clear separation of gift and commodity exchange is possible,
or that uninterrupted motives and calculations subtend specific forms of interaction (all of
which tend to be the conclusion of reductive studies of the gift), the notion of the gift serves rather to expose
disciplinary limitations in the demarcation of social behaviour, to abolish the dichotomies
of vertical forms of social categories, and to give concrete but temporary expression to
social assemblages. The gift stabilizes a set of transversal social relations, transversal
relations that unbind the disciplinary categories of economics and construct the gift as "the
space or figure that impels ethical and political considerations, even for a regime of
economic value."58 Mark Osteen takes the ethical demand of the gift even further, calling the gift "a dangerous phenomenon because it
involves risk: the risk that one may give without reciprocation; the risk that one may accrue burdensome obligations; the risk that one may never
be able to repay a gift; the risk of the loss of freedom."59 Slavoj Žižek, following the lead of Marshall Sahlins—who framed the gift as
"destructive" of the normative social bond because of its inherent ambiguity and seemingly vindictive logic, expands this notion of the gift as a
dangerous phenomenon by calling it "the zero-level of civility, the paradoxical point at which restrained civility and obscene consumption
overlap, the point at which it is polite to behave impolitely."60 All
of these potentialities that make the gift a
"dangerous phenomenon" also gesture at the reasons why radical imagining, something
afforded by gifting, is such a rare and powerful act. The act of radical imagining makes an
ethical demand with substantial risk and potential loss of freedom. In the most pedestrian
sense, gifting represents the invocation of trust in human affairs. What makes gifting dangerous, then, is
that trust may be rebuffed or exploited by an unsympathetic partner or community. What makes gifting powerful is that it
can interrogate, escape, confound, circumvent, or reverse oppressive social arrangements
whose authority is predicated on substantial forms of economics, militarism, racism,
ableism, and so on. Often, the relationship between risk and freedom is directly proportional: the greater the potential
risk, the greater the potential freedom.
Their claims that greed is inevitable are capitalist lies – empirics prove that greed is
not inevitable
Spritzler ‘12(Spritzler, John, Senior Research Scientist at Harvard University, “The Capitalist Lie About
Human Nature”, http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/culture/human_nature.html September
30,2012)
Human nature is not the same as capitalist nature, no matter what the capitalists want us to
believe. Human beings create cultures. Cultures embody values about how relations between
people ought to be. Being selfish or sharing is a behavioral choice determined in large part by
one's culture. Conflicting cultures have developed, especially conflicting class cultures. Classes of
human beings have arisen that dominate, oppress and exploit other human beings, and they have
created a culture that legitimizes and even glorifies their oppressive relation to others. But these
oppressive classes that survive by taking economic wealth from those who actually produce it are
numerically small. The majority of human beings whose labor produces all the wealth of society
have developed a very different culture Conflicting cultures have developed, especially
conflicting class cultures. Classes of human beings have arisen that dominate, oppress and
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exploit other human beings, and they have created a culture that legitimizes and even
glorifies their oppressive relation to others. But these oppressive classes that survive by taking
economic wealth from those who actually produce it are numerically small. The majority of human
beings whose labor produces all the wealth of society have developed a very different culture. The
culture of the people who produce the wealth of society is different because we are a social
species; we produce the things and services we need for survival and for our comfort and
enjoyment only by cooperating with others. Cooperation requires mutual trust. The reason
why the Golden Rule is universally honored as the basis of morality, and the reason why it is therefore
incorporated into every major religion, is because it is the basis for establishing the trust that
cooperation and hence human survival requires. There is a class culture that says to be selfish. And
there is a conflicting class culture, enshrined in the Golden Rule, that says to share. It is well
known by anthropologists that hunter gatherer societies are extremely egalitarian. For
example in the journal, Current Anthropology, Vol 35, No 2 (April 1994) online here, on page 176 one
reads, "Yet the universality of egalitarianism in hunter-gatherers suggests that it is an
ancient, evolved human pattern." This Big Fact contradicts the Big Lie that human nature is
innately selfish and that inequality is simply what human nature inevitably produces . In this
regard it is worth reading a passage from Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. In his
chapter, "Mutual Aid Among Savages," he writes about the "Hottentots, who are but a little more
developed than the bushmen": "Lubbock describes them as 'the filthiest animals.' and filthy they really
are. A fur suspended to the neck and worn till it falls to pieces is all their dress; their huts are a few sticks
assembled together and covered with mats, with no kind of furniture within. And though they kept oxen
and sheep, and seem to have known the use of iron before they made acquaintance with the
Europeans, they still occupy one of the lowest degrees of the human scale. And yet those who knew
them highly praised their sociability and readiness to aid each other. If anything is given to a Hottentot,
he at once divides it among all present--a habit which, as is known, so much struck Darwin among all
Fuegians. He cannot eat alone, and, however hungry, he calls those who pass by to share his food. And
when Kolben expressed his astonishment thereat, he received the answer: 'That is Hottentot manner.'
But this is not Hottentot manner only: it is an all but universal habit among the 'savages.' Kolben, who
knew the Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects in silence, could not praise their tribal
morality highly enough. "'Their word is sacred,' he wrote. They know 'nothing of the corruptness and
faithless arts of Europe.,' 'They live in great tranquility and are seldom at war with their neighbors.' They
are 'all kindness and goodwill to one another....One of the greatest pleasures of the Hottentots certainly
lies in their gifts and good offices to one another,' 'The integrity of the Hottentots, their strictness and
celerity in the exercise of justice, and their chastity, are things to which they excel all or most nations in
the world.'" The Hottentots are, of course, the same species as us. Their innate human nature enabled
them to develop an extremely egalitarian culture. That means that our innate human nature (whatever
it may be) enables us to do the same, contrary to the Big Lie of capitalism. Some defend the Big Lie by
arguing that human nature may permit egalitarianism within a tribe, but it also causes tribes to wage
war against each other. But the anthropological evidence does not support the assertion, made by the
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Warmonger in Chief, Barack Obama, that "war appeared with the first
man." As John Horgan writes in his The End of War: "The Homo genus emerged about 2 million years
ago and Homo sapiens about two hundred thousand years ago. But the oldest clear-cut relic of lethal
group aggression is not millions or hundreds of thousands of years old. It is a 13,000 year old grave site
along the Nile River in the Jebel Sahaba region of Sudan. Excavated in the 1960s, the site contains fiftynine skeletons,twenty-four of which bear marks of violence, such as embedded projectile points.
"What's more, the Jebel Sahaba site is an outlier. Most of the other evidence for warfare dates back no
more than 10,000 years. The oldest known homicide victim--as opposed to war casualty--was a young
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man who lived 20,000 years ago along the Nile... "Sarah Blaffer Hardy, an anthropologist and authority
on both primates and early humans, believes that our human and proto-human ancestors were at least
occasionally violent. Given how often fights occur among virtually all primates, including humans, 'we
can be fairly certain that lethal aggression occasionally broke out' in the Paleolithic era, she says. 'It
would be amazing if it did not.' But Hrdy sees no persuasive evidence that war--which she defines as
'organized aggression between groups with the intent of killing those in other groups'--is either ancient
or innate." [pg. 30-31] Nor does it require living in primitive conditions for egalitarianism to arise. The
modern labor movement, with all its strikes and campaigns for things like the Eight Hour Day, and the
social movements against racial discrimination (e.g., the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and the Global
Anti-Apartheid Movement) are all examples of the mass support for making the world more
equal. The fact that when polled, most Americans say they want health care to be a right of
all people, and furthermore say they would agree to paying higher taxes to make it so, cannot
be explained by any theory that includes the capitalist Big Lie about human nature being
mainly motivated by self-interest. Workers often continue their labor strikes far beyond the point
when they have any chance at all of making up in higher wages all of the wages they have already lost
during the strike, not to mention homes foreclosed for lack of money to make the mortgage payments
and cars repossessed. This was the case in the Hormel meatpackers strike in the 1980s in Minnesota.
Why do they do this? A striker explained why this way, as recounted by Dave Stratman in his We CAN
Change the World (pdf): "Like the British miners, the striking meatpackers understood that far more was
at stake than their specific demands. In a speech to supporters in Boston in February, 1986, Pete
Winkels, business agent of Local P-9, made this clear: 'Our people are never going to get back what
we've already lost financially. We know that. But we're fighting for our fami- lies and for the next
generation. And we're not going to give up.' "Since it was precisely the strikers and their families who
suffered the economic and emotional costs of the strike, the explanation that "we're fighting for our
families and for the next generation" has to be interpreted in a class context. "For the next generation"
was a phrase the strikers used again and again to describe why they were fighting, as if these words
encapsulated their feelings about creating a future very different from where things seem headed, not
just for their immediate families, but for other people like themselves." The Hormel strike, and many
others like it, was a struggle to make the world more equal; as a fight for merely personal
self-interest it would have been crazy to continue the strike, as the strikers well knew. During
the Spanish Revolution that involved millions of people in almost half of Spain in 1936-9 peasants
expropriated the land from the rich landowers. They invariably decided to own it collectively instead of
dividing it up into parcels to be owned individually. Some collectives abolished money altogether and
those that didn't made changes in the direction of economic equality, such as paying people according
to the size of their family instead of their education or job type. If the Big Lie of human nature were true
it would be very difficult to explain how this could have happened. But it did happen. Economic
production by these egalitarian collectives actually increased, by the way, refuting the notion that
nobody works in an egalitarian society. From the most common everyday acts of kindness, such
as people I see everyday getting up and giving their seat on the subway to an elderly person,
to epic struggles for equality, there is abundant proof that the capitalist assertion about
human nature being the same as capitalist nature is flat out false. There are countless Big
Facts that refute
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The claim that morals are followed for the sake of inflating our egos is empirically
denied– potlatch originated from the rituals of PRECAPITALIST tribes
Botting and Wilson 97(Botting, Fred, professor of cultural studies at the University of Lancester,
Wilson, Scott, faculty member at Kingston University, The Bataille Reader, pgs 20-21, 1997)
The energy that Bataille invokes as a challenge to bourgeois capitalism's troubled drive
towards the homogenization of modem life is manifested quite differently in other epochs
and societies. As a historian of modes of expenditure, Bataille drew not only on his background as a
medievalist librarian, but also on the work of the renowned anthropologist Marcel Mauss, in particular
his essay on the gift. Mauss' text provides numerous examples of a phenomenon called potlatch that
occurred among precapitalist tribes.38 Foreign to western assumptions about rational modes
of production and exchange, potlatch describes the rules of a type of gift giving in which
expenditure is privileged over acquisition. Gift exchange often involved an escalating series of
highly prized commodities, drawing tribal chiefs into a form of rivalry that was ruinous in that the gifts
could be neither refused nor returned. Bound up with festivals, potlatch, Bataille contends, excludes all
bargaining and, in general, it is constituted by a considerable gift of riches, offered openly with the soal
of humiliatins, defying, and obligating a rival. The exchange-value of the gift results from the fact that
the donee, in order to efface the humiliation and respond to the challenge, must satisfy the obligation
(incurred by him at the time of acceptance) to respond later with a more valuable gift, in other words, to
return with interest. (p. 172)
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2ac Blackness
Social death thesis is false – blacks have agency and progressive change is possible.
Robinson 4 – Prof Law @ Howard University, Reginald, CRITICAL RACE THEORY: HISTORY,
EVOLUTION, AND NEW FRONTIERS: ARTICLE: HUMAN AGENCY, NEGATED
SUBJECTIVITY, AND WHITE STRUCTURAL OPPRESSION: AN ANALYSIS OF CRITICAL
RACE PRACTICE/PRAXIS, 53 Am. U.L. Rev. 1361
Choosing to fight and die, slaves showed us their power to act purposefully. The power to
act is human agency, and these actions can support or transform society. Through social
and cultural influences, society can constrain or empower ordinary people n9 to act by
giving them relatively equal access to the rules, resources, and language. By supporting or
transforming a society, we express a latent, inexorable power that rejects the thought that
white structural oppression negates ordinary people's subjectivity, thus making them
subtextual victims. n10 Within a broad structuralist framework, white structural oppression
refers to practices like racism that constitute an objective, external power that robs people
of their natural right to be free human beings. Subtextual victims refer to ordinary people
like blacks who believe that America will always treat them badly, preventing them from
attaining social and economic success. For these ordinary people, experiences like
subtextual victimization and practices like white structural oppression belie human agency
(e.g., right action). n11¶ [*1364] Although ordinary people like blacks exercised human agency within the crucible of slavery, Critical Race Theory ("CRT") builds its
methodology on the idea that law, race, and power oppress ordinary people, denying them the right to live free and to act purposefully. n12 Race Crits have developed
deconstructive approaches to unearth how law and race form powerful, objective relations of whites over blacks, men over women, natives over foreigners. Relying on
this methodology and these approaches, Race Crits, especially in early writings, analyzed unconscious white racism. n13 Given CRT's early development, these
writings were perforce theoretical. Recently, some Race Crits have sought practical, serviceable tools to assist lawyers and activists. n14 Practical writings cope better
with struggles against white racism. Practical writings talk to community activists. n15 They enable political lawyers to examine and transform legal conflicts into
practical solutions or legal remedies. These writings encourage left scholars to leave the ivory tower, so that they can work with the ordinary people for whom Race
Crits purport to write and on whom their scholarly existence depends. n16 Under this view, Race Crits can redress white structural oppression and engage in
antisubordination struggles, so that ordinary people can use their human agency. ¶ [*1365] In this regard, Robert A. Williams advocates for Critical Race Practice
(Practice). n17 Eric K. Yamamoto sues for Critical Race Praxis (Praxis). n18 For Williams, traditional legal scholarship, especially ethereal writings, cannot alter
ordinary people's lives. n19 Exploiting people of color's personal and social circumstances for institutional gains like tenure, n20 Williams asserts that these Race Crits
become little more than vampires, n21 feeding on a people's misery, caring selfishly for themselves, and giving nothing back. n22 By not using their writings to
redress day-to-day issues, these Race Crits ignore ordinary people's oppression. n23 To overcome this gap, Practice requires left scholars to teach law students,
especially through clinical legal education, how to empower Native people and their perspectives. n24 ¶ [*1366] Under Praxis, Yamamoto argues that left scholars
must serve ordinary people's practical needs. n25 Right now, these scholars do not relate to political lawyers and community activists. By existing in separate worlds,
neither group has helped to co-create n26 "racial justice." As such, theoretical writings and traditional civil rights strategies move institutions not toward racial justice,
but toward liberal solutions. n27 So long as this gap continues, law will retreat from racial justice. In surmounting this gap, Yamamoto requires scholars, lawyers, and
activists to work together (e.g., consortium). ¶ Under Practice or Praxis, Williams and Yamamoto intend to pursue a justice concept, in which antisubordination
becomes the singular end. n28 This end promises to give to ordinary people, especially those engaged in interracial conflict, the human agency (or empowerment) that
they lack. For example, Yamamoto advocates for a "racial group agency," one oddly standing on racial identity and personal responsibility. n29¶
Unfortunately, Practice and Praxis cannot achieve this end. Relying on classical CRT
methodology, Williams and Yamamoto assume that ordinary people like blacks lack
human agency and personal responsibility. They presume that white structural oppression
buries ordinary people alive under the weight of liberal legalisms like Equal Protection,
rendering them subtextual victims. n30 I disagree.¶ Pure consciousness is always prior, and
all sentient beings have agency. Despite the sheer weight of the legal violence, slaves never
forgot their innate right to be free; they retained a pure consciousness that never itself [*1367]
was enslaved. n31 Moreover, slaves acted purposefully when they picked cotton and when they fought to be free. Slaves planned revolts,
killed masters, overseers, and each other, ran away, picked cotton, and betrayed other coconspirators; all examples of human agency. Today, despite danger and violence, ordinary
people co-create lives of joy, peace, and happiness. Antebellum slaves co-created spaces in which they knew joy, peace, and
happiness. In the modern era, ordinary people like blacks have pure consciousness and human
agency too.¶ Despite daily examples of human agency, Williams and Yamamoto posit that
ordinary people lack real, practical control over their lives. n32 By taking this position, they reproduce a major
premise in CRT: slavery, Jim Crow, racism, and racial discrimination have subordinated the lives of ordinary people. n33 Put succinctly, white
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structural oppression (e.g., supremacy) impacts the micropractices of ordinary people. By
implication, it negates their racial identity, social values, and personal responsibility. If so, then
criminal courts mock ordinary people like blacks when the state punishes them for committing crimes. n34 If so, the New York Times unfairly punished Jayson Blair,
and he was correct to fault it for encouraging plagiarism and for rewarding his unprofessional behavior. n35 Failing to address these implications, Williams and
Yamamoto direct us to white structural oppression and divert us from the real, practical control that ordinary people exercise when they go to work or commit a crime.
this [*1368] way, Williams and Yamamoto can only empower ordinary people if they eradicate
white racism, for only then will ordinary people have human agency.¶ Practice and Praxis
fail because they ignore how ordinary people use mind constructs. A mind construct means any artificial, causal,
In
or interdependent arrangement of facts, factors, elements, or ideas that flows from our inner awareness. n36 Representing core beliefs, n37 a mind construct allows us
A mind construct is not reality, but ordinary people
believe that it is. n38¶ Practice and Praxis also fail because they refuse to deconstruct mind
constructs of ordinary people. Intending to adhere to CRT's methodology, Williams and
Yamamoto believe that these mind constructs cannot co-create experiences, and thus white
structural oppression must be an external, objective reality. By refusing to interrogate
these mind constructs, they tell us that the proper locus of white structural oppression must
be white mindsets. By and large, while white mindsets co-create racial oppression, other mind constructs
cannot. Whites have power; others do not. Whites victimize blacks; ordinary people cannot
co-create their own oppression experience. n39 Working within CRT methodology, Williams and Yamamoto cannot re-imagine
to make sense of our personal experiences and social reality.
ordinary people as bearers of human agency, the power to act purposefully that includes how we use our mind constructs to co-create and to understand experiences
and realities. By failing to see ordinary people as powerful agents, Williams and Yamamoto have tied personal liberty not only to liberal legalism and white
appreciation, but also to CRT's liberal agenda. n40¶ [*1369] Ordinary people have always had human agency. But Race Crits cannot imagine this power. They must
.
From this core belief, ordinary people co-create their experiences and realities. Core
beliefs, experiences, and realities are concentric circles, overlapping and indistinguishable.
For example, race consciousness (a core belief) denies ordinary people full experiences, and
at the same, it co-creates what they seek to avoid. Yet, race consciousness is simply a mind construct. In this
Article, race consciousness constitutes a belief (or a mind construct) that encourages
ordinary people to point accusatory fingers at white racism, an emotional balm for that
which naturally flows from their feelings, imaginations, and actions.¶ Part I lays out the framework of Practice
alter our core beliefs to sustain their theories. A core belief flows from feelings and imaginations, and ordinary people reinforce this belief through words and deeds
and Praxis, illustrating how these frameworks link themselves to a central feature of CRT -structural determinism. Part II critiques CRT's mindset doctrine and
"naming our own reality," n41 arguing that they are corollaries of structural determinism. Part III presents an incomplete model for a pure consciousness theory of
human agency, an approach that conjoins pure consciousness, conscious mind (inner and outer ego), and co-creative principles as powerful elements in the co-creation
These elements suggest a new model for agency, bypassing
the liberal notion of a negated subject and, by implication, the victim's theory of ordinary
people who suffer apparent external, objective structural forces. In this tentative model,
nothing exists outside of the individual self or collective selves. CRT embraces a liberal idea of human subjectivity,
and so Race Crits cannot liberate anyone from so-called oppressive experiences. Nevertheless, I should point out that ordinary
people, relying on a pure consciousness theory of agency, can choose what personal
experiences and social realities they would like to co-create, thus reminding them that they
are human gods who simply play the role of victims.
of a range of personal experiences and social realities.
Modernity and American democracy aren’t inevitably tainted by anti-blackness –
individuals have agency to reform historically oppressive institutions.
Robinson 4 – Prof Law @ Howard University, Reginald, CRITICAL RACE THEORY: HISTORY,
EVOLUTION, AND NEW FRONTIERS: ARTICLE: HUMAN AGENCY, NEGATED
SUBJECTIVITY, AND WHITE STRUCTURAL OPPRESSION: AN ANALYSIS OF CRITICAL
RACE PRACTICE/PRAXIS, 53 Am. U.L. Rev. 1361
Whether stable or shifting, structures and ordinary people work together dualistically.
Broadly speaking, structural shifts evidence changing human activities and values.
Changes can be welcomed or otherwise, positive or negative. Regardless, structure has no life
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without human activities. Structural shifts are not objective, external forces that work against
ordinary people. For example, the Civil War qualifies as a structural shift. Supported by
historical ambivalence, ordinary people simply confronted their activities and values. For better
or worse, ordinary people simply encountered themselves. Although politicians expressed it in social and political
terms, a history of human ambivalence about American slavery gave rise to this War. Like
the Civil War, changing racial attitudes, social values, and political interest also qualify as
structural shifts, and these attitudes flow from us. n45¶ Structure matters. What matters
more, literally more, is the conscious mind. The conscious mind (e.g., race consciousness) has a social life, and it is through our
day-to-day practices that ordinary people experience the result of the conscious mind as an apparently tangible, external, and objective reality. Yet, it is a virtual one,
shifting when a critical mass of [*1371] ordinary people changes their core beliefs. n46 How we use language, and how we allow it to use us, n47 reinforces beliefs
and other engines of reality creation. For example, the Ho conflict came into sharp relief when each side expressed their views. n48 Language reveals beliefs and these
beliefs drove the Ho litigation. Rather than analyze this language, Yamamoto prefers to see the interracial conflict as structurally determined. n49 For ordinary people,
structural properties are social realities. If this conflict serves as a blank structural canvas, n50 Asians and blacks have painted their ideas of who ought to benefit from
Structure can be the hard edges of the canvas, but human hands built it. In this way,
Williams and
Yamamoto confer too much power on structural forces, thus relegating ordinary people to
mere witnesses to history. n51 In effect, they negate ordinary people's subjectivity. Yet, through their
these remedies.
structure works intimately with the conscious mind and human activities (e.g., race consciousness). It cannot be otherwise. ¶
antisubordination practices, they purport to cope with these forces by giving us a classic, yet banal tale of "structure" versus "agency." With a blend of modernist hope
and postmodernist surgery, they tell us that negated subjects can reclaim themselves.
The logic of social death replicates the violence of the middle passage – rejection is
necessary to honor the dead
Brown 09 – professor of history and of African and African American Studies specializing in Atlantic
Slavery (Vincent, “Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery,”
http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/documents/brown-socialdeath.pdf)
But this was not the emphasis of Patterson’s argument. As a result, those he has inspired have often conflated his exposition of slaveholding
ideology with a description of the actual condition of the enslaved. Seen
as a state of being, the concept of social
death is ultimately out of place in the political history of slavery. If studies of slavery would
account for the outlooks and maneuvers of the enslaved as an important part of that
history, scholars would do better to keep in view the struggle against alienation rather
than alienation itself. To see social death as a productive peril entails a subtle but significant shift in perspective, from seeing
slavery as a condition to viewing enslavement as a predicament, in which enslaved Africans and their descendants
never ceased to pursue a politics of belonging, mourning, accounting, and regeneration.
In part, the usefulness of social death as a concept depends on what scholars of slavery seek to explain—black pathology or black politics,
resistance or attempts to remake social life? For too long, debates about whether there were black families took precedence over discussions
of how such families were formed; disputes about whether African culture had “survived” in the Americas overwhelmed discussions of how
particular practices mediated slaves’ attempts to survive; and scholars felt compelled to prioritize the documentation of resistance over the
examination of political strife in its myriad forms. But of course, because slaves’ social and political life grew directly out of the violence and
dislocation of Atlantic slavery, these are false choices. And we may not even have to choose between tragic and romantic modes of
storytelling, for history tinged with romance may offer the truest acknowledgment of the tragedy confronted by the enslaved: it took heroic
effort for them to make social lives. There is romance, too, in the tragic fact that although scholars may never be able to give a satisfactory
account of the human experience in slavery, they nevertheless continue to try. If
scholars were to emphasize the
efforts of the enslaved more than the condition of slavery, we might at least tell richer
stories about how the endeavors of the weakest and most abject have at times reshaped
the world. The history of their social and political lives lies between resistance and
oblivion, not in the nature of their condition but in their continuous struggles to remake
it. Those struggles are slavery’s bequest to us.
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They assume that anti-black animus arises from nothingness but its caught up in a
broader web of historical power relationships like Islamophobia and nativism
Charoenying 8 (Timothy, Islamophobia & Anti-Blackness: A Genealogical Approach, http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobiaanti-blackness-genealogical-approach)
The year 1492
marked a major
turning point in the trajectory of Western Civilization. Elementary age children are taught this as the year
Columbus famously crossed the Atlantic. An equally significant event that year, was the Spanish conquest of al-Andalus–a
Moorish province on the southern Iberian peninsula established eight centuries earlier–and more importantly, the last major Muslim stronghold
on the European continent. Critical race scholars have argued that these two
events would not only shift the
geopolitical balance of power from the Orient to the Occident, but fundamentally alter
conceptions about religious and racial identity. According to Nelson Maldonado-Torres, of the University of
California, Berkeley, the expulsion of the Moors from continental Europe marked a transition from an age of imperial relations between Christian
and Muslim empires, to an age of European colonial expansion throughout the known world. The “discovery” of “godless” natives in the
Americas would also inspire the great debates between Las Casas and Sepúlveda in 1550 on the nature of the human soul. Such
a
geopolitical and philosophical shift, Maldonado-Torres argues, would lead to a Eurocentric, recategorization of humanity based upon religous—and ultimately racial—differences.
Maldonado-Torres has proposed that anti-black racism is not simply an extension of some historical bias
against blacks, but rather, is an amalgam of old-world Islamophobia linked to the history
of the Iberian peninsula, and to the notion of souless beings embodied in
popular conceptions about the indigenous natives of the Americas. These beliefs would
contribute to an ideological basis for, and justification of, colonial conquests in the name of
cultural and religious conversion, as well as pave the way for the enslavement and human
trafficking of sub-Saharan Africans.
Wilderson is wrong, reductionist, and essentialist
Ellison 11 (Mary, PhD, Fellow, African American and Indian American history and culture, Keele
University, “Review of: Red, White and Black: cinema and the structure of US antagonisms”
http://rac.sagepub.com/content/53/2/100.full.pdf+html?rss=1, Acc: 8/5/12,)
These are two illuminating, but frustratingly flawed books. Their approaches are different, although both frequently quote Frantz Fanon and Jacques Lacan. Frank
Wilderson utilises the iconic theoreticians within the context of a study that concentrates on
a conceptual ideology that, he claims, is based on a fusion of Marxism, feminism,
postcolonialism and psychology. He uses a small number of independent films to illustrate his
theories. Charlene Regester has a more practical framework. She divides her book into nine chapters devoted to individual female actors and then weaves her
ideological concepts into these specific chapters. Both have a problem with clarity. Regester uses less complex language than Wilderson, but still manages to be
obtuse at times. Wilderson starts from a position of using ontology and grammar as his main tools, but manages to consistently misuse or misappropriate terms like
his language is complicated,
his concepts are often oversimplified. He envisions every black person in film as a slave who is
suffering from irreparable alienation from any meaningful sense of cultural identity. He believes
fungible or fungibility. Wilderson writes as an intelligent and challenging author, but is often frustrating. Although
that filmmakers, including black filmmakers, are victims of a deprivation of meaning that has been condensed by Jacques Lacan as a ‘wall of language’ as well as an
inability to create a clear voice in the face of gratuitous violence. He cites Frantz Fanon, Orlando Patterson and Hortense Spiller as being among those theorists who
His own attempts to define ‘what is black?’, ‘a
subject?’, ‘an object?’, ‘a slave?’, seem bound up with limiting preconceptions, and he
evaluates neither blackness nor the ‘red’ that is part of his title in any truly meaningful
way.
effectively investigate the issues of black structural non-communicability.
Their deterministic scholarship = bad
Robinson 4 – Prof Law @ Howard University, Reginald, CRITICAL RACE THEORY: HISTORY,
EVOLUTION, AND NEW FRONTIERS: ARTICLE: HUMAN AGENCY, NEGATED
SUBJECTIVITY, AND WHITE STRUCTURAL OPPRESSION: AN ANALYSIS OF CRITICAL
RACE PRACTICE/PRAXIS, 53 Am. U.L. Rev. 1361
As an antisubordination practice, Williams' Practice and Yamamoto's Praxis grow out of structural determinism. For didactic purposes, I divide
this sociological concept into two parts: structuralism and determinism. Structuralism n130 directly links "words" and "reality." n131 It relates
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things to things. Speaker A talks
of things, and even if ordinary people, the listeners, cannot actually
"observe" these things, they become accustomed to experiencing the things as real, external
forces. n132 Speaker A reveals how society's underlying structure shapes an individual's
experience or group's life. n133 For Race Crits, an unseen thing like white racism limits and constrains how people believe, think,
feel, and act. n134¶ [*1383] Determinism states that a clear, narrow set of factors cause social events
in a relatively predictable way. n135 Broadly speaking, determinism is any theory, like CRT, that explains the world (e.g.,
white racism) by definable factors. n136 This approach negates a host of other factors, including human agency. n137 As
such, Race Crits can argue against the relative autonomy of ordinary people like blacks so
that they can pursue other political ends. By so doing, Race Crits can say that things (or a set of
things) cause ordinary people to be subtextual victims, thus explaining the moment-to-moment existence of, say, the
black community. If these things victimize ordinary people, it follows that ordinary people lack meaningful human agency. In this way,
determinism becomes a reductionist model, emphasizing a limited range of causal social factors that explains why ordinary people like Mexicans
suffer racism and racial discrimination. n138
Alt fails– presuming ontological whiteness obscures the shared cultural practices of
power structures and reinscribes oppression
Welcome 2004 – completing his PhD at the sociology department of the City University of New York's
Graduate Center (H. Alexander, "White Is Right": The Utilization of an Improper Ontological Perspective
in Analyses of Black Experiences, Journal of African American Studies, Summer-Fall 2004, Vol. 8, No. 1
& 2, pp. 59-73)
When addressing or investigating oppositional identity, roadblocks develop.
Oppositional identity within the black community is said to be a rejection of all things "white,"
in terms of behavior and attitudes toward the "white" perspective. This formulation
creates a dichotomous structure of behaviors and attitudes--some things are "white" and
some things are "black." More specifically, whatever is "white" is not and cannot be
"black." In this situation, the question becomes "who determines what is white?" One really
does not need to ask the question of "who determines what is black" because in this argument black
identity simply reflects the passively determined inverse of white identity. While the preceding
analysis suggests that there are problems with Fordham and Ogbu's (1986) conceptualization of the
genesis of black identity, other problems also occur with their presentation of what black identity reflects.
In the sociological study of identity, and black identity in particular, personal identity has often been
conflated with reference group orientation (Cross, 1991). Personal identity reflects "variables,
traits, or dynamics that appear in evidence in all human beings, regardless of social class,
gender, race, or culture; in this sense [personal identity] studies examine the so-called
universal components of behavior" (Cross, 1991, p. 43). Reference group orientation seeks to
discover "those aspects of the 'self' that are culture, class, and gender specific .... It seeks to discover
differences in values, perspectives, group identifies, lifestyles and worldviews" (Cross, 1991, p. 45).
Arguably, what Fordham and Ogbu label "identity" is actually reference group
orientation. This paradox in the "acting white" version of oppositional culture is the result
of the use of whiteness as an ontological frame. A theory of behavior wherein the agency of actors
is limited is not necessarily unsound. However, the inconsistency of the "acting white" version of
oppositional culture is its obfuscation of how the nature of identity does not change from
group to group, presenting a narrative about the black self that is theoretically untenable.
Also, by locating the origin of black identity in the mostly passive inversion of white
identity, the individual agency of blacks is obscured, creating a situation wherein white
actors possess a freedom to determine and construct their identity that is denied black
actors
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2ac Cap
Permutation do both- net benefit is unproductive expenditure- key to value to life
Goldhammer 5 (Jesse Goldhammer,
Trained in political theory, Jesse has a longstanding interest in the genealogy of social, economic,
and political power. He has taught in several universities, worked in the information technology sector, and is now a partner in a transnational
management consulting firm. His first book, "The Headless Republic," examined the role of violence and sacrifice in French intellectual and
political life. His most recent book, "Deviant Globalization," explores the underlying forces that enable a wide variety of illicit global flows,
including drugs, weapons, and toxic waste, “The Headless Republic: Sacrificial Violence in Modern French Thought,”
http://books.google.com/books?id=SFXoW2fEMWYC&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165&dq=bataille+potlatch+capitalism&source=bl&ots=PlzlDwEV
Qz&sig=5uyCCfBrPbF9NBjKBhNKT0Cy1vw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HyPTUeCuD4W0QHV2YHgCg&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false)
Bataille rejects Mauss’s interpretation of potlatch as a conservative form of ritual destruction that reforges
preexisting social norms and bonds. In his reformulation of potlatch, Bataille hypothesizes “that
potlatch is the means by which the established order is periodically disrupted and the
anguishing confrontation with death symbolized in the destruction of goods ritually
dramatized.” Unlike Mauss, Bataille has no interest in conserving any aspect of the status
quo. He views potlatch as merely a particular example of a more general sacrificial operation,
distinguished by its ability to make unrecoverable loss sacred. Whereas Mauss takes a more interest in
potlatch because it exchanges sacrificial loss for social obligation, Bataille argues that it makes violent
loss sacred, ambiguous, and destabilizing. Furthermore, Bataille expands the domain of unproductive
expenditure beyond the economic realm: “Luxury, mourning, war, cults, the construction of sumptuary
monuments, games, spectacles, arts, perverse sexual activity (i.e., deflected from genital finality)—all
these represent activities which, at least in primitive circumstances, have no end beyond themselves. For
Bataille, unproductive expenditure involves real and symbolic sacrificial waste. Because
modern societies have banished all but the most benign of those activities, modern human
beings are left without and significant or meaningful ways to partake of sumptuary loss.
Bataillle relishes unproductive expenditure because it directly challenges modern Frane’s
ethi of accumulation and utilitarianism and thus forms the basis of a sacrificial economy at
odds with the social, economic, and political foundations of modern society.
By fusing the notion of class conflict with his concept of sacrifice, Bataille reveals a new
basis for proletarian revolutionary fervor. He views the history of modern society as a
regressive withering away of unproductive expenditure, whiose disappearance has
provoked class conflict, strengthend reification, and heightened the revolutionary activites
of the proletariat. Trapped by a system of exchange based on an ethic of accumulation, the proletariat
has been alienated from and enslaved by the bourgeoisie, who have achieved their status through only
production and miserliness. Unrecoverable sacrificial loss thus offers the proletariat both a
means to combat its servile condition and a practice essential to the ontological
reconstitution of humanity. Such a sqeeping view of the role of sacrifice in the proletariat’s
revolutionary struggle reveals a Sorelian influence. But whereas Sorel considered the bourgeoisie
insufficiently capitalistic, Bataille views them as too concerned with production and
accumulation and thus as the enemies of a sacrificial economy based on waste. Echoing
Sorel’s lament of the bourgeoisie’s loss of sublimity, Bataille writes: Today the great and free forms
of unproductive social expenditure have disappeared.” Unlike Sorel, however, Bataille’s point
is that the proletariat overcomes its servile status by sacrificially destroying its masters and
their chosen forms of exchange.
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Anthropological descriptions of economic systems are useful for a more fine – tuned
analysis of capitalism- key to solve
Martin 12 (Keir Martin, Professor at the University of Manchester, “The ‘Potlatch of Destruction’: Gifting against the State,”
http://coa.sagepub.com/content/32/2/125.full.pdf+html)
Anthropology has long been a rich source of material for radical anti-capitalists looking for
supporting evidence for their views. In particular, ethnographic descriptions of people in
‘pre-capitalist’ or ‘pre-class’ societies have often been used to demonstrate that many of
the negative features of capitalist society that tend to be taken for granted (greed, competition,
inequality, etc.) are not the result of human nature but of society or culture and are therefore not inevitable but open to
change. This use of anthropology has a long pedigree in revolutionary theory. As Bloch (1983: 10)
notes, anthropology served a double purpose in the work of Marx and Engels; first being a
means for helping to develop a ‘historical’ account of the forces that motivate social change
and, second, providing a ‘rhetorical’ counterpoint to claims for the universality of capitalist
social relations. This second ‘rhetorical’ use of anthropology is still very much alive and well. Revolutionary groups continue to produce
pamphlets in which anthropological accounts of hunter gatherers are used to demonstrate such arguments:¶ A truly communal life is often
dismissed as a utopian ideal, to be endorsed in theory but unattainable in practice. But the evidence of foraging people tells us otherwise.
A
sharing way of life is not only possible but has actually existed in many parts of the world
and over long periods of time. (Molyneux, 2003:14).¶ Robinson and Tormey (this volume) provide a more detailed description
of anar- chist appropriations of ethnography as part of the ‘generation of critique’ of cap- italist everyday normality. Such ‘rhetorical’ uses of
anthropology have long disturbed academic anthropologists, even those who are sympathetic to the polit- ical theories of those espousing them, as
rhetoric can lead one into theoretical simplifications or even falsifications (e.g. Bloch, 1983: 16). These uses of anthro- pology have become even
more unpalatable following the postmodern turn of the 1980s, when the kind of division of the world into western and non-western cultures,
which provided easy ethnographic material for radical rhetorical appro- priation, fell out of favour and became itself viewed as a kind
objectifying violence¶ 128 Critique of Anthropology 32(2)¶ at GEORGETOWN UNIV LIBRARY on July 2, 2013coa.sagepub.comDownloaded
from ¶ by which the object of anthropological study is constructed as the primitive Other outside of history (e.g. Clifford and Marcus, 1986;
Fabian, 1983). The Situationists’ use of anthropology, in common with other revolutionary anti-capitalists, certainly did make use of contrasts
between the dehumanized cap- italist present and the romanticized pre-capitalist past, that most contemporary anthropologists would treat with
the utmost suspicion. For example, leading Situationist Raoul Vaneigem (1994: 77), writing on, ‘Exchange and gift’ in his book, The Revolution
of Everyday Life:¶ Primitive man’s unity with nature is essentially magical. Man only really separates himself from nature by transforming it
through technology, and as he transforms it he disenchants it. But the use of technology is determined by social organization...Social organization
– hierarchical, since it is based on private appropriation – gradually destroys the magical bond between man and nature. ¶ But the Situationist use
of anthropological theory goes well beyond such familiar radical rhetorical uses of the primitive Other of alienated capitalism. Gift
exchange’s perceived tendency to totalize and reveal social relations potentially made it a
weapon to be used in the struggle against what the Situationists had come to see as the
main arena of revolutionary struggle; the tendency of commod- ity exchange (not production per se)
to reify social relations and hide their inter- connectedness. The !Kung San may provide a rhetorical illustration of the nonhierarchical potential within human nature, waiting to blossom as soon as historical circumstances and the victorious struggle of the international
proletariat allow, but no-one was suggesting that they might actually provide a model for how that struggle might be conducted. No pamphlets
were produced suggesting that collecting and sharing nuts and berries might provide an alternative to the trade union struggle or the need to build
the vanguard party. These remained the key to unlocking the future potential of humanity of which the !Kung and their like could merely give
revolutionaries fleeting glimpses.
Turn- Gift giving is a form of generosity which disrupts the flows of capital in favor
of a giving economy
Martin 12 (Keir Martin, Professor at the University of Manchester, “The ‘Potlatch of Destruction’: Gifting against the State,”
http://coa.sagepub.com/content/32/2/125.full.pdf+html)
That this form of exchange was as important as the content of the knowledge in Potlatch is also made clear by Debord in a letter written towards
the end of his life in which he notes the importance of the way in which the distribution of Potlatch was: ¶ rigorous in its rejection of market
relations. Potlatch – obeying its title – was only ever given away for free in the time it was published. (Debord, 2006)4 ¶ The Lettrists’, and
subsequently the Situationists’ great claim was that one
could choose to reject market relations of commodity
exchange by appropriating the separated knowledge that they offered and then recirculating it as a gift that would provoke others to make their own connections. If the
spectacle-capitalism formed a circuit for the circulation of reified commodified knowledge,
then the Lettrists’ aim was to create a modern potlatch in which they could, ‘interrupt the
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circuit when and where we please’, as Andre-Frank Conord put it in his article, ‘Potlatch: directions for use’, that introduced
the first issue of the journal (Conord, 1954). Potlatch and the gift had gone from being another illustration
of an archaic practice that showed that alternatives to capitalist hierarchy were possible to
being one of the weapons that could be used to disrupt its flows. As the first issue of Potlatch proclaimed,
‘We are working toward the conscious and collective estab- lishment of a new civilization’ (Conord, 1954). This desire to use the gift as the tool
of revolutionary transformation continued into the Situationist International. For the Situationists, the
gift functioned simultaneously as a message from humanity’s past, a vision of its future once a society of
material plenty was freed from the yoke of economic rationalism and, most cru- cially, a
tool to be used to remove that yoke in the present. As Vaneigem (1994: 81) put it:¶ We must rediscover
the pleasure of giving: giving because you have so much. What beautiful and priceless potlatches the affluent society will see –
whether it likes it or¶ 130 Critique of Anthropology 32(2)¶ at GEORGETOWN UNIV LIBRARY on July 2, 2013coa.sagepub.comDownloaded
from ¶ not! – when the exuberance of the younger generation discovers the pure gift. The growing passion for stealing books, clothes, food,
weapons or jewelry simply for the pleasure of giving them away gives us a glimpse of what the will to live has in store for consumer society.¶ In
the Situationist publication, The Return of the Durutti Column (AFGES, 1966), a kind of comic-book illustration of their ideas in which photos
and images from mass media publications are ‘detourned’ or have their meanings symbolically altered through the addition of captions or speech
bubbles, the idea of the revo- lutionary gift continues to play a large part. The
practice of stealing goods to give them
away, as practised by juvenile delinquents, is praised as transcending capital- ist order and
rediscovering, ‘the practice of the gift’. As a consequence there will be no need for pointless
accumulation, and, ‘therefore no more need for laws, no more need for masters’. Later on a
caption proclaiming money to be the root of discord and hatred is counterposed with other text proposing that it should be replaced with potlatch
(Marcus, 1997: 421–2).
Potlatching prevents the impacts of capitalism and effectively removes the excess of
wealth that capitalist culture attempts to accumulate
Yang 2k(Yang, Mayfair, Ph.D Anthropology, professor at U.C. Berkeley, fellowship at Harvard, Putting
Global Capitalism in its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure, pg 482, 2000)
Baudrillard’s emphasis on consumption and the radical difference of precapitalist formations owes much
to the earlier work of Georges Bataille. Bataille produced a very different kind of critique of capitalism,
one focused not on production but on consumption. He found that in archaic economies
“production was subordinated to nonproductive destruction” (1989a:90). The great motive
force of these societies was not the compulsion to produce (which unleashes a process of
objectification whereby all forms of life, including humans, become things) but a desire to escape the
order of things and to live for the present moment through exuberant consumption in the
form of excesses of generosity, display, and sacrifice. The societies of Kwakwaka’wakw potlatch
feasting, Aztec human sacrifice, Islamic militarism, and Tibetan monastic Lamaism all understood the
necessity of nonproductive expenditure (Bataille 1989b). They set aside a major proportion of
their wealth for expenditures which ensured the “wasting” and “loss” of wealth rather than
rational accumulation. This destructive consumption allowed them to avoid the deadly hand
of utility and to restore some of the lost “intimacy” of an existence without a separation between
sacred and profane. Whereas Weber (1958) looked to religion to explain the origins of the capitalist
ethic, Bataille looked to archaic religion for seeds of a subversion of capitalism. If forms of archaic ritual
prestation and sacrificial destruction of wealth could be reintegrated into modern economies,
capitalism would have built-in mechanisms for social redistribution and for limiting its
utilitarian productivism and incessant commodification of nature and culture. Its expansionary
tendencies would suffer frequent shutdowns and reversals. Bataille’s project called for widening the
frame of our economic inquiry to what he called a general economy, which accounted not only for such
things as production, trade, and finance but also for social consumption, of which ritual and religious
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sacrifice, feasting, and festival were important components in precapitalist economies. In Bataille’s
approach, religion was not an epiphenomenal derivative of the infrastructures of production but an
economic activity in itself. A general economy treats economic wealth and growth as part of the
operations of the law of physics governing the global field of energy for all organic phenomena, so that,
when any organism accumulates energy in excess of that needed for its subsistence, this energy must be
expended and dissipated in some way. What he proposed in his enigmatic and mesmerizing book The
Accursed Share was that, in our modern capitalist productivism, we have lost sight of this
fundamental law of physics and material existence: that the surplus energy and wealth left over
after the basic conditions for subsistence, reproduction, and growth have been satisfied must
be expended. If this energy is not destroyed, it will erupt of its own in an uncontrolled
explosion such as war. Given the tremendous productive power of modern industrial society and the
fact that its productivist ethos has cut off virtually all traditional avenues of ritual and festive
expenditures, energy surpluses have been redirected to military expenditures for modern warfare on a
scale unknown in traditional societies. Bataille thought that the incessant growth machine that is the
post-World War II U.S. economy could be deflected from a catastrophic expenditure on violent warfare
only by potlatching the entire national economy. In giving away its excess wealth to poorer nations, as in
the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-torn Europe, the United States could engage in a nonmilitary rivalry for
prestige and influence with the Soviet Union, that other center of industrial modernity’s radical
reduction of nonproductive expenditure.14 Thus, Bataille wished to resuscitate an important dimension
of the economy, nonproductive expenditure, that has all but disappeared in both capitalist and state
socialist modernity.
Turn- gift giving is in direct opposition to capitalist notions of commodity and
exchange
Martin 12 (Keir Martin, Professor at the University of Manchester, “The ‘Potlatch of Destruction’: Gifting against the State,”
http://coa.sagepub.com/content/32/2/125.full.pdf+html)
Thirty years prior to the publication of Sahlins’ article, the Situationists were also interested in processes of cultural humiliation. And like
Sahlins, they were interested in the ways in which the increasing importance of commodity exchange can be the motor of that humiliation. But
unlike Sahlins, for whom this process is essentially the result of a commodity culture imposing its values upon a gifting culture, the Situationists
point to the possibility that unequal access to commod- ities is a source of humiliation and social hierarchy that are central to the con- stitution of
social class in western societies (well before the publication of works such as Bourdieu’s (1984) Distinction, that focus on this possibility).
Debord’s analysis of humiliation differs slightly from Sahlins’ as well in the sense that, for Debord, humiliation seems to be an inherent property
of the dehumanizing spirit of the commodity, whereas for Sahlins it is more the case that there are some historically specific cultures that have to
be humiliated in order for capitalist development to progress. This fleeting description of the importance of humilia- tion and the possibility for
rejecting it in ‘The decline and fall of the spectacle- commodity economy’ (Debord, 1981), is developed further in the second chapter of
Vaneigem’s Revolution of Everyday Life (1994), which is simply entitled ‘Humiliation’. Here the argument for the relationship between
humiliation and exchange is made in more detail. Although the Vaneigem acknowledges the
importance of the humiliations
of colonialism and racism, for him these are merely one aspect of a generalized authority
inherent in a world of commodity production and exchange: a generalized authority that
ultimately humiliates all of those who are condemned to live within it (Vaneigem, 1994: 37). For Sahlins,
the humiliation of colonialism is indeed intimately tied to the insistence that the colonized
adopt the cultural logic of commodity accumulation and exchange, but there is little sense that this cultural
logic does not simply derive from the West but is in fact equally problematic, humiliating and resisted within its alleged heartlands.¶ Martin 137¶
at GEORGETOWN UNIV LIBRARY on July 2, 2013coa.sagepub.comDownloaded from ¶ One of the implications of Sahlins’ (2005: 24, 39)
description is the ways in which gifting
and the transformation of gifts into commodities can be seen as
a resistance to colonialism and its humiliations. Gifting as an act of resistance was, as we have seen, an idea developed
by the Situationists 25 years earlier. Potlatch is re-invented in the Watts riots, or, as Vaneigem puts it in his discussion of humiliation, ‘ a new
reality can only be based on the principle of the gift’ (1994: 31, emphasis in the original). One does not necessarily
need to wholeheartedly agree with every aspect of the Situationists’ analysis of the meaning of looting, or indeed the inherent humiliating
potential of the commodity, to see that the model of commodity- based humiliation that Vaneigem draws from it is potentially more nuanced than
Sahlins’, not only because it sees the potential for this humiliation to affect the inhabitants of western society, but also by virtue of the way in
which it perceives humiliation as an ongoing contested dynamic in which tendencies for commodity humiliation or its rejection are in constant
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flux. And rather than this more nuanced perspective being some kind of accident that the Situationists developed despite the drawback of
appropriating anthropological theory for activist rhetoric,
it is precisely their desire to engage with contemporary
political debates and socio- economic cleavages at the heart of western political economies
that led them to view humiliation as an ongoing tension central to those political economies
rather than a juggernaut that those political economies inflicted on other parts of the
world.
Capitalism is entrenched in the logic of scarcity; the only way of breaking down Capitalism is
too destroy this logic through the act of Potlatch. The Indigenous people of the Americas are
forced to conform to the European model of economic scarcity, forcing the extinction of
cultures and the production of indigenous docile bodies.
Keating 09 (Neal Keating, PhD, University at Albany, SUNY Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology, “Rioting & Looting:
As a Modern-Day Form of Potlatch”
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/neal-keating-rioting-looting-as-a-modern-day-form-of-potlatch)
A spectre haunts the modern world. It is the spectre of the gift. Everywhere the fight goes on, to get people to respect property, and to accept
the miseries that come with such respect, such as work, destitution, and injustice. It is an endless fight by necessity. The minute it ceases, or
weakens (e.g., gets caught on videotape), people break out into activities of an altogether different nature. They riot, and they loot. They
relieve things of their fixed commodity values. The redistribution of these relieved things does not take the form of a sale, nor even a trade.
Without a fixed price, they can only be considered as gifts. Many societies throughout the world practiced their entire economic activities along
the lines of gift-exchanges, the most famous of which is the potlatch.[1] As
the modern societies continue to approach
total collapse, we see an interesting trend developing. Potlatching is making a comeback ! This
was recently demonstrated in 1992 in South-Central Los Angeles, when more than twelve-thousand people took to the streets to express
themselves through the destruction of great amounts of accumulated wealth. Around
Christmas in 1921, a Nimkish
Kwakiutl fellow named Dan Cranmer hosted a six-day potlatch at Village Island, near Alert Bay in the Canadian
province of British Colombia.[2] The occasion was that of his marriage. Cranmer, being true to his
Kwakiutl traditions, planned to celebrate the event with a long feast during which he would
give everyone gifts. Some three-hundred guests (fellow Kwakiutls) were on hand to witness
and receive Cranmer’s giving away of all his accumulated wealth. Cranmer reportedly started out on the first
day by receiving much of this wealth from his wife’s family (like a dowry). That night there was a dance. The next day he gave away twenty-four
canoes, pool tables for two chiefs, four gasoline boats, and another pool table. He gave away blankets, gaslights, violins and guitars, kitchen
utensils and three-hundred trunks. Women were given bracelets, shawls and dresses. Sweaters and shirts were given to youngsters, and coins
were thrown in the air for children to collect. Another dance was held afterwards. He did not remember what he did on the third day (perhaps
he was in a swoon). During the fourth day he gave away sewing machines, gramophones, bedsteads, and bureaus, along with more boxes and
trunks. On the fifth day he gave away cash. And on the sixth he gave away about 1000 sacks of flour, each worth three dollars (a lot of money in
1921), as well as some sugar. It
was one of the largest potlatches on record. Although it sounds like a good time for
everyone, Cranmer’s potlatch was in fact against the law, and he, along with fifty other
Kwakiutls, had criminal charges brought against them as a result . Twenty-two of those people were
imprisoned for two months, and the rest were given suspended sentences on the condition that they surrender all their potlatch gear, which
included dance masks, ceremonial whistles, and plaques of beaten copper (known as “coppers”). The
law Cranmer had violated
is known as Canada’s Indian Act of 1885, which specifically made any potlatching illegal. The
reasoning behind this act was produced by a typical blend of missionary and governmental
rationales which had as their goal the assimilation of Aboriginals into modern society, and the
extinction of their cultures . The motives behind these goals were hardly just misguided altruism. In reality, The Canadian
government (as did the American government) was seeking the absolute extension of the rule of property.
Potlatching was a
threat to this rule because among other things, potlatching was an economic system of
distribution that followed along communal lines. It took commodities and turned them into
gifts, thus mocking the entire system of capitalist production . Potlatch destroys property. It is the old
story of the “lazy Indian,” the one who is indolent and thriftless. The big project was figuring
out how to get these people to work. Forcing practices of private property on them seemed
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the obvious choice. Potlatching was perceived by Canadian legislators as a “mania,” an “insane exuberance of generosity”[3] that had
to be stopped. Cranmer might as well have gone a-looting. Americans today generally think the intentional
destruction of property is a bad thing. When rioters and looters take to the streets, people
generally agree that society is breaking down. Those people caught rioting and looting get put
in prison. Laws are made against such actions. The same goes for the rest of the modern world. Yet within the
context of gift economies like potlatch, such actions were not only held in high regard, they
enhanced social solidarity. Although the contexts in which potlatching went on are very
different from the context in which the L.A. riots of 1992 took place, there is a common
ground. That ground is the necessity to squander the surplus . In one case the forcing pressure is custom, in the
other it is injustice. The point is that they are both pressures demanding the destruction of property through its redistribution or outright
elimination. This pressure will make itself felt one way or another.¶ With the knowledge of the gift and the accursed share, it seems reasonable
that the gift economy is a far more preferable mechanism for our material activities. It offers the advantages of individual autonomy, a flexible
market for exchange, but without all the problems that come with commodities, like work. Going from here to there will certainly be tricky, but
I suggest we start with a lesson from the Kwakiutl. The big chief is not made so by force, nor by right. He is made by rank and status, which he
acquires through a demonstrated superior disregard for material wealth. On those grounds I suggest that the twelve-thousand or so people
who were arrested for rioting, and especially looting, be made into potlatch chiefs. Furthermore, I suggest that an obligation to reciprocate is
incumbent upon the rest of us. The South-Central potlatchers threw a grand maxwa. Who will throw the next potlatch?
Generosity and sacrifice are necessary for a meaningful consumption of an excess –
simple consumption leads to ontological destruction of the self
Stoekl 07( Stoekl, Allan, philosopher, professor at Penn State University, “Bataille’s Peak: Energy Religion and Postsustainable, 2007)
,” Bataille first broaches the issue of generosity in the context of the radical
apathy analyzed by Blanchot in his essay on Sade. As we have seen, Sadean subjectivity is nothing more than an intensification to
the point of explosion (or implosion) of violent energy. Bataille shifts the emphasis of Blanchot’s version of Sade slightly by
emphasizing a link between this self -destruction and generosity. Bataille stresses in his first Sade essay, in
Erotism, the fact that “denying others in the end becomes denying oneself ” (OC, 10: 174; E, 175). Bataille, however, asks:
“What can be more disturbing than the prospect of selfishness becoming the will to perish
in the furnace lit by selfishness?” (OC, 10: 174; E, 175). The extreme selfishness of Sade’s characters thus turns against selfishness:
when extreme pleasure is pushed to the limit, the sheer energy of destructiveness threatens
the stability of all selfish subjectivity. Bataille goes on to illustrate this self -destruction with
a reference to a character, Amélie, who appears very briefly in Sade’s Juliette. Amélie, though quickly sketched, is striking because she
offers herself as a crime victim to one of Sade’s most sinister villains, Borchamps. Bataille cites a passage in which Amélie addresses
In “De Sade’s Sovereign Man
Borchamps: I love your ferocity; swear to me that one day I shall also be your victim. Since I was 15 my imagination has been fired only at the thought of dying a
victim of the cruel passions of a libertine. Not that I wish to die tomorrow—my extravagant fantasies do not go that far; but that is the only way I want to die; to have
my death the result of a crime sets my head spinning. (OC, 10: 174– 75; E, 175–76) Bataille cites Borchamps’s response: “I love your head madly, and I think we
shall achieve great things between us . . . rotten and corrupt as it is, I grant you” (OC, 10: 175; E, 176). Although Bataille gives no reference, the incident with
Borchamps takes place in the fifth part of Juliette. Oddly enough though, while thelittle speech by Amélie is to be found there (Sade 1966, 276), Borchamps’s
response, as cited, is not. In fact nowhere in Borchamps’s appearances does he say anything of the sort. Of course it is possible that Bataille found his remark in some
version of Juliette, or in some other text that mentions his name. But the standard version of
Juliette does not include it; all Borchamps says is, in an autobiographical narrative, “Deeply
moved [ému] myself by such a proposal, I protested to Amélie that she would have reason to be
pleased with¶ me” (Sade 1966, 276). The passage Bataille cites, wherever it may come from, is
nevertheless stronger: Borchamps tells Amélie that he loves her (strictly speaking, he loves her
head); in effect, he promises her that they will have a relationship based on love. Something of
the sort does take place in Sade’s novel: Borchamps marries Amélie; they flee to St.
Petersburg, where Borchamps commits all¶ sorts of crimes; they live in great luxury and have
what seems, strangely (for Sade), a happy conjugal life for two years. In the end no less than
the Empress Catherine demands that Amélie be murdered in an orgy, and Borchamps is
happy to oblige. It is clear as well that he has become bored with their relationship, since
Amélie has turned out to be a bit less devoted to crime, and a bit more to faithfulness and
contentment, than the libertine first suspected. Her initial speech, the one that so moved Bataille,
earlier¶
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was, he tells us, only a “raffinement de délicatesse” (refined bit of thoughtfulness) (Sade 1966,
279). It seems that Borchamps has taken Amélie at her word, whereas she had only been
engaging in a bit of flattery. She finally has to be content with the end that she herself has
chosen. Important here, I think, is the fact that Bataille projects onto the figure of Amélie a
kind of gracious generosity, which is returned as love by the criminal Borchamps. It is not just
that Sade’s characters are, as Blanchot would have it, pushing their violence to the point of
total apathy toward their own selves, their own survival. Rather, an extreme devotion to
crime— to, as the prewar Bataille would put it, the production of heterogeneous objects—
leads, surprisingly, to a self -sacrificing generosity. The self is not simply destroyed in a
whirlwind of energy; the self is destroyed through an excess of energy entailing a mortal
gift of oneself in love, in crime, to the other. And that love is in some way reciprocated. The
cult, the myth, of the death of God and ultimately of Man is inseparable from the gift of oneself,
to the point of death. All this is important because it indicates a direction that Bataille can
follow, one that leads away from the sheer fictionality or parody of Sade (indeed, we can
never be certain of parody to the extent that it is the reversible trope par excellence) toward a
mythical -anthropological model in which the histories of “primitive” societies can be
invoked to justify a reconceptualization of our own, modern, social order. The violence of
Amélie, even though (and perhaps because) it is self -destructive, shows clearly enough that
extreme “disorder” (to use an expression dear to Sade) leads not to the simple extinction of the
self but also to a bond with another: the beginnings of a community. We might even say that this
generosity, linked to love, is the unintended aftereffect of a violent spending of oneself to the
point of self -extinction. The extreme generosity that we saw as being inseparable from the death
of Man (the death of self, law, permanence) entails, unforeseen, unplanned, the establishment of
a community. The more one squanders, the more one deviates from a supreme selfishness,
not just in the direction of “apathetic” self -destruction (which reaffirms the human in the
very isolation of the Sadean sovereign), but in the direction of a generosity that inaugurates a
social tie. This is the movement that characterizes both the death of the self (of Man) and the
death of God. The will here is virtually irrelevant: it is not so much that Amélie is seeking a
social bond with another through her will to a limitless death, but rather that that bond is the
inevitable aftereffect of the will to the “continuity of crime,” as Bataille calls it (OC, 10: 175; E,
176). That will is attained through a spending of oneself without limit, with no goal, with no
desire for anything positive or constructive. Nevertheless, attaining the “continuity of crime,”
which is the continuity of energy that violates all arbitrary human boundaries and laws, is the
attainment of a social order more profound, more basic, than that of the current bourgeois
regime. It is as if the Sadean sovereign analyzed by Blanchot realizes that his or her¶
concentration of energy and explosive death (through apathy) entails in the end not a predatory
selfishness but a profound generosity—and that this generosity, through the death of God and
Man, goes on to reenergize a moribund and oppressive society
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2ac Falsifiability
Bataille uses the scientific method to form the basis of his criticism
Hochroth 95 Lysa Hochroth, Professor @ the French Departments at Columbia
University and at the University of the District of Columbia, “The Scientific Imperative:
Improductive Expenditure and Energeticism,” Configurations 3.1 (1995) 47-77, (Project
Muse)
Before getting into the specifics, and as the point is not often discussed, we must first pause to examine Bataille's
relationship to the natural sciences. Bataille himself repeatedly called attention to his interest
in (pure) science. 21 On one occasion, he mentioned his scientific background regarding La part
maudite, in a note for a text called "La limite de l'utile" related to the preface of the book: "Dans la
préface, ma vie et le principe de l'extrême. Sur aucun des points traités, rien de plus
qu'une compétence douteuse--formation scientifique toutefois." 22 Yet this short
passage only begins to support the idea proposed herein that Bataille was driven by an
epistemological reevaluation of the scientific bases of social philosophy. In short, he accorded
science with a preponderant role in explaining thought and consciousness. Science also proves
the relativity of utility as a category and opens up onto the investigation of universal matter: "Si
je continue d'en passer par la science, je suis amené à voir ces galaxies entraînant des étoiles sans nombre." 23 The human
condition has become isolated, not only due to alienation in the restricted economics of the
capitalist world, but also as a manifestation of a more general fact, that man has become
isolated from the universe to which he belongs. Bataille defined his scientific approach as
critical, aware of his own hesitations, and yet capable of pushing science beyond its affective
limitations and bent on making an effort toward detachment to arrive at a greater
understanding of the world: On dit souvent que les données de science sont abstraites et vides de sens. Mais de telles vérités
faciles n'enferment rien. J'imagine un esprit enclin à l'intériorité mais n'admettant rien que la science ne fonde (encore qu'il la considère de
sang-froid, comme il convient). La science lui paraîtrait sans doute un piège: il dirait aux savants son effroi de les voir vains, sans angoisse.
Mais [End Page 56] ce qu'il apprend du monde dans les livres ne pourrait lui sembler vide. Il lirait ce qui suit dans ses études. 24 This passage
The limits of utility are literally preceded by scientific
considerations. This is reiterated, and Bataille, after describing the galaxies, their movements,
the stars, and the planets, pinpoints the fundamental value of these scientific premises: "Sans la
leads directly into the above-cited text "La limite de l'utile."
science, je n'aurais pu dire ce qui précède et la science m'autorise à m'attarder. La suite du livre se développe à partir de ces prémices: elle
fait voir dans la vie humaine à la fois l'avidité économique, propre aux éléments divisés de la terre, et la nostalgie d'une gloire qui
Scientific thought, just like naive contemplation, opens up the
universe--and is, in short, Bataille's passport to the extreme realm of improductive expenditure.
n'appartient vraiment qu'aux cieux." 25
Standards of falsifiability guarantee massive skepticism – both undermines the aff’s
predictions and fails to access the foundational sacrifice of the alternative
Garcia 6 (professor of philosophy, at the University of Florida, former professor at the University of
Bogota, citing and extrapolating on the studies of Karl Popper, winner of the Kyoto Prize in Arts and
Philosophy, philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics, Carlos, “Popper’s Theory of
Science: An Apologia (Continuum Studies in Philosophy)”, 2006, Print josh nabors)
Lakatos then argues that even if his evaluation of assumptions (a) and (b) above were wrong,
no theory would ever meet the criterion falsifiability in the sense of prohibiting an observable
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state of affairs. Lakatos tells how a Newtonian scientist confronted with the anomalous behavior of a planet is able to engage in an
endless process of inventing ingenious conjectures instead of considering every deviation from the predicted values as an instance of a state of
affairs prohibited by the theory. In
other words, the Newtonian scientist saves the theory from
falsification by tirelessly introducing auxiliary hypotheses as needed. In contradistinction to
Popper, Lakatos thinks that irrefutability, in the sense of tenacity of a theory against
empirical evidence, should become the hallmark of science. )2 Moreover, anyone who
accepts dogmatic falsificationalism tie. the demarcation criterion and the idea that facts can
prove factual statements‘) should reach the exact opposite conclusions that Popper endorses:
the dogmatic falsificationalist would have to consider the most important scientific theories
ever proposed metaphysical; he would he forced to redefine
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2ac Extinction o/w’s
And, only our impact is irreversible – humanity may recover after a nuclear war
but ontological damnation is final
Zimmerman 94
(Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University – 94 (Michael, Contesting Earth's Future, p. 119-120)
Heidegger asserted that human self-assertion, combined with the eclipse of being, threatens the relation between
being and human Dasein. Loss of this relation would be even more dangerous than a nuclear war that might "bring
about the complete annihilation of humanity and the destruction of the earth." This controversial claim is
comparable to the Christian teaching that it is better to forfeit the world than to lose one's soul by losing one's
relation to God. Heidegger apparently thought along these lines: it is possible that after a nuclear war, life might
once again emerge, but it is far less likely that there will ever again occur an ontological clearing through which
such life could manifest itself. Further, since modernity's one-dimensional disclosure of entities virtually denies
them any "being" at all, the loss of humanity's openness for being is already occurring. Modernity's background
mood is horror in the face of nihilism, which is consistent with the aim of providing material "happiness" for
everyone by reducing nature to pure energy. The unleashing of vast quantities of energy in nuclear war would be
equivalent to modernity's slow-motion destruction of nature: unbounded destruction would equal limitless
consumption. If humanity avoided nuclear war only to survive as contented clever animals, Heidegger believed we
would exist in a state of ontological damnation: hell on earth, masquerading as material paradise. Deep ecologists
might agree that a world of material human comfort purchased at the price of everything wild would not be a world
worth living in, for in killing wild nature, people would be as good as dead. But most of them could not agree that
the loss of humanity's relation to being would be worse than nuclear omnicide, for it is wrong to suppose that the
lives of millions of extinct and unknown species are somehow lessened because they were never "disclosed" by
humanity.
A loss of value to life precedes all other impacts – death is preferable to a valueless
life
Mitchell 5
[Andrew J. Mitchell, Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University, "Heidegger and Terrorism,"
Research in Phenomenology, Volume 35, Number 1, 2005 , pp. 171-217]
Devastation (Verwistung) is the process by which the world becomes a desert (Wfiste), a sandy expanse that
seemingly extends without end, without landmarks or direction, and is devoid of all life.20 If we follow the dialogue
in thinking an ancient Greek notion of "life" as another name for "being," then the lifeless desert is the being-less
desert. The world that becomes a lifeless desert is consequently an unworld from which being has withdrawn. The
older prisoner makes this connection explicit, "The being of an age of devastation would then consist in the
abandonment of being" (GA 77: 213). As we have seen, this is a process that befalls the world, slowly dissolving it
of worldliness and rendering it an "unworld" (cf. GA 7: 88, 92f./EP, 104, 107f., etc.). Yet this unworld is not simply
the opposite of world; it remains a world, but a world made desert. The desert is not the complete absence of world.
Such an absence would not be reached by devastation (Verwisiung), but rather by annihilation (Vernichtung); and
for Heidegger, annihilation is far less of a concern than devastation: "Devastation is more uncanny than mere
annihilation [blofle Vernichtung]. Mere annihilation sweeps aside all things including even nothingness, while
devastation on the contrary orders and spreads everything that blocks and prevents" (WHD, 11/29-30; tin).
Annihilation as a thought of total absence is a thought from metaphysics. It is one with a thinking of pure presence:
pure presence, pure absence, and. purely no contact between them. During another lecture course on H6lderlin, this
time in 1942 on the hymn "The Ister," Heidegger claims that annihilation is precisely the agenda of America in
regards to the "homeland," which is here equated with Europe: "We know today that the Anglo-Saxon world of
Americanism has resolved to annihilate [zu vernichten] Europe, that is, the homeland, and that means: the inception
of the Western world. The inceptual is indestructible [unzersto'rbar]" (GA 53: 68/54; tm). America is the agent of
technological devastation, and it operates under the assumptions of presence and absence that it itself is so expert at
dissembling. America resolves to annihilate and condemns itself to fdilure in so doing, for the origin is
"indestructible." We could take this a step further and claim that only because the origin cannot be annihilated is it
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possible to destroy it. This possibility of destruction is its indestructible character. It can always be further
destroyed, but you will never annihilate it. Americanism names the endeavor or resolution to drive the destruction of
the world ever further into the unworld. America is the agent of a malevolent being. This same reasoning explains
why the older man's original conception of evil had to be rethought. Evil is the "devastation of the earth and the
annihilation of the human essence that goes along with it" (GA 77: 207), he said, but this annihilation is simply too
easy, too much of an "Americanism." The human essence is not annihilated in evil-who could care about that?
Instead it is destroyed and devastated by evil. Devastation does not annihilate, but brings about something worse, the
unworld. Without limit, the desert of the unworld spreads, ever worsening and incessantiy urging itself to new
expressions of malevolence. Annihilation would bring respite and, in a perverse sense, relief. There would be
nothing left to protect and guard, nothing left to concern ourselves with-nothing left to terrorize. Devastation is also
irreparable; no salvation can arrive for it. The younger man is able to voice the monstrous conclusion of this
thinking of devastation: "Then malevolence, as which devastation occurs [sich ereignet], would indeed remain a basic characteristic of being itself" (GA 77: 213, 215; em). The older man agrees, "being would be in the ground of
its essence malevolent" (GA 77: 215). Being is not evil; it is something much worse; being is malevolent.
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2ac Bataille is a Fascist
Bataille isn’t a fascist.
Falasca-Zamponi 6 (Simonetta Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “A Left
Sacred or a Sacred Left?, South Central Review.” Accessed:7/19/12.
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/south_central_review/v023/23.1falasca-zamponi.html josh nabors)
The connection between politics and sacred did not escape Georges Bataille. He saw in fascism the
fulfillment of the sacred's ability to [End Page 43] communify, and founded the Collège de sociologie as
the intellectual site for exploring such a "burning" issue. We indeed owe to Bataille a first analysis of
fascism, well ahead of the Collège, that drew from French sociology, German phenomenology and psychoanalysis. In his 1933 essay "The
Psychological Structure of Fascism," Bataille formulated a theory of politics that was based, Bataille argued, on actual
experiences, and that directly implicated the role of the sacred. Bataille contended that Marx had not made
clear the impact of the base on the formation of "religious and political society."13 More fundamentally,
Bataille claimed, the economic base could not explain the origins and development of a social
phenomenon such as fascism. In order to understand the formation of religious and political societies,
Bataille continued, it was necessary to lay out a general explanation of the social structure as a whole on
the basis of concepts such as homogeneity, heterogeneity, affectivity and, more generally, here
mentioned for the first time, a "sacred sociology."14 It was in the context of his consideration of social
homogeneity and heterogeneity that Bataille situated the sacred. Bataille identified homogeneity
with the rule of commensurability, where production and use dominate. As for heterogeneity, the nonassimilable, Bataille believed that it largely comprised the sacred world, "and that reactions analogous
to those generated by sacred things are provoked by heterogeneous things that are not, strictly
speaking, considered to be sacred."15 Any object that produces affective reaction is heterogeneous, claimed Bataille, whether
one deals with attraction or repulsion. For, heterogeneous reality is not based on objects, but is force or shock
and contains a fundamental dualism, such as we find in the sacred strictly speaking: pure and impure,
imperative forces (i.e. the leader) and the lowest strata of society (like the Untouchables in India). Following Mauss and
Henri Hubert, Durkheim and Robert Hertz, who were themselves inspired by Robertson Smith's thesis on sacrifice, Bataille built his
own theory of the ambiguity of the notion of sacred. He emphasized the sacred's impure side and
argued that the "institutional" sacred is not necessarily healthy to society . As he tackled the realm of the sacred
through his interest in the non-assimilable, Bataille situated fascism within the higher forms of heterogeneity.
Fascism, Bataille claimed, was fundamentally based on alterity and in many ways appeared to be
above any consideration of utility, of usefulness.16 Did that make fascism good? Not so fast, Bataille
warned. "Higher," that is superior, also meant domination and even oppression within Bataille's schema;
it was not a positive quality. As an imperative royal form, that is, one that historically excluded the
impoverished "filthy," fascism, according to Bataille, actually contributed [End Page 44] to the
stabilization of homogeneous society, for the latter needed "free-floating imperative forces" to expel
those incompatible elements that it found mostly unacceptable. Although, in principle, homogeneous
society excluded "any" heterogeneous element, whether filthy or noble, homogeneous society had to
resort to the "higher" forms of heterogeneity to thrive. Fascism represented such a case, making of it
an accomplice of homogeneous society.
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2ac Sacrifice fails
Sacrifice ideologically restructures dominant hierarchies – their attacks on the
alternative cannot fathom the true nature of the sacrificial act
Goldhammer 5 - Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley (Jesse, “The
Headless Republic”, pg 179-181 josh nabors)
Because the obelisk is like an authoritative pile driven into a foundational swamp filled with sacrificial blood, it cannot return to the French
what they, in a fit of revolutionary fervor, destroyed. In the Place de la Concorde, spatially speaking, an empty notion of authority surrounds a
traditionally elevated one. As Denis Holier writes, "Bataille's Place de la Concorde ... is the place where loss is incarnate embodied in a man who
identifies himself by his lack. The
headless man, Acephalus, rises up where the guillotine let in the
freezing gales of empty space."' Holier's observation reveals Bataille's agreement with Maistre: the regicide was a profoundly
evil act, which Maistre lamented and Bataille celebrated. Rather than auguring the return of God, as Maistre had hoped, the regicide killed him,
leaving in his place an absence so complete that it forbids the accumulation of transcendental power. Negativity or destruction
without recompense: such is the fruit of the regicide and the basis for Bataille's concept of
sacrificial violence. The regicide does not make way for the obelisk, which represents none
other than the next generation's sovereign intentions. Rather, the regicide calls into question
any future claim to authority, leaving the Place de la Concorde to represent not a place of peace, but rather one of permanent
disorientation and subversion. Somewhere under the obelisk remain the impression of the guillotine and the blood of the king. Informing
Bataille's novel interpretation of the regicide, antipathy toward morality, and subversion of power indeed, his attitude toward politics in to lo¬
is a trenchant rejection of idealism. He rejects all traditions of thought that value the ideal or elevated over the material or base. One of his
most eloquent critiques of idealism appears in an early essay in which Bataille argues that the big toe is "the most human part of the body."
Using the big toe as a metaphor for seductive baseness, Bataille explains that human beings reject aspects of their uniqueness when they
celebrate all that is noble and pure in the hope of masking all that is low and impure: Although within the body blood flows in equal quantities
from high to low and from low to high, there is a bias in favor of that which elevates itself, and human life is erroneously seen as an elevation
Human life entails, in fact, the rage of seeing oneself as a back and forth movement from refuse to the ideal, and from the ideal to refuse a
rage that is easily directed against an organ as base as the foot. 'O Bataille uses the image of the big toe to criticize the metaphysics of
elevation. Humans err in their belief that humanity is uniquely an ideal achievement. Idealism is reason's attempt to hide the truth about being
human from human beings. This error led human beings to demonize the very part of their bodies that Bataille argues is the most human, an
exercise in self loathing. Without the "grotesque" big toe, humans could not stand erect, nor could they differentiate themselves from beasts.
This observation recalls Maistre's claim that the greatest human achievements are mired in the worst. Bataille's celebration of the big toe is a
reminder that what it means to be human is inescapably deformed, dirty, base, immoral, material, and incapable of rational thought. At the
same time, however, Bataille does not seek to elevate the big toe to a higher status. Its value consists paradoxically in its abjectness. Like the
regicide, the big toe symbolizes a permanent destabilization of the boundaries established by idealistic thought. When the former royal
executioner Sanson guillotined the king, neither monarchists nor republicans imagined that the sacrifice would be a permanently destabilizing
loss. Both the Roman and Christian sacrificial traditions instructed otherwise. During the Revolution, the examples of Brutus and Jesus
illustrated that different forms of sacrificial violence could be used to destroy as well as create authority. In the minds of the revolutionaries,
and then later in the writings of Maistre and Sorel, the concept of sacrificial violence became inextricably linked to the formation of both
political and spiritual communities bound together by traditionally elevated notions of power. Sacrifice accomplished this remarkable task by
skillfully manipulating the sacred categories that structure people's perceptions of authority. Impurity and purity, sin and redemption, moral
decadence and regeneration these are the dueling sacred polarities altered by sacrificial bloodshed in the French discourse. Sacrifice negotiates
be tween these terms by fostering different forms of exchange. Kill the king, the revolutionaries believed, and the republic would be purified.
Embracing a similar logic, Maistre claimed that the Terror would punitively cleanse the French of their secular hubris. More than a hundred
years later, Sorel argued that proletarian martyrs would regenerate working class morality saving in the religious sense of the word French
society from bourgeois decadence. In all three cases, the sacrificial death of one human being generated new social bonds by neutralizing and
reconfiguring the sacred bases of the old ones. Sacrificial loss thus came to be associated with the creation of new morality, new authority, and
new political regimes. Sacrificial Innovation in the Work of Bataille Bataille's interpretation of the regicide as a sacrifice that cannot recover
what it has lost presents a radical challenge to the Roman and Christian sacrificial traditions as well as to their incorporation into the French
discourse on sacrificial violence. Unrecoverable
sacrificial loss is a violent operation that only wastes. In
producing nothing useful, sacrifice subverts all idealistic distinctions. Stripped of idealism,
Brutus' filicide and Jesus' crucifixion can no longer participate in the task of foundation
because sacrifice loses its ability to produce popular authority or redemption. In order for authority to
be legitimate or for redemption to cleanse bodies or souls, the sacrificial operation must be capable of establishing stable, hierarchical
boundaries between sacred polarities. Cathartic, expiatory, and redemptive exchange permits this delimitation to take place because violent
loss is balanccd against some kind of psychological, spiritual, or moral gain. However, regicide that does not recover something from the violent
destruction of the king that does not make sacred in a particular way is useless. In this way,
Bataillian sacrifice permits no
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establishment, no obelisk, no higher source of power or authority, because it is a total loss
without sacred exchange. It has no capacity to establish order, as, for instance, between
sacrilegious and divine bloodshed, or between force and violence. It can neither recover, nor
make useful, the pure sacred authority of the king. Only if conceived in ideal and
compensatory terms can the collective taking of a life delineate between high and low, pure
and impure. If the desire to practice the art of politics were compared to the myth of Icarus,a
favorite of Bataille's, then sacrifice would correspond to the sun's blinding, wasted energy,
which melted Icarus' wings, reminding all human beings of the fragility of their activities and
their existence. Bataillian sacrifice challenges human beings to confront and test the limits of
their being, without ever allowing for the reestablishment of order. It is a violent and ecstatic
state of permanent alternation between purity and impurity With no finality, no
conservation, and no reserve, Bataille's concept of sacrifice reflects not just a critique of idealism but also, more specifically, of
Hegelian dialectics. Bataille attended A.lexandre Kojève's lectures on Hegel during which Kojéve famously declared history to be over. Bataille's
confrontation with Hegelian philosophy left him feeling "suffocated, crushed, shattered, killed ten times over."" If history was over, what was
left to do? In a letter to Kojêve, Bataille wondered what it meant to act freely in such a condition: "If action ("doing") is¬as Hegel says negativity,
the question arises as to whether the negativity of one who has 'nothing more to do' disappears or remains in a state of 'unemployed
negativity' Personally I can only decide in one way, being myself precisely this 'unemployed negativity' (I would not be able to define myself
more precisely). ,12
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Impact- Vtl
Potlatch is the only method of revealing true luxury and giving value to life – it functions
by reducing the excess of useless objects and reinforcing our contempt for the riches
Bataille in ‘49(Bataille, Georges, famous philosopher, The Accursed Share, pgs 207-208, 1949)
Indifferent to intentions, to reticences and lies, slowly or suddenly, the movement of wealth exudes and consumes
the resources of energy. This often seems strange, but not only do these resources suffice; if
they cannot be completely consumed productively a surplus usually remains, which must
be annihilated. At first sight, potlatch appears to carry out this consumption badly. The destruction of riches is not its rule: they
are ordinarily given away and the loss in the operation is reduced to that of the giver: the aggregate of riches is preserved. But this is only
an appearance. If
the potlatch rarely results in acts similar in every respect to sacrifice, it is
nonetheless the complementary form of an institution whose meaning is in the fact that it
withdraws wealth from productive consumption. In general, sacrifice withdraws useful
products from profane circulation; in principles the gifts of potlatch liberate objects that
are useless from the start. The industry of archaic luxury is the basis of potlatch; obviously, this industry squander
resources represented by the quantities of available human labour. Among the Aztecs, they were ‘ cloaks, petticoats, precious blouses’:
or ‘richly colored feathers…cut stones, shells, fans, shell paddles...wild-animal, canoes and houses are destroyed, and dogs or slaves are
slaughtered: calculations of those who enjoy luxury are surpassed in every way .
In wealth, what shines through the
defects extends the brilliance of the sun and provokes passion. It is not what is imagined by
those who have reduced it to their poverty; it is the return of life’s immensity to the truth of
exuberance. This truth destroys those who have taken it for what it is not; the least that one can say is that the present forms of
wealth make a shambles and a human mockery of those who think they own it. In this respect, present day society is a
huge counterfeit, where this truth of wealth has underhandedly slipped into extreme
poverty. The true luxury and the real potlatch of our time fall to the poverty stricken, that is,
to the individual who lies down and scoffs. A genuine luxury requires a complete contempt for riches, the
sombre indifference of the individual who refuses work and makes his life on the one hand
an infinitely ruined splendour, and on the other, a silent insult to the laborious lie of the
rich. Beyond a military exploitation, a religious mystification and a capitalist misappropriation, henceforth no one can rediscover the
meaning of wealth, the explosiveness that it heralds, unless it is in the splendour of rags and the sombre challenge of indifference. One
might say, finally, that the lie these are useful riches. Essentially the gifts are objects of luxury (elsewhere the gifts of food are pledged
from the start to the useless consumption of feasts). One might even say that potlatch
is the specific manifestation,
the meaningful form of luxury. Beyond the archaic forms, luxury has actually retained the functional value of potlatch,
creative of rank. Luxury still determines the rank of the one who displays it, and there is no exalted tank that does not require a display.
But the petty destines life’s exuberance to revolt.
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Impact- War
Excess has been the cause of war --only the aff can efficiently get rid of excess wealth
Bataille in ‘49(Bataille, Georges, famous philosopher, The Accursed Share, pgs 207208, 1949)
On the surface of the globe, for living matter in general, energy
is always in excess; the question is always posed in terms of
The choice is limited to how the wealth is to be squandered. It is to the particular
living being, or to limited populations of living beings, that the problem of necessity
presents itself. But the man is not just the separate being that contends with the living
world and with other men for his share of resources. The general movement of exudation
(of waste)of living matter impels him, and he cannot stop it; moreover, being at the summit, his sovereignty
in the living world identifies him with this movement; it destines him in a privileged way, to the glorious
operation, to useless consumption. If he denies this, as he is constantly urged to do by the consciousness of a necessity, of
extravagance.
an indigence inherent in separate beings (which are constantly short of resources, which are nothing but eternally needy individuals), his
denial does not alter the global movement of energy in the least: The latter cannot accumulate limitlessly in the productive forces;
eventually, like a river into the sea, it is bound to escape us and be lost to us. Incomprehension does not change the final outcome in the
slightest. We can ignore or forget the fact that the ground we live on is little other than a field of multiple destructions. Our ignorance
only has this incontestable effect: It causes us to undergo what we could bring about in our own what, if we understood. It deprives us the
For if we do
not have the force to destroy the surplus energy ourselves, It cannot be used, and like an
unbroken animal that cannot be trained, it is this energy that destroys us; it is we who pay
the price of the inevitable explosion. These excesses of life force, which logically block the –
poorest economies, are in fact the most dangerous factors or ruination. Hence relieving the
blockage was always, if only in the darkest region of consciousness, the object of a feverish
pursuit. Ancient societies found relief in festivals; some erected admirable monuments that had no useful purpose; we use the excess
choice of an exudation that might suit us. Above all, it consigns men and their works to catastrophic destructions.
to multiply “services” that make life smoother, and we are led to reabsorb part of it by increasing leisure time. But these diversions have
always been inadequate: Their
existence in excess nevertheless ( in certain respects) has perpetually
doomed multitudes of human beings and great quantities of useful goods to the destruction
of wars. In our time, the relative importance of armed conflicts has even increased; it has
taken on the disastrous proportions of which we are aware. Recent history is the result of the soaring
growth of industrial activity. At first this prolific movement restrained martial activity by absorbing the main part of excess: The
development of modern industry yielded the period of relative peace from 1815 to 1914. Developing in this way, increasing the resources,
the productive forces made possible in the same period the rapid demographics expansion of the advanced countries ( this is the fleshly
aspect of the bony proliferation of the factories). But in the long run the
growth that the technical changes made
possible became difficult to sustain. It became productive of an increased surplus itself. The
First World War broke out before its limits were really reached, even locally.
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Impact- Ontolog. Destruct.
Generosity and sacrifice are necessary for a meaningful consumption of an excess – simple
consumption leads to ontological destruction of the self
Stoekl 07( Stoekl, Allan, philosopher, professor at Penn State University, “Bataille’s Peak: Energy Religion and Postsustainable, 2007)
In “De Sade’s Sovereign Man,” Bataille first broaches the issue of generosity in the context of the
radical apathy analyzed by Blanchot in his essay on Sade. As we have seen, Sadean subjectivity is nothing more
than an intensification to the point of explosion (or implosion) of violent energy. Bataille shifts the emphasis of Blanchot’s
version of Sade slightly by emphasizing a link between this self -destruction and generosity. Bataille
stresses in his first Sade essay, in Erotism, the fact that “denying others in the end becomes denying oneself ”
(OC, 10: 174; E, 175). Bataille, however, asks: “What can be more disturbing than the prospect of
selfishness becoming the will to perish in the furnace lit by selfishness?” (OC, 10: 174; E, 175). The
extreme selfishness of Sade’s characters thus turns against selfishness: when extreme pleasure is pushed to the
limit, the sheer energy of destructiveness threatens the stability of all selfish subjectivity.
Bataille goes on to illustrate this self -destruction with a reference to a character, Amélie,
who appears very briefly in Sade’s Juliette. Amélie, though quickly sketched, is striking because she offers herself as a crime
victim to one of Sade’s most sinister villains, Borchamps. Bataille cites a passage in which Amélie addresses Borchamps: I love your
ferocity; swear to me that one day I shall also be your victim. Since I was 15 my imagination has been fired only at the thought of dying a
victim of the cruel passions of a libertine. Not that I wish to die tomorrow—my extravagant fantasies do not go that far; but that is the
only way I want to die; to have my death the result of a crime sets my head spinning. (OC, 10: 174– 75; E, 175–76) Bataille cites
Borchamps’s response: “I love your head madly, and I think we shall achieve great things between us . . . rotten and corrupt as it is, I
grant you” (OC, 10: 175; E, 176). Although Bataille gives no reference, the incident with Borchamps takes place in the fifth part of
Juliette. Oddly enough though, while thelittle speech by Amélie is to be found there (Sade 1966, 276), Borchamps’s response, as cited, is
not. In fact nowhere in Borchamps’s appearances does he say anything of the sort. Of course it is possible that Bataille found his remark
in some earlier¶ version of Juliette, or in some other text that mentions his name. But the standard version of Juliette does not include it;
all Borchamps says is, in an autobiographical narrative, “Deeply moved [ému] myself by such a proposal, I protested to Amélie that she
would have reason to be pleased with¶ me” (Sade 1966, 276). The
passage Bataille cites, wherever it may come
from, is nevertheless stronger: Borchamps tells Amélie that he loves her (strictly speaking, he loves her head); in effect, he
promises her that they will have a relationship based on love. Something of the sort does take place in Sade’s novel: Borchamps
marries Amélie; they flee to St. Petersburg, where Borchamps commits all¶ sorts of crimes; they live
in great luxury and have what seems, strangely (for Sade), a happy conjugal life for two years. In the end no less than
the Empress Catherine demands that Amélie be murdered in an orgy, and Borchamps is happy
to oblige. It is clear as well that he has become bored with their relationship, since Amélie has turned out to be
a bit less devoted to crime, and a bit more to faithfulness and contentment, than the libertine first suspected. Her initial speech, the one
that so moved Bataille, was, he tells us, only a “raffinement de délicatesse” (refined bit of thoughtfulness) (Sade 1966, 279). It seems that
Borchamps has taken Amélie at her word, whereas she had only been engaging in a bit of flattery. She finally has to be content with the
end that she herself has chosen. Important here, I think, is the fact that Bataille
projects onto the figure of Amélie a
kind of gracious generosity, which is returned as love by the criminal Borchamps. It is not just that Sade’s characters
are, as Blanchot would have it, pushing their violence to the point of total apathy toward their own
selves, their own survival. Rather, an extreme devotion to crime— to, as the prewar Bataille would put it, the
production of heterogeneous objects—leads, surprisingly, to a self -sacrificing generosity.
The self is not simply destroyed in a whirlwind of energy; the self is destroyed through an
excess of energy entailing a mortal gift of oneself in love, in crime, to the other. And that love is in
some way reciprocated. The cult, the myth, of the death of God and ultimately of Man is inseparable from the gift of oneself, to the point
of death. All this is important because it
indicates a direction that Bataille can follow, one that leads
away from the sheer fictionality or parody of Sade (indeed, we can never be certain of parody to the extent that it is the
reversible trope par excellence) toward a mythical -anthropological model in which the histories of
“primitive” societies can be invoked to justify a reconceptualization of our own, modern,
social order. The violence of Amélie, even though (and perhaps because) it is self -destructive, shows clearly enough that extreme
“disorder” (to use an expression dear to Sade) leads not to the simple extinction of the self but also to a bond with another: the
beginnings of a community. We might even say that this generosity, linked to love, is the unintended aftereffect of a violent spending of
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oneself to the point of self -extinction. The extreme generosity that we saw as being inseparable from the death of Man (the death of self,
The more one squanders, the more
one deviates from a supreme selfishness, not just in the direction of “apathetic” self destruction (which reaffirms the human in the very isolation of the Sadean sovereign), but in the direction of a
generosity that inaugurates a social tie. This is the movement that characterizes both the death of the self (of Man)
law, permanence) entails, unforeseen, unplanned, the establishment of a community.
and the death of God. The will here is virtually irrelevant: it is not so much that Amélie is seeking a social bond with another through her
will to a limitless death, but rather that that bond is the inevitable aftereffect of the will to the “continuity of crime,” as Bataille calls it
(OC, 10: 175; E, 176). That will is attained through a spending of oneself without limit, with no goal, with no desire for anything positive
or constructive. Nevertheless, attaining the “continuity of crime,” which is the continuity of energy that violates all arbitrary human
boundaries and laws, is the attainment of a social order more profound, more basic, than that of the current bourgeois regime. It is as if
the Sadean sovereign analyzed by Blanchot realizes that his or her¶ concentration of energy and explosive death (through apathy) entails
in the end not a predatory selfishness but a profound generosity—and that this generosity, through the death of God and Man, goes on to
reenergize a moribund and oppressive society.
It is not about offering the stranger dinner, it is about offering the strangers desert
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Solvency- empirics
Potlatch has been done before on a huge level– means that it is feasible
Richardson ‘94(Richardson, Michael, philosopher who studied Bataille, Georges Bataille, 1994)
The Marshall Plan was unveiled by the United States in 1947 in the wake of the devastation
brought to Europe by the Second World War. In its aims the Marshall Plan served to focus
Bataille’s contentions because it was presented as an act of generosity by the United States
to revitalize Europe without any expectation of an economic return for itself . It was not,
however, simply the destruction of the war that accounted for the US generosity. What was
determining was the threat from Soviet expansionism. The two factors together (European economic
chaos and Soviet political ambitions) had made the market economy untenable. According to Bataille
the choice was between, ‘the silence of communism universally imposed by concentration
camps and…freedom exterminating the communists’. The war that could result was far from
Marx’s vision of the transformation of capitalism, but could only destroy it and install a
universal darkness. Nevertheless this menace had its positive side. It forced an awakening of the
mind’: with the world on a knife edge, and petty calculation of interests became counterproductive and
forced the American capitalists to abandon the restricted economy and take the general economy into
account. No other course was open to them since to have continued to apply the logic of a market
economy would have made it impossible for a ruined Europe to return to a viable political economy.